Aaron Swartz

Information still wants to be free. It's sad that there are tragedies along that road. Such a waste.

Beautiful tribute from Tim Berners-Lee:

Aaron is dead.

Wanderers in this crazy world,
we have lost a mentor, a wise elder.


Hackers for right, we are one down,
we have lost one of our own.


Nurtures, careers, listeners, feeders,
parents all,
we have lost a child.


Let us all weep.

timbl - source

Aaron Swartz bio
Corey Doctorow: RIP, Aaron Swartz
Lawrence Lessig: Prosecuter as Bully

Just a little corruption in Sweden

It turns out that the judge who passed the verdict in the Pirate Bay case is:

"... a signed up member of Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt ('the Swedish Copyright Association'), where he is joined by Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, all of whom represented the entertainment industry in the case against file sharing site The Pirate Bay.

The judge also sits on the board of Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property), a group actively advocating for more stringent copyright laws."
http://www.thelocal.se/19028/20090423/

The judgment was rather extreme:

The four defendants in the case, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström, were each sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.56 million) in damages

One of the lawyers has called for a mistrial

Just a little corruption in Sweden, who would have imagined such a thing?

More at torrent freak

Swedes Demonstrate in Support of Pirate Bay

Following the prosecution of the Pirate Bay torrent site it will be interesting to see how the Pirate Party goes in the next European parliamentary elections (June 7th)

Swedes Demonstrate in Support of Pirate Bay

The Pirate Party organized demonstrations against the convictions at several cities across Sweden on Saturday. More than 1,000 people turned out in Stockholm to show support for The Pirate Bay defendents and the practice of file sharing ...

Since the Stockholm district court passed judgment on April 17th the Pirate Party confirmed on Saturday afternoon that its membership has swelled to 21,000.

The party's youth league is now, with its 10,000 members, larger than all of the parliamentary party youth organizations.

Ruddocks copyright FAQ

News today that Attourney General Ruddock has modified some of the worst aspects of the new Australian Copyright Law. His FAQ. We are now allowed to sing "Happy Birthday" in public without on the spot fines, record programs to watch them later (but not allowed to keep them or show them to any public audience - bad luck for teachers who tape a good show for school), you can copy music you buy to your ipod (wow!) and you are allowed to listen to it with a friend but not allowed to lend it to your friend, let alone make them a copy, but you are allowed to lend it to a family member (well, yes, we do need to teach our young people the importance of family!!). Even if you have bought a CD you are not allowed to make a copy if it has a TPM on it (technological protection measure). No backups allowed for your own property.

Some of the worst elements have been removed but the Attourney General's FAQ churns my stomach because it means that a generalised fair use provision has been abandoned in favour of a futile attempt to define each and every case. We can no longer sloppily assume that what we are doing is "fair use", it is now being defined in exact terms in each and every case - in practice, impossible, the law cannot achieve that. We are now locked into an FAQ lifesyle wrt copyright where we go cap in hand to the Minister asking is it alright to do what comes naturally and which is core to teacher's work - copying, modifying and distributing information.

I think we need an overview of what copyright ought to be about from our perspective as knowledge workers, starting from these sorts of big picture perspectives:

1. Copyright as the natural, inalienable right of the owner
2. Copyright as a balance between the rights of the owner and the rights of society
3. Copyleft, expand the commons

Attourney General Ruddock supports (1). I don't and this has not been the historical rationale for copyright.

In fact, Mr Ruddock said his reforms made Australia a world leader on copyright reform.

"Australia's approach is in contrast to those countries which have a general 'fair use' right or which put levies on equipment for private copying," he said in a statement.

"Many countries have not yet tackled the issue of fair use in the digital environment. Australia's approach is fair and certain for all concerned."
- from The Age Report, FAQ address copyright concerns

Note the use of the words, "fair and certain" - ie. trying to achieve certainty where it cannot be achieved and where you need to have a safety valve fair use provision.

This is exactly what google was warning us about in their submission to the australian copyright act - that there would be an attempt at certainty where it is not possible to achieve certainty.

Google presents a very strong and convincing case for maintaining fair use ("safety valve") provisions as well as exceptions.

... it is difficult to identify all current problems ... and impossible to prophesy future problems . An exclusive list of specific exemptions will inevitably run afoul of technology's rapidly changing reality ... such boundaries are inherently artificial and are not in accord with the nature of creativity ... Creativity is sui generis (of its own kind, unique in its characteristics, cannot be included in a wider concept) and contextual. An arbitrary limit on the number of words that can be copied ... runs roughshod over the way innovation arises ..."

e-criminals

“As an example,” said Mr Coroneos, “a family who holds a birthday picnic in a place of public entertainment (for example, the grounds of a zoo) and sings ‘Happy Birthday’ in a manner that can be heard by others, risks an infringement notice carrying a fine of up to $1320. If they make a video recording of the event, they risk a further fine for the possession of a device for the purpose of making an infringing copy of a song. And if they go home and upload the clip to the internet where it can be accessed by others, they risk a further fine of up to $1320 for illegal distribution. All in all, possible fines of up to $3960 for this series of acts – and the new offences do not require knowledge or improper intent. Just the doing of the acts is enough to ground a legal liability under the new ‘strict liability’ offences.”
- New Copyright Laws Risk Criminalising Everyday Australians (Peter Coroneos is chief executive of the internet industry association)

It looks like the new australian version of copyright law is going through the parliament rapidly, without significant modification despite the various insightful submissions by google, Linux society, the IIA, the Queensland UT Copyright reform group and many others

It has now passed through the House of Reps and is due to be voted on in the Senate in two weeks.

