SIGGRAPH 2011 : Cory Doctorow's Keynote Address

Cory Doctorow is an author, activist, journalist, and blogger. As a vocal advocate of copyright reform, he’s got clear ideas about how copyright could work to the benefit of creators and publishers.

Doctorow, a Canadian living in London, will deliver the keynote address at the SIGGRAPH 2011 conference on Monday August 8 2011 at 11 a.m. at the Vancouver Convention Centre.

Upload of 18 592 Scientific Documents to the Pirate Bay

A user called Greg Maxwell just uploaded a torrent with 18,592 scientific publications to the Pirate Bay, in what appears to be a protest directed both at the recent indictment of programmer Aaron Swartz for data theft as well as the scientific publishing model in general. All the documents of the 32-gigabyte torrent were taken from JSTOR, the academic database that’s at the center of the case against Swartz.

The torrent consists of documents from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the copyright to which has long since expired. However, the only way to access these documents until now has been via JSTOR, as Maxwell explains in a long and eloquent text on the Pirate Bay, with individual articles costing as much as $19. “Purchasing access to this collection one article at a time would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he writes.

Maxwell goes on to explain that he gained access to the documents years ago in what he says was a legal manner, but he was afraid to publish them because of potential legal repercussions from the publishers of scientific journals. He says the indictment of Swartz, who allegedly tried to download thousands of files from JSTOR through the library at MIT, made him change his mind:


"This archive contains 18,592 scientific publications totaling 33GiB, all from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and which should be available to everyone at no cost, but most have previously only been made available at high prices through paywall gatekeepers like JSTOR.

Limited access to the documents here is typically sold for $19USD per article, though some of the older ones are available as cheaply as $8. Purchasing access to this collection one article at a time would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Also included is the basic factual metadata allowing you to locate works by title, author, or publication date, and a checksum file to allow you to check for corruption.

ef8c02959e947d7f4e4699f399ade838431692d972661f145b782c2fa3ebcc6a sha256sum.txt

I've had these files for a long time, but I've been afraid that if I published them I would be subject to unjust legal harassment by those who profit from controlling access to these works.

I now feel that I've been making the wrong decision.

On July 19th 2011, Aaron Swartz was criminally charged by the US Attorney General's office for, effectively, downloading too many academic papers from JSTOR.

Academic publishing is an odd systemΓΓé¼ΓÇ¥the authors are not paid for their writing, nor are the peer reviewers (they're just more unpaid academics), and in some fields even the journal editors are unpaid. Sometimes the authors must even pay the publishers.

And yet scientific publications are some of the most outrageously expensive pieces of literature you can buy. In the past, the high access fees supported the costly mechanical reproduction of niche paper journals, but online distribution has mostly made this function obsolete.

As far as I can tell, the money paid for access today serves little significant purpose except to perpetuate dead business models. The "publish or perish" pressure in academia gives the authors an impossibly weak negotiating position, and the existing system has enormous inertia.

Those with the most power to change the system--the long-tenured luminary scholars whose works give legitimacy and prestige to the journals, rather than the other way around--are the least impacted by its failures. They are supported by institutions who invisibly provide access to all of the resources they need. And as the journals depend on them, they may ask for alterations to the standard contract without risking their career on the loss of a publication offer. Many don't even realize the extent to which academic work is inaccessible to the general public, nor do they realize what sort of work is being done outside universities that would benefit by it.

Large publishers are now able to purchase the political clout needed to abuse the narrow commercial scope of copyright protection, extending it to completely inapplicable areas: slavish reproductions of historic documents and art, for example, and exploiting the labors of unpaid scientists. They're even able to make the taxpayers pay for their attacks on free society by pursuing criminal prosecution (copyright has classically been a civil matter) and by burdening public institutions
with outrageous subscription fees.

Copyright is a legal fiction representing a narrow compromise: we give up some of our natural right to exchange information in exchange for creating an economic incentive to author, so that we may all enjoy more works. When publishers abuse the system to prop up their existence, when they misrepresent the extent of copyright coverage, when they use threats of frivolous litigation to suppress the dissemination of publicly owned works, they are stealing from everyone else.

Several years ago I came into possession, through rather boring and lawful means, of a large collection of JSTOR documents. These particular documents are the historic back archives of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society's prestigious scientific journal with a history extending back to the 1600s.

The portion of the collection included in this archive, ones published prior to 1923 and therefore obviously in the public domain, total some 18,592 papers and 33 gigabytes of data.

The documents are part of the shared heritage of all mankind, and are rightfully in the public domain, but they are not available freely. Instead the articles are available at $19 each--for one month's viewing, by one person, on one computer. It's a steal. From you.

When I received these documents I had grand plans of uploading them to Wikipedia's sister site for reference works, Wikisource where they could be tightly interlinked with Wikipedia, providing interesting historical context to the encyclopedia articles. For example, Uranus was discovered in 1781 by William Herschel; why not take a look at the paper where he originally disclosed his discovery? (Or one of the several follow on publications about its satellites, or the dozens of other papers he authored?)

But I soon found the reality of the situation to be less than appealing: publishing the documents freely was likely to bring frivolous litigation from the publishers.

As in many other cases, I could expect them to claim that their slavish reproduction, scanning the documents created a new copyright interest. Or that distributing the documents complete with the trivial watermarks they added constituted unlawful copying of that mark. They might even pursue strawman criminal charges claiming that whoever obtained the files must have violated some kind of anti-hacking laws.

In my discreet inquiry, I was unable to find anyone willing to cover the potentially unbounded legal costs I risked, even though the only unlawful action here is the fraudulent misuse of copyright by JSTOR and the Royal Society to withhold access from the public to that which is legally and morally everyone's property.

In the meantime, and to great fanfare as part of their 350th anniversary, the RSOL opened up "free" access to their historic archives but "free" only meant "with many odious terms", and access was limited to about 100 articles.

All too often journals, galleries, and museums are becoming not disseminators of knowledge as their lofty mission statements suggest but censors of knowledge, because censoring is the one thing they do better than the Internet does. Stewardship and curation are valuable functions, but their value is negative when there is only one steward and one curator, whose judgment reigns supreme as the final word on what everyone else sees and knows. If their recommendations have value they can be heeded without the coercive abuse of copyright to silence competition.

The liberal dissemination of knowledge is essential to scientific inquiry. More than in any other area, the application of restrictive copyright is inappropriate for academic works: there is no sticky question of how to pay authors or reviewers, as the publishers are already not paying them. And unlike 'mere' works of entertainment, liberal access to scientific work impacts the well-being of all mankind. Our continued
survival may even depend on it.

If I can remove even one dollar of ill-gained income from a poisonous industry which acts to suppress scientific and historic understanding, then whatever personal cost I suffer will be justified it will be one less dollar spent in the war against knowledge. One less dollar spent lobbying for laws that make downloading too many scientific papers a crime.

I had considered releasing this collection anonymously, but others pointed out that the obviously overzealous prosecutors of Aaron Swartz would probably accuse him of it and add it to their growing list of ridiculous charges. This didn't sit well with my conscience, and I generally believe that anything worth doing is worth attaching your name to.

I'm interested in hearing about any enjoyable discoveries or even useful applications which come of this archive.

- ----
Greg Maxwell - July 20th 2011
gmaxwell@gmail.com Bitcoin: 14csFEJHk3SYbkBmajyJ3ktpsd2TmwDEBb

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Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAk4nlfwACgkQrIWTYrBBO/pK4QCfV/voN6IdZRU36Vy3xAedUMfz
rJcAoNF4/QTdxYscvF2nklJdMzXFDwtF
=YlVR
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The Architecture of Access to Scientific Knowledge

Just in case you thought things were getting better in terms of access to knowledge for all, it's not really.

Professor Lawrence Lessig, Lecture at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 18 April 2011: A new talk about open access to academic or scientific information, with a bit of commentary about YouTube Copyright School.

A Letter to Mandy

An open letter to Peter Mandelson regarding the newly announced Digital Economy Bill.

Dear Peter Mandelson,

I've been following your recent policy proposals, so now they've gone through, I thought I'd contribute some vocals. The focal point of my criticism's the ridiculous decision to bring in a system where you flick a switch and disconnect the internet when it's suspected that intellectual infringement has been detected, even if the relatives they live with definitely didn't. I think it's in your best interest to bin this, yes? 'Cause isn't it a respected institution that we're considered innocent unless different is proven? Er, excuse me - how can you excuse exclusion when you've not pursued a definite conclusion?

You're picking on the little man, the Lilliputian; now there's a pain in my gulliver and it's confusing. You're swift to treat your citizens with such little human humour it's no wonder that we're disilliusioned. This resolution's gonna end in revolution just like any other governance that doesn't accept evolution. To be perfectly honest, m'lord, there'd be less intrusion if you curtly abolished the law and left us to it.

And why do games require safety ratings, but any age can see adult-aimed plays and paintings? It's state censorship, the same as Beijing; but even China thinks a pirate isn't worth the time of day for chasing. I think Chairman Mao would say the same thing - since you became secretary, it's like the state's your plaything. You made a massive sacrifice, invaded loads of privacy, but if I wanted to download, there'd be no hope of finding me. I could take my mobile phone to the local library, and utilise the free wireless to find the file I need. Then what are you going to try - to disconnect their ISP? You might as well just burn the books on rights to speech.

Dear Mandy, stay away from my family. Yours considerably angrily, Dan Bull. Dear Mandy, stay away from my family. Yours considerably angrily, Dan Bull.

Who'll profit from the Digital Economy Bill? Not the public, but the profiteers probably will. Who'll profit from the Digital Economy Bill? Not the public, but the puppeteers probably will. I've talked about how intellectual property kills and you're still just concerned with who's copping the bill. It's quite obvious you've been lobbied until the copy holders got control, and you're probably their shill. It's not your problem when you're positioned on top of the hill, in your property that probably cost a couple of mil. But wake up and smell the coffee, the milk is going off and you're not bothered 'cause your coffers are filled.

Lord, it's time you took an honesty pill, and acknowledged the majority aren't horribly thrilled. So what if I watched a torrented comedy film? I don't need to now my country's just become a Brazil. You know the truth, Orwell spoke his views, your House broke the news and all Hell's broken loose. The utopia we hoped for is overdue, so could you help out a little bit and don't be stupid?

The onus is on you to show us you aren't using your throne in a way the voters don't approve. I know you're very close to David Geffen, so maybe his interests have given you a hazed perception. Hey, do you reckon you'd win today's election, considering you're chasing this amidst a great recession? Deception's the politician's favourite weapon but we're already jaded from one too many painful lessons.

Dear Mandy, stay away from my family. Yours considerably angrily, Dan Bull. Dear Mandy, stay away from my family.

Yours considerably angrily,
Dan Bull.

P.S. I love you, Mandy x

---------------------------------------- -------------------------------------
Samples used:
Lily Allen - Never Gonna Happen
Lily Allen - Who'd Have Known

If you disapprove of the Bill, sign the petition at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/dont...

Write your own message to Lord Mandelson at http://threestrikes.openrightsgroup.org/

Download the mp3: http://www.zshare.net/audio/69029460c...

