The Goings On in France

First published here.

France will probably not legalize file sharing.

Sorry, but that's the way it is. The headlines screaming about France giving the green light to file sharers have been quite misleading, but there's still some hope to be found.

For those unfamiliar with the French government, there's a lower house called the National Assembly, just like the US Congress, the Australian House of Representatives or the British House of Commons. There's also an upper house called the Senate, just like the US Senate, the Australian Senate or the British House of Lords.

Now, in France (just like everywhere else really), if you're a member of the lower house and don't turn up for work, they just carry on without you. That's what happened in this case: everyone was away for Christmas and a handful of renegades who stayed behind jammed a "pro-p2p" amendment into a bill about intellectual property rights.

The French Culture Minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres has already asked that the debate be re-opened, so the pro-p2p part will probably be taken out before the whole thing goes before the French Senate to sign off on...and the French Senate doesn't have to sign off on it anyway: they can send it back to the National Assembly with a "Get Stuffed!" note stuck on the front, (or more, likely a "Va te faire foutre" note).

So everyone who was about to rush off and find a French proxy service, don't bother.

Yet.

One of the most striking issues of this development is the numbers. Only around 10% of the members of the National Assembly were there for the vote but in total, more than 5% of the people who make the laws in France said file sharing for personal use was a good idea. There may be more, too: 519 of the members of the National Assembly weren't around to vote, but will get a chance to when the vote is opened up again. When the the issue comes up a second time, the people of France will get to see who backs their interests and who sides with the (mainly American) corporations.

One other thing worth noting is the entertainment industry, represented by the likes of Walt Disney, Viacom and News Corp's Fox, say downloading TV shows and movies will cost them $5 billion in revenue this year. The thing here is, it won't cost them five billion bucks.

It won't even cost them five bucks.

It may mean they won't make $5 billion dollars, but that's in no way similar to having $5 billion in the bank and having someone come and take it away from you. This is because you can't lose something you never had in your possession in the first place.

For instance, I didn't hand over my cash to pay for a Britney Spears CD, so the music store didn't lose any money. They just didn't make as much as they might have if I had bought a Britney Spears CD, which I assure you (and them) will never happen.

This is where the entertainment industry seems to get confused and demonstrates its poor understanding of economics: they just expect people will hand over the moolah. Some Hollywood executive wakes up every morning believing that by the end of the day, his company will have sold X million DVDs and X million movie tickets.

Not any more.

The movie studio hasn't actually lost anything tangible, they simply had poor sales forecasts. They still have the movie sitting on a reel of film somewhere too, so it's not as if they can't crank up the projectors in the executive movie theatre and watch the film themselves.

"Someone stole my movie off the internet" is not the same as "someone stole my wallet in the carpark".

I don't know about you, but I feel insulted when I find out someone was really counting on me to buy something and then gets shitty at me when I don't. It's the same feeling I get when a telemarketer phones me up and then calls me an idiot for not jumping at his fantastic deal of a lifetime. The telemarketer should be able to deal with rejection as he's using an active selling technique where I actually have the opportunity to say "Va te faire foutre", but when big media companies simply stick up a bunch of posters, run TV commercials and then complain through the nose about how We The People are "stealing" from them, I get really annoyed.

So as and when the French government removes the "legal file sharing" amendment from the DADVSI bill, don't think of it as a loss to Big Media.

Look at the shitstorm it created and take heart in knowing that governments will soon have to take these issues seriously, just like they had to when the French people rejected the proposed European Constitution in May this year.

Sooner or later, We The People will get what's due to us.

And it will be sweet.

Don't Buy CDs This Christmas!

First published here.

"Mein Gott!" I said to myself in a bad German accent. I was reading the Wall Street Journal's latest piece on the music industry's imminent death-by-a-thousand-cuts. Just to be sure I wasn't barking up the wrong tree, I called up a stock broker friend to make sure my understanding of the free market wasn't as screwed up as the RIAA's seems to be.

"What happens to an existing monopoly when the market is opened up to it's competitors?" I asked

"Well, the first thing that happens is the share price of the company with the monopoly takes a hit. The market has to deal with a lot more new information about the industry sector, because there is more competition. Basically the whole thing is a mess for a while until everyone works out who the biggest player is going to be; whether the old monopoly can keep it's market share or if the new companies have taken such a big chunk of the action that the original leader has lost their dominance," was his answer.

"What is a market correction then?" I asked.

"In that situation? There would be a correction happening when the market takes the new players into account and the share price of the monopoly goes down. A correction is basically a reality check."

"How's the new iPod?"

"Oh, you're talking about the music industry! (Note: This kind of quick thinking is the reason he makes about thirty times the amount of money I do every year). Yeah, they're going to have some issues to work out over the next few years. Some of the smart ones will get through it, but a lot of the guys I work with think there'll be some big falls. I'm betting there'll be at least one big implosion. There's too much money and too much disruptive technology out there for someone not to go out with a bang".

Okay, so it wasn't just me thinking the music industry is coming out with the usual crap. At a first glance, their "nearly 20%" drop in sales looks legit. I wonder why that is? I sat down and had a think about it:

To start with, it seems my personal boycott is working! I do have to give some credit to the tens of thousands of other people who also refuse to buy music from major producers who back extremist legal wars on ordinary people, but for the moment I'd like to think a lot of it's down to me.

I also happened to glance at the all important Top 20 this week. Anyone else who saw it won't have any trouble figuring out why people aren't buying music. Interestingly, a comparison with the top ten highest grossing music tours this year shows that all the top touring acts are more than a decade old. Ah, the good old days!

That 40%-down-over-Thanksgiving thing was kind of weird. Wait a minute...when did the Sony rootkit fiasco start going down? Mark Russinovich broke the news on October 31st, right? And Thanksgiving was on the 24th of November this year, right? So the CD buying public in the US had a good three weeks to freak out about CD manufacturers putting easily hacked spyware on their precious PCs before the Thanksgiving holiday came along.

Just so we're all clear, the big record companies got caught trying to fuck over their customers, right before the biggest shopping season of the year. Smart move guys.

