internet – Page 2

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? 🙂

Internettet er under angreb

Pressemeddelelse fra Hanne Dahl, MEP for Junibevægelsen:

På tirsdag den 5. maj skal Europa-Parlamentet stemme om den meget omstridte Telekommunikationspakke – vel at mærke Parlamentets sidste samling i denne valgperiode. Det er knald eller fald for det åbne og brugerdrevne internet, som vi kender og nyder godt af i dig. Og med det er vores basale borgerrettigheder også i fare.

”Et af de helt centrale punkter er spørgsmålet om at lukke folks internetforbindelse, hvis de har downloadet ulovligt, hvor internetudbydere som TDC og Tele2 vil kunne lukke dig helt af – uden dommerkendelse og almindelig retssikkerhed. Det er absurdt, at man på internettet åbenbart
godt kan se bort fra helt basale borgerrettigheder. Man forbyder jo heller ikke folk adgang til alle supermarkeder, fordi de har stjålet en pakke tyggegummi i Netto”, siger Hanne Dahl.

Hanne Dahl har sammen med en række andre medlemmer af Europa-Parlamentet fremsat en pakke af ændringsforslag under navnet ”Citizens’ Rights Amendments”. Ideen er at minimere de skader, som Telekompakken ser ud til at volde – og sikre borgernes rettigheder på internettet. Internettet sikrer adgang til en masse tjenester og derved muligheder. Vi må bevare den åbenhed, som karakteriserer nettet i dag og sikre det frie valg, i stedet for at filtrere indholdet på nettet og intensivere overvågningen. Det er endnu uklart, om ændringsforslagene vil blive vedtaget, men det vil blive afgjort på tirsdag middag.

Se mere om ”Citizens’ Rights Amendments” her: http://werebuild.eu/

Udover at have sine ændringsforslag med i afstemningen har Hanne Dahl også taletid til debatten om Telekompakken i Parlamentet tirsdag formiddag.

”Internettet skal selvfølgelig ikke være Det Vilde Vesten, men derfor skal almindelige borgerrettigheder stadig gælde. I dag går mange jo heller ikke på posthuset, i banken eller i tøjbutikken – de ordner det på internettet. Og hvis man begrænser nettet på denne måde, vil det være et kæmpe tilbageslag – og et decideret demokratisk problem.”

”Vi er og skal også fremover være medborgere på internettet med ytringsfrihed og basale frihedsrettigheder. Vi må ikke lade os reducere til kunder og klienter”, slutter Hanne Dahl.

Link: Internettet er under angreb!

Læs også:
• Digitale borgerrettigheder – en nødvendighed
• Borgerrettigheder på Internettet

Digitale borgerrettigheder i EU, fortsat

Den amerikanske jurist Michael Carroll forklarer på sin blog meget rammende, hvad der egentlig er på spil med EUs telecom-pakke og forslagene om digitale rettigheder:

Readers in Europe who care about keeping the Internet relatively neutral need to express that opinion to policymakers in the European Parliament by April 29. In particular, it is inexplicable why the Green Party is on the sidelines and not actively supporting the Citizens’ Rights Amendments that have been tabled to restore users’ rights that were in an earlier version of the gargantuan Telecoms Package making its way through the European Parliament. Erik Josefsson is a leading proponent of these amendments, and he is hosting PDF versions of the amendments Part I, Part II and Part III on his site.

The magic numbers in this debate have been 138 and 166. These are the two amendments that initially were hailed in the US press as recognizing access to the Internet as a fundamental right, countering French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s campaign to require service providers to impose the Internet death penalty on users found to have infringed intellectual property rights three times.

Lobbying by representatives of corporate and professional rights owners – remember there is no group dedicated solely to lobbying on behalf of the millions of amateur creators who also are rights owners under copyright – has led to a reversal of this position As Monica Horten reports, the current versions of Amendment 138 and Amendment 166 would allow for imposition of the Internet death penalty and non-neutral network management.