Buy or download Dan Bull's debut album Safe from
http://www.freshnut.co.uk/shop

Follow Dan on Twitter @itsDanBull - share the message with the #dearmandy tag.

Connect on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Dan-B...

MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/danbull

New Contract Presented by Blogger, Google and Picasa

I am almost certain I own the copyright to the above image of my avatar in Second Life, while the avatar itself is the property of Linden Lab. Its a good thing because Google is now demanding a contract of the End User License Agreement (EULA) variety to be agreed to for every image that is uploaded to the Picasa Web Albums server they run through Blogger. Things are gradually tightening up on the electronic frontier. Shall we review the EULA? I personally have a deep interest in these forms of contract which attempt to control responses to digital media.

Firstly in order to use the Picasa Web Albums service you must be "of legal age to form a binding contract and are not a person barred from receiving services under the laws of the United States or other applicable jurisdiction" (Picassa). Those under the age of 18 are now banned from using the service. This is keeping in line with Google contracts of use of search, YouTube, Gmail, news, or images. As Chris Soghoian points out:

Google's terms of service, thick with legalese, state that:

"You may not use ... Google's products, software, services and web sites ... and may not accept the Terms if ... you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google.

Incredible when one thinks about it, those under 18 are not legally allowed to use YouTube! But back to Picassa, under the heading Appropriate Conduct we (you) are reminded;

You understand that all information, data, text, software, music, sound, photographs, graphics, video, advertisements, messages or other materials ("Content") are the sole responsibility of the person from which such Content originated.

The contract on Picasa coincides with what could be the greatest challenge yet to the Google empire. the United States Federal Justice Department stated yesterday that they wish the agreement between between Google and the Authors Guild be revised. In a statement it read.

"Because a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits, the United States does not want the opportunity or momentum to be lost,"

This is serious. Google vs the United States.....mmmm.

Could the wording in the Picasa EULA anticipates coming problems on such a scale that Google is going to have to deal with them in a very careful and conscientious manner. Consider what Google is also asking for in the EULA:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.

So while I am responsible for the visual content on this blog I don't actually own it. I could theoretically go to jail because of it, if I was stupid enough to contradict the EULA, but I cannot control the images for my own purposes and have sole income rights to.

This is strange, with potentially huge implications..and kind of sad.

Copyright and Fortress Europe

Earlier today I watched most of a two and half hour discussion on copyright, digital culture, file sharing and the internet hosted by the Fores Seminar (it is in Swedish but the video is available from the link). The panel was divided along the pro-copyright/anti-pirate and anti-copyright/pro-pirate divide (although several of the participants distanced themselves from such a simplistic divide). It started with a series of 'what is good about copyright?', which led into 'what is bad about it'? Those on the panel, many of them well known in Sweden for their professional activities in the areas discussed (lawyers, academics, politicians and business people including Monique Wadsted, Göran Lambertz, Olle Abrahamsson, Rasmus Fleischer, Nicklas Lundblad and Hans Pandeya) expressed standard opinions; why we need copyright, how artists must be paid for their work if culture is to survive, how file sharing is stealing, that it is not stealing, that we are in the midst of a revolution brought about by digital media, that we are not in the midst of a revolution and it has all happened before and so on. The main theme of the discussion (it never really got to the level of debate) was consumption and how it is to be preserved in any future digital culture that may eventuate. This got me thinking.

Even during the broadcast of the Fores panel I was amazed that nobody brought up the idea that copyright not only protects the interests of the artists (and producers, publishers, legitimate distributors etc.) it also protects the wealth of the nations from which they come. Why are we in the developed post-industrial world not seeking ways of helping the developing world through providing access to cultural resources? Why cannot the Global North produce a system of copyright which allows for those that can pay to pay and those that cannot, not? Countries could be given 'copyright credits' with a country like Sierra Leone having free access to everything for a period of five or ten years, while countries like Germany or the USA pay a bit extra. The benefits of these copyright credits cannot be channeled into commercial media until education in the nation has been granted the full benefits of them. Textbooks, films, computer software and audio materials are all free for the education system of the benefiting nation during the period allocated for the copyright credits. Implementation of the materials could be arranged via UNESCO.

Following my initial thoughts of the Fores Seminar, tonight I watched Zapatista, a film from 1999 about the struggle in Chaipas, a struggle that is a direct result of global policy making having catastrophic effects at local levels. As well the Tällberg Forum is on again, this year looking at the possible future that awaits us if we do not start making decisions based on the state of the collective, rather than the wealthy few who can afford to ride out the worst of the havoc wrecked by unbridled consumption and industrial production. I believe copyright is part of this scenario. Copyright is as effective as a wall or navy flotilla in holding out the poor of the world from the riches of the culture and knowledge economy. If there is to be a readdress of copyright in Europe (and this seems unlikely), the possibilities to help those nations to the South should be considered. It could even be offset by a reduction in development aid to the nations that receive copyright credits, saving money for the generous nations who are willing to support such a scheme (so kind they are).

Of course there is no mention of any such crazy ideas in the Fores Seminar.

The Pirate Bay to be Sold

It has just been announced that world in/famous torrent tracker site, The Pirate Bay (TPB) is to be sold to Global Gaming Factory X AB, the owner of Entropia. The community using the site does not seem to be too happy about it if we are to judge by the comments on TPB blog:

"Way to sell out for the money :D
Where is your ideals gone now friends?
Ha, I cannot believe I supported you guys.
Same old same old. Where will it end?" driver779

"I'd say this is the death of PirateBay, they wanna make PirateBay a legit place if I understand the news being spread around.
Thats is done by removing all the illegal files (90%+ of the torrents?)
And this will make most people go away too." Mith0s

I have heard the sum of 60 million Swedish Crowns (30 in cash and 30 in stocks) being accepted for the sale of the site. TPB 'heads' are speaking abut a transfer and new impetus in the operation. I am not sure about this and I tend to agree with many of the comments on the blog site. However, TPB was always a limited thing and the end was in some way inevitable. I am disappointed that it was the private sector which stepped up and took over the machinery of TPB. It should have been made a research object for the people of Sweden to be used to develop new web applications and architetcures.

