You might have noticed the little Electronic Frontier Foundation and Open Rights Group banners that have been at the bottom right of this blog for years…why do I support them? Well for one, although I’m not in the States I support the EFF because currently they are fighting for you and I to be able to do video mashups and post them legally to sites like YouTube without getting those infantile (as Lessig pointed out in my last post they do treat you like you’re in school, the Myspace ‘copyright quiz’ is even more offensive) DMCAs.

Also I support them because they are fighting the likes of Apple and co. who are creating anti-competitive closed systems and thus being usually bad for the consumer (AppleVangelists and ‘Geniuses’ should read their rather damning revelation of the AppStore legals that Apple doesn’t want you to see – All Your Appz Belong To Uzz indeed) and fighting DMCA and ACTA which is probably behind the evil Digital Economy Bill, and fighting for free speech and net neutrality online.

Open Rights Group does a similar job but with a UK/European stance – there are things EFF can’t/won’t touch that are specifically UK (the aforementioned DEBill for example, ORG has been campaigning about that). It’s a double handed attack, because what may go down in the US could pop up here, and vice versa. They also cover CCTV and ID card and other security worries where technology is possibly going to infringe on civil liberties and privacy – things that are more specific to the UK.

Pirate Party is also getting bigger here in the UK, I’m a member there too, although not been as involved as I’d like.

So whether you’re a mashup DJ, video remixer, developer, interactive artist, musician, web designer or just concerned about security and the (mis)use of technology and laws around it, I strongly recommend punting some money and support over to EFF and ORG, amongst many others…because they really are fighting for the digital freedoms you currently enjoy.

/soapbox out.

Are you looking at me?, originally uploaded by BinaryApe.

No2ID and Open Rights Group are doing a Fear Not Freedom day on the 11th of October. Those in the UK – they need your pictures of the surveillance state!

Those of you outside the UK might not know there is the biggest density of CCTV cameras here in the whole world…and with the new yet STUPID ID coming in attacking migrant workers, it’s just Nanny State 1984.

I’ll try and take some pictures locally over the new few days – not hard since there are so many cameras everywhere now, entryphones and card entry systems…

Here�s how you can help:

1. Spot something that embodies the UK�s wholesale transformation into the surveillance society/database state. Subjects might include your local CCTV camera(s), or fingerprinting equipment in your child�s school library
2. Snap it
3. Upload it to Flickr and tag it �FNFBigPicture� – please use an Attribution Creative Commons license*
4. That�s it!

*We need you to license it this way because we want to give the image to newspapers to run on the day.

uh oh – the e-voting part of the Mayoral election bothered me, but with such a close vote is it possible Boris Johnson didn’t win at all? This is the problem with e-voting systems, you cannot easily know as all the votes are counted inside a machine, and the company behind it Indra was involved with those trials last year which were far from perfect, total chaos in fact. And now the just released Open Righs Group report has given a ‘no confidence’ vote to the London elections.

Not happy…

ORG Report:

However, transparency around the recording of valid votes was a major issue, leading many of our team of 27 official observers to conclude that they were unable to observe votes being counted. And while hundreds of screens set up by vote scanners showed almost meaningless data to observers, London Elects admit that the system was likely to be recording blank ballots as valid votes.

The report also details how London Elects are unable to publish an audit, commissioned from KPMG, of some of the software used to count the London vote, because of disputes over commercial confidentiality. The situation highlights the problems that arise when the very public function of running elections is mixed with issues of commercial confidentiality and proprietary software. In the context of a public election, it is unacceptable that these issues should preclude the publication of the KPMG audit.

Link to Open Rights Group report

Hmm rather long time coming this one, unlike the train this got re-recorded and edited…

Includes an interview with Glyn from Open Rights Group, my memories and thoughts of PodCamp UK, and various new and old mashups, covers and the like. Oh and a few Pirate tunes – YARR!

