homebrew

AHARS Symposium September 19

2010-08-10T09:52:00.004+09:30

Event; AHARS Symposium

Topics; Amateur radio, Construction

Speakers; Drew Diamond VK3XU, Phil Harman VK6APH and more

Venue; Belair Community Centre, Corner of Sheoak Road and Burnell Drive, Belair

Cost; $20 at the door for morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea.

Date; 19 September, 2010

Time; 930am - 5pm

beep

2010-01-04T21:52:00.001+10:30

Kim has been tinkering with analog electronic music. Over the Christmas break he has put together an 8 step rotary sequencer and atari punk console.

Horse trading

2009-05-01T10:51:00.007+09:30

On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 9:52 AM, Jeffrey A. Williams
<jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Jeremy and all,

> Americans interests in this instance
> should come first but in a fair way
> with our Trading partners around the world.

Janet:

It seems fraught to me to have an issue like copyright horse traded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_trading

It has become clear through the previous discussions that the DMCA, especially in regards to DRM/TPM, runs at odds to civil rights and accessibility. Incongruent law is generated because the trade process sidesteps or bulldozes public interests.

Since the printing press copyright has been used as a means to find a balance between the social function of information, our peace with our possessions, and the business of making and distributing ideas.

We now use methods of publishing and distribution which do match the printing press' single point of investment model. We could do with rethinking the social/business balance around ways to multiple points of contribution and where publishing is trivial, and creation is living and participatory.

A single point of value with a distributed social cost is no longer a good value mapping for the ways that we can express information.

A trade negotiation is not a suitable context for negotiating that kind of civil infrastructure. The public interest is not effectively represented in the mechanics of trades processes. It leads to the kind of gaming and hypocrisy which Consumers International have pointed out.

Repeal of DMCA would be a useful first step.
The crucial aspects of the social functions of information need to be able to flow in the interests of world health, ecology, community. Our means for valuing innovation should not effect obstacles to world health, our means for innovating with agriculture should not cause risk to ecologies or encourage the development of nonviable species for commercial interest. As a species we need to look at our methods for valuing to see if they are responsible to our biodiverse context, as a community of people we need to value in ways which do not cause inhumanity.

A tragedy of the commons is a choice, it is a prisoner's dilemma kind of choice. There is no tragedy in contexts where the participants choose to act for the common good.

If our systems for generating law are engineered through trade processes the underlying precepts are grounded in individual advantage. If they are developed in piecemeal increments with global agreements we get a uniform obfuscated law because the process is only practical in small pieces at a global scale. The result is that copyright is not a comprehensible model of valuing for public use.

If a child cannot confidently wield the fabric of their cultural context because it is damn near impossible to figure out what is legal and what is not then the method for valuing is costing society both in the right to participate for new generations, and in their ability to see legal frameworks as viable and reasonable systems. ie It erodes lawfulness to have incomprehensible law which results in more people choosing for their own interests rather than any common good.

DMCA is a problem. DRM/TPM technologies are not a workable solution to a social question.

If we did not have the Statute of Anne heritage, and we were looking at our current means of production/distribution and social function with information what kinds of models for valuing could we make? How would we ensure that they always kept strong ecological and humanist values and also helped value to accrue to effort and investment?

[Janet XYL]

Consumers International: Call for end to USA hypocrisy on Fair Use

2009-05-01T00:47:00.003+09:30

Global copyright watch list reveals US hypocrisy and how out-of-date legislation is damaging consumer interests

Jeremy Malcolm, CI IP Programme Coordinator says:

“Fair use in US copyright law has contributed an estimated $4.5 trillion to the US economy, by allowing the use of copyrighted material by educational institutions, Internet innovators, and sellers of devices like the iPod and TiVo. Yet the US government is actively stopping other countries from having the same opportunities. CI wants to see an end to this hypocrisy.”

[Janet XYL]

Comments on proposed WIPO treaty to permit blind users to circumvent DRM

2009-04-29T22:50:00.011+09:30

(Janet: ianal)

This post is a summary of my thoughts on a thread in the Access to Knowledge email list. The A2K is generally an announce flavoured list but this particular issue has generated some dialogue.

The initial post is titled:
[A2k] DRM and the World Blind Union's Proposed Treaty for Reading Disabled Persons
There are some title changes through the discussion.

The following is a post I contributed:

================

Greets

OK so if we have a blind person and a DRM media item
to effect access we need:

a copyright law which includes a useful limitation and exception for the intended use and user
a treaty which permits circumvention of the DRM for that type of user and use

In Australia it is illegal to circumvent a TPM, it is also a felony to develop tools which do so or to distribute those tools. If the blind user is not able to engineer circumvention themselves, we would also need:

the right to delegate that exemption to a possibly sighted engineer/organisation
the right to delegate the permission to develop a tool/means of circumvention to a possibly sighted engineer organisation
the right to delegate a permission to distribute or share the tool and/or the resulting accessible media back to the user.
there may be cost issues associated with sourcing this kind of expertise which might be difficult to afford for individual users and so it is likely that some wider sharing of either the media or the tools would still be needed to make the material accessible in a cost effective and a timely manner.

If we have users who are deaf, who use a mouthstick, or who work with other kinds of accessibility issues then each of those groups would need to be able to source engineering and distribution to suit the kinds of issues they face with the media which are of issue to them.
[snipped a bit about education and library uses]

What kind of approach should be taken to make it possible for these acts of engineering, distribution and use to occur on behalf of the blind user by a third party?
Similar question for engineering, distribution on behalf of other accessibility purposes.
Similar question for engineering, distribution on behalf of education, library, health and other civic uses which could easily impact a blind user as well.

I guess I am concerned that this feels like a legal Barrier Reef.

In Australia there are existing laws about providing goods and services in an accessible manner. A user successfully sued the Olympic Games for a website which did not make it possible to purchase tickets in an accessible manner.
Is it possible to use that kind of approach to ensure that media is provided in an accessible way and that circumvention and distribution for any legal use or on behalf of users who require access to means of circumvention is a safe thing to participate in for all those in the supply chain.

================

Tonight Paul Lehto posted a comment drawing parallels between his experience in contesting civil rights with digital voting technologies and the legality of purveying information using inaccessible technology.

"Both with DRM (Digital Reformatory Mandates) contracts and with elections, governments and corporations are increasingly using contracts/compacts/treaties or licensing contracts as an improper method of “opting out” of constitutional limitations or core human rights enforcement, instead of using the only proper method available: actually amending the constitution. Just hours ago, Washington state become the 5th state to pass the “National Popular Vote Compact” which is en end-around the relatively unpopular Electoral College method of electing U.S. Presidents.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_electoral_college.html?source=mypi

Now, I myself don’t particularly like the Electoral College, but it’s even more fundamental that contracts can’t be used to modify core rights at all, in most cases, and in any case they certainly don’t modify the rights of those who haven’t even signed the bloody contract, digitally or otherwise.

With Digital Reformatory Mandates it seems to me that, among other things, big corporate providers have no intention of following constitutional and legal schemes of copyright that require that knowledge always (eventually) make it into the public domain. There doesn’t appear to be any real intention of making available an unrestricted public domain version of the work seventy or more years later (or whatever the applicable copyright period happens to be). As such, these contracts also go above and beyond what fundamental law allows. The UDHR "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" recently cited on this list aptly points out that “IP” “rights” are not on a par with core human rights, they are privileges handed out at the discretion of governments.

In contrast, inalienable rights consist of things (in the USA at least) as simple as the right to file bankruptcy (no contract is valid that purports to waive that right) or the right to seek a divorce. Similarly, one may not waive one’s right to vote by contract or other core rights.

If the list agrees that knowledge and access thereto is a core human right, and if the list agrees that licensing contracts or technological structures that put freedom and knowledge in a kind of private prison via Digital Reformatory Mandates, then what is called a “facial attack” on the DRM regime is clearly available in various forms."

================

Australia does not have fair use, it does not have the same Constitutional liberties which exist in the USA, however we do have laws ensuring people should have access to goods and services in an accessible manner.

I don't know which way this debate will proceed but in either direction the debate about facilitating accessible technologies should raise some interesting issues for those who may need to unpick DRM/TPM issues from either a technical or a legal perspective.

/me hopes that what this means is that DRM effects disfunction that we already have legal recourse to outlaw.

Janet (XYL)

Podcasts I've been listening to recently

2009-04-29T20:39:00.003+09:30

Recently I've been listening to a couple of podcasts about HAM radio, homebrew, computers and Linux.

I have been hanging out for the next podcast from Bill N2CQR. Bill posts usually once a fortnight and keeps an interesting blog called SolderSmoke. Homebrew amateur radio, some travel log, some amateur astronomy and other related geeky things.

A couple of weeks back I found Linux in the HAM Shack, which is self explanatory really. Russ K5TUX and Richard KB5JBV, aim to walk you through all the popular things you's likely do with computers in HAM radio. Assume radio experience, but not Linux experience.

I have at least a hour bus trip to work and then another hour home again, so these podcasts help fill the voids in my head with useful radio thoughts =)

Kim VK5FNET

Progress on NE602 based direct conversion receiver

2009-04-22T20:42:00.006+09:30

So today I stayed home due to brain pain, it had been building up for the last few days. Also I had difficulty with my balance. To the point that walking involved bumping into everything. Lots of water and pain killers helped a little, breakfast and coffee later helped a little too. However the head ache didn't wear off until late into the afternoon with more sleep. So I spent some of the day sitting down, tidying the shed.

The cool thing about that was I found a couple of little paper bags with parts that I had bought months back and promptly filed for safe keeping in boxes! Anyhow, that list of parts contained an SA602, 3.579MHz crystals, a variable poly-cap, a large breadboard and some zeners.

This was all the missing parts for the NE602 based direct conversion receiver I've been wanting to build. So late this afternoon I sorted out all the other parts, put them in a box and setup on the kitchen table to assemble. My soldering iron and other tools are currently at a friends, so I pretty much had to assemble everything up on the breadboard.

Made dinner, a tasty curry with shallot pancakes. Then assembled it as per the circuit from W1AW. I am not sure where I first found it, google has a few references to it about. There are also a few variations on the NE602 direct conversion receiver, like the MRX-40_Mini_Receiver and another that I like using LC tank circuits for both the RF input filter and the oscillator side.

I fired it up but heard absolutely nothing. Much comparing with the diagram led to adding the vcc and ground rail for the LM386, after which I could hear familiar hash with the speaker held very close to my ear. I dug out the Pixie2 hoping to create some kind of signal. However the oscillator from the Pixie2 did not create the expected signal or inteference on the DC receiver. So this needs looking at another day when I can focus for more than ten minutes at a time. Hopefully this coming weekend wont involve any more headaches.

Kim VK5FNET

2 Meter Portable Ops

2009-04-13T09:14:00.004+09:30

Yesterday Karl VK5FOSS and I VK5FNET, worked through the check list to do a test set up for the 2 meter portable rig. The aim was to get all the kit together for operating in the field. Why would we do that you ask? Well last year I wasn't really quite ready for either of the rallies that we worked at. The ROSA and the Classic Rally of Adelaide. Both time Karl and I worked as radio operators. The main function of the role is to record information on the stage and pass this information as 'messages' to Rally Control.

HAM radio operators work under the banner of WICEN. WICEN is an organisation for emergency radio communications to help in message passing for the emergency organisations like the Country Fire Services, Police, Ambulances, etc. The aim here is for radio operators to work well under pressure to get messages through under tricky conditions. I've been told that despite the technical problems I had at the rallies, I did a good job and should continue working in this field. So once I am confident I have useful portable kit I will join WICEN and do more formal activities with them. Here is a summary from the de-brief of the last rallies.

Anyway, so yesterday we made a list of things we are missing and working to narrow that down. Along with places to find said missing items. Things like; good rope, large non-black tent pegs, tubing for another mast, extra RF patch cables, another dummy load, a good box on wheels that can be pulled or pushed like a sack truck and fix my SWR meter.

So later in the day we put together a couple more patch leads and a 7.5watt dummy load for Karl. I have also spent a fair bit of time working on the SWR meter. I looks good to me, but I think I'll follow up with some of the local HAMs to confirm that its accurate as I had to repair the input connector. Which meant disassembling the whole thing and rebuilding it again, which means it will need re-calibration.

Was planning some more study for the next exam today, but a long list of around the house jobs are yet to be done. You know the ones, mowing, digging, weeding, tidying... Maybe tonight =)
The main reason I need to push to get these exams out of the way is that I really want to work packet at the next rally. This is where my radio/linux/networking/computing interests all meet. There is so much stuff to explore in this space, thankfully it doesn't seem to change very fast, so I will have a chance to catch up =) Then I can start work into the areas of HF and 2 meter packet radio with some of the local guys. Not sure where that will end yet =)

Kim VK5FNET

dreams of arduinos

2009-03-09T13:42:00.003+10:30

Its one of those local public holidays today. Cup day or something. The kind that make you sleep in, warm enough to organise firewood and mow the back lawn. Well whats left of the lawn from the water bans and hot summer, but then theres the go inside time. Cool down with a chilled beverage and surf the 'net time.

I've been following the SolderSmoke blog and podcast, Bill mentioned that he put in a submission to Hack A Day about QRSS. Hack A Day is one of those sites that just gets the juices in the brain a pumping and thinking about building various things.

The first thing I found this morning was pluggable modules on an arduino shield, like lego blocks to enable fast prototyping of hardware and software.

The second was a two servo, four legged robot powered by four AA batteries and an Arduino.

The third was a tiny parallel supercomputer; the non-von1-supercomputer. There was another project a while back implementing a basic stamp supercomputer.

From a link somewhere I found one of the things that I keep crossing paths with, a home made Arduino board project. I found one today that set my mind racing off down the path of pluggable modules; the cheapduino.

