Category: Kultur

Hvem ejer din iPhone og din computer?

Det gør du selv, mener du måske (hvis du har nogen af disse ting). Men balladen omkring Amazons Kindle-læser viser, at det måske ikke lige præcis er dig der ejer disse ting i den forstand, at det er dig, der bestemmer, hvordan du kan bruge dem eller hvilke ting, du må have på dem. Farhad Manjoo beskriver situationen i en artikel i Slate:

The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren’t really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. Steve Jobs has confirmed that every iPhone routinely checks back with Apple to make sure the apps you’ve purchased are still kosher; Apple reserves the right to kill any app at any time for any reason. But why stop there? If Apple or Amazon can decide to delete stuff you’ve bought, then surely a court—or, to channel Orwell, perhaps even a totalitarian regime—could force them to do the same. Like a lot of others, I’ve predicted the Kindle is the future of publishing. Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.[…]

In The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain argues that such “tethered” appliances give the government unprecedented power to reach into our homes and change how our devices function. In 2004, TiVo sued Echostar (which runs Dish Network) for giving its customers DVR set-top boxes that TiVo alleged infringed on its software patents. A federal district judge agreed. As a remedy, the judge didn’t simply force Dish to stop selling new devices containing the infringing software—the judge also ordered Dish to electronically disable the 192,000 devices that it had already installed in people’s homes. (An appeals court later stayed the order; the legal battle is ongoing.) In 2001, a company called Playmedia sued AOL for including a version of the company’s MP3 player in its software. A federal court agreed and ordered AOL to remove Playmedia’s software from its customers’ computers through a “live update.”

Mine fremhævelser. Modtræk? Nægte at bruge apparater og medier, der anvender nogen form for kopibeskyttelse, også når man sælger e-bøger og online-film. Insistere på, at alt skal kunne håndteres ved hjælp af fri software. Boycot iPhones og brug Android og andre GNU/Linux-baserede telefoner i stedet.  Afvis tanken om, at producenten skal bestemme, hvad man kan gøre ved eller have liggende på sine egne ting.

Link: Why 2024 will be like Nineteen Eighty Four

Amazons Kindle Swindle

Amazon sælger en e-bogslæser, de selv har produceret, den såkaldte Kindle. Denne ebogs-læser er ikke som ethvert andet boglæserprogram, f.eks. FBReader – nej, en Kindle er forsynet med DRM, også kendt som kopibeskyttelse, der sætter Amazon i stand til i samarbejde med rettighedshaverne at bestemme, hvilke bøger den enkelte kunde kan læse på sin Kindle.

For eksempel udgav Amazon for nylig George Orwells samlede værker i deres e-bogsformat. Det var rigtig fint, og masser af mennesker kunne således købe, downloade og læse “1984” og andre af Orwells værker i deres elektroniske bogsamling.

Men så skete det, at Amazon blev uenig med dem, der bestyrer rettighederne for Orwells bøger. Hvad gør man ved det? Jo, næste gang e-bogs-læserne kommer i kontakt med Internettet, ryger der besked ud om, at Orwells bøger alligevel ikke er solgt – de er så at sige usolgt. Bøgerne blev bag om ryggen og uden at spørge slettet fra folks Kindles, og en eller to må have spurgt sig selv, om det mon i virkeligheden var en Swindle, de dér havde købt:

David Pogue. writing in the New York Times, reported that hundreds of customers awoke to find that Amazon remotely deleted books that they’d earlier bought and downloaded. Apparently, the publisher determined that it should not offer those titles, so Amazon logged into Kindles, erased the books, and issued refunds. This was aptly compared to someone sneaking into your house, taking away your books, and leaving a stack of cash on the table.

That George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm were among the wiped books is so funny that it aches. The headlines across the ‘net wrote themselves. Down the memory hole!

If this were the only example of this sort of thing, it could be written off as a mistake. But it’s just the latest in a series illustrating Amazon’s vision for the future of reading.

• First, Amazon selectively disabled text-to-speech. It did this to cosy up to publishers who felt audiobook sales were threatened by the Kindle’s robotic enunciation. This mocks the blind and supports an ugly interpretation of the law, which would make reading to your own children an act of copyright infringement.

• Amazon also refuses to disclose the circumstances under which it will no longer allow you to download copies of books you have bought. Cory’s been stonewalled, by one spokesdroid after another, which would be comical were it not so absurd.

• The Author’s contract for Kindle publications is “the pinnacle of bogosity.” Nor can you resell Kindle books, as you can normal ones, even though you have the legal right to do so. This is because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act makes it illegal to circumvent the electronic locks that Amazon applies to its e-books.

• Amazon has even locked Kindle users out of their own Kindle accounts, for trivial reasons.

Now we find that the books you buy are never really yours, and that enjoying them is a privilege granted and withdrawn by Amazon at publisher behest. No-one who enjoys reading can take comfort in any of this.

