Copyrighteous

Mika and I were talking about micronutrients and she was mentioning the importance of copper and zinc. I pointed out that pennies have both copper and zinc (although in a 19:1 ratio) and asked her how many pennies I would need to eat to stay healthy. She said 1 or 2 would do.

While I'm not about to start eating pennies, many people do. Eating non-food items after you are a couple years old is pathologic but surprisingly common. It's often called pica although it has many other names -- especially for people that particular types of non-food items (e.g., geophagia for folks who eat dirt, cautopyreiophagia for burnt matches, geomelophagia for raw potatoes, amylophagia for soap, acuphagia for sharp items, etc).

Mika asked me why adults would eat coins. I suggested that it was mental problem. She pointed out it that perhaps it was more of a metal problem.

In no small part because of the Gitlin book I've been reading recently, I've recently been thinking a lot about the way that media gives us a cheap and easy way to get intense little bursts of feeling (which you might otherwise have to work pretty hard for) on command. I've been paying a lot of attention to my feelings as I am exposed to media.

Maybe I'm sensative because I don't watch television and I don't normally watch movies anymore either. I can't remember the last time I went to a movie theater and I don't think I've sat down to watch a movie since last September. Except on airplanes.

On the planes from New York City to Australia, I had the opportunity to watch a number of movies. I've read a good deal on the Rwandan genocide so I decided to check out Hotel Rwanda. The movie, like anything that deals with genocide, is a pretty emotional experience. Afterwards, a little drained, I looked through the movie choices for something more humorous and fun.

I value the ability to produce all sorts of information the right of people to choose from it. That said, I'm slightly worried by the fact that it's so easy to say things like, "wow, this genocide stuff is getting me down, lets move on to something funny."

Last night, I accidentally left my thong in someone else's hotel room.

Because I suspect there might be ambiguity in the minds of some my non-Australian readers, this is what I forgot:

Even with full knowledge of the Australian definition, it's sometimes difficult for me to talk about my thongs by name. I've been told that I can also call them "pluggers." I'm not sure that this is really all that much better.

My last post made me think of some of the other funny confusing cultural differences I experienced when I lived in Ethiopia.

One strange area is people's names. In Ethiopia, like the West, a person's first name is their given name. However, their second name is their father's given name. Their third name is their paternal grandfather's given name and so on and so fourth. People are expected to know up to eighth ancestors or their name up to eight places. For example: a man named Binyam who's father is named Getachaw whose father is named Mekkonen would be named Binyam Getachaw or Binyam Getachaw Mekkonen.

Explaining the difference between the Western system (1+ given name(s) followed by a final family name) and the Ethiopian system fell on its face when I tried to use my own name as an example of the Western system because my second given name (my "middle name") is my father's first given name. The conversation would go something like this:

Friend: "Your first name is your given name, right?"

Me: "Right."

Friend: "And your second name is your father's first name?"

Me: "Well, yes. But that's not normal. That's a coincidence in this case."

Friend: "And your third name is your grandfather's name?"

Me: "Well, yes. We have the same last name because all family members share a last name which is usually comes third."

Friend: "So it's the same system!"

Me: "Ahhh!"

The long-standing motto of the Ethiopian tourism committee is "13 months of sunshine." Most people think that this is cute hyperbole. It's not. Ethiopians use a calendar that includes 12 30-day months followed a 5 or 6 day holiday month. Even during the rainy season, it's always sunny.

Sounds confusing, right? It's only the tip of the iceberg.

The Ethiopian calendar is also seven and a half years behind the Gregorian calendar. Any computers in Ethiopia that use the Ethiopian calendar have yet to confront their Y2K problems. Dates on passports are all written twice.

And if that wasn't enough, the clock is also six hours different. The day is split into twelve numbered hours of sunlight and twelve numbered hours of a night. The sun rises at 1 in the morning (7AM in the west) and sets around 12:59 in the night (6:59PM or 19 in the west). It works because Ethiopia is roughly equatorial.

You can read more about all of these different systems here.

While they systems are interesting in themselves, it's when the Ethiopian and Western systems collide that things really get fun. Most Ethiopians' prefer their own time and date systems but know that the rest of the world does not. Since it's pretty easy to distinguish Ethiopians from many Westerners, Ethiopians will sometimes give foreigners the time, date or year of an event, date, or appointment in Western time. Sometimes.

