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The Raspberry Pi is a $25 credit-card sized computer
that has succeeded in making GNU/Linux not just newsworthy, but
downright desirable. The initial batch of boards sold out in minutes,
and eager customers crashed the server where it was being sold.
The original vision of the Raspberry Pi was to promote amateur
programming and to re-invigorate the teaching of computing in the UK
(and elsewhere) by providing a very low-cost and easily hackable system.
Naturally, though, its open source code allows it to be applied in
many different situations. Here, for example, is a plan to create a secure chat system for activists that can be used in countries where communications are routinely under surveillance, using a program called Cryptocat:
On
Techdirt.
Amidst the growing enthusiasm for digital texts -- ebooks and scans
of illustrated books -- it's easy to overlook some important drawbacks.
First, that you don't really own ebooks, as various unhappy experiences
with Amazon's Kindle have brought home.
Secondly, that a scan of an illustrated book is only as good as the
scanning technology that is available when it is made: there's no way to
upgrade a scan to higher quality images without rescanning the whole
thing.
On
Techdirt.
Some bad ideas just keep on coming back, despite the fact that they
are manifestly stupid. Trying to get Google and others to pay for the
privilege of sending more traffic to newspapers by including short
snippets from their stories is one of them. Of course, logic would
dictate that the newspapers should be paying Google for the marketing it
provides, but unfortunately not everyone sees it that way.
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt reported
earlier this year, Spain's Sinde Law, designed to combat file sharing
by blocking sites with allegedly infringing material, has an extremely
complex history. It finally went into effect on 1 March, and was
immediately met with a clever denial of service attack from a Spanish group with the self-explanatory name "Hackivistas". As TorrentFreak explains:
On
Techdirt.
One of the most insidious aspects of recent Internet policy-making is
that much of it is taking place behind closed doors, with little or no
consultation -- think of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. But there's another
dangerous trend: the rise of "informal" agreements between the copyright
industries and Internet service providers.
On
Techdirt.
Even though the European Commission has referred
ACTA to the European Court of Justice, the European Parliament
continues to examine the treaty in its various committees. Earlier this
week, the one dealing with International Trade
met for a preliminary discussion. One of the key speakers was the
Commissioner responsible for ACTA, Karel De Gucht, who naturally tried
to make light of the many problems that have been raised in recent
weeks.
On
Techdirt.
Here's an interesting move from the European Commission:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the striking features of the demonstrations
against ACTA that took place across Europe over the last few weeks was
the youth of the participants. That's not to say that only young
people are concerned about ACTA, but it's an indication that they take
its assault on the Internet very personally -- unlike, perhaps, older
and more dispassionate critics.
On
Techdirt.
Just as the original term of copyright has been constantly extended
from the original 14 years in the Statute of Anne, so the the scope of
intellectual monopolies has been widened by the introduction of new ways
in which people assert ownership of abstractions. Here's the latest
idea: a right to protect your image.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt wrote
about a surprising initiative by the Netherlands to introduce new
flexibilities into its copyright law. Given that leadership from the
Dutch government, it's probably no surprise that a few days later, the
Dutch Parliament also showed itself in the political vanguard by voting not to ratify ACTA for the time being.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt reported
on UK politicians calling for ISPs to "take down" terrorist content.
Now it seems that the idea has not only spread to other European
countries, but even acquired a cheesy name: "the Clean IT Project".
On
Techdirt.
January 18, 2012 may well go down as a pivotal date in the
history of the Internet – and of copyright. For on that day, the
English-language Wikipedia and thousands of other websites were blacked
out or modified to protest against two bills passing through the US
legislative system that were designed to fight copyright infringement.
To understand why that unprecedented action took place, and what it
means for the future of the Net, it’s necessary to review the history of
copyright briefly.
On Stir to Action.
Somewhat belatedly (apologies), here is the second part of my
analysis of the UK government's Open Standards consultation. As well as
a quick look at the remaining two chapters, I include my responses to
individual questions at the end.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
A few months ago, I wrote
about the library management program Koha, and how the irruption of
money into the previously tranquil world of open source led to some
painful arguments. Sadly, that's not a unique example, as the recent
case of WURFL demonstrates.
