Difficult choices?

 I enjoyed this too much not to post....

Privacy, what privacy? Spies on your desktop.

The EFF blog has a thought provoking piece on online tracking and how information on your surfing ends up in the hands of a wide range of players in what at best you could describe as a less than transparent process. There is quite clearly a whole industry that collects and correlates inforrmation to build up in depth dossiers on people.

Key points of concern are:
- The scale and scope of information gathering
- new 'super cookies' hidden from and out of the control of your browser
- lack of respect for users privacy, e.g. recreating cookies after they're deleted.
- Datamining social networks and analysing usage to identify you. (Violating your anonymity)

Monitoring and tracking your online activity amounts to electronic surveillance - it can lay bare your social and business networks, your interests, your political affiliations and your religiouus beliefs. Surveillance on this scale - actively, and with the intention to use the information - would be a gross abuse if it was run by the state... and to have this going on in unregulated private hands is simply scary.

The article gives tips on how to shield your privacy - but at the end concludes that it is extremely hard today to not be a victim of this systematic invasion of your privacy. The right to privacy needs to be protected - and that means this type of intrusion needs to be regulated with clear, easy and legally binding opt outs.

Piratpartiet and the Pirate Party - putting privacy first:

Divine injustice in the ballot box

HAX... Henrik Alexandersson.. a favourite stopping off point of mine for Swedish political gossip has a recent blog piece on electoral fraud in Sweden - speculating on whether the irregularities reported in the recent EU elections could have changed the outcome. An interesting topic for debate. Democracy hinges on the honesty and integrity of the voting process.

Interesting.. but not in the same league as this statement from Iran's Guardian Council reported by The Guardian on complaints of election rigging in Iran:

"Statistics provided by the candidates, who claim more than 100% of those eligible have cast their ballot in 80-170 cities are not accurate - the incident has happened in only 50 cities."

Read that again... in fifty cities the number of votes cast exceeds the number of eligible voters. (...by up to 40% I gather) That in my book is vote rigging of epidemic proportions ...and yet this seems to be considered a cause for reassurance....

Islam, in my understanding, has close ties between religion and politics - the state of the Islamic community reflects on the spiritual well-being of it's members. Quoting from the preface to Karen Armstrong's "Islam, A Short History"

"...the Quran gave them (muslims) a historical mission. Their chief duty was to create a just community in which all members, even the most weak and vulnerable, were treated with absolute respect. The experience of building such a society would give them intimations of the divine because they would be living in accordance with god's will"

Absolute respect is not expressed by stuffing ballot boxes... it is fundamentally repressive and unjust. ... and for moslems presumably not just morally, but spiritually wrong. And in this case condoned it seems not just by politicians but by spiritual leaders too. Double jeopardy.

It is a dilemma. What do you do when those leading you to a just society deliver injustice instead? How far are you prepared to go to stand up for justice and respect for all?.. and society's spiritual well-being?

What would you do, if your salvation depended on it?

Footnote: the original press conference explains the overflow to voters voting outside of the area where they live. A practice permitted in in presidential elections.

Steal with pride - the Canadian way

The Conference Board of Canada - a Canadian think-tank - is withdrawing a report on the Digital Economy saying it didn't live up to their high quality research standards.

The report, funded by tax-payers, included sections plagiarised from US copyright lobbyists, the International Intellectual Property Alliance - and discarded contradictory evidence material from their own analysts....

Jeeez.. it's so unfair when you get caught out like that!

This blog entry on the other hand is plagiarised from Boingboing....
...just so you know

Voting shennanigans

Britain, as half the world knows has an antiquated electoral system (at least for parliament). You divide the country up into small constituencies, and each one votes one candidate to parliament on a first 'past the post' basis. It's a system that guarantees that the political representation in parliament bears no resemblance to the spread of political opinion in the country.

Voting though is simple.. you get a piece of paper with all the candidates listed and you cross against the one you are voting for.... ALL the candidates.

I mention this for one reason - to explain how farcical it is to me to see the recent debate on alleged election fraud here in Sweden. Each party has a whole list of candidates, so there is a separate ballot paper for each party... You just pick the one you fancy and stick it in the box.

