Untranslatable

AKMA says
So David presses onward to the question, Are there things that can be said in Chinese that simply cannot be said in English, and vice versa And again I agree; the question is totally screwed up (though something in this area teases us with an elusive truth that entices people to take the easy, unfortunate way out by affirming the oversimplified version. But we can pursue this anon.

Stoppard meditated on this a long time ago in 'Professional Foul' - get it and read it if you haven't.

The example that sticks in my memory is that you can't say 'he said one thing but meant another' in French, because the translation comes out as

'Il dit quelque chose, mais il veut dire quelque chose d'autre'

If he didn't WANT to say something else, but was being deliberately disingenuous or misleading, you lose that sense in translation.

Aux armes, citoyens!

I wrote on Sunday about Radio Caroline (the origin of the music industry's term piracy) and its owner's foray into politics in 1970, where he is credited with helping turn the UK General Election.

In the US, this is harder (all those checks and balances) but still possible. In the next 3 months, all the representatives of the people will be in their home districts, campaigning, holding public meetings, trekking from one place to another to meet their constituents.

What if there was a 'smart mob' waiting for them at each one?
Local constituents concerned and informed about the CBDTPA, Coble/Berman, the DMCA and the rest.

Lets set up a tree of weblogs - a top-level campaign one, giving the overview and highlights, then state and regional ones for each election. Brainstorm and hone a set of questions to ask each representative, and publish their responses, and an endorsement/rejection. Get the meeting attendees to bring video cameras and tape recorders and post the Q&A sessions in video and audio too. Sign up flyposters and canvassers. If there isn't an endorsable candidate, come up with a write-in candidate instead.

Instead of arguing about whether programmers or lawyers are doing more, or the details of which licence you release your software under, sign up to the broad principles we all can agree on - that the CBDTPA and Coble-Berman bills are an attempt to overturn the constitution by narrow interests.

Are we likely to win any seats? Probably not. But at the end of it, every representative will be aware of a big constituency who don't want the entertainment industry to have veto rights over the constitution. The DMCA was passed unanimously. Coble-Berman mustn't be.

So, why am I telling you to do this instead of doing it myself? I am a resident alien, and not supposed to get involved in politics - taxation without representation is my lot. You citizens need to do this - they are YOUR representatives.

Go out there and remind them.

AOTC could be a starting point BlogTheVote2002USA

Lesson from History

Do you know why the RIAA call copying files without their permission 'piracy'?

Back in the 1960s, radio in the UK was completely run by the BBC, the state-licensed monopoly broadcaster. The way round this was to broadcast from outside the UK, after the fashion of Radio Luxembourg.

Radio stations on boats, of which Radio Caroline was the most famous and longest lasting, were called 'pirate radio' because they were operating in international waters, beyond the reach of national laws.

This history of Radio Caroline contains this interesting incident, which may prove inspiring to those currently labelled pirates.

After an earlier incident where Prime Minister Harold Wilson had raged at [Radio Caroline owner] O'Rahilly telling him that he was 'finished', Ronan nursed a healthy hatred of the man. As The Mebo 2 countered its jammed signal a General Election was looming that Labour and Wilson were expected to win easily. O'Rahilly convinced the Swiss that public sympathy for them would be greatly enhanced by renaming the station Radio Caroline and this done he set about blatant on air campaigning against Labour, targeting marginal seats where control could change if only a few hundred voters switched allegiance. Breaking every law in the book concerning politics and the representation of the people, Ronan likened Wilson to Chairman Mao while Caroline battle buses toured marginal wards and thousands of rapidly recruited supporters fly posted millions of posters suggesting that a vote for Labour was akin to voting for a Marxist state. He instigated a rolling phone call campaign where each supporter would recruit by phone, three more supporters and so forth. He arranged for the phone lines into Labour HQ to be jammed by hoax calls.

The government had forgotten or failed to consider that this election was the first in which 18 to 21 year olds could vote and that these people had been impressionable teenagers when Caroline was at the peak of its influence. It was not difficult to motivate them to strike back at the politicians who had so arrogantly ruined their enjoyment.

On the day after the election as the votes were counted, shell shocked Labour politicians found that against all predictions they had lost. For Ronan while the score was not settled, the loss of his station had been partially avenged. Soon after on a London street O'Rahilly was baulked by a careless pedestrian. The two men stared at each other, Ronan recognising Ted Short, a senior Labour politician. Short recognised Ronan and said simply 'It's you. Why did you do it?'. 'Listen baby' replied Ronan using his trademark opening phrase, 'if you hurt Caroline, I hurt you'.

I believe there are a few elections coming up in the US.

Blogcritics

Blogcritics: Interview With Cary Sherman, President of the RIAA
They asked my question first, and this was Cary's response:
Cary Sherman:
Actually, we're not lobbying for copy-restriction technologies. We do want
our companies to be able to use copy protection technology on their CDs,
however, so that they can discourage unlimited copying and distribution on
the Internet.
Hilary Rosen (apparently president of RIAA then) said in March
The introduction of the 'Consumer Broadband Act' sends an unmistakable
signal about the importance of protecting digital music and other
content from piracy. Without stringent protections, online piracy will
continue to proliferate and spin further out of control.

So, did they stop lobbying recently, or is Cary lying?

Cory stands up for Turing and innovation

Me too

Frankston and Isenberg explain

Bob Frankston explains why the Economist don't know a market when they see one that doen't fit their phsical goods worldview.

We must address the realities of the new marketplace and assure the ability of connectivity. I expect we'll see a combination of private commodity suppliers of connectivity and municipal services since connectivity is a basic utility like water and electricity.

