And Now, by an Amazing Coincidence...

A little while back I pointed out at some length how flimsy was the logic found in a white paper that claimed Microsoft's Vista would bring "benefits" of $40 billion to six European countries - conveniently forgetting the fact that those $40 billion of "benefits" were actually a cost.

And now, what do we find, but a study from the US film industry that purports to show:

movie piracy causes a total lost output for U.S. industries of $20.5 billion per year, thwarts the creation of about 140,000 jobs and accounts for more than $800 million in lost tax revenue.

But fortunately, there's someone else on hand who isn't taken in by this Vista-like logic:

It's important to remember, however, that even though piracy prevents money from reaching the movie industry, those dollars probably stay in the economy, one intellectual property expert said.

"In other words, let's say people are forgoing paying for $6 billion in movies by downloading or consuming illegal goods but end up spending that $6 billion on iPods, computers and HDTV sets on which to watch the movies, which leads to $25 billion in job creation in the computer/software/consumer electronics field," Jason Shultz, staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote in an e-mail.

Quite.

European Digital Library, European Archive

Some time back I wrote about the European Digital Library. But it seems that this isn't enough: now we have the European Archive, too, which seems even more ambitious. For as well as providing access to digital versions of traditional content, it seems to be aiming to become a European mirror of the wonderful Internet Archive:

The European Archive is a non-profit foundation working towards universal access to all knowledge. The archive will achieve this through partnerships with libraries, museums, other collection bodies, and through building its own collections. The primary goal of collecting this knowledge is to make it as publicly accessible as possible, via the Internet and other means.

...

As the web has grown in importance as a publishing medium, we are behind in bringing into operation the archiving and library services that will provide enduring access to many important resources. Where some assumed web site owners would archive their own materials, this has not generally been the case. If properly archived, the Web history can provide a tremendous base for time-based analysis of the content, the topology including emerging communities and topics, trends analysis etc. as well as an invaluable source of information for the future.

The foremost effort to archive the Web has been carried on in the US by the Internet Archive, a non-profit foundation based in San Francisco. Every two months, large snapshots of the surface of the web are archived by the Internet Archive since 1996.

This entire collection offers 500 terabytes of data of major significance in all domain that have been impacted by the development of the Internet, that is, almost all. This represent large amount of data (petabytes in the coming years) to crawl, organize and give access to.

By partnering with the Internet Archive, the European Archive is laying down the foundation of a global Web archive based in Europe.

Obviously, all this begs scads of questions to do with access and copyright, but at least it's a start.

Charlie is Not My Darling

'McPatent' McCreevy is at it again:

In the context of the debate about the resolution of the European Parliament on future patent policy the EU Commission will press ahead with an official communication and an action plan of its own and will thereby seek to support the much criticized European Patent Litigation Agreement, Charlie McCreevy, the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, told the European Parliament during a plenary session in Strasburg on Thursday.

And there was a telling quotation:

"compared to our major trading partners, Europe is losing ground," Mr. McCreevy, referring to the patent systems in, for example, the United States and Japan, critically observed.

He's clearly referring to the number of patents in Europe (too low), and their quality (too high) compared to those in the US and Japan. But don't worry, Chas'll fix it....

The Benefits of Open Access - for Publishers

Here's an interesting take on open access.

The benefits of this kind of openness for scientists and the public have been rehearsed many times; but this paper by Paul Peters, the Senior Publishing Developer of Hindawi Publishing Corporation, one of the leading open access outfits, presents some pretty compelling reasons why opening up is good for publishers - well, the smaller ones, at least:

While advocates of open access publishing have tended to focus on the benefits that it can offer authors and readers, there are equally important benefits that an open access publishing model can provide for small and mid-sized publishers. Within the existing subscription-based publishing industry there are a number of market forces that work against smaller publishers, and this is making it increasingly difficult for these smaller publishers to stay competitive. However, by adopting a business model based on publication charges, smaller publishers can overcome many of the difficulties that they currently face in the subscription market.

There are three main advantages that open access can provide for smaller publishers. One important advantage is that it makes the growth of both new and existing journals much easier. In addition, a shift to open access will promote more competition between publishers, which will enable many smaller publishers to gain a competitive edge over the largest and most well-established publishing houses. Finally, an open access publishing model will make a journal far more attractive to potential authors, since they can avoid many of the unnecessary limitations imposed by subscription-based models.

