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Speaking of Kiwi Culture, said ex-mother-in-law’s eldest child was Pixie Wiliams who was the vocalist on New Zealand’s first ever ‘pop song‘ Blue Smoke. I took this photo of Ben with his Aunt’s record on a visit to Te Papa a couple of years ago.

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The Creative Freedom Foundation has had lots to talk about this week. Earlier it was the way that school students have been fed one side of the copyright debate. By the end of the week they were looking more deeply at some of the Public Library copyright tensions.

Related posts:

1. Linkeracy 13 September 2009
2. Linkeracy – 10th September 2006
3. Linkeracy – 14th August 2006

I’ve had a fiddle with the Maintenance Mode plugin (which is where I got the idea) and will see how that works.

Related posts:

1. Ink Blog
2. WYSIWYG

Over the weekend I discovered that the National Library of New Zealand had been trawling the net and bulk downloading harvesting,

every publicly accessible website that falls under the nz country code, as well as certain other websites that are owned by New Zealanders or legally considered New Zealand publications.

This is because

The internet is always changing, and uses a myriad of technologies, so it is impossible to make a perfect copy. Despite this, we are hoping to harvest 100 million URLs during October 2008, giving us a snapshot of the internet at that time. link

I also discovered that if I took the usual measure, to avoid being crawled and archived, by using a robots.txt file inside my website, the National Library would ignore my wishes right to object to outside crawling of my site and take it anyway “to enhance the likelihood of our being able to harvest as full a snapshot of the .nz domain as possible“.

That’s OK though because I know that the National Library has my best interests at heart and knows better than I do about the archiving of my website. They know that although I might consider my few pages of rants, raves and links to be temporary, my grandchildren will want to benefit from the crazy thoughts that I had way back in October 2008.

But what about the people who have developed applications which generate dynamic webpages based on entry data – I’ve seen countless webpages like this. The astute developer will have done the right thing and placed an anti crawl robots.txt file in their website to avoid crawlers doing huge damage to their server traffic. I know you can opt in to opt out of being crawled, but you have to have seen it at the right time, followed up the user agents, worked out what was happening and put in your request. I didn’t notice until it was a bit life. Hu hum, life got in my way.

I’m in two minds about this idea of the National Library archiving everything in the .nz webosphere. As much as anyone I want the stories collected and collated for the future, couldn’t they respect respect some of our wishes for autonomy over our material? I have no robots.txt file on any of my websites at the moment – although I do want the right as a relatively savvy citizen to have the option. As it happens, it appears the biggest internet archive site in the world agrees with me.

EDIT: Aha! A rewrite rule with a Rickroll. Nice. Very. Nice.

No related posts.

As yet New Zealand does not have specific Creative Commons Licences so for those of us who choose to licence our work in this way we are using licences which are based on US rights and laws. From the Worldwide CC website:

Our generic licenses are jurisdiction-agnostic: they do not mention any particular jurisdiction’s laws or statutes or contain any sort of choice-of-law provision. The licenses are, however, based on the U.S. Copyright Act in many respects. This means that, though we have no reason to believe that the licenses would not function in legal systems across the world, it is at least conceivable that some aspect of our licenses does not jibe with a particular jurisdiction’s laws.

And from the Creative Commons New Zealand FAQ:

You may well feel that you don’t need to take the trouble; both sets of licences are designed to give the same bundle of rights as the generic licences, so that they can be used worldwide. However, CC feels that there are advantages to switching to a New Zealand licence if you live in New Zealand. These licences have been designed to be fully compatible with national contract and copyright law. Some benefits from using a New Zealand licence would be:

• their plain English language; easier to understand than the American legal language of the generic licences;
• because they follow national contract and copyright law, they offer explicit protection of your ‘moral rights’;
• the support offered by the New Zealand project, [and its helpful joint mailing list??];
• in the very unlikely event of any dispute over the terms of the licence, they provide that this should be heard in the courts of your own country;

Related posts:

1. Digital Content Strategy
2. Sunday Procrastination
3. Content Sharing

One that is still important, despite not being updated since 1995, is RFC 1855. This is one with a whole lot of guidelines about electronic communications. It’s a sort of Miss Manners guide to (n)ettiquette.

