For a company specialising in Internet law, they have some strange ideas. According to their User Agreement, it’s illegal to link to their site without written permission. Even more strangely, you’re not allowed look at the HTML source code for their website. Doing so infringes their intellectual property and violates their copyright – despite the fact that copyright law does not prevent you from viewing a work. It only prevents you from making an unauthorised copy. Unfortunately for Dozier Internet Law, every browser on the market will read the source code and make a copy when the site is viewed. Worse still, that copy is stored on the users hard-drive. So according to Dozier Internet Law, every single person who views their site is committing a breach of copyright law.

It gets better! Oh does it get better. The site was built using a program called Zope. Whoever built the Dozier Internet Law website left a whole lot of stuff turned on that they should not have – including the ability for anyone to upload files to the site. Of course, the Internet being the Internet, a whole lot of stuff has ended up on the Dozier Internet Law website that shouldn’t be there, including copyrighted works. So now Dozier Internet Law are breaking copyright law by making these copyright works available for download.

The games have begun, and guess who’s losing? That’s right Dozier Internet Law!

PS. For anyone from Dozier Internet Law, I’ve linked to your website a total of 13 times, and I’ve mentioned your company name 10 times.

By the way, here’s a screen shot of the source code for your website. It could do with a bit of cleaning up, there’s 4 errors and 52 warnings on the main page alone.

Welcome to the Streisand Effect. I haven’t linked to your “File Library” because there’s stuff on there that is illegal in quite a few countries, including Ireland. I may even have to report it to the relevant authorities. Tsk, tsk.

Unfortunately for Mr. Burns, (am I the only one that thinks of the Simpsons when I hear that name? No? “Excellent”), he sent this email to a group of people who know exactly how to deal with it. Like Michele Neylon from Blacknight. And Tom Rafferty. And being the prolific bloggers that they are, of course they were going to post about it.

I’m not going to harp on about the fall-out from Mr Burns actions, (hee-hee-hee), but it’s starting to get interesting. I recommend that you start with Michele’s post, and then move on to Tom’s.

PS: Mr Burns wants his name removed from posts associated with this topic. So let’s call him Smithers.

Which side you believe generally depends on whether you are a creator or consumer of artistic works. If you are a creator, then you’ll have a better understanding of the time and effort that goes into producing something original, and therefore will feel that paying to own something original is the right thing to do. On the other hand, if you are on the consumer side of the divide, then you won’t have that same understanding, and therefore will put a lesser value – or no value at all – on the works that you enjoy.

But who’s to say that we’re even observing the correct fence? Looking at the Open Source and Free Software movements will demonstrate that there are people who will dedicate their time to create something that will make them no money, but they do so for any number of other reasons: love of the work, pride in accomplishing something that no-one else has done, fame, the joy of solving a problem or just being able to help others. At the other side of this fence are consumers, who even though they are not required to pay for the end product, will still make a donation to help the cause. They perceive that the end product has a value, and are willing to prove it through their donations.

Even though Open Source or Free Software may not cost you anything to use, they are still covered by copyright, or “copyleft” as some advocates like to refer to it. Whether it be the GNU General Public License (GPL), the BSD License, a Creative Commons License (CC), or any of the myriad of other available Open Source licenses, each work is still protected to some extent. Which one that is used can depend as much on the beliefs of the author(s), as much as what they want to achieve by opening their work to the public.

The reason that I’m posting on this topic is that I came across a story recently that highlights some of the problems with copyleft licenses, or more precisely what can happen when their meaning is misunderstood. The story goes like this: a major international company used the picture of a young girl in a national advertising campaign. The photograph they used had been taken from Flickr. The photograph in question, along with several others used in the same campaign, had been posted by the user under a Creative Commons license. This license allowed for commercial use of the image so long as the owner was accredited. The company involved did credit the owner by including their Flickr URL on the advertisement.

So far the terms of the license were adhered to. What makes this into a major story is the fact that the person in the photograph is easily identifiable, is under the age of 18, and was not asked for her permission to have her image used in this way. Given these circumstances, there is an argument to be made that the company should have obtained written permission from the young person and her parents to use her image, regardless of how the actual image was licensed. The owner of image was also unaware that licensing their work under this specific Creative Commons license would allow it to be used in commercially.

In this case there are possible misunderstandings on both sides of the fence – because the work was released under a Creative Commons license the company involved did not believe that they needed a release form, and the owner who released it under that license did not understand the implications of doing so.

This brings me back to my original argument, whether you agree with copyright or not depends on whether you are a consumer or a creator. This time round the creator is the small guy, and the consumer is the multinational corporation.

