Mozilla's Next Firefox Moment?

Last year, there was a lot of handwringing about Firefox's continuing loss of market share. This was only by relatively small amounts, but people wondered whether Firefox had peaked and was in trouble.

On The H Open.

Why Defensive Patents are a Contradiction in Terms

I've been writing about why software patents are bad from every viewpoint for far too long, but I'm heartened by the recent upswing in interest by others, less obsessed than I am, which has resulted in a sudden flood of really intelligent reporting on the subject (this, for example).

Usually those pieces are just catching up with what has been said by many of us for a while. Occasionally, though, you come across a post that is genuinely original in its insights, and makes you exclaim: "now, why didn't I think of that?" This is just such a post:

A patent that is truly so original that somebody else wouldn’t arrive at the same solution by applying normal engineering skill is useless as a defensive patent. You can’t threaten someone with a countersuit if your idea is so brilliant that your opponents—because they didn’t think of it—haven’t incorporated it in their technology. The ideal defensive patent, by contrast, is the most obvious one you can get the U.S. Patent Office to sign off on—one that competitors are likely to unwittingly “infringe,” not realizing they’ve made themselves vulnerable to legal counterattack, because it’s simply the solution a good, smart engineer trying to solve a particular problem would naturally come up with.

Of course - it's obvious when you think about it. And it means that these so-called "defensive patents" are a contradiction in terms: if ideas are useful as a defence, they don't deserve a patent, and if they truly do deserve a patent (in theory, at least), they will be useless for defensive purpose.

What a fab insight - one that takes another huge chunk out of the arguments in favour of patents.

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Not So Fast, FAST

FAST - "Federation Against Software Theft" - is manifestly one of the more risible copyright organisations, since it doesn't even know the law (it's not "theft", it's "copyright infringement" - quite different, because nothing is stolen in these cases.)

Since that is what they are paid to do, its PR company keeps sending me FAST's press releases, which I studiously ignore since they are uniformly ridiculous. But its latest missive is so indicative of what the problem is with the copyright industries, I feel obliged to share part of it (sadly, it's not yet online - I'll add it if and when it appears.)

It's about Newzbin 2, which it inaccurately claims

aggregates a large amount of the illegally copied material found on Usenet discussion forums.

Of course, there's no aggregation whatsoever, just links: Newzbin 2 is a search engine, like Google. Clearly FAST has the same problems understanding that distinction as it does with the difference between theft and copyright infringement.

But the best bit comes towards the end:

Our stance has always been one of carrot and stick – ensuring that customers are educated on the economic impact of piracy as well as advocating compliance with the law protecting creators.

Except, of course, there is no carrot there, just propaganda and threats. And the propaganda is wrong: as I - and others - have noted, there's growing evidence to show that piracy actually boosts sales.

This neatly sums up the problem with the copyright maximalists. Rather than focussing on giving customers what they want - easy access to digital products at reasonable prices - they spend all their time focussing on the stick. Little wonder, then, that the current "victory" in the courts will prove as hollow as all the others, because there is still no "carrot" being offered as an alternative...

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The Art of Sharing Online

As has been noted many times before, the Internet is essentially a global, digital copier. Anything that is placed online is, by definition, copied as it is accessed. This means that every site must think about how it would like its content to be shared. That wish may or may not be respected, but if it's not articulated, it certainly won't be.

For "ordinary" creations like text of images, the licensing situation is pretty well-defined. Basically, you can either put things into the public domain, claim maximal, "ordinary", copyright, or something in-between, using Creative Commons licences. But for less common kinds of material, things may not be so obvious.

That seems to be the case with an interesting new site called CircuitBee. Here's the background:

We love making electronics projects, we've not worked on many but we've enjoyed it as a hobby for some time. The one thing we have a problem with however is how to get help with our schematics, how to talk about them and how to show them off to other people.

During our last big electronics project we got really stuck with our design, it mostly worked but we weren't sure how stable it was or how reliable our circuit would be. We went online to look for help and see if anybody would look over our schematics and give us any tips. We found people willing to help easily enough but providing them with our circuit became a real headache.

First we posted a copy of the project files, that didn't help since the some of people helping us used a different version of the software and some of them only used a different schematics package.

Next we decided to post a screenshot of the schematic but our schematic software would only let us capture the current screenshot of the schematic, which wasn't zoomed in enough to be able to make it readable!

Finally we used a PDF print out of the schematic and had to upload it to some hosting online and give the people in the forum a link to the PDF.

After all this messing around just to show someone our schematic we thought that there had to be a better way. We looked around, but didn't find anything that solved this problem, so we set out to create CircuitBee.

CircuitBee takes your schematic project files, converts them into its own internal format and then provides you with an embeddable version of the circuit, similar to Google Maps but for electronics schematics.

You can pan, zoom, go fullscreen, mouse over components to see what they are and we have plans for lots more features yet.

Currently we only support KiCad schematics since we couldn't find good documentation on the file formats used by other software. We intend to expand to other popular schematic capture software like Eagle and Fritzing in the near future.

That sounds like a really good idea. The problem with the site at the moment is that these schematics come with no information about what you can do with them. Are they freely available, available for non-commercial use, subject to the maximal copyright restrictions, etc?

The obvious solution would be allow people who upload their schematics to choose from the full range of Creative Commons licences at that time. These could then be displayed alongside circuit online so that visitors know what the legal situation is.

