Some flurry is going on about a new cost-free piece of Apple software, iBooks Author.  This software allows a user to create an ebook – nothing particularly remarkable there.  What is remarkable is some terms from the End User License Agreement which binds use of the software.

The particularly contentious verbiage surrounds Apple’s assertion that in the instances where you sell the result of what you do with iBooks Author, you grant Apple exclusive publishing rights.  That is to say that you may not use iBooks Author to create a “work” as the EULA terms it, and sell that work through a publisher other than Apple.

The particularly obnoxious wording is;

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you charge a fee for any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”), you may only sell or distribute such Work through Apple (e.g., through the iBookstore) and such distribution will be subject to a separate agreement with Apple.

What Apple is doing has not been done before.  Microsoft does not assert publishing rights to the documents you write in Word, nor does Adobe say that they want their cut of any movies you edit with Premiere.  The world should be in uproar about this, but they are not, and I think I know why.

Canvassing for why people are not stunned at Apple’s greedy grab for the publishing rights to its users’ creative works, I’ve had the following excuses;

1. iBooks Author is free
2. If you don’t like the EULA, use another product – you’re not obligated to use iBooks Author
3. Apple isn’t asserting rights to the meaningful creative content you write, only the file/layout/particular edition of the creative content that is the specific “thing” that iBooks Author spits out

None of these wash.  I’m going to address 2 and 3.  1 doesn’t deserve the dignity of a response beyond pointing out that offering a product free of charge doesn’t obviate the responsibility for the product to adhere to a standard of ethics.

If you don’t like it, use something else

That’s great for those who don’t like it, for those who read what they are being legally bound to when they choose to use the software, but that’s currently me, you and a handful of other bloggers.  Due to the troika that nobody reads EULAs, Apple has a near monopoly market position in casual creative software and iBooks Author is free of barriers to its use or reasons to carefully consider using it (because it’s free), thousands or even millions of people will use the software and Apple will consider they have accepted the terms of the EULA, including conferring sole publishing rights to Apple.

In short, people who don’t like it will use something else, but almost nobody will make an informed decision about whether or not they like it.  They will simply use it because it’s there, familiar and free.

Apple’s assertion over publishing rights is not your book, it’s the edition or format or layout or something

Apple asserts their rights over (and I quote) any book or other work you generate using this software (a “Work”).  This wording is similar to the way copyright law and intellectual agreements are frequently worded, and it has nothing to do with layout, format or software.

The “work” you create is a book.  It doesn’t matter whether that book is created in ipub format or is a PDF, or if it’s in two column or indeed written right-to-left, you have created a book and that is what Apple has the publishing rights to.  The Hobbit is a book and for the purposes of this EULA, a “work” – hard versus soft cover, movie poster front cover, foreword by Tolkein’s grandson etc. is all noise.

I’ve heard arguments that if you were to take the raw text of your book and run it through another ebook publishing tool, the resultant file would be free of Apple’s EULA.  Until a copyright lawyer corrects me, I can’t see how this reading is correct.  If it were, I would be able to re-record Eminem’s Relapse album at a different studio with myself rapping – taking the same artistic content and running it through a different technical process – and own copyright over the resultant LP.  This is not the case.  I couldn’t shoot Star Wars with different actors and locations either.  The “work” in copyright law is simply not diversified by processes and technical tools and what piece of software was used.

I hope nobody uses iBooks Author.  I’m of course however a realist and know that many people will.  I look forward with some trepidation to what the outcome of that will be in courts, and I look forward to reading the EULAs in the next version of Garage Band, iMovie and indeed OSX itself.

Wikipedia’s blackout of its site unfortunately includes the explanatory “learn more” link as to why it’s doing so.  I’ve reproduced that material here to help out.

What exactly is Wikipedia doing?

On January 18, 2012, the English Wikipedia community is protesting SOPA and PIPA with a global blackout of the English Wikipedia. Readers who come to English Wikipedia from the United States will see a message from Wikipedia about SOP and PIPA that encourages them to contact their representatives or senators, and readers everywhere will be encouraged to share their views via social media. This protest will last 24 hours – from midnight to midnight EST.