• A Department of Homeland Security,
• A Terror Alert Level,
• Security at all airports that would make Soviet Russia seem like a holiday camp,
• A level of paranoia that hasn’t been seen since the Salom Witch Trials.

Then in your infinite wisdom you decide to walk into an airport with a circuit board and a battery pinned to your chest while holding a lump of playdough in your hand. What would you expect would happen?

The process is fairly straightforward:

1. Download the Orb software to your Windows PC,
2. Follow on the on-screen instructions and install the Orb program,
3. Set up a login account,
4. Start the Internet Channel on your Wii and go to mycast.orb.com,
5. Login to your Orb account,
6. Browse for the audio, video or photos that you want to play.

In order to get the best from Orb, you do need a broadband connection, and your Wii needs to be connected to the Internet. Although it does work, I found that watching videos through the Orb interface is patchy, but that is more than likely down to the fact that my upload connection is terrible. Another thing – at the moment the Orb software is Windows only, but apparently they will be releasing beta versions of the platform for Mac OS and Linux next year.

In order to use Joomla, you need three things: Apache, PHP and MySQL. Individually, these are easy enough to install, but getting them to work together can be a bit of a headache. Config files need to be edited, file permissions need to be changed, servers need to be started and restarted, and it can be a bit daunting, not to say time consuming.

That’s where MAMP comes in. An acronym for Mac, Apache, MySQL, PHP, it’s a collection of all these programs in one handy installer that does all the work for you. It took a couple of minutes to download and about 30 seconds to install. Once installed you have a full Apache server, MySQL server and PHP 4 and PHP 5 installation. Better still, it doesn’t interfere with any other Apache, MySQL, or PHP installations you may have running, and it’s controllable from a handy Dashboard Widget.

Once MAMP is installed and running, it’s just a matter of downloading the package and installing Joomla. A simple browser-based installer guides you through the setup, and within minutes I was up and running. The only issue I came across was that the permissions of the Joomla folder had to be updated to allow the installation. It was just a matter of selecting the folder, holding Option-I and changing the permissions for “Others”. Done and dusted.

For those of you not on the Mac platform there are also versions for Windows, Linux, and Solaris available, along with a Joomla Standalone Server (Windows based).

Recently his bag was lost by the baggage handling company – Sky Handling Partners. And as any normal, sane person would do, he rang them and made a complaint. And as anyone who has ever lost their bag is probably aware, he didn’t get much help. So as a blogger, he did what comes naturally, he wrote an article about it.

Then something interesting happened. He started to get emails from gay dating websites confirming his registration. But he hadn’t registered with these sites. From one of these sites he got the IP address of the computer that was used to sign him up. And surprise, surprise, the IP address was registered to City Jet Handling Dublin. This just happens to be the name that Sky Handling Partners used to trade under. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.

So, once again, as any sane, normal person would do, he contacted Sky Handling Partners to complain. Following his complaint, and the complete lack of service and assistance he received, he blogged about it.

Then something really interesting happened. His story hit the front page of Digg. The story now had an international audience. It even made The Sunday Times. (Note: It’s on page 2 of the 24th June 2007 edition of the dead tree version, but I haven’t been able to find it in the online version.)

Now the story descends into farce. Then he got a solicitors letter. A letter which requested that he remove his posts about Sky Handling Partners. So yet again, as any sane, normal person would do, he blogged about it. Oh, and he refused to remove the posts. His hosting provider, Blacknight Solutions, sided with him. In fact, they even moved his site to a higher capacity server to handle the load.

At the moment, from Damien’s side, that’s where the story ends.

As a former travel insurance claims associate, I have to say that I have heard this story hundreds of times before. More often than not, the items in question are never found. And if my experience is anything to go by, he’ll be lucky to ever get any kind of service from Sky Handling Partners. It’s a pity. It shouldn’t be this way, but these company’s tend to operate in a manner that would lead to other companies ending up either in court or bankruptcy.

This does remind me of a story I was once told, though I have no way to verify its authenticity:

Quite a few years ago a large airline took out a billboard ad outside Shannon Airport to show off it’s new low cost European routes. The ad went as follows:

Breakfast in Shannon.
Lunch in London.
Dinner in Paris.

Underneath, someone had scrawled in large lettering:
Luggage in Singapore.

As well as www.youtube.ie, there will be 8 other localised versions available to users in Brazil, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK. Each version of the site will concentrate on content for that particular country.

So in celebration, I give you the crowd reaction to the last moments of the Heineken Cup Final: