So the commonly used images to visualize the Long Tail are shots from inside the enormous warehouses run by the online book retailer amazon.com all over the world.

Seems like that these warehouse are not the only ones associated with the long tail. In reality (which is not properly depicted by all those fancy graphical representations of the long tail) enormous warehouses are being constructed way beyond the (imagined) end of the long tail:

The Guardian has an excellent article (‘Inside the tomb of tomes‘) that focusses on the construction of a warehouse that will house the British Library’s collection of books that no one is reading. The warehouse, currently being constructed somewhere in the cultural wastelands of the midlands, will house most of the books that the BL aquires via the legal deposit function it has for copyrighted works being published in the UK. Under this system it has to take into it’s collection a copy of every book being published in the UK which means that they are amassing a fair amount of unwanted books:

We used to build cathedrals. Now we build warehouses. [… This] warehouse is extraordinary because, unlike all those monstrous Tesco and Amazon depositories that litter the fringes of the motorways of the Midlands, it is being meticulously constructed to house things that no one wants. When it is complete next year, this warehouse will be state-of-the-art, containing 262 linear kilometres of high-density, fully automated storage in a low-oxygen environment. It will house books, journals and magazines that many of us have forgotten about or have never heard of in the first place.[…]

It is where, before this century reaches its teens, copies of books spared a quick death at the pulping plant – thanks to the grace of the provisions of the 1911 Copyright Act and later government legislation – will go to serve their life sentences in a secure environment. […] The British Library, you see, strives to live up to its self-imposed title of “the world’s knowledge”. That knowledge, though, is an odd thing. Along with the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible, it includes Everybody Poos, by Taro Gomi (to help kids over toilet phobias). Not to mention Wayne Rooney’s autobiography, Jordan’s novel and a book called Do Ants Have Arseholes And 101 Other Bloody Ridiculous Questions. The MPs who in 1911 established the legal deposit principle for the five greatest libraries in the British Isles probably didn’t realise the full consequences of their decision.

Read the complete guardian article here [via BLDGblog which has a couple of amazing warehouse/library pictures in its review]

Patrice (who refuses to have a web presence so i cannot link him) has some thoughtful comments on the recent french initiative to combat ‘casual illegal file sharing’ by having ISPs terminate internet connections of ‘persistent pirates’. Apparently ISPs have to monitor the data streams of their subscribers and report those who are engaging in file sharing to an ‘independent body’¹ who can then issue warnings and after two warnings order the ISPs to terminate the internet accounts of the ‘pirates’. sounds a bit like the Californian three-strikes-and-you-are-out regulation and i guess that is why Tilman Lueder calls this the Sarkozy/Schwarzenegger plan’.

Sarkozy himself prefers to call this ‘A decisive moment for the future of a civilized internet’, something which is hard to argue with as this will most likely result in lots of dumb-ass adolescents being disconnected form the internets which in turn will result in less nonsense being posted to youtube and less time wasted on myspace and facebook, which is a good thing. plus this will give these kids plenty of time to acquire the skills they need to participate in the 21st century knowledge economy (by reading good old fashioned books and writing letters to each other). sounds like a seriously well thought out plan to me….

But before i get carried away, here is what Patrice had to say on the good old (in fact so old that the archive has not caught up yet so i cannot link) nettime mailing list. He is quoting this BBC news article before his comments so you might want to read that first:

From all the “clue-less about the Internet” politicians, the French would seem the ones who have put the most ‘less’ into the ‘clue’ (Thank you, Gunner ;-) This impression, alas, is very deceptive. They have probably thought the most of all about it, and they came to very, very wrong conclusions and decisions. This of course, with not a little help of the lobbying industry, but mainly because of their own (mis)representation of what the whole issue is about. And to understand that you have to dig deeper.

French ‘Republican’ intellectuals, from which class politicians are coming to a (wo)man, hold two beliefs that are deeply inimical to the Internet economy as we know it (for a large part): a quasi-religious faith in the ‘moral right’ of the (intellectual) author, which, suitably reformulated to the wishes of the ‘creative’ industries, gives it a much higher moral highground than in the rest of the world (piracy becomes then the real thing). And, less well known, an abhorence of ‘gratuity’ (“La gratuite, c’est le vol” – ‘gratuity = theft’ is a very commonly held opinion). Getting things for free, or to be more precise, without payment in legal currency, is considered unlawful by default, because harmful to the proper order of society. (Hence France also going after ‘LETS’ systems, for instance)

These two comvictions are then combined with yet another commonly held belief in political circles, subsumed in the funny 1970s slogan “In France we don’t have oil, but we have ideas!”. This has led to a very peculiar, that is litteral, interpretation of the “Oil of the 21st Century” concept, loudly advocated by prominent public economists like Alain Minc and Jacques Attali². The French ‘knowledge economy’ shall be firmly copyright based – or bust. All this results in an irresistible aggregate argument to legislate for ‘robust protection of intellectual property’, against which more enlightened critics in the digital community and some intellectual circles (eg the group around the review ‘Multitudes’) are rather helpless.