So while not specifically parallel, but pluggable architectures of embedded systems. It could simplify the design of the individual board if a backplane had all the power, clock and a MPI interface for each CPU.

Perhaps a single USB connected backplane with a serial interface for each pluggable daughter board, in a simple frame that lets each daughter board have an edge connected I/O space. Something like the cards in a QBUS VAX. Smaller obviously, about five centimeters or two inches a side.

On that you could build a service per CPU, say, temperature logging, writing to a SD card, inrfa red comms., two wheeled robot platform built with servos, xigbee Tx/Rx, bluetooth...

I'm sure that there are loads of other ideas in this space. Its all about context and filling a need, its just strange some days where ones mind wanders... parallel pluggable embedded systems, which I'm sure one call call a mini-frame. Hmmmm ... theres an LCA talk in that I'm sure.

Kim VK5FNET

Band Pass Filters

2009-02-23T20:17:00.004+10:30

Last night I built up an input band pass filter. The point of this little beastie is filter out the RF from above and below the band or radio frequency that you want to receive on.

I found a page on the band pass filters; http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/02/maker_channel_ep_8_uber_tuber_freel.html

So the original Pixie 2 circuit - a direct conversion receiver I'd like to use for QRSS - has a low pass filter. Firstly, the reason the BPF project was started, is to remove all the spurious noise from other bands. Mainly the huge signal from the commercial AM broadcasters around 1.8MHz. Secondly, I want to make pretty sure that I'm not spraying harmonics across higher bands.

Some testing with the original LPF from the crystal oscillator shows a nice sine wave like signal with some noise on the peak of the upper cycle. However the Chebyshev BFP has lots of harmonics and looks like its attenuating a lot. I need to get some advice on reading the output of my CRO. Also a spectrum analyzer would be a very hand tool. But I'm not real happy with the output of the Chebyshev, it actually looks worse than the input side from the oscillator.

It seems, on advice from VK5TR / VK5JST, that many of the generic toroids from Altronics, DSE & Jaycar, may not have a suitable Q factor. Jim suggested the FT68-41 toroid cores. The suggested core is the T94-6. Will have to find a source of toroids specifically for the purpose. Not found any local suppliers, but will keep looking.

BPF == band pass filter
LPF == low pass filter
HPF == high pass filter
CRO == cathode ray oscilloscope
harmonics == multiples of the frequency that you are generating

Kim VK5FNET

LinuxSA Talk: Hacking the chumby, by Chris Iona

2009-02-17T19:09:00.002+10:30

Chris Iona talks about "Hacking the chumby". Has a control panel. Runs Adobe Flash Lite 3.0. Plays FLV, PNG, GIF, MP3, some streams. 350MHz ARM9. Can boot from cramfs and chroot a distro(Debian) from an external USB drive. The 2009 model has an internal battery.

More interesting stuff at Bunnies blog of chumby hacks.

More on toroids

2009-02-16T22:32:00.005+10:30

Been searching for info about the toroids from Altronics. Setting up a band pass filter for the QRSS receiver.

The L4534 seems to be the same dimensions as the T130-2.

OD = 1.30 / 33.0 mm +/- 0.02 in
ID = .780 in / 19.8 mm +/- 0.02 in
Ht = .437 in / 11.1 mm +/- 0.025 in

Also I've found a useful site on the standard sizes.

The T130-2 has a AL of 11 +/-5%. So then to calculate the inductance like so; uH=(AL*Turns2)/1000

The L4517 does not match up to any of the standard sizes. Its just a bit bigger than the T50-2. So I'll use that as a model and obviously subtract some turns ...

I have three of the L4517's would with 36 turns of 0.5mm enabled wire for an inductance of 12uH. Now to pick out the capacitors for the BPF. Then find the smallest way to build it all up on copper clad board for the Pixie2 in the Haighs tin.

kim vk5fnet

How to capture output from a CW beacon with an Arduino?

2009-02-15T20:56:00.007+10:30

So what the hell am I talking about? In them olden days CW, or as we know it, morse, was the primary means of radio communications. CW is still in active use today. Its common for HAM repeaters to use CW to identify their call sign. CW is also used for MEPT beacons. Its these beacons that I'm interested in listening out for. There are a couple of uses that beacons serve, firstly its a really useful thing to have a beacon on 24/7 to listen for so you can tell what the radio propagation is like. Another useful thing is many beacons are time based, so they transmit in regular intervals, ie every hour/half/quarter.

Now where does the Arduino fit into this? Ideally we need to monitor the incoming signals. We can do this with programs like glfer or baudline in Linux. In windows land there is Spectran and Argo. This requires the operator to sit and watch the waterfall screen scroll by and wait to see whats out there. Often what happens is that the operator will do a screen capture of the window with the waterfall to share what they saw. Often there will have to be a series of screen captures to get the entire message. I'm aiming to find a way to use the Arduino to monitor the audio from a Pixie2. Once an interesting signal is detected it either records the audio stream or attempts to decode it.

I'm sure there are useful SDRAM devices that you can store an audio stream to, not sure of the bandwidth, but expect that 10-44KHz audio wouldn't be that much of a challenge. Once you have the data then you manually need to view or listen to all the recorded streams and see of any of them are indeed useful. Perhaps its a little ambitious, but what I'd like to do is to decode the CW audio into text and record on the fly. Perhaps also logging to a serial port. We're talking about 25 words per minute, tops, for manually sent CW from a good operator. With QRSS we are talking about 0.3 baud, so much, much less. The hard part is actually processing the data and making clever descisions about what is real signal and what is noise.

If you've ever watched the waterfall scroll by, you'll see that there is a lot of noise out there. Much more than you'd expect. Every plasma TV, every AM radio station, every computer, etc adds to electrical and magnetic junk flying around. The power supply on my laptop is amazingly bad. So much so that I've added extra filtering so that I can use it near my Pixie2 to record the audio coming from it. Actually I don't use the PSU when recording any more, luckily the laptop has a 5 hour battery life. The laptop itself isn't too bad. I have added RF filtering on the audio input cable, which solved a bunch of things, but has reduced the sensitivity a bit. Its hard to measure.

Measuring seems to be the black art of HAM radio. Yes a DMM, a digital multi-meter will do a lot of things, but doesn't do everything. A while back I found a LCR meter, which has been really handy. L is inductance, C is capacitance, R is resistance. It does the job ok, but I'd like to compare it to another meter see see if its accurate.

Building radio gear is easy if you know all your components are right. I had a battle with measuring inductance before. Calculating coils it easy but you don't know if your theoretical model actually matches your hand wound inductor in the low pass filter. Is it really 2.2uF? Am I really getting RF above 4MHz filtered out? Is it actually 3MHz? I suppose thats where a spectrum analyser comes in. Good radio practice is all about measuring things. Things that measure things are not cheap as I've discovered.

My ongoing reading leads me down the path of buying some existing kits. Why? Other people measured things and made a kit with all the part supplied. You don't have to think too much about measuring the details, because the kit is supposed to work =) Not casting nasturtiums at all. However if I've any change to understand how all this stuff works, you need to cut the code yourself, wind the toroids yourself, put the transistors in backward the first time and mess with it and measure until you've got what you expected. I mean, who'd have thought that the 2N2222's that I baught from Dick Smith have a different pin out to the data sheet?!?!

Where was I going... oh yes, there is a point at which you don't want to have to build everything. There are nice kits out there and there are building blocks that you just want to slot in that just work. I am finding that I need to actually build some anyway as its the only way to learn about this stuff. Electronics isn't as easy as it first looks. Just like code, you have APIs, you have to muck around with the input/output matching, buffers and sometimes you need to add a few bypass capacitors, just because! I don't know why yet, but it makes a difference. One of these days I'm sure I'll understand RFC's too, people put them in funny places.

RF propagation is at a low right now. Sun spots are also at a low. Yes these are related. While propagation is bad, folks are playing with MEPT beacons that use QRSS, its a really slow form of CW. Why? Because when you slow down the data rate, you can decrease the bandwidth needed to send the signal. If you are narrowing the bandwidth you can use less power too. When receiving a QRSS signal, you only need to look at a very narrow chunk of RF spectrum. As little as 10Hz. Folks are using tiny amounts of power to get their signals around, as little as 100uW. 10mW will travel from the USA to Australia.

Stability becomes a problem when we are talking about a band 100Hz wide. You also need an oscillator that is very temperature insensitive. Which is where something simple like the Pixie2 comes in, it listens to a much wider chunk of RF spectrum. A peecee sound card has an input bandwidth around 44KHz. That is plenty wide enough to allow for a beacon and receiver to drift around. The main battle is find the signal in the first place.

As you make the radio hardware simpler, you may need to make the software a little more complex. A peecee has more then enough capacity to process this amount of information, but does an Arduino? I'm hoping that it does. To record a QRSS MEPT transmission and play back the message. Also I'd really like the Arduino to be independent from a peecee, so it can be remote.

The other option is a full SDR, software defined radio, but these are very expensive. Also a lot more flexible than a little direct conversion (DC) receiver like the Pixie2. The way the Australian dollar is compared to the US dollar theres no chance an SDR will land in my radio shack this year.

kim vk5fnet

Fun with toroids

2009-02-15T19:29:00.014+10:30

The aim here is to find an inexpensive source of toroids for kits for QRSS receivers. Jaycar and Altronics have a reasonable number of shops around the place and also do Internet and mail order, so folks should be able to get the parts easily enough.

Anyhow, some time back I picked up all the 15.2X8.53X5.94 toroid cores, L4517 the local Aztronics. They sell from the Altronics catalog. So these cores are not standard sizes or models that are used in HAM radio, so far that I can make out. They are pretty close to a T50-2, as they are supposed to be iron core, but are a bit larger diameter. Using 0.5mm/24bs enameled copper wire, WW4016, from Jaycar, I've spread the turns out over at least 80% of the toroid, values as follows;

10 turns gives 0.001mH

20 turns gives 0.003mH

25 turns gives 0.005mH

36 turns gives 0.012mH - for 3.5MHz BPF

I could probably squeeze on another 5 turns, but 10-36 turns covers the inductance that I need right now. Perhaps other gauges of wire will yield other usable values. These toroids as they are setup are intended for low pass filters or band pass filters. The Pixie 2 needs just one in its current configuration. I intend to build up a better filter as there is lots of AM broadcast signal there when down on the flat in Adelaide.

kim vk5fnet

Thankyou

2009-02-01T04:10:00.003+10:30

Kim returned from the LCA09 with a brainful
of tech and hands full of Tasmanian treasure.

He also brought home a
Community Recognition Award certificate for me.
Thankyou very much!
Congratulations to Alli Russell and
Hugh Blemings who were also recognised. =)

The conference sounds like it was a ripper.
Looking forward to checking out the recordings.
Good luck to the Wellington team with LCA2010,
the incoming Linux Australia committee,
and all the best to the LA mob for 2009.

jh

olsrd ported to android

2009-01-12T09:09:00.007+10:30

Saturday I spoke with Joel Stanely about his new Android phone.

I've been looking for a replacement for mine as its just getting old and falling to bits.

This morning I found another incentive to look at the android;
olsrd ported to the google phone

OLSR on a phone, sounds like the kind of networking for me =)

kim vk5fnet

Fun with radio - part 2

2009-01-11T08:36:00.005+10:30

Now that I have built a receiver, as the first stage in a QRSS grabber, how do I calibrate it?

I commented in Bills blog, SolderSmoke News, about the how the two pixie 2's David Rowe and I built were not on the same frequency despite being the same circuit. They are about 2KHz apart, which we put down to the tolerances in the components.

My HF rig has a 'digial readout' that measures down to 1KHz increments. QRSS uses a 'band' of 100Hz wide. Thats right, a tenth of what my smallest increment on the HF rig. So how to I measure that?

I'm looking to build a frequency counter or meter. Are there homebrew designs out there?

kim vk5fnet

Fun with radio - part 1

2009-01-08T16:44:00.005+10:30

Yesterday I spent an afternoon working with David Rowe building a Pixie 2; www.kenneke.com/~jon/pixie/

The Pixie 2 a tiny direct conversion radio intended for training new HAMs in under standing radio and building electronics. The initial build was a little bit troublesome as the oscillator wasn't. This makes it quite hard to build the rest of the radio, as it can be built in stages; the oscillator, the PA/detector, the audio amplifier.

Well the afternoon turned out to be quite productive and with a working radio picking up Davids Pixie transmitting from a foot away on the work bench. It puts out a whopping 200milliWatts and the output waveform on the oscilloscope was very sinusoidal.

David has a full amateur radio license and is a very cluey electronics engineer. I have my foundation license, so while I'm not worried about building a transmitter yet, I am quite interested in software defined radio(SDR) and QRSS. Which is what this project/journey is all about.

Whats next? Well as I now have a DC radio with audio output, SDR being the end goal, the next thing to build is the audio interface to the laptop so I can get the Linux QRSS client running...

kim vk5fnet

A2K from FSF Europe's Georg Greve

2008-12-03T07:44:00.000+10:30

"[...] Both patents and standards derive their justification from the public benefit, yet upholding one deprives the other of its function. Standards seek to counteract monopolies, patents establish them. Or, as Tomoko Miyamoto, Senior Counsellor of the Patent Law Section in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said in her presentation: Patent thickets and patent hold-ups arise from legitimate exploitation of the exclusive rights intentionally conferred by patents. They are a normal and intended consequence of the patent system. [...]"

The article just went online at http://fsfeurope.org/standards/ps

Join the UN open letter - action to protect the public-ness and the egalitarian nature of the Internet.

