Weiterhin sind wir eine Stadt näher an der Einführung eines Informationsfreiheitsgesetzes in Bayern, eines der wenigen Bundesländer ohne ein solches Gesetz.

Ich freue mich einfach, wie einfach unsere Demokratie manchmal funktioniert und man mit einem simplen Antrag bei der Bürgerversammlung im März jetzt eine Informationsfreiheitssatzung hat.

Stellt Doch auch einfach mal einen Antrag auf die Einführung einer Informationsfreiheitssatzung. Ein Brief mit 5 Zeilen + ein paar Internetlinks reicht.

Mehr Infos: www.informationsfreiheit.org

Everything is a Remix from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.

Sebastian Frankenberger - Photo: chrisglub - CC-BY-SA

On friday as part of the ongoing series of political talks by the “Piratenpartei Bayern” I watched the presentation about “Volksbegehren”, referendums, by Sebastian Frankenberger.

Frankenberger is known in Bavaria for the referendum about “Nichtraucherschutz” banning smokers from pubs and restaurants. It is one of the few successful referendums in Bavaria and was one of the most controversial and emotional issues in Bavaria last year. But leaving pro and contra smoking behind us Frankenberger gave some very good insights in the organization of referendums.

Sebastian himself is since November 2010 the chairman of the German political party ÖDP, a kind of conservative Greens, and supports as a consultant referendums in Berlin, Hamburg and Austria. He is also a member of ” Mehr Demokratie e.V.”, a group trying to improve the democratic processes in Germany.

First of all a referendum is about the amendment of a specific law. Therefore there needs to be the amendment and a justification of the amendment written down in the referendum. Referendums in Bavaria have three stages:

1. “Antrag auf ein Volksbegehren” – The initiators of the referendum have to collect 25.000 signatures of people entitled to vote (time span: 2 years) to get the process started.
2. “Volksbegehren” – In the second stage of the referendum 10% of all people entitled to vote have to sign for the referendum in their respective city halls (time span: 14 days). The Bavarian parliament can accept the amendment, deem it unlawful or has to initiate the third stage of the referendum:
3. “Volksentscheid” – The people have to decide about the amendment themselves – at least 25% of all entitled citizens have to vote.

In Bavaria 18 referendums were approved, 7 of these reached the 10% quorum. Of these 7 referendums 3 were successful. The most difficult part of the process is to reach the 10% signatures, representing in Bavaria about 1 million people. The time span of 14 days makes this very hard, therefore the focus of the initiators has to be on this stage. The non-smoking referendum had 13.9% signatures.

Several key points seem to be important for a successful referendum:

• The topic of the referendum should be easy to understand and emotional to activate the people. Only these topics have a chance to overcome the 10% hurdle.
• A strong core team (3 – 8 people) is necessary to  coordinate the efforts.
• This team needs to establish a strategy.
• A very important part of the work is to have very good press relations. Especially during the 2. stage the press has to report about the referendum the whole 14 days. A professional press relations officer seems the way to go.
• In every county there need to be people to further the referendum by info booths, local press relations, etc.
• To get the necessary manpower and funds an alliance with other interest groups and parties is key at least after the initial 25.000 signatures. The broader the alliance, especially with NGOs and nonpolitical entities, the more information about the referendum can be dissipated to the people.
• A referendum seems to cost at least 200.000 Euros, realistically half a million Euros. Therefore fundraising is another key element and has to be done during the whole process. Most of the funds will come from the members of the alliance, although parties seem to be sticky with their money and during elections do not count on them.

All in all a referendum is an undertaking spanning several years and binding quite a bit of manpower and resources. The best way to a successful referendum seems to be to first attach yourself to a referendum initiated by an experienced group and learn by doing it. But initiating a referendum will be a great experience and learning opportunity regardless the outcome.