However, there is one other aspect that could be usefully clarified. As the quoted text explains, "CircuitBee takes your schematic project files, converts them into its own internal format and then provides you with an embeddable version of the circuit, similar to Google Maps but for electronics schematics." The status of that format is not clear. Ideally, it would be released as an open format for all to use - after all, doing so is likely to increase its uptake, for example in other software. Making it a fully open format will also allow others to help improve it.

And that, really, is the art of sharing stuff online: the more freely it is done, the greater the benefits for everyone.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca, or on Google+

What's the Father of the Wiki Doing at Nike?

The idea of the wiki is now so pervasive that we rather take it for granted - "oh, let's just use a wiki" is a typical cry these days. But it's important to remember that for all its simplicity, it took someone to come up with the idea (just as it did for the "simple" idea of a hyperlinked Web.)

That person was Ward Cunningham, who has led a colourful professional life, as his Wikipedia entry (oh look, a wiki...) makes clear:

He is a founder of Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. He has also served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as Principal Engineer in the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. He is founder of the Hillside Group and has served as program chair of the Pattern Languages of Programming conference which it sponsors. Cunningham was part of the Smalltalk community. From December 2003 until October 2005, he worked for Microsoft Corporation in the "patterns & practices" group. From October 2005 to May 2007, he held the position of Director of Committer Community Development at the Eclipse Foundation.

In May 2007, Cunningham joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer.[2][3][4] On March 24, 2011 The Oregonian reported that Cunningham had quietly departed AboutUs to join Venice-based CitizenGlobal, a startup working on crowd-sourced video content, as their Chief Technology Officer. He remains "an adviser" with AboutUs.

Well, he is moving again, to fill this rather interesting, if horribly-named, post at Nike:

At Nike we know tomorrow's world will be radically different from today's. To thrive in a world where resources are constrained, where people and governments and systems are fully connected, where sustainability is an imperative, not a choice, where transparency is requisite, we believe we need innovation. Disruptive, radical, jaw-dropping innovation. Innovation we cannot imagine. That kind of innovation is not going to come only from within. It will require the best of what we've got, along with unlikely partnerships, collaborations and open innovation.

We believe that data and technology will be key to unleashing new innovations.

Nike is looking for a person with the skills, passion and know-how to use data and technology to solve problems standing between business-as-usual and a sustainable future. We're looking for a creative visionary who also has both feet firmly on the ground — one in Nike and one in the open data world, ready to run. We're looking for a Code for a Better World Fellow.

The fellow will help Nike determine the steps needed to open our sustainability data to communities of data-obsessed programmers, visual designers and researchers.

The fellow will work with Nike's data managers to landscape current data and craft a desired future state; manage the formatting and release of data to the open data community; curate use of the data within the community; bring knowledge from the open data community back to Nike as actionable steps; attend conferences related to open data to grow Nike's network and profile in this space; and ultimately create/steward the creation of prototypes that demonstrate how opening Nike's sustainability data can be a force to drive change.

What's particularly interesting here is the emphasis on open data. So far, we have seen mainly governments opening up their data stores, but there are many benefits for companies, to do so too, as this article points out (it was also the source of the news that Cunningham was moving.) It also points out that Nike has been in the forefront of innovative business practices in this area for a while:

Nike have a surprisingly long history of releasing data. Back in 2000, they started publishing a list of all their contracted factories (scraped list by Selena Deckelmann) and related audit information. The aim? To improve their factory working conditions, both by improved scrutiny of Nike’s own measurement systems, and by enabling direct on the ground inspection and campaigning by activists.

Employing the Father of the Wiki is another smart move, and I can't wait to see what he does there.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca, or on Google+

Why We Should - and Can - Abolish All Patents

As long-suffering readers will know, I've been warning about the growing problem of patent thickets in the field of software for some time now. Until relatively recently, I and a few others have been voices crying in the wilderness: the general consensus has been that patents are good, and more patents are better. But in the last few weeks, the first hopeful signs have appeared that at least some people are beginning to realise that software patents not only do not promote innovation, they actually throttle it.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Time to Break up Big, Bad Apple?

One of the unusual characteristics of the computer industry in recent years is the rapid rise of companies to almost complete market dominance of their respective sectors.

Things began with Microsoft, whose Windows operating system is still unchallenged on the desktop. Then came Google, which more or less owns the online search world (with the notable exception of the important Chinese market), and after that Facebook, which is probably hurtling towards 800 million users at the moment. What this means is that it is almost impossible for other companies to enter those particular markets and compete against the incumbent.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Are Hackers Becoming So Angry?

You may have noticed a bit of a trend recently. Groups of hackers are getting hold of stuff that has hitherto been kept locked up, and making it freely available online, much to the annoyance and embarrassment of those involved.

Well-known examples include Wikileaks, Anonymous and LulzSec, but we now have a new name to add to the list. Step forward (the possibly pseudonymous) Greg Maxwell, who has been provoked by the Aaron Swartz saga, which I wrote about earlier this week, to release some files of his own:

On Open Enterprise blog.

An Open Government Data Licence for the World?