Why is this happening?

The English Wikipedia community is opposed to SOPA/PIPA. In an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and inhibit people’s access to information online.

Why? SOPA and PIPA put the burden on website owners to police user-contributed material and call for the unnecessary blocking of entire sites. Small sites won’t have sufficient resources to defend themselves. Big media companies may seek to cut off funding sources for their foreign competitors, even if copyright isn’t being infringed. Foreign sites will be blacklisted, which means they won’t show up in major search engines. SOPA and PIPA build a framework for future restrictions and suppression.

For over a decade, Wikipedians have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. This proposed legislation could seriously damage Wikipedia, and your ability to access information online.

Isn’t SOPA dead? Wasn’t the bill shelved, and didn’t the White House declare that it won’t sign anything that resembles the current bill?

No, SOPA and PIPA are not dead. On January 17th, SOPA’s sponsor said the bill will be discussed in early February. There are signs PIPA may be debated on the Senate floor next week. The threat of SOPA and PIPA remains, and the English Wikipedia community wants to send a strong message that such attacks on the free and open web are not welcome.

Aren’t SOPA/PIPA as they stand not even really a threat to Wikipedia? Won’t the DNS provisions be removed?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a great post about this here. SOPA and PIPA are still alive, and they’re still a threat to the free and open web, which means they are a threat to Wikipedia. For example, in its current form, SOPA would require U.S. sites to take on the heavy burden of actively policing third-party links for infringing content. And even with the DNS provisions removed, the bill would give the U.S. government extraordinary and loosely-defined powers to take control over content and information on the free web. Taking one bad provision out doesn’t make the bills okay, and regardless, Internet experts agree they won’t even be effective in their main goal: halting copyright infringement.

What can users outside of the U.S. do to support this effort?

Users outside of the U.S. can contact their local State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or similar branch of government. Tell them that you oppose the draft US SOPA and PIPA legislation, and all similar legislation. SOPA and PIPA will have a global effect – websites outside of the U.S. would be impacted by legislation that hurts the free and open web. And, other jurisdictions are grappling with similar issues, and may choose paths similar to SOPA and PIPA.

Is it still possible to access Wikipedia in any way?

The Wikipedia community, as part of their request to the Wikimedia Foundation to carry out this protest, asked us to ensure that we make English Wikipedia accessible in some way during an emergency. The English Wikipedia will be accessible on mobile devices and smart phones. Because the protest message is powered by JavaScript, it’s also possible to view Wikipedia by completely disabling JavaScript in your browser.

In carrying out this protest, is Wikipedia abandoning neutrality? Can I still trust Wikipedia?

We hope you continue to trust Wikipedia. We are staging this blackout because, although Wikipedia’s articles are neutral, its existence actually is not. Wikipedia depends on its existence for a free and open, uncensored Internet. We are shutting down for you, our readers. We support your right to freedom of thought and freedom of expression. We think everyone should have access to educational material on a wide range of subjects, even if they can’t pay for it. We believe people should be able to share information without impediment. We believe that new proposed laws like SOPA and PIPA (and other similar laws under discussion inside and outside the United States) don’t advance the interests of the general public. That’s why we’re doing this.

An awful lot is made of anonymity online, in particular the urban myth that anonymity in online discourse drives antisocial behaviour or rude comments.  One of the biggest sources of this opinion are traditional media outlets and within them, more conservative traditional media outlets and the silver probably goes to politicians newly engaging online.  When some of the frustration around this is aired, a popular accusation is that the behaviour is cowardly.

There are a few different of problems with this but by far the most overwhelmingly problematic issue is that it’s untrue.

Research around this is fairly sparse but what there is rejects the hypothesis.  Most recently Disqus (one of several aggregated online comment tools) released data that of the 96% of people commenting anonymously or under a pseudonym, via their software on sites such as CNN, Time and Fox, the overwhelming majority were either positively received or unremarkable.

So if being a jerk isn’t driven by identity, what and who is it driven by?

