Darkness at Noon

Cory Doctorow’s latest piece in the Guardian makes a fine point:

WIPO’s case for using the term [Intellectual property] is easy to understand: people who’ve “had their property stolen” are a lot more sympathetic in the public imagination than “industrial entities who’ve had the contours of their regulatory monopolies violated”, the latter being the more common way of talking about infringement until the ascendancy of “intellectual property” as a term of art.

The rest of the article is worth a read as well.

…and then, via Slashdot, if IP is property, where is the property tax?:

A solution to determining which works are in the “Mickey Mouse” category of copyrights and which are in the more socially valuable “oral rehydration therapy” class of work is not feasible for a government bureaucracy. However, if all copyrights were taxed at a fixed (but significant) amount per year to maintain the copyright (all registered through the copyright office and searchable), there would be a significant carrying cost and most of the copyrighted material would revert to “public domain” and become available to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” As intellectual property and copyrights become an even more significant part of our economy, and as copyright holders (not necessarily the creators) make claims of “stealing” as though it is real property, it should be taxed. Relative to copyrights’ significance in our economy, the amount of revenue from this source should be in the hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

With a proper tax system, publishers like the L.A. Times or scientific journals may maintain a copyright for only a year or so before letting the content revert to public domain and letting Google and everyone else utilize the material for its small, but socially significant, remaining value. The human enterprise could continue to build on itself in these creative, sustainable and non-resource-consuming ways, with copyrights only applying to a small subset of this enterprise.

The Centre certainly extols the failures of a representative democracy.

So for those of you interested in this debate, have a look at the discussion over at John Quiggin

As a follow up to this:

So, yeah was massively crazy last night as im sure youve heard. Was really exciting and i think it is for sure an incredible time to be here…. I actually ended up joining the protest in the end. Was amazing, the energy of the crowd really electric. Went and listened to all of the speeches down at republic square then ended up being moved along with the crowd to the church, which is really really close to the hostel. Then stood around there for maybe an hour and listened to prayers and singing and stuff like that. Was in fact really peaceful. Everyone had candles and stuff like that. Returned to hostel before shit hit the fan, but watched it all on telly. Thought that i may as well be a part of it all since im here though, and not just hide away.
Today went for nice long walk to assess all the damage. CRAZY!! The Maccas was completely gutted, with burnt out cars flipped on their roofs out the front. Street signs smashed through all the windows and stuff. Then the walk of about two blocks to the American embassy every single shopped was smashed in and all the produce stolen and destroyed. The embassy was absolutely gutted by fire, and there were crowds still there protesting today. More burnt out cars flipped on their roofs… So, yeah, thats about it. Im safe and happy and am heading to Sarajevo tomorrow, cause was getting a little concerned about being able to escape this place if a war or something is declared.

Update:

But there are just a couple of things that should maybe be included. There were 500 000 people at the rally, not 200 000, and the Serbian government allowed for that day free transportation throughtout Serbia so that everyone would freely be able to converge on Belgrade. Encouraging, of course, the mayhem that ensued.

Our Submission to the Select Committee on Electoral and Political Party Funding is now publicly available and downloadable from here.

There were 145 submissions (which is great to see) including from the Liberal Party, the Greens Political Donations Research Project (Dr Norman Thompson), Democracy Watch (Mr Brad Pederson) a hand full of minor parties, some assorted MPs and councilors and a few others.

You can see the full list here.

It’s interesting to note submissions from organisations such as the Cancer Council and Oatley Flora and Fauna Conservation Society.

i just got a pretty incredible email from someone very close to me (who will remain annonymous until I have their permission) that I thought was worth sharing:

Did my massive 24 hr train journey and landed in Belgrade about 10pm. Was a bit scared, the sky was filled with smoke and heaps of people wandering about yelling stuff i didnt understand. Did the old ‘head down low and go go go’ to the hostel. So yeah, crazy times in old Belgrade. Massive rally organised for today. About 200 000 people anticipated to attended, and all occuring about 30 metres from my hostel. Crazy hey. So have been receiving warnings about heading out there and all but think ill check it out just a little.

Main problem is that they’ve given all the hooligan kinds a day off and apparently they drink and have a few little left over grandanes (sic) from the war back in 2001! But mainly im being told that there is no real hatred within Serbia, so there will be no violence toward people, just, for example, the Australian emabassy (as a building, not a person).

But essentially what im telling you is that im safe and well informed and will not do anything stupid so when you watch the news and see crazy shit know im ok and prob just having a beer in the hostel and being a part of history in a removed sort of way. Ill just ‘not talk english’ and be fine!!

