machine-envy

The article originally intended for Index on Censorship has been beefed up and published on openDemocracy. The website runs a really great discussion forum, which dedicates a space for each article, and there’s already been some very interesting responses. I’m going to stay out of it for a while in the hope that people continue thrashing the issues out with each other since I’d like to see what they come up with.

It was great to see John Naughton’s piece in today’s Observer, but it confirmed my conviction about how hard it is to write on this subject… Tom Chance and Edward Griffiths-Jones from Remix Reading on sw patents in O’Reilly Policy DevCenter… And here’s something I wish I’d linked too in the oD piece.

I suppose it’s not a surprise that lot of the people who spend too much of their time worrying about copyright law are involved in it themselves - software programmers, for instance. But people who write about copyright law, Creative Commons, etc in newspapers, blogs or “fornightly digests” play quite close to the edges of hypocrisy. Some CC a large part of their work, others, including me, are mute on the subject.

I have wasted time reading the terms and conditions of freelance contracts with a sense of pride in the idea that I might have rights. I’ve been paid for a syndication deal - translated into German, no less. I’ve also kicked myself when I’ve failed to negotiate rights and ended up doing work for hire without realising (for an organisation that advises artists on copyright!). And today I come across this, one of the poor (apologies) selection of photos I took at Remix Reading, reproduced by none other than the BBC.

No, they didn’t ask me. I waited until I got home to check the mails off this site, and there’s no first-jobber BBC Berkshire online picture assistant getting in touch to let me know they snafoo-ed my shot. I’m not sure how I feel about this, but I’m not going to do anything about it either way. Which makes me a lazy copyfighter.

I will, however, spend a few more paragraphs musing on the situation, if only to recreate the train journeys to and from the Remix Reading launch (a half hour a piece) wherein myself and a British Net Celebrity were unpacking the ideas behind Creative Commons (and wondering if we’d picked up the wrong suitcase).

To recap, I take a photo of a group of drummers at the launch event of an arts collective who release all their work Creative Commons. Let’s assume that all the performances I saw that night - including the drumming, which was, in fact, part of a workshop - were performed under a Creative Commons-flavoured copyright. There was in fact a rather good poet who performed later that night not releasing his work CC “because I’m not a hippie”, but nevermind.

What if the flavour of CC the drummers were performing under was “share alike” - a viral licence like the GPL? That means my photo, perhaps its “mechanical copyright”, would also be CC. What happens then, when the BBC pick it up? Well, if it’s a non-commercial licence, they would need to negotiate terms to use the picture, just like normal copyright. But who do they negotiate with - me… or the drummers?

And is the BBC a commercial organisation, or a public service body? Is their use non-commercial? It’s getting clear why the UK version of Creative Commons is taking so long coming. And that’s without even touching on moral rights.

If an IP lawyer had been listening to us on the train, I think he would have been laughing to himself. We were so close to the answer, but we were never going to get there until we realised that the very same arguments we were having could only be settled by a team of lawyers. I don’t think lawyers get their work protected by intellectual property law - and I don’t suppose they mind all that much.

Over 200 people made it to the Remix Reading launch event last night. Although it’s a rare treat to see art, poetry, workshops, live music and… er… open source software demonstrations under one roof on a Tuesday night, it was a fairly normal party atmosphere, and not your usual show of copyright geekery. I took a few photos.

It’s the second convention of the Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop this weekend. Catch us at Speaker’s Corner, Hyde Park, London, at around two o’clock on Sunday (27th). What will be the hot topics this month? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if WIPO’s decision to exclude copyright reform groups from the upcoming talks on the Development Agenda in Geneva doesn’t get some attention.

Okay - so I read boingboing, big deal, I’m sure you do too. But I’ve just come across another brilliant story, this time about my MP Brian Sedgemore (who looks a bit like the BFG). This man, whose historic performance reflects the fact he holds one of the safest Labour seats in Britain, delivered a cracking speech against anti-terror legislation yesterday. James faxed him last month just before the third reading on ID cards. Sedgemore replied with a load of backup material, including a response from the Home Office, which, he confided, “is all pretty depressing”.

So in the end I pulled the Index piece. Rohan did a lot more work on it, but still made open source the main argument. I’ve come out of the experience pretty down, but I’m moving on.

After all, 249 people visited this site in the last four days, and I’ve got to give them more to read than me pissing and moaning. I’m going to ignore what a friend at PC Advisor magazine told me on Tuesday, that it’s just Googlebots trawling the site. It can’t be long until the bots gain consciousness and take over the world - maybe they’ll spare me if they’re already fans.

I’m off work today with laryngitis - coughing up all sorts of gremlins that wouldn’t be welcome in the office. I resolved at three am this morning to stop smoking. But if I only tell the Googlebots then who’s to object when I start again next week?

Spent the whole day blog-surfing in bed. Intrigued by Jason Kottke’s delusion that he can give up working forever and become a full time blogger. I’m going to get a bit more bloggy here, but I won’t install Typepad until I get a few emails letting me know somebody’s listening. Otherwise it would just be me, the bots and the comment spammers.

It makes sense as now I’m working I’ll be writing less. And I’ve had enough of reporting events on the copyfight circuit for a while. Last Thursday, fresh from pulling my piece on Index because it damaged the anti-patent lobby in its hyperedited form, I was accused of “working for the Guardian” at an OKFN meet. So if you want to know about Crown copyright, parliamentary copyright and the Access to Knowledge treaty you’ll have to go elsewhere today. (Cue the sound of 249 people hitting the back button). I’m sulking.

Instead this week I’m working on a long feature piece about the “nu” music industry, as in the guys who are going to pick up the evolutionary baton when the old dinosaur disappears in a puff of litigation and bloatware. So far I’ve interviewed Audioscrobbler/last.fm, Loca Records, Remix Reading and Will Rokier (he of Chems mashup fame). Any further suggestions welcome.

Finally, I should be in Music Week this week, shouting down David Ferguson after he published some FUD on Creative Commons. Can anyone confirm? The bastards haven’t sent me a copy and I couldn’t find it anywhere in East London even if I could get out of bed. It’s my first ever photo byline - perhaps the ultimate ambition of my writing career - so I’m filled with girlish glee.

My article in techtank on software patents went up some time last week. They seem to have decided they don’t do bylines anymore, but I promise I wrote it.

I’ve been holding out for Index on Censorship to publish a meatier software patents article I submitted a couple of weeks ago. All I can say is careful what you wish for. It went up this afternoon, but an over-enthusiastic editing job has rendered it factually inaccurate, not to say damaging to the anti-patent lobby, in several key respects.

So if you’ve come to this site to get my email so you can write something rude to me, hold your horses. Rohan at Index is a very talented editor, and I was really pleased with the last job he did on my Elvis piece (currently offline due to site refurbishment - anyone know a mirror?), he’s got a real way with words. I guess it just goes to show that when it comes to European bureaucracy, intellectual property law and software programming, a little bit of background knowledge goes a long way.

I’ve spoken to Index and they’re going to resolve the issue - somehow. I wish they’d just take it down. Hopefully we can get towards publishing something halfway accurate forthwith. The fatalist in me just hopes this isn’t a bad sign, what with the votes taking place tomorrow.

BTW - I’m well aware how awful it is when writers piss and moan about the way editors treat their work.

I wrote a Creative Commons factsheet for Own It, which they’ve now put online. Guess they got bored of waiting for the UK licences to launch. Last I heard the UK team are hoping the launch date will be March 3rd.

Spent this morning at the inaugural meeting of the London Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop. Taking digital rights campaigning into the analogue sphere, Cory Doctorow of EFF invited tech activists and stakeholders down to Speakers Corner in Hyde Park. Attendees included Rufus Pollock of Open Knowledge Foundation, Danny O’Brien, Dave Green, Toby from MusicAlly and Alice and Paula from the BBC. Next time we will bring

1. soapbox
2. banner
3. flyers

Although shouting on street corners to anybody who will listen seems like a sad conclusion to the copyfight, it was heaps of fun. Here’s to it becoming a monthly thing.

For a taste of what went on, please feel free to download the following .mpg files (or visit Jose Maria Mateos’ mirror site - see UPDATE below). And apologies for audio quality and jiggly camera work. I will try and do better next time…

• Cory - piracy
• Rufus - men in smoke-filled rooms
• Danny - dusty archives

Argh! 3,000 people wanted to see Cory shout his stuff on Speaker’s Corner - these files should be small enough now so we can all get a good look. Anybody wanting to help hosting please mail me: becky at (you know the rest)

UPDATE! Jose Maria Mateos has very kindly mirrored these files as my server is groaning under the pressure of hosting them. Next Copyfighters Talking Shop will be held at Speakers Corner on 27th February, around 2ish.

I was back at the ICA last night for a brilliant talk on Open Access science. Four panel members - Tim Hubbard, Ian Gibson, McKenzie Wark and David Bodanis - thrashed out the finer points of the future of science funding and publishing, with Fiona Fox from the Science Media Centre acting as chair.

Tim Hubbard, who leads the Human Genome Analysis Group at the Sanger Centre talked about how open source models of production in science are continuously competitive. His interpretation of the open source model - as a number of groups working on a project in parallel and reporting back to a central body - could be, he said, an excellent model for government IT projects within the NHS.

He also believed the model could stretch to the production of therapeutic drugs.

When making the argument for decoupling research from sales within the drugs industry, and instead allowing drug R and D to be centralised, he pointed out that nations around the world spend an average of 1% of annual GDP on medicines. Assuming 10% of drug company revenue goes back into research, Hubbard suggested that if countries could prove they were investing 0.1% of GDP into drugs research, they could be exempt from TRIPS. This would permit them to produce generic versions of drugs under patent. For a more detailed explanation of Hubbard’s ideas, read this paper.