You are as likely to meet a bad person who gives their full name as you are to be offended by someone who goes by “Chooka”, similarly polite people might go by a nickname or their actual identity.  Offensive people may have an ideological agenda, may simply find being offensive amusing or may be unused to discourse with people in a particular community and the social norms associated with it.  Anonymous people may be protecting their privacy “just because”, not seeing the value in revealing details about themselves in exchange for only the right to express their opinion. They may have a reason such as a relationship with an employer who unfairly (or fairly) expects personal opinions or discourse to be relevant to a job role, or they may be in a corner case such as a previous abusive personal relationship where their identity and activity is better kept a secret.  It’s a broad church, but the correlation isn’t causation, and one charge that can’t be levelled in either case is cowardice.  In reality, cowardice exists but not on the part of the commenting party.

Anonymous opinion is disempowering. When someone anonymous disagrees with you, rudely or politely, you are left with no further recourse than to disagree in turn (again your behaviour is an individual choice).  The gatekeepers of traditional media journalism, political engagement or any of the other forums where anonymous offense is described as cowardice are actually unreasonably afraid themselves.  They don’t have traditional tools to avenge offense such as being able to highlight behaviour to members of irrelevant relationships (bosses, friends, communities) or the lever of permanence where one’s identity is attached to their opinion at the pleasure of whoever maintains the online community and the lifetime of the commentary.  Anonymity isn’t cowardice, demanding someone’s identity so you can make them pay for hurting your feelings is cowardice.

In the next few months Facebook is rumoured to unveil its gambling service.  This will be amusing because it’ll be a pervasive service available to Facebook’s gazillion subscribers regardless of where they are, and the service will have patchwork legality around the world.

Under Australian law, a service may not offer gambling online to Australians.

There are exceptions to this rule.  Broadly speaking betting on sports results and races is fine, but it’s poker, bingo or other casino style services which are prohibited (so Sportsbet are OK but 888.com isn’t).  Other exceptions include offering the service in a public venue (presumably to preserve the legality of poker machines in clubs which may utilise the Internet to work).

Routinely when I raise this issue online I’m met with doubt and dismissal, “that’s not true, plenty of services offer poker to Australians”.  It takes typically about half an hour to illustrate and subsequently prove that there are plenty of services that offer prohibited   gambling services. The operators are certainly aware that they are operating online, and are no doubt aware that they offer the service to Australians, and while they seem to act with impunity they are nonetheless banned under Australian law.

Reams of Australian online regulations are completely ignored in part because there’s no community respect for them because they’re out of line with community expectation, but the predominant reason is that Australian police don’t know how to enforce them or don’t care.  This was most obvious to me in the case of the “Whozadog” website in 2010 in which Western Victorians were invited to submit reasons why those in their community were “dogs”, a reflection usually on the appearance of local women.  There were offences under Australian law that are easily applicable here as the operator of the site and the participants were all Australians in Australia, but when asked to act the relevant police spokesperson said that police were powerless to act because the server running the site was based in the US.  They had made up a jurisdictional issue where one didn’t exist, confused by the online nature of the offence.

Police aren’t alone.  The governmental bodies make at least as many mistakes by not understanding our online world.

Increasingly, Facebook fixes a lot of these problems in the eyes of our regulators and enforcers.  Police are able to move from a mental model of “the Internet is a computer in the US that we can’t arrest” to one whereby an actual company with an Australian office is able to be approached about issues that occur on its platform – increasingly a platform that Australians consider the lion’s share of the Internet’s utility anyway.  Google gets dragged in as well; Australian police don’t understand the online communities that make up the web but they do understand how to send subpoenas to an office in Pyrmont, NSW.

I’m going to be curious to see how this pans out.  The ban on online gambling has gone unenforced for a decade because police couldn’t find the Internet’s casino and nobody cared.  When Facebook puts its hand up as the responsible party, we can expect Senator Nick Xenephon to attempt to ban it and realise it’s already banned pretty quickly, then we’ll have national visibility to Australia’s regulation of the Internet as well as pressure for police to enforce the laws of the day.