Helt ærligt: Kunne man forestille sig en boghandler, der fandt ud af, at han alligevel ikke havde “ret” til at sælge dig en bestemt bog, fordi forlæggeren var raget uklar med rettighedshaverne, og derfor brød ind i dit hus i nattens mulm og mørke for at tage bogen tilbage? Og hvis ikke – hvordan kan Amazon så tro, at det på nogen måde kan være acceptabelt, når blot indbruddet er på et stykke forbrugerelektronik i kundens hjem frem for et fysisk indbrud?

Eksemplet understreger, hvorfor kopibeskyttelse og anden “fjernkontrol” er en uskik, vi som borgere og forbrugere ikke burde finde os i.

Link: Delete this book (via Boing Boing).

Saudi-arabisk familie slæber djinn i retten

Den onde eller i hvert fald drillesyge ånd plager dem ved at lægge ondskabsfulde beskeder på deres telefonsvarere og stjæle deres mobiltelefoner, om man skal tro CNN:

The lawsuit filed in Shariah court accuses the genie of leaving them threatening voicemails, stealing their cell phones and hurling rocks at them when they leave their house at night, said Al-Watan newspaper.

An investigation was under way, local court officials said.

“We have to verify the truthfulness of this case despite the difficulty of doing so,” Sheikh Amr Al Salmi, the head of the court, told Al-Watan. “What makes this case and complaint more interesting is that it wasn’t filed by just one person. Every member of the family is part of this case.”

The family, which has lived in the same house near the holy city of Medina for 15 years, said it became aware of the spirit in the past two years.

“We began hearing strange noises,” the head of the family, who requested anonymity, told Al-Watan. “In the beginning, we didn’t take it seriously, but after that, stranger things started happening and the children got really scared when the genie began throwing stones.”

A local charity has moved the family to a temporary residence while a court investigates, the newspaper said.

Som artiklen også gør opmærksom på, er forestillingen om djinner  udbredt i store dele af den islamiske verden, og selvom de arabiske djinner har nogle særlige karakteristika, kan de formentlig bedst sammenlignes med de overnaturlige væsner fra vore egne himmelstrøg, nisser og elverfolk og hvad har vi.

Hvad der undrer mig er, hvad man forestiller sig, at domstolen kan gøre for at hjælpe i et tilfælde som dette – man skulle tro, det lå uden for dens jurisdiktion.

Link: Saudi family sues genie, alleges harassment

Porno – væk fra det kunstige og opstyltede, tilbage til naturen

Information har en interessant artikel om, hvordan den etablerede pornobranche lider under Internettets fremmarch, og om, hvordan folk nu vil have mere “naturlig” pornografi, der ligger tættere på “rigtig” sex end de sædvanlige, opstyltede kortfilm med plumbers, house wives og cum shots:

Stephen Paul Jones havde løsningen. Han repræsenterede websitet Youporn.com, der i sine ni første måneder havde genereret 15 millioner unikke brugere, og siden begyndelsen var vokset med 38 procent om måneden. Konceptet var enkelt: Brugerne oploadede selv deres sexvideoer, og alt var fuldkommen gratis i lighed med det noget mere stuerene site YouTube. Hirsch var interesseret, men reserveret, forklarede han senere til det amerikanske livsstilsmagasin Conde Nast Portfolio. Sitet havde som mange andre internetsuccesser ikke fundet ud af at omsætte de mange brugere til penge, og desuden forudså han en masse rettighedsproblemer med de andre producenter og den amerikanske pornolovgivning. YouTube og Myspace var blevet solgt for mange milliarder, men Jones skulle bare have 20 millioner dollar. Hirsch takkede nej.

I dag – halvandet år efter Hirschs afslag – er YouPorn det mest besøgte erotiske site på nettet. Vivid.com, der er Steven Hirschs eget betalingssite, ligger nummer 5.061, og ifølge den mest ansete hitliste for hele nettet, Alexa, ligger YouPorn nummer 47, hvilket er et pænt stykke over CNN. Herhjemme ligger den nummer 42 som det næstmest besøgte pornosite efter kopien RedTube, der ligger nummer 29. (…)

I år er det 40 år siden, Danmark som det første land i verden frigav billedpornografien, og efterspørgslen er større end nogensinde. Alligevel bløder den etablerede pornobranche over hele verden, der af den internationale pornobrancheforening, AVN, i 2008 blev vurderet til at have mistet 85 procent af sin samlede værdi siden 1998. Ud over internettets piratkopiering er kunderne søgt væk fra de store filmproduktioner, og de orienterer sig i dag langt mere mod amatørpornografi.

En “afkommercialisering” og amatørisering af pornografien. En spændende udvikling, i alle tilfælde, for én som mig, der altid har kunnet se pointen i billedpornografi som sådan, men aldrig har brudt sig om de fleste kommercielle produkters afstumpede følelseskulde.

