A Thank You to Eric Sterling

Offered for the attention of those who attended Eric's recent keynote at DjangoCon and, most especially for Eric himself. I still remember the talk and the panel session he took the time to contribute to fondly, and I particularly enjoyed the unique flavor he added to the lunch he attended.

Digital Rights Repression

There's something about the phrase "Digital Rights Management" that gets right up my nose. I suppose it's because it makes it sound as though we have digital rights and other rights, and they are somehow different. The digital age has definitely brought new approaches and new legislation which infringe on our freedoms.

The US Digital Millenium Copyright Act has had a "chilling effect" on free speech by allowing copyright holders to achieve censorship of publication without any prior scrutiny by a court being required. This is very definitely a bridge too far.

Now the UK has gone the same way with the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill. This reading was cynically timed to assure the bill's passage and enactment in the "wash-up" process following the dissolution of parliament prior to the general election of May 6. The most sinister and at the same time the most ridiculous aspect of the Bill is its provision that someone about whom three complaints have been received will be liable to have their Internet services removed - again without the intrusion of any legal process, let alone the requirement for conviction in a court of law. The Bill makes no mention of the collateral damage caused to other people living in the same domicile, nor does it propose any sensible way of stopping such disenfranchised individuals from using the many free wireless access points that are available throughout the world. The law is, in short, an ass.

It's easy to see in both the DMCA and the DEB the hand of corporations seeking to enforce their copyright and bolster their profits. It's also easy to see that the laws were framed by people who either didn't understand the broader implications of their work or who didn't care. The DEB is the brainchild of Lord Mandelson, an effete politician who's too snobby to tread in dogshit and no more a servant of the people than Dick Cheney.

This handover of power to the corporate world has now officially gone way too far. The legal notion that corporations should be granted the same rights as individuals, although enshrined in case law, is fundamentally unconstitutional. Corporations wield a disproportionate amount of wealth and power in today's society. The recording industry lobbied for a levy on blank audio cassettes because (to use their slogan) "Home Taping is Killling Music", yet twenty years later music seems very much alive.

I have railed against the DEB, unsuccessfully. The DMCA is ten years old. I've been a supporter of the open source movement for over twenty years, and I can tell you that it's a harbinger of  new approach. In the short term the corporations may feel they are winning, but in fact they are merely sowing the seeds of their own eventual destruction. You might care to bear that in mind in your investment strategy, if you have one. The music industry is like the boy who cried wolf; pretty soon nobody will care when they get eaten.

The Internet is Not the UK

Without the EFF Western society's relentless march towards 1984 would have concluded by now. Many formerly accepted liberties have been eroded in the first decade of the 21st century. Think about joining.

Who Put the "Ass" in Associated Press?

The recently-publicized Associated Press approach to copyrighting the news includes such stupidities as

• Charging people to use their own words, and
  
• Attempting to charge for the use of information in the public domain

To this stupidity it appears that through the inadequacies of the system they have chosen to use for licensing we can now add

• Charging people for things that were never said:

This does raise some interesting questions, however. Since I now have a license (purchased for $12.50) from Associated Press to quote these words, are they going to sue me for defamation (against which my defense would be "fair comment") or will they instead fall back on their terms of use, which does not allow me to use licensed material in a way "derogatory to Publisher"?

Given the huge popularity of this blog (not) I suspect this one will sneak under their radar, but if it doesn't (and assuming I am neither subjected to a gag order nor rubbed out by hired gorillas) I shall report back.

UPDATE: About five hours later I received a refund on the grounds that the quoted material was not part of the referenced article:
So it appears that the system isn't quite as asinine as it might at first seem. But Associated Press still need to get a clue, I think.

What Would We Do ...

... without the EFF?

Shameful Day in American History

So, it's official. Corporations are above the law, individual freedom should be subservient to corporate profits and if the president tells you to break the law well you can just go ahead and break it. The revolution moves a little nearer.

Senate Says Corporations Can Ignore the Law

[UPDATE: see this Salon.com article for a great summary of the position].

For a good while now there has been a political campaign to provide immunity to telecommunication companies that supported President Bush's illegal surveillance of US citizens. This appears to mean that "I was just obeying orders" is about to become a valid legal defense in the USA, and that corporate managers need take no account of the law when the executive branch asks them to take actions without any support from legislation and in clear defiance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The House passed a surveillance bill in November 2007 that leaves the companies that assisted the CIA's spying mission responsible for their actions. Yesterday the Senate passed a similar bill, but one that would grant the telcos retrospective immunity for their lawbreaking.

The President has lost touch with reality to the extent that he appears to believe that he is above the law, and he now proposes to put the corporations that spied on their customers in the same happy position. Anyone who supports these actions needs to think really carefully: the founders of the Constitution established clear limits to Presidential authority, and if nobody takes the trouble to convince Bush and Cheney that they are mistaken it will be a bad day for us all.

I'd like to see them impeached: if a stupid sexual peccadillo was sufficient to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton's behavior, how much more appropriate is it to do so when a president takes the country into a bogus war on the basis of manufactured intelligence and spies on his fellow countrymen? This is a chance for the American people to show the rest of the world that the rule of law really does mean something in the USA.

This affects us all as technologists: we may be asked to take part in the spying next time (if we weren't this time), and soon there may be nothing to stop us from being thrown into prison merely for failing to comply. This represents the first step onto a very slippery slope indeed, and we need to help ensure that corporations and the executive remain subject to the rule of law. It isn't a party political matter. It's about standing together and taking action when the law which is supposed to protect us all is threatened.