She’s pretty amazing and very excited to be here as she has spent a lot of time studying the region. I’m very worried for her but secretly excited and even a little jealous that she is there experiencing such an incredible historic moment.

I saw this article on Slash Dot last night and was going to comment but of course Kim has beaten me to the punch and is infinitely more thorough than I would ever be. One of the points she makes is:

It is not at all obvious why copyright owners should get special treatment in the form of the government stepping in and requiring third parties to enforce their rights for them. We do not have ‘three strikes’ disconnection policies for defamers, for spammers, for online stalkers and harassers, or phishers. What is the argument that copyright owners deserve special protection here? (and before you start telling me that ‘there’s more copyright infringement online’, please go and have a look at analyses of how much spam there is flowing over the intertubes. And have a little think about how much spam costs business.)

Piracy will never be stopped and ISP don’t want it stopped as long as they are billing people on how much they download. There is very few reasons that someone would want a 50 Gig download other than pirating. But as many have said before me, there are alternatives and the tables have turned so new approaches need to be made.

One solution would be to add a licensing fee every internet connection, similar to those granted to radio stations. So charge every person say $50 a year, spread out over the 12 months of their internet plan (ie an additional $4.17 a month) and then give this to and industry body to redistribute the funds to the appropriate artists and record labels such as the ARIA.

Just a thought.

A few years back the Centre put out a press release with a couple of others including Brad Pedersen, president of www.democracywatch.com.au.

He’s got a great article in Online Opinion today:

The Urban Task Force, a lobby group for developers, has recently called for a “blanket ban on any form of political party donations”.

This has shocked many observers who thought the development lobby would be the last group to seek such a ban. After all, the development lobby is the single biggest donor group and widely suspected of hugely benefiting from their donations.

So, should this call for a “blanket ban on donations” by this developer lobby be taken at face value and applauded? Should we give them the benefit of the doubt? Or is it just a cynical PR exercise to muddy the waters? The truth is, it’s the latter.

Read the rest here.

Well I’ve just come from Federation Square in Melbourne where a huge number of people turned out to watch Prime Minister Rudd say Sorry for to forced removal of indigenous children from their parents.

I was moved to tears. It was the finest speech I’ve ever heard Rudd give. It was unequivocal which is exactly what it should have been.

It’s taken entirely too long but today I am a proud Australian.

Sorry.

Around the blog sphere:

• Buggery
• Flutey
• Defamer
• Dog Fight
• LP
• And Surfdom has a transcript

And finally, perhaps the finest speech ever given on the issue of injustices to Indigenous Australia:

Update: Just in case you haven’t seen or heard Rudd’s speech:

This post over at Dogfight at Bankstown reminded me to look up “Anonymous” as a friend has told me to.

The Dogfight post pointed to this article:

DOZENS of protests against the Church of Scientology across the US, Canada and Western Europe are planned today as part of a campaign organised by the internet group “Anonymous”.

Anonymous are a loose collection of internet users, including some hackers, who declared “war” on the church last month and temporarily prevented access to at least one official Scientology website.

Members of the group organised a worldwide day of protest to coincide with the birthday of Lisa McPherson, who died while in the care of a branch of the church in 1995. Criminal charges filed against the church over Ms McPherson’s death were dropped in 2000. (more here)

Scientology as their target, not a bad choice. but what is more interesting is their main tactic is Hactivism – something that I haven’t seen a lot of for a while.

Anonymous have a rather detailed wikipedia entry here. Which chronicles their denial of server attacks on Scientology.org. Their Party Van entry serves as their public face and includes a bit of an explanation of what/who Anonymous is here. So it’s all very “peer produced” and rhizome-like as well.

This Saturday I know where i’ll be:

Over the past few years, we have seen the emergence of a new social change movement, driven by an inspiring new wave of grassroots community activism. Around the country there are literally dozens of new groups, campaigning for effective action on climate change.

As yet, this new movement has not been able to gather in the one place. The climate movement convergence seeks to create this space in a one day forum, aiming to bring together the remarkably diverse climate change community we have here in Victoria, including local climate action groups, peak green groups, thinkers and strategists, social activists and other sectors concerned about climate change, and progressive businesses.

We aim to provide an inspiring day of workshops, open space for discussions, an overview of the latest climate science, ideas on building a strong and vibrant movement, and the opportunity to ponder what opportunities are now present with a change in federal government.

2008 CONVERGENCE – STRENGTHENING THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT
Saturday 9 February | 9am – 5pm

VENUE
Northcote High School
St Georges Road, Northcote, 3070 (just north of Merri creek). Take tram line 112 towards West Preston, stop 26

A copy of the program is here and the general website is here.