More information (in German) and consultants can be found here: http://bayern.mehr-demokratie.de/bayern_volksbegehren.html

Always a great laugh: http://mimiandeunice.com/ by Nina Paley

The idea that works are produced by the creator alone without influences from the outside world and therefore there is a livelong right to the works (even after death) is in my opinion wrong. Creation of works always happens in context with society, with experiences and learning through the society. Society enables the creator to create his work. Therefore I present some ideas for copyright reform:

1. Copyright as Opt-In

First of all copyright should be opt-in and not a default. Everybody who wants to have copyright protection should have to seek it actively. Works who are not under the stewardship of the creator or copyright holder therefore can go easily into the public domain easing the problem of orphaned works, works no one claims anymore but today are still under copyright. Also copyright as opt-in gives the creator a choice to donate his work to society, the public domain, or protect it through copyright and e.g. using Creative Commons licences.

2. Copyright Registration

Establishing copyright to works should be done by the creator on a central webpage. This guarantees a onestop-shop for people seeking to use and licence works. They can see if the work is copyrighted and by whom. Or that it is not . Public Domain works could be registered as public domain in a community effort so producing an extensive database of the worlds creative works. This also would remedy a bit the problem of people, who might register copyright wrongly for works not their own.

Another point should be the possibility to deregister copyrighted works or change the status of the work e.g. to public domain. Such changes could happen automatically for works slipping out of the time span of copyright duration.

3. Copyright Duration

For me a key to copyright reform is copyright duration. Especially the duration should not be connected to the life or death of the creator but be standard periods of years after publication. This would be more just for the creator and easier to establish if a work is still under copyright.

Another point is that the total span of copyright should be divided in several smaller periods. With the end of every period the copyright has to be renewed or the work will become public domain. This again protects society from the problem of orphaned works.

An example would be spans of 10 years and the possibility to renew it for 5 times. The total span of copyright protection would then be 50 years. This for me should be amble time to make a profit from creative works. Most creative works make most of its profits in the first years after publication. And after 50 years it should really be time for the creator to honor is part of the copyright contract and give society his works.

Often it is said the long duration of copyright protection encourages creativity. But does it? One question in a presentation by Cory Doctorow boils it down: We have 70 years copyright protection, do you think a prolongation to 90 years will encourage John Lennon to write a new song?

With the advent of the internet the topography of creative works and copyright changed dramatically. Copying works became easy, cheap and copies have the same quality as the original, in the case of digital rights management copies are even better than the original. Famous are music sharing through peer-to-peer networks and the lawsuits resulting out of this practice. Filesharing became the ghost hunting the content industry and forevermore it tries to contain it. Legislative efforts like the DMCA in the USA try to criminalize and contemn copying. Instead of thinking about new business models the industry wants to cement their old business models into law.

Following trends can be recognized:

• Closed Systems and Digital Rights Management

Closed systems with digital rights management make the buyer of ebooks not the owner of a book anymore, but only a licensee.  Normal activities like lending books to friends or reselling it are restricted. There is a reason why the iPad and iTunes are hyped in the press. They represent such a walled garden where content providers can control every aspect of their content distribution.

• 3-Strikes-Rule

In many new laws some kind of the 3-strikes-rule will be implemented. The rule enables content providers to let the ISPs cut the internet connection of people after 3 accusations of copyright infringement. This means first the classic and very important juridical principle of presumption of innocence is ignored. It is enough to accuse someone of copyright infringement. There is no need anymore for a conviction. The second point is that the internet is today very much ingrained in our daily life and often very important for success in personal, social and especially professional life. The 3-strikes-rule could cut people off from their livelihood much to easy. Therefore internet access should need a special form of protection.

• Extending Copyright to new Industries

Industries beside the traditional content industries try to establish copyright protection for their works. Examples are the fashion industry and also dance and yoga, where people try to protect movements thousands of years old. Funnily the fashion industry is one of the most thriving and innovative industries in the world without copyright protection.

• Restricting Fair Use and Right to a Private Copy

Fair Use in the States allows people to use copyrighted material in new works, especially in parody. In Germany people were/are allowed to make a copy of copyrighted works e.g. for data security reasons or to give it to friends. Digital rights management restricts these possibilities. It is not allowed to circumvent these technical restrictions and therefore fair use and private copying are hindered or become even illegal.

• Using Copyright to restrict Freedom of Expression or Free Speech (USA)

Organisations and especially politicians sometimes try to hinder free speech through copyright claims, clearly a misuse of the copyright idea. This  restricts open discussion and the expression of opinion and therefore endangers our democratic processes.