As I've noted before, the UK government is now arguably the leader when it comes to open data. Of course, that's not really the point: this isn't a competition with winners and losers, but a global effort to open things up. As such, it would be nice if there were more collaboration between the different governments - things like this, for example:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Myhrvold Hoist By His Own (Patented) Petard

There's a column doing the rounds at the moment that is generating some interest. It comes from the King of the Patent Trolls, Nathan Myhrvold. I urge you to read it - not so much for what he wants to point out, as for what he inadvertently reveals. Here's the key passage:

Most big tech companies inhabit winner-take-most markets, in which any company that gets out in front can develop an enormous lead. This is how Microsoft came to dominate in software, Intel Corp. in processors, Google Inc. (GOOG) in web search, Oracle Corp. in databases, Amazon.com Inc. in web retail, and so on.

As a result, the tech world has seen a series of mad scrambles by companies wanting to be king of the hill. In the late 1980s, the battle was for dominance of spreadsheet and word-processing software. In the late 1990s, it was about e- commerce on the emerging Internet. The latest whatever-it-takes struggle has been over social networks, with enough drama to script a Hollywood movie.

In each case, the recipe for success was to bring to market, at a furious pace, products that incorporate new features. Along the way, inconvenient intellectual property rights were ignored.

I think he's absolutely spot on. In the 1980s and 1990s, companies successively carved out dominant shares in emerging markets, often becoming vastly profitable in the process. And how did they do that? Well, as Myhrvold says, "the recipe for success was to bring to market, at a furious pace, products that incorporate new features." Their rise and huge success was almost entirely down to the fact that they innovated at a "furious pace", which led to market success.

They did not, that is, innovate in order to gain patents, but in order to succeed. They did not even bother taking out patents, so busy were they innovating and succeeding. Indeed, Myhrvold himself says: "Along the way, inconvenient intellectual property rights were ignored." They were ignored by everyone, and the most innovative companies thrived as a direct result, because only innovation mattered.

Fast forward to today. Now even the most innovative company has to spend millions of dollars fighting lawsuits over alleged patent infringement. Often these come from companies that don't actually innovate in any way - they just happen to own a patent that may or may not read on real products that genuine innovators have produced.

So by Myhrvold's own admission, ignoring "inconvenient intellectual property rights", companies innovated fiercely, created now market segments, and were rewarded for their innovation by market dominance and profits. Why then is he and others extolling the virtue of those same, inconvenient patent rights that did nothing for two decades?

The answer, of course, is obvious: because he and the other patent trolls (and burnt-out companies like Microsoft that are becoming a new kind of patent troll by default) have realised that it is not actual, on-the-ground, expensive innovation that counts, but the piece of paper from the USPTO assigning nominal "ownership" of that innovation.

He and his company have learned how to game the system and thus destroy the conditions that led to over two decades of uninterrupted and unprecedented innovation and wealth creation thanks to a level playing field offered by the absence of distorting intellectual monopolies - not their presence, as his column illogically tries to suggest at one point. This U-turn is doubly ironic given his unexpectedly candid opening analysis describes so well why we do not need patents at all.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

How Should We Liberate Knowledge?

Here's an interesting situation at the online academic repository JSTOR:

Last fall and winter, JSTOR experienced a significant misuse of our database. A substantial portion of our publisher partners’ content was downloaded in an unauthorized fashion using the network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of our participating institutions. The content taken was systematically downloaded using an approach designed to avoid detection by our monitoring systems.

On Open Enterprise blog.

How Should We Liberate Knowledge?

Here's an interesting situation at the online academic repository JSTOR:

Last fall and winter, JSTOR experienced a significant misuse of our database. A substantial portion of our publisher partners’ content was downloaded in an unauthorized fashion using the network at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of our participating institutions. The content taken was systematically downloaded using an approach designed to avoid detection by our monitoring systems.

On Open Enterprise blog.

To Defend Android Google Must Attack Software Patents

Android is under serious threat. Not so much commercially, where it continues to trounce its rivals and take an ever-larger market share around the world, but through legal threats. Of course, that's not just a problem for Google: as Techdirt's handy diagram illustrates, practically everyone in the smartphone space is suing everyone else. But the big difference is how the others are addressing this.

On The H Open blog.

Open Season on Open Data

Well, it seems to be Open Data week here on Computerworld UK. After my report on the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin, one of whose principal themes was open data, and my post about proposals for a data.gov.eu portal, this morning we have the following major announcement by the UK Prime Minister:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Data Portals Become Fashionable: Time to Worry?

Yesterday I mentioned Nigel Shadbolt, who has played a leading role in the opening up of government data in the UK. By chance, I've just come across a report [.pdf] he wrote for the EU about doing much the same, but on a larger scale. Curiously, this is dated 15 December 2010, but this is the first I've seen it. Either it's been buried deep within the Brussels system, or I've been remiss in catching it. Either way, it's still well worth reading.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Open Knowledge Foundation Comes of Age

The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) was launched just over seven years ago:

May 24th 2004: The Open Knowledge Foundation was launched today with explicit objectives to promote the openness of all forms of knowledge where knowledge is taken to include information, data and all other synonymous terms. In particular

To promote freedom of access, creation and dissemination of knowledge.

To develop, support and promote projects, communities and tools that foster and facilitate the creation, access to and dissemination of knowledge.

To campaign against restrictions both legal and non-legal on the creation, access to and dissemination of knowledge.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Rise and Fall and Rise of HTML

HTML began life as a clever hack of a pre-existing approach. As Tim Berners-Lee explains in his book, “Weaving the Web”:

Since I knew it would be difficult to encourage the whole world to use a new global information system, I wanted to bring on board every group I could. There was a family of markup languages, the standard generalised markup language (SGML), already preferred by some of the world's top documentation community and at the time considered the only potential document standard among the hypertext community. I developed HTML to look like a member of that family.