And the state takes care of all the printing and distribution so that's OK. Unless you're a small party and then you have to print and distribute your own...

And then when the voter gets there they check over the assembled ballots and choose. Of course it's bad luck if the electoral officials chose to leave your party's blank ballots on a little table off to the side - or thought they would just ditch yours at the end the day (advance balloting is taking place now). If no one sees your ballot papers you're not likely to get many votes..

Sloppy practice, or a bit of subtle electoral bias? Both Piratpartiet and Feministiska Initiativ have cried foul - hopefully loud enough for abnormalities to be fewer in the last days of the campaign. Piratpartiet have in any case taken a practical and mature response to this risk and drawn up a clear summary of what the law says, and how to escalate.

And purely by coincidence, Sweden is to get independant external election observers for the first time ever.....

Hired men and troopers

"From the men of property the orders came; they sent the hired men & troopers to wipe out the Digger's claim"

Time's change, but some things stay the same...

Lyrics from Leon Rosselson

Sharing is caring

If you've ever watched a movie on DVD you're probably familiar with the slogan - Filesharing is theft.

There is I'm sure a mature adult audience that tuts between their teeth and says 'These young people today - no morals....' But how about you? Where does sharing end and theft begin....?

• You go to a dinner party and complement the chef - who then asks "Would you like the recipe?" reaching for the glossy, copyrighted, cookbook on the shelf. Did you ever say yes?
• Perhaps you belong to the generation that knits and sews? "Just let me have a copy of that pattern will you?"
• Or did you ever... tape tracks from the radio?
• Copy course notes from a book?
• Borrow LPs to tape?
• Borrow discs from the library and copy?
• Buy a cut price DVD marked 'Not for Resale'?

• A film you like is playing on the TV.. but you're not home. So you tape it...
• ..or save it to the harddrive on your new DVD player.
• You got the settings wrong... so you borrow the DVD from a friend and watch it..
• ..or borrow the DVD and copy it to watch it later.
• ..or you borrow the copy they recorded?
• Your friend has a film you've not seen so you borrow it...
• ..and copy it to watch later.
• Your friend has lent it to his brother so you hire it instead...
• ..and copy it to watch again later.

Or maybe you save yourself the walk and search for it online?

Philosophically speaking - is it morally more acceptable if a thousand people share something with someone they know than if one person shares something with a thousand people they never met?

Morality on trial?

Going through a process that ultimately involves criminalising a generation of your customers has to be a tricky job at the best of times. In the pirates versus the music industry the moral high ground is thus a much sought after vantage point. And rather like the USA and Guantanamo, taking the high ground and then being caught breaking the rules is absolutely not good PR.

Whether they knew or whether they wanted it that way - having questions asked about the impartiality of the judge at your ground breaking trial is not good news and is sure to undermine the legitimacy of the result.

In some senses it makes sense that in a trial focussed on copyright law the judge engaged should be an expert in the field - but at the same time, for a verdict to have the faith of the public behind it it needs not just to be just but to be seen to be just. And that now is clearlly not the case.

It seems unlikely, reading the press, that there will be a retrial. The trial will in any case go to appeal and any bias in the first trial would be removed. I think that's a shame as I think the question of whether the judge went ahead in spite of a conflict of interest is one that goes to the roots of ethics in the judicial process and is a question the public deserves to have an answer to.
However, the 'mud sticks' principle will sour any moral victory the media industry might have seen - placing them back under suspicion of using all means, fair and foul to hang onto their monopolistic profits.
And then of course there is the 'no smoke without fire' principle to consider...

Infiltrating the Vegan Underground

By a kind of circuitous route I ended up at an interesting blog post on Greenisthenewred with the interesting title "10 easy ways to be labelled a "Terrorist" by the government". ..meaning of course the American government.

I liked number 8 - attend Vegan Potlucks.......

..but ... the article gives a scary reminder that legislation aimed at stopping suicide bombers and plane hijacks gets pointed at a completely different scale of activity - including things that are explicitly legal (not least in constitutional America). Running a website reporting on activist activities for instance.