And how pig-headed the French position may look like, it could well provide an attractive example for other legislations, especially the more authoritarian ones, to follow.

On a more serious note i have to agree with Patrice here. If this plan is really going through this will almost definitely make the copyright ayatollahs in other countries salivate for similar arrangements… [in fact they (a.k.a the Phonographic Inquisition) already are]

Since i am going to iran in less than two weeks i thought it might be useful to go take the sharia exam at paradiso tonight. but as i was kind of late, i did not get a chance to participate (no more voting machines). the whole thing was about screening recordings of questions posed to TV imams (like Yusuf al-Qaradawi) who have shows on arabic TV stations such as Al Jazeera. After a questions was shown you would be given three possible answers and had to decide which of the three answers would be given by the imam (typical questions are something like ‘is it allowed to kiss my husband while i am fasting?’ with ‘yes, the prophet did this himself’, ‘no, humans are too easily tempted for more intimate conduct’ and ‘yes, but only on the cheek’ as possible answers’).

Both questions and answers were highly entertaining and it is hilarious to see how blunt these TV imams are: generally someone would pose questions in third person (‘my friend has not been doing his prayers since….’) and the imam or TV anchor person would respond by directly addressing the caller (‘so you have not been doing your prayers…’).

After the show there was the possibility to pose questions to 4 locals imams which made me go and ask 2 of them if downloading/copying things from the internet is considered equally bad as stealing (which clearly is considered to be haram). the first imam (Yassin el Forkani) expressed the opinion that this can only be considered stealing if it is done while there are other ways to obtain the work that do respect the interest of the author to get paid (e.g if i am downloading a film that is not available legally, it is ok, even if the film is protected by copyright). guess this means that there would be no orphan works problematic under sharia law.

Now unfortunately the other imam was of a slightly different opinion, as according to him downloading/copying is haram if it violates other peoples copyright regardless if there is actual harm being done to them. Sounds a bit strange to me to make the interpretation of the sharia depended on local copyright legislation, but then the guy works as imam for the Dutch prison service so i guess he values local law a bit more than your average imam. Guess i will stick with the first interpretation for now…

Bech over at remakz shares a rather amuzing metadata conflict involving Hezbollah and Snoop Doggy Dog:

from the anecdote file where we find the joys of being a researcher on Hizbullah

Buy one of the many cds of Hizbullah ‘chants’ (anashid). For example, the volume 12 of Firkat el Asra’, Al Moqawama wal Tahrir. Open it, and rip the cd on Windows media player. The software checks for titles through its search engine. When you get back to your computer you find copied to your hard drive:

Artist: Snoop Doggy Dog

Album title: Doggy Style

Example of song name: Shitznit, for all my Niggaz & Bitchiz, etc.

I changed the name of the songs so as to at least remember what I am listening to. But I cannot erase the “Doggy Style”. So I get: “Hamdan lil Lah atah al Zafar” with “Doggy Style”, right under it.

Please keep in mind that at the bottom of the cd back cover there is a mention of protected copyrights.

Couple of days ago i got this flickr mail from someone working for Tobacco International which describes itself as the ‘The authority on the tobacco industry since 1886’. The person wanted to know if he could use this picture of mine for ‘a profile on the tobacco industry of the middle east for our upcoming July/August issue’

I told him to go a ahead and use the picture and send me a copy of the mag if he did indeed do so. As a matter of fact the photo is cc-by licensed so he did not even need to ask me. Now today the same guy got back to me to thank me for my permission and went on to inquire:

By the way, we are looking for more photos for this story if you have any. We’re looking for photos from the Middle East of adults smoking cigarettes – with a smile if possible. They should be shots that are emblematic of the region – in dress or background that couldn’t come from anywhere else.