As a foreigner, every time an Ethiopian gives you a year number or a numerical month/date birthday, you need to ask whether it's Ethiopian or Western time. Every time you plan an appointment or a date, you need to make sure that when you agree which system you are using. If you agree to meet at 2, you need to insure that both parties are thinking of the same 2. Every foreigner in Ethiopia makes the mistake of arriving either six hours early or six hours late at least once.

As you might imagine, it helps to have a good sense of humor if you live in Ethiopia.

Today I got about half-way through Media Unlimited: How The Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives by Todd Gitlin. It reminds me a little bit of Roszak's Cult of Information which is not meant to be a glowing complement. Roszak self-identifies as a neo-Luddite and, while I applaud his attempt to deflate the unchecked and unrealistic enthusiasm that sounds many people involved in the information technology industry, is overly cynical in my opinion.

Unlike Luddites and neo-Luddites, I am excited about the increasing and increasingly cheap and uninhibited flow of information and positive social impact that this might have. The negative impact of the overwhelming amount of information and the overwhelming ways that it is distributed are important but I don't believe it is inherently bad. Gitlin is more cynical than I am but more reasonable than Roszak. He is not as unexcited as Roszak but is concerned. He does a very nice job of connecting the problems associated with the massive surge in media with the nature of the information that people are being barraged with.

Gitlin is a good read and it does a good deal of synthesis of a widely varying line-up of thinkers and writers.

I also pleased with the unintended pun in the title. I know many people that can speak to the overwhelming effect that a wholly different type of torrents have in providing highly connected people with more images and sounds than they can easily consume.

I am in Canberra at the Australian National University for Linux Conference Australia.

Here is a picture of the place where biology is done at ANU:

The way Mark Shuttleworth signs his first name reminds me a lot of a khomut -- the Thai end of document character, which, I am willing to argue, is the coolest character in Unicode. I've included an image of both here because it's not in everyone's font:

The way Mark Shuttleworth signifies the end of a letter.		The way Thai people signify the end of a letter.

๛

Seth Schoen gave me a whole much of cool stickers that were evidently made by Don Marti several years ago. The stickers say "OPEN" and are a parody of the DMAT logo. Here are pictures of the DMAT logo and the OPEN stickers:

For those that don't know, DMAT was the trade-name for the recording industry's Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI). It was basically a secure (read DRM) standard that the recording industry wanted to use to kill MP3. Except it wasn't a standard. It was many incompatible standards. That may not even have been the biggest thing wrong with SDMI.

There was a time, not really very long ago, when people I knew were very afraid of SDMI and what it would might do to online music. As you might imagine, DMAT/SDMI fell on its face.

In any case, the sticker is a funny parody. I put them all over the place. Of course, because SDMI was so completely unsuccessful, very few people get the joke. This is my favorite thing about the stickers.

The door to my apartment has an OPEN sticker on it. This is funny because the term "open," as it is commonly used, is rarely an accurate way to describe the state of the door. In the sense of the sticker (meaning DRM free), it is technically true -- but only because the lock is not digital. Our door is certainly a piece of technology that we use to protect our more traditional property rights.

While I'm on the subject (and since I will almost definitely never return), I should point out that one of the only places I could find any copy of the DMAT logo is in the portfolio of work for the corporate name generation firm "Catchword" whose motto seems to be: "a great name is the genesis of a lasting brand." Evidently, the recording industry paid some expensive naming firm to come up with the idea to replace the very unsexy "SMDI" with the oh-so-hot "DMAT" with the the promise this would lead to a lasting brand. If I were Catchword, I'm not sure I'd host the only google-accessable copy of the logo in the portfolio I show to my clients.

So I've known about Sir Thomas Urquhart for a while and read a few bits and pieces of his Rabelais translation in college. Recently though, I reminded of him while reading through a book on eccentricity and I found this excerpt from Urquhart's introduction to his The Jewel (please feel free to skip the bottom as soon as you get the point):

