Oo! Imagine spending a year in New York. Well Helen Nissenbaum, who does interesting and cool computer ethics (focus on privacy work), is looking to fill a research fellowship:

Thanks Michael Zimmer for the heads-up!

November 18th, 2008 | Category: Academia, Cyberlaw, Privacy | Leave a comment

Growing up around the mediterranean meant that all men struggled with the problem of carrying cigarettes, lighter, wallet and keys in a limited selection of pockets. Some adopted the wrist bag while other ‘trendily’ stuck their cigarettes in the sleeve of their t-shirt.

Today the cigarettes are gone but the gadgets have increased and men are once again struggling with the conflict of ideas of manliness and the ability to carry all their gadgets. Enter the e-Volve Gadget Shoulder Holster:

This may be a solution but I am not so sure it’s me… It seems more like the problem is that we are so confused by the assortment of gadgets and our manliness that we will try almost anything. Also won’t you get shot reaching for you iPhone in America? Everyone there will think you are going for a gun…

November 18th, 2008 | Category: other stuff | Leave a comment

Its been ten years since the implementation of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and in order to commemorate this decade the Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a report entitled Unintended Consequences: Ten Years Under the DCMA. A collection of disturbing real life stories, the report reads like “a trip down memory lane for those who have followed digital freedom issues over the past decadeâ€.

Wow, ten years! Time flies when we are having fun.

November 18th, 2008 | Category: Copyright, Regulation | Leave a comment

När Bo-Erik Gyberg får skriva en artikel i SvD med rubriken Upphovsrätten gav oss mångfald (16 november 2008) blev jag först irriterad över artikelns bristande faktabas.

Men när det sedan visade sig att artikelförfattaren Bo-Erik Gyberg är lobbyist och knappast opartisk journalist blev jag ännu mer irriterad på SvDs bristande journalistik.

SvD låter alltså en lobbyist för filmproducenter att skriva att upphovsrätten behövs för att säkra mångfald. Med vilket författaren hävdar att den rika historiska kulturutbudet före upphovsrättens tillkomst (tidigast 1710) räknas inte som mångfald. Något som jag argumenterar emot här.

Lika oroväckande är dock att SvD inte meddelar författarens uppenbara agenda. Artikeln bör utpekas för vad det är - en åsikt och inte nyheter. Egentligen, med tanke på dagens upphovsrättsdebatt, borde artikeln räknas till reklam.

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Sorry for this being in Swedish I needed to comment on a Swedish lobbyist writing as a journalist in a Swedish daily - my earlier blog post here.

November 18th, 2008 | Category: Annoyances, Democracy, Society | Leave a comment

Today is a busy day! In another Swedish newspaper there is an article that claims, already in it’s title, that copyright gave us diversity (Upphovsrätten gav oss mÃ¥ngfald). The article is a short burst of twaddle that attempts to state that copyright is necessary for litterature and ends with the bombastic but incredibly false statement that:

The author is a fool. He lacks any knowledge of literature and the effects of copyright. This is pure marketing without any knowledge of the facts. It is counterfactual (an ugly word if there ever was one).  Let me explain this slowly and simply so that the slow witted author may understand.

The earliest modern copyright legislation came in 1710. This is a short burst from wikipedia:

According to the article author there was no diversity before copyright and therefore there was no diversity before 1710… This means that: Homer (ca 850 BC), Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), Augustine (354 – 430), Boethius (480–524 or 525), Snorri Sturluson (1178 – 1241), Petrarch (1304 – 1374), Boccaccio (1313 – 1375), Dante (1265 - 1321), Chaucer (1343 – 1400), Machiavelli (1469 – 1527), Paracelsus (1493 - 1541), Rabelais (1494 - 1553), Cervantes (1547 – 1616), Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Racine (1639 – 1699), Moliere (1622 – 1673), John Locke (1632 – 1704) & Samuel Pepys (1633 – 1703)… just to name a few…Did not provide the world with cultural diversity ?!?!?!?…  So what can the author mean when he writes that copyright is a prerequisite for cultural diversity? My only conclusion is that the author of the newspaper article is a fool…

Update:

In the comments section Henrik points out that Bo-Erik Gyberg (the author of the newspaper article) was appointed Chairman of the Swedish lobbying group Filmallians in in June 2007.

The shocking thing is that the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet does not present this information but allows him to write an article which is plainly a political position and part of his lobbyist work.

Shame on you Svenska Dagbladet! The concept of journalistic integrity seems to be lost on you completely… Are you being paid for this political advertising?

November 17th, 2008 | Category: Copyright, Culture, Society | Comments (7)

This is from an article on the BBC website How do Avatars have sex? the problems are as old as chatrooms - cybersex leads to a real life divorce etc etc. What is so great about online sex? Isn’t it much better offline? Maybe I am just too conservative or maybe its just…

The article is a silly piece but it does touch on some interesting questions - without actually meaning to…

If we are talking about computer representations, or avatars you are not actually having sex with anyone other than yourself. Just becuase their is a screen and the Internet is involved we are supposed to be excited but in reality its the same as it ever was…

Pompeii ancient sex photo by Thomas Reichart

November 17th, 2008 | Category: technology | Comments (2)

In the IT newspaper Computer Sweden a Swedish IT/IP lawyer (Malin Forsman) is quoted as saying that proprietary software is of “better quality” than Free or Open Source software (my translation):

My first problem is with the journalism and the article itself. Like many other short newspaper articles it does not seem to have a point. What is the newsworthiness of this article? That an individual has an opinion? So what? We all have opinions but this does not make them newsworthy. Mind you if this had been my only complaint it would not have been worth blogging about.