On the 14th of December 2010, the US Dept. of Justice issued subpoenas to Twitter seeking the identity of people involved with Wikileaks.  More recently subpoenas have been  issued seeking the identity of people connected with the “Occupy” movement – in particular there has been legal activity around Occupy Boston.  Twitter did the right thing and advised the users whose details were subject to a subpoena, the police had asked them not to (asked because they do not have a de jure right to demand such).

Google is almost permanently under assault by governments demanding that content be removed from the web, one of the key reasons is defamation.

What is said on the Internet is serious business.  We live in an age where millions of people can broadcast their thoughts to millions more in real time, for eight hours at a stretch, from a computer the size of a packet of cigarettes.  This is vexing for organisations including governmental, executive and law enforcement organisations who have an interest in some things not being said and have ranging powers to make the lives of people who say certain things very miserable indeed.

With that being the case, why on God’s earth does Just Coz exist?

For the unfamiliar, Just Coz is a method whereby you can select one or more charities, provide them with OAuth access to your Twitter account, and they will Tweet via your account, once a day, in support of that cause.  You have the mouth, they have the message.

The stupidity of this should be visible from space.

Don’t provide unfettered, unmoderated access to your online conversation to someone else.  Perhaps Just Coz never ever misuse this power and say something (or rather make you say something) that they shouldn’t, but what happens in the event they are compromised?  Can a hacker infiltrate the system they use and make you unknowingly broadcast on their behalf?  Can law enforcement authorities in the United States seize control of the system for national security reasons (whereby they wish every user of it to repeat Tweets condemning Al Queda)?  Can a staff member at Just Coz find out they are going to lose their job and turn you into their mouthpiece about their boss?

In the age of what you say online being so important for legal compliance and other reputation management issues like job applications, you are extremely foolish to allow another entity to talk through your mouth.  Additionally, while technology like this marches on, courts gleefully uphold that genuine technical explanations as to why things went wrong are unlikely; consider the cases of people persecuted for what was downloaded on their Internet connection when courts refused to believe that their security was compromised.

Don’t use Just Coz.  Don’t use anything like it where you are unaware of what is going to be said using your voice.  There are too many consequences for the wrong thing being said, and things said online are even more unsayable than anything has ever been.

Syndicate, my favourite computer game of all time and a game that I had long joked I would fund a remake of were I independently wealthy, has been refused classification (and thereby banned) in Australia.  I will be writing more on that later, but for today I would like to investigate the likelihood of the classification review board – who review the classification board’s decisions where required – of overturning the decision.

According to the board’s website, the board is

an independent statutory body whose members are chosen from a range of backgrounds to broadly represent the Australian community.

So in order to make sure that Australia’s supposed thirst for censorship is correctly approached, a posse of completely different people that represent every nook and cranny of our civil and confident society has been hand picked by politicians.  Each independently can bring their own perspective and advocate their section of the community.  Right?  Meet the board.

•  Victoria Rubensohn is a convenor of the board and is a white, middle-aged woman who has a history of serving on several different types of boards and committees (like the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal).  She has university degrees in law and arts.
• Fiona Jolly is the deputy convenor.  She’s a white, middle-aged woman who has a history of serving on several different types of boards and committees (like the YWCA board).  She has a degree in law and arts.
• Ann Stark is a psychologist with the requisite degree in psychology.  She’s white, middle aged and has extensive experience in a number of community organisations; like boards and committees.
• Helen Blundell has a degree in arts and a degree in law.  She’s on boards and committees (including the YWCA board like Fiona Jolly), she’s white and middle aged.
• Melissa De Zwart is involved with several local community groups like boards and committees.  She’s middle aged and white, and she holds a degree in arts and law.
• Jane Smith is a middle-aged white woman who has a degree arts like everyone else on the board except Ann Stark, and she has a psychology degree like Ann Stark.  She’s Chair of the Committee for Revision of Mobile Premium Services (MPS) Codes and has experience with other community orgs like boards and committees.
• Peter Attard presumably represents the men of Australia; the white and middle aged ones.   Peter’s involved in a bunch of other community organisations like the Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM), judged ATOM student film awards and is a member of the Victorian Institute of Teaching.

