Mindre ophavsret = mere kulturliv
Cory Doctorow forklarer, hvorfor en mildere fortolkning af ophavsretten vil føre til et rigere kulturliv.
Link: Cory Doctorow on copyright and piracy: ‘Every pirate wants to be an admiral’ (via Boing Boing).
‘IT-politik’ Archives
Fri software – inspirerende scenarier
Den sydafrikanske regering udgav i 2002 en rapport om Free/Libre and Open Source Software in South Africa (opdateret flere gange, bl.. i 2004), og den indeholder en række scenarier for den umiddelbare gavn af fri og gratis tilgængelig software, som i sig selv er grund nok til at læse den:
SIPHO’S CHOICE
Sipho has good reason to be pleased with himself; he has just submitted a groundbreaking PhD thesis at a leading South African university. Using advanced concepts in mathematics and physics, his thesis, “QVM: the Quantum Virtual Machine”, proposes an ingenious algorithm to speed up the conventional PC beyond the wildest dreams of classical wisdom.
QVM will make light of computer resource hungry fields like environmental and climate modelling, determination of protein structure and function, discovery of new drugs, complex industrial simulation and design etc. It will also lead to a host of completely newapplications that inevitably accompany such a major computational advance.
Sipho cannot wait to publish a paper in a high impact international journal giving full details of QVM principles and design. He also intends to place a full software implementation on the Internet, allowing anyone to download and use it on a standard PC. No license fee, no royalties. They can use the software as they please –learn from it, modify it – as long as they do not repackage and sell it for private commercial gain and attempt to stop others from using the free distribution.
His friends are horrified – he could license QVM to a global computer company and make a fortune. The university is horrified – it could license QVM to a global computer company and make a fortune. His supervisor is horrified…
But Sipho stands his ground. He firmly believes in the freedom (or should that be obligation?) to publish academic work supported by public funds – software included. His own research benefited immensely from the use of software distributed under similar conditions.
He is also mindful of a moral obligation to seek the greatest economic gain for the country from publicly funded research. But this only strengthens his resolve. He is convinced that greater benefit can accrue to South Africa’s scientific and economic fortunes through his suggested route than by surrendering such a major scientific breakthrough wholesale to any single company, whether it is foreign (almost certainly) or local.
“Is he very foolish or simply ahead of the game, like he is in his research?” his friends puzzle. “Is he really acting in the country’s best interest or is he a well-meaning but naïve academic?” wonders the inquiring public. “Should a man like this even be allowed a choice on the matter?” fumes the university’s deputy vice chancellor for research.
FUNEKA’S AWAKENING
Funeka is a schoolteacher with a mission: to give her dusty, rural school the very best. She launches a campaign to build a computer lab and approaches various businesses for help. To her delight, one company donates 20 computers that are being replaced, but the company will keep all their software licenses for their new machines. She also has to find her own educational
software.Delight turns to horror when she discovers that it will cost many thousands of Rand for software licenses, including licensing the educational software the dealer tells her she needs. To make matters worse, casual inspection reveals that the content is geared to American schools, using unfamiliar baseball metaphors and the like.
Meantime, Funeka’s students have been doing some legwork of their own. They have contacted a young IT company that has offered to network the computers and connect them to the Internet. When the company’s network guru calls by and finds computers with no software, she installs Linux and associated free software on all of them, sets up the network and Internet connection and even gives the students a preliminary driving lesson on using the software and surfing the Internet.
While Funeka agonises over raising a software budget, the students spend many days probing, exploring and discovering new things. Within a short time they have learned to do creative projects by searching the Internet and sending email around the world for facts they can’ find in the tiny school library. Using tools and examples from other Web sites, they soon start designing their own school Web site and developing content like a Web-based newspaper covering school and local community issues.
When she learns of all this, Funeka is amazed at the creativity of her students, and decides that her original idea of what computers should do is completely wrong. She had thought of the computer as just another passive medium of instruction. Funeka quickly adapts to this awakening, and promptly arranges a session on the Internet – given by her students to members of staff. They are all amazed that all this has happened without the school having to pay a cent in software licenses.
They also heartily approve when the students explain their plans to design a community resource for guided access to government Web sites. The one concern the students have is that they are often unable to read files downloaded from government sites. The problematic files are in a format that requires proprietary software to read.