BBC + MS = DRM?

Bad, bad BBC:

The BBC has signed an agreement with Microsoft to explore ways of developing its digital services.

The only thing that Microsoft understands is control; if the BBC teams up with Bill Gates' company in any way, we can kiss goodbye to our televisual heritage.

CIOs Will Turn Green...

...because they will have no choice. As this Reg piece explains, the worlds of computing and the environment are inexorably becoming more intertwined. From the story:

"Today, energy costs typically form less than 10 per cent of an overall IT budget. However, this could rise to more than 50 per cent in the next few years. The bottom line is that the cost of power on this scale would be difficult to manage simply as a budget increase and most CIOs would struggle to justify the situation to company board members."

Enough to make anyone go green.

Bill Clinton Recommends Ubuntu

No, really.

Open Energy Technology

Here's another example of open source being invoked in the context of helping to solve environmental problems:

Non-patentable shared "open energy technology" has the potential to have a profound impact on the reduction of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, in the same way that open source software has changed computers and the Internet.

There's an interesting twist, in that it also suggests

Possibly the most ideal person to do it would be South African billionaire, Mark Shuttleworth, who is currently taking on Microsoft's domination of the operating system market through the development of the open source operating system, Ubuntu Linux.

The reason being that Shuttleworth is a local boy for the publication in question. A nice idea, despite the nepotism.

You Say "Direct Economy", I Say "Web 2.0"

The Direct Economy:

In a system of direct democracy, sovereignty is lodged with the citizens - or at least, with those among them that choose to actively participate in the system. They can not only pick among prepackaged options (vote) or candidates (election) but they also can deeply co-shape the policy process. Switzerland is probably the strongest case: here new laws can be put forth, and even the Constitution modified, by citizens’ initiative. Translate that into business terms and we have a description of a system where consumers have a direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them. The more informed, opinionated and wired (socially connected) they are, the more they are likely to make use of this influence and to try to organize it - exactly as in a direct democracy system.

Sounds like a business using Web 2.0 to me. Still, good to see the memes spreading.

Bubble 2.0, Meet Blodgett 2.0

Talking of the past, do you remember Henry Blodgett?

Amazon was selling for about $275 a share when a little-known analyst, Henry Blodgett, predicted it would go to $400 - even though Amazon had never made a profit. Amazon did go to $400 and beyond.

Amazon's backer, Merrill Lynch, responded by replacing its pessimistic Amazon analyst. His replacement? Henry Blodgett. While this was great for Blodgett, it proved not so good for investors, many of whom got soaked when Amazon's value fell 75 percent.

Blodgett has said his prediction was based on sound analysis using new ways to measure a company's performance. Wall Street coined a new verb: to "blodgett" a stock.

Now what do we hear?

MySpace, the social-networking Web site, could be worth around $15 billion within three years, measured in terms of the value created for shareholders of parent company News Corp., a Wall Street media analyst forecast Wednesday.

Those who cannot remember the past....

Update: Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction....

Mind-boggling Bloglines

I must have blinked. Bloglines has started offering package tracking and weather forecasts. Makes sense of course: as blogs and RSS feeds in general become the common purveyors of information, you may as well use your aggregator to pull in info from all kinds of sources - even those that have nothing to do with the blogosphere.

Internet in a Box 2.0

Only really, really old-timers - and sad ones at that - remember one of O'Reilly's less well-known products, called simply Internet in a Box, which came out in 1995. Well, it was clearly an idea ahead of its time.

Now, though, we have a real Internet in a box - or rather, Internet dans

la première « box » associant l’accès à l’Internet haut débit et les principales fonctionnalités d’un ordinateur.

For 40 Euros a month, and a deposit of 150 Euros, you get EasyGate, which is effectively a super-router that handles not just the Internet side, but the entire PC side as well. If you add a screen, mouse, keyboard and webcam, it'll cost you an extra 99 Euros. But since you end up with a GNU/Linux-based system, completely with Firefox and OpenOffice.org and a GNOME-like environment, that's not bad.

As hardware prices plummet, this was bound to come. But having come, it does look extremely attractive as an all-in-one, techophobe-safe system - rather like the highly-successful Amstrad PCW8256.

I predict we're going to see more and more of these systems, which means that GNU/Linux and open source software in general is going to start popping up in all sorts of unexpected places. (Via LXer and The Inquirer.)

