And Another Reason that Rupe is Wrong...

...about his plans to gag Google, and embrace the beauteous Bing:

For the plan to work, it will also require that the vast, endlessly proliferating ecology of Internet filters, such as the millions of bloggers or tweeters or Facebook posters who recommend or summarize news stories, are eradicated from the Net. When searching for news, I'd rather find the original Associated Press article breaking a story, but in a pinch I will settle for a summary. The pathways in which information flows on the Internet are near infinite, and until now, have always been expanding in size and scope. I have paid subscriptions to the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, but I rarely have time to sit down and devour the daily publications from "front" to "back." I depend on a network of my own Internet filters to tell me what is important or newsworthy -- without them, there is simply too much out there for me to comprehend or absorb.

Poor Mr Murdoch, bless his cotton socks, is still thinking in terms of command and control - with him doing both; the Internet doesn't quite work like that - despite the best efforts of repressive governments around the world (I'm looking at *you*, Gordon).

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Promoting Open Source Science

Open source science certainly seems to be catching on lately: there have been as many articles on the subject in the last few months as in the prevous few years. Here's a good one, an interview with Walter Jessen. This is his definition of what open source science means:

Open Source Science is a collaborative and transparent approach to science. To me, it means four things:

1. Open Source: the use of open and freely accessible software tools for scientific research and collaboration.
2. Open Notebook: transparency in experimental design and data management.
3. Open Data: public accessibility of scientific data, which allows for distribution, reuse and derived works.
4. Open Access: public access to scholarly literature.

It's well-worth reading, not least for its useful links to related sites.

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The Internet's Infinite Subversion

Another nicely clueful piece in the Guardian:

The emancipatory potential of the free dissemination of intellectual property through infinite replication is overwhelming. Unlike private property that is subject to scarcity, supply and demand laws and other rigid determinations, immaterial property poses an explosive threat to our deeply rooted notions of proprietorship.

It is not only because there can be potentially infinite owners of property that the internet redefines our notion of it. It is also that people who participate in the exchange of immaterial works do not treat them as property. When they exchange music, books or movies, they are not merely transferring ownership from themselves to others; they simply do not recognise themselves as owners in the first place.

Dangerous place, this Internet...no wonder they are trying to lock it down.

Software Copyright vs. Software Patents

Here's an noteworthy story about the different kinds of protection that can be given to software:

Mit einer Stellungnahme vom 16.11.2009 (PDF) hat sich der Bundesverband Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie e.V. (BIKT) zur anstehenden Urheberrechtsreform (dem so genannten “3. Korb”) geäußert. Der Brachenverband, der nach eigenen Angaben die Interessen von über 600 kleinen und mittelständischen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie (IKT-)-Lösungsanbietern auf nationaler und europäischer Ebene vertritt fordert von der Politik, dass der Urheberrechtsschutz an Computerprogrammen gestärkt und gegen Patente auf “computerimplementierte Erfindungen” (also Softwarepatente) abgesichert wird. Der Verband sieht die Interessen der Software-Urheber wegen eines Anstiegs von Softwarepatenterteilungen durch das Europäische Patentamt (EPA) in Gefahr.

BIKT weist in der Stellungnahme darauf hin, dass sich die internationale Politik beim Rechtsschutz für Computerprogramme bewusst für einen “copyright approach” und gegen einen “patent approach” entschieden habe. Ein paralleler Patentschutz, der sich an vielen Software-Patenten, die vom EPA gewährt würden, manifestiere, gefährde diese Entscheidung und die Integrität des Urheberrechtsschutzes am Programm. Er führe dazu, dass “Softwareautoren im Wirkungsbereich von Patenten an der wirtschaftlichen Nutzung ihrer eigenen Programme gehindert werden.”

[Via Google Translate: With an opinion (PDF), which was published on 16.11.2009, has the Federal Information and Communications Technology Association (BIKT) for the upcoming copyright reform (the so-called "3 Basket") expressed. The industry organization representing the interests of their own statements to over 600 small and medium-sized information and communication technology (ICT) solution providers at the national and European levels of politics requires that copyright protection for computer programs and strengthened against patents on "computer-implemented inventions" (ie software) is secured. The Association considers the interests of software authors because of the high inventory and further rise of software patents granted by the European Patent Office (EPO) in danger.

BIKT notes in the comments that are aware of international politics in legal protection for computer programs for a "copyright approach" and had decided against a "patent approach". A parallel patent protection, which manifests itself in many software patents that were granted by the EPO, the decision and threatens the integrity of copyright protection in the program. It leads to that "be prevented from software authors in the scope of patents in the economic exploitation of their own programs."]

What's interesting here is that this position - preferring copyright rather than patent protection - comes from small to medium-sized software companies, but aligns with that of the free software world, which depends on copyright for the efficacy of its licences, but cannot accommodate patents, because they act as a brake on sharing.

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Of Credibility, Openness and Scientific Tribalism

I've steered clear of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) break-in since emotions are still running high, while information content remains low. But aside from the significance (or otherwise) of the emails, one thing is abundantly clear: if the climate data had been released from the beginning, this would really be a story of negligible interest to the wider world.

Here's an insightful post that explores not only that issue of openness, but also an extremely important factor I'd not really appreciated sufficiently before: scientific tribalism.

Tribalism is defined here as a strong identity that separates one’s group from members of another group, characterized by strong in-group loyalty and regarding other groups differing from the tribe’s defining characteristics as inferior. In the context of scientific research, tribes differ from groups of colleagues that collaborate and otherwise associate with each other professionally. As a result of the politicization of climate science, climate tribes (consisting of a small number of climate researchers) were established in response to the politically motivated climate disinformation machine that was associated with e.g. ExxonMobil, CEI, Inhofe/Morano etc. The reaction of the climate tribes to the political assault has been to circle the wagons and point the guns outward in an attempt to discredit misinformation from politicized advocacy groups. The motivation of scientists in the pro AGW tribes appears to be less about politics and more about professional ego and scientific integrity as their research was under assault for nonscientific reasons (I’m sure there are individual exceptions, but this is my overall perception).

...

Scientists are of course human, and short-term emotional responses to attacks and adversity are to be expected, but I am particularly concerned by this apparent systematic and continuing behavior from scientists that hold editorial positions, serve on important boards and committees and participate in the major assessment reports. It is these issues revealed in the HADCRU emails that concern me the most, and it seems difficult to spin many of the emails related to FOIA, peer review, and the assessment process. I sincerely hope that these emails do not in actuality reflect what they appear to, and I encourage Gavin Schmidt et al. to continue explaining the individual emails and the broader issues of concern.

This analysis exposes the worrying possibility that the fractures within the scientific community can be further exploited by those who wish to see climate change science damaged and the necessary measures it calls for delayed or even dismissed.

It looks like the greatest enemy to climate change science comes not from the denialists - be they fools or knaves - but from narrow-minded tribalists within the scientific community itself who cannot see the bigger picture. Perhaps we should be grateful for the ugly fissures that the CRU incident seems to reveal, since it gives the people concerned a chance to heal them before they lead to irreversible fractures.

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Has Microsoft Got a Job for You...

Since it's Monday morning, I thought I'd start the week gently, with a little humour, courtesy of a Microsoft job ad. After all, who could read the following without laughing?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Opening up the Black Box of Scientific Research

I've written before about the idea of applying openness/open source ideas to science, but here's an interesting new project that attempts to go much further:

our fundamental goal is to render transparent the black-box of scientific research by affording all individuals an opportunity to both access and participate directly in the scientific research process. To achieve this goal, we are working toward developing an entirely research-based scientific curriculum, and three additional resources (the discussion forum, research microfinance platform, and research log platform) which shall function to dynamically feed information to this curriculum - thereby ensuring the accuracy of the information contained within it, and its ability to maintain par with the course of scientific research.

In addition, each of these resources will also serve to increase the accessibility of the scientific research process for non-researchers by allowing individuals to (1) directly invest in research projects (via the research microfinance platform), (2) pose questions directly to researchers working at the cutting edge of scientific research (via the discussion forum), and (3) observe the progress of ongoing publicly-funded research (via the research log platform).

