There has been an attempt made by the MIT to make their lectures available to the wider audience for free. The project is called MIT OpenCourseWare. It includes about 1900 course materials.
The site presents the core academic content–including lecture notes, syllabi, assignments and exams–from substantially all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate curriculum freely and openly to support formal and informal learning around the world.
Each course published on the MIT site require an average of 100 hours of effort to produce.
While the MIT faculty devote 5-10 hours of their own time for each course, it would be impossible for them to produce OCW courses alone. In order to publish materials from 200 courses each year while minimizing impact on MIT faculty time, OCW maintains a publication staff of twelve people who work directly with the faculty to collect and compile course materials, ensure proper licensing for open sharing, and format materials for our site. We also employ two intellectual property staff and four production staff who support our publication team.
The project is funded partly by the university itself and partly by the sponsors. The annual cost to make the courses available online is 3,5 million dollars.
Although it could be argued that this is MIT-s long range marketing trick to make their university name virally spread (its the degree that counts these days - not what you know - so you still need to attend to some university to get the degree ) , on the other hand it is a generous project that makes education available to the global audience and reduces the digital divide.
And there are contributions made by the faculty members to produce these materials. These lectures cost thousands of USD just some years ago, now they are available for free.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
GPL licence, compared to BSD
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project.
The GPL is the most popular of the strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft
GNU is used in about 70% of all free software projects. Although GPL licence is free it also strogly emphasises the initial authors rights to determine the faith of the created works - the pieces created by the GPL licence can be used, copied, distributed, modified for any purpose as long as the it is distributed under the same conditions - the next user of the piece can have the same rights and must obey these same GPL conditions. Therefore its not possible to make GPL licenced software into a proprietary piece.
Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples. BSD licence allows to make commercial and business versions based on the BSD software.
The GPL requires any derivative work that is released to be released according to the GPL while the BSD licence does not. BSD´s only requirement is to acknowledge the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how the source code may be used.
The GPL is the most popular of the strong copyleft license that requires derived works to be available under the same copyleft
GNU is used in about 70% of all free software projects. Although GPL licence is free it also strogly emphasises the initial authors rights to determine the faith of the created works - the pieces created by the GPL licence can be used, copied, distributed, modified for any purpose as long as the it is distributed under the same conditions - the next user of the piece can have the same rights and must obey these same GPL conditions. Therefore its not possible to make GPL licenced software into a proprietary piece.
Under this philosophy, the GPL grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the free software definition and uses copyleft to ensure the freedoms are preserved, even when the work is changed or added to. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses are the standard examples. BSD licence allows to make commercial and business versions based on the BSD software.
The GPL requires any derivative work that is released to be released according to the GPL while the BSD licence does not. BSD´s only requirement is to acknowledge the original authors, and poses no restrictions on how the source code may be used.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Two schools of IP rights
There are two different schools of intellectual property rights law. One is European system and the other is Anglo-American system. The Anglo-American system only covers the use of authors economic rights ( varalised õigused ) related to the intellectual property.
The European law system on the other hand differenciates the economic rights and the authors moral rights ( isiklikud õigused ). Moral rights are the aouthors right to be an author , the right to be called an author of the piece, the right to change or not to change the intellectual property item or its appendixes, it also involves the right to protect authors good name.
Moral rights also involve the authors right to say whether or not certain IP item should be published and distributed and made public or not so. Moral rights can not be separated from the person who created the piece and also they can not be transferred to anyone else.
The American system gives all these rights also to the owner of economic rights. This means that the owner of property rights also has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the protected piece.
European system of IP in general presumes that employees who are also authors must transfer their pieces economic rights to the employer.
In some countries it is done so automatically, some other countries ( Finland, France , Germany ) demand that the employer and employee must make a separate agreement on whether or not the employer has the right to economic rights of its employees pieces or not. But even in these countries there is exeption made which is related to the software industry - all the software related works economic rights belong to the empoyers by law also in these countries.