2008-12-02T04:43:00.005+10:30

Most of us tend to take the commons and the public nature of the Internet for granted. However, increasing corporatisation and control of the Internet are strongly threatening these fundamental characteristics of the Internet as we know it. Therefore, six civil society organisations in India have proposed an open letter to the UN Internet Governance Forum which meets for its third annual meeting between 3rd and 6th December in Hyderabad. The letter exhorts urgent global action to ensure that the public-ness and the egalitarian nature of the Internet are preserved as its essential features. The possibilities of democracy, equity and social justice in our societies will be significantly impacted by the extent to which we can achieve this objective.

To read the complete letter click here.

For the current endorsement list click here

Sign the open letter

Respect

2008-12-01T14:17:00.002+10:30

Brendan Scott writes about a nasty twist to the idea of showing respect by copying or following a style or meme.

pwned by the pipes

2008-11-11T07:57:00.003+10:30

EFF Gwen Hinze on the risks of a WIPO Broadcasting Treaty

EFF and a diverse group of public interest NGOs, libraries and major U.S. tech industry players continue to oppose the current treaty draft because it's not limited to signal protection, but would instead create a new layer of exclusive intellectual property rights for broadcasters and cablecasters that would harm access to knowledge and consumers' existing rights under national copyright law, endanger citizen broadcasting on the Internet, raise competition policy concerns and stifle technological innovation.

Why I copyfight by Cory Doctorow

2008-11-09T06:28:00.002+10:30

Why I copyfight Cory Doctorow

An extract :

Indeed, copyists are busily building an elaborate ethos of what can and can't be shared, and with whom, and under what circumstances. They join private sharing circles, argue norms among themselves, and in word and deed create a plethora of "para-copyrights" that reflect a cultural understanding of what they're meant to be doing.

The tragedy is that these para-copyrights have almost nothing in common with actual copyright law. No matter how hard you adhere to them, you're probably breaking the law — so if you're in making anime music videos (videos for pop music made by cleverly splicing together clips of anime movies — google for "amv" to see examples), you can abide by all the rules of your group about not showing them to outsiders and only using certain sources for music and video, but you're still committing millions of dollars' worth of infringement every time you sit down to your keyboard.

It's not surprising that para-copyright and copyright don't have much to say to one another. After all, copyright regulates what giant companies do with each other. Para-copyright regulates what individuals do with each other in a cultural settings. Why be surprised that these rulesets are so disjointed?

It's entirely possible that there's a detente to be reached between the copyists and the copyright holders: a set of rules that only try to encompass "culture" and not "industry." But the only way to bring copyists to the table is to stop insisting that all unauthorized copying is theft and a
crime and wrong. People who know that copying is simple, good, and beneficial hear that and assume that you're either talking nonsense or that you're talking about someone else.

KEI on Copyright and accessibility at WIPO

2008-11-07T03:02:00.003+10:30

KEI Statement on SCCR future work

KEI supports work on copyright limitations and exceptions. Like many others, we think that access for disabled persons should be given priority. The World Blind Union (WBU) has petitioned WIPO consistently on this topic since 2002, at SCCR 7. It is time to address the human rights of disabled persons.

asks the SCCR to remove the broadcasting treaty from the agenda until such time as there is greater consensus over the purpose of the treaty.

Piracy of broadcasts is already illegal under numerous treaties, including those that deal with copyright, or regulatory policy. If new economic rights are created for cable and satellite television channels, there will be a huge concentration of rights in a handful of corporations, at the expense of consumers and creative communities.

KEI suggests the SCCR broaden its program on the issue of performers. The SCCR might gather data and statistics on the distribution of income from performances, or ask the Secretariat to commission a study on the factors that influence the distribution of revenues to performers. This should also fruitfully consider the types of alternative remuneration schemes referred to by the IMMF, considering the possibility that there are limits to the enforcement of exclusive rights.

The orphan works element of the EU proposal could be included in the agenda item for limitations and exceptions.

No filter tshirt

2008-11-01T05:30:00.004+10:30

buy unique gifts at Zazzle

Action needed to expand exceptions and limitations to copyright law,

2008-11-01T02:47:00.002+10:30

Action needed to expand exceptions and limitations to copyright law by Gwen Hinze (July 2008) Third world network

These discussions flowed from three proposals to give access to the most vulnerable or socially submitted to WIPO by the government of Chile at prioritized sectors.
A paper looking at international negotiations for exemptions and limitations:

1. Identification, from the national intellectual property systems of WIPO Member States, of national models and practices concerning exceptions and limitations.

2. Analysis of the exceptions and limitations needed to promote creation and innovation and the dissemination of developments stemming therefrom.

3. Establishment of agreement on exceptions and limitations for purposes of public interest that must be envisaged as a minimum in all national legislations for the benefit of the community.

ACTA proposed copyright treaty

2008-06-10T13:14:00.002+09:30

The next piece of 'governance' using IP based property and control.

Michael Geist notes exemptions for circumvention in NZ

2008-04-11T00:05:00.001+09:30

DMCA doesnt bite as badly in NZ. Nice work.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2829/125/

Australia abstains on OOXML

2008-03-31T21:45:00.004+10:30

Australia's NO vote was pivotal, so in effect the abstain is likely to win the day for OOXML.
It does seem a lot of work to go to in order to have no opinion.

As I understand it many committee members were quietly hopeful of a No vote. Australia is not the only nation where people have invested a lot of time and expressed their perspectives thoroughly and carefully through this process only to find that the final vote bears no connection to their work.

There have certainly been no shortage of concerns, published openly, expressed to Standards Australia, or to ISO directly.

Sadly given the other irregularities in the process I am not surprised about Australia's abstension. It has been an amazing process to watch.

So the abstension is likely to mean a win. That brings Australia a pre-stamped commitment to a format which:
* needs yet to be completely written and implemented,
* in its current and intended state conflicts with other standards and
* is only drafted in terms of its relationship with closed Microsoft formats
* is not considered legally safe for interoperability work.

Quoting Jan Wildeboer Red Hat EMEA Evangelist Open Source Affairs

"OOXML was created solely for use in Microsoft applications. It is not currently suitable as an international standard, because it cannot be completely implemented by anyone without access to inside information. Although it is more than 6,000 pages long, it contains various references to things that are defined only in Microsoft's software, not in the specification itself."

============================

Needless to say the ISO stamp does not change any of the realities described below, and so the inability to express the fact that the proposal is broken through the ISO process will likely result in a change in what the ISO brand means rather than resulting in an acceptance of the proposal as something which can be relied upon as a useful tool in making interoperable data.
It will be interesting to see where nations will look to in the future in order to find whether a format can effectively serve a public function without causing vendor lockin and anti-trust concerns.

From: Peter Drummond in an Open Letter to ISO.
To: ua.gro.sdradnats|tcestni#ua.gro.sdradnats|tcestni
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:47:55 +1000
Subject: OOXML ISO proposal

Dear ISO Standards Committee -

As Australia's IUPAP representative for computational physics, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, I would like to make the strongest possible objection to the proposal that the OOXML specification be adopted by the ISO. Australia should vote to reject this proposal.

This proposal is along the lines that ‘We wish to propose an alternative standard for measurement called the Microsoft metre, which equals 3.14159 standard metres, except on leap years, when it equals 2.71828 standard metres’. Such a ridiculous proposal is unacceptable.

The simple point here is that there is an existing international standard called the ODF, just as we have an existing international standard for length (the meter), time (the second) and weight (the kilogram). The entire point of having a standard is the uniqueness of the standard!

To have two completely incompatible standards is not necessary, and would lead to the destruction of the standardization process. In the long run, this is less efficient, increases costs, and greatly reduces the chances of archival documents being readable in the distant future.

If a corporation or individual wishes to make technical improvements to a standard like ODF, there are channels and procedures for this. It is totally counterproductive and foolish to try and create a second incompatible standard, purely to afford competitive advantages to one company.

Finally, I haven't even mentioned the numerous technical problems to the OOXML proposal. This is so complex and poorly specified that there appears to be no fully compliant implementation in existence now, nor any means to verify compliance. To avoid embarrassment, please vote NO.

Yours sincerely,

Peter D Drummond, FAA,
Professor of Theoretical Physics,
University of Queensland.

Happy document freedom day

2008-03-26T06:44:00.006+10:30

Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards. To support the initiatives surrounding the first day to celebrate document liberation, DFD starter packs containing a DFD flag, t-shirts and leaflets have been sent to the first 100 registered teams over the past weeks.
http://www.documentfreedom.org/
http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Document_Freedom_Day_2008

Open Document Format (ODF) is the first and only *Open* Standard standardised in ISO. It is supported by many applications, some of them proprietary, some of them Free Software. If you are currently using any of the applications below, your software already supports Open Document Format:

* AbiWord
* Google Docs
* IBM Lotus Symphony
* KOffice
* NeoOffice
* OpenOffice.org
* StarOffice

If you are not already using any of these applications, the following applications are Free Software and available for public download. Try ODF today:

* AbiWord
* KOffice
* NeoOffice
* OpenOffice.org

Wikipedia on OpenDocument

OOXML
Microsoft's promise covers only fully-compliant implementations.
But Microsoft Office isn't fully compliant with the OOXML (OfficeOpen XML) specification, therefore those who seek interoperability with Microsoft's software won't be covered by its promise.

Correction: It also doesn't cover the optional or not fully detailed parts of the specification. Almost everything is optional and far from complete in the specification.
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/stdlib/offdoc/mision

OOXML is not legally safe for FLOSS

2008-03-13T07:57:00.003+10:30

SFLC recommends against the establishment of OOXML as an international standard and cautions GPL implementers not to rely on the OSP.

http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2008/osp-gpl.html

Groklaw commentary:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080312151954507

EDRI's Statement at WIPO SCCR on limitations and exceptions

2008-03-12T02:41:00.001+10:30

European Digital Rights, EDRI, represents 28 privacy and civil rights organisations from 17 different countries in Europe. As this is the first time EDRI takes the floor, we’d like to congratulate you and your vice chairs on your election.

Not surprisingly, we are strongly in favour of starting the work that would hopefully lead to new international instrument on limitations and exceptions of copyright. EDRI therefore warmly supports the proposal presented by honourable delegate of Chile.

However, EDRI firmly believes that any new instrument should have also a strong focus – for example as a part of best practices - on the rights of totally ordinary citizens --- in addition to the professional or institutional users that traditionally occupy the center stage during these discussions of limitations and exceptions.

One of the key reason for this is that value of all kinds of consumer goods is based nowadays increasingly on the software and content and not so much on hardware. As a concequence copyright has to learn to live with consumer protection regulation. From our perspective, it would make
most sense to address this challenge inside the copyright system at the international level. In practice this means that the proposed research should also seek to answer questions like “is it ok to hack your iPhone even if that requires making a derivate copy of the software ” and “is it legal to create tools that help consumer to transfer maps from his old navigator to a new one even if the license agreements forbid it”. As far as we know, answers to this kind of questions are not yet firmly established at any jurisdictions and therefore task at hand would be forward-looking global harmonization..

Finally, EDRI would like to see very much such limitations and exceptions those aim is to protect free speech – for example parody and satire, quotations for criticism, usage of works in news - included extensively to the process. Copyright has a dark history for being a tool for censorship and oppression of controversial opinions – hopefully the possible new instrument could be a tool for redeeming this black past.

Proposal by Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua and Uruguay for Work Related to Exceptions and Limitations

2008-03-12T02:36:00.003+10:30

Proposal by Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua and Uruguay for Work Related to Exceptions and Limitations.

WIPO copyright review. Perhaps a chance for Australia to pull back some basic rights to access information and to participate in technology innovation in DRM multivendor environments?

KEI Statement at WIPO SCCR on agenda item on limitations and exceptions

2008-03-12T02:26:00.002+10:30

KEI supports the proposal by Brazil, Chile, Nicaragua and Uruguay for a strong substantive work program in the area of limitations and exceptions, and urges the SCCR members to give this topic the time, attention and care that it deserves. These are very important and challenging tasks. They go to the very core concerns of consumers, and they are highly relevant to the WIPO development agenda.

We welcome the constructive comments by the United States and other countries, and agree that work on norm setting should be informed by evidence, careful analysis, and that there is a tension with the need for national discretion in implementing treaty flexibilities.

We note that Chile indicated that the SCCR work on exceptions and limitations could proceed within the framework of existing copyright treaties, and that it would be fruitful to address specific problems.

Among the (many) questions the SCCR might consider, are the following:

1. Has the Internet created a compelling need to develop global norms for limitations and exceptions, in order to foster cross border publishing and sharing of information?

2. Do distance education services need minimum exceptions to truly develop as a platform, and to provide the type of services that are important for development?

3. Is the Appendix to the Berne Convention working? Does it need an "update" for the digital age?

4. How do DRM/TPM technologies work with consumer rights? Do we have the right models for state practice in implementing the 1996 WIPO digital treaties, as it relates to L&E?

5. Do countries have the flexibility in the TRIPS to deal with the orphan works problem? Is a cross border solution important?

6. How can countries implement the flexibilities in TRIPS Articles 40, on the control of anti-competitive practices, and Article 44, concerning alternatives to injunctions.

http://www.keionline.org/

ooxml process in Greece

2008-02-22T20:53:00.001+10:30

The Greek Head of Delegation is elected amid questions on the legality of the procedure

In the meeting of 2008-02-21 of the Technical Committee 48 of ELOT (the Greek ISO National Body), Sokratis Maanian was elected as Head of the Greek Delegation to the OpenXML Ballot Resolution Meeting, rather than Antonis Christofides, with 8 votes against 6. The vote was secret, despite the protest by Antonis Christofides. In addition, four additional organisations had been appointed committee members without prior notification.

http://elot.ece.ntua.gr/te48/ooxml/2008-02-21-meeting-en

Developers warned over OOXML patent risk

2008-02-19T06:32:00.003+10:30

"David Vaile, executive director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Center at the University of New South Wales, said that Microsoft participants at a recent symposium on the issue found it challenging to explain how an ordinary person 'or even an ordinary lawyer' could easily determine which parts of the specification were covered. 'This lack of certainty would mean a cautious lawyer may be reluctant to advise any third party to rely on the promise without extensive and potentially quite expensive analysis, and even that could be inconclusive,' Vaile said. 'In turn, this could restrict its viability as a usable standard for less well-resourced users, including small developers and many public organizations.'"

zdnetasia

Australian Linux community celebrates a year of leadership.