Not quite sure how this will scale, but anything whose "fundamental goal" is "to render transparent the black-box of scientific research" sounds good to me.

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A Modest Proposal: "How to Fix Capitalism"

"How to Fix Capitalism" is an insanely ambitious post that ranges over, well, just about everything concerned with business and all it touches. The following proposals give some hint of its deep wisdom:

# Abolish patents. They have not been proven to speed progress: the evidence seems to be to the contrary. They definitely increase costs, are an inefficient way of funding R & D and allow oligopolists to block competition.

# Reduce the copyright term to the optimal length suggested by research of about 15 years. It ought to be obvious that works produced in the reign of Queen Victoria should not be in copyright in the 21st century.

# Exclude works distributed with DRM from copyright to ensure that copyright works do fall into the public domain when the copyright expires.

# Reduce the copyright term on computer software to two years, and make copyright contingent on disclosing source code (so others can alter the software when it comes out of copyright).

This section also warmed the cockles of my collaborative heart:

by telling people that they are expected to be selfish, they become more selfish. Economics students become more selfish because they are repeatedly taught to expect that people are rational and selfish: the association between the two can only strengthen the effect.

Society is permeated, especially in business, politics and economics, with the idea that is people pursue their own interests, this will automatically lead to the best outcome, and that, therefore, people should be selfish. This cannot be fixed by endless incentives to align interests: life and business is too complex for that to work. A free market is not a substitute for integrity.

Just share it...

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The Copyright Ratchet Racket Explained

I and many others have noted how changes in copyright law only ever work in one direction: to *increase* copyright's term and to give greater powers to copyright holders. In effect, it's a ratchet. But until now, I've not seen a good explanation of what's driving all this (although I had a pretty good idea). The motor behind the ratchet (assuming such mixed metaphors are permitted) is harmonisation:

Simply put, “harmonization” is a concept whereby the intellectual property laws of different countries are made consistent, mostly to facilitate international trade and business. The concept of harmonization is not unusual; almost all the states and territories in this country are signatories to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC), a model law in the U.S. that makes consistent (or “harmonizes”) the law of contracts, sales, banking, and secured transactions. This allows firms in one state to reasonably, predictably, and consistently do business with firms in another state.

...

From a linguistic perspective, harmonization suggests a voluntary coordination that the parties to an agreement will be held to the same, core standards and will be working under the same rules. Ideally, each country’s intellectual property laws should have similar weight and effect where harmonization occurs.

But in reality, harmonization of intellectual property laws is different. The term has become a euphemism for the global, one-sided spread of United States’ intellectual property laws. One could argue that under the guise of harmonization, intellectual property law has become America’s chief 21st century export. In the harmonization model, U.S. intellectual property law effectively becomes the world’s de facto intellectual property law, effectively overriding the voluntary coordination principle that should be inherent through the Berne Convention.

This is a fantastic post, with useful links, that fleshes out the following basic argument:

The dismissal of voluntary coordination occurs because the U.S. leverages its economic power to force other countries to adopt U.S. copyright law in lieu of their own if the U.S. thinks the foreign country’s laws are insufficient to protect American intellectual property. It is a “carrot and stick” approach: If a foreign country wants to do business with the U.S. (or get U.S. support to enter into the World Trade Organization), it must adopt U.S. copyright standards and codify them into their statutes.

For most foreign countries, this quid pro quo has become the price of doing business with the U.S. On the other hand, it is unusual that the U.S. would agree to agree to another country’s intellectual property regimen: It doesn’t have to. Therefore, harmonization really is doublespeak for a worldwide adoption of the American intellectual property standard.

Indispensable reading for anyone who cares about the global copyright racket - and that should mean anyone who is online, since the tricks used to bolster copyright around the world will have a profound effect on ordinary users there, as the current UK Digital Economy bill makes all-too plain.

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Mandelson's Madness

The trajectory of the Digital Economy Bill has been extraordinary, constantly experiencing will-he-won't-he moments as successive consultations and comments and rumours have contradicted each other over whether “three strikes and you're out” would be part of the plan. Today, the Bill is finally published, but that particular element now looks almost mild compared to what is apparently coming...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Sir Tim: "Public Data is a Public Good"

The man - er, knight - himself comments on the opening up of the Ordnance Survey, and concludes with these thoughts:

Data is beginning to drive the Government’s websites. But without a consistent policy to make it available to others, without the use of open standards and unrestrictive licences for reuse, information stays compartmentalised and its full value is lost.

Openly available public data not only creates economic and social capital, it also creates bottom-up pressure to improve public services. Data is essential in enabling citizens to choose between public service providers. It helps them to compare their local services with services elsewhere. It enables all of us to lobby for improvement. Public data is a public good.

Yup, yup and yup. (Via Free Our Data.)

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Free Culture Forum: Getting it Together

As regular readers will know, I write a lot about the related areas of openness, freedom, transparency and the commons, but it's rare to find them literally coming together like this, in the Free Culture Forum:

Across the planet, people are recognizing the need for an international space to build and coordinate a common agenda for issues surrounding free culture and access to knowledge. The Free Culture Forum of Barcelona created one such space.

Bringing together key organizations and active voices in the free culture and knowledge space under a single roof, the Forum was a meeting point to sit and find answers to the pressing questions behind the present paradigm shift.

The Forum was an open space for drawing up proposals to present the position of civil society on the privatization of culture and access to knowledge. Participants debated the role of government in access to knowledge, on the creation and distribution of art and culture, and other areas.

The list of participants is impressive, and includes well-known names like the EFF, the P2P Foundation, the Knoweldge Ecology International, La Quadrature du Net, and many others. Even better is the extremely thorough charter; here's it's opening section:

We are in the midst of a revolution in the way that knowledge and culture are created, accessed and transformed. Citizens, artists and consumers are no longer powerless and isolated in the face of the content-providing industries: now individuals across many different spheres collaborate, participate and decide. Digital technology has bridged the gap, allowing ideas and knowledge to flow. It has done away with many of the geographic and technological barriers to sharing. It has provided new educational tools and stimulated new possibilities for forms of social, economic and political organisation. This revolution is comparable to the far reaching changes brought about as a result of the printing press.

In spite of these transformations, the entertainment industry, most communications service providers governments and international bodies still base the sources of their advantages and profits on control of content and tools and on managing scarcity. This leads to restrictions on citizens’ rights to education, access to information, culture, science and technology; freedom of expression; inviolability of communications and privacy. They put the protection of private interests above the public interest, holding back the development of society in general.

Today’s institutions, industries, structures or conventions will not survive into the future unless they adapt to these changes. Some, however, will alter and refine their methods in response to the new realities. And we need to take account of this.

That will all be pretty familiar to readers of this blog. There then follow an amazingly complete list of Things That We Need - which will also ring a few bells. Here are the areas covered:

Reverse Three-Step Test
Knowledge Commons and Public Domain
Defending access to Technological Infrastructures and Net Neutrality
Rights in digital context
Stimulating Creativity and Innovation
Access to works for persons with reading disabilities
Transparency

There's also an important section headed "Guidelines for Education and Access to Knowledge", which naturally considers open educational resources, and has this to say on free software, open standards and open formats:

Free/libre and Open Source Software allows people to study and learn concepts instead of black boxes, enables transparency of information processing, assures competition and innovation, provides independence from corporate interests and increases the autonomy of citizens.

The use of open standards and open formats is essential to ensure technical interoperability, provide a level playing field for competing vendors, enable seamless access to digital information and the availability of knowledge and social memory now and in the future. Thus we assert that:

* Educational entities should use Free/libre and Open Source Software as a learning tool, as a subject in itself and as the base for their IT infrastructure.
* All software developed in an educational environment and publicly funded must be released under a free license.
* Promote the use of Free/libre and Open Source Software in textbooks as an alternative to proprietary software to perform learning-related tasks such as numerical calculus, image editing, document composition, etc. where applicable.
* Develop, provide and promote free editing tools to elaborate and improve didactic materials.
* Technologies like Digital Rights Management must be refused to assure the permanent access to educational resources and enable lifelong learning.