Si it can be said that these two schools of IP laws are not that much different in case of software industry - usually the economic rights belong to the employer. If it werent so I would assume that it would bring and endless flow of court cases where the bitter ex-employees of software companies claim their rights to the software businesses and it would take very long time for the courts to analyse and prove who invented what and who can sell what. In that case a software-lawyers-industry would have beem created - and that court battle industry would produce no good at all to anyone.
So the exception made in the European software industry - that employers get all the economic rights to the software that is produced by the employees - was a wis thing to do. May be Americans are even wiser - as they dont bother with the authors moral rights at all.
The European law system on the other hand differenciates the economic rights and the authors moral rights ( isiklikud õigused ). Moral rights are the aouthors right to be an author , the right to be called an author of the piece, the right to change or not to change the intellectual property item or its appendixes, it also involves the right to protect authors good name.
Moral rights also involve the authors right to say whether or not certain IP item should be published and distributed and made public or not so. Moral rights can not be separated from the person who created the piece and also they can not be transferred to anyone else.
The American system gives all these rights also to the owner of economic rights. This means that the owner of property rights also has the right to do whatever he or she wants with the protected piece.
European system of IP in general presumes that employees who are also authors must transfer their pieces economic rights to the employer.
In some countries it is done so automatically, some other countries ( Finland, France , Germany ) demand that the employer and employee must make a separate agreement on whether or not the employer has the right to economic rights of its employees pieces or not. But even in these countries there is exeption made which is related to the software industry - all the software related works economic rights belong to the empoyers by law also in these countries.
Si it can be said that these two schools of IP laws are not that much different in case of software industry - usually the economic rights belong to the employer. If it werent so I would assume that it would bring and endless flow of court cases where the bitter ex-employees of software companies claim their rights to the software businesses and it would take very long time for the courts to analyse and prove who invented what and who can sell what. In that case a software-lawyers-industry would have beem created - and that court battle industry would produce no good at all to anyone.
So the exception made in the European software industry - that employers get all the economic rights to the software that is produced by the employees - was a wis thing to do. May be Americans are even wiser - as they dont bother with the authors moral rights at all.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Against intellectual property - Brian Martin
Brian Martin makes a case against intellectual property in his books Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property".
He argues that intellectual property rights often slow down innovation and exploits Third World countries. He argues that most of the common arguments for intellectual property do not hold up if examined more carefully. He also claims that big part of the products prices these days comes from the IP rights and these costs are hidden usually - consumers dont know actually how much they pay for IP rights - in case of medicine drugs etc.
One of the common arguments for IP is that the authors depend on the royalties. Martin claims that only a few individuals make money for living from royalties - probably only a coupld of hundred writers who could live from royalties in the USA for example. Most of the rewards go to big companies instead. He proposes that the authors should receive some kind of salary instead of royalties, like most scientists do these days.
The other argument for IP rights is usually the argument that protecting authors would stimulate the creativity in the society as a whole. Martin argues that this is not true because most scientists and other creators are creators because of intrinsic motivatiors - the inner drive and natural tendency to be creative, not because it is financially stimulated in any way. Some research even suggests that financial rewards actually slow down the creativity and production in sme cases.
Martin proposes that the whole economic system and the way of thinking needs to be changed along with the IP law and the system to support the creators must be worked out.
Martin proposes several strategies to move from the old system to the new IP system in the world: 1) Change thinking - the awareness of the pluses and minuses of the IP rights in societies 2) Expose the costs - people must be aware of the indirect costs related to the IP rights - such as lawyers etc. This would change the attitudes towards the IP system 3) Reproduce protected works - to copy the protected materials and exploite them as much as possible. It is not possible to change the whole system if all people obey loyally the old IP law system, he argues 4) Promote non-owned information. This means promoting all the information and materials such as freeware software for example. This software distribution usually involves the obligation not to protect the software in any ways and most often also it is prohibitted to re-sell the open source software packages for a price. 5) Develope principles to give credit for outstanding creative innovations. This means that the scientists or other creatoes who have invented something should be credited as the initial innovators - even if the initial ideas and solutions would be distributed freely afterwwards. It could be argued that this is important also because most often the initial innovators get more exposure and have better possibilities to a wealthy life after the initial invention.