Time and time again I see shout-outs on Twitter or in other communities, with the following format;

Hi folks! Anyone have resources for online safety for 8 – 12 year olds on YouTube, Facebook etc? Thanks!

There are no valid resources for this, because essentially every social networking community has a minimum age requirement of at least 13.  YouTube, Facebook, BeBo and Hi5 all do, it’s 14 for MySpace, 16 for Friendster, and Orkut is actually adults only.  The only exception is Twitter which dropped its minimum age limit of 13 in 2009.

This is important stuff.  ”All their friends are, so I don’t see the problem” is a common dismissal, so let me counter by actually showing what the problem is; when every one of these companies is making decisions about what is good and safe, they are not considering people younger than their age floor.  None of these organisations spends even a minute considering what’s good for your 10 year old.  ”How will parents explain this content to their 7 year old?”, not a question they spend any time on.  Outside of the way these organisations consider content and community, outside of the way they regulate social behaviour, each of them has a revenue model largely predicated on collecting private information and wholesaling it to advertisers.  Is your 8 year old mature enough to make the conscious decision to tell Facebook everything about herself in exchange for an online community?

Communities exist for children, such as YourSphere.

There are no resources on how to do this without being worried about safety and propriety, because if you allow your children to access online communities that are unsuitable for them safety and propriety will be an ongoing concern.  If you insist on doing it, I suggest constant, direct supervision as the only resource that may help.

I’m actually about ready to call it on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s review into the classification system in Australia; I can’t see how very positive outcomes are possible from here.  Approximately 2451^* submissions were received and the submissions appear to be from both individuals and groups, seeking both more and less regulation.  For all the reasons I can’t see that this inquiry will produce results that Australia needs, a coordinated and artificial-looking campaign thousands of individual submissions that politicians can dismiss as confected isn’t one of them.

So why am I being negative?

There are a couple of reasons, but primarily there are a few things that have been raised variously by people (including myself) who’ve been around the block a few times on these issues, as fundamental failings of our classification and censorship systems.  While we differ in some of our approaches, there are a few take-away issues that the review needed to have at the front of the pack to have any credibility, these are;

• Australia is the only jurisdiction that has the not-illegal-but-we’d-like-you-to-think-it-is classification of “refused classification”, and it has failed miserably in that what it comprises and what that means is not understood by most people, and those who do understand it consider it inappropriate
• Mandatory Internet censorship is incompatible with a western-style democracy, not useful or inappropriate as a law enforcement tool and impossible to implement successfully as a policy outcome
• Classification in Australia does not deliver the outcomes Australians generally expect it to as a country, and it is plagued with mythological or unworkable pseudo-measurements like “community standard”, “reasonable person” and the concept of harm being inflicted by content which is experienced by audiences other than the ones intended to experience it (e.g. adult movies viewed by children)

10.3 When the Commonwealth, state and territory Attorneys-General and the Commonwealth Minister for Home Affairs agreed to refer the National Classification Scheme Review to the ALRC, they specifically agreed that the review would include the content of the RC category for films, computer games and publications.

Translation:  Telstra says it’s do-able so on the basis of that we’ll dismiss the other statements that it’s not.  We have not considered that Telstra’s interests might not be the same as the community generally, and we didn’t ask and therefore didn’t subsequently discover, Telstra’s methodology.  If we did we might have realised the trial was conducted with a single laptop.

On community standards the report ignores outright the refutation that such a thing can be understood to exist and used as an instrument with which to create policy, and suggests five yearly reviews on what “the community” has as standards.

