Inside View

Share Your Opinion with European Copyright Legislators

Screencap from @topgold.

I GOT A COPYRIGHT ALERT from the Icelandic Pirate Party and later noticed Cory Doctorow covering the point. [1] The alert told me about a short timeline set by the European Commission on Copyright Reform and the need to make an input by February 4, 2014.

Ásta Helgadóttir, reserve MP for the Icelandic Pirate Party, writes, "The European Commission has opened up for consultation on their proposal for legislation [2] (which then will be sent to the European Parliament) and you, as an individual, alien or organization can give your honest opinion about whatever copyright has done, good or bad, for and to you in the past decades".

The copyright consultation period lasts only 60 days for 80 questions. The language in the consultation document is very technical and this will compound problems for Europeans who are unable to read English. The Commission has rejected pleas on extending the consultation period and providing translations at least in French, German and Polish.

Copyright is Culture. Good copyright legislation ensures we can reimagine content and continue to fuel the rise of the creative economy. And most importantly, copyright cannot be perverted into a system that makes peer-to-peer filesharing illegal. We need our Dropboxes, our Skydrives and our shared Evernote accounts because these functional software services reduce the friction associated with the sharing of knowledge.

Good copyright legislation does not make people liable for the content of webpages they connect with hyperlinks.

But without citizen involvement, Europeans risk copyright laws being twisted to criminalise normal usage patters on the social web.

If you care about these issues, please go to www.copywrongs.eu before 5 February 2014 and answer the questions which are important to you. You do not have to answer all the questions, only the ones that matter to you.

Fair play to the Pirate Party Austria, Wikimedia in Germany and Open Knowledge Foundation Germany who set up Copywrongs as a place for citizens to have their voices heard.

[Bernie Goldbach is the senior creative multimedia lecturer at the Limerick School of Art & Design.]

1. Cory Doctorow -- "URGENT: Input Needed on EU Copyright Consultation" on BoingBoing, January 5, 2014.

2. Original EU consultation.

3. Simplified consultuation document.

Technology Has Made Me Lazy

Photo by @topgold of how calling someone used to be.

AFTER LISTENING TO several people on Audioboo describe how technology has affected their demeanour, I conclude my use of technology has made me lazy while also making me appear smarter.

Tech Makes Us Smarter

I'm following discussions on Audioboo in which people are commenting on different continents about the effects they believe technology is having on their lives. Some believe it has made them impatient. Others share my perspective--easy access to tech can make your lazy. I also believe the clever use of tech in our lives can make us smarter (or at least appear to be more intelligent).

But one thing has become more apparent to me--humans need to use the "off" switch and take time away from sentient tech. If I don't, I feel I'm imprisoned by the tech features of life around me.

[Bernie Goldbach discusses the effects of technology in culture while lecturing for the Limerick Institute of Technology.]

Digital Rights Ireland Needs Your Money

DIGITAL RIGHTS IRELAND ENJOYED a major success with a case against mass surveillance which led to an Advocate-General’s opinion that the Data Retention Directive is incompatible with the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. This result should lead to a judgment from the European Court of Justice which will give greater privacy rights for all Europeans.

MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht described this as a "breakthrough for civil liberties" in a Wall Street Journal article. The DRI also appeared before the Irish Parliament to argue against kneejerk reactions to “cyberbullying” which could damage free speech online.

But there are major financial woes around the DRI's accounts linked to an internet blocking case in Ireland. I went to a blog post on the DRI site to find out more. 

In February 2013, the Digital Rights Ireland team took an important court case, applying to be an "amicus curiae" in a case brought by record companies demanding internet blocking in Ireland. This would have given the Digital Rights Ireland a voice in court and a method to explain why blocking is futile and how overblocking affects other websites and harms internet users. Otherwise the Irish courts could simply order blocking based only on the say so of the music industry – without anyone to challenge their case.

The judge gave a detailed decision. However, the upshot was that Digital Rights Ireland did not succeed in the application to the court. What’s more, costs were awarded against DRI. This meant that DRI has to pay the bills of the other parties to the case. The ISPs did not pursue costs against DRI, but the music industry did – demanding payment of €26,658.15 for what was, in effect, a single day in court. This bill, when challenged, was reduced to €13,700

In my opinion, litigation in Ireland favours industry rights over individual rights. Left to run its own course, Irish litigation could actually cripple civil society.

DRI faces crippling costs. If they cannot raise money to cover these costs of litigation, the music industry will mark 2014 as the year it shut down digital rights in Ireland. 

If you care, you can make a donation through PayPal:

You can also transfer money to the DRI account, pay by BitCoin or just send a cheque.

[Information and links in this blog post came from the Digital Rights Ireland website on January 2, 2014.]