I begge tilfælde er scenarierne særdeles realistiske. Det er egentlig ret meget ude af trit med almindelig akademisk skik, at universiteterne kan finde på at sælge vigtige ideer til det private erhversliv, for slet ikke at tale om at patentere dem. Hvad Sipho gør, er det eneste oplagte og det bedste for såvel Sydafrika som hele verden, men desværre er det ikke sådan, det altid går.
Og hvis skolerne baserer sig på fri software, kan de både undgå store udgifter til licenser og få langt bedre muligheder for at tilpasse systemerne til deres egne lokale behov. I Sydafrika betyder det ikke mindst, at man kan få lokale virksomheder eller sågar frivillige til at hjælpe til med at oversætte programmerne til et af de elleve officielle sprog. Så behøver man heller ikke vente på, at Microsoft eller de andre store leverandører tager sig sammen til at levere en oversat version – med fri software kan man altid oversætte programmet selv, hvis man har lyst.
Eksemplerne er mange og lærerige, og det var slet heller ingen skade til, om en dansk politiker eller to også kastede et blik på denne rapport.
http://www.nacinnovation.biz/wp-content/uploads/pdf/NACI%20Resources%20studies,%20reports%20and%20publications/2002/Libre%20&%20Open%20Source%202002.pdf
PC på størrelse med USB-drev, 25$ inkl. software
Raspberry Pi Foundation vil bygge en Ubuntu-PC til næsten ingen penge og på størrelse med en USB-stick:
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a UK registered charity (Registration Number 1129409) which exists to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.
We plan to develop, manufacture and distribute an ultra-low-cost computer, for use in teaching computer programming to children. We expect this computer to have many other applications both in the developed and the developing world.
Our first product is about the size of a USB key, and is designed to plug into a TV or be combined with a touch screen for a low cost tablet. The expected price is $25 for a fully-configured system.
How would you use an ultra-low-cost computer? Do you have open-source educational software we can use? Contact us at info@raspberrypi.org.
Provisional specification:
- 700MHz ARM11
- 128MB of SDRAM
- OpenGL ES 2.0
- 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
- Composite and HDMI video output
- USB 2.0
- SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
- General-purpose I/O
- Open software (Ubuntu, Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)
Raspberry Pi device running Ubuntu 9.04
Raspberry Pi device with attached 12MPixel camera module
Via Boing Boing.
Facebook bortcensurerer britiske protestsider
Facebook har besluttet at fejre det kongelige bryllup i Storbritannien ved at slå ned på ytringsfriheden. Helt specifikt har Facebook netop 29. april besluttet at lukke mindst 50 politiske oppositionssider, skriver anticutsspace:
The Anti-Cuts Space London facebook group has been taken down without warning or permission. In the last 12 hours, facebook has deleted around 50 sites. Message people in extant groups to warn them, and tell them to get on your email list or twitter account instead. Screw you Zuckerberg.FACEBOOK PAGES THAT HAVE BEEN DELETED IN THE LAST 12 HOURS:
Open Birkbeck, UWE Occupation, Chesterfield Stopthecuts, Camberwell AntiCuts, IVA Womensrevolution, Tower Hamlets Greens, No Cuts, ArtsAgainst Cuts, London Student Assembly, Beat’n Streets, Roscoe ‘Manchester’ Occupation, Bristol Bookfair, Newcastle Occupation, Socialist Unity, Whospeaks Forus, Ourland FreeLand, Bristol Ukuncut, Teampalestina Shaf, Notts-Uncut Part-of UKUncut, No Quarter Cutthewar, Bootle Labour, Claimants Fightback, Ecosocialists Unite, Comrade George Orwell, Jason Derrick, Anarchista Rebellionist, BigSociety Leeds, Slade Occupation, Anti-Cuts Across Wigan, Firstof Mayband, Don’t Break Britain United, Cockneyreject, SWP Cork, Westiminster Trades Council, York Anarchists, Rock War, Sheffield Occupation, Central London SWP, North London Solidarity, Southwark Sos, Save NHS, Rochdale Law Centre, Goldsmiths Fights Back
Hvorfor? Facebook vil åbenbart ikke længere tolerere ubekvem modstand mod regimet i Storbritannien; måske de har fået klager, eller også har de selv besluttet, at den slags politiske sider er “upassende” på en social hyggeside.
