Copyright Watch & Making the Secret Treaty Public

One of my favorite advocacy groups, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new website called Copyright Watch. The site allows users to see the latest news in copyright law. The effort is to inform the general public about the threat that looming copyright laws poses to individual freedom, and maintaining an open Internet.

In other related news, here’s a quote from BoingBoing for you… I can’t improve upon their words:

“Two US Senators, Bernie Sanders (I-VI) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH), have written to the US Trade Representative demanding that the text of the secret Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement be made public. This is the treaty that allows for criminal sanctions against noncommercial file-sharers, demands border-searches of laptop hard-drives and personal media players and phones for pirated material, requires ISPs to spy on their users, and gives movie and record companies the right to take whole households off the Internet with unsubstantiated allegations of piracy.”*

This secret copyright treaty is pretty black and white to me; we must crush it. The consequences of this treaty are unimaginably dreadful.

For more information you can visit the following links:

The Geek Whisperer: Scary Secret Copyright Treaty: From Music to Purses, This is Bad News

Copyright Watch

The Electronic Frontier Foundation

* BoingBoing: Two US senators demand publication of secret copyright treaty

Bank Robber Eats Evidence in Police Custody

This guy is accused of attempting to rob a bank. He allegedly handed a note to a bank teller demanding money. The video picks up with his arrest and subsequent search.

Enjoy.

Scary Secret Copyright Treaty: From Music to Purses, This is Bad News

To followup yesterday’s post, Copyright, teh Internets & the Future, here’s a bit on the secret international copyright treaty known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).

ACTA is an international copyright treaty that is being negotiated in secret; although a lot of details have been leaked. The sections regarding the Internet are obscenely draconian; three strikes and you lose your right to connect to the Internet for a year. If this passes, I want that applied to major media conglomerates as well. Three misuses of intellectual property and the whole company loses it’s connection.

This video explains the treaty as it exists today, it’s origins, and it’s potential impact. This isn’t the best video, but it does the job. You are on the Internet, and you are reading a blog, so this treaty will harm you. You should watch the video, don’t be ignorant on this issue.

Make no mistake about it, ACTA will impact everyone. We all handle intellectual property on a daily basis, and current copyright law just doesn’t make sense in a post-Internet world (see yesterday’s post for more on that).

How can the US Government participate in secret negotiations for a treaty that will directly impact so many American’s? This isn’t some right wing thing pro business thing, this is the Obama Administration (not that I care for either side, but some of you do).

Current copyright law turns everyone into a criminal.

Kill ACTA. Reform copyright law.

Copyright, teh Internets & the Future

Copyright law has fascinated me since high school. I read a lot about it, I understand it (fairly well), I have a lot of informed opinions on it, but I have never been able to articulate my ideas on the subject in the way that I am confident.

Fortunately, law professor and Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig does it for me. His presentation perfectly explains Copyright law, then he breaks it down in ways that make so much sense. So much more sense then I could ever make. Not only that, the presentation uses PowerPoint in fun ways.

This isn’t short, but if you have any curiosity or interest in Copyright law and how it impacts you, watch this video. If you don’t have a lot of time, watch the first twelve minutes, and the last five; you won’t regret it.

“No Doubt” & Courtney Love Need to Stop Suing Activision

“No Doubt” is suing Band Hero (and Guitar Hero) maker Activision over their appearance in the game (GameSpy).

Allegedly, the band’s contract with Activision dictates that the band member’s avatars can only be used on their own songs, but they are fully playable characters in the game. This means that players can appear as say, Gwen Stefani on any song in the game.

Apparently this is damaging to the members of “No Doubt.”

Someone screwed up badly, and only time will tell who it was. Either…

1. “No Doubt’s” lawyers dropped the ball or…
2. Activision breached their contract.

I don’t know how it actually went down, but either way, this is pathetic.

At the end of the day, I don’t see how the members of “No Doubt” are actually damaged and deserving of financial reward on account of this, but I’m sure their lawyers would be happy to explain why I’m wrong. By the same token, Activision needs to get their shit together and make sure that the artists that they put in their games understand, and are happy with their role within it, as the very same thing happened with Guitar Hero 5, and their use of Kurt Cobain.

Speaking of the late Mr. Cobain…

Cobain’s wife Courtney Love complained that the ability for players to use Cobain on any song in the game, including a lot of pop and electro-crap that he probably would hate was damaging to his legacy. Normally I would agree. Cobain was a revolutionary figure in music, popular culture, hell, culture in general. Having him play a song like “Play That Funky Music” is degrading. Then I saw this commercial for Nicktoons that is set to Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Sorry, I can’t embed this one, but it’s worth watching).*

I’m sure that the same lawyer who approved the deal with Activision over Cobain’s appearance along with the song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in Guitar Hero 5, had to approve the deal with Nicktoons as well. I can’t imagine that Cobain would have liked that commercial.