2008-01-03T20:23:00.000+10:30

Best wishes to local Free and Open Source Software communities around the country as they recover from end of year celebrations and muster themselves for LCA08

Open source and free software has provided opportunities for local, national and international leadership for many Australians in 2007. These leaders leverage a whole body of code, knowledge and community support. Open sharing and collaboration make it possible for Australians to participate, innovate using these technologies and communities of knowledge.

2007 started with Linux Conference Australia at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The 2007 team organised a winning conference attracting record attendance. An Open Day event brought many new people in to see games, solar cars, and open office desktop tools. The audio visual team did an exceptional job making the presentations available online.

During March WikimediaAU enjoyed a visit from Jimmy Wales and is forming an organisation. Jimmy toured for educationau and promoted open participation and open technologies for education. An Australian and New Zealand Open Geospatial group is also forming.

A rolling tide of BarCamps was initiated by Ben Balbo resulting in some great events and lots of learning about organising unconferences.

In April, Brisbane based, Anthony Towns completed his term as leader of the Debian project seeing in the new GPLv3 and Debian Etch.

Sridhar Dhanapalan fought through a car accident to still represent Linux at the CEBIT conference in May.

June saw Melissa Draper, leader of UbuntuAU presenting on women in open technologies both at local community events, and internationally.

Adelaide University student, Joel Stanley won an OLPC internship and contributed to advocacy around the world.

Open source educator, Peter Ruwoldt was chosen as an observer for the Information Economy Advisory Board in South Australia.

Tim Ansell's space game Thousand Parsec won code time in the Google Summer of Code. This year, the program brought together 900 students and nearly 1500 mentors across 90 countries to contribute to over 130 different open source software projects. A second project the Google Highly Open Participation Contest was also launched offering High School students a model for contributing to key open source projects.

On September 15 a record number of teams participated in Software Freedom Day 2007. This international event is coordinated annually by a Software Freedom International, this year led by Australian, Pia Waugh. Teams worldwide distributed and demonstrated free open source software in their local communities. It was especially great to see more teams participating from regional areas.

September also saw Pia and Jeff Waugh launch of the Australian Open Source Industry and Community Census.

Open source software was discussed and distributed at education events including Computers in Education Group of South Australia and at Monash University OpenCDs of open source software for use on Windows computers was distributed at both events.

Copyright was a hot topic at the ALIA conference and Creative Commons Australia and New Zealand teams produced local adaptations of the Creative Commons licences.

November brought the eeePC with Linux installed to retail outlets in Australia.
It is selling well, having sold out its first run, and is bringing open code to more Australian homes.

Victorian Information Technology Teachers Association conference in Melbourne included excellent sessions on several open philosophies, pedagogy and projects including Alan Kay's ideas on education by Bill Kerr, Dr Kathryn Moyle on pedagogy first, Bryan McHugh on VELS - a multi-domain approach using free software.

The theme 'Success in Development & Business' headlined the Open Source Developers' Conference 2007. Arjen Lentz lead the Brisbane event covering numerous programming languages across a range of operating systems, and related topics such as business processes, licensing, and strategy.

Pia and Jeff Waugh won this year's State Pearcey Award for Young Achievers for work educating the ICT sector about free software.

The University of New South Wales and Pia Waugh have worked together on an OOXML CyberLaw Symposium to assess the ISO proposal. Linux Australia also submitted comments to Standards Australia on the proposal.

So now is a time for thanking the local user group organisers and for celebrating a fine year. The new year starts with the Linux Conference in Melbourne led by Donna Benjamin. A week of collaboration and challenging ideas around open technologies. Bring it on.

Doctorow: Why a rights robocop will never work

2007-11-05T10:20:00.000+10:30

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/30/copyright
"Remaking the internet to invade privacy and silence our conversations is a crummy idea, but even worse is the fact that it won't actually stop or even slow infringement. But for so long as there are technology companies with magic beans to sell - and desperate, ageing entertainment execs willing to buy them - we'll have to keep fighting."

The interesting aspect of this to me is how do we make free and open stuff findable without getting caught into this kind of thinking/identification of things which are closed and open.

Janet

CopyrightCommons game

2007-10-01T17:10:00.000+09:30

A scoring sheet

A minimalist present file =)

And the cards

Australia: Doctorow on copyright

2007-09-25T15:27:00.000+09:30

ABC Radio National, For the Book Show, Sarah L'Estrange spoke to Cory Doctorow about why he embraced creative commons.

Creative commons: a challenge for creatives?

Great stuff.

Lessig has a win re public domain works

2007-09-10T20:55:00.000+09:30

This victory means that the impact of copyright on other rights will be reviewed. fingers crossed.

SouthCentre paper on impact of TPMs on developing countries.

2007-09-04T20:46:00.000+09:30

The Threat of Technological Protection Measures to a Development-Oriented
Information Society

The use of technological measures by copyright right-holders to protect works in the digital
environment, combined with new international legal obligations to protect such measures poses
a threat for developing countries. The obligations should be rejected, or narrowly crafted in national laws so as to promote access to knowledge for development.

Doctorow SF and copyright

2007-09-04T20:16:00.000+09:30

At the World Science Fiction Convention in Yokohama, Japan, Doctorow sat down for an interview with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, the editor who runs the science fiction line for Tor Books. Hayden and Doctorow had a discussion about copyright, technology and the future of science fiction.

Geneva: WIPO Seminar to Address Digital Rights Management Technologies

2007-09-04T20:02:00.000+09:30

Heres hoping this becomes the means for people to choose free content.

WIPO is hosting a seminar on rights management information at its Geneva headquarters on
September 17, 2007. Rights management information (RMI) consists of metadata used to identify digital content and owners of rights, and to express licensing information in digital form. The seminar will explore the relevance of RMI, survey emerging technologies and standards, and
identify challenges affecting copyright owners, Internet users and intermediaries such as search engines. The seminar will also address crucial questions such as ownership, licensing and management of IP as well as the tools used to manage creative content and identify users and
owners.

RMI is increasingly relevant and important to online content distribution. The technologies used to manage rights information have been improving in recent years through increased sophistication in metadata schemes and development of standards. For example, RMI can help users to customize their searches and engage in effective and flexible licensing agreements with right owners. Moreover, the rise of User Generated Content (UGC), the growth of new online licensing tools such
as Creative Commons, and the growing popularity of blogging and social networking, offer a promising horizon for use of RMI in increasing copyright compliance while providing users greater functionality and flexibility to access and use content.

APEC eyes merging trade pacts in region to create APEC-wide FTA | 23-August-2007

2007-08-24T12:50:00.000+09:30

Another FTA leveraging IP patents

Pacific Rim leaders are expected at their summit next month to consider combining existing bilateral and regional free trade agreements in the region as a way of creating a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific, according to a draft report of policy
recommendations to the leaders.

Vote no with comments

2007-08-13T08:57:00.000+09:30

This is an open letter which I would like to be considered in the Standards Australia review of the ooxml proposal. I have not been sent information by Standards Australia about the required format and would be happy to adapt this material to a format when provided.

While I appreciate the original scope of the process around technical concerns I also am writing about the proposal process and feel that the primary problems with the proposal are process related. I am writing more broadly because I feel the broader concerns are important to our Standards organisation and would avoid similar proposals using the same process.

Overview: Double standards are counter productive

In this issue there are two kinds of double standards. The proposal and its counterpart existing ISO standards, and the open or closed processes which the different projects have followed.

Microsoft's OOXML replicates functions covered by the Open Document Format standard and other standard XML formats. Duplication of standards reduces the value of the original openly developed standards.

Microsoft supporters in the Australian meeting suggested that "OOXML was enough of a standard, that we should expect there would always be proprietary material in Microsoft formats, and that their clients understand this."

The MS OOXML proposal is not 'enough of a standard' to make it useful for all developers and users because it is undefined both legally and technically. This will devalue a standards based approach in information formats.

The process for the OOXML format has been closed in its development phase and structured to reduce meaningful review. The result is a vendor centric document which is inward looking in its implementation.

Standards usually are developed to enable consolidation of current best practices and they need to be written and legally framed so that they are reliable and safe to use. ODF provides this function. OOXML undoes that work by approximating a standard but being sufficiently noncompliant to provide data compatibility problems with material
matching existing standards.

Competing standards

I feel that standards organisations need to take a stand to recognise the value in the work they have done on ODF XML SVG and to stand firm to support them.
In each case where there is a multiple standard there is a cost to the wider community in accommodating multiple approaches to the same function space. Forking the market into two separate standards to cover the same material is not a step forward.

The market in documents has been vendor oriented for many years. Open Document Format was developed as a common format two years ago. The purpose was to agree on a way to make information accessible regardless of vendor.
The effect of the OOXML proposal is undo that commonality.

Document specification is a core requirement in our information and computing based economies and therefore the cost of multiple standards in this fundamental space is an expensive outcome.

In any case where an information format is as fundamental as this there will be increased temptation for vendors to try to find ways to gain control of the space. ISO has approved a standard which has worked through this space and is continuing to develop and refine functions. Introducing a vendor based standard at this point would
compromise all that work in negotiating common ground. While the market might include many products which match specific vendors, the role of the standard in that space is to share information regardless of vendor. A single vendor standard on the other hand operates as a kind of franchise over a sector of the market.

From Andy Updegrove:
"The best reason for not approving OOXML/Ecma 376 as a global standard is that it will encourage other vendors to push for multiple, unnecessary standards rather than achieving consensus on a single standard that will best serve the needs of all stakeholders, and not individual proprietary vendors."
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070629070544217&mode=print

The Australian Commonwealth memorandum of understanding with Standards Australia is certainly written around these kinds of values related to public benefit and national interest. I understand that in negotiating a useful and meaningful standard there will be competing and challenging choices to make and that there has been a move toward accepting plural standards for different vendors, possibly to reduce
contention in these processes. However I feel this move shifts the contention into the marketplace and reduces the value of standards to the wider community.

Existing standards which are contradicted by the material included in the OOXML
proposal include
- ODF (document xml)
- OOXML doesn't use the stablished SVG (vector based xml) but on the
contrary two private and exclusive formats, one of them legacy: VML and GraphML
- OOXML doesn't use the stablished MathML (mathematical markup) but its proprietary format (already rejected by scientific editorials which make deep use of that feature for Nature and Science)
- OOXML doesn't use the International date and time (ISO 8601), the basic of all economic, legal and political transactions in world. On the contrary uses two calendars, one limited to start recently, in 1904, and other the one used by the Roman Empire thousand of years ago, the Julian Calendar.
Rather than passing a proposal which conflicts so fundamentally with standards practice Microsoft should be encouraged to participate in constructive collaboration on the development of those projects. This would better serve the standards process than initiation of a second set of materials which non-Microsoft people would have trouble interoperating with, and which would undo our ability to share information using conforming standards.

OOXML is not functionally open

The name of the proposal OOXML is Office Open XML, this is a misleading name as the proposal is not fully open, its development has not been open, process for new versions is suggested to be through ECMA's closed process, the legal access to "enough rights to implement the standard" are not clearly provided. Wording
inside the proposal includes 'wordwrap like Microsoft97' which is subjective and unimplementable language and would be unlikely to pass in a proper ISO process. The format includes proprietary binary material which is not open.

This is perhaps a work which contributes to better documentation of existing Microsoft formats in terms which are useful for Microsoft related developers but it is not outward looking or well integrated with ISO standards which it is likely to interface with.

Clients who believe they are moving from a closed format to an open format will find it is only comparably more open but is not drafted in a way to make it transparent or easy to avoid vendor lock in.

Making this a standard in my opinion makes the standards bodies complicit in duping customers into adopting a format which is not truly representative of the criteria which are normally recognised as ISO.

The value of formal standards

Standards are increasingly important as our economies and information becomes more transnational. We cannot afford to be imprecise with data working at the scales which
are now possible. Working with live transactional data would be a situation where
explicit single outcome processes would be most important. Mapping those sensitive projects to a format which is built on a single vendor retrospective is not a recipe for safe eCommerce.

"[A] document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context NOTE Standards should be based on the consolidated results of science, technology and experience, and aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits." -- ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004, Definition 3.2

The value of formal standards is to find a best practice approach to common agreed functionality. To use that as a unifying reference point in order to ensure
developers of systems have a way to map to an exact and accessible reference. And that customers of products are able to choose from solutions by a range of vendors and to move their information from one to another without prejudice. This makes it possible for multiple providers to participate in a market and for consumers to make
flexible choices about the formats and applications which suit their needs on an ongoing basis.

I feel that Australian and other standards bodies need to take this opportunity to review their function in society and to consider that the point of difference they offer is to contribute a means for finding negotiated best practice. This is a craft in the truest sense. It involves people developing skills in understanding systems objectively and in working through issues to find a useful and reliable outcome.

Companies which have a large market share already enjoy a kind of default standard status through cost to change, skill base or in some cases through data lock-in. Formal standards processes need the ability to attract quality participation in collaboration of standards development by using processes which do not marginalise collaborative processes and goals in favour of competitive processes. ie. Without a
focus on common interest and collaboration the formal process will only be able to mirror market share and will not be able to move Australia forward in a flexible and broadly useful manner.