Set på Boing Boing, hvor Cory Doctorow advarer mod faren ved at satse for meget på Facebook – især for politiske græsrodsbevægelser:
Facebook is not suited to the purpose of organizing political causes. It may be an easy place to mobilize people, but between its capricious management and the ease of mining it for social graphs, it is an authoritarian secret policeman’s best friend and a censor’s bosom buddy.
“Capricious” er nøgleordet her. Noget af det mest problemtiske ved Facebooks politiske censur er – ud over det simple faktum, at den er der – at den er så vilkårlig, for ikke at sige komplet uberegnelig. Alle græsrodssider kan potentielt være lukket i morgen, og det gør det svært at stole på den (indrømmet) potentielt set store gennemslagskraft, de faktisk kan have.
Internet in Society: Empowering or Censoring Citizens?
Internettet som aktivistisk gennembud – eller tidsfordriv og narresut? Tankevækkende foredrag af Evgeny Morozov.
Med tak til Mahmood fra Bahrain.
Web 2.0-fail: Flickr bortcensurerer dokumentation af egyptiske Stasifolk
Den egyptiske blogger og aktivist Hossam El-Hamalawy har i efterhånden årevis samlet billeder af egyptiske Stasifolk – medlemmer af det berygtede sikkerhedspoliti, der som deres vigtigste opgave har haft at udpege og nedkæmpe regimets modstandere, og det med ganske ubehagelige metoder – på sin Flickr-konto.
Den slags synes Flickr imidlertid ikke, at deres “pro”-konti skal bruges til, for nu har El-Hamalawy fået dette brev fra dem:
Det lyder jo meget tilforladeligt med begrundelsen om, at man kun må have billeder, man selv har taget – eller gør det? Masser af mennesker lægger billeder, de ikke selv har taget, på Flickr, og det sker der næsten aldrig noget ved. Man aner, at det må være politisk motiveret – at Flickr nok synes, det er hyggeligt, at folk bruger siden til at lægge feriebilleder og den slags op.
Som El-Hamalawy selv gør opmærksom på: Billederne blev taget ned “because of ‘copyright infringement’”. Men der har næppe været fremsat noget krav om en sådan krænkelse af ophavsretten, eftersom billederne var bidraget af folk, der gerne ville have dem frem. Der er snarere tale om en politisk motiveret “proaktiv” censur fra Flickrs side.
Moderselskabet Yahoo! synes også, det er fint nok at angive folk, der engagerer sig i kampen mod et diktatur som det i Egypten eller Kina – men hvis nogen bruger deres tjeneste til at dokumentere et dikatorisk regimes overgreb , kommer de pludselig i tanker om reglerne. Det er ærligt talt skammeligt og udstiller svagheden i det “nye” Internet – de meget store og centrale sider som Amazon, Google, Facebook og Flickr bliver også til et “single point of censorship”, hvor Censur 2.0 let kan få alt til at forsvinde fra de få steder, folk læser.
Men var den egyptiske sikkerhedstjeneste overhovedet så slem, at den fortjener at blive udstillet, dokumenteret og sammenlignet med Gestapo, SS og Stasi?
Ja, skriver Issandr El Amrani i den egyptiske avis Al-Masry Al-Youm, under overskriften “This is more of a revolution than you think“:
There were worse dictatorships, yes, but the problem was not simply an aging, authoritarian president, his ambitious son and his corrupt entourage. It was that, for the sake of regime preservation, a sprawling security apparatus collected information on citizens, manipulated them, cajoled and threatened them, humiliated them. State Security did not just, as its role should have been, keep tabs on possible terrorists and criminal networks. It ran Egypt on a day-to-day level, super-imposing itself onto the regular bureaucracy, acting as an intermediary.While ministries shuffled paper and red tape, state security kept tabs on people. This goes beyond the issue of torture, which it certainly practiced abundantly, or the racketeering, blackmailing and other schemes its officers carried out with impunity. What those who gained access to its offices discovered is that, much like the Ministry of Transport might keep an inventory of its buses and trains, State Security maintained an elaborate database on citizens, the threats they represented, their weaknesses, relationships and other every little detail of their lives.