I could truly have enlarged this discourse with a choicer variety of phrase, and made it overflow the field of the reader's understanding with an inundation of greater eloquence; and that one way, tropologetically, by metonymical, ironical, metaphorical, and synecdochical instruments of elocution, in all their several kinds, artificially effected, according to the nature of the subject, with emphatical expressions in things of greater concernment, with catachrestical in matters of meaner moment; attended on each side respectively with an epiplectic and exegetic modification; with hyperbolical, either epitatically or hypocoristically, as the purpose required to be elated or extenuated, with qualifying metaphors, and accompanied by apostrophes; and lastly, with allegories of all sorts, whether apologal, affabulatory, parabolary, aenigmatic, or paraemial. And on the other part, schematologetically adorning the proposed theme with the most especial and chief flowers of the garden or rhetoric and omitting no figure either of diction or sentence, that might contribute to the ear's enchantment, or persuasion of the hearer. I could have introduced, in case of obscurity, synonymal, exargastic, palilogetic elucidations; for sweetness of phrase, antimetathetic commutations of epithets; for the vehement excitation of a matter, exclamation in the front and epiphonemas in the rear. I could have used, for the promptlier stirring up of passion, apostrophal and prosopopoeial diversions; and, for the appeasing and settling of them, some epanorthotic revocations, and aposiopetic restraints. I could have inserted dialogisms, displaying their interrogatory part with communicatively psymatic and sustenative flourishes; or proleptically, with the refutative schemes of anticipation and subjection, and that part which concerns the responsary, with the figures of permission and concession. Speeches extending a matter beyond what is, auxetically, digressively, transitiously, by ratiocination, aetiology, circumlocution, and other ways, I could have made use of; as likewise with words diminishing the worth of a thing; tapinotically, periphrastically, by rejection, translation, and other means, I could have served myself.

Lets ignore the 100+ words sentences. Let's ignore the Mojo Jojo-esque redundancy. A teacher in high school once told me to not use a one dollar word when a fifty cent word will do. Urquhart employs long strings of five dollar words for things that don't really need be said at all. While the result may be nearly incomprehensible, Urquhart is a master of the form. I absolutely love it and I just bought two of his books.

In addition to writing on a large number of subjects (a sample of which is here; I recommend the section on Scottish bankers), Urquhart created a universal language called Logopandecteision with, "eleven genders, seven moods, four voices, ten cases, besides the nominative, and twelve parts of speech; every word signifieth as well backwards as forwards." Of course, the prose is so complex that it's hard to tell he's even talking about a language at many points. I'm still trying to find out what most of those 11 genders are.

I love the idea of an incomprehensibly complex language defined only in a massive tome of incomprehensibly complex prose. I hope to complete a similarly expansive and internally consistent masterwork in my life.

So I'm not usually one for beauty pageants but I couldn't help but notice the picture of the winner of Miss USA on Google News. It wasn't her beauty that caught my eye but rather her facial expression after winning:

That is serious surprise. She looks so surprised and happy that she looks completely horrified. Like a rat just jumped on her foot.

This is pageantry: like acting except more emphasis on the spectacle and less emphasis on the plausibility. The ideal candidate for Miss USA is someone who can, at the drop a pin, conjure up an reaction that is that extreme, over the top: a caricature of itself. Of course she won.

So I suggested that Mika and I have own our pageant. We skipped all the fluffy bits with the swimsuits and talents and competed wholly on the bit that really mattered: the acceptance face.

I think it's close.

Greg Pomerantz pointed me to this article on a recent 2nd Circuit copyright decision. The case basically disambiguated the term "owner" in 17 U.S.C. §117 (a). It may seem nit-picky and obscure but (AFAICT, IANAL, OMG) this decision has good implications for free software hackers. Because Greg continues to refuse a blog of his own, I've agreed to write this up to spread the good news.

As the article points out, §117 (a) of the copyright code provides an affirmative defense against copyright infringement for anyone who owns a physical copy of a computer program and who makes an adaptation "as an essential step in the utilization of the computer program in conjunction with a machine," and uses it "in no other manner." Basically, owners of programs can modify said programs.

The case in question is Krause v. Titleserv Inc., 03-9303. Here is the back story: William Krause was a programmer and consultant hired by Titleserv to write a series of programs over the course of a decade. When Krause left Titleserv, he left the company the right use the software but not modify it. Using technical means that are not entirely clear from what I've read, he left the software "locked" so that the company did not have access to source code or the ability to modify the program. Evidently, the technical means were not very good ones. Titleserv managed to sidestep these restrictions and bring the software back into modifiable source form. They modified the program to keep it working a number of times and in a number of sometimes rather intrusive ways.

As I mentioned above, copyright law says that the right to modify is something all owners have. As a result, the core argument in the case boiled down to Krause saying that the owner of the software was the person who held a title to the software -- unsurprising himself in this case. Titleserv, predictably enough, argued that the owner was anybody who rightfully possessed the software and that any rightful possessor of a copy was an "owner" and could modify software without any risk of infringement.

