Communications on copyright Chairs: Raquel Xalabarder. Professor of Intellectual Property. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Copyright infringing content available online. Federica Casarosa, European University Institute, Department of Law, Florence (Italy)
There are new actors that have entered the supply chain: citizens/users and intermediaries; new models for content distribution; an increased role for ISP: they collect content from users, they deliver content online; there are blurring boundaries from the different actors, etc.
ISP liability is a sine-qua-non condition for copyright infringement. Thus, ISP have to be noticed of content infringing copyright.
In France, the notice is a set of specific items defined by law, while in Italy it is a case-by-case evaluation of sufficient level of detail in order to recognise the infringing content.
As per monitoring obligations, in France there is an obligation to monitor further infringements with the collaboration of copyright owners; while in Italy there is no ex ante filtering activity (also in case of previous notice on similar content).
There is a crucial difference in the definition of what a hosting provider is between France and Italy. While in Italy there is a distinction between an active and a passive host, in France there is no such a distinction.
Thus, there is a need for harmonization at the European level.
Emulation is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery: Retro Videogames, ROM Distribution and Copyright. Benjamin Farrand, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law, The University of Strathclyde (UK).
What is the balance from accessing copyrighted works and the right of access to cultural works.
In consoles, you need some hardware to be able to run a specific software. Emulators get rid of this necessity, by making it possible to use software (the emulator) instead of the hardware (the console). This, indeed, also enables the copy of ROM files aside from cartridges. But, is it legal to create emulators themselves?
Usually, reverse engineering (the process behind the creation of emulators) is legal, but the industry claims that emulators damage their sales/revenues. A criticism against this industry claim is that emulators usually come very much later than consoles, and thus only release old games that do not really compete with the current ones. On the other hand, newer consoles do not usually feature legacy games as they are not perceived as being economically viable or profitable, but they do appear on emulators.
Should thus videogames be considered cultural heritage/ public domain after 15-20 years? Should we consider a ‘use it or lose it’ approach to videogames?
The Digital Cloud Recorder: Modern VCR or New Intermediary? Robin Kerremans, consultant with Deloitte in Diegem, Brussels (Belgium); Geert Somers, Lawyer, Partner at time.lex, (Brussels), Affiliated Researcher ICRI-KULeuven (Belgium).
We have moved from the video-cassette recorder (VCR), to digital recorders and, now, to digital cloud recorders (DCR): there are no more boundaries of time that you can record, things you can record at the same time, disk space, etc. They normally provide format shifting, screen shifting, time shifting, live streaming, etc.
What is the legal status of the copy made by a DCR? Can we way that it is the private copy you would have done with a VCR? Is it the same concept of ‘reproduction’ in the sense of Belgian copyright law? According to law, they access legally disclosed source and audiovisual content, so DCR and VCR so far are the same thing. Notwithstanding, copies have to be made within the family circle and used therein. The question being: who is actually making the copy in the cloud, who is the ‘copier’? There surely is a distinction between who is the technical copier and who is the maker of the copy.
Besides, in Belgium exceptions to personal copies include “any medium”, which includes “the cloud”.
The three step (advertising, time of storage, remuneration) is somewhat unclear. Is the copy a temporary technical copy? Is stream-back public communication?
Collective Licensing of On Line Music and the Recent Initiatives in the EU. Enrico Bonadio, Lecturer in IP law – City University London (UK).
Collective licensing is a system under which copyright holders authorise collecting societies (CS) to license their copyright to users: CS grant users licenses covering foreign repertoires, there are reciprocal representation agreements, multi-repertoire licenses (but not multi-territorial licenses, as there sometimes are territorial restrictions as stated in specific clauses), etc.
The traditional licensing system requires authorizations for each country where music is to be licensed, especially in a changing environment where supports are multiple and new ones appearing every now and then.
Maybe a EU-wide licensing would provide successful in making things easier for everyone. Some criticism arises in the fact that it may still be costly for certain commercial users that still require an extended repertoire, that multi-repertoire blanket licences may still have “market appeal”, that there would be a loss of the usual single point of reference, and, somehow, there might be a “repertoire fragmentation”. On the other hand, there could be a possible “race to the bottom”, a detriment to right holders, low-quality management of their works, and, sometimes, even low remuneration.
Some initiatives: CELAS initiative 2007 (Centralised European Licensing and Administrative Service), Pan-European Digital Licensing Initiative (PEDL) 2006, ARMONIA Initiative 2007.
Cloud-Based cyberlocker services for music: other incoming battles in the endless war between copyright and technology? Aura Bertoni, Research Fellow in Intellectual Property Law, Bocconi University (Italy); Maria Lillà Montagnani, Assistant Professor of Commercial Law, Bocconi University (Italy).
What changes are taking place in online music distribution with the advent of cloud computing?