ECMA fast track process

The ooxml proposal is a very large document(6000pages) and has been pushed through in 6 months. It has been suggested in the Australian meeting that this made it impossible to review. The volume/time compares poorly with usual standards which are 50 pages and take approximately 2 years to review thoroughly. ODF is 1000 pages itself and is considered large for a standards document but at least it was processed in an open way and there was room for all parties to contribute to its definition as well as a standard process of review.

The ECMA fast track process is structured in such a way that it does not honor aspirations of public benefit and national interest. The value that ECMA offers its vendor customers is to "offer a path which will minimise changes to input specs"
http://www.groklaw.net/pdf/OOXML_Forum.pdf

The process is a product offered to vendors by a provider who benefits from being able to push through many projects. This means the original relationship between the vendor and the ECMA organisation is based around momentum and single source material with no benefit to either party in providing real and rigorous review or participation in development. This together with the idea that multiple vendors offering vendor specific 'standards' is a workable approach are the underlying
assumptions which derail the rest of the process.

While it is expected that there may be different approaches to technologies and products, it is the role of a standards group to identify points of best practice around which an industry can integrate and offer flexible choices to consumers. This relies on access to a process where the craft of standards writing is core, where the considered and 'hands-on' input of many participants in the given standard is facilitated and where the proposal is thoroughly tested for its interoperability with existing standards.

Open review and participation in developing the standard is the means by which unifying and consolidating outcomes are made. This is the role which all groups interested in long term safe access to knowledge look to standards bodies for.

Australian process and responsibility

I sense a 'good faith' spirit in the efforts of the Standards Australia staff.
However I feel that the fast track process applied to this proposal, both in
Australia and internationally, is structurally not able to deliver outcomes in the Australian and public best interest. We need to address these procedural issues prior to processing this proposal so that it can be considered in a way which does address the goals of the Commonwealth in applying these standards processes to proposals.
Difficulty in finding out information about the process has not helped, including meeting information and formats for responses.

Australia as a country with an important role in these proceedings should not take an uncritical role in these processes. There needs to be a method for identifying when a new approach to processing standards is disfunctional. It is in Australia's national interest to understand the core function that open standards play in enabling all businesses and organisations to safely participate in working to or adapting from a standard format.

Accessibility and accuracy are prominent requirements within the education sector.
As James Dalziel pointed out in the Australian meeting, Australia leads on technologies for the education sector. Access to knowledge is an increasing piority and being able to share information developed with public funds is becoming an important issue. Organsiations which are able to develop once and distribute the value across the sector offer efficiencies which are valuable.

Australian companies and developers would find it expensive to accommodate two complex and incompatible approaches to documents requiring two approaches to each project they deliver. We need to be more sophisticated in our choices because we need to be able to make better value from smaller projects. Australia has many smaller players which means we need to be able to do things in a develop once use flexibly kind of way. Developers who produce technologies which help with accessibility also need to be nimble and flexible to cater effectively to small markets.

The University of Toronto recognises these issues "This paper undertakes a preliminary analysis of the OOXML format with respect to its accessibility, with emphasis on accessibility to persons with disabilities. We will demonstrate that the OOXML format fails to adequately support accessibility of documents."
http://atrc.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=371&Itemid=94

Backwards compatibility

Work on translating the legacy document formats into an xml based format is a worthwhile project. If Microsoft have a reliable tool for mapping material out of those formats into parsable XML that is a great step forward for their clients and for the ongoing relevance of their applications. Unfortunately it is my understanding that the technique for translating the documents involves embedding binary material in the XML.

OOXML is also a new-'old format', the time, date, vector, math models used in the new format are still reflective of historical choices and do not represent current best practice. In order to truly be facing forwards the material from the closed formats should be parsable XML and to match existing ISO standards. If the OOXML approach is not able to deliver on these outcomes then it is a great step forward from
opacity to translucency but is not the full journey.

Security, transactions and XML with embedded binary material

Transactions are not a point of difference to existing standards for OOXML.
Transactions are the normal function of XML and the specific focus of EBXML.
The OOXML approach to formats includes binary material.
Embedding binary material in transactional secure XML is likely to cause security issues. The transactional material has been developed only to work with MS
Internet Explorer which is the browser of choice for internet based exploits. Designing a transaction solution around embedding unknown content in an eCommerce context, to match only a singler vendor's formats and applications would be unlikely to pass a regular standards process.

Vote

Australia's Standards organisation should vote no with comments.

The comments should reflect our concerns with the principles and process of Fast Track standards development using ECMA.

The proposal should be put on hold until a review of the goals, responsibilities and processes for formal standards are completed.

This to include establishing a standard independently known and safe scoping for legal safety of any material which is ISO accredited. We cannot rely on unseen information and vendor assurances. There should be a known legal scope for all ISO standards.

The proposal could then be reconsidered, including whether a second standard in this space is a useful project for good standards practice.

These factors to be considered first before any further work and consideration is given to working through the body of the proposal.

It is possible that after reconsidering the processes and overlap between existing standards and OOXML that it might be possible to use aspects of the translation from legacy formats to map to Open Document Format and to translate from other non standard models to match other ISO standards.

From that point forward it could be also useful to look at the way Microsoft have worked with transactions, to compare those with existing standards and practices and to see if there is any scope for finding unity in those approaches.

6000 pages is too large. Breaking the proposal into
- retrospective work mapping to ODF or other standards.
- new work starting from an ODF and ISO standard compliant base would help to make the size of the standard less of an obstacle for implementation.

Specifications for non standard implementations of vector, math, time
and date, could be included in the retrospective work but should not
need to be a part of the forward looking standard format.

Further to the action on this proposal and on the international Fast Track process I would suggest that Standards Australia, and if applicable other nations, review their own processes and advice around the role of participants in the review process.

The memorandum of understanding between Standards Australia and the Commonwealth is written in terms of public benefit and national interest. This contrast with the participant information on the Standards Australia website which talks about representing specific groups and their own interests. This generates a tension between the overall goal of developing unifying standards in the national
interest, and a process which encourages people to view the process as
a partisan practice.

The process for any standard being considered should be clearly available on the website. The phases and formats required for public or industry participation
should be available throughout the process. Criteria for evaluation of a good standard for a given function should be identified and agreed in order to give a focus to the conversations. Existing standards which may overlap should be identified. If the criteria are listed and available this makes it far more likely
that people will be able to anticipate missing concerns or concerns which are not core. It provides a purpose which enables collaboration as well as competition around meeting known objectives.

I feel it would be useful to provide some workshops or communication around what kind of skills resources and time are required to participate. ie Australia needs to consider how it resources the process of standards development in order to produce outcomes which have vision beyond vendor interests.

I value very much the role that standards bodies have to play for our innovative and social function and hope that Standards Australia feels that OOXML is NOT "enough of a standard" and that while it might be true that Microsoft formats will always have proprietary components, that kind of fancy footwork is not compatible with ISO and Standards Australia branding.

Thankyou for the opportunity to participate.

Janet Hawtin

danah in AU

2007-08-07T15:04:00.000+09:30

danah in Brisbane part 1
danah in Brisbane part 2
danah in Brisbane part 3

And there is a moodle group Generation MySpace where there are resources tagged eduausem2007 flowing in and some folks talking about social networks.
(login)
Peter Shanks linked through to his training02 project which has some great work on the folks interested in the courses tagging related resources.

iCommons open business guide

2007-08-07T10:13:00.000+09:30

iCommons Open Business Guide
People finding ways to do business without restriction.
Economics with freedom and participation.

Copyright diagram USA

2007-07-22T14:05:00.000+09:30

EJH uses Venn diagram to explain copyright. With more specific fair dealing rights in AU perhaps the AU Venn diagram looks more like a game of frogger with specific stones or alligators which are mostly safe to step on. And as one of the commenters in the AJH blog suggests. DRM changes everything. =)

Perspective on Fair Use and education in USA

2007-07-04T23:05:00.000+09:30

Sometimes, freedom can just come to seem inefficient. Old-fashioned. Something that can be subcontracted away. That is the time to worry.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/25cf260c-265c-11dc-8e18-000b5df10621.html

By James Boyle

Published: July 1 2007 20:50 | Last updated: July 1 2007 20:50

via A2k list

Alan Kay on croquet web and computer science

2007-06-25T23:16:00.000+09:30

http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-3163738949450782327

Free culture and social engineering

2007-06-24T23:03:00.000+09:30

This article gives us a quick snapshot of the AU government's track record on Aboriginal community and land.

And this from Getup in May 2006 about shifting Aboriginal communities from land rights ownership to a 99 year lease:

Something dangerous is about to happen to the very heartland of Aboriginal Australia - and neither the traditional owners, nor you, have been warned.
Under the guise of promoting economic development for indigenous Australians, the Federal Government wants to ram through new legislation this Tuesday that actually jeopardises future generations of Aboriginal livelihoods. It's quite possibly the most important law you've never heard of.
The law will amend the iconic Land Rights Act, stripping away power from one of the only true representative bodies, the Land Councils, while pressuring Aboriginal communities to hand over control of their lands for 99 years. With profound disrespect, many of those who this new law affects most have not even been told.
Only your senators can put the brakes on this legislation, to allow time for real debate and understanding. Tell them now these seismic policy changes are too important to rush through.

Deaths in custody committee.
Recent death in custody case.
Stolen generation in wikipedia

Yes I am sceptical about the probable purposes and likely outcomes of the proposal.

I do not see how making Aboriginal people tenants of their own land will provide more surety.
To me it seems more directly related to making them less able to defend their lands from dumps and other external impacts on their lands.
The proposal describes people buying houses for $100k for a 99 year lease.
My understanding is that this means that house is not a permanent asset.
The beachfront shacks on the SA peninsula at the end of 99 years were removed, together with the owner's claim to the land.

IMHO in a context where a man can die in gaol for bad language, tying 'keeping the peace' to access to income and to one's children is likely to result in very similar uncertainty to the stolen generation.

Externally determined controls which are applied across a whole race of people are as far as I can see apartheid. Community determined patterns and controls are important in building the skills for a good social fabric. Resourcing and helping those choices and opportunities is important, but external management of communities particularly given the challenges around race and justice and land rights does feel like we are revisiting a pattern of external agencies
unpacking families according to distant policies.

There are problems. IMHO many of these are a product of our approaches to poverty generally, distance, isolation and race make remote communities more extreme but our cities have their share of spaces with curfews and violence. Making intra family spaces which are more institutionalised does not feel like a win.

If communities are able to lead change themselves with real support then the goals could be useful. Many aboriginal communities are already permanently dry by their own choice. (no alcohol)
Can we support training and autonomy for communities which is related to their context.
Building and maintaining wind and solar power, building skills, mechanical skills, skills which make sense when you are 500kms from alternatives. Solutions which have people buying houses from elsewhere and attracting 100k debt on a house in a community on traditional land feels disjointed. Perhaps there are communities where this approach would make more sense, perhaps it works for Cape York.

That is the point I guess. The communities are diverse, the geography is diverse, the pressures and commitment from the wider community vary from place to place. Looking at low debt strategies which enable the communities to build skills for making their own way and having purpose and connection with each other and with the wider community are likely to have stronger outcomes for people than buying into the economy in a cash sense in situations where the debt may put people at further risk.

What happens when kids leave home to get to a high school?
What does that do at home and in town?
Many of these challenges are faced by other rural families.
Distance and infrastructure good water, diesel costs and access to cultural participation.
Access to banking, health services access to jobs.
Our CWA centres are for sale, our rural towns are struggling.
Our booming nation does not resource these places effectively anymore.
We only build to profit. We do not build and maintain infrastructure for social purposes.

I do think the idea that enterprise should feel like a step forward is important.
Aboriginal women paint artworks and may be paid for them. A canvas may take a few weeks and earn $200 (old data price may be different now) The women work together on the paintings.
The woman who is paid for the painting is required to declare it and when I was there
she was threatened with losing her income because she would be deemed to be earning.
In this sense I think that it is very difficult to be on the edge of enterprise and agency.
If the proposal is more constructive about transition and seasonal work and people moving
to follow it then that would be a great step forward for all folks who either get started or live doing rural work.

Providing reliable ongoing structures and links with real opportunities and training
(not just an election catalyst burst with media launch) would make a difference.
Thinking through environmental and debt sustainability of the ideas from the community's perspective is important.

Our own recognition of positive stories and the connections we make and the space we make for people to fit into also defines the potential for people to grow. Society is very loud about what it expects people to be. It speaks daily and very tangibly in how our economics and agencies and businesses and social spaces work.

Our government's track record on empowering and enabling Aboriginal communities is appalling our community support is patchy.

Artichoke and Lessig have me thinking about structural corruption.

And Illich has some words which fit the kind of things I feel are missing in our thinking. A sense of valuing what might be wonderful and beautiful in the patterns of these communities which are struggling so hard to find their place in our shared economy and country.

Ivan Illich: [To think the commons, we must consider] the reconquest of the right to live in self-limiting communities that each treasure their own mode of subsistence. Pressed, I would call this project the recovery of commons. Commons, in custom and law, refers to a kind of space which is fundamentally different from the space of which most ecologists speak. Biologists speak of habitats and economists of a receptacle containing resources and opportunities. The public environment is opposed to the private home. Both are not what "commons" means.

Commons are cultural spaces that lie beyond my threshold and this side of wilderness. Custom defines the different usefulness of commons for each one. The commons are porous. The same spot for different purposes can be used by different people. And above all, custom protects the commons.

The commons are not community resources; the commons become a resource only when the Lor [sic] or the community encloses them. Enclosure transmogrifies the commons into a resource for the extraction, production or circulation of commodities. Commons are as vernacular as vernacular speech. I am not suggesting that it is possible to re-create the old commons. But lacking any better analogy I speak of the recovery of the commons, to indicate how, at least conceptually, we could move beyond our sacred cows.

Truly subsistence-oriented action transcends economic space, it reconstitutes the commons. This is as true for speech that recovers common language as for action which recovers commons from the environment.

