Free Culture news around the world:

• United States: Restating the obvious with facts. The Coverity Scan: 2011 Open Source Integrity Report, which can be found here, highlights how Open Source code is of higher quality than Proprietary software. The average density of defects per one thousand lines of code for Open Source software is 0.64, where as for proprietary software is 1.0. Coverity analysed 37M line codes from 45 important open source projects.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

• Europe: The European Union has doubts and concerns over Google change in privacy policy. So, since yesterday Google achieved what the EU wanted/wants with Indect – an online identity of users recording all actions done by a user across all Google services. The key of the vault is Gmail, so your personal and possibly business life, then YouTube, so what you watch, what you have watched what you have uploaded and liked. Then Google documents, so what you work on. Google search engine, so what you searched for what links you clicked on. This magic world of tailroed advertisement  and mass not anoymous information gathering is a threat to privacy and different aspects that govern a persons life.  The Guardian talks about it here.

  The assurance or security of better search results, more effective advertisement and more accurate recommendations is not worth the consolidation of an user online activties and the replication of a person identity through an unavoidable and  hydroid creature more effective and pervasive than our own shadows. Giant internet companies like Google Apple Facebook should have user elected representatives to protect and advocate the users rights, it is time for web democracy in the real position of powers(ie where code gets written) in today’s online world.

  

  European Union (Photo credit: erjkprunczyk)

  Not to mention that if you have an Android phone you need a Google account to operate it, so everything will be recorded and nothing forgotten. There-must-be-greater-accountability-and-transparency!

• South Korea: Korea Telecom, the main ISP in Korea is dealing with network neutrality. KT recently blocked Samsung’s SmartTV software from accessing its pipes saying that it should pay for the huge amount of bandwidth this service consumes. After a couple of days of talks the access to SmartTV was restored, but KT relaunched the idea that big data eaters like YouTube should pay for using their pipes. Ironically, these pipes have already been paid for by each customer accessing the service, so taxing websites(regardless of how gigantic they are) for the user accessing them is not only redundant but it would discriminate against smaller ones which are growing quickly and don’t have the bandwidth and resources  to fulfill this request and it would also create a dangerous precedent.
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  The pipes which physically deliver the web are like the ones which carry water. If you buy a pool, you pay for the water to fill it up. It seems only absurd that the water company goes banging on the door of the company making the pool demanding compensation for all the water consumed to fill the tank.

• Germany: Library.nu providing thousands of eBooks – most thought to be copyright infringing – for free download was shut down by a court in Munich. Given and admitted that the copyright infringing issue must be addressed and sanitized, it is evident that access to culture has been restricted in the same way that eBook readers make it difficult to share digital copies of the book you have legally purchased. Proprierty is essential and consequently copyright is necessary, but used as a hammer crushing the free exchange of culture, whether in the form of books or movies makes the world every day a bit gloomer and more arid. Article from the Huffington Post here

• United States: Facebook’s timeline is a great idea. It makes it so much easier to search in a users content back to the first post someone made on Facebook. It creates a beautiful chronological story for companies, allowing them to show their history from the initial founding act to today, just take a look at Cocacola or the NYT page, great! Very informative and delivering an entertaining user experience, it might not be good for users itself. As a friend of mine said last night while discussing the topic, “if three years ago someone posted on my wall or tagged me somewhere that I might not necessarily like now it was more or less ok. Before finding the specific post it would take hours to go all the way back to that exact entry, with Timeline that same post can be found in a matter of clicks, so now I have to be worried about something that was published years ago.” Great for companies, not so much for users, but as long as there is the option not to activate Timeline, the situation is still manageable. But it must be the user’s choice, not a default action.
  

   

Related articles

• Smart TVs cause a net neutrality debate in S. Korea (gigaom.com)
• Actually, Open Source Code Is Better: Report (pcworld.com)
• Why Should You Start Using Free Software? (techie-buzz.com)

Let’s be honest, not always would you want to share moments of your life with all the people that you know. Thats why we concern ourself with privacy and we try to protect it simply because an unlimited viewage or third party sharing erodes our intimacy.