The Citizens’ Rights Amendments have been tabled to reverse these back-room deals and to clarify the original position concerning users’ rights.

Hat tip: Erik Josefsson

Link: Urgent – the fate of Internet Users’ Rights in the EU

Læs også:
• Digitale borgerrettigheder – en nødvendighed
• Borgerrettigheder på Internettet

Borgerrettigheder på internettet

Jeg har modtaget nedenstående pressemeddelelse.

Kort fortalt: En gruppe EU-parlamentarikere vil indføre “digitale borgerrettigheder” på EU-plan; et sådant initiativ vil gøre meget for at forhindre vilkårlig overvågning, afkobling (som i den franske lov om “three strikes and you’re out”, tre ubeviste beskyldninger for download og brud på ophavsretten, og familien mister retten til at have Internet) og censur af den type, der er indført med det danske “børnepornofilter”.

Et vigtigt princip er således, at alle indskrænkninger skal idømmes ved en domstol og efter gældende lov og altså ikke blot kan indføres administrativt, som det er sket hidtil.

Some very important amendments might be retabled by MEPs who care about the Internet and european citizens.

It is paramount to support those very good amendments and let our MEPs know that we want them, we want an open Internet.

We want freedom of choice. We want the right to decide which web sites we wish to visit, which applications we like to run, which protocols we decide to use and which contents we like to access.

Eva-Britt Svensson, Member of GUE/NGL

The European Parliament will vote on the so called Telecoms Package during its May session. MEP Eva-Britt Svensson will together with her colleagues in the party group GUE/NGL table a number of Citizens’ Rights Amendments”, which aim at protecting citizens’ rights on the Internet.

The amendments restore the fundamental principles the European Parliament adopted with a wide a majority in the First Reading in September 2008. (Svensson tabled “Amendment 166”). They are divided in three parts and will be tabled for the second reading the 5th of May. The last day to table amendments is the 29th of April but she has choosen to publish them now to clarify that there is a lot more that has to be dealt with than what the famous amendments 166 and 138 achieve. She wants to make sure that the Internet is not transformed into a Cable-TV-Internet – which would mean that Internet offerings will evolve towards sets of pre-choosen content and services which will then be sold to us citizens, instead of us being able to choose for ourselves.

We who love the Internet say that “Users rights” are defined by what we use our subscription for, says Eva-Britt Svensson (Swedish Left party), MEP. We do not want to be reduced into consumers so that our rights just constitute what is explicitly permitted in the subscription agreement. Unfortunately, both the Council’s Common Position and the amendments that have been proposed in the trialogues, open up for this development.

We want to be citizens on the Internet, not just customers or consumers.

The amendments by Ms. Svensson can be found here:
Part 1 http://www.erikjosefsson.eu/sites/default/files/Citizens_Rights_Amendments_(Part_I).pdf
Part 2 http://www.erikjosefsson.eu/sites/default/files/Citizens_Rights_Amendments_(Part_II).pdf
Part 3 http://www.erikjosefsson.eu/sites/default/files/Citizens_Rights_Amendments_(Part_III).pdf

For more information, contact:
Eva-Britt Svensson (Swedish Left Party), Member of the European
Parliament, Swedish cell +46 706 331 346, blog www.evabrittsvensson.se
Roger Falk Press secretary, +32473 80 45 79
Webpage: www.vguengl.org (Photos can be found here)

Og hvad vi end mener om EU, er der brug for sådanne garantier. Her i Danmark er myndigheder og Internetudbydere allererede gået for vidt i deres bestræbelser på at overvåge og bortcensurere adgangen til Internettet, og et sæt elementære borgerrettigheder, der ville forbyde den slags uden efter udtrykkelig retskendelse, ville gøre meget for at sikre mod denne form for magtmisbrug i fremtiden.

Jeg følger op på denne historie, så snart jeg hører nyt om, hvad man kan gøre for at støtte disse digitale borgerrettigheder.

