Will Knott

Free speech = Net neutrality?

As a principle many people would say that the freedom to disseminate information is a requirement of a democracy. After all an informed populace can make better decisions.

Except of course information about things we don’t want to know about. Pro-Anorexia and Pro-Bulimia forums are a controversial example. Its freedom of speech, its an informed choice, and women (mostly, men tend to have image issues with not being muscular enough) on these sites that promote being (too?) thin get positive reinforcement to get thinner. After all, this information isn’t a criminal action.

What has this got to do with Blackout Ireland?

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.

Well imagine if various food and health industry bodies got a legal settlement with Eircom to enforce a “three strikes and your out” policy against readers of these forums, without a chance to appeal? (Let’s ignore the fact that much of our lives are now done through the internet and that the German courts thought that it was to harsh a punishment; a death sentence to a virtual world). Would there be an outcry? “We’ve doing this to help you”. Then the lobby groups arrange to get Eircom to block certain pro-ana (after all Eircom have said that they wouldn’t fight the court orders). Then go after other Irish ISPs demanding similar action.

Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.

So of course, these sites go underground; accessible by proxy, or new different ones spring up in its place. So the information is out there. Illegal. Hidden. Cherished by a knowing few. Shared with a wider knowing few.

Would there be mistakes and false positives? Of course. Every “not caught in the act” action has the potential for mistaken identity. And with wireless networks, connecting via your neighbour (or war driving to an open location) is going to ensure the wrong people are caught. Or a printer is blamed for having image issues.

But why stop at image issues! There is too much violence on the streets, lets ban all forms of internet violence. No more over the internet first person shooters.

Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.

Cyberbullying is too much. Lets block social network sites where such a situation can take place!

Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude.

We can’t have our children accessing information and images about gay life. Block these sites!

Ban.

Block.

Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

Its the start of a slope.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

The initial logical, maybe apparently sensible first step leads to a worse situation.

So, back to the point of all of this. IRMA wants Eircom to block certain file sharing sites, starting with the Pirate’s Bay.

Interestingly the international version of IRMA is trying to get the Pirate’s bay shut down. And based on the reports of the trial in Sweden, the prosecution are not doing a good job in persuading the courts that the Pirate’s Bay are any different than Google (in fact, it seems that much of the same information can be found using Google). File sharing isn’t a criminal offence. Depending on the outcome of the trial, using Pirate’s Bay may not even be viewed as a civil offence.

So block Google? It’s an option, but too many companies use their cloud computing services for the Irish economy to survive such a block.

So back to net neutrality. Actually it isn’t exactly entirely related to speech. Its closer to a deep packet inspection; what type of packet is this. Is it a web (or encrypted html) packet? A packet form an email? Or a bit torrent packet?

Which is how some software updates itself, for example Blizzard’s World of Warcraft.

Which is how millions (if not billions) around the globe saw the inauguration of President Obama on CNN’s software.

For something purely illegal, those are very odd companies to be using it. Content companies too.

So join in the week long protest against this. Shout, not whisper about the chilling effects on internet free speech.

Join with the other voices around Ireland speak out on this issue.

Darken your avatar.

Write to your local TD about it.

Write to Minister Ryan about it.

While you still can, speak out.

Will Knott

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• Irish Internet firm to shut off illegal music users (canada.com)
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• Pirate Bay rejects law-breaking claims (theregister.co.uk)
• Pirate Bay awaits court verdict (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Luck ran out: Irish ISP agrees to music industry demands to selectively block access to Web sites (crunchgear.com)
• Record industry talks Irish ISP into blocking P2P sites (arstechnica.com)
• Music industry’s Irish ISP shakedown letter (theregister.co.uk)
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• Maybe It’s Time To Cross Ireland Off “Places I’d Like To Live” [Bad Idea Jeans] (idolator.com)
• Irish Internet Users Blocked From The Pirate Bay (beatcrave.com)
• IRMA Threatens Irish ISPs (blacknight.com)
• Irish ISP agrees to disconnect repeat P2P users (arstechnica.com)
• Irish ISP will disconnect Internet users after three unsubstantiated copyright claims (boingboing.net)
• Irish ISP Eircom in ‘three strike’ filesharer crackdown (theregister.co.uk)
• About Defending Blasphemy (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

Dear photobloggers. I want you to do something. Raise cash for the Irish Cancer Society!

Most of you are at least aware of the internet phenomena that is Pink for October. This is a breast cancer awareness programme, where websites and blogs go pink for the month, and photobloggers show pink photos for the month.

However, it occurred to me that the one thing this internet outreach does not do is actually help cancer charities. So lets fix this.

Last time I was in Cork city I called in here…

my local Irish Cancer Society shop. I’m not sure if the Castle Street shop in cork city is unusual, but they tend to have big window displays. So I chatted with the manager (nice lady) about making a window display using pink photos for October. In Cork, the Jazz festival will have its own display, but since she hadn’t planned anything from the start of the month until the festival, she is willing to display the photos.

However it might be worth going one better… donate the photos to the charity not just for display, but to be sold and raise money for the charity.

And while photos of pink objects might sell, portraits will sell, to the subject at least.

My plan is to go to the streets of Cork with model release forms and approach people wearing pink (anything pink from a splash of pink lipstick, to a pink bow in the hair or a pink tie). Explain to the subject why I’m taking the photos and if they would be willing to pose and (under no obligation) buy the photo (I’m thinking €5 at most) from the Cancer charity shop and have the photo displayed online. With a bit of publicity I suspect there would be volunteers lined up on the streets.

Personally I would like to perform a selective colourisation on the photograph so that its a black and white photo with only the pink coloured, but that isn’t a requirement.

Then in the middle of September, present the collection of A4 printouts to the charity shop for display and sale.