I have always been contrary to the idea of geoblocking per se, but in a global field where real life connections progate online and its polite to accept having everything open can create problems, so filtering by country could be a useful tool. At the same time the Brazilian government politely asked Twitter to censor the accounts of people who shared locations of Autovelox and patrol or a fine of 200000 R$ per day. The domino effect seen with Megavideo, Fileserve, Videoweed and so on is  reproducing in governments posing vetoes in what is present on the web. There are alternative ways on the internet, as always. Still there must be a democratizion of these tools – so everyone should be allowed to choose what policy would happen next, at least for their account and from all the people that are connected to it. If I want to geofilter among Facebook connections I should, if I want the twitter feed to be visible everywhere I can tick a box. Private should be opt in and culture opt out. Give access to knowledge and leave me my privacy. Once these services will have these tools maybe we can start educating – and we already should – more about their usage in schools, universities. Online identity and emotion sharing is fundamental to both a 15 year old in a classroom and a 40 year old professional. If the latter is aware the former must be made aware of what is happening with his digital self. We must nurture and promote the ability to choose to everyone who uses these tools.

http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/images/2007/10/05/online_identity_2.jpg

It was interesting to see such a variety of groups united under the cause of digital rights. Home-made banners and Guy Fawkes masks were, as requested on the facebook page, out in full force. Masked anonymous supporters in smart suits stood next to members of the UK Pirate Party, the Open Rights Group, FLOSS UK and many others. There was even a strong (some might say opportunist) contingent of the Socialist Worker’s Party, handing out their signature style protest banners and selling copies of the party paper.

UK Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye kicked things off with a rousing speech directed as much to the British Music House as to the audience. As a musician himself, Loz denounced the pro-ACTA arguments being put forward by legacy media in the name of content creators. The loudspeaker was then handed to a number of other speakers whose faces I couldn’t see  but I think included Jim Killock from ORG, and someone from FLOSS UK and others.

The march then took off around the busy shopping streets of central London, with a stop outside the US embassy, nearby Buckingham Palace, towards Trafalgar Square (which had only just emptied itself of Amnesty International supporters), and to St Paul’s Cathedral (the site of Occupy London last year).

Protecting the net for future generations...

http://www.ceskapozice.cz/sites/default/files/imagecache/full_size_content_image/bansky-acta.jpg

Because generally watching for example american tv series, japanese comic books for free in original lang was legal in poland until it was bought by polish company/television and translated, now it won’t be legal, and young people are usually addicted to tv series and watching them 5 mins after they have tv premiere in usa (but it’s not a main and most important reason, just one of similar).

http://cpcml.ca/images2011/Asia/India/File/070100-IndiaNewDelhiNovartisPatentProtest-01.jpg

It’s not only about internet, it’s about medicines that are extremely expensive, especially for old and/or very sick people here, so they were always made such medicines that have same things inside and working in same way, but different name and brand and 10 times less expensive – now it’s illegal, same with all the parts and fillings of things that don’t need to be original, printer’s ink, car parts, anything, can be either original or none, so both companies that were always producing such things will have problems now, and people using it, because it would make everything not exist, because they punish websites for letting users put on them anything illegal, so controlling users or stopping existing, because it doesn’t protect ‘little’ producers, like graphic designers, photographers, programmers doing something own – so it’s not about anti-piracy or using not own things, it’s about letting big companies that have money, threathen people and blackmail them (“you seem to have downloaded something.mp3 that wasn’t yours, pay 1mio$ or you wll have serious problems, we have all your data from your isp”) – bypassing court, only assuming someone really did this thing.

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By Paulina, a Polish Computer Science student from Warsaw. Part of a longer conversation on ACTA, the Internet and crowded places.

Related articles

• Acta goes too far, says MEP (guardian.co.uk)
• ACTA: What You Need To Know (news.dice.com)
• We Have Every Right To Be Furious About ACTA (thenewworldreporter.com)
• Thousands Take To the Streets To Protest ACTA (politics.slashdot.org)

Protest ACTA SOPA PIPA Fourth choice! (4th monkey from www.blogosphere.com)

Internet and politics are now more interconnected than ever. Certain aspects of it jump up in the everyday life of millions of people. Twitteris without doubt one of those – but until a certain point. In Italy, people who consider themselves with a fair amount of digital technical skills, and to good reason, see apparently no use in getting a Twitter account. Despite smartphones and facebook and youtube and ipads, even though it is in the media it is not widely adopted in the population(no statistics provided just asking around, do you know what twitter is? Try to ask beyond the ‘social network’ answer).

Its important to discuss the reasons why Twitter decided to allow filtering some messages in specific countries(ie censor them), you don’t need to have HIV to know that it is vital to fight it. Twitter is being more open about it and according to its policy, filtering out contents in a specific country will be balanced by marking it as censored in the rest of the world and easily accessing the institution asking for it to be removed, with the reason for removal.  From a tool for freedom, Twitter will become just a tool in that same country.

Multiple online services from Twitter to Filesonic have been shaken by the uncontested and unconstitutional seizure of Megavideo – despite the alleged wrong doing and lascivious life of its founders, there was a total lack of due process or selection of illegal content, everything will be removed, copyright infringing or not. If the web as a nation has no physical or elected ambassadors to defend its rights, we the people must stand up and speak in defence of our love for Wikipedia, our positive feelings nurtured by Youtube, the cosiness and security of a Skype conversation, the amplification and accessibility of our opinions on Twitter, the assurance of our Facebook inboxes kept private and the availability of all other online services, albeit not major ones but still essential in our every day life. Only by proving our presence in a common cause to protect the internet, educating friends and sensibilizing our elected representatives can we disentangle our liberties in the jungle of web diplomacy.

