16 January 2008
Fighting for Open Access in Russia
The UK is apparently not the only country where there is a fight going on for open access to government information:The Institute for Information Freedom Development (IIFD) fighting for the state standards to be available in the internet has managed to persuade the Russian government in its rightness. On the eve of the New Year’s holidays the decree of the RF cabinet of ministers setting the procedure to publish the national standards on the site of the Federal Agency for Metrology and Technical Regulation (Rostehregulirovanie) has been enforced. The document foresees the standards to be open and available free of charge. However, the officials do not intend to give up.
...
The institute hopes if will be hard for the officials to question the official document. ‘The public servants, who are used to selling the state standards, have no loopholes this time, as the document highlights the access should be free of charge. The term ‘open access’ left some room for manoeuvre. However, now many will have to accept the fact that their profitable business exists no longer’, - Ivan Pavlov says.
In fact, it sounds as if things are rather better in Russia than in the UK....
Whatever Happened to the GFDL?
With all the excitement last year over the GNU GPLv3, the Cinderella of the FSF licences, the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL) has been rather overshadowed. And yet, as this post reminds us, the GFDL is being revised too:Although quiet, the consultation for drafting the next version of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, plus the new GNU Simpler Free Documentation License, are still ongoing:
* http://gplv3.fsf.org/doclic-dd1-guide.html
The online draft of GFDLv2 still has Invariant Sections. The proposed GSFDL is a documentation licence without Invariant Sections.
I don't have information about the timeline for the GFDL and GSFDL, so all I can recommend is that comments be made as soon as possible.
Freeing The Future of Ideas
Larry Lessig's The Future of Ideas is one of the key books of the open content world, so it's particularly appropriate that it should now be freely available as a download.
Read it. Now.
Open Politics
One sphere where openness is generally acknowledged as indispensable is politics: true democracy can never be opaque. In the past, providing that transparency has been hard, but with the advent of Web access and powerful search technologies, it has become markedly easier. Despite that, there are still very limited resources for searching through the raw stuff of politics.
A new pilot project, called Hansard Prototype, may help to change that:This site is generated from a sample of information from Hansard, the Official Report of Parliament. It is not a complete nor an official record. Material from this site should not be used as a reference to or cited as Hansard. The material on this site cannot be held to be authoritative. Material on this site falls under Crown and Parliamentary Copyright. Within these copyright constraints, you are encouraged to use and to explore the information provided here. We would be especially interested in requests for functionality you have.
Even though it's still limited in its reach, playing with it is instructive. For example this search for "genome" not only throws up various hits, but also shows graphically when they occurred, and ranks the names of speakers.
It's also got the right approach to code:What technology has been used to build and run this site? Code: Visible Red, Moving Flow. Hosting: Joyent Accelerators. Server OS: OpenSolaris. Database: MySQL. Web server: Apache. Application server: Mongrel. Code framework: Ruby on Rails. Source code control: Subversion. Search engine: Lucene, Solr. Backup: Joyent Bingodisk. Development and deployment platforms: Mac OS X, Ubuntu.
The source code for this site will be made available under an open licence.
More please. (Via James Governor's Monkchips.)
15 January 2008
Bring on the Ferrets
A dissertation on copyright in 19th-century America may not sound exactly like beach reading, but the fact is that US law in this area affects the rest of the world - not least because of the US's heavy-handed attempts to extend its application around the globe:With the rise of digital reproduction and the expansion of the Internet, copyright issues have assumed tremendous prominence in contemporary society. Domestically, the United States is awash in copyright-related lawsuits. Internationally, fears of copyright violation strongly influence U.S. foreign policy, especially with China. Hardly a week goes by without some new copyright-related headline in the news. In a globalized world with cheap digital reproduction, copyright matters.
That law has been shaped by the 19th-century experience. And what a century:The bill in substance provides that […] copyright patents shall be granted to foreigners; they may hold these monopolies for forty-two years; the assigns of foreigners may also obtain copyrights; all postmasters and customs officers throughout the United States are constituted pimps and ferrets for these foreigners; it is made the duty of postmasters to spy out and seize all books going though the mails that infringe the copyrights of foreigners; if an American citizen coming home brings with him a purchased book, it is to be seized on landing unless he can produce the written consent of the man who owns the copyright, signed by two witnesses. Who the said owner may be, in what part of the world he lives, the innocent citizen must find out as best he can, or be despoiled of his property.
The source of this heated prose of pimps and ferrets? The May 19, 1888 issue of Scientific American.
Linux-Powered Toasters?
Well, not quite, but here's a Linux-powered picture frame:Sagem Communications and Freescale Semiconductor today announced the deployment of the new AgfaPhoto AF5080W digital photoframe, the latest product from their broad collaboration based on Freescale’s i.MX multimedia processors and Linux multimedia applications.
(Via Linux and Open Source blog.)