On The H Open.

Open for Business in Every Way

For some reason, I seem to be giving talks all over the place this month. I've already written about the one that I presented at the European Parliament at the end of May, and I'll be blogging about my presentation at the Open Knowledge Conference in Berlin this week in due course (once I've finished writing it....).

But in this blog post I want to expand on some of the ideas I explored at a meeting entitled “The Future is Free”, held in Kortrijk, Belgium, last week. The session was recorded, so there should be videos of the talks at some point: when they're available, I'll add the link.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Failed Experiment of Software Patents

I've noted before that we are witnessing a classic patent thicket in the realm of smartphones, with everyone and his or her dog suing everyone else (and their dog.) But without doubt one of the more cynical applications of intellectual monopolies is Oracle suit against Google. This smacked entirely of the lovely Larry Ellison spotting a chance to extra some money without needing to do much other than point his legal department in the right direction.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Opening Up Design

One of the most fascinating aspects of open source is how its key ideas are being applied elsewhere. Obvious examples include open content - things like Wikipedia - open data, open access and open science, but there are also moves to apply them to more specialised business disciplines like design.

Recently, a book called “Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive” was published, which provided the first in-depth look at this world. As you might hope given its subject-matter, the essays that go to make it up are also being made available online under a Creative Commons licence - but with a twist:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Of Standards and Software Patents

Xiph.org has an interesting name and the following forthright self-description:

Xiph.Org is a collection of open source, multimedia-related projects. The most aggressive effort works to put the foundation standards of Internet audio and video into the public domain, where all Internet standards belong." ...and that last bit is where the passion comes in.

On Open Enterprise blog.

An Attack that Goes to the Heart of Free Software

The key hack that made free software possible was a legal one: using copyright to keep software free. It did that by demanding a quid pro quo: if you use software made available under the GNU GPL, modify it and distribute it, you too must make it available under the GNU GPL.

If it were possible to take software released under the GPL, modify it and release it, but without passing on the freedoms to users downstream, the entire edifice of free software would be in trouble. And that, alas, iseems to be precisely what is happening in a German court case:

On Open Enterprise blog.

British Library Encloses the Public Domain

There's considerable excitement about an announcement from the British Library and Google detailing a wonderful gift to the world:

The British Library and Google today announced a partnership to digitise 250,000 out-of-copyright books from the Library’s collections. Opening up access to one of the greatest collections of books in the world, this demonstrates the Library’s commitment, as stated in its 2020 Vision, to increase access to anyone who wants to do research.

Selected by the British Library and digitised by Google, both organisations will work in partnership over the coming years to deliver this content free through Google Books (http://books.google.co.uk) and the British Library’s website (www.bl.uk). Google will cover all digitisation costs.

Isn't that just swell? Vast quantities of fascinating books in the public domain are being made "available to all", as the press release trumpets:

This project will digitise a huge range of printed books, pamphlets and periodicals dated 1700 to 1870, the period that saw the French and Industrial Revolutions, The Battle of Trafalgar and the Crimean War, the invention of rail travel and of the telegraph, the beginning of UK income tax, and the end of slavery. It will include material in a variety of major European languages, and will focus on books that are not yet freely available in digital form online.

Freely available, too... But, er, exactly *how* freely available?

Once digitised, these unique items will be available for full text search, download and reading through Google Books, as well as being searchable through the Library’s website and stored in perpetuity within the Library’s digital archive.

Fab, and....?

Researchers, students and other users of the Library will be able to view historical items from anywhere in the world as well as copy, share and manipulate text for non-commercial purposes.

But hang on: these are materials that are in the public domain; public domain means that anyone can do anything with them - including commercial applications. So this condition of "non-commercial purposes" means one thing, and one thing only: although the texts themselves are public domain, the digitised texts are not (otherwise it would be impossible to impose the non-commercial clause).

In other words, far from helping to make knowledge freely accessible to all and sundry, the British Library is actually enclosing the knowledge commons that rightfully belongs to humankind as a whole, by claiming a new copyright term for the digitised versions. Call me ungrateful, but that's a gift I can do without.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

The Arrogance of Artists (and Publishers)

You wouldn't expect much else from a meeting organised by WIPO, but this is pretty rich even for them:

Copyright is necessary to allow authors to live from their trade and to guarantee their independence, and exceptions should be decided by authors and publishers, according to panellists on a copyright dialogue held at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week.

Amusingly, this was a "copyright dialogue": but I bet there weren't many people from the *other* side of the equation - the readers. The readers, you see, don't really count in this - "exceptions should be decided by authors and publishers" as the above insists. The fact that copyright is supposed to be a balanced quid pro quo - a time-limited monopoly in return for works entering the public domain afterwards, and that such a balanced of necessity requires both parties to agree, seems not to have entered the heads of those authors and publishers.

The very idea that "exceptions should be decided by authors and publishers" betrays the deep-seated arrogance and contempt that both of these now have for their readers. And that's all part and parcel of the publishing industry's problems: it sees readers as the enemy, something that must be fought and vanquished in order for it to be forced to buy books on the terms of authors and publishers - forced, if necessary, by ever-more Draconian laws that criminalise willy-nilly.