David Isenberg quotes Skip Mallete on how this is already happening in Washington State:

Two years ago the Washington State legislature put into a law a provision to allow Public Utility Districts and Rural Port Districts to build fiber infrastructure as wholesale providers. As a result the state association of PUDs formed a non-profit organization to build and maintain a statewide backbone to link all the PUDs together. This backbone, known as NOANET, also provides a link to the Internet at the primary interconnect in downtown Seattle. Most of the PUDs are electric utilities and can justify running fiber to the home as part of their operational needs. The biggest PUD in this effort is in Grant County and has done most of the pioneering effort. Several smaller county PUDs have followed Grant's lead and have begun allowing various service providers to use the FTTH to provide customers a choice of services including telephone, TV, and one whopping Internet service.

I hope 'the Capital of Silicon Valley' is paying attention.

Sterling on Open Source

Sterling on Open Source lots of great stuff here - read it through:
You know, I don't write code. I don't think I'm ever going to write any code. It just amazes me how often people who know absolutely nothing about code want to tell software people their business. "Why don't they just," that's the standard phraseology. "Why don't they just" code-up something-or-other. Whenever I hear that, frankly, I just want to slap the living shit out of those people.

That's like people whose fingers are covered with diamonds complaining about the easy lives of diamond miners.

You're, like, seven miles down in this diamond mine, and these cats are laboring, laboring with these pickaxes and blasting caps and giant grinding machines. And it's like: "Why don't you people just put in a tomato garden down here? Don't you like fresh air in this diamond mine? How about some zinnias and daisies? You over there, with the carpal tunnel wristbands ? you sure look pale, fella! Don't you like the sunshine?"

They don't like to confront the sweat, and the labor, the human suffering.... Even people who are in the industry don't like to talk about what a massive drag it is, to sit there, grinding code, at 3 AM, as your eyes, and your wrists, and your spine, all slowly give out. Everybody has to come up with these farfetched, elegant, literary metaphors to describe this process.

Vigilante DRM

Richard Forno writes on Vigilante DRM:
If it passes, the Hollywood Hacking law, as Berman's bill has come to be known, would give a profit-driven industry license to do what the government cannot: conduct searches of personal property at any time without the case-by-case justification a search warrant requires. In other words, the constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure is abrogated, thereby negating the users? implicit guarantees of privacy and confidentiality. More frightening, these non-government, for-profit entities would be free to disrupt personal property (namely computers and networks) in their attempts to "enforce copyright" - too bad if legitimate data or activities are affected by such enforcement activities.

Copyright as Cudgel

Siva Vaidhyanathan: Copyright as Cudgel
We make a grave mistake when we choose to engage in discussions of copyright in terms of "property." Copyright is not about "property" as commonly understood. It is a specific state-granted monopoly issued for particular policy reasons. While, technically, it describes real property as well, it also describes a more fundamental public good that precedes specific policy choices the state may make about the regulation and dispensation of property. But we can't win an argument as long as those who hold inordinate interest in copyright maximization can cry "theft" at any mention of fair use or users' rights. You can't argue for theft.

Read the whole thing. It's very good.

Hacking, hijacking our rights

Dan Gillmor writes with anger and clarity:
If you or I asked Congress for permission to legally hack other people's computers, we'd be laughed off Capitol Hill. Then we'd be investigated by the FBI and every other agency concerned with criminal violations of privacy and security.

Then again, you and I aren't part of the movie and music business. We aren't as powerful as an industry that knows no bounds in its paranoia and greed, a cartel that boasts enough money and public-relations talent to turn Congress into a marionette.

That was quick

Less than a week after I point out how to prosecute DRM vigilantes under federal law, they buy themselves an exemption.

Glut is good

Isenberg explains why telecommunciations are in crisis, even though communications is still growing.
...in an Internet world, a network owner has no special advantage in adding value to their network, say, over somebody who owns a few servers at the edge and buys connectivity.

This single fact makes the telephone-company business model obsolete. It also makes the Internet the huge success, the integral part of our lives that it is today.

Think about all the killer applications of the last decade -- email, instant messaging, web browsing, streaming audio, ecommerce, Internet telephony -- you don't have to be a network owner to host these apps. Indeed not a single one was brought to market by a telephone company or a cable company.

EPIC's DRM Comments

EPIC's DRM Comments are very clear anda good read. I really liked this point, until they used the p-word.
Consumers enjoy online entertainment because it is convenient and easy to access and share digital content. Consumers enjoy the freedom of listening, reading or watching from the comfort and privacy of their own home. Unfortunately, in the absence of legitimate services the online demand is manifested largely through piracy.

We need to rip them off because we can't pick hits

Musicians explain to Congress how the music cartel treats them:

Music attorney Don Engel estimated that record companies routinely "underpay 10 to 40 percent on every royalty" and dare artists to challenge it without killing their careers.

The industries only defence was to flaunt their incompetence in their star-picking rôle

The industry also released an economic analysis that showed fewer than 5 percent of signed artists produce a hit record. Likewise, for every hit, the industry loses $6.3 million on albums that fail.

Time to let a marketplace decide who is to be a star, and who is to be paid, instead of this corrupt system.

Jerome K Jerome on coding

Jerome K Jerome's advice on bicycles from 100 years ago or so, still applies to present-day technologies:
There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can "overhaul" it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He has to put up with certain disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy. He himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise it; but as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this, perhaps, does not much matter. The mistake some people make is in thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine. This is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain. You must make up your mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler" or a rider.