So what am I asking you to do?

1. Go to your nearest Cancer Charity shop (In Ireland it’s the Irish Cancer Society, I’m not sure what it is in Northern Ireland let alone the rest of the world)
2. Ask the manager of that shop if he or she would be willing to accept the donation of photographs as part of the “Pink for October Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign“, display and sell the photos. You might have to explain the Pink for October story and that model release forms will be produced.
3. Take the photographs. Print the photographs. Yes some time and expense will be involved. Anything worth doing involves a bit of an outlay.
4. If you wish, do put some identifying marks (like a web address to the online version of the photo) on the printouts. A Pink for October logo and link should also be included.
5. Present the photographs (and at least offer the release forms) on (or around) Friday September 19 2008 to the charity shop so that the manager has time to display the photographs. (I can see Kilkenny photoblogers being a little later if they want to include a Podcamp Ireland photowalk)

So, is this a dumb idea?

At the moment I’m looking for a little help with this. Could you help me with…

• Commitment to join in. You have over two months to do something this year
• The wording for the model release form. I’m not sure how it should be worded and what details are required.
• Would I (or anyone else doing the street portraits) need a licence of some kind? If so where and how would I go about getting one?
• While I’m willing to print out my photos myself, does anyone know of a willing printer?
• Anything else I should know about?

Happy snapping,
Will Knott

update September 3 2008. The 2008 Pink for October Ireland portraits won’t be happening. Details in this post.

Dear Ms. Marianne Mikko Member of the European Parliment,

I’ve been reading reports that you have called for a registration of bloggers.

Given the importance of the Internet in Estonia, I suspect that you would get a lot of, er, assistance in answering an explanation of what you mean.
Or at least a high level of details on what you are actually requesting.

Most blog posts are highly personal by nature, be it personal observation, on the ground reporting of a war in their local neighbourhood, on the antics of their cat (depressing there are a lot of these) or the rote by which a blogger investigated the dealings of a disgraced public official.
They are closer to opinion pieces than investigative reporting.

There are also blogs which by their very nature need to be anonymous. Those detailing illegal activities by officials for instance. A registration of such a blogger is likely to lead to intimidation or death.

Do you wish to clarify your wording.
Say in a blog of your own for instance?

Yours sincerely,
Will Knott

http://WillKnott.ie

When a books comes out with 27 pages of source references, you know someone is trying to prove that he is correct.

Image via Wikipedia

And when the 532-page ebook is free, I suspect that the author is trying to be very correct and get his point across. Partly to stop himself being sued by George Lucas no doubt. The book is question is The Secret History of Star Wars which skews from the Lucasfilm version of history.

According to the “Frequently Asked Questions” part of the book’s site, Michael Kaminski wrote the book to fill the perceived knowledge gap (or at least lore gap) between the observed history from the fan’s perspective, and the official history according the Lucasfilm.

To be honest, I don’t care enough about the politics of the Star Wars movies (or the Jedi religion) to be worried, about the book’s content. But the existence of the book is interesting.

Essentially this book is a compiled collection of sources to create a history of the creation of six highly influential movies; a series which continues to generate controversy. And is of course unauthorised.

When an unauthorised biography is compiled, the person at the heart of it can sue for liable, as long as the accusations (if any) in the book are false). This book is not about George Lucas, but about the creation of a series of products. Which means that is possible to sue for copyright violations in much the same way that a lawsuit was perused against the creators of a printed Harry Potter Lexicon (which was settled out of court). Its not just reputation at stake here, but a multimillion empire. By being a free download, the author manages to avoid at least part of the consequences (financial gain) and given that this 3rd edition of the book came after the above settlement, it is possible that a few discrete alternations may have been made to prevent the “too much of my work” arguments.

There are of course two reasons as to why Lucasfilm has not sued.

1) Suing your fans is not a good idea; you need them

2) Lucas has a Pirates Dilemma problem. Yes its is a derived work, but its taken the history of the series in a direction which LucasFilm never would. While they are unlikely to support it, it would be a bad idea for them to try to destroy it. Because its something they can build on (or at least with).

Could someone who cares about the series and can confirm the truth of any of the books details contact me? Also in the unlikely possibility that someone from LucasFilm is reading this, is there an official response to the book? I can confirm that the author cares enough about copyright to disable copying and pasting from the PDF file.

Still behind the scenes shenanigans are always interesting.

take care,
Will Knott

p.s. I’m waiting for The Secret History of the Babylon 5 series (or at least the collected Hyperion archives). Have I missed them?

When the precursor to the phonograph arrived, John Philip Sousa was not a happy musician. He fretted that people would stop spending time singing the old songs and the songs of the day.

I don’t know if he meant mixing them together, but he was right.
Sort of.

The law changed in such a way to make these mixes illegal. But Mashups still live…

Yup I’m going to Mashup University (and possibly Mashup Camp too). Sousa (and perhaps Larry Lessig) would be proud.

To see what I’m talking about here is Larry Lessig talk on Creativity recorded at TED in March of this year. And yes I so want to go to one of these.

Embedded video from T.E.D. Talks series

tags : John Philip Sousa, mixing, copyright, law, mashup, Larry Lessig, creativity, TED

Gentle reader,

The Magna Carta is now available in the Project Gutenberg site. This is eBook 10,000. Of course with all the extensions on copyright expirations I’m suprised it could be put online.

Incidentally, there is a Project Gutenberg Australia [gutenberg.net.au] which has quite a few works online which are still under copyright in the United States but not in Australia. Those seeking works more recent than 1923 or so might find it worthwhile taking a look there.

take care,

Will

Gentle reader,

Would you like to read some e-mail? Like Enron’s?

take care,

Will