What I think the music industry needs now is a good old Commie shake up. It needs to be nationalized. For those too young to remember, this is what used to happen when an important industry was being managed by knuckleheads and started going down the toilet: the government would take over running it. You know all those public assets that the politicians keep selling off? They used to be "nationalized industries".

Now the music industry keeps telling us how important it is, so we should obviously take their word for it. Being vitally important, it seems the music industry needs some guidance through these troubling times. I mean, look what happens when you have a privatised energy market *cough* Enron *cough*.

It looks like the "creative industries" are faced with three choices:

1. Keep doing what they're doing now (my mate the stock broker knows some great bankruptcy lawyers if anyone should need them).

2. Hand the entire lot over for the governments to sort out (he also knows some exellent people who specialize in fraud and incompetence cases).

3. Be creative (Oh! The irony!) and work through it.

Whatever happens, I won't be buying any music this Christmas and I've specially asked my friends and family not to buy any for me either.

Instead, I'll be giving an amount equal to the price of a full CD to the Salvation Army.

There are people out there who really need my cash this Christmas, and they're certainly not billion dollar record companies.

May the best candidate win

Originally published here.

In sending its troops into Iraq, the US government engaged in an aggressive foreign policy under which it could go to war with another country because it had decided that country posed a "credible threat" to the American people.

This kind of action used to be called "attacking" or launching a "pre-emptive strike".

Whether you agree with the US being in Iraq or not, its presence there hasn't been challenged in any material way. Countries such as France and Germany have made strong statements against the actions and the United Nations isn't too happy either. But nothing has actually been done to stop the "pre-emptive strike" policy from being carried out.

So, here's the world according to the US: it's now OK to take an active part in the internal politics of another country, and it's also OK to change that country's government if you don't like it.

That's the extreme end of the spectrum, but everyone is aware American politics affect the rest of the world in much more subtle ways as well.

Take The Pirate Bay for example.

Its "Legal Threats" page is filled with take-down notices and other "orders" from US law firms. Also included on the page are The Pirate Bay's responses, which politely remind the lawyers that US laws don't apply in Sweden where the famous BitTorrent tracker is hosted (The response with instructions for where a lawyer should insert a retractable baton is my personal favourite.) The fact that an American legal firm would send a take-down notice to a Swede is quite intriguing. From reading these take-down notices, the cartel lawyers seem actually to expect to be taken seriously!

Nor is The Pirate Bay alone. Cogeco, a Canadian ISP, was also sending warnings under America's DMCA. Needless to say, the Hollywood-inspired act has no weight in Canada, although the entertainment and software cartels are doing everything they can to change that

Unfortunately, however, also now pending are several cases where US law firms are attempting to extradite foreign nationals who have never set foot on American soil but who have (according to the lawyers) committed criminal offences in the US.

This is why the rest of the world takes US politics so seriously - they affect non-Americans too!

Australia, for instance, recently signed a Free Trade Agreement with the United States which will result not only in Australia importing more American media, but American intellectual property laws as well. This is called "harmonization of the laws" and means some politician in another country gets to decide what I'm allowed to do with my CD collection.

I don't even get a chance to vote for or against this politician, and this is troubling to me because there are some real wackos in office over there.

Take Orrin Hatch for example. He made headlines in the tech world a while ago when he said copyright holders should have the ability to destroy the computers of people who violate their intellectual property rights - a couple of warnings via email and then BANG goes your motherboard.

Hatch has also been instrumental in getting copyright extended so far that most people reading this will either have two kids and a mortgage or be dead by the time they're allowed to use WWII era film footage to make a documentary. Hatch recieves a lot of money from the entertainment industry for doing this too.

A quick back-of-the-envelope number crunch shows that a $3,000 PC could be destroyed after three "violations". This puts the value of each potentially infringing file at $1,000, when an "authorized" copy could be bought for $1.00. Therefore, every violation of intellectual property is punishable-by-destruction to the value of one thousand times it's official market value. Even common law (upon which US law is based) says this is excessive. To view this in layman's terms, just ask: "Does the punishment fit the crime?"

It so happens that Swedish law isn't based on common law. But had Hatch's scheme beenallowed, it's highly probably that an IP lawyer in New York would be pushing buttons and nuking servers and PCs all over the world. If the lawyer believes he or she can legally send "take down" notices to foreign countries, the remote destruction of your computer could simply be the next "tool in the fight against piracy".

Among those challenging Orrin Hatch for his seat in the US senate is Pete Ashdown, and from reading his interview with p2pnet Ashdown seems to be a great choice for anyone who values their digital rights (such as free speech online). That includes you, but unfortunately only US citizens can donate money to help his campaign effort. Only people living in Utah can actually vote for him.

I wouldn't want to buy this guy into office anyway. I don't think lots of cash and expensive lawyers are the right way to get things done either, because those are the tactics used by the worst elements of the entertainment industries - the trade organizations who behave like the Mafia or the drug lords, doing favours for their corrupt friends and sabotaging their enemies in back room dealings with sleazy characters.

I believe in fairness, open discussion, the opportunity to achive something on your own.

I still don't want American laws to be exported to the country I live in because they're American laws, and shouldn't apply to me. This is also why a US state election has to remain a US state election.

But that being said, from what I've seen and read of Pete Ashdown, he really does have the interests of Utah's people at heart. People - everywhere - should be aware of that and hope that they are lucky enough to find a similar person to represent them in government, wherever that may be.

I wish Pete Ashdown the best of luck and hope that the best candidate wins.

FreeWANs - Part II

Originally published here.

Ready to start building your own free (as in open) internet?

As one regular p2pnet reader pointed out, there are always "government departments that regulate what parts of the frequency "spectrum" are used by who, and what for. Well, we know that 802.11 is the standard for local-area networks and operates within the unlicenced 2.4 GHz frequency band. The 802.15.4 standard also uses unlicenced frequency bands - 2.4GHz, 915MHz and 868MHz. There are the standards used by our mesh network.

