Julianna Yau’s blog

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Yesterday, I attended the 2008 Grafstein Lecture in Communications at the University of Waterloo. This year’s presenter was Jessica Litman, on the topic of rethinking copyright.

The topic of rethinking copyright was exciting on its own. I have a great deal of respect for Litman’s work, so being able to attend the lecture was something I was looking forward to for several weeks.

Litman started the lecture with some background information, which was mostly “common knowledge” for anyone who has studied copyright and all of which was a precursor to the crux of her position. She reiterated the fact that many creators are trying to manage the changes in the way their work is distributed, accessed and copied with the new technologies available to us, and that the internet is putting some copyright owners out of business and creating opportunities for other copyright owners (primarily creators who wouldn’t have publishers under the old model of creation and distribution). She then reminded us that the costs of paper publishing, both historically and presently, require that much of the revenue go toward the publisher, who is an intermediary between the creator and the user.

Litman stressed the need for a reallocation of the priorities in copyright, with a focus on enhanced rights for readers of works. She reminded us that the dominant businesses in the creative industry are lobbying for change because the current copyright law does not work well for them. In particular, current US copyright law makes it very difficult to license digital copies of music.

Among the distribution problems is the one that creators often have little control over and income from their works. This, I believe, is a problem more common in creative works meant for mass distribution (e.g. literature, movies, software and music), rather than something like visual art where the work is meant to be unique and limited in its distribution.

A very interesting (and under-reported) point that Litman mentioned is that 4 years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada passed a judgement which states ““Research” must be given a large and liberal interpretation in order to ensure that users’ rights are not unduly constrained“. This decision, she felt, should be giving lobbyists for user rights adequate support for their cause.

One of her great observations is that the technology for distributing/copying/publishing is overlapping with the technology for reading/watching/listening. This is where the old concepts of how people interact with creative works shifts, because the technologies create temporary and permanent copies of copyrighted works.

The following are the three ongoing problems she listed as prime examples:

• webcasting
• what falls under private copying
• law suits for secondary liability (read some of these recent posts by others for a taste of the issues)

The question Litman posed to us is where do readers, listeners and viewers fall into copyright?

One of the problems she has with current discussions on user rights is that we are rolling all users of copyrighted materials into one category: both the corporate users (e.g. Disney) and the individual readers, listeners and viewers. Note that in the Q&A which followed the lecture, someone asked where Litman would place the new breed of users, which I’ll call the creators of user-generated content. Litman replied that she would draw the line between commercial and non-commercial use. Although I tried drawing that line in the past, I’m still not certain whether that’s the correct or most accurate distinction.

Litman stressed the need to use the distinction of “readers, listeners and viewers” rather than “consumers” (because of the inherit implication that money is involved) or “enjoyers” (because the work may not necessarily be enjoyed, per se). From this point, I’m just going to use “RLV” because I’m too lazy to type “readers, listeners and viewers” every time.

To drive home the need for us to rethink copyright via user rights, Litman argued that the RLVs interact with works and thereby complete the creators’ interests. While I find this notion somewhat romantic, I do agree that the creation and existence of works seems very hollow without anyone on the receiving end. Like having a conversation with yourself, creating a work without an audience is often unfulfilling for the creator.

Litman recognizes that it’s difficult for many people to think about user rights because that’s not normally how we think about copyright. The difficulty I have with thinking about user rights is not the resistance to it, but not knowing what exactly those rights ought to be and which ones are related primarily to copyright.

Personally, I found Litman’s comments about the relationship between the creator and the RLV to be a crucial concept which needs to be explored much more, both within and outside of the realm of copyright. At the Visual Arts Summit, there was discussion of needing to connect audiences with art, and I’m now wondering how much creators have been disconnected with the people for whom they are creating/the people who interact with their creations. Litman likened the trio of creators, publishers an RLVs to an ecosystem which depends on each other, and it was unspoken that there is an imbalance in the ecoystem.

A humorous and true insight from Litman was that while we all agree that there is an imbalance in the amount of power and control allotted to the creators, distributors and RLVs, the disagreement is who has the upper hand. Each side feels that they are being cheated by the other two, and each demands for their rights to be protected. But when their interests conflict, whose rights prevail?

Throughout the lecture, the dominant thought I had was that we need to start rethinking, not copyright, but the entire sphere of creative output and its support systems. To date, most of us have been treating the problems of copyright as the result of changes in technology. But I’m starting to think that we need to see the inadequacies of current copyright law as a symptom of a much greater phenomenon: the very rel change in the way works are created, distributed and read/listened/viewed. Perhaps we can’t come to any resolutions and keep discussing unrelated issues as copyright issues, not because they are unrelated, but because we are starting from the wrong place.