It’s not doable.  The review is not going to “reform” anything; I don’t think that word means what the ALRC thinks it means.  There will be some cosmetic changes to the system, with a fresh splash of paint over a termite-eaten policy framework, and Australian communities and industry will be bound by the same problems as before, and do the same things as before to deal with it.  We’ll continue to see everyday folks ignoring the classification system in its entirety, and our media and content industries continue to slip under the waves of irrelevancy

A few days ago ZDNet reported that the government is looking for input into a “cyber whitepaper”, simultaneously and inadvertently breaking the news that the government has plumbed new depths of weasel words replacing actual online policy. From the article;

The discussion paper, hosted on a purpose-built Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet-run blog, presents facts and figures on a range of issues including digital citizenship, online collaboration, safety and security online, and the different levels of governance required to encourage online investment in Australia’s digital economy.

The blog is titled “Connecting With Confidence: Optimising Australia’s Digital Future” and it’s certainly concerning.  I’ll be making a submission, but my current worries are about the questions the site is asking, and the subsequent problems it seems to have created to solve.  From the blog, with my comments inline;

For example what is the role of government in cyberspace?

The term “cyberspace” is no longer used.  This is not a question of grammar, it’s a matter of the world understanding that prefixing nouns with cyber- or e- is a depreciated act of drawing distinctions between a theoretical “real life” without the Internet, and our online world.  This was a thing we did in 1998, it’s not something we do in 2011, because our lives span online and offline as we need.  We don’t even think of the Internet as a separate entity any more, we just receive the invitation to the barbeque online (Facebook, EventBrite or email), then we go to the house where it is and sit in the offline backyard.

The role of the government is as it always was.  Regulating people and behaviours.  It doesn’t matter where they are and how.

How do we promote the concept of digital citizenship?

“Digital citizenship” is a pointless neologism.  If it refers to civil and safe identity online, it doesn’t need promoting.  Australians conduct themselves in a range of different contexts in a range of different ways and it’s not the role of government to promote particular behaviours or identities beyond regulating those which are societally unacceptable with the law.

What information do consumers and small businesses need to better protect themselves online, and how can this information be better provided?

If this is and has been genuinely a policy objective, what was the point of convening a joint-select committee cyber-safety which ultimately did nothing but table a report about how frightening the Internet was for children?  What evidence to we have to suggest consumers and small businesses are exposed to new risks of business online that differ significantly in their approach and resolution to offline ones?  In particular, if it’s a focus of this whitepaper to empower people to protect themselves, does that mean police are struggling to deal with the threats to online business conduct which are presumably illegal if they are dangerous?

This is going to be yet another foray by the government that could be re-titled “how can government implement more regulation focussed on online issues in response to threats we have imagined should be policy priorities?”  I’ll be submitting.

A Gizmodo op-ed by Matt Buchanan meanders through a list of technology companies, entreating them to hire designers because that would make everything better, he then winds up with;

Nerds:

You know more about technology than anybody else, and anybody who knows less than you is a total dipshit. I love you for that. But normal people deserve wonderful technology too. And half the shit you call computing—running custom ROMs, reinstalling OSes, fucking with network settings—is like a chef sharpening his knives over and over and calling that cooking. Real computing is the actual stuff you do—cutting videos, editing photos, writing. Or at least it should be. Not the shit people do to make all of that work.

No.

For a start, people who know how to use computers well are largely sick to death of being contrasted with “normal people”.  It’s that type of nonsensical, arrogant, false dichotomy that leads to public policy being talked about in terms of normal, law abiding idiots who refuse to read instructions, and a handful of traitorous, evil geeks that circumvent censorship systems almost certainly to view child abuse images.

Secondly, running custom ROMs, reinstalling operating systems and changing network settings are part of computing.  I’m sorry that this is frustrating for you, but it’s true.  Your assertion of “Real computing” consisting of cutting videos, editing photos or writing is incorrect, because cutting videos is correctly called “cutting videos”, editing photos is more correctly termed “editing photos” and writing’s official name is “writing”.  Saying that these things are computing, is like a chef eating, and calling that cooking.  And when I say eating, I mean stuffing food in your ears.  And demanding that a kitchen hand come and put it in your mouth for you.

If Buchanan is so convinced that the core part of computing is design aesthetic, he should go write about technology for House and Garden magazine.