The collected resources of TPB (those that survived the legal onslaught of the past three years) is now passing into the hands of entrepreneurs. The business community perhaps has a better idea of the worth of such network ventures that TPB represents. The law however restricts what can be done with such a developed network structure. I have seen this recently in my experimentation with Spotify, another Swedish innovation that attempts to deliver unlimited streamed music over the net. While Spotify does deliver music, its network possibilities are extreamly limited. One cannot share play lists within the program (email of links is the only option), link to other users, watch other users for tips and so on. In effect one is alone on Spotify. TPB is/was a community and that was its strength and greatest weakness in the eyes of the law. By allowing for a horizontal spread of network connections users were/are able to share things. How this can be adopted to a legitimate business model by something like Global Gaming Factory X AB will be interesting to see.

Pirate Party Elected to EU Parliament

Christian Engström (left) and leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, Rickard Falkvinge as activists. Christian is now on his way to a seat in the European Parliament

The winning of a seat in the European Parliament by Christian Engström from the Swedish Pirate Party (PP) should be considered an important turn in the ongoing (and far from over) developments around the law and the conceptualization of intellectual property.

Only a dismal 44% of Swedes actually bothered to vote in the 2009 EU elections (compared to around 89% that voted in the last national election in 2007) and the PP received 7.1% of the vote. The primary base for the PP vote is apparently younger people (under 30) and males. The commentators attributed this demographic to the PP preventing an extreme right wing party gaining a Swedish seat in the EU parliament.

While the figure are flying in the Swedish media tonight about how many and who brought this new political party into a representative institution, the broader ramifications are yet to be discussed on television or in the press. On the state broadcast news tonight Rickard Falkvinge was questioned about policies on tax, abortion, employment and health care. The PP does not have policies on these issues in a sense that they are dealt with separably from policies on the development of an information based society. I find this extreamly important as a development in the media ecology of the region.

If I were to go into describing the revolution we are living in when it comes to media I would be stuck at this keyboard for a longer time that I can afford, but consider this example that I gleaned from my Twitter feed just now:

"There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University — the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn." Edge

At the moment many universities are struggling to keep up with changes in media and information creation, storage and distribution. One of the major epistemological tenets of the struggle to come to terms with what is happening is the concept of 'real life' and the virtual, online, cyberspace or 'whatever it is that people are doing with digital media' (even finding names for some of these practices and realisations is difficult and confusing).

My impression is that the virtual/real discrepancy is prevalent in university leadership throughout much of Europe. The major parties in the Swedish EU elections expressed a 'real life' and 'virtual life' dichotomy when describing such issues as Peer to Peer file sharing prior to the EU election day last weekend. In the recent Pirate Bay trial here in Sweden the now mythic phrase "We don't use IRL. Everything is real life. We use AFK." (IRL- In Real Life, AFK- Away From Keyboard) was uttered in the courtroom by one of the defendants. The concept of AFK summarises many of the problems that have brought a representative of the PP to a seat in the EU parliament. These problems should be considered in light of Sweden being a land that has a very advanced level of digital media connectivity. Fast broadband is standard in Sweden. I believe that the situation in Sweden represents a future scenario for many presently less connected societies.

The narrowness of confining multimedia representation and embodiment to a 'virtual' sphere is fast running out of currency. The list of examples I could summon on the reality of what is happening just in online, so-called 'virtual worlds' is long. The Swedish tax authorities are struggling to find a solution for taxing the income of those who work with such communities as Second Life. How does one organise a working day according to union regulations when one works in a 24 hour world mediated by super-fast high resolution three dimensional internet worlds. Last term I tried to convince students (yes, young people who are supposed to be 'digital natives') that they can work according to the time it is in Second Life. Weekends could be used for socialising inworld rather than in the local pub. They did not like the idea. But this is something many of us are dealing with already. I read that our local hospital here has sent two doctors to live and work in Australia. Their jobs are to review x-rays that are done by Umeå Univesity Hospital in the north of Sweden during the day and are then sent to them in Sydney, where there is a 8 to 9 hour time difference. While the patient sleeps through the night here, the doctors in Australia examine the x-rays, sending a report by morning. The savings from not having to pay a night rate to two doctors makes the project worth while. These are just a few examples of the digital society we are seeing developing around us now.

Mr. Engström alone in Brussels will probably not be able to accomplish much. The desired goal of the PP of

"All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created." Pirate Party

Involves the dissolution of several international treaties to which Sweden and the rest of Europe are party to. Furthermore I am uncertain of the logic involved in the idea that all "culture and knowledge are good things". I think it does seem idealistic and somewhat naive. But is is also brave, and the sentiment behind the idea is to be admired. I think that what we see in the election of Mr Engström to the EU assembly is an important turn. This turn is away from the court rooms and the police raids that have filled the pages of our dying newspapers over the past few years, to the activities in the legislative bodies of the democratic state. I think there will be more stories in the coming year or two about how those that oppose the attempted preservation of the hierarchical media model as it has been for the past hundred years are seeking direct political representation.

European Union Elections and the Fear

"We build the knowledge society" - Election poster from the Swedish Pirate Party, Umeå May 2009.