A first problem arises with the very same definition of cloud computing, as it changes depending on what the point of view (technological, economical, etc.) is and what kind of computing services are we looking at (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS). Cloud computing is more an economic model than a specific technology.
iTunes, Spotify or Google’s Music Beta are different initiatives of cloud computing for music, and they already represent an evolution from the former to the latter: the former contemplates consumption as happening offline, while Spotify and Google’s Music contemplate online consumption of music, the latter with an ‘individual public cloud’, very different to Spotify’s.
Spotify is a cloud-based music service; Google Music is a music locker service (MLS) requiring every user to upload every song; MP3tunes is an MLS with single storage method that requires requiring to upload only songs not included in its library; last, iCloud is another MLS with single storage method and songs upgrade.
We have shifted from device-centric to information-centric music distribution.
We have thus to modernise copyright law to accommodate the new reality of music distribution: from the right to exclude to the right to have a fair remuneration; reforming the private copy regulation (what is a digital copy?); defining clear rules for online intermediary liability.
When we speak about the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on Education, there are two main approaches that we can follow.
The micro-level approach deals with the impact of ICTs on learning processes and/or the different components of a learning process. The point in the micro-level approach is to tell what the impact will be on how things work and howshould or will they change. The micro-level is about evolutions.
The macro-level approach puts the stress on the system and its foundations. The point in the macro-level approach is to tell what the impact will be on what things work into that system and why. and which will be the new foundations upon to which build a new system. The macro-level is about revolutions.
See, for instance, the following examples, picked at random and with no aim of comprehensiveness:
Item
Micro-level approach Evolution
Macro-level approach Revolution
Teacher
How can the teacher use an interactive whiteboard to support lecturing?
What is the role of the teacher? A mentor? An instructional designer?
Who is the teacher? Who is an expert?
Is there a need for a teacher?
Student
What is the use of laptops when attending classes or doing homework?
What is a student? Does the dychotomy student-worker still apply?
Will ICTs empower people so that they can master their own learning processes?
Textbook
What will be the e-book like? Can it be interactive? Searchable?
Is there any need for a textbook?
How can we turn any information resorce into a learning resource?
Who should design learning resources? What is the role of publishers in this (new) scenario (if any)?
Classroom
Can we use (or ban) wi-fi in the classroom? For what purposes?
Will meeting physical spaces become irrelevant in a no-time- and no-space-boundaries digital environment?
What is the added value of physical gatherings?
Is there a reason to keep thinking in terms of classmates and cohorts?
Assessment
What is the best way to apply self-correcting surveys for assessment?
Do we need assessment or certification?
Is peer-to-peer assessment possible?
Can we redefine reputation and authority in an open Knowledge Society?
Syllabus
Should the syllabus self-adapt according to performance of the student?
Just-in-case or just-in-time learning?
Can we unstructure learning?
Both approaches are worth being followed. Most times, there will be no revolution without a well paced set of little evolutions (contradictory as this may sound), and evolutions may eventually lead to sheer revolution when all added up. But. But when a revolution is — a digital revolution, as it now seems to be — clearly coming up in the horizon, time is of the essence: the debates on the evolutions that might be should give way to the debates on the revolutions that may or very likely will be.
Two reflections or corollaries arise from the former statement.
The first one is that we have to be able to tell evolutions from revolutions. Statement the like of tablets — or laptops or interactive whiteboards or e-books or iBooks or you-name-it — are going to revolutionize Education are very likely to be either misleading or plain wrong. At least in the way they are usually stated or framed. All the aforementioned examples-in-the-classroom belong to the world if evolution, of innovation: they improve or even radically change the way we do some things, but not things themselves. In other words, tablets may revolutionize lecturing and, as such, make a huge contribution to the evolution of Education. But not revolutionize education.
The second one is that if a revolution in Education is about to come — as many people see sings of it, and even work towards it — we certainly should put the focus on systemic changes and not in changes within the system. In other words, we should analyse how evolutions relate to or can contribute to a deep revolution, instead of focusing on evolutions themselves.
It is just normal that, as educators, we feel the urge to deal with the present, with solving the impact of ICTs in our daily lives inside our classrooms. But I believe we should put more effort in looking ahead in the future, in making our evolutions shift towards the path of the systemic change and not in parallel or diverting from it.
During the III European Conference on Information Technology in Education and Society: A Critical Insight (TIES2012) I felt like there was much concern on the micro vision of ICTs in education and just a little bit on the macro side of things. And I sometimes wondered whether that was thinking on your pedicure before having your leg amputated — and, by the way, not having a plan for the upcoming haemorrhage.
Net neutrality struggle and new movements in the digital era Ismael Peña-López (chair), Txarlie (Hacktivistas.net), Carlos Sánchez Almeida (Bufet Almeida), Gala Pin (X.net)
Txarlie
Hacktivism works as a free software project: it collects information, documents the processes and implements actions. The idea is avoiding reinventing the wheel but implementing the same ideas and processes in other social projects — in this specific case, the Spanish Ley Sinde.