Blocking or banning usage of the 2.4GHz band would defeat the purpose of having Wi-Fi enabled anything, so the worst case scenario involves a government requiring all users of the 2.4GHz band to have a licence. This would also include people with certain cordless phones and microwave ovens. Because the 2.4GHz band is becoming increasingly noisy with all the Wi-Fi users, the task of licensing home users would become very difficult. This problem would be compounded by all the little gadgets that have appeared which can connect to a PC via Wi-Fi ------ USB flash drives, webcams, security cameras. You name it and somebody has built one that can connect to something else via Wi-Fi.

Finding any device using a radio frequency is relativly simple - it's done by getting two receivers to listen to the transmission, pointing them in the direction where the signal is strongest, and then refining the signal on the receiver to find the missing point in the triangle created by the three devices.

The good news is that to be legally able to do this with any type of accuracy, you need to have a really cool job with the government, preferably with an FBI-type agency. And there's a very good reason for this: if anybody can do it, someone might do it to the FBI-type agency and they don't like the idea of anyone with a few radio receivers knowing where they are (like in the car across the street a drug dealer's house).

Unless the government in question is willing to pay for lots of two-person teams with expensive equipment and cars to carry them about, we'd be unlikely to see any serious attempt at locating unlicensed Wi-Fi transmitters. This government could always authorize someone else to do the tracking, but that would compromise law enforcement.

We also must remember that our hypothetical (at time of writing) mesh network is very ad-hoc. Nodes could be programmed to go offline at random intervals, making signal tracking a hit-and-miss affair. Ethernet cables can also be used too, so taking out a series of mote nodes would not necessarily hurt the traffic flow if it can be re-routed along some Cat-5 cable running between two buildings and then back into a Wi-Fi signal. Perhaps a mote node sitting up a tree with a 2GB flash drive attached? And let's not forget the cheap laptop with a solar panel and a wireless network card sitting under a sheet of plastic on top of an old warehouse.

And at the end of the day, if the multi-billion corporate machines can't stop some kid sending an mp3 to his friends, what chance to they have in stopping people from dropping wireless motes all over the place?

That's right kids, it's p2p for real. But who builds this amazing thing? The same people who build the current p2p networks - the users.

People experiment with stuff. People are generous with their knowledge. People come up weird things, like modded Xboxes, Bluetooth sniper rifles and hacks for Sony's robotic dog, Aibo. Perhaps you've just remembered the capabilities of that wireless chip in your old PDA ------ you know, the one with 802.11 conectivity...

I don't know about you, but I'd be happy to spend a few hundred bucks buying hardware to scatter around my neighbourhood.

I wonder how long it'll take for this to start happening, considering that all this hardware is already commercially available and just waiting for some clever hackers to get stuck into?

If you feel like checking out some of the gear thats around, the following should point you in the right direction.

Get hacking!

• Intel - Publicly Available Devices Based on Intel XScale Technology
  
• Moteiv - US manufacturer of motes. Also designs custom software for mote sensor networks. Check out the online shop.
  
• Crossbow Technology - Wide range of customizable motes. Check out the online shop.
  
• TinyOS - The Open Source Operating System that powers most commercialy available motes.
  
• TinyDB - Home of "a query processing system for extracting information from a network of TinyOS sensors".
  
• An Atlas Of Cyberspace - Topology maps of various networks, including the global Internet, Gnutella and IPv6 test networks. (This is what the networks look like).
  
• $100 Wireless Laptop - Program to give computers to children in developing nations. Devices designed to be capable of forming wireless mesh networks for internet access.

FreeWANs - Part I

Originally published here.

After reading William Keeley's article on setting up a FreeWAN cell, I was intrigued by the possibilities of communicating over a network of FreeWAN cells. Would it be possile to connect to one outpost cell and use it to "hop" to another? Could a network of FreeWAN cells become searchable? Could this type of network be shut down in an instant by some nasty government authority?

After a little bit of digging and it seems the answers come in at: Yes, Yes and Not Really. Here's the low down.

Mesh Networks

Mesh networking is entirly based on small, self organising nodes working to create a decentralised wireless network. Take Gnutella and imagine it existing in the physical world - that's mesh networking.

The US Department of Defense has been mucking around in this field of communications since the early 1970s and is currently working on a fully fledged mesh network called the Joint Tactical Radio System for deployment in the next few years.

And what exactly do these nodes for mesh networks look like?

Obviously, that's just the controller chip, but basically, you can squeeze a outdoor-network-ready mote node down to the size of a USB flash drive. Due to the extremely small size, power usage can be a problem but a three-year working life on 2xAA batteries ain't too bad now, is it?

Some designs currently in development are even able to supplement their batteries by drawing power from vibrations in the environment around them, like those watches that get power from the movement of your wrist. Remembering where you left your mote three years ago may be a problem, but luckily there are many GPS options available to help you locate the little buggers for battery changes.

Many of these commercial grade motes run on the 802.15.4 wireless network band, with speeds of up to 250 kbps. Intel has actually been looking at mesh networks quite seriously, and have been conducting some very interesting research. For instance, Intel's EcoSense project has been looking at "how to network large numbers of inexpensive wireless sensor nodes while maintaining a high level of network performance." They came up with some cool ideas too.

Heterogeneous Networks

In another example of a multi-billion dollar company "discovering" things that were developed ages ago by Open Source programmers, Intel has worked out what an Ultrapeer is.

By taking a mesh network of low power motes and overlaying a series of high powered Intel XScale based nodes, the performance of the network can be significantly increased. The XScale mote also solves the problem of getting data from an 802.15.4 network onto the 802.11 part of the spectrum.

Experiments with the XScale overlay show that mesh networks can be greatly improved by the presence of the Ultrapeer-like nodes (wow!), and by adding even bigger hardware to the network, like a regular home router, the reliability increses even more (who’d have thought it?).

And there we have a bridge to link two FreeWAN cells.

Creating Searchable Networks

Intel takes a leaf from the FLOSS book. Again. Where there's TinyOS, the open source operating system which has become a standard for building mote networks, Intel came up with TinyDB, a query processing system.