On June 7th those adults living in the European Union who have not submitted a postal vote already go to the ballot boxes for an election of members to the EU parliament. Sweden is of course taking part in this process and I tell you things could not be more interesting if you are a researcher in digital culture and textuality.

Since January the membership of The Pirate Party in Sweden has risen from 14000 to 55000. If current polls are reflecting how people will vote they are now a serious contender for seats in the EU parliament. The problem for the PP in the 2007 Swedish general election was few of its supporters actually voted. This may change on June 7th but it is not for certain. In a recent poll, the Pirate Party Showed 5.1% of the vote. The second largest party for Sweden in the 18-29 age group and the fourth largest for the 30-44 group.

All this attention has not gone unnoticed by the larger parties. The Vanster (Left) party are the only one of the other serious contenders for EU seats which is adopting a position even sympathetic to that held by the PP. The center left Social Democratic Party is against the digital surveillance and copyright laws passed recently by the government in principle, but have failed to take a strong stand by providing any sort of dramatic alternatives. The Green Party of Sweden (Miljöpartiet de Gröna) are somewhat silent on the issue of file sharing, and their coalition with the Social Democrates probably has something to do with it.

The center-right coalition which forms the government in Sweden is not silent on the issue of either surveillance or P2P file sharing. This afternoon I listened to Hans Wallmark, a Moderate Party candidate for the EU parliament speak about

"Where is the limit for freedom on the internet? Shall we accept child pornography and drug trafficking on the internet? I believe freedom has its limits on the internet. Just as one warns of integrity but one must also give answers to the questions. Drugs on the net? Child pornography on the net? What is permitted?"

Serious questions but it all sounds very familiar to one who follows the news on the other side of the globe, and the net filter that is currently being debated, often irrationally, in Australia:

"There is no political content banned in the existing Broadcasting Services Act," he said.

"We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth - like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here."

How it is done "will be guided by the outcome of the trials."

Most of the assertions otherwise are "patently a scare campaign [against] a policy objective we think is fair and reasonable," he said.
Australian Communications Minister Stephen Conroy

Fear is the key to this, as Senator Conroy points out. Fear is also being peddled in Sweden. Fear of lawlessness and the idea that in order to be safe media must be controlled and those who use it monitored. If we go further back we can easily find connections between media, fear and politics:

"Something that stood even deeper than the fear of Protestantism was also at stake in the great refusal of 1496. The decision to stand by the Vulgate, to veil the gospels, and stress lay obedience over lay education was certainly framed as a reaction to the Protestant threat. Fear of the threat of the spread of Lutheran heresy undoubtedly loomed large in the debates. Actions taken by Catholic churchmen, however, were designed to counteract forces which had begun to subvert the medieval church before Luther was born and which continued to menace the Roman Catholicism long after Protestant zeal had ebbed.
It was printing, not Protestantism, which outmoded the medieval Vulgate and introduced a new drive to tap mass markets."
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change By Elizabeth L. Eisenstein p353

The account of the printing press and the revolution it brought about, while often verging on a tale of technodeterminism, is undoubtedly worth considering when listening today to the members of the Pirate, Left, Moderate, Green, Social Dems and so forth on internet controls. Those with an insight into the long term effects of what we, in the economically developed parts of the world, are experiencing in media ecology should not resort to fear in order to express themselves.
And don't forget to vote.

Swedish Internet Service Providers Destroy IP Logs

The so-called 'intellectual property' environment in Sweden makes this a fascinating country to live in. Today the Stockholm based paper Dagens Nyheter published three more letters to the editor in regards to peer to peer file sharing. The lead letter has the heading "The Recording Industry is Dead. The Music Industry Lives!"

In the same edition, and across radio, television and internet (English) the big news today in Sweden is that an increasing number of major internet service providers are destroying the information on customers IP information. Today it was Tele2 that said it would not be keeping customer IP information more than the obligatory (by European Law) three weeks. This is in reaction to the extreme interpretation of the IPRED law which the Swedish government introduced on April 1, which states that if a rights holder of a music or film work can show there is a suspicion that an IP address is sharing copyright material, the records of traffic for the IP address can be obtained with a court order from the IP service provider. The loophole in the IPRED law is that the legislators forgot to add a clause that compelled the IP service provider to keep the IP address information. The focus of the IPRED law it seems was getting the information.

So today one of the main figures in the so-called anti-pirate forces, Henrik Pontén makes the bizarre statement regarding the destruction of IP records:

This question is much bigger than file sharing. Think of a pedophile alarm for example - how could the internet carriers protect a victim of the crime with this situation? This reaction means that all legislation regarding the internet is compromised. Profit goes before the law.

It seems to me like a panic reaction; pedophiles, victims, anarchy and the dissolving of all legal society online. The final sentence regarding the sanctity of the law over profit seems ironic considering the claims of hundreds of millions made against The Pirate Bay (only 30 million crowns was awarded in damages) recently and the losses claimed to sales which seems to drive the whole legal process against file sharing. The IPRED law is only 27 days old. How did we survive March?

The turn among major (and minor) service providers is the latest in a week of disasters for the anti-pirate organisations inSweden with a retrial demanded and 45 submissions made to the The Ombudsmen of Justice (JO) or the Parliamentary Ombudsmen on the possible presence of bias in The Pirate Bay Trial.

It's only Tuesday. What will happen next?

What Did Copyright Mean in 1710?

One of the strangest elements in the judgment made today against The Pirate Bay was the comments by Horace Engdahl, speaking as the permanent secretary for the Swedish Academy on the national broadcaster's Culture News this evening.

