John Gordon Ross

The post is another country.

They do things differently there.

This video is unclassified because I have no reason at all for posting it, except - why not? Found on Futility Closet, the site of my semi-namesake, Greg Ross. A once-cuddly lion cub had outgrown his bourgeois pet status and been released into the semi-wilderness of a wildlife reserve to save his owners the trouble and expense of looking after him when he had grown, and they went to look for him a year later. This is what happened when they found each other.

So, so true. Found on Translating is an Art:

Under the same headline as the above, myth-busting science journalist Ben Goldacre debunks the imaginary figures the industry pulls out of its hat to support its hysterical “jail file sharers” yapping. His conclusion is particularly in tune with my own feelings on the matter, though I would extend it to the entire lying-scumbag copyright sector: “as far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise.”

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While I’m on my anti-Big-Industry high horse, a word of support for Pablo Soto. Pablo and his company MP2P Technologies are being sued by Warner Music, Universal Music, Emi, Sony and the Spanish record industry association PROMUSICAE, which seek the ridiculous sum of 13 million euros for competencia desleal, unfair competition. Pablo’s offences are a) to champion the P2P cause and b) to develop software which allows file sharing. The case is currently being heard by a court in Madrid and is expected to last no more than a day or two more, though it will be months before a verdict is made public and whoever loses will probably appeal, in any case.

It’s an important case for lots of reasons. All efforts by the copyright industries to prosecute copyright offenders in Spain have failed, because the law as it stands says that two premises need to be fulfilled - that there has been unauthorized “communication” of copyright-protected works and that it was motivated by a desire to profit. The single exception is the webmaster of a site in La Rioja called InfoPSP, Adrián Gómez Llorente, condemned in April, 1992. The word is that this sentence was the result of an agreement whereby he accepted a few months of prison and a fine of €4,900 and the prosecution promised to refrain from bringing a civil suit against him. In other words, blackmail.

The evident injustice and the lightness of the compensation awarded combined with the fact that in Spain, with very few exceptions, sentences of less than 3 years never entail the offender actually being sent to gaol, made it a hollow victory for the copyright sector. So the case against Pablo Soto represents a change of strategy by the copyright industries, beginning with a civil suit rather than a prosecution. Hence, we imagine, the absurdity of the numbers being thrown around.

I wish Pablo all the best and hope the consequences for him of this legal action are minimum or even positive (and if the sector were left with egg on its face again, that too would please me, I don’t mind confessing). Unfortunately, I am pessimistic. I feel that if PROMUSICAE’s legal thugs lose again, they will simply use it as an argument to put pressure on Spanish parliament to change the legislation, as the US copyright sector is lobbying. The clout of this sector is immense, which is why I have been blogging about it for the last couple of days, and I am afraid right-thinking governments like those of Spain or Canada will not have the long-term resistance to withstand it.

More information:
Pablo Soto’s blog
Blog of David Bravo, Spanish lawyer and P2P campaigner
MP2P
¡Pablo Soto Absolución! (Facebook group)
Manolito, Pablo Soto’s file-sharing protocol.

AFP reports that “Canada, China, Mexico, Russia and Spain have been singled out by members of the US Congress for “alarming levels” of piracy of copyrighted movies, music, video games and other entertainment.” This comes in the wake of the IIPA Special 301 I was talking about yesterday, and is surely not unrelated. Now, the “Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus, made up of more than 70 members of the Senate and House of Representatives, [has] placed the five countries at the top of their “2009 International Piracy Watch List”

So what is this International Anti-PIracy Caucus? It is a group of American politicans (international? They can’t mean an interntational caucus of US politicians, so they must mean “Anti-International Piracy,” was that too difficult a structure for them?) at the service of their constituents (quite rightly, too) who happen to be the same industries who pull the strings of the IIPA.

Should anyone outside the US take any notice? Most emphatically, no.

Specifically:
“Peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy in Spain is widely perceived as an acceptable cultural phenomenon, and the situation is exacerbated by a government policy that has essentially decriminalized illicit P2P file sharing.”

a) P2P is not synonymous with piracy
b) If P2P is perceived as acceptable, that means it is acceptable in Spain
c) P2P is not illicit under any circumstances, nor should it be criminalized to serve the interests of US industries.

So this is yet another example of the power of the copyright industries to bend truth. One senator is quoted as saying, “We must stop this destructive mindset.” And that is the name of the game - brainwashing.