What is so regrettable about this depressing vision is that at the very same conference where these extraordinarily insulting comments about readers were made, another publisher revealed the wonderful truth:

For Richard Charkin, executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing, publishing is also investing in the future. Copyright is a flexible system, he said, giving an example of Bloomsbury Academic’s business model. The publishing company publishes social sciences and humanities research publications. They are available online under a Creative Commons non-commercial licence, and for sale as printed books. The publications are thus widely available, Charkin said, but surprisingly, he said that sales of books seem to be higher when they offer free downloads than if they do not.

Go that? "Surprisingly", when people can freely share books, they *buy more* - exactly as many of us have been saying for years, and in diametric opposition to the dogma of the same authors and publishers who insist that they know best, and that readers must be brought to heel like recalcitrant curs rather than treated as equals in a pleasant colloquy.

How to make money in the age of digital abundance is there for all that have eyes to see; sadly, even the most basic optical equipment seems lacking in this singularly benighted profession. Looks like they will have to learn the hard way....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Of Open Source and Open Innovation

Last week I wrote about a talk I gave with the title “Innovation inducement prizes as a possible mechanism to unlock the benefits of open innovation models”. I explored the idea of inducement prizes then, and now I'd like to look at open innovation.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Glyn Moody: The great prize: open innovation

View more presentations from glynmoody

US Abuses Copyright and Extradition Law: UK Acquiesces

If you want a vision of the world of global repression and bullying that copyright maximalists are striving to create, try this:

A Sheffield student is facing up to five years in jail if convicted in America for a website which provided links to movie clips.

Let's just look at the component parts of this story.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Software Patents: Do as You Would be Done By

I've written plenty about why software patents should be resisted where they don't exist, and abolished where they do. But if I wanted further ammunition for my arguments I couldn't hope for a better example of software patent madness than what is happening in the smartphone sector.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Do We Still Need the FSF, GNU and GPL?

It's easy to take things for granted – to assume that the world will always be as it is. And then sometimes you receive a mild jolt: some new information appears that makes you sit up and reconsider your preconceptions.

On The H Open.

Interoperability and Open Standards: Help Make It Happen

In a previous column, I mentioned that I was invited to talk at a meeting at the European Parliament about innovation prizes last week. That's not something that often happens, and I frequently get to hear about meetings only after the event, when it's too late, which is very frustrating. But happily here's one on the 16th June entitled “Interoperability and standards: making it happen“ that I've come across in time:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Good Apple, Bad Apple

Since Apple has replaced Microsoft as the leading patent-wielding cheerleader for closed-source computing, it will come as no surprise that I have no intention of providing a rapturous run-down of yesterday's wondrous announcements. But there is one aspect I'd like to explore, because it has interesting wider implications.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Great Prize: Innovating Without Monopolies

Last week I was in Brussels, talking at the European Parliament - not, I hasten to add, talking to the Parliament. This was a more intimate gathering in one of the smaller (but still quite large) conference halls, discussing a rather interesting matter:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Back to Back-to-Back Bach

Here's some good news:

You can download for free the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach. They were recorded by Dr. James Kibbie (University of Michigan) on original baroque organs in Leipzig, Germany. Start with a collection of Favorite Masterworks, or get the complete works that have been divided into 13 groups for easy download.

It's certainly wonderful that everyone can now enjoy the greatest organ works ever written, but there are a couple of points worth noting here.

First, it's not clear what licence is being used for these recordings: there's no mention of Creative Commons options anywhere, so presumably they are under normal copyright, but freely released. That's not ideal, since it limits what can be done with them.

The other thing is that it's extraordinary that such a move is extraordinary. These works were written at a time when music copyright did not exist, and have in any case been in the public domain for hundreds of years. So why is it only now that people can download them in this way?

It is a mark of a civilised society that everyone has free access to its cultural treasures to study and perhaps build upon. The fact that we only have that now for one part of one composer's legacy is truly damning. The reason people don't have instant access to all music is, of course, copyright. Its deadening hand means that not only are copyright works rigorously locked down, but that performances of works in the public domain also rarely get released freely, partly because yet more copyright artefacts are created by such contemporary recreations.

This latest news about Dr Kibbie's generous move only emphasises how poor we really are when it comes to enjoying the immense riches of our culture. (Via @timbray.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

The Real Legacy of the Hargreaves Report?

Now that the dust has settled a little on the Hargreaves report, I thought it might be worth revisiting it, but looking at it from a slightly different angle. Before, I noted its sensible thoughts on software patents; there's also much good stuff on orphan works, one of the areas crying out for a way to unlock the riches currently unavailable. But I want to step back and look at the bigger picture, and how in addition to offering their specific recommendations, Professor Hargreaves and his team have done something rather clever.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Guardian: Yes, but of What?

I wrote last week about a curious article in the Guardian calling for “caution” on open source. And now we have another odd piece:

The sad truth is that while the UK has the creativity and technological know-how to produce the next Google, the relatively smooth road to patent protection in the US isn't mirrored here - and that's a stumbling block that will hinder the growth of the UK software developer.

But that is simply wrong. Of all the major software companies, Google has eschewed taking out software patents the most. That's because it knows that the US patent system is broken, and wants to see it reformed:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Now is the Summer of Our Discontent

Google's Summer of Code has been running for a few years now, and is an established and important fixture for the free software world:

Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together over 4500 successful student participants and over 3000 mentors from over 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code.