Engdahl spoke of the fact that authors prior to the Statute of Anne, the first copyright law in effect, were forced to live from patrons. "Writers were forced to know power and know the great in the society ." When asked if the time prior to 1710 was a 'pirate time' that was also very creative, that also had its good side, Engdahl replied "Jag förstår inte vad dem göda tider skulle har bestod. Det var helt enkelt bara kaos. En tjuvarnas marknad" ("I don't understand what those good times would have been. It was quote simply chaos. A market of thieves").

That he is the spokesperson for the Swedish Academy (founded 1786) supplies these observations with an extra dimension of relevancy. The ordered system of language and culture which the academy attempts to enforce, its mission of "Talent and Taste" ("Snille och Smak" in Swedish) is a long way from the cultural free for all which The Pirate Bay apparently represents (although may not live up to) today.

I join with literary critic Thomas Götselius and further dispute the idea that "It was quite simply chaos" before the Charter of Anne came into being. Having read the essays and articles of Steele and Addison I have gained some impression of the London of the early Georgians. It was a vibrant time of great creativity and experimentation. As a course description at the University of Sussex states:

However it is described, the 150 years (1600-1742) covered have some claim to be the decisive period in the creation of what we think of as modern politics. It is also a period of astonishing literary creativity. This is true both in terms of the volume, variety and quality of writing produced, and in terms of radical innovations in styles, in readerships, and in media. It also encompasses the growth of a powerful female authorship and readership.

Prior to the Charter of Anne it may well have been a free for all. For the majority of writer's, life was probably harsh, with no guarantees for survival, let along readership. But looking at the diary of Samuel Pepys for the 1660s there seemed to be a fair number of booksellers about, where they all pirates?

Booksellers Pepys mentions by name

Name/location/when Pepys’s 1st mentions:

JAMES ALLESTRY
— St. Paul’s Churchyard, later Duck Lane; mentioned ONCE, 1667 (@ Duck Lane)

HENRY HERRINGMAN
— New Exchange; 1667

JOSHUA KIRTON
— St. Paul’s Churchyard; 1660

JOHN MARTIN
— Temple Bar; 1668

MILES & ANN MITCHELL
— Westminster Hall; 1660

WILLIAM MORDEN
— Cambridge; mentioned ONCE in 1660

JOHN PLAYFORD
— Inner Temple; 1660

WILLIAM SHREWSBURY
— At The Bible on Duck Lane; 1668

JOHN STARKEY
— St. Paul’s Churchyard, later on Fleet Street when Pepys mentions him; 1667

— L&M Index volume

The digital media environment is far from the pamphlet stalls in St. Paul's yard. But the lack of center in both is perhaps what is causing such anxiety for the Swedish Academy and its like (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, L'Académie française). Putting the genie back in the bottle is not an option. The courts can only postpone this shift in representative technologies for so long. Long term solutions need to be developed if we are going to harness the creative energies of these new (well not so really new) media.

PIrate Bay Saga

A Timeline on The Pirate Bay on Dipity.

A guilty as charged verdict has been delivered in the trial of four men connected to The Pirate Bay torrent site in Stockholm a few hours ago. I am not really surprised, but it is sad that such a decision does not allow for any other way forward concerning the giant torrent site (and the technology in general) than further legal process.

I predict that the legal industry around the illegal sharing of copyrighted material will one day gross more income than the copyrighted material itself. I say by 2015.

The Pirate Bay Trial and a Need for Digital Literacy

The trial of four men for copyright infringements that goes by the name of The Pirate Bay Trial is big news at the moment here in Sweden and it seems to be around the world. The methods employed for its coverage should be studied by journalism scholars. Live radio, enormous Twitter entries (some live from the defendants bench in the courtroom), blogs, RSS feeds, newspapers and television (and even a free download documentary) are providing an account of the trial. It is mainly the defense side of the trial which is utilizing the social and networked media technologies. In fact the deficit in regards to the digital literacy of the prosecution has actually surprised me. These are intelligent people and very well versed in the law, but they seem to be struggling to understand how a torrent tracker works. In fact one Swedish newspaper today said the trial was a fiasco, while another was trying to see what the goal of both the prosecution and the defense actually is.

In so many ways the prosecution is letting the side down by failing to embrace the very technology that lies at the center of the case. The prosecution so far (Day 3) has adopted a purely economic and legal approach to the case. Yesterday the prosecution dropped the charge of assisting access to copyrighted material (hjälpt till att ta fram exemplar av upphovsskyddat material), and what remains in the case is that "file sharers can exchange film and music with each other and therefore The Pirate Bay has committed infringement of copyright law" ( from DN: "att fildelare har kunnat utbyta film och musik med varandra, och därför har Pirate Bay begått brott mot upphovsrättslagen, enligt åklagaresidan.") This seems a tentative argument based on the nature of The Pirate Bay operation. If permitting access to copyrighted material is a crime then linking and search engines that return copyrighted material are a crime. Although linking has been successfully prosecuted in Australia (for a $360 million dollar claim by the same group behind The Pirate Bay trial) it was in a different context to the torrent index of The Pirate Bay (direct hyperlinking rather than torrent tracking). The Australian case went as high as to the Federal Court and was upheld. The goal of the prosecution seemed to be the ISP Comcen, with Music Industry Piracy Investigations general manager Michael Kerin stating

"This is a very significant blow in the war against piracy," he said. "The court has found against all the respondents. It sends the message that ISPs who involve themselves in copyright infringement can be found guilty. The verdict showed that employees of ISPs who engage in piracy can be seen in the eyes of the court as guilty."

In recent months the so called Pirate Law has been passing through the Swedish parliament and is set to become law on April 1 (no joke). According to the law the copyright holder can go to a court and obtain the identity of a person according to an IP address if they suspect an act of infringement has taken place, related to the address.