Guess he must have mistaken me for some kind of photo agency or something like this. Feed me a couple of orientalist stereotypes as keywords and see if i come up with more pictures. Now i happen to have at least one picture that more or less perfectly fits his request, but i do not think that i am selling (or giving away) pictures of friends of mine to promote smoking (note: the license does not allow for use in a commercial publication):

Not that i have anything against smoking or smokers, but if it comes to the middle east i definitely prefer smoking argile to cigarettes. Plus Nat reminded me that it would just be plain wrong to hand over that picture:

you have no god!!! AND aiding the tobacco industry AND aiding the perpetuation on monolithic stereotyped orientalist imagery?!??!!!

So i have been trying to buy a dvd copy of the latest James Bond movie all along my trip. finally managed to score a decent copy with proper english sound in Shenzhen (china) yesterday. in total i bought 4 different discs which gives a nice little insight in the dynamics of movie piracy in asia:

25/11 Dubai, Karama market: got a 4-1 dvd with three other crap movies on it in a upstairs room behind one of the numerous fake brand clothing shops in the Karama Market Shopping Complex. Paid 20 Dirham, to the guy who claimed that he had seen it the other night and that image and sound quality were ‘good’. turned out to be really crappy image quality (blurry 320*240 pix) and the sound was distorted and out of sync. the seller claimed he got his DVDs supplied form Malaysia.

28/11 Delhi, Palika Bazaar: got the same 4-1 DVD with the same unwatchable video and audio files on it from one of the many stalls in the palika underground shopping complex for 200 rupees.

08/12 Temple Street Night Market, Hong Kong: got a single movie DVD from a market stall on the Temple Street Night Market. According to the cover it is a region-code less English language version with English, Chinese and simplified Chinese subtitles. The person i bought it form for 20 Hong Kong Dollars claimed that he had seen it the night before and that audio and video were fine. Turns out that audio and video are good quality, except that the audio is in russian (so is the DVD menu) and that there are no english subtitles. the disc also contains a muted and inaudible english sound track.

09/12 DVD shop near the Shenzhen railway station, China: Nobody claimed anything, because nobody spoke english. bought a single movie DVD for 10 yuan in a shop near the railway station. The back cover contains a senseless machine translation which seems to refer to the movie, plus the credits for the latest ‘harry potter’ movie. The disc label looks professional but there is the same russian language menu as before. however this time there is actually an audible english soundtrack which runs in sync with the images (except for 4 minutes in the second half where it runs out of sync).

Was watching the live stream of the tagesthemen (the late edition of the main news show of the ARD) earlier this evening. after a rather helpless interview with the german foreign minister again avoided to tell the Israelis their completely unjustified attacks on Lebanese civilians) they had a bit about the final of this years Tour de France which had the potential to cheer up my mood a little bit, but instead of seeing images of champagne-drinking cyclists i got this:

Bunch of stupid wankers! Not showing a news report about the tour de france on the final day of the event pretty much unacceptable. Does not really matter if they do not have the internet rights or if they do not have the rights to broadcast outside of germany. This is news-reporting and they shoudl get a better lawyer.

Ok it seems his has been around for a while (my pal bjorn blogged about it 4 days ago) but it seems that the british online music distributer OD2 (a.k.a loudeye.com) is canceling some of the licenses it has given out a while ago. initialreports suggested that the music bought (downloaded) under the 10-cents-per-song-for-unlimited-playback-on-one-computer-license option ‘possibly will no longer play’ after 1 jan 2007. the quote is taken from a translated letter to users of this licensing model, in which one of the resellers of the OD2 licenses even boasts that they have ‘succeed in allowing you to play the music until January 1st 2007’.

Today this story has been picked up by the Dutch daily het parool which claims that in the case of the 150.000 users of KPN music stream (another of the dutch resellers of OD2 and self-proclaimed market leader in online music distribution in the Netherlands) the licenses will be terminated on 3 april 2006, thereby rendering the DRM crippled files unplayable.

How sick is that? first they (and they is not some shady russian eBay operators, but a division of the biggest dutch telco) sell you a song for unlimited playback and then they disable it at whim. the article quotes the spokesperson of the biggest dutch consumer rights organization stating that at time of purchase it was not communicated to the users that this would be possible. KPN itself claims to be innocent (as they are only a reseller and OD2 apparently decided to terminate this license type at the pressure of the mayor record companies).