So Many Santas

Lumia photo of Santa in Clonmel snapped by @topgold.

CHRISTMAS BELONGS TO CHILDREN and this month we share seasonal joys through the eyes and ears of our six year old daughter.

I also believe Christmas belongs to those who give. That is a message underscored by RaquelG on Audioboo. I recommend her dulcet tones as a Christmas gift to you. You can subscribe to her musings by RSS or by iTunes.

RaquelG Musing about This Time of Year

As we watch the days of 2013 dissolve alongside holiday smiles, I keep my Foursquare alerts poking around my local area in search of "Santa" and found one within two miles of our daughter's primary school. Score one for the business intelligence of Foursquare.

[Uploaded on Lumia using O2-Ireland mail2blog Typepad service.]

Making a List

Photo of @miarosegold by Lumia.

ONE OF THE MOST motivational features of any new tool is watching its social effects. Such it is with learning the alphabet--you get to write Christmas cards.

For the past week, I have watched our six year old try to carefully print names on envelopes and then painstakingly print her name on the back of each envelope. Her writing style is 90% accurate because only one out of every 10 of her cards has returned for being unknown to An Post.

Mia is very driven to use all the letters in the alphabet during her Christmas card addressing. In this shot, she has found the letter Z in Hazel. I think I will help her mark her result by putting pinpoints on a map and connect the points on a List.ly list.

[Photo of Mia snapped with Lumia. Blog post uploaded with O2-Ireland using Typepad mail2blog.]

An Irish Web 1.0 Huddle

Screenshot from @topgold's Nokia Lumia.

MY LIFE IN IRELAND started before any Irish Internet Service Provider's and this weekend I get to huddle with several Irish voices from that Web 1.0 era.

Erasing Yourself from History

Photo inside Sligo Abbey snapped with Nokia Lumia 925 by @topgold.

EVERY WEEK, I READ about someone who wants to erase themselves from the history written about them. It used to be easier back in the days when the most indelible records were granite.

I walked on the historical record of James, located deep within Sligo Abbey. His surname and several particulars were carved away from his headstone, meaning his memory and his legacy lasted only in spoken word of mouth. Perhaps he was illegitimate or maybe his remains were moved to a family site somewhere else. More alarmingly, James' mother might have offended community sensitivities, causing the church to erase reference details about her son from his headstone.

Today, it is much more difficult erasing the electronic reference to a person when they do something they regret. It is so easy for damning information to trickle into easily-discovered corners of the internet where it oozes out to soil a CV or credit check years later.

And when that happens, it is often easier to discard your online nickname or to adopt a new surname. That is one reason why some employers demand to know all your identities during the hiring process and why those same employers will terminate you for cause if you are not forthcoming.

If only things were as simple as scraping off a surname on a granite stone.

[Bernie Goldbach discusses the indelible nature of online behaviour as part of the creative multimedia degree in the Limerick School of Art & Design.]

I Want to Listen to Headstones

Panoramic shot of Hore Abbey with Nokia Lumia 925.

SEVERAL BRILLIANT SUMMER evenings in County Tipperary have left me wanting to complete an historic graves project with headstones in Hore Abbey, a site just 900 metres from our front door.

It's a place I've photographed often since moving to Cashel in 2005. Now I want to learn from the experts how to put together a body of work that can be safely digitised into a dataset that researchers from around the world might use to find their part in Irish history.

When Old Meets New. And Audi Too.

Screenshot from "The Challenge" with Leonad Nimoy.

I LOVE HIGH TECH cars as much as I love science fiction so when the two come together, I smile.

You need to see the video (below the break) all the way to the very very end to appreciate fine advertising that capitalises on semiotics.

Teens Watching Thigh Gaps

Bernie Goldbach in LSAD-Clonmel | Image from Viixen's Twitpics.

UNTIL INSTAGRAM, I was unaware of the thigh gap obsession. Then it appeared in my daily newsfeeds in the form of a quick test.

Derek Baird gave the test: "Stand-up straight with your feet together in front of a mirror and look for a space between your upper thighs. If you see a gap, you have the latest body image obsession teen girls are starving themselves to achieve."

And then Derek pointed me to how this teen girl obsession has a huge following on social media sites like Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram.

Derek explains, "The trend is fueled by digital media and magazines that feature celebrities with the elusive 'thigh gap'---which is, in most cases, the work of a highly skilled Photoshop guru and not so much based on reality."

I noticed how easy it is to subscribe to a steady pictoral flow of dangerous body image trend. I can read tweets from Supermodel Cara Delevingne about her thigh gap on Twitter and scroll through thousands of thigh gaps on Tumblr with images of ultrathin women in bikinis, hiked up skirts, and lingerie, all baring thighs so thin they don't touch.