You can see the whole story here

The IIPA Special 301 for 2009 is out and as unpleasant and boorish a document as you are likely to come across this year. The IIPA is a vast business coalition-cum-lobby masquerading as guardian of authors’ rights, which every year produces a list of countries which according to its lights “deny adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights or deny fair and equitable market access to U.S. persons who rely on intellectual property protection pursuant to Section 182 of the Trade Act of 1974,”

(Note that “U.S.,” for the IIPA (iInternational Intellectual Property Alliance) is an entirely North American affair, which could not give two figs for the copyrights of Europeans or Asians. In other words, the first word in its very name is a lie. This is indicative)

The Special 301 groups “offending” countries in a “Watch List” of 25 and a “Priority Watch” list of 13 (Argentina, Brunei, Canada (yes, Canada!), Chile, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, the People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, and Thailand). The Watch List includes much of Western Europe, including Spain,

The Special 301 is breathtaking in its distorsion of language and truth. Its basic premise is that copyright breach is theft, which is nonsense, or piracy, which is at least more in line with popular language use. It uses words like “illegal,” with a totally cynical disregard for the law, and the phrase “unauthorized download” (unauthorized by whom?) as though it were on the same level as paedophilia. Indeed it actually says “criminal revenue in 2004 for IPR theft was $512 billion, while for drug trafficking it was $322 billion,” with the evident implication that copyright offences are more dastardly than drug smuggling.

The IIPA has this to say about Spain, specifically:

“In 2009, IIPA recommends that Spain stay on the Watch List, and that USTR conduct an out-of-cycle review in summer 2009. See http://www.iipa.com/rbc/2009/2009SPEC301SPAIN.pdf. Spain first appeared on USTR’s Special 301 Watch List from 1989 through 1994. In IIPA’s 1994 Special 301 filing, the business software industry hoped that Spain’s implementation of the EU Software Directive would improve enforcement efforts. After some initial success in obtaining raids on end-users after that legislation was enacted, action by the courts had slowed to the point where it became clear that renewed attention to the problem was required. In 1998, IIPA recommended that Spain be placed on the Special 301 Watch List, primarily due to continuing high levels of piracy and losses experienced by the software industries. On May 1, 1998, Ambassador Barshefsky placed Spain on the Special 301 list of Other Observations. While noting the high levels of business software piracy in Spain, the Ambassador added, “The United States is concerned that judicial proceedings are frequently delayed and that penalties assessed against infringers are inadequate to serve as a deterrent against piracy.” However, in 1999 IIPA recommended that Spain be placed on the Special 301 Watch List due to one of the highest levels of piracy of business software in Europe. USTR agreed and elevated Spain to the Watch List for the first time since 1994. In 2000, IIPA again recommended that Spain remain on the Watch List for one of the highest levels of piracy for business software in the
European Union. USTR agreed, and kept Spain on the Watch List in 2000. Though IIPA did not make any formal recommendation for Spain in 2002, it did note certain copyright issues in its Special 301 cover letter to USTR that year. In 2004, IIPA recommended that Spain be returned to the Watch List, citing the country’s high piracy rates and the dominance of pirated material in street markets. In both 2005 and 2006, IIPA highlighted copyright concerns in Spain in the Special Mention section of its Special 301 Report. In 2007, IIPA recommended that Spain be added to the Special 301 Watch List but USTR chose not to do so. In 2008, IIPA recommended that Spain be added to the Special 301 Watch List; USTR placed Spain on the Watch List in April 2008.”

If that you think that sounds like the IIPA has it in for Spain, you’re probably right. The “action by the courts” which slowed did so precisely because no Spanish legislation prohibits copyright infringement - p2p, for example, is entirely legal in Spain. This may change, and profiting from someone else’s copyright is quite a different kettle of fish (but even that is not a “crime” just because a US pressure group says it is). But in Spain, many police forces have given up on chasing street sellers with “pirate” CDs, because they are unable to prosecute successfully. This is simply the state of the law.

It is to be hoped that Spain will not allow itself to be buillied by this kind of thuggishness, but I am afraid the IIPA will get its way in time. But from me - bog off, IIPA.

The Internet’s most prominent prescriptivist, John McIntyre, has been elbowed out of his position presiding the copy desk at the Baltimore Sun. I might be imagining things, but his last post at his blog You Don’t Say was actually put up by a colleague, which smacks to me of “you’ve got ten minutes to clear your desk out before the security guys escort you out of the building.”* His obliged departure is a blow to all right-thinking Net denizens with an interest in the English language, for his affability, intelligence, humour and tolerance of other viewpoints made that blog exemplary, and it is to be hoped that he will resume blogging as he promises to do sooner rather than later. At least, as soon as possible after he treats himself to a well-earned extended vacation somewhere more amenable than Baltimore.

*No, I was right (at least, if you believe the kind of unreliable news source John would mistrust). According to the blog dcrtv, those canned (it was a bloodbath, apparently) were told to “leave the building immediately.”

I think this proves once again that no amount of endeavour is as creatively fruitful as plain old getting it wrong. I found it on a forum, posted by someone from an Eastern European capital, who was evidently trying to say to another poster, “You’re wrong.” But isn’t that “You are not true” (the original in bold, as well) both more plaintive and more beautiful?