14 January 2008
The Real Big Switch
An eloquent statement by John Wilbanks about the commons, sharing and solving complex problems:One of the reasons I believe so deeply in the commons approach (by which i mean: contractually constructed regimes that tilt the field towards sharing and reuse, technological enablements that make public knowledge easy to find and use, and default policy rules that create incentives to share and reuse) is that I think it is one of the only non-miraculous ways to defeat complexity. If we can get more people working on individual issues – which are each alone not so complex – and the outputs of research snap together, and smart people can work on the compiled output as well – then it stands to reason that the odds of meaningful discoveries increase in spite of overall systemic complexity.
He concludes:
It is not easy. But it is, in a way, a very simple change. It just requires the flipping of a switch, from a default rule of “sharing doesn’t matter” to one of “sharing matters enormously”.
That's what it's all about, people.
De-Commodifying an Enclosed Commons
Confused? You will be:in today’s world, the crush of branded meanings has become overwhelming. The cultural space is too cluttered with signifiers, and words are losing their credibility. And marketing itself is so ubiquitous that it is difficult for a super-elite establishment to convey that it is “above it all” -- grandly indifferent to the market. Clearly the next step is to de-commodify the product or service that was sold in the market, and previously belonged to the commons, and make it a proprietary gift! Ah, now that’s really luxury!
EU vs. MS 2.0?
The European Commission opened a new antitrust probe against Microsoft
But the good news is:"This initiation of proceedings does not imply that the Commission has proof of an infringement. It only signifies that the Commission will further investigate the case as a matter of priority," the Commission said.
Oh, that's alright, then.
Gaining Focus
Focus is one of the two main German-language weekly news magazines (the other being Der Spiegel), so the announcement that it is opening up its full 15-year archive for free access is most welcome. Let's hope that Der Spiegel, err, mirrors the move.
Mozilla's Middle Kingdom Mess
Mozilla is a disaster in China:
With more than 160 million Internet users, China is the world's second-largest Net market and is likely to overtake the U.S. as No. 1 by the end of the decade. More than four-fifths of China's Internet users use IE to go online, mostly because it's bundled with the Windows operating system. Homegrown companies Maxthon—a private company based in Hong Kong—and Tencent —the Shenzhen-based operator of China's most popular instant messaging service—both have browsers based on IE kernels that are the second and third most commonly used in China.
Mozilla estimates there are 3.5 million regular Firefox users in China, giving it just 2% of the market. (According to June, 2007, figures by Onestat, Mozilla has a 19.65% market share in the U.S.) Mozilla has set a goal of grabbing a 5% market share in China "as quickly as possible," says Gong.
The problem?In the West, Mozilla has been able to eat away at IE's market share by promoting Firefox as a free open-source software project. In China, the open-source movement is having a harder time gaining traction because of widespread software piracy. With pirated copies of Windows XP or Vista selling on the street for less than $2, there is little economic incentive for Chinese Internet users to download Firefox.
The solution? Bill Xu, founder of the ZEUUX Free Software Community, a Beijing group that promotes open source, points out that for Firefox to succeed in China, it shouldn't compete on cost but by stressing its security features. "IE isn't very secure. It's plagued with a lot of add-ons, malware, and viruses. Firefox is more secure, and that's the main reason a lot of users choose it," he says.
Well, I think this may require some more creative thinking. It's not just a matter of saying "security", not least because Firefox has its own security problems, and it will be easy to defeat that tactic. Perhaps we need more Firefox plugins that serve the Chinese market, specific to the Chinese language, for example.
In any case, this is getting serious: failure to make inroads into the Chinese browser market undoes much of the good work in Europe, where Firefox is getting close to a majority share in some markets.
An Intellectual Approach to File Sharing
I've always assumed the Swedish Pirate Party were a bunch of anarchists who wanted to cock a snook at authority by disrupting one of its precious intellectual monopolies, and have some fun along the way.
I was wrong.
It turns out that there is some pretty deep thinking behind what they are doing, as evidence by this fascinating interview with Rick Falkvinge, founder and the leader of the party:What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy - forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance - realized they were under a serious attack, and mounted every piece of defense they could muster. For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle.
And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.
So now we know what the enemy has, and that they have absolutely nothing in terms of intellectual capital to bring to the battle. They do, however, have their bedside connections with the current establishment. That's the major threat to us at this point.
Intellectual capital? Hm....
And then he goes on to make this important point:The people who have been led to believe that file sharing can be stopped with minimal intrusion are basically smoking crack.
Early on in the debate, we dropped the economic arguments altogether and focused entirely on civil liberties and the right to privacy. This has proven to be a winning strategy, with my keynote "Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties" being praised as groundbreaking.
The economic arguments are strong, but debatable. There are as many reports as there are interests in copyright, and every report arrives at a new conclusion. If you just shout and throw reports over the volleyball net at the other team, it becomes a matter of credibility of the reports. When you switch to arguing civil liberties, you dropkick that entire discussion.
Obviously I need to pay more attention to these people.
Has EMI Finally Heard the Music?