"The ultimate goal of TinyDB is to allow people to query sensor networks without having to program them," says Mark Yarvis, the principal investigator for Intel's Heterogeneous Sensor Networking project. "Essentially, TinyDB imposes a database model on top of the sensor networks. Once the model is in place, users can do sensing tasks based on simply posing queries, similar to querying a standard database."

Intel is trying to work out how to optimize a mesh network using TinyDB. "Even in a network of completely homogenous hardware, some nodes may be underutilized. That makes them good places to cache data to handle complex group queries or similar tasks." Any sort of search engine would use the resources of these underutilized nodes, so in a network made up of mixed FreeWAN cells and smaller motes, chances are it will still be a regular PC with a few clock cycles to spare. Kind of like Ultrapeers really, except the resource barrier will be lower with TinyDB code running the show.

Unfortunately, the best application Intel can up with for this type of network is in theme parks. "One potential use is monitoring the quality of water in tanks", according to Intel, but they do make up for the mundane thinking.

"If you're at the park with your kids all day, you could use the (mote accessible) Internet to stay in touch with friends and the office as well. And the kids could download and store information for a school paper. In general, it would provide a way to stay connected," says Lakshman Krishnamurthy, Principal Investigator the Intel EcoSense project.

W00t!

Well, now we know what's possible. Next, we'll look at some of the problems you might face building your own alternative internet.

Studio Execs - Stupid White Men

Originally published here.

"Ok guys, here's my idea. There's a plane which crashes on a small island in the Pacific and the people left alive have to learn how to survive together. Soon, they realize that there's something weird about the island - there's some kind of mysterious creature living there and other strange things going on. It's a world waiting to be explored and we get to see the best and worst sides of the survivors as they discover the island...and themselves.

"Sounds like expensive crap."

"Ok, I have another idea, for a film this time. It's the life story of one of the world's best-known musicians. He has a disability and nobody thinks he'll be able to go very far with it. But he goes from strength to strength until his music is loved by millions and he becomes an international celebrity. Oh, and he's black."

"Black? Won't make any money".

"Alright then, how about we just take one of the most loved stories of the 20th century and film it? I know a great epic story, so the whole project just screams sequels!"

"Hmm...Ok, but only if you squash the story down to one film. Two hours maximum."

What's going on with the big studios? I just described ratings topper and Emmy Award winner "Lost", double Oscar winner "Ray" and Peter Jackson's US$3 billion revenue reaper, The Lord of The Rings.

All three had problems getting into production.

The executive who backed "Lost" left the television network halfway through the filming of the pilot over a disagreement with the network owners. "Ray" was financed with zero help from the studio that released it, and Miramax decided they didn't know enough about big budget films or sequels to make The Lord of the Rings trilogy and wanted to cut it down to a single film.

Is it really that hard to recognise a good idea when it presents itself? Or are media executives just stupid?

Cynicism aside, the answer lies more towards the former - the vast majority of studio executives are middle aged white men who don't represent the general population. Michael Moore explained this phenomenon in his book Stupid Whit Men, and while you many not agree with his politics, it's difficult to find fault with his logic.

How many women come to mind when looking at international politics? Condelleza Rice, Queen Elizabeth...um...oh, whatshername, the Prime Minister of New Zealand. Just about everything else is run by men. We often have little idea who they actually are but they toil away doing their jobs the way most middle aged men would.

It's a well known fact in US politics that you can't win the White House by pitching your policies to white men. The two most important demographics are women (because they make up more than half the population), and "minorities" like latinos and blacks. Actually, white men usually back the losers.

Why then, are we happy to let them run our TV stations and movie studios? Would the quality of our entertainment perhaps improve with a little (or a lot) of input from some different points of view? Why are we letting our creativity and culture be influenced by such conservative, profit driven people?

I can understand why these guys think the way they do: they're not as young as they used to be, they like attractive young women, they never got the chance to blow stuff up or play with big guns. So in essence, they back stories they want to see.

I can understand how they think and feel because I mix with an incredibly diverse group of people: black, white, Asian, men, women, old, young, rich, poor, smart and stupid. I get the benefit from all these different points of view.

We're seeing the games industry get their act together since people realised that women like playing The Sims. It's a different experience for a different audience, which just happens to include an incredibly large number of people.

Wow, who would have thought it. Bring on the best selling PC game of all time.

When Lloyd Braun left ABC after the fight over "Lost", he asked his children whether they'd prefer to give up their TV or their computer. The kids voted to ditch the TV. They must have thought the internet had more to offer them.

Lloyd Braun is now the head of media and entertainment at Yahoo!

There's at least one middle aged white man out there with some kind of an idea about where the world is heading.

Now let's hope we can find a few more.

Best among equals

Originally published here.

In 2001 the Australian government introduced the Innovation Patent to protect lower level inventions which wouldn't normally meet the requirements of a Standard Patent.

This was a fantastic concept for fueling innovation for one simple reason:

The test of an Innovation Patent is that it must show a "substantial contribution to the working of the invention", even if the contribution is an obvious one that could be made by anybody who's skilled in that particular area.

Basically, this means an Innovation Patent holder can say, "Yeah, anybody could have done it, but I was the one who actually did". But because fewer resources are required to make something worthy of a Innovation Patent, the patent holder only gets eight years to exploit their invention instead of the normal 20 years.

As we still live in a "closed" intellectual property based world, this is a great step in giving entrepreneurs and inventors a reason to keep doing their thing. They can take the inventive process one step at a time. By shortening the length of the patent, there's actually a bigger incentive to keep working on the invention and this will be especially beneficial to developers of complicated works such as stem cell based medicines where there may be 40 years worth of work involved before a product is ready for market.

The idea of shorter periods for people to exploit their inventions has actually been coming along quite nicely for more than a decade in "open" intellectual property circles, and it's proving to be damned effective.

In the "open" world the challenges are bigger, yet they're met more often. Developers are constantly helping their competitors, and yet they can still be market leaders. A bright newcomer can destroy the major players with one new concept, while the defeated stalwart can claw its way back to the top just as fast.

