Michael Geist writes in with more analysis of the recently leaked draft of ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret treaty being negotiated among rich countries whose entertainment lobbyists have decided that the United Nations is too open and balanced to be used for future copyright negotiations.
I posted yesterday on the updated Internet chapter in the latest version of ACTA, which features a major change on secondary liability [ed: e.g., holding ISPs and web-sites liable for copyright infringement if they don't surveil and censor their users] and the U.S. attempt to clawback on recent domestic DMCA changes by arguing against linking circumvention and copyright infringement [ed: that is, the attempt to broaden the reach of the US law that prohibits breaking "copy-protection" even if you're doing so for reasons that don't violate copyright, such as loading unauthorized software onto locked mobile devices like iPads].
While there remains a number of issues to be determined in that chapter (and a great deal to be addressed in the other IP enforcement chapters on criminal provisions, civil enforcement, and border measures), the rest of ACTA has largely been decided. As in the Internet chapter, where compromise was needed it was the U.S. that did most of it, as it becomes increasingly apparent that the USTR is willing to agree to almost anything in order to bring home an agreement before the next round of elections in November.
Most interesting is the U.S. decision to cave on border issues. The U.S. had sought a provision requiring that each party shall adopt and maintain appropriate measures that facilitate activities of custom authorities for better identifying and targeting for inspection at its border shipments that could contain pirated goods. The article then specified a range of activities including consultation, information exchange, and a mandatory audit power. Moreover, there was an additional article on information exchange between customs authorities. All of that has been dropped, leaving only a provision where a party may consult with stakeholders or share information.
Fifty-three years ago, Jefferson Thomas joined eight other black teenagers in integrating Little Rock Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. The reaction against them was immediate, pervasive and frequently violent. White mobs spit and screamed at Thomas and the other Little Rock 9 when they showed up for school. The state's governor tried to use the Arkansas National Guard to keep the black students out, saying that following the federal mandate would only result in social disruption and that integration would have to wait until some unspecified time. And Thomas' father was laid off, probably as punishment for his son's decision.
"It seemed that overnight, things stopped being so bad," he said. "The same things were happening, but they didn't hurt me as much. I didn't feel like I was a failure. I felt victorious because I made it through the day."
Thomas died last Sunday, from pancreatic cancer, at the age of 67. He is the first of the Little Rock 9 to pass away. Little Rock Central High School has since become a National Historic Site. The photo of Jefferson Thomas—along with classmates Minnijean Brown and Thelma Mothershed—is from their online archives, where you can also listen to oral history recordings, read about the lives of the Little Rock 9, and get a deeper understanding of the events surrounding public school integration. Personally, I like this shot because it shows Thomas and his classmates in a candid moment, looking like normal teenagers, rather than people from a history textbook. That reminder, that historic figures are people, is important to keeping their experiences—and the lessons we ought to be learning from those experiences—fresh and real. History isn't just facts for a quiz.
Ted Balaker of Reason.tv produced a video about moonshine. He says, "You can make beer at home, but if you try to make spirits at home it's a felony. Go figure."
If drinking makes us healthier and wealthier, why is America's liquor policy so screwy?
Jimmy Carter legalized home brewing in 1978, and that newfound freedom fueled the craft beer movement that continues to lavish beer lovers with endless choices. But in many ways, laws that govern whiskey, gin, and other distilled spirits are stuck in the 1920s.
Federal agents still raid distilleries much like they did during Prohibition, and making any amount of moonshine at home is not only illegal, it's a felony that can carry up to five years in prison. The result is a market dominated by a few big names, where would-be craftsmen are forced to hide their work.
And yet, despite the danger, America is in the midst of "moonshine renaissance," in which a new wave of hipster hobbyists has joined with old-time 'shiners to flout the law and do what they love to do.
Michael Geist writes in with the latest news on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the secret, closed-door copyright treaty that will bring US-style copyright rules (and worse) to the whole world. Particularly disturbing is the growing support for "three-strikes" copyright rules that would disconnect whole families from the Internet if one member of the household was accused (without proof) of copyright infringement. The other big US agenda item is cramming pro-Digital Rights Management (DRM) rules down the world's throats that go way beyond the current obligations under the UN's WIPO Copyright Treaty. In the US version, breaking DRM is always illegal, even if you're not committing any copyright violation -- so breaking the DRM on your iPad to install software you bought from someone who hasn't gone through the Apple approval process is illegal, even though the transaction involves no illicit copying.