Open Access to the Origins of Language

New Scientist reports:

Linguists are calling for an online public database, similar to the human genome project, that would allow researchers to collaboratively share different studies of language impairment.

By gathering together studies of developmental disorders that cause communication impairments – such as autism or Down’s syndrome – they hope to provide new clues about the origins of language.

Aside from the interesting nature of the project, what is striking is that the key element is not creating new knowledge, but consolidating it in a database, allowing higher-level knowledge to emerge. Clearly, for this to work in an optimal way, all the data and papers need to be open access. Whether it will be, assuming the project goes ahead, remains to be seen.

Update: Wow, the original article behind the NS story is not behind the usual paywall. So from this I can read:

We close by illustrating how systematic analyses within and between disorders, suitably informed by evolutionary theory—and ideally facilitated by the creation of an open-access database—could provide new insights into language evolution.

The Tipping Point

I don't want to push the analogy too far, but it's amazing how the following passage could almost be talking about free software:

The interest and investment and technological momentum in all of these technologies is not only accelerating, but I think reaching some kind of tipping point where the markets really get to be transformed in a way that the next stage of change is actually a lot easier. Even though the amount of growth is going to be a lot larger, it actually gets easier to do, because the whole political equation is different. You've got big energy companies that are supporting renewable energy rather than opposing it, because it's part of their business plan, as opposed to before when they saw it as an unwanted competitor. That in turn changes the political equation, which means that it's easier to get new laws enacted, which in turn tends to speed up investment, so it becomes a real self-reinforcing circle.

Bravo!

Gilberto Gil is something of an icon in the open content world, and with good cause. He's a big name that backs the idea of others creating around his own art. And as Minister of Culture, he's also an influential politician in his native Brazil and far beyond.

Put the two together and you have a man who is in a unique position to talk to powerful people about important things. For example:

I had a meeting with the president of WIPO [on 25 September], and I was very much enthusiastic about the future role about the future role we think WIPO should play in terms of interpreting the trends, the tendencies, of intellectual property flexibility, inclusion, as the president himself puts it. Meaning, not just including as many as possible number of countries in the functioning of the institution today, but also inclusion in the sense that we should include the new themes, the new demands, and intellectual property flexibilities is one of the main things today. Not only considering the protection of the authors and of the authors’ rights, but also taking care of the public domain, of the social role of intellectual property, democratisation, universalisation, all of those contexts that should be referential to the work of an organisation like WIPO today already but mainly in the future. So like horizon, we were discussing horizon ahead of us for the next years. This is, I think, besides the regular day-to-day process of the subjects, and the multilateral and bilateral situations for WIPO, we should consider this advancing in terms of substance, of policy, I would even use the word ideology.

Not many people could have that conversation.

The Sun Sets on Sony

Sony is a strange company. Despite its numerous mis-steps - remember that DRM rootkit? - people still seem to harbour a certain affection for the outfit. Maybe it's that all those years spent playing on the Playstation have addled their brains...(well, it couldn't be because of the Walkman, could it?).

Me, well, I never played on the Playstation. I did own a Vaio laptop once (The horror! The horror!): I hated it, and I have sworn never to buy another. So this story about the possibility of Sony going permanently down the tubes rather warmed the cockles of my heart. Pathetic, I know. (Via Monkchips.)

The Other GNU Licence Upgrade

With the jolly kerfuffle over GNU GPL v3, it's easy to overlook the fact that the less well-known GNU Free Documentation Licence is also being updated, and that the first draft of version 2 is available. So why is this important? Because Wikipedia uses the GFDL.

Let's hope Jimmy Wales doesn't feel the same way Linus does over this process....

IBM's Open Patent Policy

IBM's announcement of a new patent policy is obviously important, if only because Big Blue has a big collection of the critters. Whether it will do much to help fix a deeply broken system is another matter:

The worldwide policy, built on IBM's long-standing practices of high quality patents and transparency of ownership, is designed to foster integrity, a healthier environment for innovation, and mutual respect for intellectual property rights. IBM encouraged others in the patent community to adopt similar policies and practices, more stringent than currently required by law.

For a good first analysis, see Andy Updegrove's blog.

Update 1: And here's a salutary reminder from Andy on why it's best to get all the facts before you express your enthusiasm.

Update 2: Richard Poynder also makes some good points about the move.