WIPO Broadcast treaty slides to the back burner.

2007-06-23T18:36:00.000+09:30

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005333.php

Gwen Hinze:

Negotiations on the proposed WIPO Broadcasting Treaty ended on Friday with some welcome news. WIPO Member States agreed to postpone the high-level intergovernmental Diplomatic Conference at which the draft treaty could have been adopted, and have moved discussions back to
regular committee meetings, down a notch from the last two "Special Session" meetings.

In the meantime, apart from pulling the plug on a diplomatic conference that seemed doomed for failure, as the delegate of India and Jamie Love of Knowledge Ecology International have both noted, today's decision also provides a much-needed opportunity for WIPO to start focusing on other initiatives, such as facilitating access to knowledge, evaluating the impact of legally-enforced technological protection measures on exceptions and limitations, and Chile's 2004 proposal for mandatory exceptions and limitations to copyright law for education, the disabled and libraries and archives. Now that would be good news indeed.

Lessig changes tack

2007-06-23T00:39:00.001+09:30

http://www.lessig.org/blog/

Will be great to see LL working outside of the shadow of copyright law.
Interesting times.

WIPO Broadcast Treaty pushes forward despite no consensus.

2007-06-22T20:43:00.000+09:30

Jamie Love:

The Draft conclusions by the Chair are out , and wow, what brass. Jukka is recommending that:
* Idris as DG convenes a meeting in Sept 2007 for ” joint analysis of notions, terms and conceptual basis of the instrument.
* The GA sets a SCCR for November/December 2007,
* A dipcom be held in 2008.

It would even appear that webcasting is possibly back in.
This is discussed at 2pm. It is all quite surreal.

And from Russell McOrmond in CA:

US To Seek 15 Percent Cut In WIPO Patent Fees

WIPO is primarily funded through fees for its services, with Patent Cooperation Treaty fees representing about 3/4 of the revenue. One has to wonder with the USA calling for a cut in this revenue stream whether they are trying to signal the beginning of the end of their endorsement of this organization, now that the organization has allowed for a minimum of balance in policy making from the US maximalist IP agenda and an agenda that takes the interests of other countries and industries into consideration. I have heard other rumors that there will be a push away from this UN agency to bilateral agreements.

It is also a fee that are primarily paid by Industrialized nations (who file for and are granted more patents) rather than other fees primarily paid by so-called "developing" (less-industrialized) nations. The special interest reason for the USA's call is fairly transparent. http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/4026

WIPO Broadcast treaty: We broadcast/pwn you.

2007-06-22T09:12:00.000+09:30

Given that news broadcasters can record you or broadcast your materials without your permission because they are 'news collecting agencies'. It is hard to see how anyone other than a registered broadcaster would have any right to broadcast anything if broadcasting by those organisations gives them a right to control future broadcasts.
For me it feels like a Midas touch. The broadcaster touched the item so now it is gold for them and infertile for any other purpose.

From United Nations University June 21, 2007
WIPO: Finishing days for Broadcasting Treaty negotiations
Filed under: general, ipr, education, WIPO — Karsten Gerloff @ 9:30 am

"In the negotiations on a “broadcasting treaty” at WIPO, members are debating whether broadcasters such as TV and radio stations should get a copyright-like monopoly on the things they broadcast. While this is silly enough - it will keep armies of IP lawyers clothed and fed for decades to come, with the rest of us picking up the tab -, the bigger problem is that this will badly hurt the ways in which sound and video can be used on the Internet.

Material that’s in the public domain may be re-monopolised simply because it has been broadcast by a TV or radio station. Another issue arises with sites like YouTube, which often host short clips of movies. Under the proposed treaty, a TV station which has broadcast the movie in question could then demand that the clip be taken down, even if the movie is in the public domain, or the movie’s copyright holder has no objection to seeing the clip on the net."

http://www.merit.unu.edu/a2k/?p=50

Open Access: Mandates for digital copies of theses in NZ and AU

2007-06-16T08:53:00.000+09:30

OA mandates for ETDs growing in Australasia

Comment. This is very good news. For ETDs, mandatory digital submission is essentially equivalent to OA. Here's how Peter put it last year:

In principle, universities could require electronic submission of the dissertation without requiring deposit in the institutional repository. They could also require deposit in the repository without requiring OA. But in practice, most universities don't draw these distinctions. Most universities that encourage or require electronic submission also encourage or require OA. What's remarkable is that for theses and dissertations, OA is not the hard step. The hard step is encouraging or requiring electronic submission. For dissertations that are born digital and submitted in digital form, OA is pretty much the default. I needn't tell you that this is not at all the case with journal literature....

Beatle chooses new download label.

2007-06-13T09:16:00.000+09:30

"Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney will release his new album today — it's called 'Memory Almost Full.' In an interview with the L.A. Times, he talked about ending his long-time relationship with EMI and making the new album fully downloadable through his new relationship with Starbucks' Hear Music label. Some of his comments on the music industry: 'I was bored with the old record company's jaded view,' McCartney says... 'They're very confused, and they will admit it themselves: that this is a new world, and they're a little bit at a loss as to what to do. So they've got millions of dollars and X budget... for them to come up with boring ways — because they've been at it for so long — to what they call "market" it. And I find that all a bit disturbing.'"

WIPO KEI statement to 4th Session of WIPO PCDA

2007-06-12T19:10:00.001+09:30

These folks write such lovely stuff.

"On 23 May 2007 (nearly three weeks ago), the 60th World Health Assembly, the highest governing body of the World Health Organization, WIPO’s sister agency tasked in the UN family with international health, took a bold step to change the way the WHO and Member States deal with innovation and access. The World Health Assembly adopted language that requests the WHO Director-General Margaret Chan to encourage the development of proposals for health-needs driven R&D, including those “addressing the linkage between paying for the cost of R&D and the prices” of medicines, vaccines, diagnostic tools and other health care products.

This sea change evidenced at the WHO and by its constituent Member States on new paradigms of reconciling innovation and access is also reflected in some of the provisions of Annex B which call upon WIPO to consider discussions on complementary systems to intellectual property including, as mentioned above, a treaty on access to knowledge, as well as a Treaty on Medical R&D, and systems of free and open licenses and creative commons, and the promotion of models based on open collaborative projects to develop public goods, as exemplified by the Human Genome Project and Open Source Software.

The PCDA has to find a way for these conversations to move forward, in WIPO.

June 12th, 2007 by Thiru Balasubramaniam Knowledge Ecology International

KEI: Structure of patent pools

2007-06-07T08:57:00.000+09:30

via the A2K list

KEI has published a new research note on patent pools. This is a survey of 35 different existing and proposed patent pools, covering different technologies and time periods, beginning in the nineteen century through the present.

The Research Note is available on html and pdf formats here

Copyright and education

2007-06-06T13:45:00.000+09:30

Trying to find a good licence for a teacher podcasting on science topics, I ventured out looking for clues. I thought the new NEALS licence might be useful.

I asked whether using the NEALS licence on a podcast by a teacher would be a good choice or whether it would mean that overseas visitors could not use it.

"The quick answer is that NEALS only applies to text and artistic works (in hardcopy or digital format) ie works that are covered by the Part VB licence. Therefore a podcast would not be covered by NEALS. ..(it) is correct that NEALS only covers Australian schools, so it doesn't give any rights to schools outside Australia."

So NEALS does not cover a podcast because it is not a text or artistic work.
Despite that presumably for good accessibility practice a podcast should have a transcript. Perhaps the transcript can be covered by NEALS. =)
But in anycase only AU folk would be able to use it. So not a good fit for purpose.
That is fair enough. It is a good fit for more organisational purposes.
The NEALS approach helps formal entities more than individual people.
It is written primarily to help the organisations in the education sector have an amnesty on collecting copyright fees for information they share within the sector. That is cool, but it would be nice if those organisations were thinking strategically about the same concerns for the *people* who are in the sector, and not just the bigger entities. Kids and parents who are not geographically at school, ie are at home, or home schooling, or who are looking for material for life long learning, but are outside a participating organisation may not be covered?

It would be nice to see some "Consumer First" branding on information so that citizens, participants, users of information, can choose materials they can see are free for their use.

Currently people who care about copyright are often chipping through screeds of text because they are not the person the licence is designed for, coming to the end of the effort with no greater clarity than when they started.

This is no problem for the publishers because currently people have to buy information regardless of whether the information is explicit about how we can use information. ie the Law does not ensure that the publishers are explicit about what people can do, but is explicit after the fact about what people may not do, on a case by case basis, with criminal penalties.

In this context there is no way that we can be sure of being on the right side of copyright law. The law is designed to catch people, not to make information accessible and usable, it is written and works in only one direction.

It would be nice to be able to choose my purchases by the A2K accessibility profile it carries, without needing a law degree.

Doctorow: on copyright Authors@Google

2007-05-31T10:51:00.001+09:30

Doctorow: "A couple weeks back, I went to Google and spoke there as part of their
Authors@Google series. I talked about how US trade policy had driven the
US to abandon the tech sector and all the enterprises it supports in
favor of a doomed plan to replace American industry with Police Academy
sequels and Happy Meal toys. They've posted the video to YouTube."

Patent wrangling from educause

2007-05-29T13:06:00.000+09:30

There have been many efforts to reform the patent systems starting in 1919 and continuing today with major legislation being considered in Congress. For a comprehensive listing of these reform efforts see:

http://www.educause.edu/Browse/645?PARENT_ID=767

Fair'y' Use Tale

2007-05-24T10:20:00.000+09:30

Another ripper mashup on Fair Use using Disney animations. Many of these animations are based on fairy tales which were used by Disney specifically because they were in the public domain.

Free Culture Mashup on Fair Use

2007-05-24T09:21:00.000+09:30

Would be great to have one on Fair Dealing and what is actually accessible in AU.
I am happy to help with graphics but do not have the 'plot' nailed if someone with better legal perspective is up for a script.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=uGe3gJx3Gnk

via Margaret Chon on A2K mail list.

Gotham prize for shared cancer research

2007-05-23T20:02:00.000+09:30

* In spite of the billions of dollars that have been invested in cancer research, many promising research ideas do not receive support - either because they go against the mainstream, because of a lack of funding to test ideas, or because preliminary research isn't shared for competitive reasons.

* The Gotham Prize provides a real incentive by rewarding collaboration,

via James love A2K

Danah apophenia and AU education

2007-05-23T15:50:00.000+09:30

Danah will be in AU in August.
Brisbane and Melbourne. Same sort of cost as Mr Wales.

I am interested in finding out about education projects which have students as leaders and active participants. Where they are really working their online social spaces because I think Danah's primary message is that online negotiation skills are developed by participating - both by teachers and students. Would be great to be able to get info about what is working well in AU to these events to help us recognise local best practice re a participatory approach to online education in AU.

The Knowledge Tree has a paper and podcast introducing Danah's ideas.

In the same issue is an interesting podcast from Geetha Narayanan

Geetha talks about small slow schools where the student and family lead the focus of learning and where the learning materials are from and by the local community and available for reuse. Focus on the transforming of the mind rather than transferring skills.

CA: GM v organics

2007-05-12T12:33:00.000+09:30

The Saskatchewan organic farmers who had sued Monsanto and Bayer CropScience
for losses caused by drifting genetically modified canola (Hoffman v.
Monsanto) have lost their case at the Court of Appeal. So it remains the law
in Canada that agrochemical companies that patent GMOs are entitled to all
of the rights of property owners, but have none of the typical ownership
responsibilities. Jd.

Jeremy de Beer's blog, via A2K

Commons film adventures in Melbourne

2007-05-11T11:26:00.000+09:30

via Kattekrab, thanks!

Video Slam - Free Screening & Artist Forum

Created by OPEN CHANNEL as part of Arts Law Week, Video Slam is a 48-hour filmmaking marathon.

Over a period of 48 hours, from Sunday May 13, 10am to Monday May 14, 8pm, filmmakers, writers, programmers, sound and video artists will slam out a 10-minute digital short from content found largely on the Web.

Video Slam will explore the use of Creative Commons licenses for the creation of original digital content. Based at Horse Bazaar, Melbourne's Digital Arts bar and The Age Cheap Eats Bar of the Year 07, individuals and teams will collaborate to create unique fragments towards a complete narrative, perhaps one editor to each scene, or five composers scoring two minutes a-piece, or three actors performing the same part directed by four directors!

The fruit of their labours, a 10-minute short, will be simulcast from Horse Bazaar to the big screen at Federation Square before a live audience, and online at OPEN CHANNEL and EngageMedia, on Monday night May 14 at 8pm.

AU Wales seminar and panel

2007-05-02T21:06:00.000+09:30

pov from Adelaide.

Here are my notes from the Adelaide seminar.
They are scratchy but there were so many thoughts that I've kept it as a whole thingo.

For a blog post I thought I would be a bit haiku about it.
Core thoughts from my pov were

- we are talking about learning the skills to function collaboratively in a global community.
- people who participate in npov discussions learn skills that are not learned in contexts with one person's right of way.
- gpl rocks, gfdl rocks
- custom responses for different purposes.
- teachers can exchange literacies with students. ie not one way.
- disconnect between the scope of policy and values of practice.
- design our community as if we expect it to go well, respond to challenges as they arise.
- applied vision feels grounded and authentic, specific, tangible.

I hope that all of these thoughts and seminars help to unpack some of the deadlock regarding what could be possible in AU education.

Danah Boyd will be next. Great choices De.
Lets do it. =)

Jabber's Jeremie Miller Takes Over At Wikia Search

2007-05-02T08:54:00.000+09:30

Wired article Monday, April 30, 2007
This project is interesting in context with education and search work and from cultural perspective. I am looking forward to seeing how the design of this community/technology evolves.