An obvious question is: where are all those participants coming from? Now we know; here are the top ten countries by student count:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Will Apple Redeem Piracy?

One of the central arguments I and others make is that piracy is actually *good* for media producers in all sorts of ways (there lots of links to examples in my submission to the Hargreaves enquiry.)

The content industry has simply refused to consider this possibility, because it would undermine all its arguments for harsher enforcement of copyright - even though it might help them to make more money (it seems that control is more important than cash...)

Against that background of pig-headed refusal to look at the objective facts, news of an imminent announcement by Apple of a cloud-based music service could be rather significant:

Apple no doubt has paid dearly for any cloud music licenses, and it's unclear how much of those costs it will eat or pass on to consumers. One possibility would be to bundle an iCloud digital locker into Apple's MobileMe online service, which currently costs $99 a year and synchronizes contacts, e-mail, Web bookmarks, and other user data across multiple devices. Users will be able to store their entire music collections in the cloud—even if they obtained some songs illegally. That would finally give the labels a way to claw out some money on pirated music.

I think this could be an important moment: it would suddenly give the recorded music industry an incentive to accept, if not actively encourage, piracy, because it would effectively be marketing for the new service (and for others that will doubtless come along based on the same idea.)

This, of course, is what some of us have been saying all along; but if it takes Apple to get this idea into the heads of the music industry, so be it. The main thing is that we need to move away from the current obsession with repressive "enforcement" measures that will cause huge collateral damage to freedom and society, as the chilling calls for a "civilised" (as in locked-down, monitored and corporatised) Net at the recent eG8 circus made only too clear.

Let's just hope that the labels don't manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on *this* one, too....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Time for Amazon to Pay its dues to Open Source?

It's nearly summertime. How do I know? Not, of course, by looking at the iffy British weather outside, but because Google's Summer of Code is here again:

On The H Open.

Peer to Patent in the UK: Worth a Punt?

As I've written too many times, software patents make no sense for lots of reasons. Although rather more circumspect than me in its phraseology, the Hargreaves Review essentially agreed:

In this case, the Review believes the balance of evidence lies in continuing to withhold patent recognition of non-technical computer programs as part of a sustained effort to deal with the growing and dangerous problem of thickets

But there still remains a grey area where pseudo-software patents are being granted because of legalistic trickery that succeeds in dressing up software as if it were something else - notably the “computer-implemented invention” (CII):

On Open Enterprise blog.

Caution on that "Call for Caution on Open Source"

The Guardian has published a very curious piece today, entitled: “A Call for Caution on Open Source”. It concludes:

The UK coalition government should take considered note that the procurement of open source software buys neither governments nor taxpayers a cost- and indigestion-free lunch.

Leaving aside the fairly obvious fact that nobody had claimed anything of the sort, it's worth exploring some of the thinking behind this piece.

On Open Enterprise blog.

World Copyright Summit: 7 Billion Elephants

In a couple of weeks' time, the World Copyright Summit takes place in Brussels:

Creating value in the digital economy

The World Copyright Summit is a truly international and cross-industry event addressing the future of the creative community and the entertainment business in the digital economy.

All stakeholders involved in creative industries – creation, licensing, usage, collective management, legislation and dissemination of intellectual property and creative content – now have a unique forum to exchange views on the value of creative works, the future of authors’ rights, the role of creators and their collective management organisations.

It's certainly a pretty high-powered event, judging by some of the big names there. There's Francis Gurry, Director General, WIPO; Michel Barnier, European Commissioner, Internal Market and Services; Maria Martin-Prat, Head of Unit “Copyright”, Intellectual Property Directorate; and Marielle Gallo, Member of the Committee on Legal Affairs, European Parliament.

Alongside these, we have the heads of just about every industry association for writers, musicians, filmmakers etc., as well as a few big names from the creative and media worlds - people like The Reg's Andrew Orlowski and Robert Levine.

The organisers really seem to have included everyone, just as they say: "All stakeholders involved in creative industries – creation, licensing, usage, collective management, legislation and dissemination of intellectual property and creative content."

Well, everyone except one: The Public.

The public is the elephant in the room at this conference - or, rather, the seven billion elephants in the room.

Not only is the public not participating here, it is not even mentioned, as if the very word were some kind of defilement in these hallowed halls celebrating the great intellectual monopoly of copyright, and ways of extracting the maximum "value" from it.

In the extensive programme [.pdf], the nearest thing I can find to an acknowledgement that the public exists is the odd mention of "consumers" - that is, passive recipients of the content industries' largesse - like this one:

Several initiatives around the world have attempted to connect rights holders – and primarily creators – to consumers in order to promote values such as the respect of copyright. This session looks at some of those projects which are aiming to bring creators and consumers closer together.

Even here, then, the "connection" between these consumers and rights holders is "respect of copyright". It's almost as if no other connection can be imagined - the idea, say, that art loses much of its deeper meaning as a social act without an appreciative and involved audience.

Indeed, that word "respect" is hammered home again and again throughout the programme. It forms one of the three defining themes of the whole conference. But here "respect" means one thing only: respect of the public for the monopolies of the rights holders.

This huge and insulting asymmetry is perhaps the perfect symbol of all that is wrong with industries based around copyright today: they sincerely believe that the "respect" involved is all one-way - that the public has no right to respect whatsoever; that laws can - and should - be passed that take from the public and never give, just as the copyright ratchet means term is always extended, never shortened.