Take the eDonkey network.

When MetaMachine released the first version of eDonkey 2000, it was a stunning piece of software and was steadily improved upon. The idea was quickly borrowed and the eMule Project came into being soon after. Being open source, eMule developed at a faster rate and development continued at a frantic pace until it became the dominant client on the eDonkey network.

MetaMachine responded with Overnet, a decentralized version of their network. Again, the concept was borrowed and the word "Kademlia" started working it's way into the online vocabulary. The Kademlia Distributed Hash Table network was jumped on my eMule users and coders alike and not long after it was declared to be "fairly stable," the developers of the popular Azureus BitTorrent client announced they'd worked a Kad-based searching method into their client. Then the official BitTorrent client was quick to announce the implementation of a similar system. Not long after that, poor old MetaMachine announced they had worked out how a user could group a bunch of files together.

In the world of "open" intellectual property, a developer doesn't have to hide his or her work from competitors. "Protection" comes from simply being the best among equals.

Some say that war is the greatest stimulant for innovation, but this can't be true. The US military had more than 30 years to develop the DARPA network, a period during which a bitter Cold War was waged and threats against America multiplied dramatically. The end result was a communications tool that could only be operated by highly trained and exceptionally skilled technicians.

Enter the CERN academic who wanted a convenient way to organize his research notes, and HTML was born. Ten years later we can communicate with anyone, anywhere. And thankfully, even the traditional "closed" intellectual property system is working its way towards a more open working environment.

Where fast moving development is the key to success, an Innovation Patent is an excellent option. However, in the place where ideas really take on a life of their own - the internet - open development will always be better both for innovators and for everyone else.

CeBit Australia 2005

Orignially published here.

I just got back from CeBit Australia 2005, where over 600 companies are showing off the latest in cool tech gear. Here are some impressions:

Firstly, VoIP is IN. It's the new black. Every kind of VoIP technology is on display: the servers, cabling, backend software, PC based connection gear, handsets, earpieces, Bluetooth adaptors, small office systems, enterprise grade kit outs and half a million consultants to help you put it all together.

Mobile phones are hot too, and they're getting smaller. They're also getting some funky new designs, a stand out being from new Australian company Linophir. The E1000 cube-like device has a really interesting keypad, while the C800 looks kind of like a discman if it was shrunk to the size of a jam jar lid.

I also got my first look at a real 3D plasma screen TV. I never thought I'd say that watching an animated can of Guinness play football was an exciting experience, but Electroboard has successfully changed my view on that.

And speaking of presentation display gear, if you're in the market for an electronic whiteboard you can expect to see a lot more of it about in the near future. Everywhere I turned there was a huge screen with sales people drawing stick figures on it with sensor-pens.

Another interesting thing I realized was that technology has matured enough for a second-hand market to spring up, and I'm not just talking about selling your old hard drive on eBay either.

How would you like a used Cisco switch powerful enough to run your own phone company? Many of the tech-based companies we see today built their million dollar empires on this stuff and you can now pick it up for a fraction of what it would have cost you five years ago. (I saw ISP grade gear leases starting at less than $1000 - gives you a few ideas, doesn't it?)

Of course, there was a stack of other stuff - GPS navigation systems, foreign governments spruiking their ICT industries, PC modding gear, f*cking huge displays, routers, wireless networking cards, robots (go Aibo, go!), RFID systems, biometric locks, e-commerce providers, virus and spam killing software and a load of very silly people trying to convince the world that THEIR digital rights management "solutions" actually worked.

Getting the sales pitch from one of these DRM companies was really a very enlightening experience and lead me to an interesting conclusion: they really don't know what they're up against.

Listening to this guy ramble on about how his company's software WILL make my electronic documents secure, I mentally pulled it apart. Half the "solution" relies on methods which have already been compromised, an important part of the key management could be circumvented with a few social engineering tricks (geeks should read this as "being able to talk to people") and I'd give the rest of it a few days once an experienced hacker gets hold of it, including removal of the watermark.

I confronted the salesman with the social engineering aspect of it, which lead to the National Sales Manager being called over. I got the higher level pitch which is reserved for people who know what they're talking about, which included lots of ICT buzz words. I didn't press the matter. I just thanked the guy for his time and took a brochure.

As I walked away from the stand, I looked around at the crowd - suits, styled haircuts, promo girls, slick logos, custom built display stands, complementary coffee and free pens. I wondered how many of these people were there because they were passionate about the technology and how many were there just to sell something.

Then I watched as a kid on a skateboard sailed down the corridor and forced the suits to jump out of the way.

Twenty seconds later a security guard appeared in pursuit.

I felt much better knowing that there was at least one person there who didn't play by the rules.

Journalism By Press Release

Originally published here.

For all of us out there who are sick of reading regurgitated press releases in the always reliable (cough) and scrupulously fair (cough, cough) mainstream media be aware that contrary to what you might think, journalists do have access to a Code of Ethics.

Head over to the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics page for a look at what these guys are supposed to be doing in, "seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues".

Some of my favourites include:

• Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error.
  
• Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing. (A big hello to Jennifer Yu at New Century Media).
  
• Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.
  
• Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context.
  
• Distinguish news from advertising and shun hybrids that blur the lines between the two.
  
  

My all-time favourite however, is, "Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media."

Now, here's a fun game we can all play.

Whenever you see or hear a "news article" from a "reputable" source that's obviously one sided (you know, quoting the BSA "statistics" on piracy, giving the RIAA or MPAA a free soapbox, etc.) fire off one of these pre-written emails. Just copy and paste.

If you get really good at this, you might be able to get a job as an investigative reporter!

Here we go:

Greetings Friend/Sir/Madam

I took exception with your recent report on [--------------insert description of story here].

In my view, it was seriously unbalanced, giving more coverage to one party/side of the argument than the other. Nor did it mention/explain the motives/interests of the party which received a disproportionate share of the coverage.

I hope that in the future, your publication/station/web site will present a more unbiased coverage of the issues involved in the stories you cover than it does at present.