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Like the XO, I needed to have my Eee exchanged for another due to a keyboard problem. But unlike the XO, the problem was mostly cosmetic (the left side of the space bar was slightly warped) and I was able to take the Eee to the retailer to be exchanged. Not being a consumer product, the XO naturally has a disadvantage because it has no retail store. That was to be expected. But the fact that I needed to pay a total of $32CAD in shipping and $48USD in brokerage and surety bond fees was a total surprise. That added another $80 to the price of the laptop, with no guarantee that the one I would get in exchange would be fully functional.

That’s not to say that the keyboard of the Eee is perfect. Like any keyboard, it requires a bit of time to become accustomed to it. Because of how cramped the keys are, I really notice any extra length on my fingernails because I’m typing with the very tips of my fingers on the main A to L row of keys. The placement of some keys is quite awkward, particularly the “1”, which is more easily accessible with my ring finger than my pinkie. The “e”, “i”, “c” and “m” keys are often missed due to how I need to curve my fingers and apply pressure to the keys. Surprisingly, this is more noticeable for single words than when typing entire sentences.

The touchpad, like any other, is a painful alternative to a mouse. Luckily, the Eee’s operating system (Xandros, a flavour of Linux) auto-recognizes the two Logitech mice I have. Linux does not have great support for more than just the scroll-wheel and left- and right-click buttons, but this is not something unique to Xandros and is something I don’t really need.

I did have some permissions issues when trying to install new dictionaries for OpenOffice.org…it seems that I could only get to the “super user” access through the terminal. This may be a strange glitch in the way I have customized my Eee, because I have not seen this problem reported by other users. Once I was able to install the Canadian dictionary, the spellcheck was an invaluable feature of OpenOffice.org. Because of the idiosyncrasies of the keyboard, it is invaluable to be able to correct many typos quickly.

Adding more software to the Eee is not always an easy task. From what I’ve seen, “Easy Mode” only allows for updates to the software, and any adding or removing of software needs to be done in “Advanced Mode” (i.e. full KDE desktop for Xandros). Because Xandros does not have the same market penetration as SUSE, Fedora or Debian, it doesn’t have quite as many pre-compiled applications available. Many users have reported that most Debian packages are compatible with Xandros, but those packages do not seem to be supported for Xandros by either the Xandros folks or the Debian folks.

When showing off the Eee to friends, they’re always struck firstly by how tiny and light it is, and then by what a familiar feeling they get from the “Advanced Mode” interface. When using the Eee in public with little fanfare on my part, I found that many onlookers were extremely curious, but stopped short of actually asking about it. The Eee received many glances which I assumed were intended to be discreet attempts at determining what the heck it is (and possibly who makes it).

The power adaptor is both a blessing and a source of frustration. Because of its size, I was able to toss it into my purse along with the Eee itself. But the placement of the prongs relative to the bulk of the adaptor resulted in two instances where I thought I could use the adaptor…but couldn’t. In the first instance, there were two free ports on a powerbar, and the length of the adaptor was greater than the space available for two more compact plugs. In the second instance, the outlet was on a hub attached to a table at a lecture hall and the prongs were too far down on the adaptor for it to nestle into the L-shaped space allowed for the adaptor. In both instances, I was dearly missing the compactness of the actual connective parts of a standard laptop adaptor.

Because of the size of the screen I would not recommend the Eee as the only computer you own. It’s great as a portable second computer, but is less than ideal for extended use and extensive work (particularly anything involving graphics work). The operating temperature of the Eee is also a persistent concern. Although it seems to level out at a “hot-but-not-too-hot” temperature, I often worry about it overheating.

Overall, I love my Eee. I just need to find a way to make the adaptor …more adaptable.

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There have been some great responses and related posts to the one I wrote on Roles & Responsibilities on the Web, focused primarily on ISPs:

• Copyright formalities, technical measures, and what a modernizing Copyright treaty would really look like - Russell McOrmond
• ISP Insanity - Metaphaze (with diagrams! fun!)
  
• ISPs Face New Role in Network Control - Michael Geist

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I have been very dissatisfied with the work I did in my previous post in my deconstruction of copyright, and thought this would be a good time to take a step back.

So, rather than another literal post, I decided to reorganize my thoughts in a mind map. This is something I have been intending to do, but wanted to wait until I had completed some preliminary thoughts on the structure of copyright.

This is my mapping of the Canadian Copyright Act.

And this is my mapping of how I’m starting to see the picture.

As a warning, the mind map of the Canadian Copyright Act is as messy as the Act itself. If you haven’t read the Act (or even if you have), you may benefit from the more compact, prosaic version.

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Last week, I was reflecting on the fact that my cynicism actually protects me from quite a bit of frustration. This reflection came just in time for me to be aware that because I don’t expect anything to be done for the right reasons, I am not shocked to find capitalists behind the bubbly front of social networking sites. I do, however, still experience quite a bit of frustration because I maintain that things should still be done properly, and am often called an idealist for that reason…but that’s a whole other discussion.