This process that had its own chilling logic, reminiscent of the “banality of evil” Hannah Arendt chronicled in Nazi Germany, Andrei Almarik in the Soviet Union, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in East Germany, or Ariel Dorfman in Pinochet’s Chile. What it boils down to is that a vast bureaucracy existed simply to perpetuate itself and those in charge. Consider the neat categorizations of the population–“Muslim Brothers”, “Communists and human rights activists,” etc.–or the recent allegation that the Ministry of Trade paid a monthly retainer of LE174,000 to its own state security watchers to get them to write positive reports.
Whatever counter-terrorism and other legitimate roles State Security played, this must have been a relatively minor part of what it did: most of its resources were dedicated to the humdrum task of keeping tabs on those Egyptians who, for whatever reason–wealth, political opinion, media influence, foreign connections–posed a potential threat to the regime.
Flickr-gruppen Piggipedia er endnu ikke fjernet, men det er givetvis kun et spørgsmål om tid. El-Hamalawy opsummerer selv situationen således:
And once again, @flickr you should b ashamed. The only people u made happy tonight r police torturers. Way to go.
Neil Gaiman forklarer, hvorfor piratkopiering er godt
Gaimans oplevelse er, at jo mere hans bøger er til rådighed som gratis downloads på nettet, jo flere sælger han. Mange mennesker opdager deres yndlingsforfattere på biblioteket – eller på nettet, og derfor mister en forfatter ikke noget ved at få sine bøger lagt på nettet – snarere tværtimod, om man skal tro Gaiman.
Wikileaks: Boykot Apple
Det opfordrer Mark LeVine til – han skriver på Aljazeera.net:
On December 21, Apple pulled a WikiLeaks application from its iTunes store, banning it forever. When reporters queried the company about why it did so, the response was: “We removed WikiLeaks because it violated developer guidelines. An app must comply with all local laws. It may not put an individual or target group in harm’s way.”
And so Apple has joined capital’s war on WikiLeaks; adding its power to that of the credit card company’s online retailers and even Swiss banks who refuse to do any business with the grassroots whistleblowing organisation that has done more to bring the malfeasance of governments and corporations to the light of public scrutiny than any other organisation in at least two generations.
And because of that, I will never buy another Apple product again. You’ve made your choice, Mr. Jobs, and now so have I.
LeVine skriver mere, og det er alt sammen værd at læse. Men egentlig er der ikke mere at sige. At mene, at Apple-produkter er cool er det samme som at mene, at politisk censur er cool – for Apple praktiserer politisk censur og er stolt af det.
Casper Christensen og Frank Hvam: Bare download vores film
- I skal sgu ikke være bange for at piratkopiere filmen. Download den – fyr den af – og lav den i mange kopier. Casper og jeg har det sådan – og det er med hånden på hjertet – at når vi tæller sammen hvad vi er blevet snydt for af penge, så er det ikke piraterne der har snydt os. Det er distributørerne og producenterne der har snydt os, det er ikke jer søde piratbrugere … Fyr den løs!
Distribution via download er jo også blevet en del af den virkelighed, som filmmagere og musikere må forholde sig til i disse år. Det er uden tvivl langt klogere at ride med den bølge fremfor at forsøge at svømme imod den.
Johan Schlüter fra IFPI og Antipiratgruppen: Børneporno er alle tiders
Til et møde i Stockholm for nylig slog advokat Johan Schlüter fra Antipiratgruppen (en gruppe, der bl.a. er kendt for at sende erstatningskrav i hundredetusindersklassen til teenagere, der linker til sider, der måske indeholder ulovlige MP3-filer) sig løs med betragtninger om, hvor meget han holder af børneporno. Ikke som “forbruger”, men fordi det kan udnyttes til at overtale politikerne til at indføre overvågning og censur:
“Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. “It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.
The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title “Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?”. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others…
“One day we will have a giant filter that we develop in close cooperation with IFPI and MPA. We continuously monitor the child porn on the net, to show the politicians that filtering works. Child porn is an issue they understand,” Johan Schlüter said with a grin, his whole being radiating pride and enthusiasm from the podium.
Tro det eller lad være, men den helt store overraskelse er det nok ikke.
Link: IFPI’s child porn strategy (via Boing Boing).
Update: Nu også på ComputerWorld.
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Associate Member]](http://www.modspil.dk/images/fsfMembergetButton.png){kind=small}