If the quality of reporting does not rise above the copy/paste nature your publication/station/web site has used in the past, I will be forced to stop using your publication/station/web site as a reliable source of news and will cancel my subscription (if I have one) and encourage others to do the same.

Yours faithfully,

Someone Who Is Already Aware Of The Issues And Doesn't Appreciate Sloppy Reporting Practices.

The SPJ's Code of Ethics is a voluntary standard. The challenge for a professional journalist is whether or not he or she can live up to it.

The Hollywood Numbers Game

Originally published here.

"P2P robs artists of their rightful income", says the MPAA.

It would seem the movie studios themselves are pretty good at that.

Peter Jackson, who won the hearts of millions of geeks for his masterful film depiction of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," is suing the film's distributors, New Line Cinema.

Why?

According to CNN, New Line is responsible for, "... improperly deducting certain home video costs that were not spelled out in the agreement, paying an incorrect royalty rate for DVD sales, delaying the reporting of certain licensing revenue and failing to audit sub-distributors, including those affiliated with New Line. The latter claim goes to the broader issue of self-dealing, in which Wingnut accuses New Line of allowing its sub-distributors to charge a higher fee than would be expected from nonaffiliated companies."

The skeptical among us would say that New Line lacks basic math and accounting skills. But then again, with a multi-million-dollar-a-year business, one would think they were able to hire someone who can add up properly.

Any other business who can't work out where the decimal point REALLY goes would be in big trouble, at least from the tax man. But as the The Fellowship of the Ring alone has pulled in over $850 million world wide, the studios can afford to make expensive mistakes.

Anyone else think that Hollywood will come to an "arrangement" with Jackson? We can probably expect this to be "all a big misunderstanding" in the end.

This case has larger implications, though.

If New Line Cinema (owned by Time Warner Inc) simply made a mistake how do we, the public, know that this type of dodgy numbers game isn't going on in other places in Hollywood? If studios can't even add up the money they DO make, how can they possibly estimate the money they claim is lost from P2P?

Unfortunately, it's to be expected that the MPAA will come out with a statement from its well-oiled propaganda machine well before the facts are established. For decades, content providers have claimed new technology will ruin their businesses:

• Late 19th century - Book publishers claim the new public libraries will destroy all incentives to take on new authors, as people will stop buying new books if they can read for free. Book sales increase dramatically over the next century.

• Mid 20th century - AM radio monopolies try to suppress the new and superior FM technology. FM operates on different frequencies which are un-regulated and therefor uncontrollable. FM radio inventor commits suicide after more than 10 years of legal battles over the new technology. Revenues increase dramatically over the next few decades.
  

• Early 1980s - Movie studios claim in the famous "Betamax Case" that Sony's new VCR will put them out of business. They enjoy a new multi-billion dollar per year industry supplying movies on tape and DVD.
  

• Late 1990s - The music industry shuts down Napster citing that it allows wide scale piracy of recorded music. Sales and profits increase despite a hundred-fold grown in P2P.
  

Perhaps the fact that content providers have been wrong in every single one of these cases has made the public skeptical?

Oz "Victory" Against Pirates - MEAA

Originally published here.


I’ve just recieved the latest newsletter from my union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance.

Yes, I'm secretly a creative type, and when I'm not overseeing an encryption upgrade into the Australian banking network, I design the lighting for live theatre shows.

I've worked in most of the theatres in Sydney, from the back rooms of pubs to the Sydney Opera House, and I'll write about that some other time.

Meanwhile, the Alliance informs me there’s been "A Victory Against Pirates" and goes on to detail how "the findings in a major music piracy case are a victory for all industries facing copyright infringements, including film and TV."

Can you guess what this is all about? I thought you could.

It’s the mp3s4free.net case where the Federal Court in Sydney found that linking to pirated material is infringement of copyright under Australian law.

Setting aside the fact that Google is probably illegal under the court's definition of linking (and so is p2pnet, come to that) I wonder if the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance has thought this through carefully enough?

Of course I agree with Michael Kerin from ARIA's Music Industry Piracy Investigations that this is very "significant" for the Australian music industry.

The problem is, getting people to listen to Australian music is damned hard, especially since the introduction of poker machines killed off so many live music venues in Sydney a few years ago.

So let's look at the state of Aussie music:

• Reduction in live music venues
• Reduction in number of titles released annualy
• Reduction in number of record company contracts with artists
• Increased legislation relating to infringement of intelectual property
• Increased enforcement of IP law
• Increased sales of digital music players (1,000% increase over 12 months)
• Lack of legal download sites
• High prices on downloaded tracks (~AUD$1.89)
• Severe incompatabilities between digital music players and available downloads

How are we doing so far? Add all those factors together and things start to look pretty bleak down here in Oz.

We can't easily see live music.

We can't find a great number of titles to choose from because they're not being made.

We've all got the hardware to play our music, but can't afford to buy the DRM-wrapped tracks.

To top it all off, we can now expect to get a battering from the courts if we dare to provide people with a few digital choices to expand their musical horizons.

This is indeed a victory for Australian music.

A Pyrrhic victory.

Thankfully I have caring, thoughtful union to look after me.

The headlines we havn't seen...yet

Originally published here.