Tom Hodgkinson’s article on the “shady” inner workings of Facebook sound, to me, like the lamentations of someone who is more naive than insightful.

I totally respect the fact that there are many people out there who choose not to participate on websites like Facebook (even though I give some of them a hard time, just for fun). Like phones, email, post mail, VOIP, instant messaging and “the rest”, a social networking site is merely a tool, and doesn’t work for everyone.

Personally, I like maintaining regular contact with friends and colleagues through Facebook because it allows me to do it on my own time. Of course, it’s no substitute for in-person interaction but I find it very handy for keeping abreast of my friends’ more mundane events. By doing so, I’ve noticed that when I have lunch with a friend, we can have more [frequent and valuable] meaningful conversations without having to play catch-up firstly.

If someone else wants to use it as a make-shift dating site or homage to themselves, do I really care? Not so long as I continue to be able to ignore their requests to be my friend. Like in a high school or any other social space, cliques form naturally and most people gravitate towards others who are there for similar purposes. I’m sure the people who are merely on Facebook to boost their self-image think that people like me are taking the fun out of Facebook by using it to network professionally, but don’t really care because there’s enough space for us all.

Hodgkinson’s profiles on the brains and finances behind Facebook were actually a very interesting read. I’m sure he had intended for the information to show how that Facebook is really being operated by “The Man”, but I found their histories to be quite cool. I had not known about Peter Thiel prior to reading Hodgkinson’s article, but found his work to be extremely exciting. I know my affinity towards Thiel is mostly due to “The Diversity Myth”, which he co-wrote, because it seems to be a more expansive version of the same realization I reached in high school during one of our many assemblies to “celebrate multiculturalism”.

Although I don’t think Facebook is perfect (far from it; I agree with Hodgkinson’s, and most other people’s, dislike for the recent fiasco over the opt-out/opt-in problem with Beacon), many of the problems Hodgkinson has with Facebook are not unique to Facebook.

1 Everyone will advertise at you

Facebook doesn’t charge for membership, and instead uses advertisement as its main source of revenue. Even newspapers like The Guardian, in which Hodgkinson’s article was published, use advertisement. Not only do many other businesses use ads, and targeted ads, as part of their revenue source, not all of them are transparent about their ad targeting practices.

2 Nothing ever gets deleted on the internet

Maybe not nothing ever gets deleted, but data retention is a huge issue which is not limited to Facebook. You’ve got to be very new to the internet if you aren’t aware that anything you put online will probably exist until the end of time (or at least the end of the internet), either online, on a backup, or on someone’s personal computer.

3 Privacy isn’t guaranteed anywhere anymore

Social networking sites may make private detectives a thing of the past, only to be relived in Film Noir, and are certainly making people realize that privacy is an illusion. While I don’t agree that privacy should be allowed to be an illusion, I also realize that anyone who really wants to know about my most intimate confessions will find a way to do so, whether I’m on Facebook or not. Luckily, I don’t think anyone really cares to do so.

4 Facebook only knows what you tell it

Most of the information you give Facebook for it to build a profile on you is optional. Users need to take responsibility for how they share their information. If you’re going to do it through Facebook, of course they’re going to use that data. Duh. Many of the fields, like your gender and marital status, are optional. So are the bajillion applications which harvest more information about users. Just because you’re presented with a field doesn’t mean you need to complete it. Social networking sites need to be responsible for how they use the data they have, but the users who provide that data share that responsibility and need to start owning up to it.

5 Opting out doesn’t mean closed communication…ever

If Hodgkinson ever read any other privacy policy (like the one for a financial institution or utilities company), he’s probably likely to find that they also indicate that opting out of notifications will not cease all communications. I assume those clauses exist so that the company with which you’re doing business can still contact you if there’s a problem with your account—whether they abuse that is a whole other issue, and I have yet to be spammed by Facebook. They actually deliver fewer direct mailings (via email) to me than my credit card companies, opting instead to broadcast updates on their blog.

6 The CIA would probably look at your stuff anyway, if they really needed to

Does anyone really think that the CIA, or any other homeland security organization, would not be able to access your information on a social networking site just because that site’s TOS didn’t say that they could? I don’t.

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Oh, Google, how you disappoint me. First with YouTube’s unnavigable help pages, then with a product which, despite being in beta, fails to do what its help pages claims it does.

Now that I have two (and soon to be three) laptops (!), and after discovering that free WiFi is spotty at best, I thought I should look for a feed reader which will allow me to access feeds on several computers and offline. After a bit of research I narrowed my options to Liferea and Google’s Reader. Because I didn’t want to wrestle with figuring out how to synchronize Liferea on two computers (I suspect I would need to have the user files on an SD card and transfer the card from one computer to another), or getting Liferea onto Sugar, I decided to try Google’s Reader first.

