[Commons-Law] relay

Via: "dwijr"

Via: "Patrice Riemens"

bwo nettime-l/ Alessandro Ludovico


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From: Scott Kildall
Subject: [NetBehaviour] Wikipedia challenges "Wikipedia Art"

Hi everyone,

I have been keeping quiet about this development until today.

A brief history: On February 14th, 2009, Nathaniel Stern and I
launched the Wikipedia Art intervention on Wikipedia, which generated
knots of discussion on what was deemed encyclopedia-worthy. The full
archive of this project is at www.wikipediaart.org.

A few weeks ago, I was sent a letter from the Wikimedia legal counsel
(they run Wikipedia) which challenged the Wikipedia Art project
(specifically the domain name, which I was the registrant of) on the
grounds of trademark infringement since we were using the "Wikipedia"
name in the project. This is despite the fact that the project is a
non-commercial commentary of Wikipedia.

Here is an article written by Corynne McSherry from
the Electronic Frontier Foundation on the Wikimedia
action, in support of the Wikipedia Art project:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/wikipedia-threatens-

And this is a brief legal history along with a personal statement that
we put up on the site: http://wikipediaart.org/legal-history/

It certainly has been an interesting few weeks and in my various
consultations with lawyers, I have learned a *lot* about intellectual
property and cyberlegal issues.

Best wishes,
Scott Kildall
www.kildall.com

Via: Pranesh Prakash

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Dear All,
Taiwan has also jumped on to the three-strikes bandwagon.

The majority of all works on the Internet are copyrighted (everything
except that which is already in the public domain, or has been
dedicated into the public domain, or is startlingly unoriginal). So,
the "interests of the majority of Internet users who have no
intentions of infringing on others' copyrights" will be affected,
since whether they mean to or not, they probably infringe copyright on
an everyday basis.

Regards,
Pranesh

- From
Wednesday, April 22, 2009 9:28 am TWN,
The China Post news staff

Net service providers now can 'strike out' pirating surfers
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The Legislative Yuan ratified yesterday the latest
revision of the Copyright Law to empower Internet service providers
(ISPs) to "strike out" Internet surfers who have violated others'
copyrights and posted unauthorized content on any Web sites.

The new rules will exempt the ISPs from any responsibility for
offenses caused by pirating parties in order to avoid litigation by
copyright owners.

But the service providers will be obliged to inform the pirating
parties about the infringement on the copyrights.

They can suspend part or all services to the pirates after giving
three warnings.

The pirates will still face lawsuits from the copyright owners.

Officials at the Intellectual Property Office said piracy is
comparatively easier because the new technology makes it convenient
for people to duplicate and forward information, pictures, images or
audio files via the Internet.

They said the new rules will discourage the reckless "posting" or
forwarding materials with copyrights.

But the rules should not affect the interests of the majority of
Internet users who have no intention of infringing on others'
copyrights, they said.

When passing the new rules, the lawmakers also adopted a resolution
requiring the Intellectual Property Office to launch an anti-piracy
publicity campaign against copyright infringement.

- --
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283
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Via: Pranesh Prakash

From .

"Norström [the judge] argues that he was not however swayed in his
judgement by involvement with copyright protection groups.

"My view has been that these activities do not constitute a conflict
of interest," Norström told Sveriges Radio.


What about that old adage about justice not only being done, but being
seen to be done as well?

Via: Jeebesh

Via: "Patrice Riemens"

bwo nettime-l / Jaromil



re all,

As some of you might already have heard, the second appeal to the
Pirate Bay courtcase ended up with the conviction of four people
behind the popular bittorrent tracker and website, Alan Toner give us
two extensive accounts about the situation on his blog:

http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/2009/04/17/pirate-bay-defendants-convicted/

http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/more-on-the-pirate-bay-conviction/

Further below you'll find the statement that the Internet Society
Philippines Chapter released about the happenings. What I find
particularly interesting about the point of view offered by ISOC-PH
president Fatima Lasay is the deep awareness of political implications
in this and other similar court cases also quoted, for which the
Pirate Bay case covers a prominent role.

Seen from an Asian perspective, the criminalising campaigns lead by
Western business interests represent a worrying threat to the
planetary opening that "peer to peer" cultures and practices provide
for developing countries.