All-in-all, this is an extraordinary document with which I find myself in pretty much total agreement. It's an great achievement, and will be a real reference point for everyone working in the fields of digital freedom, openness and transparency for years to come.

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Has Ordnance Survey Managed to Find a Clue?

This is better than I was expecting:

Speaking at a seminar on Smarter Government in Downing Street later today, attended by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, the Prime Minister will set out how the Government and Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency, will open up its data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries, postcode areas and mid scale mapping information.

The Government will consult on proposals to make data from Ordnance Survey freely available so it can be used for digital innovation and to support democratic accountability.

Specifically:

Data relating to electoral and local authority boundaries as well as postcode areas would be released for free re-use, including commercially. Mid-scale digital mapping information would also be released in the same way.

...

The highest-specification Ordnance Survey products and services – such as those used by property developers or the utility companies – would be charged for on a cost-reflective basis.

This suggests that people in government are gradually beginning to understand that they can give away much of their data - well, actually, *our* data - and still generate revenue by targetting particular remunerative sectors.

I was also interested to read this:

Freely available facts and figures are essential for driving improvements in public services. It puts information, and therefore power, in the hands of the public and the service providers to challenge or demand innovation in public services.

The Prime Minister has set out the importance of an open data policy as part of broader efforts to strengthen democracy – creating a culture in which Government information is accessible and useful to as many people as possible in order to increase transparency and accountability, improve public services and create new economic and social value.

Now, I'm not so naïve as to believe this signals a massive sea-change in the present UK government's attitude to open data, openness and transparency. But what's significant is that it clearly feels the need at least to mouth the words: that is, it's aware that it is not in Kansas any more, and that the Ordnance Survey in its current form won't be providing any maps for them....

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British Library's Bitter Digital Milestone

Oh look, the British Library thinks it has passed a milestone:

The British Library has added the 500,000th item to its long-term Digital Library System. The milestone item was a digitised copy of a newspaper originally published in 1864 and scanned as part of the Library's 19th Century British Library Newspapers project, which recently made more than 2 million pages of historic newspapers available online at http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/

In eight pages of densely-packed text, The Birmingham Daily Post dated Monday 19 December 1864 offers a vivid snapshot of life 145 years ago. Along with accounts of an 82-year-old man who died after falling out of bed and two men before the courts for bigamy, the paper also reports on President Lincoln recommending to the US congress the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, and 'a number of the worst "roughs" of the town' who pelted churchgoers with snowballs after several inches of snow had fallen.

The digitised newspaper joins hundreds of thousands of other items including e-journals, digital sound recordings, born-digital material received through voluntary deposit arrangements with publishers andmore than 65,000 19th century digitised books. The Digital Library System within which these items are now stored has been developed by the British Library to enable long term storage of the digital material that forms an increasing proportion of the nation's intellectual output.

Fab stuff...except:

To access the subscription-based articles in this database, you will need to first register as a user and then purchase either

* A 24-hour pass that provides you access to 100 articles over that period.
* A 7-day pass that provides you access to 200 articles over that period.

Cost?

a 24-hour pass for £6.99 allowing you to view up to 100 articles, or a seven-day pass with 200 article views for £9.99

That is: digitising content that is out of copyright, in the public domain, and then making us pay through the nose - us as in muggins public, which has kept the British Library going for two centuries thanks to our taxes, in case you'd forgotten - for the privilege of viewing it online.

Thanks a bunch, BL, for locking up "an increasing proportion of the nation's intellectual output" behind a paywall, where few will ever see it: that's what spreading knowledge is all about, isn't it? Great work from a quondam great institution, more millstone than milestone...

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Free Software for All Russian Schools in Jeopardy

I've written before about Russia's ambitious plan to install free software throughout its education system. Worrying news suggests that things are not going smoothly:

Президент РФ Дмитрий Медведев поручил разобраться с ситуацией с поставками в российские школы свободного программного обеспечения (СПО). С просьбой об этом к нему обратился глава IT-компании "Армада" Алексей Кузовкин, который считает, что программа поставок Linux в школы находится под угрозой срыва.

[Via Google Translate: President Dmitry Medvedev instructed to deal with the situation with supplies in Russia's school of free software (ACT). The request for this approached by the head of IT-companies "Armada" Alexei Kuzovkin, who believes that the program supplies Linux to schools is in jeopardy.]

Part of the problem is money:

В 2009 году планировалось установить СПО во всех школах страны, а с 1 января 2011 года — отказаться от закупок коммерческого ПО для школ за счет федерального бюджета. Но с начала года финансирование проекта было урезано в три раза, говорится в письме "Армады", а конкурс на внедрение СПО во все школы до сих пор не объявлен. 13 июля Министерство образования и науки приняло решение о разделе работ по проекту 2009 года на три лота. В письме "Армады" говорится, что это "неизбежно приведет к провалу всего проекта в результате размытия ответственности среди исполнителей".

[In 2009, planned to be installed in all ACT schools across the country, and from January 1st 2011 - refuse to purchase commercial software for schools at the expense of the federal budget. But from the beginning of the year funding for the project was pared down to three times, the letter says "Armada", a competition for the introduction of ACT in all the schools have not yet been announced. July 13 The Ministry of Education and Science has decided on the topic of the project in 2009 to three lot. The letter "Armada" states that it "will inevitably lead to failure of the project as a result of spreading responsibility among the performers.]

Another factor seems to be problems with the free software discs that were sent out:

Но опыт рассылки пакетов с СПО в этом году не удался (выполнял IBS), вспоминает один из участников рынка: "Данный пакет был разослан, но с ошибками, которые возникли при записи ПО на диски". Быстрый отказ от платного ПО вряд ли возможен, считает аналитик ИК "Финам" Татьяна Менькова. По ее мнению, прежде всего школьникам нужен будет достаточный объем различного прикладного софта, причем простого и понятного, а с этим у производителей СПО традиционно есть проблемы. Кроме того, скорее всего, придется платить за обновление операционной системы, за апдейт того же прикладного софта. "Достаточно много ресурсов потребуется на переобучение учителей, большинство из которых привыкли к Windows. Конечно, в перспективе нескольких лет это все равно будет в разы дешевле закупки решений от Microsoft, но есть и издержки для экономики. Так, на Linux приходится всего около 1% пользовательских ОС, то есть стране все-таки нужны специалисты, знающие Windows",— указывает Татьяна Менькова.

[But the experience of sending packets from the ACT this year was a failure (served IBS), recalls one of the market participants: "This package was sent, but with errors that occurred when recording to disk. Quick refusal to pay software is hardly possible, says analyst IK "Finam" Tatiana Menkova. In her opinion, first of all students will need an adequate amount of different software applications, with simple and understandable, and with that the producers ACT traditionally have problems. In addition, most likely have to pay for upgrading the operating system update for the same application software. "Quite a number of resources needed for retraining of teachers, most of whom are accustomed to Windows. Of course, in future years it will still be many times cheaper to purchase solutions from Microsoft, but there are costs to the economy. So, on Linux there are only about 1% custom operating system, that is, the country still in need of professionals who are familiar with Windows ", - points Tatiana Menkova.]

Finally, Microsoft has been up to its old tricks of offering special deals for its software: $30 per computer (it's not clear whether that's just for Windows XP, or includes Microsoft Office too):

Контракт на поставку лицензионного программного обеспечения в школы в течение 2007-2009 годов получил системный интегратор "Компьюлинк". Конкурс Рособразования под номером НП-17 подразумевал поставку в 60 тыс. российских школ (650-700 тыс. компьютеров) пакета лицензионного ПО в 2007-2009 годах. В пакет вошли: ОС Windows XP, Microsoft Office, словарь Abbyy Lingvo 12, антивирусное ПО Kaspersky Work Space Security, Adobe Photoshop CS3 и другие. Источник в Рособразовании знает, что Microsoft согласилась лицензировать ОС Windows на всех ПК примерно за $20 млн (около $30 за компьютер).