IPJustice on USA 'reform' of international intellectual property laws.

2007-05-01T08:56:00.000+09:30

US Dictates Domestic Policies on Intellectual Property to Foreign Nationsin 2007 USTR “Special 301 Report”.

"And while foreign countries are forced to enact many of the more restrictive IPR provisions found in the US, none of the balance found in the US, such as fair use or reverse engineering are permitted in the foreign country’s “reformed” intellectual property laws. Technological innovation, access to knowledge and medicines, and free expression depend upon these legal limitations to a monopolist’s power."

30 April 2007 — By Robin Gross, IP Justice Executive Director

USA Yale A2K

2007-05-01T00:03:00.000+09:30

Yale A2k conference was on this weekend. Search for a2k and yale or a2k2 to catch the reverb.
Here's hoping it helped some like minded thinkers to start building together.
* A2K2 Conference
* Law and information blog
* Open Access Anthropology
* fsfe blog
* IGP blog

USA Doctorow at boingboing on Yale A2k Conference

2007-04-18T10:57:00.000+09:30

boingboing
We invite remote participation in the A2K2 conference on the accompanying A2K2 Wiki. There is room on the wiki to questions of the panelists and to include background resources for each panels.

Tectonic shifts and tipping points

2007-04-11T11:47:00.000+09:30

Tipping points: Freedom v safety, participation v safety, broadcast v user content, signal v noise, popular v authoritative, folksonomy v taxonomy. Some people are discussing safe digital space. Some have freedom of speech concerns, including for 'lawyers what blog'.

Blogging about law and governance is a fantastic opportunity for public information and education. The CPTech WIPO blogs are fantastic; public role of information, ability for developing nations to participate as equals in the information and knowledge economy, not as subscribers to groups which are fencing our cultural and scientific conceptual spaces into tollways, but as members of our community.

Teachers are aiming to provide participative and constructivist learning opportunities (ones where students get to wrangle stuff and make things for themselves) in a context where education internet policy frequently deems that readwrite internet is unsafe.

TALO member Alexander Hayes can trace his digital life with a tag.

Some folks aim for continuity with their digital real estate/name space, some folks shift and change, some use both. It is easier to use a single name for a single line of thought or perspective to give that theme a useful thread. For other ideas and more adventurous or political thoughts discussions experiments people might like to be a distinct self. Avatars are studying law in Second Life.

Secondlife is slicing into separate sectors for safe teen surfing, teens themselves are lobbying to be able to participate in the wider SL economy not just in the teen SL economy. Danah maps the void.

Open source communities are built around the opportunity to participate and share, to have open dialogue and to find our own niches of common interest and signal in amongst the flow of information. Balancing context with expression, finding the best ways to share ideas effectively. Building community value and individual opportunity. This contrasts with more 'broadcast model' projects which aim to broker access to technologies and to technologists.

web2 and the 'year of us' meets DMCA and the terror of toothpaste.
It cant be a war, it isn't disruptive technology, it is a very traditional open flow of conversations in a new context, the only difference is we can hear further now.
We can be heard further now. Less shouting, some listening, learning how to mesh folksonomies and taxonomies, where they each are powerful. We can customise our own input channels, make our own safe, choose our own voice and context, and explore our freedoms and understand them better as individuals and as communities.

This video captures the feeling for me.

Discussions are brewing Jimmy Wales comes to town, and I am saving to go. I think this will be a ripper, panel debate, participation and access in education and knowledge. We live in interesting times. =)

AU Jimmy Wales and Garry Putland interview

2007-04-10T12:01:00.000+09:30

Transparency, openness, freedom and access to information
Deanne Bullen's blog has the links.

Mark Shuttleworth on DRM

2007-04-10T09:14:00.000+09:30

link via Peter Ruwoldt.

There are some ideas that are broken, but attractive enough to some people that they are doomed to be tried again and again. DRM is one of them.

http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/96

USA User Generated Content: The Copyright Conundrum

2007-04-10T09:07:00.000+09:30

via A2K

AU folks might find the webcast interesting.

User Generated Content: The Copyright Conundrum
April 10th | 4:00 pm — 6:00 pm
Reception to Follow
Washington College of Law | Room 603

4801 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington D.C.

Registration: www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm

The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law and the Center for Social Media at the American University School of Communications, in collaboration with the DC Chapter of the Copyright Society of the USA, present a lively discussion on the implications of copyright law for makers of participatory media and the platforms on which it is
displayed. The discussion will emphasize strategies to avoid or minimize risk of copyright liability. Panelists will include:

Sarah B. Deutsch
Vice President & Assoc. General Counsel, Verizon

Alec French
Senior Counsel, Gov’t Relations, NBC Universal, Inc.

Fred von Lohmann
Sr. Staff Attorney, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Steve Tapia
Sr. Attorney, Law & Corp. Affairs, Microsoft

Mike Remington
Partner, Drinker Biddle & Reath, LLP

This event is open to the public. Your registration is appreciated to help our planning of the public reception following the panel.
Registration, however, is not required to attend.

Registration
www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm

Webcast
www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm

FR: Cheap FLOSS computer

2007-04-05T11:40:00.000+09:30

Neuf Cegetel, has taken inspiration from the Minitel to develop a computer based on a similar low-cost model, aimed at people who are unable or unwilling to buy a computer. In a gesture to high-technology enthusiasts, however, the system uses the open-source software beloved by many engineers and programmers.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/02/technology/neuf.php?page=1

Here is the link to the neuf site.(FR)
Thanks Mr Rumble =).

USA Korea, FTA IP provisions

2007-04-04T08:51:00.000+09:30

via A2K list

http://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/documents/ustrfactsheet.pdf?rd=1
Office of the United States Trade Representative
www.ustr.gov April 2007

Free Trade with Korea Summary of the KORUS FTA

The United States concluded an historic agreement with the Republic of Korea on April 1, 2007. This comprehensive trade agreement will eliminate tariffs and other barriers to trade in goods and services, promote economic growth, and strengthen economic ties between the United States and Korea.

[snip]

State-of-the-Art Protection for U.S. Trademarks

• Provides trademark protection for sound and scent marks, as well as certification marks.

• Requires a system to resolve disputes about trademarks used in Internet domain names, which is important to prevent "cyber-squatting" with respect to high-value domain names.

• Applies principle of "first-in-time, first-in-right" to trademarks and geographical indications, so that the first person who acquires a right to a trademark or geographical indication is the person who has the right to use it.

• Provides for an on-line system for the registration and maintenance of trademarks, as well as a searchable database and requires transparent procedures for the registration of trademarks, including geographical indications.

• Prevents requirements for license recordation in order to establish the validity of that license.

Protection for Copyrighted Works in a Digital Economy

• Protects music, videos, software, and text from widespread unauthorized sharing via the Internet by giving copyright owners to ability to maintain rights over temporary copies of their works.

• Provides extended terms of protection (e.g., life of the author plus seventy years) for copyrighted works, including phonograms, consistent with emerging international standards.

• Establishes strong anti-circumvention provisions to prohibit tampering with technologies (like embedded codes on discs) that are designed to prevent piracy and unauthorized distribution over the Internet.

• Requires that government agencies use only legitimate computer software, setting a positive example for private users.

• Requires rules to prohibit the unauthorized receipt or distribution of encrypted satellite signals, to prevent piracy of satellite television programming.

• Provides rules for the liability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for copyright infringement, reflecting the balance struck in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act between legitimate ISP activity and the infringement of copyright.

Patents & Regulated products

• Provides for the extension of patent terms to compensate for delays in granting the original patent.

• Permits inventors to publish their inventions in journals and still have 12-months before their own publication will prevent patenting that invention.

• Protects against arbitrary revocation of patents and assures protection for newly developed plant varieties and animals.

• Clarifies that test data submitted to a government for the purpose of product approval will be protected against unfair commercial use for a period of five years for pharmaceuticals and 10 years for agricultural chemicals.

• Requires measures to prevent the marketing of pharmaceutical products that infringe patents, and to provide notice when the validity of a pharmaceutical patent is to be challenged.

Tough Penalties for Piracy and Counterfeiting

• Criminalizes end-user piracy, providing strong deterrence against copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting.

• Requires parties to authorize the seizure, forfeiture, and destruction of counterfeit and pirated goods and the equipment used to produce them.

• Provides for customs enforcement against goods-in-transit, to deter violators from using ports or free trade zones to traffic in pirated products.

• Streamlines customs procedures to increase efficiency of enforcement.

• Permits customs officials and prosecutors to bring an IPR enforcement action without having to wait for a formal complaint from the right holders, providing for more effective enforcement.

Cory Doctorow Profiled in The Chronicle of Higher Ed

2007-04-03T08:29:00.000+09:30

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/siva/archives/004093.html

... Mr. Doctorow has little taste for what he calls the "maximalist" view of intellectual property — the notion that copyright is something to be enforced strictly rather than something that should strive to be as invisible and as flexible as possible — and the subtitle of his course is meant as a bit of a provocation. "Is everyone on campus a copyright criminal?" the syllabus asks, alluding to the overwhelming majority of college students who have swapped music, movies, and software on peer-to-peer networks. If the answer is yes, he suggests, then something has clearly gone wrong.

Course wiki: The Cultural Commons II: Copyright in Cyberspace

2007-04-02T09:00:00.002+09:30

Harvard technology and society course wiki on copyright.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/ptc/The_Cultural_Commons_II:_Copyright_in_Cyberspace

CA: Michael Geist on DMCA author's change of heart

2007-03-29T14:21:00.000+09:30

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1826/125/

"Lehman says that we are entering the "post-copyright" era for music, suggesting that a new form of patronage will emerge with support coming from industries that require music (webcasters, satellite radio) and government funding. While he says that teens have lost respect for copyright, he lays much of the blame at the feet of the recording industry for their failure to adapt to the online marketplace in the mid-1990s.

In a later afternoon discussion, Lehman went further, urging Canada to think outside the box on future copyright reform. While emphasizing the need to adhere to international copyright law (ie. Berne), he suggested that Canada was well placed to experiment with new approaches. He was not impressed with Bill C-60, seemingly because he does not believe that it went far enough in reshaping digital copyright issues. Given ongoing pressure from the U.S., I'm skeptical about Canada's ability to chart a new course on copyright, yet if the architect of the DMCA is willing to admit that change is needed, then surely our elected officials should take notice."

UK Knowledge Politics publications, brochure

2007-03-22T07:01:00.000+10:30

via A2K
This update email is from Knowledge Politics, the information society think-tank.

We are delighted to announce the publication of a new series of pamphlets on the future of intellectual property rights in the digital age.

In Part One of the series, Derek Wyatt, Pete Wishart and campaigner Becky Hogge respond to the recommendations of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. In Part Two, experts discuss the global intellectual property regime - featuring contributions by Susan K Sell, Debora Halbert and Sam Howard-Spink. In Part Three, the changing nature of intellectual property theory is considered by Christopher May, Rosemary Bechler, David M Berry and Martin McIvor.

The pamphlets and accompanying press release can be downloaded at:
http://www.knowledgepolitics.org.uk/frontiers.html

Further upcoming publications from Knowledge Politics will include a report on the EU's proposed revision of the Television Without Frontiers directive.

http://www.knowledgepolitics.org.uk/frontiers.html

Tell me a Turing

2007-03-17T15:10:00.000+10:30

Cultural anthropologist Gregory Bateson was asked in the 1950s if he believed that computer artificial intelligence was possible. He responded that he did not know, but he believed when you would ask a computer a yes-or-no question and it responded with "that reminds me of a story," you would be close.

ARTstor and Metropolitan Museum provide access to institutions and their scholars for specified uses.

2007-03-17T08:24:00.000+10:30

Organisations are freeing up access for each other and individuals who are defined by the organisation. This is making the broadcast model of sharing information more distributed. There are more nodes participating. Still not public access to public resources imho. I think it would be a 'pioneering' change if it encouraged participative wrangling and also was publically available, but perhaps at least this is thinking one step closer to the right direction:

ARTstor and Metropolitan Museum will distribute, free of charge, high-resolution digital images from an expanding array of works in its renowned collection for use in academic publications. This new service, which is effective immediately, is available through ARTstor, a non-profit organization that makes art images available for educational use.

ARTstor makes available a restricted database of images of art works and other materials to non-profit institutions. These materials are only made available for educational and scholarly uses that are noncommercial in nature.

Your institution may provide access to only the following categories of individuals: those individuals who have a current official or unofficial affiliation with your institution, or individuals who do not have a current official or unofficial affiliation, but who are using that institution’s library or other facilities (referred to as “Walk-In Users”). For more information on Authorized Users, contact your institution.

Prohibited Uses. You may not: (a) use the ARTstor Digital Library, or use, display or make performances with, reproduce, or distribute Content from the ARTstor Digital Library, for any commercial purpose whatsoever, including but not limited to fee-for-service use of the ARTstor Digital Library, or make any use, display, performance, reproduction, or distribution that exceeds or violates these Terms and Conditions of Use; (b) distribute and/or make available Content in the ARTstor Digital Library to persons other than as expressly permitted herein; (c) provide and/or authorize access to the ARTstor electronic database, such as through the sharing of passwords, to persons or entities other than Authorized Users; (d) download or print, or attempt to download or print, substantial portions of the ARTstor Digital Library; (e) incorporate Content into print or electronic materials that are for purchase or are disseminated for commercial purposes (such as by a scholarly or commercial press); (f) use (including reproduce, distribute, display or make performances of) the ARTstor Digital Library in any way that is not authorized under this Agreement and that infringes another’s Intellectual Property Rights therein; (g) make any adaptation or modification of, or any derivative work from, Content; or (h) attempt to override, circumvent, or disable any encryption features or software protections employed in the ARTstor Digital Library.

Commonwealth copyright audit

2007-03-14T08:00:00.000+10:30

w00t!