Behind the surface of this court case lies a tension that lasts since
several centuries in history, as the historical account of professor
Boron Ben-Altar outlines in his book "Trade Secrets: Intellectual
Piracy and the Origins of American Industrial Power" (obviously
intended as North American here).

Almost 2 years ago I've done my best exploring the topic from the
perspective of "border economies", as well outlining the complementary
dynamic of loss of privacy for Internet citizens.

http://jaromil.dyne.org/journal/piracy_privacy.html

Going further in connecting dots, let me now mention that these
dynamics are evolving into a worrying threat to free speech and wide
access to media offered by contemporary participative technologies, as
outlined by the European campaign http://www.blackouteurope.eu

As Alan documents in his reports a popular uprise is raising
specifically on the PB case, still as a symptom of the wider concerns
it raises: examples are the "#fullboycott" campaign launched by
Monochrom activists http://www.monochrom.at/fullboycott as well the
dedication of the First Internet Pavilion at the Venice Biennial to
The Pirate Bay cause noticed by Miltos Manetas on this list.

Obviously the Pirate Bay court case is not just a concern for the
Swedish jurisdiction: it is configuring as a crucial node for the
evolution of knowledge sharing policies on a planetary scale, for
which it is extremely important to take into account an Asian
perspective offered by the document that follows.

Via: Pranesh Prakash

The famous New Delhi-based IP lawyer's created a board game around
intellectual property law. Go get your own copy now! (Or as soon as
it hits the markets.) And it's an "open source game". You are free
to take inspiration from it (which, it seems, is not permissible
otherwise under the rules of IPR). Oh, and the currency used is
"A,nas", standing for Anand & Anand.

Via: Pranesh Prakash

Dear all,
The Centre for Internet and Society cordially invites you to a talk on
"Internet, Transparency and Politics" by Barun Mitra on Wednesday,
April 15, 2009 at 17:00.

Description:
The 2009 general elections in India have been preceded by various
initiatives that seek to provide information to the voters about
candidates contesting the elections. The aim of providing this
information is to help voters to make 'informed choices' when casting
their votes. This talk is being organized in the context of the
research that CIS-RAW fellow Zainab Bawa is carrying out on "Internet,
Transparency and Politics". Why has the Internet become an important
space for publishing information that is streamlined for facilitating
interaction between citizens and the state? What is the impact of
making such information available to citizens? How does it transform
their relationship with political actors and government agencies?
Simultaneously, how are elected representatives and political parties
responding to these 'transparency' initiatives?

About the Speaker:
Barun Mitra is the Director of Liberty Institute, a think-tank based
in Delhi. He has conceptualized EmpoweringIndia.org to enable voters
to cast their votes thoughtfully during the elections and to use the
information on the site to hold their elected representatives
accountable after they have been voted in. Barun Mitra also writes on
issues of environment, health, trade and democracy in national and
international publications.

Time and Date:
Wednesday, 15th April, 2009
17:00 - 18:30

Venue:
Centre for Internet and Society, No. D2, 3rd Floor, Shariff Chambers,
14, Cunningham Road, Bangalore - 560052
Map: http://bit.ly/cis-map

For more details, visit
http://www.cis-india.org/events/internet-transparency-and-politics

Via: Venkatesh Hariharan

Pranesh Prakash wrote:
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/should-open-source-licence-ever-be-patent-agnostic
>
> Should an Open Source Licence Ever Be Patent-Agnostic?
> April 9th, 2009 by Glyn Moody

Pranesh, thanks for posting this. My comments on Glyn's post is below.

Venky
=====

Dear Glyn,

I agree with you that the open source community should stand up to the
"sheer brinkmanship on the part of the media industries" as you call
it. More and more countries are hardening their stance against
software patents and the US remains one of the few countries that
continues to grant software patents. Even in the US, the voices for
reform are growing. Bessen and Meurer's research
(http://www.researchoninnovation.org/) shows that software patents
lead to litigation and actually prevent innovation. Even in the US,
the recent Bilski case goes against business method patents, which are
closely related to software patents.

The larger issue is that standards should belong to humanity and
should not be controlled by individuals or companies. We do not pay
for standards like weights and measures in the physical world and we
should not pay for standards in the digital world either. Governments
across the world are mandating open standards because public data
should be in public formats and not private formats like MPEG. This
will eventually tilt the balance of power in favor of open standards.

The dot com bust proved that the digital world cannot violate the laws
of economics. The open standards movement will prove that the digital
world cannot violate the norms of civil society.