Next up was Ian Gibson, chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. He admitted he found Hubbard’s ideas fairly idealistic (he hadn’t heard McKenzie Wark yet!), and concentrated on the need to liberate scientific publishing and open it up to the wider public.

”Why should the public get their information on science from the front pages of the Sun?”, he asked. He also pointed out that drug companies can access public research whilst they keep their own research hidden from view. Although he admitted with some disdain that the Labour government is far too friendly with industry, he seemed convinced that drugs companies would be coming under increasing pressure from the state to change their ways. You can read his report to the House of Commons here.

McKenzie Wark, author of The Hacker Manifesto, was next to speak. It was him I’d come to see - amid all the furore over Bill Gates calling copylefters “communists” here is a man that relishes Marxist innuendo. I’d read version 4.0 of his manifesto, so was surprised by his wit - “That’s all very well in practice, but what about in theory” was his opener, which immediately warmed the crowd. He stressed that science belonged to everybody, and that unless scientific work was open and easily accessible to the public, not just to peers and industry, then it could not properly call itself science.

Wark outlined what we were up against - the “philosophy of the commodity”. Picking up on the situation with HIV/AIDS in Africa, he characterised this philosophy as “we have to let people who need not die, die, in order to preserve the incentive (for drug companies) to produce other drugs which might possibly save other lives at some unknown point in the future”.

Popular Science author David Bodanis was last to speak. Although he professed his agreement with much of what the previous speakers had outlined, he warned that “you can take a good idea too far”. In particular, he thought that the creative industries needed the protection of an intellectual property framework in order to create. He was also concerned that a model as outlined by Hubbard, where centralised, state-controlled funding bodies took responsibility for all scientific research and development, could lead to “technocracy gone mad”.

An impressive crowd had turned up to hear the speakers. When questions were taken from the floor two main concerns were revealed. Firstly, there was some cynicism as to the public’s ability and willingness to engage with scientific research. And a couple of people were concerned that the ideas we’d heard were unrealistic, in light of the current race to strengthen IP legislation across the world.

Hubbard answered this second complaint with a wary optimism, citing the genome project as “an example of where we won” and pointing to various encouraging developments, including Poland’s last minute intervention on the EU software patent vote, and the development of WIPO away from focussing on intellectual property and towards the advancement of knowledge, as witnessed at last year’s meetings in Geneva. He also mentioned the development of Science Creative Commons, currently on Larry Lessig’s drawing board.

New Year flu hit the Own It New Media event hard last night, with two of the three billed speakers taken out at the last minute. Alex Chapman, a partner at the IP law firm BRIFFA, bravely held the fort, giving the collected audience a crash course in UK copyright law. I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the new media commentator they’d farmed in at late notice to help him out. Perhaps if he’d spent more time talking and less time fiddling with his PDA he might have made a better impression.

It was a very mixed audience. Some had come for a talk on the basics, and Alex did them proud. Others had come to share their experiences of copyleft and Creative Commons, including the guys from Loca Records, who release their stuff under Creative Commons, and Phil Hands, who runs the UK mirror for the Debian project.

The Creative Commons coverage wasn’t excellent, but I’m expecting some good things from Own-it in this respect later in the year. I wrote a factsheet on the subject for them, which will be released at the same time as the UK licences. Prodromos Tsiavos, who is part of the team porting the licence into UK law, was at the event. He’s hoping the UK licence will be ready next week. He’s spent most of the last three months negotiating with various interested parties. It’s a process that’s taken longer than anyone expected.

Listening to Alex Chapman I was struck by how different his approach to copyright was to the man I’ve had most of my IP schooling from, Lawrence Lessig. Chapman had a hands-dirty approach: he advises artists on how to “deal in” their intellectual property everyday. Lessig takes a more scholarly approach, an approach which has helped me get a handle on the issues very quickly. But whereas Lessig’s approach makes the distinction between copyright and Creative Commons very clear, Chapman’s approach to copyright showed, to me at least, how similar the two are to those used to dealing in rights. Artists are used to licensing their work using the same language as Creative Commons (attribution, distribution, though not, admittedly, share alike). The difference is they draft individual contracts and deal in these rights for money.

I don’t think anybody who wasn’t switched on to CC already would have walked away any the wiser as to what it’s all about. Other complaints? Well, file-sharing wasn’t well represented. It was implied that any artist putting their work on a peer-to-peer network invalidated their right to copyright protection, which is utter bunkum. It’s startling how many people believe file-sharing was developed specifically to steal content, rather than as an incredibly practical and efficient way to distribute data. There were enough geeks in the audinece to put Chapman right, but his misrepresentation of the black art of file-sharing did stall things a bit.

But then, how long can you talk about DRM in a room full of techies without toys being thrown out of prams? Prodromos characterised Creative Commons for me after the talk as a benign form of DRM. Heaven forbid that definition grow legs.