My second problem is with journalistic integrity. By simply blogging the lawyer we arrive at the law firm where she works and her brief bio, where under Memberships we see that she is a member of: Board member of the IT group of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Board Member of the Association for IT and Law, Member of the Swedish Copyright Association and Member of the International Technology Law Association. Her main legal experience outside law firms was working for Microsoft Corporation. Shouldn’t this maybe have been indicated in the article? If the journalist is presenting an opinion as news then shouldn’t some sort of critical analysis be added? I know that journalists are supposed to be objective but this article is hardly reporting the news as it is.

The next problem is with the lawyer herself. I have no doubt that she is a qualified lawyer and an expert in the IT/IP field but what is wrong with her statements? Unless of course this is simply a case of journalistic misquote she is a legal expert speaking of the quality of code. She does not attempt to define quality even if such a definition was at all possible. By her logic an Open Source project that makes it’s code proprietary immediately improves its code and a proprietary software project that releases its code under an Open Source license immediately deteriorates the quality of its code. Obviously these are ridiculous statements. But when the IT/IP legal expert says them we are supposed to nod our heads in agreement.

So who would be the right person to make such a statement? Well that person would need to have a vast experience of code not law. This imaginary person would need to have a vast experience of both open and proprietary projects and be able to define the concept of quality in a way that will enable these projects to be measurable and comparable. In addition to this the person would need to be free from suspicions of bias. I doubt whether such a super person exists.

But what may be said about quality? Here are two quotes:

Now lets complicate the issue even more:

While both these definitions are relatively common neither takes into full account the nature of software quality. The problem arises from the fact that software is a mix of product and service. The actual code is not what customers buy - they buy a function. Who cares what the software of a word processor looks like? It’s function is what the customer believes he/she has bought. If this is true then the customer has also bought an expectation of support in the case of software failure.

This was just meant as an illustration of the complexity of software quality and why neither a journalist nor a lawyer can deal with such a question in the space of a 350 word article. What they are really doing is pure advertising in the form of journalism. Advertising a personal, political and business stance on software while puffing up their own egos.

November 17th, 2008 | Category: Annoyances, Corporate, Property, Rants, other stuff, software | Leave a comment

Yesterday this email arrived

For those of you who do not read Swedish - don’t worry! The writers of the email could not write Swedish. The email was sent to most (all?) employees’ email accounts at Göteborg University. It is so badly written, it contains a mix of Swedish and English and cultural clues to it’s falseness - not to mention that the reply-to address was @hotmail !!

Despite this the IT department sent a warning this morning that we should not reply to these emails - did anyone, even for a second believe this email?

So is this an attempted phishing attack? Is this an attempt at identity theft?

Since the email is so badly written the “attempt” is bound to fail. Does an attempt to steal someones password need to at least be in the realm of possibly succeeding to be a criminal act?

November 17th, 2008 | Category: Cyberlaw | Leave a comment

On Thursday last week a group of Swedish artists and writers spoke up in an op-ed on the topic of file sharing. Their motives and point of view are clear. Their timing is also to act out in support of the coming parliamentary vote that will create a harsher environment around illegal file sharing.

The op-ed begins with the idea that they [the artists/writers] had been too silent in their opposition to file sharing. The reason they state for this silence is the fear of “hate attacks from notorious file sharers” (my translation from: “hatattackerna frÃ¥n notoriska fildelare”).

This is an incredibly interesting position. These artists/writers are public figures and as such have a position from which they can easily publicise any and all opinions they may have. They are the media elite - when they talk reports listen. And yet they are asking for sympathy from the public since they are the victims of a group which does not have the same platform. The very fact that they have written and published an op-ed in one of Sweden’s largest and most important newspaper should suffice to prove this point.

This false humility, this wringing of hands, this wearing of sack-cloth and ashes is irritating but it could also be seen as a rhetorical move. Even so, the position of the poor-little-me-I-am-just-a-pop-star attitude is patently false and more provocative than they seem to understand.

The group of artists/writers who signed the op-ed seem to desire a world where they have the ear of the media, the platform to publish and to be discussed (in polite terms) but are not ready to meet criticism from the broader public - from those who they are selling to!

Whether it is culture or whether it is hamburgers the seller must be able to accept the criticism and choices of the buyers. I am a vegetarian and I will criticize any attempts meat sellers make to portray happy livestock. If an artist/writer makes an uniformed/stupid statement from the platform of fame and position of importance they have achieved, then I have the right to criticize them from below - without this being referred to as a hate-attack. If you speak out in public you must expect a reply. You may not like that reply but if you are unable to cope with the reply then you should not have entered the public arena.

This post was going to be about the content of the opt-ed but as you may have noticed I got stuck on the introduction and could not move beyond. So I take the easy way out and quote from the Industrial IT Group and a blog post they entitle: Stupidity in the age of information

To this I would just like to add the schizofrenic position of encouraging and praising the importance is consumerism through digital gadgets and widgets while attempting to limit their use…

To the politicians about to vote on the coming legal proposals, a question: When you give your child an 120GB ipod - what are you expecting that they will do with it?

November 17th, 2008 | Category: Copyright, Cyberlaw, Democracy, Expression & Censorship, Regulation, Society, technology | Leave a comment

It’s been a long week and I am looking forward to leaving the mill for a relaxing break… Maybe a spot of culture and a relaxing book?

November 14th, 2008 | Category: Books, Images | Leave a comment