We must not let our guard down and denounce any activity of spreading the “I don’t hear, I don’t see, I don’t talk” attitude embracing service providers around the world.

http://alycia.brokenja.ws/readinglog

Unfortunately, ACTA, an international agreement on intellectual property which would have similarly disastrous effects on the open internet (as well as on access to life-saving drugs, educational materials, knowledge and culture), is currently being pushed through the EU. Official negotiations started in 2008, but have been mired in secrecy (despite details about the negotiations being revealed in a 2008 Wikileaks dump).

Yesterday, in a radical turn of events the EU parliamentary rapporteur for ACTA, Kader Arif, resigned in protest of the way the agreement had been dealt with.

He released the following statement;

“Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.”

“This agreement might have major consequences on citizens’ lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade.”

From Arif’s own blog, translated by La Quadrature du Net.

Galvanised by the success of anti-SOPA activism, popular opposition to ACTA is mounting (just yesterday, SFC Europe member Andrea Fassina reported on his participation in the anti-ACTA protests in Warsaw). The agreement must be fully ratified by the EU parliament before it is enforced in member states. Now is the time to continue the campaign for an open, free internet. It is also an opportunity for the EU to demonstrate its democratic principles by engaging with its citizens on this issue through parliament.

Want to act? In the short term, you can contact your MEP and make your views known. But we also hope you help us to build a movement against the EU parliamentary ratification of ACTA. At SFC Europe we hope to bring together young people from across member states this summer, to oppose this undemocratic attempt to control the flow of knowledge in the digital age.

More information can be found on La Quadrature‘s dedicated campaign page.

This post is from SFC member Reuben Binns (@RDBinns).

No to ACTA

Around ten people left the building and reached the semi square in front of the headquarters of the Eureopean Parliament in Warsaw, ascending from the metro escalator we found more than 1-2000 people speaking and standing their disapproval toward an agreement that would negatively alter the internet by criminalizing content aggregators and shifting the role of censors from law enforcement institutions to ISPs.

Protesters were students, young professionals and internet activists. The gathering was adorned with banners rejecting ACTA and for protecting the internet, Polish flags and V for Vendetta masks. Despite the general idea of young protesters being almost inevitably violent, the weapons used were jumping rhytmically, expressing with words the disapproval for this law and standing under falling snow in a freezing afternoon.

No to ACTA protest in Warsaw

What surprised me the most was not only the people that left the building with me – someone who you spend all day next to and don’t suspect that they would participate in such a gathering; but was protesting for the internet as a tool for the first time. To clarify, during the Arab revolutions the web was used as merely and organizational tool, without any second objective. This case is different, thousands of people stood up despite work, study and temperature to speak out to maintain the internet architecture as it is. The tool itself is the focus of protest, not merely a mean to overthrow a dictator or gain freedom. This “army” of internet users are now defending the internet, a metaphorical personification of a global tool.

I had been to conferences, talks, presentations workshops on protecting the open internet, but never in an organized protest, in the streets with thousands of people. It seems to be clear to many many people, even not internet activists, that the web is a basic human right and as such it must be protected, defended and spoke about. There was no main organizator of the protest, it was a spontaneous gathering achieved through social networks and word of mouth.

No to ACTA protest in Waraw

In Europe youngsters dont generally fight(ok maybe in Hungary) for freedom from violent dictators or the right to vote, the battlefield has shifted, what is of paramount importance now is to keep the flow of information free, open and unconserd. People will travel great lengths and sustain severe conditions in order to protect the things they care about, and it should now be clear to law makers that an uncensored internet doesnt only concern an elite of geeks but encompasses ever great chunks of the population.

No to ACTA protest in Waraw

Widespread revolts against censorship of the web(ACTA SOPA PIPA) shed a light on the future and importance of this tool in the everyday life of millions of people who have never studied computer science or software engineering – but who fear losing their most beloved services because of obsolete business plans and myopic content distribution licenses.