Second Circuit Judges Pierre Leval and Robert Katzmann sided with Titleserv. Leval said that courts should, "inquire into whether the party exercises sufficient incidents of ownership over a copy of the program to be sensibly considered the owner of the copy for purposes of §117(a)." Rightful possession is ownership.

Krause also argued for a narrow definition of "essential" that would only cover modifications necessary to keep the program functioning. The court was willing to side with Titleserv again and adopt a broad interpretation of "essential" that covered the wide range of changes that Titleserv made: everything from bug fixes to updates to cosmetic changes.

For free and open source software hackers, this is great news: a broad definition of owner in terms of software is fantastic for software freedom. The implications of ownership as defined as rightful possession are not necessarily limited to a distributed right to modifiability by groups other than the title holder although alone this is a major victory. Apparently, Titleserv sidestepped what sounded like sort of copyright protection device. The ability as the owner to do this on software one rightfully posesses is great. It remains to be seen (or explained) how much or how little good can be squeezed out of this.

The Debian-Legal mailing list talks about the "tentacles of evil test" which is a hypothetical situation that the list uses to evaluate licenses. Basically, the test tries to prevent against bad things happening to rightful possessors if the owner or the ownership for the title of a piece of software falls within the grasp of some nasty anti-freedom entity. I agree that the sentiment is an important freedom concern (although am not always happy with the way it has been employed and applied in the past on the list). This case seems to mean that we can worry a bit less about those tentacles in many situations.

While I'm not happy with the idea of software having owners, this case defines owner in a massively less centralized fashion that many of us had assumed was the case and this is a victory for software freedom.

If you're really interested, here is another article and you can find the full case on Lexis and elsewhere.

I own a pair of lace-up leather pants (i.e., trousers, thanks) but, while it helps, the costume doesn't make the rock star.

The Debian and Ubuntu teams that I'm on are (in a weird, dysfunctional way) slightly like rock bands. We have the long hair. We have the late nights. We have the binge drinking. Putting out a release is a bit like putting out a album.

So, to round it off, I've decided to go on tour. It's a pretty wimpy tour but it's a start. After some time locked in the studio, I'm out to promote Ubuntu's newly released "Hoary Hedgehog" and to play a few tracks from Debian's upcoming "Sarge" offering.

The two next stops include:

• On Sunday April 10, I'll be rocking out with the Southern Connecticut Open Source User Group in New Haven, CT. I'll talk about Ubuntu, the latest release, and the derivation process in relation to Debian. The event will be held at Innovation Software and feel free to drop by.
• On Monday April 11, I'll be playing at the The Northern New Jersey Linux Meetup in Fort Lee, NJ. You should reserve a spot on that web page if you plan on attending.

Both events promise to be relatively laid-back with manageably-sized groups that should leave enough time and space for questions, chatting, food and drink. I'll bring key fingerprints if anyone wants to trade keys while I'm there.

Here's a message I sent to Debian-NYC-Social:

Lots happening this week:

1. Ubuntu, the new Debian-based distribution, is making their second release this Friday. A celebration is in order.
2. There are a couple folks visiting town this week that need to pick up some GPG-signatures from Debian folks.
3. It's becoming increasingly imperative that I drink large quantities of delicious Belgian beer. I suspect some of you may be in the same situation.

We're all busy people so lets do a 3 for 1. Lets all meet up at 630pm on Friday at what is quickly becoming the official bar of Debian-NYC-Soc. Directions are online.

I hope to see you there! Call or email me if there are any questions.

If even with its world-class International Airport, New York City is out of your reach this Friday, other Ubuntites are throwing parties in their neck of the woods.

If your city isn't on that list, reflect for a moment on your favorite pub, cafe, or park. Then reflect on the fact that the page I linked to was a wiki. You'll know what to do.

On Canal Street in New York City, there are series of plastic stores. They sell basically anything made of plastic.

I'm intrigued by these stores because they challenge the traditional grouping process we use for categorizing and separating goods into different stores. Almost always, stores sell items that are useful for a related type of use or endeavor -- hardware stores, home appliance stores, book stores and wine stores are all good examples. Plastic stores are interesting because they sell items that can be used for wide variety of things but are made of a common material. Dollar stores are another example of store that employs an atypical type of product selection process in a different way.