[The contract for the supply of licensed software in schools during 2007-2009 was the system integrator "Compulink". Competition Rosobrazovanie numbered NP-17 meant the supply of 60 thousand Russian schools (650-700 thousand computers) license software package in 2007-2009. The package includes: operating system Windows XP, Microsoft Office, dictionary Abbyy Lingvo 12, anti-virus software Kaspersky Work Space Security, Adobe Photoshop CS3 and more. A source at the Federal Agency of Education knows that Microsoft has agreed to license the Windows on all PCs for about $ 20 million (about $ 30 per computer).]

So has free software lost its big chance to form the minds of a generation? And has Russia condemned itself to years more dependence on Microsoft's products? Stay tuned for further instalments of this exciting Russian epic...

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The Economics of Ecosystems

The general area of the economics of ecosystems is something that I have been banging on about for while. Now we have a Web site and even a glorious PDF report on the subject:

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study is a major international initiative to draw attention to the global economic benefits of biodiversity, to highlight the growing costs of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation, and to draw together expertise from the fields of science, economics and policy to enable practical actions moving forward.

Basically, we'd be mad - not just for environmental reasons, but economic ones too - not to look after our global commons. After all, it's the only one we've got....

The Embedded Market Beds Down with Linux

Never a dull moment in the embedded Linux market. First Intel acquires Wind River, now the slightly less well-known Cavium acquires MontaVista:

Cavium Networks, a leading provider of highly integrated semiconductor products that enable intelligent processing for networking, wireless, storage and video applications, today announced that it is has signed a definitive agreement to acquire MontaVista Software for $50 million, comprised of approximately $16 million in cash and approximately $34 million in Cavium Networks common stock.

More interesting, perhaps, are the reason for the latest move:

Today embedded Linux is fast becoming the operating system of choice for hundreds of millions of devices ranging from very large carrier grade equipment to consumer electronics. Traditionally embedded devices used a proprietary OS or commercial real-time operating system. However, there is a major trend towards using embedded Linux. This rapid adoption of Linux in embedded networking, wireless, consumer electronics, mobile devices and storage is driving the demand for a high quality, commercial grade embedded Linux along with support for multi-core processors and embedded virtualization.

MontaVista Software is a leader in multi-core embedded Linux operating systems, virtualization, development tools and professional services with a broad array of Tier-1 customers. As the first commercial embedded Linux vendor, MontaVista provides the industry’s leading Carrier Grade Linux that has been widely adopted by industry leading companies that include Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Fujitsu, NEC, Nokia-Siemens, NTT, Motorola, Samsung and many other Tier-1 vendors. MontaVista is also the innovation leader in the embedded Linux market segment with deployments in Tier-1 Consumer Electronics manufactures such as Sony, Samsung and Philips; MID and Mobile vendors such as NEC and Garmin; Industrial Automation vendors such as HP, Kyocera-Mita and Fuji Xerox and leading Automotive infotainment suppliers. One of MontaVista’s signature, high profile deployments includes Dell’s latest innovative enterprise notebook the Dell Latitude ON that uses MontaVista's Montabello software platform.

Note that this very positive assessement comes not from some open source fanboy (like me), but from a semiconductor company that has just plunked down $50 million on its bet. Against that background, there seems little doubt that Linux will soon become the de facto standard in the world of embedded systems.

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Brazil to Allow Private Copying and Mashups

I always said Brazil was a civilised country:

O MinC proporá que a cópia privada de qualquer tipo de obra digital seja permitida sem a autorização expressa ou remuneração ao titular para uso privado e desde que seja apenas um exemplar, além de permitir o uso do conteúdo original em outra mídia que não aquela que o consumidor comprou originalmente.

Na prática, quem comprou um DVD ou um CD poderá criar uma cópia de backup para uso próprio ou então poderá repassar o filme ou as músicas para o computador, trocando o suporte físico (como o disco plástico do CD ou DVD) pelo digital (esteja o arquivo em MP3, WMA e OGG ou AVI e MPEG).

...

A reforma prevê ainda "a utilização (...) de pequenos trechos de obras preexistentes, sempre que a utilização em si não seja o objetivo principal da obra nova e que não prejudique a exploração normal da obra reproduzida", dando respaldo legal à criação de mashups musicais ou visuais.

[Via Google Translate: The MinC propose that private copying of any digital work is permitted without the express permission or compensation to the owner for private use and provided that only one copy, and allows the use of original content in other media than the one that consumer originally purchased.

In practice, those who bought a DVD or CD can create a backup copy for personal use or you can pass on the movie or the music to your computer, changing the physical medium (such as the hard plastic of the CD or DVD) to digital (whether the file to MP3, WMA and OGG or AVI and MPEG).

...

The reform also provides for "(...) the use of short extracts from existing works, where the use itself is not the main purpose of new work and does not prejudice the normal exploitation of the work reproduced, giving legal backing to the creation of mashups music or visual.]

(Via Remixtures.)

The Next Bill Gates, or the Next Tim B-L?

On Twitter, I have just been followed by @nextbillgates, which is associated with the eponymous Web site:

Consider yourself to be an IT wizard – just like Bill Gates?

If the answer is yes, why not enter our brand new, national search to find the UK version of the next Bill Gates?

This is rather sad. If we're searching for an "IT wizard" to hold up as an example, why not look closer to home, and choose Sir Tim Berners-Lee? He not only invented the Web, he *gave it away*, as one of the most glorious acts of altruism we've seen in recent years, kick-starting technological, economic and social changes that are probably unmatched since the Industrial Revolution.

Isn't that something worth celebrating, and encouraging others to emulate? Or are we so mired in greedy materialism that we must instead hold up a man who not only accumulated a truly obscene amount of money by overcharging people for defective software through smart marketing, but is also founder of a company that was found to be a monopoly?

What kind of future do we really want: one based on taking, or one based on giving?

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Why SAP is a Sap

There's some interesting turbulence in the blogosphere about the following call from Dr. Vishal Sikka, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of SAP:

To ensure the continued role of Java in driving economic growth, we believe it is essential to transition the stewardship of the language and platform into an authentically open body that is not dominated by an individual corporation. Java should be free of any encumbrances to permit fair competition between compatible implementations for the benefit of customers. By preserving the integrity of Java, the IT industry can ensure a vibrant developer community and continued innovation for enterprise software customers. This ensures the continued global economic success brought about through open innovation.

Matt Asay rightly calls him out on this:

Irony, thy name is SAP.

SAP, after all, is hardly the most open-source or open-process friendly company on the planet. Despite early involvement in Eclipse, some interaction with MySQL (MaxDB), and a new commitment to the Apache Software Foundation, SAP remains a firmly proprietary company.

Even Microsoft, which arguably has the most to lose from open source, has consistently and continually experimented with greater open-source involvement.

SAP? Not so much. In large part, SAP hasn't been forced to embrace open source because it hasn't been threatened by it. ERP (enterprise resource planning) is such a complex beast that it has remained largely impervious to open source (with the exception of open-source start-ups like Compiere and Openbravo, to which I'm an adviser).

Now, Dirk Riehle is stepping into the fray:

I don’t think that this is a fair critique. SAP has always provided the source code of its main business applications suite to user-customers as part of a commercial license, and users have always customized SAP’s business suite to their heart’s content. In fact, it is the only way to make it work for their needs.

That may well be the case, but I think it's irrelevant.

The real reason SAP's call is hypocritical is this document [.pdf], essentially a love-letter to software patents, submitted as an amicus curiae brief to the European Patent Office. Software patents are simply incompatible with free software, because they are government-granted monopolies designed to *stop* people sharing stuff. They also prevent hackers from writing new code because they represent an ever-present digital sword of Damocles hanging over them.

SAP simply cannot claim to be a true friend of openness while it also supports software patents in any jurisdiction, in any form - the same applies to other companies, too, I should note. They can share as much code as they like, but until they repudiate software patents - for example, by placing their patent portfolios in the public domain - that's little more than window-dressing.