Ironically, this DRM push comes just as the US courts and regulators have begun to erode the US's own extreme rules on the subject. Or perhaps this isn't so surprising: in the past, the US copyright lobby has torpedoed the courts and Congress by getting USA to commit to international agreements that went far beyond the rules that they could push through on their own at home.
Given the history of ACTA leaks, to no one's surprise, the latest version of the draft agreement was leaked last night on Knowledge Ecology International's website. The new version - which reflects changes made during an intense week of negotiations last month in Washington - shows a draft agreement that is much closer to becoming reality. Square brackets [ed: these indicate areas where there is still debate] have been removed from many sections, leaving the core issue of scope of the agreement [ed: that is, whether the treaty will cover things like EU-style trademark rules that would prohibit calling it "cheddar cheese" if it's not made in Cheddar, England] as the biggest issue to be resolved when the next round of negotiations begins in a few weeks in Japan.
Perhaps the most important story of the latest draft is how the countries are close to agreement on the Internet enforcement chapter. The Internet enforcement chapter has been among the most contentious since the U.S. first proposed draft language that would have globalized the DMCA and raised the prospect of three strikes and you're out. In the face of opposition, the U.S. has dropped its demands on secondary liability [ed: that is, forcing ISPs and online services to police and censor their users or face prosecution] but is still holding out hope of establishing digital lock rules that go beyond the WIPO Internet treaties and were even rejected by its own courts.
Salon's got a blood-boiling interview with Aaron Kupchik, author of Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear, a close look at four very different US schools. Each school has a different demographic and different location, but the thing they all share is a set of zero-tolerance policies that turn them into Kafka-esque nightmares:
They started in the '90s, and they were spurred by the federal government's Safe and Drug Free Schools Act, which required schools to implement zero tolerance for certain things like weapons. What schools have done across the country in the last 15 years is to expand greatly what falls under zero-tolerance policies. So they extend to not just deadly weapons and drugs but sometimes fighting and prescription drugs and other types of substances. What they mean is that if you're caught violating this broad rule, there's no discussion and no elaboration of why you did this. No investigation. We just punish you with the one-size-fits-all punishment.
We're teaching kids what it means to be a citizen in our country. And what I fear we're doing is teaching them that what it means to be an American is that you accept authority without question and that you have absolutely no rights to question punishment. It's very Big Brother-ish in a way. Kids are being taught that you should expect to be drug tested if you want to participate in an organization, that walking past a police officer every day and being constantly under the gaze of a security camera is normal. And my concern is that these children are going to grow up and be less critical and thoughtful of these sorts of mechanisms. And so the types of political discussions we have now, like for example, whether or not wiretapping is OK, these might not happen in 10 years.
Mary Robinette Kowal sez, "Preschoolers in Richmond, California are being handed RFID jerseys when they get to school. The ACLU points out that in addition to the privacy concerns, these are not secure tags. It has the potential to make kidnapping and stalking very easy."
The editors of Scientific American said it well back in May 2005: "Tagging ... kids becomes a form of indoctrination into an emerging surveillance society that young minds should be learning to question."
Quiznos's food photographers and stylists are apparently some kind of latter-day sorcerers, judging from the ad-versus-reality photos of their "Baja Chicken Sandwich" product, as snapped by Sarah, a Consumerist reader.
A German TV programme showed hackers from the Chaos Computer Club using off-the-shelf equipment to extract personal information from the government's new "secure" ID card, which stores scans of fingerprints and a six-digit PIN that can be used to sign official documents and declarations.
In an interview with the show, Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said he saw no immediate reason to act on the alleged security issue.
Meanwhile on Tuesday the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) rejected the Plusminus' criticism of the new ID card. The agency's personal identification expert Jens Bender said the card was secure and called the combination of an integrated chip with a PIN number a "significant security improvement compared to today's standard process of user name and password."
But a classic Trojan horse program that logs keystrokes remained a threat, he admitted, because users must use keyboards in addition to the scanners.
My latest Locus Magazine column, "Proprietary Interest," talks about the way that our instinctive ownership claims over the stuff we find and post to the Internet do more harm than good. When we claim that public domain images, interesting links, or other net-fodder are "ours," we invite a muddle in which others make even more compelling ownership claims. For example, if the old public-domain Lysol ad you scan is "yours," then why shouldn't it be Lysol's?. This is a world in which we spend all our time arguing about whose interest is most legitimate, instead of sharing, discussing, criticizing and enjoying the world around us.