The existence of these stores inspires me to think of other ways to sort and justify goods and behaviors more generally. The process can be insightful and funny.

I've been thinking a lot about copyright and piracy recently and the different justifications or arguments against piracy. Most people say that piracy is about principle or a larger economic business model but I think it would be fun to think of it as dependent on things like theme and content. For example, one might argue that it is alright to pirate movies if and only if they are about pirates. If you think about the way that content affects society's interaction and feelings of ownership in regards to intellectual goods, it's (slightly) less ridiculous than it might initially seem.

In a bit of meta-meta-news yesterday, I reported on the report on the 35,000 reports about the Pope. If you are wondering how one squeezes 35,000 stories out an of event that could be summed up in sentence, you are missing the obvious answer: triviality. For example, we now know that many couples, in many localities, had met the Pope:

• In Vermont: Local Couple Friends With Pope
• In Florida: Local Couple Met the Pope in 2001
• In North Carolina: Local Couple Met With Pope)
• In Kentucky: Local Couple Who Met Pontiff Mourn Death
• In Utica, New York: Local Couple 'Mesmerized' by Meeting With Pope

This one (which was, I'd like to point out, the top story on Google News for a while) left me a little puzzled:

Trivial? Perhaps. But also informative. For example, I didn't even know the Pope wore felt!

It seems strikingly similar to those "normal person does obvious thing" stories that The Onion seems to like so much.

If you haven't noticed, a lot of people are talking about the religious leader formerly known as "the Pope." The New York Times supplemented the Business, Arts and Metro sections yesterday with a special "John Paul II" section.

While there is an overwhelming amount of news, this article caught my eye. The headline is: 35,000 New Stories on Pope After Death.

By my count, it seems that it is more like 35,001. Either that or it's time to start a new tally for the number of news stories on the number of news stories about the Pope.

As has become customary now, I took a short trip on the subway to check in on the Fordham Annual Conference on International Intellectual Property Law and Policy this year.

The conference always posts an extensive line-up of the biggest and brightest stars in IP law. There are folks from the copyright office, governments around the world, and all of the big media companies. While the conferences usually offers a token spot or two to more critical IP folks like Jamie Love or Fred von Lohnmann, it is basically a high-protectionist love-fest and strategizing session. It's interesting to go to take the pulse of the high protectionist world and to get a preview of upcoming policy and legal pushes around IP enforcement, DRM, litigation, legislation, and more.

It's also always interesting to see the way that free and open source software is treated in the conference. It is particularly interesting in light of that famous quote attributed to Gandhi that Eben Moglen has used in reference to the free software movement: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.

When I went to Fordham several years ago, free software was completely ignored. In previous years, it has been raised briefly but only to be dismissed and laughed off. They're still telling jokes but the jokes are becoming increasingly vicious (although not increasingly grounded in fact).

As an example of our progress and of the way that free software is treated by some of the most famous and influential minds in IP, here is a very short recording of Hugh C. Hansen -- professor of IP at Fordham, director of the conference and an famous and highly respected name in IP -- speaking about free and open source software and its developers:

• Clip in OGG Vorbis
• Clip in MP3

On the other hand, the conference web site appears to be served by Apache running on Fedora so apparently he has a little good sense.

At the Grokster oral argument, the CEA was handing out free "Save Betamax" T-Shirts. Of course, this is a reference to the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Sony v. Universal over betamax technology. The entertainment industry argued that VCR should be illegal. The Supreme Court disagreed and said that any technology with commercially significant non-infringing use is OK. Grokster v. MGM is basically revisiting the issue.

I picked up a "Save Betamax" shirt at the court and was wearing it yesterday. At a fashionable hipster bar, the cute bartender complemented me on my shirt. I said thanks and started chatting with her. It quickly became apparent that she had had no idea that the shirt was in reference Sony v. Universal. She thought it was a cry to save the now-long-dead tape format.

I've been told that hipster fashion revolves in part around an aesthetic of both retro and "so uncool it's cool" -- trucker hats, cheap beer, etc. A shirt claiming to want to save a now-totally-defunct recording technology is really uncool so, in her mind, was cool and attractive. I think that by my cute bartenders standards, the fact that the shirt was in fact referencing a now-totally-defunct video tape format only as a way of alluding to a body of copyright and technology jurisprudence is even more uncool and geeky. Following this logic, the shirt was more cool than even she knew.