I'm not the biggest fan of private equity companies, but they do have the virtue of being ruthlessly logical: they are not enslaved by history, just by greed. That means they are not frightened of radical thinking or radical solutions if it brings them more of the foldable stuff. Thinking like this:The record business - in which 85 per cent of artists are lossmaking and EMI pays £25m a year to scrap unsold CDs - "is stuck with a model designed for a world that has changed and gone forever", he says.
His solution is to switch from pushing CDs to pulling consumers towards music in different forms. One element will be focus groups. "People say the music industry is more creative and the customer doesn't know, only the creatives do.
"When you look at which car companies are succeeding it's the ones which work with their customers. Are clothes not creative? Is fashion not creative? Is food not creative? The only real difference is these industries have learnt to work with the customer and not force-feed them," he argues.
So, he seems to get the idea of listening to customers, which is good.Surprisingly, he says that Radiohead, the band that ditched EMI last year to launch their latest album online, made the right choice. "Radiohead had the right idea. They understand their fans. They realise some of them want the premium box set. I'm one who bought one, and paid the full price. What Radiohead showed the industry was that it isn't one answer for all artists or indeed for every customer."
Which indicates that he also realises what the record business is really about: selling scarce commodities like analogue objects and unique relationships.
13 January 2008
ERC Goes Big on OA
Here's an impressively strong commitment to open access from the European Research Council:
The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate research repository where available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access within 6 months of publication.
Notice that's into repositories immediately, and full open access within six months. But what struck me particularly were two additional aspects.
The first was support for open data that's one of the strongest I've seen so far:
The ERC considers essential that primary data - which in the life sciences for example could comprise data such as nucleotide/protein sequences, macromolecular atomic coordinates and anonymized epidemiological data - are deposited to the relevant databases as soon as possible, preferably immediately after publication and in any case not later than 6 months after the date of publication.
There was also a nice sting in the tail, too:The ERC is keenly aware of the desirability to shorten the period between publication and open access beyond the currently accepted standard of 6 months.
Translated: you ain't seen nuffink yet.
11 January 2008
Tweedledee, Meet Tweedledum
BECTA Late than Never
BECTA, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, starts to get it:UK schools should not upgrade to Microsoft's Vista operating system and Office 2007 productivity suite, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has said in a report on the software. It is also supporting use of the international standard ODF (Open Document Format) for storing files.
...
"We have not had sight of any evidence to support the argument that the costs of upgrading to Vista in educational establishments would be offset by appropriate benefit," it said.
The cost of upgrading Britain's schools to Vista would be £175m, around a third of which would go to Microsoft, the agency said. The rest would go on deployment costs, testing and hardware upgrades, it said.
Even that sum would not be enough to purchase graphics cards capable of displaying Windows Aero Graphics, although that's no great loss because "there was no significant benefit to schools and colleges in running Aero," it said.
As for Office 2007, "there remains no compelling case for deployment," the agency said in its full report, published this week.
It will be interesting to see how Microsoft reacts to this ever-so gentle kneeing in the digital groin.
Hallelujah! An MP Who Groks IT
Many of the UK Government's fiascos - both old ones like the loss of 25 million bank details, or future ones like ID cards - could be avoided if there were people in office who understood IT. After all, the mistakes that are being made - allowing someone to download 25 million records and then send them through the post, or creating a centralised database of everyone's most personal details - aren't exactly subtle.
Alas, these people are rare, but one such is John Pugh, the Liberal Democrat MP for Southport. I've met him a few times, and always been impressed by his grasp of technical issues, and that is demonstrated once more in this letter to Mark Thompson, the BBC's Director-General, a copy of which has been passed on to me. It deals with the thorny matter of the iPlayer, and follows a meeting with Parliament's Public Accounts Committee:
It's worth quoting at length:I do recognise that [the iPlayer] has an attractive interface,is user friendly and addresses digital rights issues so I stop short of suggesting the BBC has bought a lemon.
The more fundamental issue is its failure to apply open standards and be sufficiently interoperable to work fully (stream and download) on more than one platform. The BBC is funded by licence players not all of whom have or chose to use a computer running Windows XP or Vista. By guaranteeing full functionality to the products of one software vendor it is as a public body handing a commercial advantage to that company- effectively illegal state aid!
The aspiration to eventually ( you said within two years) remove this advantage- does not rebut this charge. A promise of amendment is never sufficient excuse for past sins or indeed much of an explanation.
Most major web based developments of any scale these days work on the presumption that interoperablity, open standards and platform neutrality are givens. It is not clear why the BBC design brief did not specify these requirements or if it did what technical problems-given the expertise available- hinder them being implemented.
So long as the I-Player is bundled in with Windows/Internet Explorer it continues runs the risk of breaching state aid rules - as the benefits it thereby bestows on Microsoft (with their somewhat blemished reputation for fair competition) come via the deployment of the public’s licence money. What might be a pragmatic choice for a privately funded company becomes deeply problematic for a public corporation.
I recognise and welcome the assurances that the BBC and you personally have given on this subject but wonder whether the sheer novelty of the new media has blinded many to the clear commercial inequity in the delivery of it.
Now all we need to do is make sure that John becomes Prime Minister....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
