Back in February we reported on a welcome move by the Dutch government to modify its copyright law so that creative remixes are permitted. A new initiative called right2remix.org wants to make that a Europe-wide change:
When we wrote last year about a Dutch idea to give police there the power to break into computers -- even those located abroad -- we and many others pointed out a number of deep flaws with the plan. Undeterred, the Dutch government seems to be going ahead with the scheme, as Bits of Freedom explains:
Techdirt readers with long memories may recall a fantasy proposal from Orrin Hatch that would have seen technological means deployed to destroy the computers of those who downloaded unauthorized copies of files. Of course, the idea was so ridiculous it went nowhere. Now, nine years later, a similar idea has turned up, but with a rather better chance of being implemented, since it comes from a national government:
As long-suffering readers of this blog will know, one of the many reasons I am against software patents is that software consists of algorithms, and algorithms are just maths, so a software patent is a patent on knowledge - the purest knowledge there is (a mathematician writes).
Sometimes defenders of software patents deny that software is just algorithms (don't ask me how, but some do). So I was particularly interested to read about this poor hacker being contacted over - you guessed it - algorithms, pure and simple:Landmark Digital Services owns the patents that cover the algorithm used as the basis for your recently posted “Creating Shazam In Java”. While it is not Landmark’s intention to alienate those in the Open Source and Music Information Retrieval community, Landmark must request that you do not ship, deploy or post the code presented in your post. Landmark also requests that in the future you do not ship, deploy or post any portions or versions of this code in its current state or in any modified state.
As you can see, there is no way of disguising the fact that this claims to be a patent on an *algorithm* - that is, on maths, which is knowledge and therefore unpatentable.
But it gets worse. As the poor chap points out:I've written some code (100% my own) and implemented my own methods for matching music. There are some key differences with the algorithm Shazam uses.
That is, he didn't copy the code, and it's not even the same approach.
But wait, there's more.
As he notes:Why does Landmark Digital Services think they hold a patent for the concepts used in my code? Even if my code works pretty different from the Shazam code (from which the patents came).
What they describe in the patent is a system which:
1. Make a series of fingerprints of a media file and/or media sample
(such as audio, but could also be text, video, multimedia, etc)
2. Have a database/hashtable of fingerprints as lookup
3. Compare the set of hashtable hits using their moment in time it happened
This is very vague, basically the only innovative idea is matching the found fingerprints linearly in time. Because the first two steps describe how a hashtable works and creating a hash works. These concepts are not new nor innovative.
Moreover:I've also had contact with other people who have implemented this kind of algorithms. Most notible is Dan Ellis. His implementation can be found here: http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/resources/matlab/fingerprint/
He hasn't been contacted (yet), but he isn't planning on taking his MatLab implementation down anyway and has agreed for me to place the link here. This raises another interesting question, why are they targetting me, somebody who hasn't even published the code yet, and not the already published implementation of Dan?!
And if they think its illegal to explain the algorithm, why aren't they going after this guy? http://laplacian.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/how-shazam-works/
This is where I got the idea to implement the algorithm and it is mentioned in my own first post about the Java Shazam.
So, moving to that last site, we find a detailed analysis of the algorithm - which is all pretty obvious. How did he do that?
So I was curious how it worked, and luckily there is a paper [.pdf] written by one of the developers explaining just that. Of course they leave out some of the details, but the basic idea is exactly what you would expect: it relies on fingerprinting music based on the spectrogram.
In other words, the description of the algorithm by the company's programmers shows that it "is exactly what you would expect".
At every level, then, this is an obvious, algorithmic, mathematical approach. And yet someone in Holland - a country that doesn't recognise software patents at all - finds himself under pressure in this manner for some code he wrote independently implementing that general, algorithmic mathematical idea.
Now explain to me how patents promote innovation, please...
Update: Re-reading the post I realise that things are even more ridiculous. Here's what the company wants:we would like you to refrain from releasing the code at all and to remove the blogpost explaining the algorithm.
Now, you recall that the algorithm is the thing that the company claims to have a patent on. The original idea behind a patent was that in return for its grant, the inventor would *reveal* all the details of his or her invention so that others could use it once the patent had expired, as a quid pro quo. So if the company claims a patent on its invention, it must *by definition* reveal the algorithm.
Against that background, this demand to remove an explanation of the algorithm is simply absurd, and contradicts the very nature of a patent - it's like asking the USPTO not to reveal the patents it grants.
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As I've noted many times, one of the big benefits of deploying open source is freedom from lock-in: using open formats that anyone can implement means that it is relatively easy to change supplier. That's not the case with Microsoft's code and formats, as the following sad saga underlines...
On Open Enterprise blog.