Each revolution has its tool. The Protestant Reformation cannot be understood without the printing press, the soviet revolution without fliers and posters, and the 1960s protests without the television.
The Internet is thus the tool of the 15M movement, and not only the Internet as a device, but also as a philosophy, as an architecture, with distributed power, policentric. Indeed, the 15M movement is not a protest without leadership, but, on the contrary, it is a protest with multiple leaders, more leaders than ever.
When it comes to Net Neutrality, the idea is do not wait until the Net is not neutral, but to actually prevent its enclosure. And there is indeed an urgent need to digitally empower people, so that there is no need to prevent the stealing of liberties, freedom instead of having to recover it.
Facebook is becoming less of a social networking site, of a democracy site, and more of a shopping mall. That is why activists are constantly moving from one platform to another one. This is not happening, though, with Twitter, that is keeping its horizontal, totally flat essence.
It is interesting to stress the fact that often people use some applications for their own purposes, and purposes that were not foreseen by the owners. And sometimes these new usages do confront the current law and thus the owner of the tool either takes sides with the activists or against them, but can no more remain neutral.
It is not a crisis, it is the system. The only difference is that we are now better informed on what is happening. Let us, so, take the chance to make an informed change.
Carlos Sanchez Almeida
Sometimes it is possible to define common rules for a collective, but sometimes it is not. And sometimes it is the very design of a system the one that has its own rules embedded in its architecture. That is happening on the Internet, that was designed in a way that included its functioning rules.
When a new territory is conquered, the first thing is imposing one’s will, the second one is to try and justify it morally, and last comes the making of rules to accommodate the new reality. The conquest of (or attempt to conquer) the Internet is no different in its aims… even if we have not yet gone through the first stage.
But as the Internet is resisting the siege, the power is trying to come through the back door and impose new rules. But the way these rules are legitimated is through media and by changing people’s minds. Thus, the centre of the power are media. What tools do we have to achieve that?
The problem with the Internet is that there are as many tools as initiatives, and as much initiatives as people.
What happened with the Spanish Ley Sinde is that it indirectly and unwillingly contributed in clustering all the different initiatives fighting for different liberties, ending up in a unique voice that colluded against the attack to social rights.
Once out of the narrowness of Internet-focussed fights, it is now the time for the assault to the very fundamentals of power: money and the media.
Gala Pin
The attacks against the Internet are not attacks against a technology, but against civil liberties like the freedom of expression, the freedom of thought, etc.
On the other hand, promoting the changes that the new technologies now enable does not necessarily goes against some private interests (e.g. the artists’). On the contrary, it quite often defends those interests, although most times requires a redefinition of how things are made.
Hacking is another type of civil disobedience, and especially effective one in this new territory that is the Internet. Hacking plus collective intelligence is certainly a very powerful combination to resist the attacks to the Net.
Discussion
Carlos Sánchez Almeida: there is a high probability that cybercrime will increasingly be on the papers, as it will be the alibi that the power will use to be able to be “legitimate” in attacking the Internet. The first aggression will be against the place where we met to prepare our revolutions.
Q: on the one hand we picture the power as a very smart institution and, on the other hand, we also picture the power as completely clueless. Isn’t that a contradiction? Txarlie: it’s probably both. It is true that the power understands the Internet as a whole, looking at its possibilities and the powers it challenges; but it is also true that its forms are mostly unknown, partly because the Net is so flexible that it is very difficult to predict in its next action. The collective intelligence moves in the boundaries and thus circumvents the power. The power understands its potential, but not its boundaries. Carlos Sánchez Almeida: one of the reasons the governments have attacked P2P networks — when they kept people quite and numb at home — is because they are not the ones in power: the power is financial and the corporations (who own what is exchanged in P2P networks).
Q: so, what’s the next step? Carlos Sánchez Almeida: we need a democracy; a new and reformed one, but a democracy. And this new democracy must be more transparent and, over all, more accountable. In the case of Spain, bipartidism should be broken by voting the smaller parties.
Mayo Fuster: why has not the 15M and other activisms taken more into account the tradition of the commons, of cooperatives, etc.? Txarlie: partly this has been due to the fact that it was preferable to begin from scratch, to avoid predefined mindsets, to promote trial and error, to experiment. The idea was that any solution had to come from the debate within the 15M itself to be legitimate.
Mayo Fuster: what is going to happen after the 15M with the Internet? will it become a 11S of the Internet? Gala Pin: We are living a dire crisis while which there has been poor or any proposal at all to improve people’s lives. The 15M has been, in many ways, the only thing that has happened to directly address the crisis. Thus, it is not a only movement of protest, but the expression of a general feeling of a real need of change.