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θαλασσα θαλασσα

Since I've been using the Web for over 15 years, it's not often that a site leaves me gob-smacked. But of all the sites I've seen recently, Marine Traffic is definitely one of the most amazing:

This web site is part of an academic, open, community-based project. It is dedicated in collecting and presenting data which are exploited in research areas, such as:

- Study of marine telecommunications in respect of efficiency and propagation parameters
- Simulation of vessel movements in order to contribute to the safety of navigation and to cope with critical incidents
- Interactive information systems design
- Design of databases providing real-time information
- Statistical processing of ports traffic with applications in operational research
- Design of models for the spotting of the origin of a pollution
- Design of efficient algorithms for sea path evaluation and for determining the estimated time of ship arrivals
- Correlation of the collected information with weather data
- Cooperation with Institutes dedicated in the protection of the environment

It provides free real-time information to the public, about ship movements and ports, mainly across the coast-lines of Europe and N.America. The project is currently hosted by the Department of Product and Systems Design Enginnering, University of the Aegean, Greece. The initial data collection is based on the Automatic Identification System (AIS). We are constantly looking for partners to take part in the community. They will have to install an AIS receiver and share the data of their area with us, in order to cover more areas and ports around the world.

Basically, then, it shows in *real-time* the positions of ships along major sea-lanes around the world. Hovering over their icons brings up information about that ship, including its speed and heading. Other pages have background data on ports and the ships. But the most amazing thing is just watching the shipping traffic gradually *move* in front of your eyes...

Free, open and gobsmacking: what more do you want? (Via Global Guerillas.)

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Microsoft's Biological Implants

Microsoft's up to its old tricks of offering pretty baubles to the innocent with The Microsoft Biology Foundation:

The bioinformatics community has developed a strong tradition of open development, code sharing, and cross-platform support, and a number of language-specific bioinformatics toolkits are now available. These toolkits serve as valuable nucleation points for the community, promoting the sharing of code and establishing de facto standards.

The Microsoft Biology Foundation (MBF) is a language-neutral bioinformatics toolkit built as an extension to the Microsoft .NET Framework. Currently it implements a range of parsers for common bioinformatics file formats; a range of algorithms for manipulating DNA, RNA, and protein sequences; and a set of connectors to biological Web services such as NCBI BLAST. MBF is available under an open source license, and executables, source code, demo applications, and documentation are freely downloadable from the link below.

Gotta love the segue from "strong tradition of open development, code sharing and cross-platform support" to "here, take these patent-encumbered .NET Framework toys to play with".

The point being, of course, that once you have dutifully installed the .NET framework, with all the patents that Microsoft claims on it, and become locked into it through use and habit, you are part of the Microsoft-controlled ecosystem. And there you are likely to stay, since Microsoft doesn't even pretend any of this stuff will be ported to other platforms.

For, under the misleading heading "Cross-platform and interoperability" it says:

MBF works well on the Windows operating system and with a range of Microsoft technologies.

Yeah? And what about non-Microsoft operating systems and technologies?

We plan to work with the developer community to take advantage of the extensibility of MBF and support an increasing range of Microsoft and non-Microsoft tools as the project develops.

Well, that's a complete irrelevance to being cross-platform: it just says it'll work with other stuff - big deal.

If I were a biologist I'd be insulted at this thinly-disguised attempt to implant such patent-encumbered software into the bioinformatics community, which has a long and glorious tradition of supporting free software that is truly free and truly cross-platform, and thus to enclose one of the most flourishing and vibrant software commons.

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ACTA's All-out Assault on the Internet

Michael Geist has some deeply disturbing details about what may well be in the Internet section of ACTA:

1. Baseline obligations inspired by Article 41 of the TRIPs which focuses on the enforcement of intellectual property.

2. A requirement to establish third-party liability for copyright infringement.

3. Restrictions on limitations to 3rd party liability (ie. limited safe harbour rules for ISPs). For example, in order for ISPs to qualify for a safe harbour, they would be required establish policies to deter unauthorized storage and transmission of IP infringing content. Provisions are modeled under the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, namely Article 18.10.30. They include policies to terminate subscribers in appropriate circumstances. Notice-and-takedown, which is not currently the law in Canada nor a requirement under WIPO, would also be an ACTA requirement.

4. Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements. For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules. These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception. Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices. The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.

5. Rights Management provisions, also modeled on U.S. free trade treaty language.

This is nothing less than the copyright cartel's last stand against the Internet - a desperate attempt to lock down everything. As Geist observes:

it provides firm confirmation that the treaty is not a counterfeiting trade, but a copyright treaty. These provisions involve copyright policy as no reasonable definition of counterfeiting would include these kinds of provisions.

That is, the Powers-that-Be *lied* to us, as usual. We must fight this, or we will be paying the consequences for years to come.

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WIPO Boss: ACTA Should be Open, Transparent

Wow:

On the secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Gurry said that WIPO too did not know a great deal about the talks.

“Naturally we prefer open, transparent international processes to arrive at conclusions that are of concern to the whole world,” he said, citing WIPO’s role as an international, United Nations agency. And, he added, “IP is of concern to the whole world.”

If even the head of WIPO is saying ACTA needs to be drawn up as part of an open, transparent process, isn't it time for the relevant governments to listen?

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If a Sequoia Falls in the Forest...

...maybe somebody's listening:

Today, Sequoia Voting Systems officially introduced its latest revolutionary new offering – the Frontier Election System – the first transparent end-to-end election system including precinct and central count digital optical scan tabulators, a robust election management and ballot preparation system, and tally, tabulation, and reporting applications based on an open architecture with publicly disclosed source code developed specifically to meet current and future iterations of the federal Voting System Guidelines.


“Security through obfuscation and secrecy is not security,” said Eric D. Coomer, PhD, Vice President of Research and Product Development at Sequoia Voting Systems. “Fully disclosed source code is the path to true transparency and confidence in the voting process for all involved. Sequoia is proud to be the leader in providing the first publicly disclosed source code for a complete end-to-end election system from a leading supplier of voting systems and software. Sequoia’s Frontier Election System has been designed to comply with all the current Election Assistance Commission’s Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.”

As you may recall, Sequoia had previously been a big fan of precisely that "security through obfuscation and secrecy", so this is an astonishing turnaround. Kudos to them for finally seeing the light - its rivals will doubtless follow suit soon, because no one can be seen to be *against* transparency.

But even more kudos to all those people who fought the e-voting industry's attempts to shut them up and get on with murky business as usual. This will surely become a textbook example of how dogged and rigorous advocacy finally wins out.

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Biophysical Economics: A Different View

One of the things that I have felt for a while is that mainstream economics isn't really the best way to look at free software, or any of the other intellectual commons or - even more importantly - the environmental commons, since economics is really about consumption. And now, it seems, some academics are beginning to call into question basic assumptions about that consumerist, consumptive viewpoint:

The financial crisis and subsequent global recession have led to much soul-searching among economists, the vast majority of whom never saw it coming. But were their assumptions and models wrong only because of minor errors or because today's dominant economic thinking violates the laws of physics?

A small but growing group of academics believe the latter is true, and they are out to prove it. These thinkers say that the neoclassical mantra of constant economic growth is ignoring the world's diminishing supply of energy at humanity's peril, failing to take account of the principle of net energy return on investment. They hope that a set of theories they call "biophysical economics" will improve upon neoclassical theory, or even replace it altogether.

Here's the heart of the problem:

Central to their argument is an understanding that the survival of all living creatures is limited by the concept of energy return on investment (EROI): that any living thing or living societies can survive only so long as they are capable of getting more net energy from any activity than they expend during the performance of that activity.

Great to see some new thinking in this area; I'm sure in time it will have knock-on consequences for the way we look at the commons, too.