The first frustration was that, unlike Thunderbird, Google’s Reader only imported posts as of the day the feed was added to Reader. After giving it some time to play catch-up, I found that (a) it will import older posts, (b) there is no option to permanently remove a post from Reader (only an option to mark it as being read), and (c) there is no option to mark a post as unread if it’s date is prior to the date you added the feed to Reader. This means if I am not reading a blog from the day it was created, I need to use one of Reader’s other features (like starring or tagging posts) to keep track of older posts which I have not yet read.

I did find that starring items is great for “bookmarking” posts I want to revisit later, particularly for the many posts to which I want to respond in my blog. The “add tags” option has potential, but seems cumbersome. I suspect it is meant to supplement Reader being alternative to social bookmarking sites like Ma.gnolia, when used alongside the option to “share” a post (and have it show in your public profile). This would be quite good for anyone who almost only reads blogs and doesn’t have the need to bookmark non-feed webpages… but I have yet to figure out if it’s possible to integrate Reader’s sharing feature with another Google bookmarking option to be a complete social bookmarking option.

Trying to get the offline feature to work was another exercise in frustration.

Installing Google Gears managed to send Firefox into a potentially infinite loop.

When you click on “offline” in Reader, Google explains how the offline mode works, tells you that you’ll need to install Google Gears, and warns:

This installation requires that you restart your browser, so we recommend you close all other windows before you begin.

After you confirm, a window opens with the splash page for the Google Gears installation. You again need to confirm that you want to proceed with the installation of Google Gears. After confirming again, there is are TOS to be accepted and the installation will then finally begin. The instructions are to allow the installation, and again:

Close and restart your web browser (be sure to close all browser windows).

What they fail to explain is that if you simply use Firefox’s built-in restart button for add-ons, and don’t close the Google Gears installation page prior to restarting, Firefox will try to install Google Gears again when you restart. Fun. I guess that’s why they keep trying to tell you to close all your browser windows.

The offline feature itself does not allow you to “even exit your browser and open it again later while you’re offline.” If it does, it totally wasn’t working for me. I was able to successfully go into offline mode in Reader, then in Firefox, and to be able to read posts in Reader. But no combination of going offline in Reader, Firefox and/or disconnecting from my internet connection allowed me to access Reader after closing Firefox and using it in offline mode after starting it again. Their help page simply indicates that I need to navigate to http://www.google.com/reader/ and it will magically work…but Firefox disagreed, telling me that “Firefox is currently in offline mode and can’t browse the Web. Uncheck “Work Offline” in the File menu, then try again.”. After trying one too many times, Reader now tells me that “synchronization has failed” when I go from offline mode to online mode.

Trying to get help from Google was, not surprisingly, as good as impossible. Their help page for offline mode maintains that:

You can even exit your browser and open it again later while you’re offline. Just enter http://www.google.com/reader/ in your address bar the same way you do when you’re online. (Note, however, that the http://reader.google.com/ form of the address will not work when you’re offline. You may want to check your bookmarks to make sure you have the correct address there.)

If I try to provide feedback that the information was not helpful, I have a maximum of 100 characters to tell Google “how [they] can make this better”. Although it’s an interesting challenge to summarize all of this in 100 characters or less, I don’t think it’s worth the work effort.

Hopefully, testing Liferea will be a less frustrating experience.

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Michael Geist picked up on an article which argues for e-petitions to have more weight in politics. And although I have signed a few e-petitions and joined many Facebook groups, I still have misgivings about the nature of click votes and petitions in general.

Matthew Ingram has reflected upon the usefulness of click votes in response to the CBC’s Great Canadian Wish List which was generated on Facebook. Even today, I marvelled at the fact that one of my friends on Facebook joined 45,853 other fans (as of the writing of this post) of the Heath Ledger Memorial page, while Geist’s heavily advertised Fair Copyright for Canada group sits at 39,470 members (and Facebook tells me that there are 374 new members…and I have yet to figure out the time span used to calculate a “new” member), and my little
Canada needs a public inquiry into copyright! group reports 1 fewer member, totalling at 114 members. Does this really mean that more people care about Ledger’s tragic death than fair copyright for Canada? Or that 39,356 people who think we should have fair copyright in Canada don’t think Canada needs a public inquiry for copyright? I certainly wouldn’t use the numbers from a Facebook group or page as the source of statistics for any real purpose.

I don’t think the issue is with fraudulent votes or signatures. Like traditional petitions, fraudulent signatures are a problem, but so is the value of the petition itself. As I have stated before, it is entirely too easy to sign something. I really do believe that, unless someone is actively against something, when asked to show support by doing something easy like signing a petition, they are likely to do so. That does not necessarily mean they understand the issues enough to be making a real decision, or that they truly care enough to do something real about it.

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