So, “No Doubt” & Courtney Love, let’s cut this shit out. Everyone got paid and these games introduce the music of “No Doubt” and Nirvana to a younger generation. Everyone is making money, and that’s all that you folks really want at this point.

* That commercial really does break my heart.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” ~V

FCC Win

Today the FCC proposed a number of net neutrality guidelines that most notably include prohibiting broadband providers from “discriminating against content or applications, and mandate transparent network management” (Engadget).

It’s nice to see a government agency leaning towards personal freedom.

Of course, this isn’t law or policy and there is a good chance there will be any number of loopholes for broadband providers to exploit.

It reminds me of a bit from Lewis Black’s stand-up routine about Enron. He said something along these lines:

“If you have a company, and you can’t explain in one sentence… what it does. It’s illegal.”

This may seem incredibly simplistic, but what’s wrong with using this language?

“It is not permissible for a broadband provider to discriminate against content or applications. Discriminating against content or applications will result in the following penalties…”

Why do we have to make this so complicated that it will be ineffective?

The Digital TV Conversion

Across the United States analog television will go away for good as of June 12, 2009, so long as it isn’t pushed back again like it was in February (I sincerely doubt that the digital conversion will be delayed again).

If you are reading this site you probably know about the conversion, but this is one of those tech issues where I ask that you keep an eye out for people who don’t know; the elderly in particular.

If you are receiving your television from a cable, phone, or satellite provider you should be fine even if you don’t have a digital television. The box does the conversion for you.

You will need a converter if you are using a television that has an antenna or you are using a roof-based antenna to receive your television signal.

Not too bad right?

Be kind and help those who aren’t in the know.

President Obama: Pirate-in-Chief???

Last week President Obama gave Queen Elizabeth II an iPod with 40 show tunes as a gift.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that the President probably violated the iTunes terms of service as a result of giving her the gift. At the very least it is incredibly ambiguous.

I took a look at the terms of service for myself and they are absolutely correct that there seems to be no real answer about who owns the music after a user pays for it.

I recommend reading the original EFF post because it clearly explains the problems and ambiguity with our current intellectual property laws. Any attempt to improve upon their post would be a total waste of your time and mine.

This just goes to show you how ill-equipped our legal system is for present and future technology.

"YES WE CAN accidentally violate ambiguous terms of service agreements!"

Phoenix Police Terrorize Critical Blogger

The police out in Arizona are pretty ridiculous. I’ve seen some pretty loopy things in Phoenix and heard a ton of stories about how vicious the authorities can be in that desert city… but this is absolutely insane:

In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

Pataky started his blog a month before his own harassment trial to rant against the police. He felt he had been wrongfully charged and ultimately a judge agreed.

After the charges were dropped Pataky was going to shut down the site when he began receiving tips from people within the Phoenix Police Department about police wrongdoing. The site has been highly critical of the Phoenix Police Department ever since – they have between 50 and 100 active and retired police sources.

Now in what appears to be an act of retaliation the Phoenix Police have confiscated his belongings and charged him with both “petty theft” and “computer tampering with the intent to harass.” No affidavits have been produced to establish probable cause for the charges or the search and seizure.

Unless there is some deeper story it seems that Phoenix Police are trying to terrorize Pataky into ceasing his criticism.

I recommend reading the whole story over at “Photography is Not a Crime.”

If the Phoenix Police have no substantive evidence of real wrongdoing on the part of Pataky, this is absolutely unacceptable.

Nuff said.

No Gadgets During Takeoff & Landing

I spent most of this past week visiting my younger brother in Arizona. On the flight back I had the great fortune to sit two seats away from an extraordinarily loud and obnoxious man. He happened to work in the same field that I do and claimed that he had great success… and oh boy was he a talker, and that’s coming from a guy who can talk your ear off. Seriously, the guy didn’t shut up until he passed out halfway through the flight. 

Wave to Eddie!

His many angry and inescapable monologues which he directed at me included everything from career advice, to his wife’s “excessive spending habits” (she sitting between us… I cannot tell you how awkward that was), to how “women are destroying the workplace,” to his rage over having to turn his cellphone off during air travel.

In an effort to cope with this guy’s schmucky, misogynistic diatribes I started to write this post in my mind. He was upset that he couldn’t use his cellphone on the plane (among many other things).