Link: Citizen’s Rights Amendment

Hvad en forlægger kan gøre

Man taler meget om, at Internettet er ved at overtage populærkulturen, at aviserne er ved at uddø, at pladeselskaberne er dinosaurer, osv.

Men dog må der vel være noget, som Internettet ikke bare kan, som f.eks. en forfatter har brug for et forlag og en musiker et pladeselskab/forlag til?

Den canadiske science fiction-forfatter og blogger Cory Doctorow, som vi også citerede i det forrige indlæg, svarer på spørgsmålet i sin seneste klumme i Locus Online os siger, at ja, der er én ting, forlagene kan gøre, som Internettet ikke kan: De kan få bogen ud på boghandlernes hylder.

Doctorow skriver:

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t get an e-mail from someone who’s ready to reinvent publishing using the Internet, and the ideas are often good ones, but they lack a key element: a sales force. That is, a small army of motivated, personable, committed salespeople who are on a first-name basis with every single bookstore owner/buyer in the country, people who lay down a lot of shoe-leather as they slog from one shop to the next, clutching a case filled with advance reader copies, cover-flats, and catalogs. When I worked in bookstores, we had exceptional local reps, like Eric, the Bantam guy who knew that I was exactly the right clerk to give an advance copy of Snow Crash to if he wanted to ensure a big order and lots of hand-selling when the book came in.

This matters. This is the kind of longitudinal, deep, expensive expertise that gets books onto shelves, into the minds of the clerks, onto the recommended tables at the front of the store. It’s labor-intensive and highly specialized, and without it, your book’s sales only come from people who’ve already heard of it (through word of mouth, advertising, a review, etc.) and who are either motivated enough to order it direct, or lucky enough to chance on a copy on a shelf at a store that ordered it based on reputation or sales literature alone, without any hand-holding or cajoling.

The best definition I’ve heard of “publishing” comes from my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who says, “publishing is making a work public.” That is, identifying a work and an audience, and taking whatever steps are necessary to get the two together (you’ll note that by this definition, Google is a fantastic publisher). Publishing is not printing, or marketing, or editorial, or copy-editing, or typesetting. It may comprise some or all of these things, but you could have the world’s best-edited, most beautiful, well-bound book in the world, and without a strategy for getting it into the hands of readers, all it’s good for is insulating the attic. (This is the unfortunate discovery made by many customers of vanity publishers.)

(…)

It’s easy to imagine a web-based discount printer, web-based copyeditors and proofreaders (the Distributed Proofreader Project, which cleans up the typos in the public domain books in Project Gutenberg, is a proof-of-concept here), web-based marketing and advertising firms (“web-based” may be redundant here — are there any marketers and advertising agencies left who aren’t primarily Internet-based?), web-based PR (ditto), and even web-based editors who serve as book-doctor, rabbi, producer, confessor, and exalted doler-out-of-blessings, gracing a book with their imprimatur, a la Oprah. (…)

This vision has captured the imagination of many of my fellow techno-utopians: a stake through the heart of the Big, Lumbering Entertainment Dinosaurs Who Put Short-Sighted Profits Ahead of Art. And there’s plenty of short-term thinking in the recent history of publishing and the rise of the mega-publishers. There are plenty of “little” publishers out there, dotted around the country, figuring out how to fill in the gaps that the big guys won’t stoop to conquer: short story collections, quirky titles, books of essays, art books, experimental titles, and anthologies. These are often fabulous books with somewhat respectable numbers, but they lag the majors in one key area: physical distribution.

Det er en glimrende observation og siger også noget om, hvad en forfatter får ud af at komme på et etableret forlag frem for selv at stå for det.

Mht. musik er der selvfølgelig den hage ved det, at pladeselskabernes standardkontrakter snyder kunstnerne så vandet driver, jfr. Courtney Love’s analyse.

Inden for bogudgivelser er det vist ikke helt så slemt (endnu?).

Link: In Praise of the Sales Force