Chop Chop Busy Busy Work Work Gang Bang (67Mb, 94mins) http://media.libsyn.com/media/radioclash/rc_130.mp3

• Hexstatic – Hitchhikers
• team9 – Saturday Salmon
• Patrick and Eugene – Can’t Get You Out of My Head
• Electrosound - Zdarlight Avenue
• Specials – Gangsters (from The Singles)
• Interview with Glyn of Open Rights Group
  backed with CC tracks from CC Mixter:

• DJ BLUE – Hear Me (ft. 21Pele & Tacet)
• Mandala Underground – Marionette Man (Treatment) (ft. Suzi Q)
• His Boy Elroy – Revolve
• 3:1 – Luke Tripp

• Soundhog – 500 Bad Mice (from House of Infinite Zen 12″)
• The Illuminoids – Satan Said Walrus Eggs
• U2 vs Daft Punk (2002 Reworked White Label)
• Architecture In Helsinki – Do The Whirlwind (Haima’s Remix)
• Super Furry Animals – Sex, War & Robots (off Phantom Power)
• The Silent League – Can’t Get It Out Of My Head
• The Real Tuesday Weld – Last Words
• Akron/Family – One Spring Morning (from Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys)
• Slade – Everyday (from Old New Borrowed And Blue)
• Bob Neuwirth – Haul On The Bowline (from Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys)

After talking to Glyn over at Open Rights Group at podcamp and then the Andrew Keen lecture, it’s interesting seeing this post by Erik Davis (via Nerdcore and Boing Boing) about a case where an advance promo CD – something that exists as a symbol of trust between music critic and label, has now become a symbol in the wars over DRM and ‘licensing’ of Intellectual Property – especially this quote and point totally missed by the Boing Boing crowd, who I assume just skimmed the post and jumped for the rope:

Moreover, the watermarked disc itself is, in some informational sense, alive, or at least virally infected with the digital ghost of my life. When I let that Beirut advance slip out of my hands, a little piece of me went with it, a chunk of virtual identity that I hadn’t agreed for it to appropriate and that I didn’t even know about. Instead of the old informal economy of circulating copies of music, I had become enmeshed in an emerging and far more claustrophobic world of endless virtual contracts and licenses, a world where objects command and the turn against you, where music has become data, and enjoyment little more than the processing thereof.

(the emphasis is mine) 

The important points here are that when someone sends you something for free, are you really entering into a contract with them? Can you ever, when unbidded, and for their own monetary gain – a good review hopefully can sell albums -  but no direct monies exchanged, people send you copies? It would be interesting if reviewers started ignoring DRM/watermarked releases as being too much trouble.

I’ve seen promos down in places like the Record Exchange, marked as ‘Not for Resale’ but as Erik points out it, like ‘illegal’ yet record-label paid-for promo whitelabels, is actually one of those ‘turn a blind eye’ slightly seedy parts of the industry. Anyway, for practical reasons alone, what do you do with the millions of chunks of plastic? Throw them away? Burn them? Not very productive, or good for the environment. Surely recycling them to someone else who wants them is better?

Most interesting is that the ghost of your identity can be enclosed into products without permission, and the repercussions can be terrible – which is why as we know DRM is EVIL. In this case it’s easy for the Boing Boing crowd to tar and feather this bloke even though it was an honest mistake, but what happened if it had gone missing in the mail? Promos do get stolen, leaks happen. But if it has your name on it, that could have serious legal and professional consequences…and it seems like with ID cards and smart media even store cards, more and more data around our lives is being included into a diaspora of electronic devices, with little or no control if they go astray.

I’m waiting for the first ‘fit-up’ where someone gets prosecuted purely on smart card (Oyster), mobile logs,  digital watermarking or site log evidence to later to be found to be innocent…at the moment they seem to be treated something on a par with DNA, but unlike DNA they can be faked (although the statistical probabilities of DNA are disputed, either in millions or billions to 1).