They do seem to understand that this situation might not be entirely welcomed by their customers and as a compensation they offer 10 euro vouchers (independent of the amount of songs downloaded under the old licenses) that can be used to buy songs from the OD2 catalogue with a license permits unlimited playback on one computer plus burning and playback on mobile devices (for 99 eurocent a song). Yeah right! Great deal thank you so much you responsible corporate entity! and when they cancel this type of license they will most likely offer you another €5 voucher that you can trade in in order to listen to your whole music library one last time before it autodestructs…

This is exactly why i have never downloaded a DRM crippled file and why i will NEVER do this in the future. This whole story actually makes me feel much better downloading music from the peer2peer corners of the internets (which is still perfectly legal in the Netherlands). The music industry has repeatedly equated downloading with theft which of course is bullshit. But maybe selling something to you for unlimited use and then taking it away from you should be considered theft? Sadly we are living in times where this kind of behavior is more likely to be called an ‘innovative business model’ instead. So i suggest going here for all your music needs.

Just read trough the Final Conference Paper (warning: pdf) of the Creative Economy Conference that was held last week in London as part of the British EU presidency. It is a pretty troubling paper that seems to be build on two general assumptions: 1) DRM is good for humanity and 2) the more/longer/stronger Intellectual Property Rights the better. Both of these assumptions are obviously stupid but they seem to be what you get when you let corporations sponsor (and dominate) government conferences.

The paper does contain two especially stunning statements that do illustrate what kind of role citizens should play in the creative economy (if you ask the creative economy types). They must be consumers of products that are supplied by the creative industries and for the rest they better shut up. My favorite statement is this:

there are concerns from consumers’ and civil society representatives that DRMs will restrict uses they believe they are entitled to (emphasis mine)

There goes fair-use, there go exceptions to copyright that protect non-consuming uses of creative works. And the DRM loving authors of this document seem to want to make a point of it by creating a PDF that i cant copy and past the text out of. kinda stupid of me to believe that i have the right to quote from this paper. This silly belief must be related to the fact that i am belonging to a minority group of people who actually want to use the powers of digital networks:

A range of alternative licensing arrangements were discussed, all of which cater for some consumers/citizens demand to interact creatively with content in the online environment.

If you ask me this is a pretty outrageous demand indeed. and at the very minimum these people need to be punished by making them type their quotes from PDF documents.

Been reading through a number of the published responses to the a recent EU study on a community initiative on the cross-border collective management copyright for the on-line distribution of musical works. This is part of a collaborative effort by a number people associated with Creative Commons who are looking into the compatibility between CC and Collective Rights Management (as it is practiced in Europe).

Reading through the responses i had been assigned has made me even more skeptical of aligning us with these attempts of the EU to break open the monopolies of the Collecting Societies. The attempts of the Commission seem to get us closer to a situation where members of collecting societies can actually use Creative Commons licenses for some of their works. But at the same time this means moving with big media companies which are more than eager to get rid of the collecting societies all together (as they increase bargaining position of individual artists vis a vis commercial users of their works and make artists generally less vulnerable to pressure from them). The reactions of O2, Deutsche Telkom and the EBU which i tried to summarize below clearly show that we are standing on an extremely slippery slope indeed:

O2 (the UK based mobile phone operator): O2 is really, really pissed by the paper. (and by the fact that they only had 3 weeks to react but so were we when we found out). first of all the commission does not propose to disband collective management, which is unacceptable to o2 as this means they actually have to pay authors if the distribute their music. my favorite sentence:

Commercial users faces considerable difficulties in obtaining the rights to exploit material on-line, and especially on terms that allow them to offer consumers attractive and profitable services at commercially acceptable prices.

Translation: the prices need to go down so that we can sell music cheap while having huge profit margins. I guess they telcos have even less understanding of them internets than the music industry…

DEUTSCHE TELEKOM: same as o2 but their anger is hidden behind much better research (if someone is interested in the complexities of the whole question this paper is a nice read). It sure looks like as if the ex-monopolists are the ones who are most furious when they encounter monopolies (in German there is a fitting but untranslatable saying: ‘die schärfsten kritiker der Elche ware früher selber welche’) they also opt for option 2 with elements of option 3. these elements of option 3 do include the right of authors to give non-exclusive licenses to the collecting societies which would make the solution proposed by DT compatible with CC licenses.

EBU: the European Broadcasters Union is not pissed off. Rather it is disappointed that the commission has not come up with a solution that will give them world wide blanket licenses for all uses that come with legal guarantees for their members immediately (somehow it seems they forgot royalty free in their list). Further they do not mention authors at all (& they constantly refer to authors rights (as opposed to phonogram producers) as ‘petit droits’) except when they demand mandatory collective licensing of all rights needed by broadcasters to broadcast. Which would obviously be very bad for someone who wants to engage in individual rights management (e.g use an open content license for a broadcast-able work). But then what do you expect from the same people who think they should own everything they broadcast for 50 years (see the ongoing negotiations about the WIPO broadcasting treaty)