On
The H Open.
As Techdirt reported
at the time, the UK's Digital Economy Bill was rammed through
Parliament, without proper scrutiny or even much democratic process, in
the dying hours of the previous government. Since then, the
implementation of the Digital Economy Act has moved forward relatively
slowly. That's partly because there have been a series of legal challenges
from ISPs concerned about its legality (and likely cost for them). In
addition, it made sense for the current UK government to wait for the
completion of the Hargreaves report on copyright in the digital age
before proceeding.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago the popular ebook portal Library.nu was shut down,
apparently voluntarily, after a coalition of book publishers obtained
an injunction against it and a similar site. As an excellent post on the
kNOw Future Inc. blog points out, Library.nu was significant in a number of ways:
On
Techdirt.
The governmental body that oversees France's "three-strikes" law, HADOPI, has already been caught once infringing
on the copyright of others -- by using a logo designed with unlicensed
fonts. Now it's been spotted using photographs without respecting the
so-called "moral rights" of the photographer, which include the right to attribution (French original),
absent on HADOPI's site. Such moral rights are taken very seriously in
France, where they are automatic, perpetual and cannot be waived
(unlike in some other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom.)
On
Techdirt.
It was only yesterday that the European Commissioner Karel de Gucht made the surprise announcement
that the European Commission would be referring ACTA to the European
Court of Justice (ECJ) "to assess whether ACTA is incompatible -- in any
way -- with the EU's fundamental rights and freedoms." Just a few
hours after that, there are already signs of panic among ACTA's
supporters that the treaty may indeed be incompatible -- and thus dead
in the water as far as the European Union is concerned.
On
Techdirt.
The British Journal of Photography (BJP) brings us yet another story of aggressive assertion of copyright wreaking harm on artists
-- the very people it allegedly empowers. It concerns some photos in
Getty Images' stock library that have chairs in them. Because a few of
those chairs are "famous" in the sense that they were produced by a
couple of designers that worked with the architect Le Corbusier, the
heirs of those designers, together with the Le Corbusier Foundation,
have sued Getty Images in France for copyright infringement -- and won:
On
Techdirt.
Last week, we had a story
about the IFPI (the international equivalent of the RIAA) saying that
the ACTA protests were trying to "silence the democratic process". You
might have thought that was bad enough, but here's worse.
On
Techdirt.
One of the widely-recognised problems with ACTA is the lack of transparency surrounding its negotiation. Since I have addressed this issue at length elsewhere,
I won't repeat myself here. But it occurred to me that there is
another way of looking at transparency, and that is in terms of
consultation. In a sense, it's the flip side of transparency.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Nicolas Sarkozy, who hopes to be re-elected as French President this
year, seems to have little love for the Internet. At best, he regards
it as a "Wild West" that needs taming. Despite that, Sarkozy joined Twitter last week -- you can follow him @NicolasSarkozy.
Posts are mainly written by his re-election team, although there seem
to be a handful of personal tweets (marked "NS"). But at least he's
finally engaging with the new medium on its own terms.
On
Techdirt.
The increasingly heated debates about the traditionally dull area of
computer standards is testimony to the rise of open source. For the
latter absolutely requires standards to be truly open - that is, freely
implementable, without any restrictions - whereas in the past standards
were pretty much anything that enough powerful companies agreed upon,
regardless of how restrictive they were.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the key problems with ACTA is the lack of transparency during
its negotiation. That this is becoming a big issue in Europe is shown by
the fact that the European Commission has tried to dispose of the
question twice -- first in its "10 myths about ACTA", which I discussed recently on Techdirt, and now with a page entitled "Transparency of ACTA negotiations":
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt noted
recently, policy-making behind closed doors is no longer acceptable.
Until the end of the 20th century, it was hard for the general public to
make their views heard, and so governments didn't really bother asking
them. But that's no longer the case: the Internet has blown government
wide open, and there is now no excuse for not consulting as widely as
possible -- including the public -- before passing legislation or
signing treaties.
On
Techdirt.
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