This conference, then, is the perfect expression of an industry talking to itself, reinforcing its own prejudices and delusions, and unwilling to accept that the world has changed utterly under the impact of digital technologies; unable even to mention the idea that it's time to engage with those seven billion people - not as consumers, but as new kinds of creators, just as worthy of "respect" as the traditional kind - and rather more numerous.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Hargreaves Report: Patently Sensible Stuff

It's a measure of how central traditionally dry-as-dust subjects like copyright and patents have become to the modern (digital) world that the Hargreaves Report on the UK's “intellectual property framework” has been so eagerly awaited. That's partly because there is a clear sense that the current systems are dysfunctional and desperately need fixing, and that this report is an important opportunity to do something about it.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Re-using PCs: Remploy's Radical Route

One of the problems with the rapid pace of development in the world of computers is that the latter become out of date and slightly slow compared to the latest speed fiend. Moreover, the computer industry is predicated on the idea that everyone upgrades their systems every year or two, and marketing is largely geared to that end.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Self-Perpetuating Copyright Enforcement

One of the most powerful emotional tricks used by the copyright industry against those seeking to reduce the term and reach of copyright to more rational levels is to invoke the poor starving artists who would suffer if this were to happen.

The fact that the vast majority of creators earn most money soon after producing their work, and relatively little years later, means that taking copyright back to the original 14-year term specified in the Statute of Anne would have minimal effect on them, but it's an undeniably clever pitch.

In reality, the copyright industry couldn't give two hoots about the artists it feeds off, as the following makes clear:

RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously told TorrentFreak that the ‘damages’ accrued from piracy-related lawsuits will not go to any of the artists, but towards funding more anti-piracy campaigns. “Any funds recouped are re-invested into our ongoing education and anti-piracy programs,” he said.

If the copyright industry *really* cared about the artists, this money would go straight into their deserving pockets.

Moreover, this "re-investment" in anti-piracy programmes makes such actions self-fuelling: the money supposedly gained for those poor starving wretches, is actually used to fund the next action, which funds the next action, and so on.

This means that the copyright organisations have a real incentive to choose a strategy that privileges heavy-handed enforcement over new business models. The latter might result in creators getting paid more, while the former ensures that the fat-cats running the enforcement machine continue to lap up the cream....

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Spain: America's Trojan Horse?

Techdirt had an interesting, if depressing, story the other day:

according to reports about some of the latest Wikileaks State Department cable leaks, it appears that Hollywood and US diplomats were behind the crafting of Spain's newly proposed copyright law. You may recall, of course, that Spain actually has a fairly reasonable copyright law. It says personal, non-commercial, file sharing is okay, and does not seem to agree with the idea that you should blame third parties for actions of their users.

Now put that together with this:

The European Commission is contemplating making Internet providers police their networks to tackle illegal downloads, a highly contested measure which is currently being scrutinised by the European Court of Justice.

Sources close to the Commission claim that the EU executive will try and replicate a Spanish law which forces Internet providers to come down hard on users for making illegal downloads.

It's pretty clear what is going on here: get one or two EU countries to bring in repressive laws that can be cited as precedents, then "harmonise" EU laws so that all European countries do the same.

It emphasises why every country has to fight these kind of neo-colonial impositions by the US copyright industries, because once a crack appears at the national level, the European Commission will be sure to start using it to open up the whole of Europe.

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BSA 2010 Piracy Report: Big Numbers, Big Flaws

In the digital world, it seems, there are two certainties: that every year the Business Software Alliance will put out a report that claims huge amounts of software are being “stolen”; and that the methodology employed by that report is deeply flawed.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Skype-ing Out an Open Source Future

You may remember a legacy company from a few years back – used to be very big in old market segments like the desktop, but never managed to make much impact in growth areas like the web or mobile. Seems like it's found some money down the back of the sofa:

On The H Open.

As British as Raspberry Pi?

There's been a lot of chatter about Apple possibly switching to ARM chips for its laptops and even its desktops. Whether or not that is true, it's certainly the case that the ARM architecture is a major success, as a glance at the huge list of major manufacturers employing it for their products confirms: as well many Android phones, the Apple iPhone and iPod touch are to be found there.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Portugal to Make CC Licences Illegal?

I recently wrote about the suggestion that a "Great Firewall of Europe" should be created - a fine example of political cluelessness when it comes to technology. Here's another, this time from Portugal:

The Socialist Party will present this new proposal for approval in the next Government, no matter if they win the elections or not. In regards to Creative Commons, they support a vision where Creative Commons harm Culture, and in this law proposal they intend to turn them illegal. Here's how (quick translation, I'll soon post the whole proposal in Portuguese online, so others can make their own translation; this is only the part regarding written works, but there are similar items in "Article 3" for other works, except software):

Article 3, point 1 - The authors have the right to the perception of a compensation equitable for the reproduction of written works, in paper or similar support, for instance microfilm, photocopy, digitalization or other processes of similar nature.

[...]

Article 5 (Inalienability and non-renunciability) - The equitable compensation of authors, artists, interpreters or executives is inalienable and non-renunciable, being null any other contractual clause in contrary.

Here: in sum, every author (except software authors, so thankfully free software isn't affected) has the right of getting money out of private copy, and they can't renounce it, so every Creative Commons license, where saying "You are free to share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work" (or actually, in legalese, "licensor hereby grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license to reproduce the Work") is illegal.