One of the central fallacies in the argument that sharing is bad for business is the idea that every file downloaded is a sale lost. In fact, there is growing evidence that the contrary is the case - that people who share stuff, buy *more* stuff. Here's some more:The Institute for Information Law in the Netherlands reports that the average downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download. Illegal downloaders represent 45 percent of consumers who purchase content legally, the institute recently reported.
The Institute estimates some 4.7 million Dutch Internet users 15 years and older downloaded hacked and pirated DVDs, games, and music in the last 12 months. This would imply a staggering 25 percent of the Dutch population (from the 2008 figure of 16.5 million) who view illegal downloading and sharing as socially acceptable, even as they're also legally acquiring content in parallel.
So that seems to say that 25 per cent of the Dutch population share stuff, but that they represent 45 per cent of the sales. In other words, they are buying quite a lot more than people who don't.
Perhaps one day the content industries will realise that they should be *encouraging* sharing, becuase it boost their sales: it's called marketing.
Here's an intriguing hint of what may be to come, in Europe at least.
First, in Belgium and Holland:
Belgium and the Netherlands will not yet consider OOXML, Microsoft's format for electronic documents, it appears from comments by the Belgian Federal ICT advisory body Fedict and the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs.
Asked to comment on last week's ISO approval for OOXML, Fedict's chief IT architect, Peter Strickx, said: "There will have to be multiple implementations, in order for us not to become dependent on a single vendor. It will also have to be compatible with open standards that we already use, in this case Open Document Format ODF."
Also in Germany:The German Foreign Ministry will not be using OOXML, at least for now.
"We will not be in a position to process OOXML unless it is available independently of the platform", said Rolf Theodor Schuster, who heads the IT department of the German Foreign Ministry. "There must exist an Open Source implementation that can be used without any restrictions, regardless of the platform or Linux distribution."
He said the Foreign Ministry will not accept OOXML if only a single GNU/Linux distribution implements OOXML. "It is not good enough if only Novell will offer it on Suse Linux."
What's particularly interesting about both these is that they show how these people understand that a so-called standard with only minimal implementation is no standard at all. What is needed is multiple, major implementations and real competition.
Maybe one benefit of the extremely argumentative process of considering the approval of OOXML is that is has made people - well, technical people, at least - much more aware of the key issues involved. And we have Microsoft to thank for that.
Everyone knows that government is dull - dull, but very, very important. So a couple of recent moves in this dull but important world seem pretty significant to me.
First, there's this:
European public administrations that want to use software that is offered for free, such as Open Source software, do not need to organise a call for tender.
This is the conclusion of the Dutch government project NOIV, after studying European rules on tenders. The NOIV published an English translation of its guide for ICT buyers in the public and semi-public sectors, 'The acquisition of (open-source) software', on its website this week.
What that might mean is that it will be much easier to take the open source route than the proprietary one, since government departments (in Holland, at least) will be able to avoid all the hassle of putting out tenders and then sifting through them, and so more departments will take opt for it.
Then there's this:The French-speaking Brussels Parliament (PFB) is considering to increase its use of Open Source, said Joël Tournemenne, director of the parliament's IT department, without giving more details.
Tournemenne visited the Solutions Linux conference in Paris at the end of January, where he spoke with the developers of Tabellio, an Open Source projects funded by the PFB.
Tabellio should result in an Open Source suite of applications for drafting, managing and publishing legislative documents and is meant for parliaments and assemblies. The project is a joined effort of two Belgian regional parliaments: the PFB and the Parliament of the French Community in Belgium.
What interests me here is not so much the details, but the fact that something like the open source Tabellio even exists: free software for "drafting, managing and publishing legislative documents" that "is meant for parliaments and assemblies"? You can hardly get closer to the heart of government - and hence power - than that.
Great post by Ed Felten about the complete mess the Dutch authorities have made of their new $2 billion transit card system, which, it seems, is wide open to cracking:
Why?Kerckhoffs’s Principle, one of the bedrock maxims of cryptography, says that security should never rely on keeping an algorithm secret. It’s okay to have a secret key, if the key is randomly chosen and can be changed when needed, but you should never bank on an algorithm remaining secret.
Unfortunately the designers of Mifare Classic did not follow this principle. Instead, they chose to combine a secret algorithm with a relatively short 48-bit key. This is a problem because once you know the algorithm it’s possible for an attacker to search the entire 48-bit key space, and therefore to forge cards, in a matter or days or weeks.
More generally:
Now the Dutch authorities have a mess on their hands. About $2 billion have been invested in this project, but serious fraud seems likely if it is deployed as designed. This kind of disaster would have been more likely had the design process been more open. Secrecy was not only an engineering mistake (violating Kerckhoffs’s Principle) but also a policy mistake, as it allowed the project to get so far along before independent analysts had a chance to critique it. A more open process, like the one the U.S. government used in choosing the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) would have been safer. Governments seem to have a hard time understanding that openness can make you more secure.