• Protection of Business Models by Law

In Germany media outlets like newspapers are clamoring for a “Leistungsschutzrecht” – right to protection of their services. People should pay for the protection of the media business models and accept monopoly-like structures instead of letting the market do its job.

On the other hand we have a movement of different groups, NGOs and parties to strengthen consumer and also author rights and curbing the works of the content industry to focus again more on the benefits of the society and not on the bottom lines of only a few companies. I will get into this trend on a later date.

I collected some examples of the new wave of copyright legislation for the internet. The source are mainly the respective Wikipedia-articles also linked.

International – ACTA – Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

ACTA is a proposed plurilateral agreement to establish international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. ACTA includes counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement on the Internet. There are several problems with the agreement:

• ACTA mixes counterfeiting, medicines and copyright infringement, topics that actually should be negotiated separately. Counterfeiting often is made possible by criminal organizations, generic medicines on the other hand provide poor states and their people with a possibility to fight deceases like AIDS and online copyright infringement often is not done by professional hardened criminals but by normal people, therefore are in need of a different set of rules. Also infringement is not counterfeiting nor stealing .
• ACTA is formulated not in already existing international bodies like WIPO, but outside of these.
• ACTA is shrouded in secrecy. Only certain stakeholders (mainly governments and lobbyists from content industry and other businesses) take part in the negotiations. Stakeholders like consumer organisations and other NGOs are not allowed at the table. The drafts of ACTA only become public by leaks and are not readily published.
• The process of the negotiations and the form how ACTA will be installed are missing democratic functions. There is no real chance for the people to influence the negotiations, the negotiators more often than not are from no elected institution.

A treaty negotiated like ACTA should not be able to be implemented in national law. But that is what the ACTA negotiators of course want from the treaty.

France – HADOPI

HADOPI – “Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Œuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet” is a french law and also established through the law a government agency. “The agency essentially to control that the internet subscribers screen their Internet connections in order to prevent the exchange of copyrighted material without prior agreement from the copyright holders (Art. L. 336-3 of the bill).”

HADOPI is interesting because it establishes a form of the 3-strike rule in France.

1. First an email to the connection owner with the claim by the copyright holders is sent and the connection will be monitored by the ISP (Internet Service Provider).
2. If in a timeframe of 6 months another infringement is suspected by copyright holders, ISP or HADOPI a letter is sent as a warning similar to the email.
3. If in the year after receiving the letter another accusations is registered the ISP is required to disconnect the internet connection from 2 to 12 month. The connection owner comes on a blacklist and third party ISPs are not allowed to provide internet to the accused. Billing will not be interrupted and termination fees have to be paid by the accused.
4. Most interestingly there is no chance for the accused to go to court for the first two steps and the last step is not able to be stopped by judicial recourse. The charge of the proof is on the accused. This clearly defies the basic principle of presumption of innocence, not guilty until proven guilty.

UK – Digital Economy Act 2010

In June the United Kingdom put the Digital Economy Act 2010 in force. Not as strict as HADOPI in France it also establishes the possibility to in the future cut internet connections without convictions.

In Germany the 3. Urheberrechtskorb, the third copyright basket, is discussed and might install similar provisions against copyright. More about this in an extra article after a bit of research.

I learned that artists do not make presentations but perform art, hiding the message in their art. I licked it a lot. It was totally different from normal presentations. There was a audiovisual information overflow. But most importantly zombies, cyborgs and other nerdy stuff. Of the three presenters only the last one had a clear message, but he was an IT-guy, not an artist per se. That said I would say, I liked this new experience and would recommend such an art-presentation to everyone.

In the short discussion afterwards I distilled some key questions from the audience:

• How can I earn money in the new world?
• How will art be defined if everybody can make art and change art? Will there be great art anymore?

And artists can also be conservative. They may seem progressive and antiestablishment but the same they have their own conservatism. At least the money question I am planning to answer sometime.

www.CoPirates.org

Just come and dance!

Dance – Technology – Experimentation

When? 22 + 23 October – 20.30h

Where? Muffathalle – Munich – Internet

All info on www.copirates.org