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How Proprietary JAWS Bites the Blind

Here's a heart-warming tale of those kind people who make proprietary software, specifically of the piquantly-named company Freedom Scientific, which produces a program called JAWS:

JAWS (an acronym for Job Access With Speech) is a screen reader, a software program for visually impaired users, produced by the Blind and Low Vision Group at Freedom Scientific of St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Its purpose is to make personal computers using Microsoft Windows accessible to blind and visually impaired users. It accomplishes this by providing the user with access to the information displayed on the screen via text-to-speech or by means of a braille display and allows for comprehensive keyboard interaction with the computer.

Clearly, JAWS fulfils an important function for the visually impaired. One might presume it is a font of benevolence and altruism, doing its utmost to help a group of people who are already at a disadvantage. Maybe not, according to this petition:

Braille displays require a screen reader in order to work. Freedom Scientific has steadfastly refused to provide Braille display manufacturers with the driver development kit required to enable a particular Braille device to communicate with JAWS. Instead, the manufacturer must first pay an outrageous sum of money before support for the Braille device will be permitted. What's more, this charge to the Braille display manufacturer is not a one-time fee but is imposed annually.

Well, that doesn't sound very kind. So why on earth do people put up with this?

One might ask how Freedom Scientific can play the gatekeeper to its JAWS product where Braille driver support is concerned. The answer is simply and for no other reason because it can.

...

I for one am shocked, appalled, and amazed that Freedom Scientific would impose such limitations and restrictions not only upon its own customer base but also on those organizations which manufacture products that supplement the information that JAWS provides. This draconian and self-serving policy is not at all in keeping with the pro-Braille spirit exemplified by the Braille Readers are Leaders Initiative set into motion earlier this year by the National Federation of the Blind in honor of the Bicentennial celebration of Louis Braille. Instead of offering an additional opportunity to expand the usage of Braille, it stifles the ability of the blind consumer to choose the Braille display that will best meet his/her needs.

And the reason it can, of course, is because it is proprietary software, which means that nobody can route around the problem.

This episode shows once again why it is vital for such software to be open source so that there is no gatekeeper, and so that the community's needs come first, not the desire of a company to make as much money as possible regardless of the plight of the people it affects.

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UK Government Blows it on Lobbying

If you wanted proof that the UK government is still an enemy of transparency, try this:

The Government is grateful to the Public Administration Select Committee for its examination of lobbying in the UK, which is the first Parliamentary inquiry on the subject since 1991.

It is right that the Government remains alert for signs of improper influence over any aspect of our public life and the Committee's Report provides a helpful opportunity to look again at arrangements and to ensure that it has the right framework in place to ensure confidence in the way outside interests interact with government.

In responding to the Committee's recommendations, it is first important to set out the context of this inquiry. While the Committee's Report focuses mainly on the relationship between the lobbying industry and Government, it must be remembered that lobbying goes much wider than this. Lobbying is essentially the activity of those in a democracy making representations to government on issues of concern. The Government is committed to protecting this right from improper use while at the same time seeking to avoid any unnecessary regulation or restriction. As well as being essential to the health of our democracy, its free and proper exercise is an important feature of good government.

What this conveniently glosses over is the difference between "making representations to government on issues of concern" - which is what you and I as citizens do all the time, mostly by sending emails to MPs and ministers - and *lobbying*, which is now an entire industry of people employed to use every trick in the book, from the most to least subtle, to get what their clients want.

The first - making representations - is just what it seems: someone expressing their view and/or asking for action. Lobbying, by contrast, is your typical iceberg, with most of its intent invisible below the surface. That is why a lobbyists' register is needed - so that others can work out the iceberg. The UK government's refusal to countenance this - and the pathetic excuse it offers for doing so - are yet another blot on this administration's record as far as openness is concerned.

And if you're wondering why it is so obstinate, maybe this has something to do with it:

The Government agrees that any system of regulation, whether it is voluntary self-regulation or statutory regulation, requires a register of lobbyists to ensure that lobbying activity is transparent. The Government agrees with most of the elements for such a register outlined by the Committee.

However, the Government does not agree that such a register should include the private interests of Ministers and civil servants. This should not be a matter for a register of lobbyists. Ultimately, major decisions are taken by Ministers. Information about Ministers' relevant private interests is now published as well as information in the Registers of Members' and Peers' Interests. In addition, relevant interests' of departmental board members are also available publicly. However, the Government believes that the proposal for a Register of the private interests of civil servants would be a disproportionate requirement that would place a significant burden on departments and agencies while adding very little to the regulation of lobbying. Both Ministers and civil servants are already subject to clear standards of conduct for dealing with lobbyists.

But hang on a minute: if the argument is that such information is *already* made available, then there would be no *extra* burden in providing it to both authorities. It would only be information not already declared that might require effort - and that is precisely what should be made available. Yet more pathetic - and transparently false - logic from the UK government, which is still trying to keep us from scrutinising the engines of political power.

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The Utter Moral Bankruptcy of the DNA Database

This is staggering:

Detections using the national DNA database have fallen over the past two years despite the number of profiles increasing by 1m and its running costs doubling to £4.2m a year.

A report on the database covering the years 2007-09, published today, shows that crimes cleared up as a result of a match on the DNA database fell from 41,148 to 31,915 over the period. At the same time the number of DNA profiles on the database – already the largest in the world – rose from 4.6m to 5.6m. Duplicates mean that the police database now holds details of 4.89 million individuals.

That is, despite increasing the size to getting on for 10% of the UK population, the number of crimes cleared *fell* by over 25%. How pathetic is that? Not as pathetic as this statement from the truly Orwellian "National Policing Improvement Agency":

Nevertheless, Peter Neyroud, the head of the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA), which hosts the DNA database, says in the report that it continues to provide the police with the most effective tool for the prevention and detection of crime since the development of fingerprint analysis more than a century ago.

Against the background that this "most effective tool for the prevention and detection of crime since the development of fingerprint analysis more than a century ago" is getting ever-less effective and more costly, and infringing on the rights of ever more people, this statement proves just one thing: that the British police are getting more and more incompetent, and have to rely on more and more Draconian laws and tools just to stop their already footling success rate dropping even more precipitously.

This is an utter scandal on so many levels, but above all because the UK government is continuing to foist this intrusive, disproportionate, racist and morally repugnant approach upon us when it's *own figures* demonstrate that it is failing more and more each year.

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Of Open Source and Open Government

One of the key figures in the open government in Australia - and indeed globally, given the paucity of such people - is Kate Lundy. She's been speaking at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference 2009. Understandably, her talk was mostly about geospatial data, but there was also this nice section:

FOSS is like a living blueprint – a map if you will – for trust, sustainability and interoperability in the implementation of Gov 2.0 principles. FOSS principles and methodologies are the best case studies you can find for tried and proven online collaboration with constructive outcomes. FOSS applications provide reference implementations for pretty much anything, which government can build upon and customise. We have a lot to learn from FOSS methods and practices, and I would ask all of you to assist us, in government, to understand.

Would that more politicians were so perspicacious.

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Artists to Fans to Artists: Positive Feedback

One of the sad things about the current mess in the music industry is that artists are too often pitted against fans, when in fact both want the same thing: good music in a convenient format at a fair price. Here's a welcome initiative that's trying to bridge that gulf of misunderstanding:

Artists need to be paid, and fans want to pay them.

Our goals at a2f2a are:

* Help each community better understand the other;

* Help find a practical and workable system which offers artists fair remuneration in exchange for access to material by fans; and

* Help set the agenda for discussions about the role P2P can play within the emergent digital record industry.

Together, we can do it – artist to fan to artist.

What I particularly like about this - aside from the dialogue - is that it starts from the premise that people *do* want to pay for stuff. I think that's absolutely central: most people realise that artists need to be supported, and that if everyone pays, the overall price will be lower. But the music industry likes to portray the public as split in two: those who don't want to pay anything, ever, and those who will meekly pay whatever exorbitant price the labels demand. It ain't that Manichean, and if a2f2a can help to dispel that myth, that's got to be good news.