If I though that he would have listened I would have explained to him that the reason portable electronics aren’t allowed during takeoff and landing is because there is a concern that they could interfere with communications systems (which are crucial during takeoff and landing). There doesn’t seem to be any conclusive studies that confirm that electronics pose a threat to communications systems, however the FAA and Congress feel that on the outside chance they can cause a problem, it is better to annoy passengers for the first 20 and last 10 minutes of a flight by making them turn everything off instead of crashing a plane and killing everyone on board.

As far as the general cellphone ban on airplanes is concerned, it seems to have more to do with a general dislike of cellphone yappers in close quarters. This issue is still up for political debate. Personally, I think there are enough annoyances on flights: the screaming baby, the guy who hasn’t bathed in a week, the kid who keeps kicking your seat, or the ass who won’t stop ranting at you. I don’t really want to add the self-important business person who can’t put down his/her phone, or the chatty teenybopper who can’t sever the connections with her BFF during a flight to the list of “people you don’t want to sit near.” But that’s just me.

To answer the question of safety, I doubt that anyone’s Nintendo DS, cellphone, iPod, or laptop will bring down an airliner. If that were the case, it probably would have already happened. Plenty of people forget to turn these devices off or they turn on in your bag or pocket. So rest easy, your phone isn’t going to make the plane crash.

For more on this, you can read WiseGeek.

“I Demand One Million Dollars”

Engadget is reporting that a Yale student named Jesse Maiman has filed a lawsuit against US Airways over the loss of his allegedly modified XBox 360… and in case the title didn’t give it away, he is suing for $1,000,000 on account of lost property and emotional damage. 

US Airways has pointed out that “the federal limit of liability for lost luggage top out at $3,300, but that electronics checked in luggage are specifically excluded from liability.”

Everything about this is screwed up!

Jesse Maiman - Get a grip. A million dollars? Really? You are either a very funny guy or a total jackass.

US Airways - Electronics checked in luggage are excluded from liability? So that means that your employees can freely steal our electronics without any recourse. That’s pretty low, especially now that you are charging for checked bags.

The lesson

Don’t bring unnecessary electronics onto airplanes, and if you bring it with you as carryon.

Empty Graves for the Entertainment Industries

This cartoon does a good job of showing how alarmist we get over new media:

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. For the most part, mediums don’t die. Some will shrink or augment with the passage of time, but they don’t really die.

Formats like VHS or floppy disks die because they are overtaken by similar, more up-to-date technologies, but the mediums can evolve… if their owners let them.

Make no mistake about it, the music industry will have to evolve or die. Artists will always make music and they don’t necessarily need the stodgie old record labels like Warner Music Group to make money.

Google Execs on Trial in Italy

Another insane court case has emerged over the use of technology. This time it’s in Italy, so I have no idea how their courts work, but I do know that chargers are ridiculous.

In 2006 a few kids teased a child with Down syndrome and video recorded it. They subsequently posted the video to YouTube. After being notified, Google removed the video and helped to make sure that the kids who did this were punished (Which they deserved).

Here’s where it gets loopy.

Some prosecutor in Italy has filed criminal chargers against four Google executives arguing that they should never have allowed for the publication of this video in the first place (If Italy’s election system is anything like ours, the prosecutor probably has plans to run for higher office).

The main issue is that the child in the video did not consent to being in the video.

Basically, there is an Internet full of user-generated/ user-created content, some legal, some illegal, and some that rests in the gray area between the two. You can’t hold Google accountable for content illegally posted by a user. Especially when they assisted in removing the video after they were asked to do so.

That would criminalize web site operation or require all web site operators to screen every piece of data posted. All that should be required is what Google did – take down illegal content when they are notified.  It’s not like they are operating some kiddy porn site where the purpose is sinister and all of the content is illegal. It is the fault of the people who posted the video. Punish them.

This is like filing charges against a shop owner because one customer robbed another in the store.

Hopefully justice prevails in this case. 

Be Vewwy, Vewwy Quiet… I’m Taking Sketchy Pics!

Usually when one of our elected officials is proposing a law to regulate the use of technology, I start foaming at the mouth. However, for the first time in a long time, I actually think that a proposed tech-regulation law isn’t bad at all.

Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York thinks that silent cellphone cameras should be illegal and I think he actually has a point.

I’ve seen some creepy people do some sketchy things in classrooms, on trains, and in other public places with cellphone cameras. Silent cellphone cameras allow privacy invading weasels to take pictures without their anyone knowing. 

At least if the camera makes noise, people will see the person taking the picture.

The big problem with this is that it isn’t enforceable. For one thing, there are so many silent camera phones out there. A new law would only ensure that future camera phones are noisy. The other problem is that any properly motivated bastard with a voyeuristic streak will be able to find a way to silence their camera phone with either a software hack or a small modification to the hardware. 

Sadly this law can never be truly effective, but the intent and logic are solid and it would deter some less sophisticated or motivated perverts.