This document explicitly asks about the form copyright takes in each of the commonwealth nations. Fantastic to see some work going into the Access to Knowlege facet of copyright.
____

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has put out an audit report for copyright law, prepared in December 2006 by Tobias Schonwetter of the University of Cape Town and I, which may be of interest/use to some:

The document was designed for policymakers as a concise intro to copyright, a2k and learning - through a set of about 50 short questions. COL is in the process of sending this out to Commonwealth member states, and if you would like more information on the exercise, please contact Paul West, pwest -at- col.org

via A2k

Connectivist teachers

2007-03-10T18:48:00.000+10:30

Donna has been talking about teachers who live at the pointy end of the pencil.
TALO is a group of folks interested in the thinking and practice of education online. The recent unconference/swapmeet at Adelaide TAFE was amazing.
Check out the photos by mobology.

These folks are thinking about pedagogy within secondlife, aggregating educational competency data feeds, web 2.0 and read write participative culture and constructivist teaching .v. content blocking, business models and identity online.

Similar challenges in the education sector regarding risk mitigation and broadcast business model based policy and the ground swell of participative 'open source' collaboration. Broadcast models of defining scope are faced with teachers and students who flow around the outside to explore participative practice. Reminds me of Ed Felten's freedom to tinker.

It feels like a chrysalis moment, where the shell doesn't fit and things are
moving under the surface. The potential for funky things to emerge is great.
It also feels unfamiliar which is strange because in many ways this is a 'return to traditional values' of shared academic and scientific knowledge, peer review and appreciation of information as the flow of dialogue which generates our local culture. The end of a phase of compulsive 3 layer plastic wrapping.

People's thoughts and experiments are converging, which is great.
I am looking forward to the next generation of education technologies.
Folksonomies meet taxonomies. Content control meets collaborative writing.
Copyright meets the social flows and functions of information.
It will take some adjustment but will be an interesting journey.

As with Eben Moglen's 'proof of concept is running code', I think that applied connectivist teaching will be the best catalyst for new forms of educational policy. We need to watch how we learn in these contexts and adapt accordingly.

IP and IT conferences: A resource for scholars

2007-03-05T23:58:00.000+10:30

Great list of law/it events and programs including:

Knowledge Policy for the 21st Century
Western Law and Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law announce two exciting conferences at the University of Western Ontario:
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) as Democratic Principle
Monday April 9, 2007
Digital Copyright in a User Generated World
Tuesday April 1, 2007

Intellectual Property and Developing Countries: The WIPO Development Agenda
UCLA, March 11-12, 2007
Our conference will address what the Development Agenda does and should entail; what is the latest empirical research on intellectual property, access to knowledge, and development; how IP could and should be tailored to account for the needs of countries in various stages of development; competition law, industry structure, and innovation in the global economy; whether there are plausible alternatives to proprietary intellectual property rights; global copyright industries and cultural sovereignty; and how, if at all, the existing intellectual property treaty regime can and should be modified to promote development and serve the needs of developing countries.

Australia exports iron and imports irony.

2007-03-05T16:55:00.000+10:30

freeculture.org gets behind a proposed reform (eff) to US DMCA which protects the right of innovators and developers for development of tools which have both an infringing and non-infringing purpose. The reform uses 'fair use' as the means to protect innovators.

As a result of the US Free Trade Agreement AUDMCA, Australian innovators now face DMCA restrictions on innovation without fair use protection.
According to the attorney general, fair use was not included in Australian copyright law because it would not have complied with international treaty requirements (and he thought it would be messy).

Boucher and Doolittle introduced the amendment.
John Doolittle (R-CA):
"America can and must be a world leader in technological innovation," said Doolittle. "This objective is hindered by the provisions in the DMCA that discourage the free flow of ideas and information. The FAIR USE Act removes those disincentives, and I look forward to seeing the benefits that will ensue."

If a tariff is a barrier to trade, what kind of device is a law which can be exported to other nations which criminalises their participation?
I hope the proposed amendment goes through and that Australian legislators reconsider their options.

Paris by night

2007-03-02T12:06:00.000+10:30

Line of sight, public photography and copyright
Is the publishing of a photo of the Eiffel Tower permitted?

A : There are no restrictions on publishing a picture of the Tower by day. Photos taken at night when the lights are aglow are subjected to copyright laws, and fees for the right to publish must be paid to the SETE.

http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/teiffel/uk/pratique/faq/index.html

WIPO embraces reform on intellectual property mission

2007-02-24T07:38:00.000+10:30

James Love:

This week's negotiation went far better than almost anyone had anticipated, and many share the credit for the excellent outcome. The United States government had greatly moderated its positions and tone, and was credited by many delegates for its constructive and open approach to the negotiations on a topic for which the US is normally considered a hard-liner. Several European States, including for example the UK, Germany and Switzerland had worked hard to find ways to reaching consensus with key developing countries. Indian persistent efforts to engage the US and European negotiators was helpful and effective. Argentina and Brazil were among the countries that had pushed the hardest for the reform agenda. Chile's leadership on the issue of the public domain was key. The contributions from the Africa Group were excellent, including for example countries like South Africa. Very high marks were given to Trevor Clarke, the impressive Chair of the meeting, who hails from Barbados.

In June, WIPO will look at a much more ambitious set of proposals, most of which were opposed by the United States or the European Commission in 2005. The June meeting, which is expected to be much more difficult, will look at topics such as proposed treaty on access to knowledge -- a startling departure from WIPO's longstanding efforts to focus largely on expanding the scope and enforcement of intellectual property rights. More.

[A2k] Financial Times: Fears over reach of US patent law

2007-02-23T07:03:00.000+10:30

Fears over reach of US patent law
By Patti Waldmeir in Washington
Published: February 22 2007 02:00
Several justices of the US Supreme Court yesterday expressed concern about the risks of extending the reach of US patent law to other countries, as they struggled to find a way to bring the law into the digital age.

via: Thiru Balasubramaniam, Geneva Representative,
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)

Consumers International statement at WIPO

2007-02-22T07:15:00.000+10:30

Consumers International Statement on competition policy and the public domain
February 21, 2007

Consumers International is very supportive of the inclusion of C28 as an actionable item to enable WIPO to assist countries to use competition policy to redress the abuse of IPRs to the detriment of consumers. We welcome the comments made by the Republic of South Africa and Germany which that competition policy is an effective tool to curb anti-competitive practices. We emphasize that Articles 6, 7, 8, 31.k and Article 40 of the TRIPS Agreement frame WTO members’ policy options in using competition policy safeguards.

As some delegates have indicated, the relationship between competition laws and intellectual property rights are complex. As WIPO and other multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations seek new intellectual property right norms, and place more obligations on countries to enforce those rights, it is quite important to fully appreciate the role of competition policy in addressing certain problems that can arise, particularly those problems that harm consumers.

It would be very useful if WIPO could collect information from member states on the cases where competition laws have been used to remedy anticompetitive practices. WIPO could also play a role in helping member states understand their rights and obligations under Article 40 of the TRIPS in cases involving disputes over anticompetitive practices in the licensing of intellectual property rights when those practices involve actions in more than one country.

An initial report from the WIPO secretariat on the possible implementations of Article 40 in cross-border cases would be a useful deliverable.

Consumers International also reiterates its support of D32 as an actionable item. This exhorts WIPO to “deepen the analysis of the implications and benefits of a rich and accessible public domain.”

WIPO could provide a report that provides case studies on this. Such case studies might discuss the decision by several member states to support activities to place the human genome in the public domain, or how the World Wide Web Consortium and other bodies have created technologies for the Internet that are free from intellectual property claims. In both instances, by placing some data and technology into the public domain, there was a more competitive environment for the next generation of inventions and services, including inventions and works that are fully protected by patents and copyrights.

A deeper understanding of the relationship between the public domain and intellectual property rights is timely and important.

Australian band groks Doctorow's CC Scifi

2007-02-21T23:55:00.000+10:30

Doctorow: Midnight.Haulkerton, a "Grok Rock" band from Australia, has very kindly recorded a song inspired by my new short story collection, Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present -- just the first of more to come.

> Future shock, present shock, we’re already in past shock
> Too much to go to and nowhere to go, we’ve got way too much to know
> Something in the future’s already in the past, the present’s an illusion
> Cos the world is spinning way too fast
>
> Overclocked, clock shock
> This watch never stops
> Overclocked, time’s fast
> You’ve been blasted in the past

Song:
http://www.midnighthaulkerton.com/alfadir/?page_id=42

Overclocked:
http://craphound.com/overclocked

Wesch interview

2007-02-21T21:50:00.000+10:30

"For me, cultural anthropology is a continuous exercise in expanding my mind and my empathy, building primarily from one simple principle: everything is connected. This is true on many levels. First, everything including the environment, technology, economy, social structure, politics, religion, art and more are all interconnected. As I tried to illustrate in the video, this means that a change in one area (such as the way we communicate) can have a profound effect on everything else, including family, love, and our sense of being itself. Second, everything is connected throughout all time, and so as anthropologists we take a very broad view of human history, looking thousands or even millions of years into the past and into the future as well. And finally, all people on the planet are connected. This has always been true environmentally because we share the same planet. Today it is even more true with increasing economic and media globalization."
http://battellemedia.com/archives/003386.php

Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) at WIPO PCDA

2007-02-20T23:27:00.000+10:30

Thiru Balasubramaniam:

New ways of sharing information over the Internet are now rapidly expanding education and development opportunities, and creating vast new business opportunities for those who understand the new knowledge ecosystems.

Time Magazine’s recent decision to declare “You” as the person of the year was recognition that something new is happening between all of us.

WIPO needs to be part of the new way of thinking. WIPO needs to change, and begin to acknowledge, respect, and exploit the new opportunities that we are all facing.

KEI will work with the PCDA to ensure the development agenda is not simply a repacking of the old ideas and mission, but also the new ideas, and a modern mission.

For this to happen, WIPO needs to have a fresh commitment to exploring the new business models, and topics such as

- Creating value from open standards,
- Expanding access to scholarly and scientific research,
- The sharing and repurposing of information in new knowledge communities,
- Knowledge as a shared asset and knowledge creation as collaboration, rather than a commodity, and
- Using prizes rather than prices to stimulate drug development.

KEI (CPTech) Has recently won an award for their work in this area.

AGD Copyright factsheets

2007-02-20T16:11:00.000+10:30

Tim Berners-Lee: On ceiling and foundation technologies

2007-02-20T14:05:00.000+10:30

"Proprietary music download systems are ceiling technologies to the extent that the technologists design to be also being the only store in town, rather than creating an open market. Though putting a lid on further innovation, they are still providing a service, and making sure they profit from it.

Ceiling technologies are the end of the road for innovation.

When you want to make a foundation technology, you need to look ahead. You need to put aside the short term return on investment questions and look at the long term."

The Mobile Web

In Good Company Michael Geist CA

2007-02-15T07:36:00.000+10:30

[One of those lists that it would have been nice for Australia to be on]

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (several U.S. lobby groups including the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, the ESA) has just released a submission to the U.S. Trade Representative that frequently serves as a blueprint for U.S. commentary on intellectual property protection around the world. The list covers 60 countries,including most of the world's leading economies.
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1679/125/

These are just fourteen examples - there are dozens more countries on the list, including many developing countries, each invariably criticized for not adopting the DMCA, not extending the term of copyright, not throwing enough people in jail, or creating too many exceptions to support education and other societal goals. In fact, the majority of the world's population finds itself on the list, with 23 of the world's 30 most populous countries targeted for criticism.

* Japan is criticized for a wide range of issues including the absence of statutory damages, copyright term extension, stronger TPM protection, narrowing private use exceptions, and the establishment of camcording legislation
* Sweden receives special mention for widespread Internet piracy and being host to thePirateBay.org
* New Zealand is criticized for its copyright reform bill, which, much like Canada's Bill C-60, adopts a more balanced approach to TPMs. For its effort, the government is also incorrectly told that the proposal "fall far short of meeting international minimum standards." Moreover, the bill's time shifting provisions are criticized, despite the fact that the U.S. has far more liberal fair use provisions.
* Switzerland is criticized for its TPM approach, which apparently does not meet the standard in the EUCD or the DMCA, along with a broad private copying provision and the need for camcording
legislation.
* South Africa is criticized for failing to sign the WIPO Internet treaties
* Hong Kong is criticized for its approach on TPMs and for proposing new exceptions for educational purposes. It is also urged to extend the term of copyright.
* South Korea is criticized for its TPM approach, education exceptions, its private copying system, and for failing to extend the term of copyright.
* Israel is criticized for failing to implement TPM legislation and for considering a fair use provision that mirrors the U.S. approach (the IIPA claims this might be viewed by the public as a "free ticket to copy.")
* Mexico is criticized for its TPM approach and for the absence of an ISP notice and takedown system
* Italy is criticized for doubt about its TPM approach and for failing to establish an ISP notice and takedown system
* Brazil is criticized for failing to ratify the WIPO Internet treaties and for granting exceptions to university students
* Greece is criticized for making it difficult to obtain the personal identities of ISP subscribers and for levying a surcharge at movie theatres that are used to support Greek films
* Spain is criticized for failing to place sufficient liability on ISPs for activity on their networks
* India is criticized for its TPM provisions and "overly broad" exceptions

The U.S. approach is quite clearly one of "do what I say, not what I do" (fair use is good for the U.S., but no one else), advising country after country that it does not meet international TPM standards (perhaps it is the U.S. that is not meeting emerging international standards), and criticizing national attempts to improve education or culture through exceptions or funding programs. Moreover, it is very clear that the U.S. lobby groups are never satisfied as even those countries that have ratified the WIPO treaties or entered into detailed free trade agreements with the U.S. that include IP provisions still find themselves criticized for not doing enough.