Judging by the interesting discussion around the post quoted above, it's still not entirely clear whether this is really the intent of this new law. It's possible, for example, that this is just very badly drafted, and not actually an attack on the idea that creators should be able to share their work freely if they wish.

Unfortunately, a follow-up comment to the post is more pessimistic:

The SPA position (that the Ministry of Culture shares because they state they agree 100% in their positions) is that every creative commons author is harming artists, authors and the creative ecosystem.

The SPA is the "Sociedade Portuguesa de Autores", or Portuguese Authors Society:

Since its creation in May 22, 1925, the Portuguese Authors Society took on two important areas of activity: the mutualist and the cultural. The mutualist one has allowed thousands of authors to find support in old age and in sickness. As for the cultural one, it remains active, always with new proposals.

It seems here that those "new proposals" have nothing to do with helping authors distribute their creations as they wish, but is more about imposing a very one-sided and anachronistic view that only fools give away their creations. (Or as Bill Gates put it some years back: "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?")

This shows how prescient Rick Falkvinge was when he wrote recently:

Some people, and corporations in particular, claim that the purpose of the copyright monopoly is for a certain profession to make money. That was never the case, and frankly, the idea is revolting to any democracy and functioning market. Bricklayers don’t have laws guaranteeing they make money, marketers don’t, plumbers don’t, and nobody else does, either.

However, the means of achieving the maximization of the available culture has been to give some creators a monopoly on the opportunity — not the right, but the opportunity — to make money off of a creative work. This has been the means to maximize culture for the public at large, and never the end in itself.

This also means that the only legitimate stakeholder in copyright legislation is the public. The monopoly is indeed a balance, but not the “balance” between corporate profits and human rights that the copyright industry likes to paint and pretend. In fact, the copyright industry is not part of the balance at all.

Unfortunately, this is not some abstract battle between different points of view. For example, if CC licences become illegal in Portugal, this would presumably mean that contributing to Wikipedia would also become illegal. Maybe Wikipedia itself would become illegal - there seems no limit to the absurdity of the knock-on consequences when starting from such a ridiculous premise.

Let's hope that enough Portuguese artists protest and the politicians come to their senses before Portugal becomes the laughing-stock of the civilised world.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Another Business Model for Art: eBay

One of the things that I and others like to emphasise is that investigating new business models is crucial for the survival of art, artists and the companies that work with them. A signal failure to do that has led to the current excesses by the content industries, which have instead become fixated on increased enforcement of copyright laws that are simply unenforceable in the digital age.

Against that background, it's always heartening to hear about artists trying out new things - like this:

Hello, my name is Daniel and I make songs. You can see my stuff by typing "Dan Bull" into YouTube. I've decided to find out what my music is really worth so I'm sticking myself on eBay. The winning bidder will receive:

One song on any topic of your choice, written, performed and produced by Dan Bull. Duration: 2.30 - 3.30 approx. I will liaise with you via e-mail if there any specific details you wish to include in the song. You will be free to use and redistribute this song in any way you wish, however I reserve the right to do the same. The song will be delivered to you in MP3 format within 14 days of the winning bid.

Get bidding now, because this may never happen again. Love from Dan :) x

Well, I actually think it might well happen again - especially if people bid enough money for Mr Bull's song. This patronage/auction model clearly generalises to other forms of creativity, and is flexible enough to encompass all levels of production, from rank amateurs to the biggest names. Interesting stuff. (Via @tdobson.)

Righting Wrongs by Re-writing Ebooks

One key property of printed books is that it is very hard to modify them. Digital books, by contrast, are trivially easy to re-write - provided they are released under a licence that permits that.

One early enlightened example of a book that does allow such modification is Free as in Freedom, a biography of Richard Stallman that came out around the same time as Rebel Code.

Although Free as in Freedom was based on extensive interviews with him, Stallman was not entirely happy with certain aspects of it; he has therefore taken advantage of the GNU Free Documentation Licence it was published under in order to offer his own gloss on the text and facts [.pdf]:

I have aimed to make this edition combine the advantages of my knowledge and Williams’ interviews and outside viewpoint. The reader can judge to what extent I have achieved this.

I read the published text of the English edition for the first time in 2009 when I was asked to assist in making a French translation of Free as in Freedom. It called for more than small changes. Many facts needed correction, but deeper changes were also needed.

...


The first edition overdramatized many events by projecting spurious emotions into them.

However, as Stallman explains, making changes was a non-trivial task:

For all these reasons, many statements in the original edition were mistaken or incoherent. It was necessary to correct them, but not straightforward to do so with integrity short of a total rewrite, which was undesirable for other reasons. Using explicit notes for the corrections was suggested, but in most chapters the amount of change made explicit notes prohibitive. Some errors were too pervasive or too ingrained to be corrected by notes. Inline or footnotes for the rest would have overwhelmed the text in some places and made the text hard to read; footnotes would have been skipped by readers tired of looking down for them. I have therefore made corrections directly in the text.

This ability for subjects of books to offer comments on and corrections to the text is a fascinating new development made possible by digital books and liberal licences. It raises all sorts of questions of how best to offer this extra layer of information and comment, and what the ethical - and legal - issues are in terms of making sure that the reader knows who is claiming what.

With Free as in Freedom 2.0, Stallman is once again a blazing a new trail; it will be interesting to see who follows him, and how.

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