I would take the example of the Ruby on Rails programming framework here. The programming language is currently one of the most popular and fastest growing web programming languages because of its ease of use. On the other hand the guy who invented the language - David Heinemeier Hansson - developed it for his company for the project 37signals.com - this was the first case ever where the Ruby on Rails was used for a web project and this is widely known fact in the world. This is a project management software company where the guy works and where he is one of the owners. Although the language itself is an open source framework - Hansson and his company receive much publicity because of the Ruby on Rails. And this helps to sell the product quite well, in fact 37signals is a multi-million dollar company. If you want to get rich also - you might want to watch how Heinemeier teaches the secret of web business.
He argues that intellectual property rights often slow down innovation and exploits Third World countries. He argues that most of the common arguments for intellectual property do not hold up if examined more carefully. He also claims that big part of the products prices these days comes from the IP rights and these costs are hidden usually - consumers dont know actually how much they pay for IP rights - in case of medicine drugs etc.
One of the common arguments for IP is that the authors depend on the royalties. Martin claims that only a few individuals make money for living from royalties - probably only a coupld of hundred writers who could live from royalties in the USA for example. Most of the rewards go to big companies instead. He proposes that the authors should receive some kind of salary instead of royalties, like most scientists do these days.
The other argument for IP rights is usually the argument that protecting authors would stimulate the creativity in the society as a whole. Martin argues that this is not true because most scientists and other creators are creators because of intrinsic motivatiors - the inner drive and natural tendency to be creative, not because it is financially stimulated in any way. Some research even suggests that financial rewards actually slow down the creativity and production in sme cases.
Martin proposes that the whole economic system and the way of thinking needs to be changed along with the IP law and the system to support the creators must be worked out.
Martin proposes several strategies to move from the old system to the new IP system in the world: 1) Change thinking - the awareness of the pluses and minuses of the IP rights in societies 2) Expose the costs - people must be aware of the indirect costs related to the IP rights - such as lawyers etc. This would change the attitudes towards the IP system 3) Reproduce protected works - to copy the protected materials and exploite them as much as possible. It is not possible to change the whole system if all people obey loyally the old IP law system, he argues 4) Promote non-owned information. This means promoting all the information and materials such as freeware software for example. This software distribution usually involves the obligation not to protect the software in any ways and most often also it is prohibitted to re-sell the open source software packages for a price. 5) Develope principles to give credit for outstanding creative innovations. This means that the scientists or other creatoes who have invented something should be credited as the initial innovators - even if the initial ideas and solutions would be distributed freely afterwwards. It could be argued that this is important also because most often the initial innovators get more exposure and have better possibilities to a wealthy life after the initial invention.
I would take the example of the Ruby on Rails programming framework here. The programming language is currently one of the most popular and fastest growing web programming languages because of its ease of use. On the other hand the guy who invented the language - David Heinemeier Hansson - developed it for his company for the project 37signals.com - this was the first case ever where the Ruby on Rails was used for a web project and this is widely known fact in the world. This is a project management software company where the guy works and where he is one of the owners. Although the language itself is an open source framework - Hansson and his company receive much publicity because of the Ruby on Rails. And this helps to sell the product quite well, in fact 37signals is a multi-million dollar company. If you want to get rich also - you might want to watch how Heinemeier teaches the secret of web business.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Twitter used for hactivism
A good example of hactivism would be the use of Twitter for DDOS attacks against Iran in the summer of 2009. Twitter was used for passing the instructions for the attacks and for spreading the message. There were political demonstrations on the streets in Teheran during that time and the government was arresting people. Twitter´s mainly English-speaking users were organizing the attacks at the same time.