Via: Pranesh Prakash

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/should-open-source-licence-ever-be-patent-agnostic

Should an Open Source Licence Ever Be Patent-Agnostic?
April 9th, 2009 by Glyn Moody

Sharing lies at the heart of free software, and drives much of its
incredible efficiency as a development methodology. It means that
coders do not have to re-invent the wheel, but can borrow from
pre-existing programs. Software patents, despite their name, are about
locking down knowledge so that it cannot be shared without permission
(and usually payment). But are there ever circumstances when software
patents that require payment might be permitted by an open source
licence? That's the question posed by a new licence that is being
submitted to the Open Source Inititative (OSI) for review.

It arises out of work to create a reference implementation of the MPEG
eXtensible Middleware (MXM) standard. This aims

>to promote the extended use of digital media content through increased interoperability and accelerated development of components, solutions and applications. This is achieved by specifying

>1.The MXM architecture
>2.The MXM components (by reference)
>3.The MXM components APIs
>4.The MXM applications API
>5.The inter-MXM communication protocols

More details can be found here.

The proposed licence is closely modelled on the Mozilla Public Licence
(MPL). In his submission to the OSI, the well-known free software
activist Carlo Piana explains the key difference:

>As you will notice, we have removed some of the patent conditions that existed in the MPL. This is because none of the contributors would have accepted to encapsulate their patents in a FOSS license without the ability to ask for a license separately from the copyright. This is a basic tenet that is enshrined in the so-called ISO/IEC Directives for the development of International Standards. Some of you might know about my public stance against software patents and my approval to some of the licenses which impose implied licensing to or patent retaliation against all who distribute FOSS software while relying on patent protection. However, the sad truth is that if we did not offer a patent-agnostic license we would have made all efforts to have an open source reference implementation moot.

He adds:

>I have insisted and obtained, however, that an explicit patent covenant be inserted, to the effect to exclude from any patent concern all who don't distribute the compiled version of the software and to those who compile it only for internal purposes without direct commercial exploitation. This covenant being irrevocable, unconditioned and detached from the copyright licensing conditions. I have asked myself if this could work and if it complied with the OSI definition. My final conclusion is that if the BSD family is considered compliant, so shall be the MXM, as it does not condition the copyright grant to the obtaining of the patents, just as the BSD licenses don't deal with them. And insofar an implementer is confident that the part of the code it uses if free from the patented area, or it decided to later challenge the patent in case an infringement litigation is threatened, the license works just fine.

Beyond the question of whether the proposed MXM licence complies with
the OSI definition from a legal point of view, there is a much larger
issue of whether it is true to its spirit – and whether we want open
source licences to accommodate software patents.

As I wrote above, software patents are fundamentally antithetical to
the free sharing of information, and so allowing their presence in an
open source licence seems to be tantamount to blessing their negation
of that ideal. More generally, explicitly permitting them in an
OSI-approved licence is bound to be exploited by those that support
software patents, especially in places like Europe where they are not
currently permitted.

The argument will go that the MXM licence shows clearly that software
patents and open source are not incompatible, and that the former can
be accommodated provided a suitable licence is chosen. This would
therefore undermine efforts to use open source as one argument against
allowing software patents in national and international standards, for
example. It would allow those endorsing software patents to claim to
be open source, while other licences – notably the GNU GPL – would be
excluded. This would lead to a complete dilution of what the open
source definition is meant to stand for.

The main argument in favour of permitting software patents in an open
source licence seems to be the pragmatic one that if they are not
allowed, then the MXM reference implementation will not be released
under an open source licence. But this is sheer brinkmanship on the
part of the media industries, who are effectively making a threat to
the open source community, saying that unless software patents are
allowed, they will not permit open source implementations.

But as history has shown, the best way to deal with bullies is to
stand up to them. The reason that an open source licence is even being
considered by organisations that in the past would never have
contemplated such a move is that they fully recognise the power and
utility of open source; in short, they *want* this code to be open
source, because it is the most efficient way of driving uptake. They
need us more than we need them.

So, in my view, the OSI should not give in to this blackmail, but
should stand firm on the fundamental principle that software patents
are an unmitigated harm for free software. It should reject the
current proposed licence, and insist that if the MPEG Working Group
wishes to benefit from open source, it should play by open source's
rules.