Terrorists Funded By Rouge States, No Link With P2P Software
A confidential report by the US Department of Homeland Security has found that Al Qaeda operations, including the attacks carried out on 9/11, were funded by several “rouge states” including Saudi Arabia and wealthy Islamic fundamentalists. The report dismisses claims that the sharing of music and movies over the Internet helped Al Qaeda as “ludicrous”.
- The Washington Post

The BPI says your child is a thief
A British faux police organization owned by EMI (Britain), Sony BGM (Japan, Germany), UMG (France) and WMG (US) says your child is committing a crime by downloading music on the internet. Our correspondent reveals for the first time how warped disinformation releases such as this really are.
- The Times – UK

RIAA Back Flips, P2P is “Actually Pretty Cool”
An RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) spokesman said today that the music industry body will cease suing users of p2p networks. “We decided to look at some real data on this and it seems people are discovering and listening to more music than ever before," said RIAA boss Mitch Bainwol. "Our distribution costs could be slashed by 95%, which we’ll spend on finding exciting new artists. This means people will be paying less for music while having a bigger range to choose from. It’s a win for the artists and a win for the customer."
- Wall Street Journal

Morgan Freeman thinks again
“…I received a surprising amount of criticism regarding my comments on digital distribution, so I decided to actually investigate the issues myself. After looking at the DRM (digital rights management) products available, I couldn’t believe how ineffectual they are…”
- Hollywood.com

Gates smells the GNU
“We’re glad that Linux is available because it helps us to us to be competitive and make better products," Microsoft ceo told a meeting of industry executives in Seattle today. "We’d have to come up with something pretty special to compete with free.”
- CNET News

Supreme Court finds for Grokser
“This court finds that technological change and the freedom of companies and individuals to create new and innovative products is of great benefit to society. It would be irresponsible to favour marginal interests over the greater good.”
- The Hill

Glickman breaks arm, blames Supreme Court ruling
“I had a few drinks after the Grokster decision was announced and slipped on my way to the bathroom," MPAA CEO Daniel Glickman explained from his hospital bed. "I’m talking to my lawyers about possible legal action against Grokster and StreamCast. Someone is at fault here and it’s certainly not me.”
- The Drudge Report

Court Order Gags MPAA
Following claims of slander, a New York state judge has ordered the Motion Picture Association of America to supply sources to verify claims made in future press releases. In his summary, Judge Mikey Bollocks told the MPAA, “Your organization has a history of making claims that are demonstratably false. To avoid wasting our legal systems’ time in the future with groundless defamation suits, I am suggesting that you provide reasonable documentation to back up any claims you may wish to make in the future.
- New York Times

Apple Drops Suit Against Bloggers
“We were talking about the case against AppleInsider.com,” said Jimmy Whack, Apple vp of Marketing. “Someone said it’s pretty cool when people love your stuff so much that they can’t wait for new products. We all looked at each other and said, “Yeah, these guys are actually promoting our product lines for free’ so we’re dropping the suits and hoping that AppleInsider and the others aren’t too pissed at us. Really, it was all a big misunderstanding”.
- Time Magazine

Record Companies Pay All Back Royalties To Artist
Veteran performer Billy Garbled is today celebrating a cheque for $1,475,000 he received from EMI, Sony BGM, UMG and WMG. The money represents 30 years of royalty arrears. "We have fired the accountants who have been handling payments," says RIAA president Cary Sherman. "We will be making similar resitutions to other artists who have somehow been similarly overlooked in past years."
- International Musician (American Federation of Musicians magazine)

Movie Store (Mis)adventures II

Originally published here.

The incident at my local video rental store was actually the second irksome experience I had with DVDs last week.

About six weeks ago I found a British crime show had been released on DVD in Australia. It's a brilliant series and the quality of the acting is a tribute to British television so I decided to fork out $59.90 for two DVDs (For the mathematically challenged, that's $29.95 each DVD).

I went into Big CD & DVD Chain Store this week to pick up the second two DVDs in the series. I walked up to the stand and saw a big "NOW $9.95!" sign. Damn!

I took the now discounted DVDs up to the counter and asked the sales girl what the story was.

"These where $29.95 just over a month ago. What happened? Is there a clearance sale on or something?"

"No, but they're pretty popular at the new price. You're, like, the tenth person today whose bought one those titles", she told me.

"So are you guys still making a profit on them, or just trying to get your costs back?"

"No, I think we still make four or five bucks on them".

I did the math. Apparently the good little shoppers had balked at being asked to pay an extra $20, perhaps because the extra 400% profit for the store was a bit too high.

I also felt pretty angry that I could have bought the whole series for less than $60 instead of just a third of it if I had only waited a couple of months.

Instead of charging a low price to begin with and getting lots of sales, the Big CD & DVD Chain Store decided to charge as much as possible until their profit margin could drop to a (standard industrialised world) 40-50%.

Apart from hiring sales staff who give out confidential pricing information, there are two other possible candidates for stupidity in this situation: either I'm a idiot for paying such a high price as soon as the titles became available, or the Big CD & DVD Chain Store management are idiots for thinking I won't notice the price drop and feel ripped-off.

The first one is probably true - I should be used to this type of behaviour by media retail outlets by now.

The second one is also probably true - I did notice the price drop and I do feel ripped-off, even though I admit the stupidity on my part.

The important question here is: do I feel stupid and ripped-off? Yes, I feel pretty ripped-off after paying the extra $40.

And, yes, I also feel stupid at the expense of Big CD & DVD Chain Store.

Nobody enjoys feeling like someone has made a fool of them and in years gone by, all a customer could do was fume in silence at the retailer. Nowadays, the customer can completely circumvent the retailer and obtain the product online. This (former) customer also feels pretty happy about being able to screw the retailer for a change. As they say: once bitten, twice shy.

So I feel "bitten" and quite stupid. As a result I'm also shy and unlikely to go back to Big CD & DVD Chain Store for fear that they drop the price even further (by up to $5 without making a loss according to the sales girl).

I've since found my British TV series on BitTorrent in .ratDVD format, so I certainly won't feel stupid about over paying for it when it's sitting on my hard drive. I expect I'll feel quite pleased with myself. Unlike the trouble at the DVD rental store, in this case I have stopped being a good customer simply because there is no incentive for me to be.

Perhaps when the people in the media supply chain make a nice gesture to me, I'll think about using them again. Unfortunately, for this to happen they need to realise that I'm the one in the position of power now - I've got a choice. I like choice and I think I'll give the entertainment industry one too:

Woo me or loose me.

Movie Store (Mis)adventures I

Originally published here.

I had two incidents this week which really annoyed me. Both of them relate to DVDs.

Today it was a run-in with a new manager at my local video rental store. About nine months ago, I signed up for their new "Ulimited Rentals" plan, which costs $29.95 per month. I can get out four VHS cassettes or DVDs at a time and return them whenever I like without getting any late fees. This works out at around $1.00 per day for as many movies as I can watch. With no late fees, I think it's a pretty good deal.

