Sin's Notebook

Telecoms package and HADOPI

Just a thought here.. Not being a lawyer, but the French HADOPI law includes something called ordonnance pénale, which is basically an automated court, with the accused having no chance to defend her or himself. It was added, since France’s Constitutional Court declared the first version (no legal instance) unconstitutional.

However, with the new text in the Telecom package combined with the ordonnance pénale means that each case must be heard, and the “automatic process” (the only viable option economically at the scale Sarkozy wants it to be handled) has to be abolished?

Article 1.3a in the Telecoms Package states that:

Accordingly, these measures may only be taken with due respect for the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to privacy. A prior fair and impartial procedure shall be guaranteed, including the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned

If so, France is looking at a hefty cost in administration every time a media company points finger at a person…

We are under attack...

Nazi Leader Herman Göring, interviewed by Gustave Gilbert during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg trails, 1946 April 18, quoted in Gilbert’s book, Nuremberg Diary:

Göring, “Naturally the common people don’t want war… but it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.”

Gilbert: “There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

Göring: “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the biding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Those words…

“All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism.”

Terrorists, paedophiles, pirates…

We are under attack…

Virtual Faces and Opportunities

My latest tweet just made me think of something.

Thank you, Second Life, for giving me a virtual mask for my private self.

If you work a lot online, and are active online in forums, groups and so on, it is usually not a problem if your main interests are grill parties with your neighbours and your political opinions belong to the moderately conservative.
You just trot along, assuming your opinions are some kind of norm, which they actually may be, and tweet about heavy taxes, lazy people on the dole or whatever.

However, if you may be slightly more libertarian, radical, green, anarchistic, autonomous, or whatever, the simple fact is that sometimes it’s slightly more convenient if your name isn’t to appear as the TAZ ideologist of the day on top of the Google hit list.
(For more info on TAZ, look for Hakim Bey on Wikipedia, or something).

Am I ashamed of my opinions? Of course not. Do I try to hide them? Never. Actually, they are part of why I work with what I do, even if I get my hands sullied in the vats of capitalism.
But I’ve never been one demanding to build barricades in my customers’ receptions when I arrive.

More conservative people speak with an assumption that their point of view is perfectly natural. You can see them probably in their status updates on Facebook or tweets: “More handouts from the Labour again to single mums and higher taxes for us decent, hard-working, non-lazy people”.
Me, I simply assumed that stance myself, years ago. Stance, mind you, not opinions. I know what I say is an opinion, and relative, but I am not trying to explain, nor excuse a single opinion of mine. Swedish Tories (Moderaterna) are concrete arseholes (betonghäckar) that have betrayed every single sentence of “liberty and choice for the individual!” by voting for laws that would give old Joe Stalin a hard on and fourscore of wet dreams.
I voted on the Pirate party this election, and now we have a representative in the European parliament. So far, I think Christian is doing a great job, being active, and blogging, using the net to have a dialogue with his voters and adding at least as much as he can, to the transparency of the EP (much to the chagrin of some MEPs that prefer a more opaque “democracy”, it seems).

The virtual face of Sin Trenton allows me simply to for now separate my professional self (not-Sin Trenton) and my private self.
Of course, more than one of my followers have a professional relation with me and know my real name.

But that I am a libertarian socialist, anarcho-taoist, green humanist, pro-choice (meaning I am 100% pro abortion rights), pro-choice (meaning I am pro 100% legal rights for same sex relation), pirate party voter, etc, etc, is something those of you just have to put up with.

However, Sin Trenton originates from Second Life.
But I think we’ve moved on in different ways, you to cater the tastes of suburbanistas of certain income brackets, rather than a possible virtual world with a global perspective and me, in a multichannel, ongoing conversation about the nature of societies and our options. Or maybe you never were there, maybe it was only my original infatuation with the possibilities a virtual world of this kind offered.

I’m popping ‘inworld’ occasionally, to communicate with friends and people or to tinker and relax for a moment. But the virtual world of Second Life per se is not where my passion and initiatives lie. I find more ‘force and initiative’, ‘revolution’, if you want, on Twitter or IRC even.
Second Life is in the pure technological perspective not a new frontier, but a commercial product, no matter how appealing the texture surface.

So thank you, Second Life the virtual world software,
for the virtual face I wear.

I see you around.

SMTP in Webmail (esp GMail)?

When you send email via any email client, your computer’s Internet address is included in the message headers for all recipients to see, right? But I have heard that this only goes for email clients, not webmail. Does anyone know how it is with webmail, and especially Gmail? Does anyone know what traffic data is conveyed?

You know what? Reading the blog posts from tne Swedish Pirate Party MEP, re the internal work of the EUP, you get a strong suspicion that the main reason why the politicans don’t want you to know about their work, decisions and all that is that they don’t want to know how clueless they are when it comes to tiny things like facts…

How to make use of the Lisbon Treaty (whatever you may think of it): “Let’s squeeze as much as possible out of Brussels” says Mr. Girzynski of the Polish Law and Justice party.
(The Polish President Lech Kaczynski has not yet signed the Treaty, just like Czech President Klaus)

http://euobserver.com/9/28780

What is quality journalism?

Just read a really good tweet from @DNEuropa2009, one of the twitter channels for the Swedish morning paper Dagens Nyheter:

What is quality journalism? Long texts, published on paper, written by men above 60, for men above 60. Just so you know.

( My translation. Original in Swedish: Vad är bra journalistik? Jo: långa texter, publicerade på papper, skrivna av män över 60, för män över 60. Bara så att ni vet.

Original source: http://twitter.com/DNEuropa2009/statuses/4622905129 )>

Dear artist,

Hi, how are you doing?

Not so good, if I am to trust your spokesmen, the media industry. You know, those chaps that take care of your interests and make sure you get what’s due. Makes me sorry to hear, and trust me, I’m honest about that one.

I just wanted to check something with you. You see, you wrote this song that I really like, and I would like to buy it. No offense, but the entire CD is not up to par and I am not too keen on paying €20 for just one song.

So I thought I’d download it. I mean, if I buy a CD, I convert the songs to MP3 anyway, so I can listen to them in my computer, mobile phone and my player. But I must confess, I’m not really sure what I am buying here? It seems that if I buy a digital file, I don’t own it, it’s not mine? Maybe it’s because I am so old that I remember my LPs, which I think I owned. Or didn’t I own them either? So I am paying for.. the right to listen to the song? Or a license to listen to a song? I guess you don’t want me to give a copy of the file/song to my mate ‘arry here… But is he still allowed to be in the room when I play the song, right?

I just want to know exactly what I am buying and if there is an expiry to the purchase or if I can burn a audio CD of my MP3’s for personal use (No, I’m not going to sell or give away copies of that CD, not even to ‘arry) and such things, you know. So I can decide if the product I am buying/renting/something is worth the price.

To be perfectly honest, and I am sorry to have to say this, but it’s quite likely that if it is too much bother about your song, it’s probably not worth it and we’ll just forget about it, mkay?