From the section on email,

• Unless you have your own Internet access through an Internet provider, be sure to check with your employer about ownership of electronic mail. Laws about the ownership of electronic mail vary from place to place.
• Unless you are using an encryption device (hardware or software), you should assume that mail on the Internet is not secure. Never put in a mail message anything you would not put on a postcard.
• Respect the copyright on material that you reproduce. Almost every country has copyright laws.
• If you are forwarding or re-posting a message you’ve received, do not change the wording. If the message was a personal message to you and you are re-posting to a group, you should ask permission first. You may shorten the message and quote only relevant parts, but be sure you give proper attribution.
• Never send chain letters via electronic mail. Chain letters are forbidden on the Internet. Your network privileges will be revoked. Notify your local system administrator if your ever receive one.
• A good rule of thumb: Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive. You should not send heated messages (we call these “flames”) even if you are provoked. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be surprised if you get flamed and it’s prudent not to respond to flames.

Are these guidelines of any use? I think that they are and I think we can adopt them into our blogging philosophies as well. The interweb is not a free for all for educators.

No related posts.

When it comes to music files, Bill Gates simply had this to say in summary; “People should just buy a CD and rip it. You are legal then.”

Except, of course, if you live in New Zealand.
Full story

Related posts:

1. Legal March
2. Licenced
3. Digital Content Strategy

Will we be able to legaly copy that brand new CD so that we can listen on that lovely new teacher laptop so thoughtfully subsidised by the Ministry of Education? Possibly. Sort of.

Clause (e) is the condition that I can see causing the most confusion and potential grief. Its not at all clear that you can play your music on a work computer, and if you do you probably are required to do so in a private office or with headphones. No listening to your co-workers music allowed! This very limited interpretation is supported by clause (f) which suggests that you have to own any computer you play music on, i.e. no using one provided by your employer. Why do I think we’ve just changed one stupid, unenforceable law for another that will see some workplaces continue to ban digital music… Link

What about copy that DVD for the computer or the media player (generous fellow that Santa bloke)? Possibly. Sort of. We we be allowed to videotape Sunday night’s Christmas movie and watch it next Christmas Eve? Possibly. Sort of. Lend it to a friend? Possibly. Sort of.

The other type of format shifting allowed under the bill is time shifting. This is the provision that makes VCRs legal while simultaneously making that collection of carefully recorded video cassettes on your shelf illegal. Yes, you can record “solely for the purpose of viewing or listening to the recording at a more convenient time” but only if you can’t access it from an on-demand service (and yes that might require a payment). However, you only get to keep that copy for as long as is “reasonably necessary for viewing or listening to the recording at a more convenient time.” Link

As presented in Parliament the bill offers little more than half measures. Whilst there has been some discussion on the web, no one in the ‘mainstream’ media has even approached some of the apparent contradictions and sops offered by this piece of legislation. There is a lot more to the whole thing than just being able to watch a DVD on a phone or video iPod. The bill is about rights of ownership of information and ideas. It’s about whether this country follows other nations into implementing draconian protection measures that may end up being used against innocent consumers and lining the purses of those whose pockets are already deep and full.

It’s time to read and think for ourselves. Some local and overseas blogs have picked up what’s happening and attempted to get the discussion going.
Today’s Hard News (guest Green MP Nandor Tanczos), earlier Russell Brown post and some well thought out background from Stephen Marshall.

Also

Synthetic Thoughts

Gadgetophile

Kim Weatherall

Related posts:

1. Ripper
2. Format Shifting
3. Linkeracy – 13th March 2008

This morning’s Sunday Star Times had a spend-up-before -Christmas glossy about some of the exciting new technologies available to consumers at the moment. Apart from giving some computer buying advice that was well out of date (60-80GB hard drive anyone?), the mag had some information about digital audio and video players – MP3 players to most of us.

To most people, you buy your iPod / MP3 player and copy your CDs onto the large empty space. Then you copy all of your friends’ CDs. At some point, people over 40 contemplate copying their entire vinyl collection to their computers and iPods. Most give up when they remember they haven’t got a turntable or find out what a new needle costs.

The problem is that under existing New Zealand law it’s illegal to copy your CDs onto the music player that you just (legally) bought. I’m often asked in professional development sessions about how to do this and teachers are incredulous when I explain what the law says and talk about the implications. Then they’ll ask about downloading music. When I point them to Coketunes or Ampifier they look at me even more incredulously – music is supposed to be free right?