The prosecution is gambling with The Pirate Bay case. If the prosecution wins the Pirate Law will come into force in Sweden and the IP address of everyone in the country who has used the Pirate Bay could theoretically be available for further cases. The Pirate Bay may not be closed down (its servers are no longer within Sweden according to its spokespeople) but it could be prison for those charged with infringing copyright through its activities. The question of the damages of 115 million Swedish Crowns (13,141,156.89 USD) seems unlikely to be met. Although advertising may cost a bit of money I dont see how The Pirate Bay could generate such capital with the few adds they run on the site at any one time.

If the prosecution loose it will put back the campaign by large scale media publishers in controlling file sharing in Sweden (and a large part of the world) by years. The publicity from the trial will ensure The Pirate Bay gets even more peers. In short it would be a disaster for the prosecution.

For these reasons I am surprised that the prosecution has not been more careful with the technical aspects of the trial. At times the language the prosecutor has used in relation to the technical set-up of The Pirate Bay has been plain clumsy. I was speaking to some colleagues today (each of them working in digital media, literature and communication) and we agreed that the need for digital literacy has never been more demonstrated than by the lack of understanding for a distributed peer to peer network displayed by the prosecution.

While the demands of the prosecution are clear, the evidence they are using is not. Examples used by the defense from the trial include:

EU directive 2000/31/EG says that he who provides an information service is not responsible for the information that is being transferred. In order to be responsible, the service provider must initiate the transfer. But the admins of The Pirate Bay don't initiate transfers. It's the users that do and they are physically identifiable people. They call themselves names like King Kong," Samuelsson told the court.

"The prosecutor must show that Carl Lundström personally has interacted with the user King Kong, who may very well be found in the jungles of Cambodia."

and

Fredrik Neij's lawyer pointed out once again that no copyright-protected material ever passes The Pirate Bay servers. If The Pirate Bay is found guilty, a major search engine like Google (search for filetype:torrent) is too. Also, the figures on the amount of downloads the prosecutors use to calculate how much money they should get are inaccurate and should not be used as evidence in court. Not every .torrent download results in a successful file download.

Tomorrow the four accused are going to be cross examined. This should be interesting. While the three who are connected to the running of The Pirate Bay are clearly gifted in technical knowledge, their detached bravado may detract from their testimony. However if the prosecution attempts to pin them down on technical specifics, the defendants will probably have difficulty controlling their own laughter.

Ninety Percent of Revenue from Sales to Music Publishers

How copyright extension in sound recordings actually works.

Works of Mahatma Gandhi Enter Public Domain

AHMEDABAD, India (Reuters Life!) - The thought-provoking literary works of Mahatma Gandhi, India's iconic freedom fighter, are set to go public after the copyright on his writings and speeches lapses this month.

Anyone will now be able to publish the writings and speeches of the legendary leader, often referred to as the Father of the Nation, since the copyright on these works expires 60 years after his death.

Gandhi, who pioneered the philosophy of non-violent resistance to the British occupation of India, was assassinated on January 30, 1948 in New Delhi by a Hindu radical.

Gandhi had given his works to the Gujarat-based Navajivan Trust which he founded, but according to the Copyright Act of 1957, works of a person go into the public domain 60 years after their death.

Trust authorities said they did not want to ask the Indian government for an extension of the copyright, based on the leader's philosophies.

"If you consider the spirit of Gandhian thought, one should not ask for such extension. And we have considered this issue and we are not going to ask for such extension," Jitendra Desai, managing trustee of the Navajivan Trust, told Reuters Television.

Since its inception, the Navajivan Trust has published some 300 volumes of Gandhi's works including articles, letters and speeches, as well as translations of his autobiography.

And although Gandhi entrusted the copyright of his works with the Navajivan Trust, he never subscribed to the idea.

"Gandhi never supported the idea of copyright. But due to some instances, where his thoughts were misinterpreted, he was forced to give into the insistence of his well-wishers urging him to get his works copyrighted," said trustee Amrut Modi.

Gandhi scholars, however, want the copyright to be revived by the government, as they fear free use of his works would lead to misinterpretation of his texts by other publishers.

"Once the copyright ends, prices of the works are sure to shoot up. The task of taking Gandhi's thoughts to the people might also be affected. The government should immediately do something about it and entrust the copyrights back to Navajivan Trust," said Dhimant Badiya, a Gandhi scholar in Ahmedabad.

The Navajivan Trust will however continue to publish Gandhi's works at subsidized prices, even after the copyright lapsed.

Sweden and the Pirates

When the Swedish Pirate Party was launched three years ago, the majority of the mainstream press viewed them with skepticism, with some simply laughing them away. Times have changed though. As the government works to introduce harsher copyright laws and others that threaten the privacy of Sweden’s citizens, the party is growing stronger and stronger.

In a recent poll, 21 percent of all Swedes indicated that they would consider voting for the Pirate Party in the upcoming European Parliament elections. Among men in the 18-29 age group, this number goes up to a massive 55% - an unprecedented statistic.

Aside from the support in this poll, more people have joined the party recently. During the last quarter the membership count increased by 50% - from 6000 to 9000 - which makes the party larger than the Green Party which currently holds 19 seats in the Swedish parliament.

Swedish Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak that the Internet played a big part in the recent successes of the party. “We couldn’t have done this without the dialog infrastructure that the Net provides. Oldmedia has lost control of the discourse,” he said. With all the controversy surrounding the new anti-piracy and wiretapping legislation, the Pirate Party was often mentioned on blogs, since they are the most outspoken opponent.