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No Patents on Seeds...or We're Really Stuffed

Good to see that I'm not a lone voice crying in the wilderness:

The continuing patenting of seeds, conventional plant varieties and animal species leads to far-reaching expropriations of farmers and breeders: farmers are deprived of their rights to save their seeds, and breeders are under strong limitations to use the patented seeds freely for further breeding. The patent holder controlls the sale of the seeds and the planting, decides about the use of herbicides and can even collect royalties at the harvest – up to the finished food product.

Our food security is increasingly dependent on a few transnational chemical and biotechnological companies.

The European Patent Office (EPO) has continuasly broadened the scope of patentability and undermined existing restrictions, in the interest of multinational companies.

Allthough plant varieties and animal species are by law exempt from patentability several hundret patents on genetically modified plants have been granted already. Basis for these decissions is the highly controversial EU Biotech Patents directive and a decission by the EPO's Enlarged Board of Appeal, which ruled in 1999 that in principle such patents could be granted.

Now the European Patent Office again has to deal with a basic question: Patents on conventional plants and animals!

The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO will use a patent on broccoli (EP 1069819) for a fundamental ruling, on whether or not conventional plants are patentable. The broccoli in question was merely diagnosed using marker assisted breeding methods to identify its natural occuring genes. The genes were not modified. All other broccoli plants with similar genes are considered as "technical inventions“ by the patent. Thus even their use for breeding and the plants themselves are monopolised. Through this the provision which prohibits the patenting of "essentially biological proceses" is to be undermined. The EPO has already granted similar patents: e.g.: only recently the company Enza Zaden Beheer received a patents on pathogene resitant lettuce ( EP1179089B1)

Should the Enlarged Board of Appeal uphold the patent, then this decission (case T0083/05) will be binding for all other pending patent applications and even for animals and their offspring.

This exactly parallels the situation with software patents, where the EPO is using every trick in the book to approve them; except it's even worse.

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Why not Participatory Medicine?

If this participation thing is so great, why don't we apply it to something really important, like medicine? Why not, indeed?

Welcome to JoPM, a New Peer-Reviewed, Open Access Journal

Our mission is to transform the culture of medicine to be more participatory. This special introductory issue is a collection of essays that will serve as the 'launch pad' from which the journal will grow. We invite you to participate as we create a robust journal to empower and connect patients, caregivers, and health professionals.

More specifically:

Because the Journal of Participatory Medicine is a new journal publishing multidisciplinary articles on topics within a new, not yet defined field, we have established draft parameters that define the journal’s range of interest. We anticipate that these parameters will change somewhat as the field develops. In the meantime, the following characterize the field of participatory medicine.

I particularly liked the following section, with its emphasis on openness:

New Knowledge Creation stems from the collaboration of researchers and patients, as individuals and as groups.

1. Health professionals and patients sharing in the discussion of scientific methods, including open discussion about the level of evidence of the research

2. Open, transparent process that demonstrates collaboration and participation in research

3. Patients with significant interest in a topic joining together to create repositories for research, including (but not limited to) registries, tissue banks and genetic databases; demonstrating mutual respect for the contributions of the data owners and health research professionals with the tools to gain insight from those repositories. Interpretation of results and conclusions including involvement of all stakeholders.

Important stuff, worth a read.

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Won't Somebody Please Think of the Orphans?

This is droll: the European Commission is finally waking up to the copyright orphans problem - thanks to some healthy panic induced by Google's book digitisation plans [.pdf]:

Orphan works are works that are in copyright but whose right holders cannot be identified or located. Protected works can become orphaned if data on the author and/or other relevant right holders (such as publishers, photographers or film producers) is missing or outdated. A work can only be exploited only after obtaining prior permission from the right holders. In the case of orphan works, granting such authorisation is not possible. This leads to a situation where millions of works cannot be copied or otherwise used e.g. a photograph cannot be used to illustrate an article in the press, a book cannot be digitised or a film restored for public viewing. There is also a risk that a significant proportion of orphan works cannot be incorporated into mass-scale digitisation and heritage preservation efforts such as Europeana or similar projects.

Libraries, universities, archives, some commercial users and several Member States claim that the problem of existing instruments, such as the Commission Recommendation 2006/585/EC 7 or the 2008 Memorandum of Understanding on Orphan Works and the related diligent search guidelines, is that these are not legally binding acts and that the issue of mass digitisation has not been addressed. Since non-legislative initiatives neither provide sufficient legal certainty nor solve the fact that using orphan works constitutes a copyright infringement, they advocate a legislative approach at the European level to allow different uses of orphan works. It is also stressed that obstacles to intra-Community trade in orphan works may emerge if each Member State were to adopt its own set of rules to deal with the problem.

For publishers, collecting societies and other right holders, orphan works are a rights-clearance issue. They are sceptical about introducing a blanket exception to use orphan works. For them, the crucial issue is to ensure that a good faith due diligence search to identify and locate the right holders is carried out, using existing databases.

The utter cluelessness and fatuity of the publishers' response is breath-taking: the problem is that the rights-holders *cannot be found* - that's why they're called "orphans". Demanding "due diligence" just misses the point completely.

At least this proves that publishers simply have no credible arguments against introducing an "exception" to use orphan works, for example in digitisation projects. And against their non-existent downside, the upside is just immense. Let's hope the European Commission is beginning to understand this.

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Racing to the Bottom of Openness

Here's some interesting news about Barnes & Noble's e-reader:

The reader, named the “Nook,” looks a lot like Amazon’s white plastic e-book, only instead of the chiclet-keyboard there is a color multi-touch screen, to be used as both a keyboard or to browse books, cover-flow style. The machine runs Google’s Android OS, will have wireless capability from an unspecified carrier and comes in at the same $260 as the now rather old-fashioned-looking Kindle.

Linux-based: no surprise there. But this is:

And over at the Wall Street Journal, somebody got a peek at an at ad set to run in the New York Times this coming Sunday. The ad features the line “Lend eBooks to friends”, and this has the potential to destroy the Kindle model. One of the biggest problems with e-books is that you can’t lend or re-sell them. If B&N is selling e-books cheaper than the paper versions, then the resale issue is moot. And lending, even if your friends need a Nook, too, takes away the other big advantage of paper.

In fact, this loaning function could be the viral feature that makes the device spread. Who would buy a walled-garden machine like the Kindle when the Nook has the same titles, cheaper, and you can borrow? The Nook is already starting to look like the real internet to the Kindle’s AOL.

It's a classic "race to the bottom", where the bottom is total openness: see you there, Amazon.

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Monsanto: Making Microsoft Look Good

Following my recent post about Bill Gates helping to push genetically-modified and patented seeds towards needy African farmers, Roy Schestowitz kindly send me links to the follow-on story: Gates attacking anyone who dares to criticise that move:

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said on October 15 that environmentalists who are adamantly opposed to using genetically modified crops in Africa are hindering efforts to end hunger on that continent.

Gates was speaking at the annual World Food Prize forum, which honors those who make important contributions to improving agriculture and ending hunger. He noted that genetically modified crops, fertilizers, and chemicals could all help small African farms produce more food, but environmentalists who resist their use are standing in the way.

“This global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two,” Gates told the forum. “Some people insist on an ideal vision of the environment. They have tried to restrict the spread of biotechnology into sub-Saharan Africa without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it, or what the farmers themselves might want.”

This is, of course, a clever framing of the debate: if you're against patented GMOs it's because you're an "idealist" (now where have I heard that before?), with a hint of Luddite too. The same post - which writes from a very Gates-friendly viewpoint - quotes him as saying:

On one side is a technological approach that increases productivity.

On the other side is an environmental approach that promotes sustainability.

Productivity or sustainability — they say you have to choose.

It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field. It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers.

The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability — and there is no reason we can’t have both.

Do genetically-modified seeds bring increased productivity? There seem doubts; but even assuming it's true, Gates sets up a false dichotomy: one reason GMO seeds aren't sustainable is because they are patented. That is, farmers *must* buy them year after year, and can't produce their own seeds. It's a situation that's relatively easy to solve: make GMOs patent-free; do not place restrictions on their use; let farmers do what farmers have done for millennia.