Mayo Fuster: how does power works inside the 15M? Carlos Sánchez Almeida: there is no power in the 15M movement, the power is outside. The 15M is a network of networks, with their own programme, working autonomously. Thus, there is no such thing as power in the 15M movement, which is but a mere platform. The Indignants Movement cannot be defined in terms of power, of structure, of hierarchy. The movement must not provide answers, but communication channels, build agorae where debate can take place.
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Civil Society and Politics transformation in the Internet Age (2011)
This year, the “other” blog SociedadRed became quite important: international politics, in general, and Spanish politics, in particular, caught my attention powerfully and I thus spent a lot of time thinking out loud on topics like the Spanish Indignants Movement.
On the other hand, Twitter established itself as an essential way to get information, to communicate and to share with others. That was especially true during events and for discussing issues on real time, like the aforementioned politics.
Indeed, most traffic comes now from Google searches and Twitter conversations, and you visitors come looking for three different things: resources on ICT4D, my rants in Spanish on the Information Society and related issues, and personal/professional information about me, like who I am, what do I do, or what have I done.
That, and the increasing amount of content gathered behind these virtual walls, made me think that a thorough redesign of the project was definitely due. And we are working on it. More information about that, hopefully soon.
By the way, for those who do not know yet and care about it, I became a father on September 4th of a beautiful Muriel. That is a project and, as we say in Spanish, the rest is nonsense.
Ferran Ruiz Tarragó, Expert in and author of books on ICT and Education, President of the Education Council of Catalonia, Spain The Usual Suspects? Teachers, Their Challenges and Development
Are there any “usual suspects” that are responsible of the ills of education?
Usually, teachers are suspects of:
School failure, low employability and youth poor cultural level.
Countries’ por results in comparative studies (e.g. PISA).
Incivic and violent behaviour of some youth.
The feeble success of reform and innovation policies.
Not working hard enough while looking to meet their convenience.
But, what are the hard facts about education?
Teachers belong to a professional bureaucracy:
Rules and regulations.
Knowledge-based division of labour.
Standarization of the activity.
Professional autonomy.
Almost flat authority structure.
formal access to the profession.
And this bureaucracy is set to provide a public service in great demand: education. But this bureaucracy system is very inflexible when it comes to adapting to new times and innovating. Change comes slowly and painfully Henry Mintzberg.
In 1893, Charles Eliot and his team made up the US secondary school curriculum subjects, which, with minor changes, still applied today in most places in the world. But the world has certainly changed in the last 120 years. So, does this curriculum makes sense any more?
Peter Senge in Schools That Learn (2000) fragmented academic subjects transform us in master reductionists, instead of going to school and being able to develop ourselves by working in the things that matter to us.
Andreas Shcleicher, in the Lisbon Council Policy Brief (2006) states that education is no more a place to share and build knowledge: Education is far from being a knowledge industry as it doesn’t transform according to knowledge of its practices.
And the worst part of it is that private sector interests are redefining what we understand by education, by performance, by excellence, by efficiency. A redefinition where “measuring” becomes of greatest importance. Measuring that inevitably leads towards standardization and goal setting based on those standards. Raising the scores becomes the total priority. And, according to Campbell (Campbell’s Law, 1976), The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
If a business reflects its manager (Ohmae, THe mind of the strategist, 1982), then the usual suspects of the educational system might not be their teachers, but their managers and administrators, and the policy-makers that put them there. The business models based on XXIth century ‘managerial capitalism’ have reached the limits of their adaptive range, Shoshana Zuboff (Creating value in the age of distributed capitalism, 2010). And the same is happening in education, that has been managed as a firm and cannot adapt to new times any more. A new logic based on the individual is now needed.
Onora O’Neill The real focus is on performance indicators for ease of measurement and control (A question of trust, 2002).
Challenges:
Teachers should be aware that they are requested to be excellent in an outdated system. Must be highly committed in spite of conditions that preclude excellence. Managers & decision-makers should make deep change possible. We have to confront the myth of the extraordinary teacher.
Teachers should widen the scope of their professional mission regarding students. Centre on youth development, community and sense of purpose, not just subject-matter instruction. Have to prepare students for the future, not for the past. Engage in deep and massive research and development.
Teachers should fight for intelligent accountability. Confront publicly the illusion that numbers never lie. Engage collectively on improving compete3ncy-base assessment of student learning. Put forward proposals for comprehensive and equilibrated accountability of their own work.
Discussion
Edem Adubra: is there a role for planning education while not interfering with teachers’ independence? Ruiz Tarragó: it surely is about being humble and willing to work together. If policy-makers aim at imposing their points of view, then there is no way on both planning and keeping independence. But it the processes are co-built by different stakeholders of the educational system, and bases on what is really an effective possibility, then changes can be made, the system can evolve and notwithstanding disruptions can be avoided and consensus reached.