For the upcoming European election, the Pirate Party requires 100,000 Swedish votes to get a seat, a goal that is within reach in the current political climate. Falkvinge is optimistic too, and said “We need to grow by another 50%, counting from the Swedish election two years ago, to get seats in the EU parliament and shake the political copyright world at its core. It’s hard, it’s supposed to be hard, but the numbers show we can do it. We can do this, and the charts are going stratospheric.”

The Internet will probably play a big role in this election for the Pirate Party, and recent history has shown that this is not only true for parties that carry “pirate” in their name. Elections to the European Parliament will be held in June 2009, and it’s going to be very interesting to see how the Pirate Party fares.

Post from: TorrentFreak

Peer to Peer File Sharing in Sweden

Posts that contain IPRED-lagen per day for the last 30 days.

The topic of the IPRED Law in Sweden has faded in the blog world.

At the moment in Sweden the Justice Minister Beatrice Ask is doing a lot of media appearances trying to explain the incoming IPRED Lag (Property Rights Enforcement Directive) and it does not seem like the honourable minister is doing a very good job. The new law is supposed to make uploading of proprietary materials illegal according to the minister. There is a technical problem with this as most people understand; when one downloads one also uploads in the network scheme of things.

Ask said on the current affair program Agenda (25.30-38:40) recently that the law is designed to act against those which upload "commercial amounts" of copyrighted material. When questioned about what exactly are 'commercial amounts' the minister could not answer and said it is up to the courts to decide. This is despite the initial power to act against file sharers not being given to the judiciary by the IPRED Law but to the publishers of the material being shared illegally. A letter of demand is to be the first stage in any action being taken against file sharers.

According to the web news site di.se the new law does not specify the amount of files being shared as deciding if an offence is being committed. Once again in the article the minister said that it is up to the courts to decide.

I cannot help but think that this is all in preparation for the Pirate Bay trial which has been postponed in the summer and will now take place early next year. The fate of four young men, Fredrik Neij, Per Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, will be decided in court. I would think that the Pirate Bay trial will be sometime soon after April 1 2009. The day the IPRED Law comes into effect.

Related to the drama in Sweden I read this morning the top ten prophecies of the digital millennium and number 4 is

4. The decline of copyright

Regular readers of this column will know this is a hobbyhorse of mine. Copyright and most intellectual property laws are now an anachronism. Attempts by record companies and film studios and book publishers to stop people copying digital media are doomed to failure.

Technology is forcing big changes to business models.

I wonder how this is all going to play out.......badly I expect.

Keeping Culture Free

Public Lecture by Lawrence Lessig in Auckland, New Zealand, about the war between "prohibitionists" and "abolitionists" in the copyright debate. Builds on old stuff, adds an idea about how best to deal with copyright in developing nations.

The Swedish government yesterday rejected any change to copyright law following a European Union directive for member nations to enter into a dicussion regrading the possibility of increasing the manditory copyright period from the current 50 years to 95 years following composition.

Its wrong, immoral and fun..here's how to do it.

Something I have noticed in regards to media reports on the evils of Peer to Peer file sharing technology is that every article is basically an instruction manual on how to do it. The latest one from Australia is a hoot:

The report opens with:

MISSING one episode of West Wing, thanks to constant schedule changes, was enough to set Mark and Kim down the road to online piracy.

In language reminiscent of the moral panic surrounding drug abuse, Mark and Kim, "suburban thirtysomethings with a young baby" are swept up in the technological ease of instant media gratification:

And they can just as easily download music and movies, although Mark and Kim generally restrict themselves to television shows. A cheap DivX-enabled DVD player lets them watch downloads on their television as easily as watching a movie, and at practically the same picture quality.

And now we are aware that a DivX DVD player (which sells at my local supermarked from about $60 US) is what I need to satisfy my need for American television drama. But that's not all. The article ends with a detailed description for setting up a P2P file sharing node:

To take advantage of file-sharing, users can start with an internet plan offering as little as 3GB per month at speeds of 512kbps, which retails from $25 per month according to Broadband Choice (bc.whirlpool.net.au). Australian consumer broadband plans offer download speeds up to 24Mbps per second, with some plans offering well over 100GB of data a month. But plans offering unlimited downloads sell for about $100 per month, while restricted to speeds of 1.5Mbps.

Resistance is futile!

Solution Found for Copyright Infringement

The site Dear Rockers is paying back musicians "five bucks at a time". The solution to the reported "millions" that is being stolen by file sharing music downloading is simply write to the musicians you love and send them cash. Here is an example from a guilty Oasis fan:

Dear Noel,
Here goes. Confession time.

I pilfered the vinyl of Definitely Maybe from Salford HMV in 1994. I don’t even live round there - I’m a “soft southern twat” lol - but I needed to prove how hard I was to my mates so I got a saver return for the day and travelled “oop north” to commit the crime. I was going to hitch, but it was a bit blowy out that day, plus I’d heard there were dreadful roadworks around the M6 area.

Anyroad up (as you Mancs say !) I’m now a comfortably off Exec in the music promotions business and I’ve seen first hand what havoc such foolish actions as my youthful misdemeanour can wreak upon the welfare and profits of the often under rewarded artist, such as your goodself.

Soooo…*deep breath*…here’s recompense. Only minor, but it’s something, eh?

Enclosed, please find:
US$1.90
GBP£1.51
and one Indian Rupee (Liam can probably fob this off in the fag machine in his local boozer)

All this ought to add up to the fair and princely sum of US$5 if we’re going by the current exchange rate of 1.946871. You can do the maths yourself.
Actually, you probably can’t, can you?

Yours Empathetically,
Phil. M. Riot

If you have guilty feelings about an Mp3 file you selfishly pilfered from one of your favorite stars, then go to Dearrockers.com, show them some love and take a load off your conscious.