In a separate piece the same author - Will Potter - highlights the hypocracy in labelling activists as 'Eco-terrorists' when it is in fact big corporations that are actively polluting the environment - and at times breaking the law to do so.

To Dig & Sow

                   This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

                                                                      
It's 360 years since Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers earned their place in English history - with a political doctrine arguing for the rights for the common man to earn their keep from the land, working collectively and in common. They were turbulent times - the monarchy had fallen and been replaced by the English Commonwealth, but still a ruling elite were steadily seizing common land to private ownership - and the poor were starving.

The movement involved relatively few people but the political ideas they put forward - argued from their religious faith - have sent ripples down the centuries. Their tale is well told in Leon Roselssons 'The World Turned Up Side Down' - here on Youtube..

With 360 years being in some degree full circle I thought I'd mark the occassion with some work of my own - a series of watercolours of which this is the first....

Rights and wrongs

Pretty soon the EU will be considering proposals to extend copyright on music to 95 years from the present 50 years... It's a proposal that's being pushed by the music industry -unsurprisingly - so you might think that it would be good for the music industry as a whole and for musicians in particular. Artists will earn more, and we will get a strong and vibrant music industry - won't we? Somehow I am unconvinced.

Why?

What does it mean for artists cutting records today?? Well... in fifty years time you can continue to earn on your records for a further 45 years. .. and if not you, then your descendants - at the very least your record label. Well, the fact is that the majority of artists struggle to GET rich on their current success, and earn very little from back catalog sales - and artists themselves see issues with these proposals because of dilution of revenue to go to artists estates, and problems with orphan works..

Anyway most artists trade some or all of their rights to income to their record company in return for someone who will (while it suits them) promote and distribute their music. So 95 years of rights must be worth more than 50 years right? Which means artists can get more when they sign away their right, right?

Well not exactly, that's the rub. Simple economics says that the 'net present value' of a return in 50 (or 90) years time is next to nothing. There is negligable economic benefit to justify any investment now in an asset that matures in 50 years... particularily with no clue as to whether an artist will be of interest then.

So what is the benefit then?? Well... record companies with back catalogs of titles that are 45 years or more old can see an extension of their chance to income from those old works. s soon to be worthless --- and by a stroke of the legislators pen they get to put millions on to their balance sheet.

But now lets assume that the consumer only has so much money to spend on entertainment... and that a record company normally spends a fixed proportion of it's budget on marketing and sales. The tempatation - nay, the clear intention - is that the record company will spend money to market and exploit the back catolog they're sitting on. This has two effects... money they draw in from consumers is money that's not available to be spent on new artists and new creativity. Moreover, because the media giants are focussed on milking their existing assets they are not investing in bringing on new talent and reinvigorating the market.

The nett effect? Today's culture loses out - the sources of revenue for new artists are lower - the opportunity for new artists to reach a wider audience are fewer, and the exposure of the audience to new music is less. We are culturally poorer - and fewer musicians are able to earn their daily bread.

Copyright is a limited monopoly granted by society to protect society's cultural interests by allowing artists to be supported from their creativity. But it's clear that for the most part this proposal does nothing to further the publics interest, nor even that of most artists... it is quite simply a protectionist measure which benefits two groups...

First there are the music companies that today have a soon to be worthless back catalog that can expect to get in effect free money from a change in the existing rules.

..and yes, there are some artists that continue to be popular and sell in volumes two generations after their initial work is published - but to be honest, songs that have been around for fifty years - especially well known and popular ones are very much part of the public domain. An artist or his/her record label have had more than enough time to rake in a reward for the months, weeks or minutes it took to produce.

Or as one academic put it... this idea is good only for "record companies, aging rock stars or, increasingly, artists' estates. It does nothing for innovation and creativity."

Thou shalt not kill?

A man will die unless you choose to defer his lethal sentence...
If you choose not to defer the sentence you choose to kill him.


And yet you did choose not to defer the sentence.
You deliberately chose to kill him.

Yes, You have the power to kill..
..but not the moral right.

Especially not for you George...

A devout Christian?