The new australian copyright law is significantly worse than the US version (which is not good) and so there is no requirement for such a bad law arising from Australia being a signatory to the Australian-US Free Trade Act.

I downloaded the 'risk analysis for teenagers' (pdf) from the iia (internet industry association) site and it does confirm that teenagers will soon face hefty legal penalties, fines of $6600 are typical, for their current everyday behaviour - backing up or downloading music, recording music on their mobile phones and then sharing with friends, burning music on a CD and giving it to a friend, incorporating popular music into a video and uploading to You Tube, recording spontaneous song as video on a mobile phone and posting to MySpace

Download 'risk analysis for teenagers' (pdf) and others covering families, small businesses and industry from here

Welcome to the new world of Australian e-criminals, or is it i-criminals?

There is also an informative podcast interview by Brian Fitzgerald of Peter Coroneos available from the iia site.

fair use under threat

There are 3 positions on copyright:

1. Copyright as the natural, inalienable right of the owner
2. Copyright as a balance between the rights of the owner and the rights of society
3. Copyleft, expand the commons

I support (3), then (2) if (3) is not immediately possible and am opposed to (1) in all circumstances. Some people believe that copyright law is mainly about the first position. But Lessig has pointed out that historically the second position has been the dominant tradition and that only recently, with the new ease of copying digital works over the internet, has the first position become strengthened through law.

The music industry and the movie industry support the first position. In today's world this means that they will have to control our machines and invade our privacy. Because the first position means that these industries will have to have control over our CD and MP3 players, our VCR and DVD players. As well as being an invasion of the natural rights of the consumer to control their property (do you own the machine you buy?) it also kills innovation. Rip, mix and burn is creative work. See the Linux Australia submission by Rusty Russell to the Australian Copyright Act 2006.

The second position is legally more complicated because it involves balance and consideration of both the rights of both the owner and the rights of society.

In this context the issue of "fair use" is being debated in the Australian Senate. I've read some of the submissions and the one from google was very helpful in understanding this.

The common, although vague understanding of fair use is that it's alright to duplicate a part of a book, CD or video for educational or research purposes because that serves a useful social purpose.

Apparently there is some danger that the whole notion of a generalised fair use clause will be thrown out and replaced by a series of specific "exceptions". For instance, the Australian Copyright Councial is lobbying for this. Note the use of the word "exceptions" which implies that copyright is by default "owners exclusive rights" and not a social balance between owners rights and society's rights.

For example there are fair dealing provisions for research and study in relation to the reproduction of literary, dramatic and musical works. But the general concept of "fairness" has now been replaced "with strict rules that limit copying of most hardcopy and electronic documents only to specific amounts. One page more than this amount, no matter how obscure or difficult the book is to obtain, and you risk liability." (see copyright jails by Brian Fitzgerald)

Google presents a very strong and convincing case for maintaining fair use ("safety valve") provisions as well as exceptions.

... it is difficult to identify all current problems ... and impossible to prophesy future problems . An exclusive list of specific exemptions will inevitably run afoul of technology's rapidly changing reality ... such boundaries are inherently artificial and are not in accord with the nature of creativity ... Creativity is sui generis (of its own kind, unique in its characteristics, cannot be included in a wider concept) and contextual. An arbitrary limit on the number of words that can be copied ... runs roughshod over the way innovation arises ..."

It's disturbing that fair use is under threat.

information wars

I posted the following to one of the Victorian IT teachers lists. My fear is that teachers won't get involved politically, that they will grumble about crazy copyright laws but just try to work around them rather than challenge them directly. Hope I'm wrong. My belief is that the intellectual property wars are escalating and that it's necessary to get involved. I'll be writing more about this.

It's about information which makes it more central to our profession than drugs or alcohol prohibition.

In this thread people are saying that they will break the law because it is an ass and turn a blind eye to students breaking stupid laws. Fair enough. However, I feel we have a broader social problem which requires political action when copyright laws exist which turn citizens into criminals.

To look at the US experience:

"According to the NY Times, 43 million Americans downloaded music in May 2002. According to the RIAA, the behaviour of those 43 million Americans is a felony. We thus have a set of rules that transform 20 percent of Americans into criminals ..." Lessig, Free Culture, 199

It's not going to go away. Copyright law is being strengthened in Australia as we speak.

How do teachers feel about the ethical dilemma of teaching copyright law in our courses and encouraging or turning a blind eye to students breaking that law when our employer has a clear expectation that we, as teachers, will not indulge in criminal activity and we can be sacked for doing so. Wouldn't happen you think? Check out some of the things that have been happening in the USA which is a bit further down the track on this issue than us. eg. a young student, Jesse Jordan, prosecuted for $15 million dollars damages for wilful violation of copyright law in 2002

I've recently joined the pirate party of australia, which is ridiculously small at the moment, but, nevertheless, I feel obliged to become political on this issue, based on my understanding of the information wars, which have already started, and which will intensify in the future.

The pirate party originated in Sweden and obtained 34,918 votes, or 0.63% of the popular vote. It's platform is reform of intellectual property laws - copyright, patent and the closely related issue of privacy

Information wars: commons v. proprietary, well, isn't it natural for teachers to support the maintenance or expansion of the commons (and not their restriction which is the way the Law is going), since our profession is based on the free and generous sharing of information?

Nor would it be wise IMO to just assume that the side that supports the maintenance / expansion of the commons will just win because that is "sensible" and the other side is ridiculous and laughable. It is laughable but common sense does not always win.