DRM's Problems Made Concrete

One of the problems with DRM is that it can override traditional copyright to forbid anyone ever having access to content: effectively it is removed from the intellectual commons forever. If that's too abstract, here's a concrete example of something that it's going to be hard to open up - with equally serious problems for the environmental commons.

Creative Commons Made Clare

...Each little tyrant with his little sign
Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine
But paths to freedom and to childhood dear
A board sticks up to notice ‘no road here’
And on the tree with ivy overhung
The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung
As tho’ the very birds should learn to know
When they go there they must no further go...

Any pamphlet that begins with a quotation from John Clare about the first enclosure movement is clearly doing something right. As it happens, Rosemary Bechler's Unbounded Freedom, nominally "A guide to Creative Commons thinking for cultural organisations", does just about everything right. It is probably the single best short introduction to intellectual monopoly issues I have ever read. It is well written, accessible, packed with good examples and surprisingly comprehensive.

What's even more amazing is that it comes from the British Council, a body that used to be even stodgier than the British Library. Clearly - or Clarely - stodge ain't what it used to be. (Via OpenBusiness.)

Update: There's now a blog for discussing this book and its ideas. Sadly, there are already some rather obtuse comments that wilfully misrepresent the idea of open content. We've still got a long way to go....

It's Baaaaack: the Scary Teeseeoh Monster

I've written extensively - some would say too extensively - about Microsoft's long tradition of FUD. This has gone through many incarnations in a desperate attempt to find something that might convince people to stay away from that nasty GNU/Linux stuff. It appears that even the fertile minds of Microsoft's FUDmeisters are running out of ideas, since they've resurrected the old TCO argument.

I won't even bother going through why this PDF is a waste of electrons - even I'm bored with refuting these tired old arguments. But I would like to point out the underlying flaw with all these studies: that traditional TCO fails utterly to take into account things like the cost of vendor lock-in that the Microsoft route implies.

Even when the TCO for Windows is lower than that for GNU/Linux - and yes, it happens - there is the problem that Microsoft will always bring out a new version of Windows that requires massive software and hardware investments over and above those budgeted for in simplistic TCO analyses (i.e. all those prepared by analysts). Of course, according to Microsoft, this isn't a problem, since it represents a huge economic "benefit".

BLimey

The British Library is not normally regarded as a beacon of enlightened thought when it comes to intellectual monopolies - it's in cahoots with Microsoft for much of it's IT stuff. But this "IP Manifesto" is decidely clueful:

1 Digital is not different – Fair dealing access and library privilege should apply to the digital world as is the case in the analogue one.

2 Contracts and DRM – New, potentially restricting technologies (such as DRMs /TPMs) and contracts issued with digital works should not exceed the statutory exceptions for fair dealing access allowed for in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

3 Archiving – Libraries should be allowed to make copies of sound (and film) recordings to ensure they can be preserved for posterity in the future.

4 Term of copyright – The copyright term for sound recording rights should not be extended without empirical evidence and the needs of society as a whole being borne in mind.

5 Orphan works – The US model of dealing with orphan works should be considered for the UK.

6 Unpublished works – The length of copyright term for unpublished works should be retrospectively brought in line with other terms – life plus 70 years.

(Via Open Access News.)

Searching for an Edge

Search lies at the heart of modern desktop computing (just ask Google). So if free software wants to make a breakthrough on the desktop, coming up with a better search tool might just be the way to do it. Perhaps this could help.

Is the New Commons Killing the Old Commons?

An interesting meditation on the way in which the application of the commons metaphor to information - something I've certainly been doing in these posts - commits the sin of ignoring the way in which computers, the creators of that metaphorical commons, are destroying the concrete commons of the environment through the toxic materials they habitually contain, and which are dumped when they reach the end of their life.

It therefore suggests:

Perhaps the time has come to revisit the metaphor of an 'environmentalism for the net' to talk not only about multiple forms of resistance to an ever expanding intellectual property regime, but quite literally of the ecopolitical implications of the very infrastructures that facilitate and sustain the net.cultural dynamic of collaborative creation. Such an environmentalism, articulated conceptually and organisationally in the challenging context of electronics manufacturing's 'global flagship networks', could significantly broaden existing efforts by labour unions and NGOs to develop a broader agenda of economic and environmental justice.

Food for thought. (Via OnTheCommons.)

One that Fled the Coop...

...without me noticing: Google Coop. It seems to be a tagging effort that provides cuts of Google searches. In doing so, it goes some way to turning the Web into the Semantic Web.