One evening last week I took a cruise around the web and found myself at Sarah McLachlan’s website. I discovered that she had a new album out and decided to listen to a few tracks. I liked what I heard so headed to a couple of NZ sites to see if I could get the CD. $50 to bring it in. I headed back to Sarah’s own site and disovered that I could downlaod the entire album for $9.99 – Canadian dollars of course. Furthermore,

“All audio downloads are available in the popular MP3 format, encoded at 192kbps. The files are not encrypted with digital rights management or copy protection software. Offering this format puts no obstacles in the way of you enjoying your music on your computer, transferring it to your media player, or burning it to CD. This format puts an amount of trust in you to obey copyright laws and not share your files. ” link

Of course I paid my money and downloaded the MP3s. I have the songs on my computer and will pop them onto my MP3 palyer for when I’m away from my computer.

I like this trusted copyright model. The artist (label?) has entrusted me with the right to play her music as and when I choose. I’m perfectly happy to comply with the request to keep the files to myself. Ten bucks Canadian – less than $14 in our currency. What could be better?

Could musicians and their labels in New Zealand do a similar thing? Of course they could. Would New Zealand consumers respect the model? With realistic pricing models like this one and with more information I think that they world. Someone just has to make a start.

Related posts:

1. Ripper
2. Legal March
3. A New Voice

“The draft New Zealand Digital Content Strategy is a sub-strategy of the Digital Strategy, and is the government’s five-year vision for unlocking New Zealand’s stock of content and providing all New Zealanders with seamless, easy access to the information that is important to their lives, businesses and cultural identity.”

This is an important document for digital citizens to read. It seeks to address the debate about the ownership and management of digital information. A bit like the draft curriculum, this is a document that is out there for public consumption and comment.
The draft categories three types of content – formal, informal and commercial. Russell Brown (who has been part of the development of the strategy) has already developed this threefold categorisation further. Russell says,

“…you can spend years strategising and still be stuck with a basically top-down model that institutionalises all decisions and fails to capture the dynamism that drives the Internet community. The emphasis here remains on the institutional capture of both content and decisions about content.”

And further (as may interest Artichoke)

“I’d like to know how a New Zealand Creative Commons licence will interact with the generally obstructive practice of Crown Copyright, for one thing.” (italics added by me)

New Zealand has not yet adopted a localised Creative Commons license. Those of us that do slap a Creative Commons license on our blogs, photos or other works are doing so in hope that at some point the license will have some formal standing in New Zealand. There is a group that is working towards the New Zealand “jurisdiction-specific” license. It’s possible to follow some of the work being done by subscribing to the Creative Commons – New Zealand Mailing List.
I hope that the Draft Digital Content document gets people thinking and talking about digital content and ownership and all of the surrounding issues.

Related posts:

1. The Digital Strategy
2. Content Sharing
3. Licenced

In A closed mind about an open world James Boyle looks at our response to knowledge networks.

It is not that openness is always right. Rather, it is that we need a balance between open and closed, owned and free, and we are systematically likely to get the balance wrong. Partly this is because we still do not understand the kind of property that exists on networks. Most of our experience is with tangible property; fields that can be overgrazed if outsiders cannot be excluded. For that kind of property, control makes more sense. We still do not intuitively grasp the kind of property that cannot be exhausted by overuse (think of a piece of software) and that can become more valuable to us the more it is used by others (think of a communications standard). There the threats are different, but so are the opportunities for productive sharing. Our intuitions, policies and business models misidentify both. Like astronauts brought up in gravity, our reflexes are poorly suited for free fall.

And on a similar subject (well sort of):

The Digital Learning Challenge: Obstacles to Educational Uses of Copyrighted Material in the Digital Age

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has released a CC licensed white paper about the copyright difficulties faced by educators.

While the primary task of the foundational white paper was to identify these obstacles, the paper concludes with some discussion of paths toward reform that might improve the situation. It suggests that certain types of legal reform, technological improvements in the rights clearance process, educator agreement on best practices, and increased use of open access distribution would help overcome the obstacles we identified.

via Will Richardson
Be aware, of course that New Zealand does not (yet?) enjoy the same fair use provisions as other countries.

The Copyright Act, 1994.
A Readers Digest type summary of NZ Copyright Law from Consumer
A review of teacher’s copyrights from Mark Treadwell

Related posts:

1. Linkeracy – 16th August 2006
2. Linkeracy – 19th August 2006
3. Linkeracy – 26th August 2006