And look, there you have it, potentially: productivity and sustainability. But we won't get that, not because the idealistic environmentalist are blocking it, but because the seed industry wants farmers dependent on their technology, not liberated by it. It is sheer hypocrisy for a fan of patents to accuse environmentalists of being the obstacle to productivity and sustainability: that would be the industrial model of dependence, enforced by intellectual monopolies, and espoused by big companies like Monsanto, the Microsoft of plant software.

I wrote about the human price paid in India as a result of these patented seeds and the new slavery they engender a few months back. The key quotation:

Tara Lohan: Farmer suicides in India recently made the news when stories broke last month about 1,500 farmers taking their own lives, what do you attribute these deaths to?

Vandana Shiva: Over the last decade, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide. The 1,500 figure is for the state of Chattisgarh. In Vidharbha, 4,000 are committing suicide annually. This is the region where 4 million acres of cotton have been grown with Monsanto's Bt cotton. The suicides are a direct result of a debt trap created by ever-increasing costs of seeds and chemicals and constantly falling prices of agricultural produce.

When Monsanto's Bt cotton was introduced, the seed costs jumped from 7 rupees per kilo to 17,000 rupees per kilo. Our survey shows a thirteenfold increase in pesticide use in cotton in Vidharbha. Meantime, the $4 billion subsidy given to U.S. agribusiness for cotton has led to dumping and depression of international prices.

Squeezed between high costs and negative incomes, farmers commit suicide when their land is being appropriated by the money lenders who are the agents of the agrichemical and seed corporations. The suicides are thus a direct result of industrial globalized agriculture and corporate monopoly on seeds.

Here's an excellent, in-depth feature from Vanity Fair on the tactics Monsanto uses in the US. A sample:

Some compare Monsanto’s hard-line approach to Microsoft’s zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto’s seeds can’t even do that.

...

Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to other farmers. This means that farmers must buy new seed every year. Those increased sales, coupled with ballooning sales of its Roundup weed killer, have been a bonanza for Monsanto.

The feature is from last year, but I don't imagine the situation has got better since then. Indeed, the picture it paints of Monsanto is so bleak and depressing that I'm forced to admit that Microsoft in comparison comes off as almost benevolent. Given Monsanto's size, methods and evident ambitions, I fear I shall be writing rather more about this company in the future.

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Opencourseware Comes Under Attack

It was bound to happen: opencourseware is under attack:

While seeking to make college more accessible, the Obama administration has launched a largely unnoticed assault upon the nation’s vibrant market in online learning. As part of an ambitious bill designed to tighten federal control over student lending, the House of Representatives included a scant few sentences green-lighting a White House plan to spend $500 million on an “Online Skills Laboratory,” in which the federal government would provide free online college courses in a variety of unspecified areas. The feds would make the courses “freely available” and encourage institutions of higher education to offer credit for them. The measure is now before the Senate.

Ah yes, "freely available": that communistic cancer again.

It is not clear what problem the administration is seeking to solve. The kinds of online courses that the administration is calling for already exist, and are offered by an array of publishers and public and private institutions. Online enrollment grew from 1.6 million students in 2002 to 3.9 million in 2007. Nearly 1,000 institutions of higher education provide distance learning.

More than half a dozen major textbook publishers, and hundreds of smaller providers, develop and distribute online educational content. To take one example, Pearson’s MyMathLab is a self-paced, customizable online course, which the University of Alabama uses to teach more than 10,000 students a year. Janet Poley, president of the American Distance Education Consortium, doesn’t see the need for federal dollars to be spent “reinventing courses that have already been invented.”

Since it's "not clear what problem the administration is seeking to solve", allow me to offer a little help.

The article suggests that the kinds of online courses that will be created are already on offer: well, no, because those produced by "major textbook publishers, and hundreds of smaller providers" are neither "free of charge" nor "free" in the other, more interesting sense that you can take them, rework them, reshape them, and then share them. And why might that be a good idea? Well, most importantly, because it means that you don't have to "reinvent courses that have already been invented."

Oh, but wait: isn't that what the article says the current situation avoids? Indeed: and that, of course, is where the article goes wrong. The existing courses, which are proprietary, and may not be copied or built on, cause *precisely* the kind of re-inventing of the wheel that opencourseware is accused of. That's because every publisher must start again, laboriously recreating the same materials, in order to avoid charges of copyright infringement.

That's an absurd waste of effort: the facts are the same, so once they are established it's clearly much more efficient to share them and then move on to create new content. The current system doesn't encourage that, which is why we need to change it.

Given the article gets things exactly the wrong way round, it's natural to ask how the gentleman who penned these words might have come to these erroneous conclusions. First, we might look at where he's coming from - literally:

Frederick M. Hess is director of education-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Here's what SourceWatch has to say on this organisation:

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) is an extremely influential, pro-business, conservative think tank founded in 1943 by Lewis H. Brown. It promotes the advancement of free enterprise capitalism, and succeeds in placing its people in influential governmental positions. It is the center base for many neo-conservatives.

And if that doesn't quite explain why Mr Hess might be pushing a somewhat incorrect characterisation of the situation, try this:

In 1980, the American Enterprise Institute for the sum of $25,000 produced a study in support of the tobacco industry titled, Cost-Benefit Analysis of Regulation: Consumer Products. The study was designed to counteract "social cost" arguments against smoking by broadening the social cost issue to include other consumer products such as alcohol and saccharin. The social cost arguments against smoking hold that smoking burdens society with additional costs from on-the-job absenteeism, medical costs, cleaning costs and fires. The report was part of the global tobacco industry's 1980s Social Costs/Social Values Project, carried out to refute emerging social cost arguments against smoking.

So, someone coming from an organisation that has no qualms defending the tobacco industry is unlikely to have much problem denouncing initiatives that spread learning, participation, collaboration, creativity, generosity and general joy in favour of all their antitheses. And the fact that such a mighty machine of FUD should stoop to attack little old opencourseware shows that we are clearly winning.

The Commons Meme Becomes More Common

One of the great knock-on benefits of Elinor Ostrom sharing the Nobel prize for Economics is that the concept of the commons is getting the best airing that it's ever had. Here's another useful meditation on the subject from someone who knows what he's talking about, since he's written a book on the subject:

Old fables die hard. That's surely been the history of the so-called "tragedy of the commons," one of the most durable myths of the past generation. In a famous 1968 essay, biologist Garrett Hardin alleged that it is nearly impossible for people to manage shared resources as a commons. Invariably someone will let his sheep over-graze a shared pasture, and the commons will collapse. Or so goes the fable.

In fact, as Professor Elinor Ostrom's pioneering scholarship over the past three decades has demonstrated, self-organized communities of "commoners" are quite capable of managing forests, fisheries and other finite resources without destroying them. On Monday, Ostrom won a Nobel Prize in Economics for explaining how real-life commons work, especially in managing natural resources.

As he notes:

Although Ostrom has not written extensively about the Internet and online commons, her work clearly speaks to the ways that people can self-organize themselves to take care of resources that they care about. The power of digital commons can be seen in the runaway success of Linux and other open-source software. It is evident, too, in the explosive growth of Wikipedia, Craigslist (classified ads), Flickr (photo-sharing), the Internet Archive (historical Web artifacts) and Public.Resource.org (government information). Each commons acts as a conscientious steward of its collective wealth.

And this is an acute observation:

A key reason that all these Internet commons flourish is because the commoners do not have to get permission from, or make payments to, a corporate middleman. They can build what they want directly, and manage their work as they wish. The cable and telephone companies that provide access to the Internet are not allowed to favor large corporate users with superior service while leaving the rest of us--including upstart competitors and non-market players--with slower, poorer-quality service.

In an earlier time, this principle was known as "common carriage"--the idea that everyone shall have roughly equivalent access and service, without discrimination. Today, in the Internet context, it is known as "net neutrality."

Neat: another reason we need to preserve Net neutrality is to preserve all the commons - past, present and future - it enables.

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