Link: Virkeligheden slog pornostjernen ihjel

Åndebesættelse – candomblé og andre religioner

Neuroanthropology har en samling af filmoptagelser af folk i forskellige former for trance- eller besættelsestilstande. Herover: Den afro-amerikanske religion Candomblé, fra Brasilien.

Link: Trance Captured on Video (via Boing Boing)

Læs også:
• Sydamerikas levende religioner

Dagens citat: Koranen

Tariq Ramadan, i hans bog Radical Reform (OUP 2009, s. 91-92):

The revealed Book neither stifles nor directs the mind, it liberates it at the heart of the Universe: the world speaks by itself, autonomously, and it is human intelligence’s task to understand its language, its vocabulary, its semantics, its rules, its grammar, and its order. The written Revelation is not a science book, but it calls on the human mind to engage all its critical, analytical and scientific potential in its quest for knowledge. Nothing is less present in the Quran than the fear or rejection of knowledge, whether sacred or profane, and this is what early scholars or scientists had felt and understood perfectly when they engaged in all the fields of learning (from philosophy to the exact and experimental sciences), confident that the absolute freedom of their reason in those fields in no way hampered the reasons and the essence of faith.

Og denne tolerante og åbne grundholdning i den tidlige islamiske civilisation var det også, som ansporede dels periodens store bidrag til videnskaber som matematik og astronomi, dels dén rolle somme kustoder af den antikke kulturarv, som araberne endte med at komme til at spille, og som senere fik en stor betydning for den eurpæiske renæssance.

Denne holdning blev senere afløst af en betydelig intellektuel stagnation, som intelligente moderne tænkere som for eksempel Tariq Ramadan forsøger at bryde blandt andet ved at vende tilbage til de første århundreders “åbne” læsning af Koranen og dens forhold til omverdenen.

Pas på Wikipedia – Maurice Jarre og nekrologen, der gik galt

Pas på, hvad du læser på Wikipedia, hvis der ikke er kildeangivelse, kunne konklusionen vel være – pas i det hele taget på, hvad du læser på nettet eller (viser det sig) i aviserne.

En 22-årig studerende fra Dublin skrev umiddelbart efter den franske komponist Maurice Jarres død et falsk citat ind på hans Wikipedia-side. Det følgende døgn gik det sin sejrsgang i alverdens aviser.

Siobhain Butterworth forklarer i dagens Guardian:

An obituary of French composer Maurice Jarre, which appeared in the Guardian on 31 March, began and ended with quotes. It opened with: “My life has been one long soundtrack. Music was my life, music brought me to life” – and closed with: “Music is how I will be remembered. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head, that only I can hear.” The words, however, were not Jarre’s, they were Shane Fitzgerald’s – the 22-year-old student at University College Dublin had put them on Jarre’s Wikipedia page a day earlier.

Fitzgerald’s timing could not have been better. He added the fake quote shortly after the composer died and just as writers were working on his obituaries. The Guardian commissioned an obituary writer on the morning of 30 March, giving him only a few hours to produce a substantial piece on Jarre’s life for the following day’s paper. He was not the only one taken in by the hoax – the quote was recycled in several other obituaries published in print and on the web. Fitzgerald told me that he’d looked for something (or someone) journalists would be under pressure to write about quickly. Jarre’s death was “the right example, at the right time”, he said.

What others might see as an act of vandalism, Fitzgerald calls research. In an email last week he apologised for deliberately misleading people and for altering Jarre’s Wikipedia page. He said his purpose was to show that journalists use Wikipedia as a primary source and to demonstrate the power the internet has over newspaper reporting.

Dette betyder ikke, at Wikipedia er ubrugeligt – som alment tilgængeligt leksikon er det endog særdeles nyttigt. Men det kan, som Butterworth også bemærker, ikke bruges som primærkilde. Selv Britannica kan det være kritisk at bruge på den måde, en Wikipedia har som bekendt det særlige problem, at hvem som helst kan skrive hvad som helst:

The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source.

The desirability of telling readers where information comes from shouldn’t be overlooked either.

It’s worrying that the misinformation only came to light because the perpetrator of the deception emailed publishers to let them know what he’d done and it’s regrettable that he took nearly a month to do so. Why did he wait so long? “I apologise for that,” he said. “I was originally going to do a report for my class and then it didn’t work out. I know I should have told you sooner.”

Fitzgerald says he is shocked by the results of his “experiment” with Jarre’s Wikipedia page. “I expected the quote to get into the blogs, but I didn’t expect it to get into mainstream newspapers,” he said.

Det besvarer vel også et andet spørgsmål, som af og til rejses. Har internet betydning som massemedie? I dette tilfælde synes Fitzgeralds eksperiment at vise, at det kan det i hvert fald have.  Om denne betydning så er gavnlig, er et andet spørgsmål – i dette tilfælde har den nok efterladt en del journalister med røde ører.

Link: Open door

Update, 8/5: Politiken har nu også historien – gad vide, om de har set den her? 🙂