Pictures are from: http://warszawa.gazeta.pl/warszawa/51,34862,11024769.html?i=15

Related articles

• Poles protest ACTA online and on the streets (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Poland: Government Will Sign ACTA Despite Massive Protest (advocacy.globalvoicesonline.org)
• Polish Web Sites To Go Dark To Protest ACTA (truthsupport.wordpress.com)

Image via Wikipedia

The solution came when single users, who were fan of the series and had collected the tapes, transcoded them in a digital format and shared it with the world. First peer-to-peer networks and then propagated them through services such as Megavideo  or Megaupload. Now an obscure B-Movie filmed in the early ‘70s like “Delitto al Blue Gay,” a series of murders in a gay bar on the Tiber’s side. Try finding this movie on Amazon, impossible, in some Italian stores online, unavailable. Imagine if you are trying to see it outside of Italy. Megaupload service was a great placeholder and container of locked up, inaccessible culture. All of the movies from the series were available for download, as were the theatrical plays of Eduardo de Filippo, a brilliant Neapolitan who wrote hours long plays in the 1940/1950/1960, try to find his plays online. Megaupload had them – or the users did – and through that service I was able in a matter of minutes to get a 80 years old black and white recording of one of his plays, Christmas in Cupiello’s house, while being under the covers in a cold Polish night. The reach and vastness of culture that these services provide(ed) should not only be treasured, but institutionalized.

Taking down Megaupload and arresting its CEO and other top managers, might make sense to protect some Hollywood blockbusters, but it is disastrous in the restriction placed on the access and spread of culture, not only in the US but globally.

It came as a surprise that the sites were being shut down, considering their efficient and instantaneous removal of infringing material upon request. The sites should have fallen under safe harbor jurisdiction for their methodical deletion of reported infringing material, instead the founders were arrested in New Zeland by the FBI, with the consent of local authorities. This is another example of the US government going around carrying a big stick and imposing its jurisdiction on other countries and citizens – even though the service was a channel to gain access to knowledge for millions of people. The legal basis of this action was not only the .com domain, controlled by the ICANN but also some Mega servers hosted in Virginia. Once again for the interests of few, whether Halliburton or Hollywood, a vast majority of citizens in the world are deprived of liberty, access to (commercially invaluable) information in a climate reminding more the Spanish inquisition instead of a country exporting democracy.

Image via Wikipedia. Giordano Bruno

The paralegal witchhunt currently going on apparently is not enough, new draconian and anachronistic laws are being considered(yes SOPA and PIPA). Giordano Bruno was a philosopher in 1500 who theorized the inifinty of worlds, that went against the vested interests, ie the Catholic church so he was burned alive in Campo de Fiori, a famous square in Rome. Even though not fair he still had a trial, if these laws will be passed the dark ages of the internet will materialize since, for example, the user sharing that theatrical play of the 80’s would automatically be committing a criminal felony as the website hosting the content.

As a Free Culture movement we have to oppose and denounce this attack not only on the internet as a global unregulated service but on the access to culture, otherwise inaccessible, threatened by walled gardens and medieval crusades.

What is there to do?

What can we do?

What can the EU do?

Related articles

• Megaupload Shutdown by Feds, Proves Further That SOPA is a Dud Bill, Anonymous Retaliates (techie-buzz.com)
• FBI Closes File-Sharing Site; Anonymous Gets Revenge – After MegaUpload is shut down, hackers hit Justice Department (tribuneofthepeople.com)
• SOPA/PIPA The Day After The Protest – Feds retaliate shutdown and arrest MEGAUPLOAD, but Anonymous strikes back with a vengeance! (toodamnez.wordpress.com)
• U.S. shuts down file-sharing website Megaupload.com (livingstrongandhappy.blogspot.com)
• [BREAKING NEWS] Feds Shut Down Megaupload (androidcrib.com)

Image via Wikipedia

How this rebirth should be exactly carried out is still unknown, but there are multiple signs that it should be based partly on the web, and the wealth – and jobs creation – that it provides.

In the last few weeks there have been a number of newspaper articles written on exactly this topic – or how the Monti government should boost the economy through the web. The article appeared on Repubblica on the 11/11/2011 written by Arturo di Corinto, brings attention to a letter sent by the Internet Governance Forum – a conference with over 22 panels and 100 panelists, focusing on the evolution of the web, to the new Italian prime minister. The letter highlights the importance of the web for the Italian economy, 2% of GDP and which has created more than 700 thousand jobs. The problem is the high digital spread between Italy and the rest of Europe, due to inadequate legislations and blindness in tackling broadband diffusion in the country.

The IGF asks Monti to institute a specific department and recognize access to the internet as not only a fundamental right but as a driving economic force, in line with EUs 2020 policies. The letter also promotes network neutrality as a principle on which the web must be based on, to flourish and drive economic growth.

Image via Wikipedia

As Students for Free Culture we can only second this letter and hope that Monti’s government and the EU understand the importance of a neutral and open internet, favoring creativity and cross border integration as a way to stimulate the economy, connect people and foster the growth of a culturally connected base of creators, entrepreneurs and citizens.

A European Union united culturally and practically through an open web is one that can better face challenges, economic problems and quickly adapt to widespread changes.

Image by Horia Varlan via Flickr

Related articles

• Monti Forms New Italian Government (time.com)