One of the responsers asks on the website though - what is the end goal because the targets of the attacks were the government sites : http://www.leader.ir/
http://president.ir/
http://www.irib.ir/
http://www.iribnews.ir/
One participant asks on the blog site - what is the end goal as he thought that these DDOS attacks prevented the Iranian people also to get access to the correct information and pass information about the events in Iran to the outer world.
One participant praized Twitter for spreading the message - the Twitter messages are short and straight to the point.
This case is similar to Estonia in 2007. In Estonia there were also political mass protests on the streets and the Estonian government sites and other important websites were DDOS attacked furing the mass demonstrations from the opposing country Russia. Although Russian government denied any involvement in the cyber attacks and said that the attacks were carried out by the grassroots movement, it is still widely believed that this Estonian case was one of the first cases of cyber war in the world.
In case of Iran it is believed that no other geovernment was involved in any way in attacking Iranian websites furing the political mass demonstrations. Because it is politically correct to think so.
One of the responsers asks on the website though - what is the end goal because the targets of the attacks were the government sites : http://www.leader.ir/
http://president.ir/
http://www.irib.ir/
http://www.iribnews.ir/
One participant asks on the blog site - what is the end goal as he thought that these DDOS attacks prevented the Iranian people also to get access to the correct information and pass information about the events in Iran to the outer world.
One participant praized Twitter for spreading the message - the Twitter messages are short and straight to the point.
This case is similar to Estonia in 2007. In Estonia there were also political mass protests on the streets and the Estonian government sites and other important websites were DDOS attacked furing the mass demonstrations from the opposing country Russia. Although Russian government denied any involvement in the cyber attacks and said that the attacks were carried out by the grassroots movement, it is still widely believed that this Estonian case was one of the first cases of cyber war in the world.
In case of Iran it is believed that no other geovernment was involved in any way in attacking Iranian websites furing the political mass demonstrations. Because it is politically correct to think so.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Is Google bombing hactivism ?
Hactivism is defined on Wikipedia web site as following: Hacktivism (a portmanteau of hack and activism) is "the nonviolent use of illegal or legally ambiguous digital tools in pursuit of political ends. These tools include web site defacements, redirects, denial-of-service attacks, information theft, web site parodies, virtual sit-ins, virtual sabotage, and software development."
As there are many clear cases of hactivism I would like to propose a somewhat unique case of political campaign , just to try to figure out whether or not this case falls into hacktivism category.
On Sunday 7, 2003 BBC News reported that Google search for the term "miserable failure" gives the president of the United States George W. Bush as the first search result. That was the year when the Iraq war started, lets remember.
Web users entering the words "miserable failure" into the popular search engine were directed to the biography of the president on the White House website. The trick was possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. Thereby the online community or activists can affect the results of Google searches - called "Google bombing" - by linking their sites to a chosen one.
This trick they pulled got worldwide coverage and could be seen some kind of a political protest.
The term hactivism presumes that some illegal activity is carried out or some legally ambigious activity goes on. While this could not be the case - no laws where broken by anyone and no machines were directly hacked, it can be argued that the Google robots were manipulated in a certain way, so that the search engines algorithm needed to be changed eventually.
This W. Bush Google bombing case became the most famous case and remained so until Google changed its engine algorithm so that the Google bombing cases, such as this one organized by George Johnston on the Old Fashion Patriot blog, are harder to organize these days.
As there are many clear cases of hactivism I would like to propose a somewhat unique case of political campaign , just to try to figure out whether or not this case falls into hacktivism category.
On Sunday 7, 2003 BBC News reported that Google search for the term "miserable failure" gives the president of the United States George W. Bush as the first search result. That was the year when the Iraq war started, lets remember.
Web users entering the words "miserable failure" into the popular search engine were directed to the biography of the president on the White House website. The trick was possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words. Thereby the online community or activists can affect the results of Google searches - called "Google bombing" - by linking their sites to a chosen one.
This trick they pulled got worldwide coverage and could be seen some kind of a political protest.