Let's hope other governments are listening...
More reinforcements are arriving all the time:The Free Knowledge Institute (www.freeknowledge.eu) is an initiative from three Amsterdam-based professionals who currently work for Internet Society Netherlands. In the past years ISOC.nl coordinated a large-scale EU-project SELF which embraced the same objectives. The need to share knowledge freely has become so important that the institute now turns into an independent organisation.
"More and more governments realise the benefits of free knowledge and free information technology", says Wouter Tebbens, the president of the new institute. The Free Knowledge Institute intends to be a knowledge partner helping to show the way in available free knowledge and technology. "That way, we can elaborate on the existing pool of free knowledge and free software, which is growing enormously. Look at projects such as Wikipedia, Linux, and the internet itself", Tebbens states. "Why reinvent the wheel yet again?"
Its main lines of activity are Free Knowledge in technology, education, culture and science. Free Knowledge in education focuses on the production and dissemination of free educational materials; Free Knowledge in IT mainly refers to free software, open standards and open hardware; Free Knowledge in culture includes open content; and Free Knowledge in science includes open access and anti-privatisation of scientific knowledge.
The actionplan 'Netherlands Open in Connection', initiated by the Dutch ministries of Economic Affairs and Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK), reflects the momentum of sharing knowledge. State secretary Bijleveld from BZK emphasized in December 2007 that sharing of knowledge is essential for further progress and development of society. The statesecretary committed to pay more attention to the valuable use of free software and open standards in education, government and business.
It's happening, people, it's happening.
How can I not link to this post, since it not only spreads the good news about the Dutch government's move to open source, but even weaves intellectual monopolies into the story?
This is obviously good news, but I can't help finding the idea of an "official" spelling list rather quaint:The OpenTaal project (Dutch for "OpenLanguage") has published the first open source word list to be certified by the Dutch Language Union as corresponding to official spelling. Simon Brouwer, project leader of OpenTaal, says, "This is a milestone. Users of open source software can trust their Dutch spell checker now. They have the guarantee that their word list is consistent with the official spelling."
...
In 2005, the Dutch language area got new spelling, which consists mainly of corrections to the spelling of 1995. Starting in August 2006, the new spelling would be mandatory for the government and schools. This revived the project of creating an open source word list. At the end of 2005 the Dutch government program Open Standards and Open Source Software (OSOSS) initiated the OpenTaal project to coordinate the various Dutch open source projects that had an interest in the new spelling, with the aim of developing a Dutch word list conforming to the new spelling. This would give users of open source software like OpenOffice.org, TeX, Thunderbird, and Firefox an up-to-date spell checker. OSOSS contacted the Dutch Language Union, which agreed to assist the project.
What were they thinking?
The European Parliament today accepted the IP Criminal Measures directive after its first reading in a vote of 374 to 278, and 17 abstentions. It left several unexamined rights in the scope, and threatens to criminalise consumers and incriminate ISPs. Recommendations from an alliance of libraries, consumers and innovators were not followed, although Parliament was clearly divided on several issues.
The battle is lost, but the war is not yet over:
The fight now moves to the Council of the European Union, where it will be considered by representatives of the national governments of all EU Member States. Several states have started to mount resistance to IPRED2 in recent weeks, with the UK and Holland leading the charge. Europeans worried about their right to innovate, and their ability to live under clear, fair criminal laws must now turn to their own national governments to ensure that IPRED2 doesn't set a terrible precedent for copyright law, and the EU legal process. If the Council disagrees with EuroParl's action -- which we believe is in reach -- IPRED2 would be returned for a second reading. We will be tracking these developments and providing opportunities to act at CopyCrime.eu.
Just in time for Rembrandt's 400th birthday, here's some good news from Holland:De gemeente Groningen heeft besloten om een overeenkomst met Microsoft voor de levering van de Office-suite van de softwaregigant te laten verlopen. De noordelijke gemeente heeft namelijk besloten om over te stappen op het opensourcepakket OpenOffice.org. Hiermee is de gemeente Groningen volgens eigen zeggen de grootste gemeente in Nederland die serieus met opensourcesoftware aan de slag gaat.
Which, I think, says (roughly) that the northern Dutch municipality Groningen has decided not to renew its contract with Microsoft for Office, but to go with OpenOffice.org, confirming Groningen's position as the open source leader in Dutch local government.
What's interesting is that it's OpenOffice.org that's driving open source uptake again. Sure, Firefox is more widely used, but it rarely figures as a conscious decision. And it's certainly not one that loses Microsoft any revenue (though its managers probably lose some sleep), as OpenOffice.org will in Groningen, to the tune of 330,000 Euros. (Via LXer.)
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