I go to return the first two DVDs in a series and get out the next two. I arrive at the counter with my two new DVDs and hand over my membership card.

"You can only get one of these out", says Mark (as in "Hi, my name is...")

I give him blank look. What's he talking about?

"You havn't returned another New Release yet", he says. "You know you can only have two New Releases out at a time, right?"

"Uh, no, actually," I say. "I just returned the two new releases I got out yesterday."

I realise I can't speak with enough enthusiasm to give the words "new release" capital letters like he can.

"If you got those two out yesterday, then you had three out. You're only allowed to have two."

This guy is really starting to annoy me. I've been going to this video store four or five times a week since I went on the "unlimited" plan. All the regular staff call me by my first name and I call them by their first names too. I can easily spend twenty minutes talking about movies with them whenever I go in there, and I've never head of this limit on new releases before ----- because nobody ever told me. I've been taking out two or three or four new releases for nine months without any problems.

"That third one isn't a premier new release, though", I point out in the hope that this whole thing will go away. I don't need any hassles today.

"No. You can get out one Premier New Release and one New Release, or two New Releases and two 3 Night Hires, or..." he drones on.

The sections in a video rental store are just like the categories used in the cinema releases: there's Premier New Release, tied to the Opening Weekend. These are the ones you see on all the posters located in very prominant places on the shelves. Their popularity works the same way as the cinema releases - all the people who really want to see it watch it as soon as it's available.

From there a movie goes into it's regular run as a New Release. It's a "new" movie and you still pay a lot to watch it, just like you do with regular cinema tickets.

Then comes the 3 Night Hire section, where a cinema would be running Two-For-The Price-Of-One or 1-Adult-Plus-Free-Popcorn deals to milk a little bit more profit out of the film.

Right at the bottom of the chain is the Weekly. A Weekly DVD is to the rental store what a Premier DVD release is to the movie studio: The Cream. All the costs have been recouped, a tidy profit has been made and all that has to happen now is to keep the movie moving for years until someone wants to watch it. From here on, it's pure profit.

My unlimited plan is like those SuperSaver cinema booklettes where you get a 40% discount if you buy ten tickets at a time.

Mark is now pointing to a helpful poster (which wasn't there yerterday) showing what I'm allowed to take out at any one time. It's a beautiful little diagram with a matrix of all the possible combinations of rental DVDs I'm allowed to borrow.

I don't absorb any of it.

"Do you know who let you get those two New Releses out yesterday?" he asks.

"No, sorry" I reply. (It was Tim. Tim an I both like Sci-Fi, so I don't want to get him in trouble).

"Well, you can only get one of these", says Mark.

I can tell he's not going to let me have the second one, even if I ask nicely. So I take one home, pick up the third new release (which was crap anyway) and take it back to the store.

"Do you still want that second New Release?" asks Mark.

"No, I just decided to make two trips here today for the hell of it", I think to myself. "Yeah" is what actually comes out of my mouth.

As I leave, I start wondering why I should keep that idiot in a job by guaranteeing the store $30 in revenue every month. I could quite easily spend the money upgrading to an ADSL2+ net connection and just download the movies I want to watch.

Then I remember all the other staff there are really cool and how much I enjoy chatting with them. I'd really like to continue those relationships, but at the end of the day, it's all about time and money and I just wasted 40 minutes of my time on the second trip. I switched to the Unlimited Plan because it was supposed to be easier, but where Digital Rights Management annoys me online, Physical Use Management annoys me just as much in the real world.

A few more incidents like that and I may just stop being a good customer.

World's First Storyline Patent?

Originally published here.

eMediaWire is reporting that "the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is scheduled to publish history's first "storyline patent" application today.

The release has Georgetown University law prof Jay Thomas saying, "The case law of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has established that virtually any subject matter is potentially patentable."

The idea that story lines could be patentable was first seriously proposed by Andrew Knight in an article for the Journal of the Patent and Trademark Office Society. In A Potentially New IP: Storyline Patents, Knight argues that "binding case law strongly suggests that methods of performing and displaying fictional plots, whether found in motion pictures, novels, television shows, or commercials, are statutory subject matter, like computer software and business methods".

And what of the individual who filed the patent application back in November 2003?

Funnily enough, it's Frank Knight.

Kight's web site, plotpatents.com, informs visitors that "Knight and Associates consists of Andrew Knight and a team of independent contractors comprising skilled writers and experienced patent attorneys, ready to turn valuable new fictional plots or storylines into U.S. utility patent applications."

They'll be able to "help your company integrate valuable Storyline Patent protection into your portfolio of other IP protection" and "draft and prosecute patent applications on unique storylines, as well as innovations in the fields of mechanical devices, electrical devices, optical devices, medical devices, engines, software, business methods, gadgets, tools, toys, and other consumer products."

This is perhaps the most reprehensable attempt by an individual to create a job for themselves. Simply create "property" where none existed before, then charge big media companies to look after the chaotic legal issues you've created for them. What does he have to say for himself?

"Recognizing that fierce competition for publication and financial reward focused on the quality of storytelling, as opposed to the quality of the underlying storyline itself, and further recognizing that even the world's most skilled storytellers (of which he is clearly not) rarely turn a profit, his unique fictional storylines have matured into pending patent applications instead of novels or screenplays. He thus seeks reward on the true value of his innovations - the underlying storylines - instead of forced, sub-par expressions of these underlying storylines."

So according to Knight, we should now be paying bad writers to use an idea that they've detailed in a utility patent.

The worst part of this is that several academics have theorised that there are only actually seven basic plots that exist in literature. Amazon.com says of Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots, "there is literally no story in the world which cannot be seen in a new light: we have come to the heart of what stories are about and why we tell them."

Unfortunately, if Andrew Knight's patent application is granted, it won't be a question of what stories are about, or why we tell them. It'll be a question of whether we can afford to pay the royalties.


This article was the basis for an entry in Jon Newton's column on TechNewsWorld.com