The term hactivism presumes that some illegal activity is carried out or some legally ambigious activity goes on. While this could not be the case - no laws where broken by anyone and no machines were directly hacked, it can be argued that the Google robots were manipulated in a certain way, so that the search engines algorithm needed to be changed eventually.
This W. Bush Google bombing case became the most famous case and remained so until Google changed its engine algorithm so that the Google bombing cases, such as this one organized by George Johnston on the Old Fashion Patriot blog, are harder to organize these days.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Hackers Ethics in todays world - mistrust authority
There most intriguing point in the hackers ethics would be - "Mistrust authority - promote decentralization." As internet usage is becoming more widely used every day and thereby more and more free information is available , the hackers culture spreads all over the world. It can be argued that the greater availability of the free information in the also creates the plurality of opinions and views. It also moves the centre of political discussion away from the old parliament builgings to the social networks and web forums. This is also understood by the servicemen of authority - such as the CIA in the United States. Recently it was announced that they would start monitoring social networks with their special software - to check what is being discussed, organized etc.
It also means that there is a lot more work to do for the government institutions due to the unpredictability of the public discourse. And this can be quite painful for the old establishment. It reminds me the speech of US senator from the well- known American bankng and oil dynasty Jay Rockefeller. He recently made a speech where he illustrated the terrible dangers of the internet - security threats among others, and asked whether or not it was a good idea to invent the internet after all. See here . It could be therefore a sign that the internet, free information and hackers culture is already shaking the foundations of the old establishment and new rules for the competition are being set.
So hackers work should be concentrated now on preserving the already achieved improvements and not letting the authorities taking their power back. The issues like internet privacy, net neutrality and the Big Brother should be the concern of every hacker these days as there are signs that not everyone likes the hackers culture.
It also means that there is a lot more work to do for the government institutions due to the unpredictability of the public discourse. And this can be quite painful for the old establishment. It reminds me the speech of US senator from the well- known American bankng and oil dynasty Jay Rockefeller. He recently made a speech where he illustrated the terrible dangers of the internet - security threats among others, and asked whether or not it was a good idea to invent the internet after all. See here . It could be therefore a sign that the internet, free information and hackers culture is already shaking the foundations of the old establishment and new rules for the competition are being set.
So hackers work should be concentrated now on preserving the already achieved improvements and not letting the authorities taking their power back. The issues like internet privacy, net neutrality and the Big Brother should be the concern of every hacker these days as there are signs that not everyone likes the hackers culture.
Jargon File and the "back door"
The term that I found most intriguing on the Jargon File dictionary was the simple term "back door". The term itself is defined as following:
"Back door - a hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. trap door; may also be called a wormhole. See also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb."
The term is intriguing in several ways. At first I did not think that the term was invented by hackers and I thought the term was invented by the mainstream IT industry as it is so commonly used. On the other hand - after thinking about it - who else could have coined the term better than the hackers themselves. The term is also intruiging in the sense that is directly related to the main topic of the course - ethics and law as in fact the whole IT ethics and law is in big part related to back doors. Is it ethical to create back doors , what to do if you have discovered the back door in someones system ? I would be interested to study this field more thoroughly - the ethics and law of "back doors".
"Back door - a hole in the security of a system deliberately left in place by designers or maintainers. The motivation for such holes is not always sinister; some operating systems, for example, come out of the box with privileged accounts intended for use by field service technicians or the vendor's maintenance programmers. Syn. trap door; may also be called a wormhole. See also iron box, cracker, worm, logic bomb."
The term is intriguing in several ways. At first I did not think that the term was invented by hackers and I thought the term was invented by the mainstream IT industry as it is so commonly used. On the other hand - after thinking about it - who else could have coined the term better than the hackers themselves. The term is also intruiging in the sense that is directly related to the main topic of the course - ethics and law as in fact the whole IT ethics and law is in big part related to back doors. Is it ethical to create back doors , what to do if you have discovered the back door in someones system ? I would be interested to study this field more thoroughly - the ethics and law of "back doors".
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