Any ethical claim to ownership over a scan of a public domain work should be treated with utmost suspicion, not least because of all the people with stronger claims than the scanner! To be consistent with the ethical principle that one should never use another's work without permission (regardless of the law or the public domain), every scanner would have a duty to ask, at the very least, the corporations whose products are advertised in these old chestnuts (the very best of them are for brands that persist to today, since these vividly illustrate the way that our world has changed - for example, see the very frank Lysol douche ad). For if scanning a work confers an ownership interest, then surely paying for the ad's production offers an even more compelling claim!
And the publishers of the magazines and the newspapers - to scan is one thing, but what about the firm that paid to physically print the edition that we make the scan from? And then there are the copywriters and illustrators and their heirs - if scanning an ad confers a proprietary interest, then surely creating the ad should give rise to an even greater claim?
We do acknowledge these claims, at least a little. A good archivist notes the source. A good critic notes the creator. But that is the extent of the claim's legitimacy. If we afford descendants and publishers and printers and commissioners their own little pocket of customary right-of-refusal over their works, we would eliminate the ability to keep these works alive in our culture. For these owed courtesies multiply geometrically - think of the challenge of getting all of Dickens' or Twains' far-flung heirs to grant permission to do anything with their ancestors' works. What a lopsided world it would be if ten seconds' scanner work with the public domain demanded 100 hours' correspondence and permission-begging to be ''polite!''
Maya Pedal is a Guatemalan NGO that works with international volunteers and local experts to remanufacture old bicycles to serve as "people-powered farm machines." The dozens of "Bicimaquina" designs include bike-powered washing machines, blenders, grain mills, water irrigation devices and animal-feed mills.
Up to ten volunteers from around the world take up residency in San Andreas Itzapas each year for several weeks at a time. Based on bicycle parts contributed by their partner organizations around the world, they work with Mr. Marroquin and his staff to produce between five and ten bicimaquinas a month, and up to fifty over the course of a year. Roughly half the working time at Maya Pedal is devoted building these machines, and the remainder is directed to an extensive bicycle maintenance program for the residents of the city. The bicimaquinas are sold locally for the cost of manufacturing. Several family-run businesses have developed from the bicimaquinas program including a shop that grinds different grains for customers, and a building contractor that uses a bicycle-powered concrete compaction machine at construction sites in the region.
Copyfighting banjo-picker Patrick Costello has a new book of free/open banjo tunes: Songs for Sunday: "In this book you will find a selection of hymns, country gospel and even some blues
songs arranged for frailing banjo. The arrangements presented here blend melody and
rhythm so that you can sing along with the banjo and still be able to knock out a solo
once in a while. The accompanying DVD contains video workshops where I walk you
through each song." (Thanks, Patrick, via Submitterator!)
— Cory • Comments: 4
Recently, Nina "Sita Sings the Blues" Paley and I conducted a protected email exchange debating the merits of the Creative Commons "noncommerical" licenses (like those used on my novels and here at Boing Boing). It was an instructive and sometimes productive debate, and Nina's edited the thread and posted it.
Here's my perspective: the purpose of any cultural policy or regulation
should be to encourage a diversity of both participation and works (that
is: more people making art, and more kinds of art being made).
ISTM that your assertion amounts to: "Whatever forms of participation
that come into existence as a result of the capitalization opportunities
that accrue in an exclusive rights regime, they are dwarfed by the works
that lurk in potentia should such a regime perish."
IOW: we unequivocally get *some* participation in culture as a result of
exclusive rights regimes, some of which would not exist except for
exclusive rights. You believe that if this regime and the works that
depend on it was to vanish, the new works that would come into existence
as a result would offset the losses.
I don't know how either assertion could be tested. We both have
firsthand experience of both modes of creativity -- I know of works that
wouldn't have been capitalized absent the higher returns expected in the
presence of exclusive rights; I also know of works that could only have
been made in their absence.
Any ethical claim to ownership over a scan of a public domain work should be treated with utmost suspicion, not least because of all the people with stronger claims than the scanner! To be consistent with the ethical principle that one should never use another's work without permission (regardless of the law or the public domain), every scanner would have a duty to ask, at the very least, the corporations whose products are advertised in these old chestnuts (the very best of them are for brands that persist to today, since these vividly illustrate the way that our world has changed - for example, see the very frank Lysol douche ad). For if scanning a work confers an ownership interest, then surely paying for the ad's production offers an even more compelling claim!
Copyfighting banjo-picker Patrick Costello has a new book of free/open banjo tunes: 
Check out 