Coming to an end

I tough about this lately, and I took the decision to stop writting on this blog. It was a really fun experience, though many aspects of it were really tedious. Writing in English on a regular basic was a real hindrance for me. I have the feeling that the quality of most of the posts are sub-par to what I can do because of this. The grammar and spelling mistakes make me ashamed of this blog. Many time, I wanted to point informants here, but I haven't done it because I didn't had the feeling that it was serious enough. Also, I had many great ideas that took too much time to translate properly, so I just skipped them.

Also, as a class blog, I tried (and failed!) to limit myself to content relevant to my project. I want to explore larger horizon, on a more open plateform. Therefore, I will soon start a new blog, in French, on a similar thematic, probably on Wordpress. I am just looking for a better name to continue. I will see this blog as a rite of passage into the cyberspace.

I will miss your small avatars' icons on the side of this blog, it was a good reminder that a least someone was reading. It was fun to share with you and to read about your project too. I can say that I have read the big majority of everyone's post and it was really interesting. I hope you will keep your blog alive.

Good luck in your future project!

Trusted Computing

Computing industry successfully control the use and access to a large part of the market software. But what if they extend their grip to the hardware? This is what Trusted Computing is about.

"Trusted Computing (TC) is a technology developed and promoted by the Trusted Computing Group.^[1] The term is taken from the field of trusted systems and has a specialized meaning. With Trusted Computing, the computer will consistently behave in specific ways, and those behaviors will be enforced by hardware and software.^[1] Enforcing this Trusted behavior is achieved by loading the hardware with a unique ID and unique master key and denying even the owner of a computer knowledge and control of their own master key. Trusted Computing is extremely controversial as the hardware is not only secured for the owner, but also secured against the owner as well." (Wikipedia)

Again, the industry's use of specific a term with a strong positive connotation to enforce their control over computer is quite clever. According to Stephan and Vogel, trust is:

"Trust
Trust is the personal believe of correctness of something.

It is the deep conviction of truth and rightness, and cannot be enforced.

If you gain someone's trust, you have established am interpersonal relationship, based on communication, shared values and experiences." (Stephan & Vorgel, 2006)

If you can trust a computer, then it is more secure. This is the idea that the industry try to promote. But more secure usually means less freedom. The industry want to "secure" the computer and technological gadget so they can monitor their activity and ensure that they are used in a manner that reflect their vision. As Stallman said "they do not mean what we normally mean by that word: protecting your machine from things you do not want. They mean protecting your copies of data on your machine from access by you in ways others do not want." (2002). This technology is likely to be use to enforce Digital Right Management and block interoperability with non "trusted" computer.

Again, the industry is investing people's private life, dictating what they can and cannot do with the available information. The more they "secure" the technologie, the more "freedom" we lose.

I invite you to check this quick video on trust computing:



1. “Trusted Computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Computing#cite_note-anderson2-1.

2. Stephan, Benjamin and Lutz Vogel, Trusted Computing, 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXU7z2_6Jg.

3. Richard Stallman, “Can You Trust Your Computer?,” GNU Project - Free Software Foundation, 2002, http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html.

The Hacker Manifesto

I'll leave this here for future reference.

The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...

Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world...

Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...

Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me.. Or thinks I'm a smart ass.. Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

I am losing control of my Internet: net neutrality at stake.

I've realize that, more and more, old institutions and industry agents are trying to shape to way the Internet is use and perceive, and they are putting lots of energy in it. Changes will affect those that are actively using internet, and I think we will move slowly toward a web 2.1: A web "more secure" controlled by large corporation where the users is thrown back to the seat of the spectator, as in old media.

Internet did change our relationship to media and information. User and produced were for a time indistinguishable. People did build a chaotic but democratic sharing of information. Anyone could see and download anything, anytime. This is not true anymore. The traditional media enterprise, that at first neglect Internet as a marginal source of information and spectacle, is now claiming back the industry that is slipping through their hands. They want to secure over the Internet the power they have over traditional media channel. "The chaotic realm of the internet needs to be ordered. "

Lots of energy, and money, is put into this attempt to take back the power from the users. The recent Pirates Bay trial is only an example. Record and movie industry are in court everywhere in the world to claim back their place in the distribution process of cultural products. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are capping traffic, inspecting it with new deep packet inspection technology and assigning different speed depending of your activity. Bell Canada assigned capped speed to sharing protocol during peak hours. In order to achieve this, they need to inspect the traffic, which seems to me a major violation of privacy. Moreover, they are not only assigning those restrictions to their customers, but also to their resellers. Since Bell own the DSL network, if you are using a DSL modem chance are you traffic is inspected and capped.

Why are they capping the file-sharing protocol? Not only because it is the main channel of pirated file sharing, but also because it is a channel that they have no control over it. They rather you use their web service, and thus bring back home their customers. In a not so distant future, they will probably charge depending the services you will be using: youtube, itune, amazon, etc. like the cable TV. Content provider will need to be large corporation, or they will just disappear. Soon enough, producer of content and users will be two distinct categories. This issue has been known for several years as the net neutrality problematic.

What option is left for the user? They can’t really turn to government. Recent events showed that they will take the side of their traditional allied. CRTC already reject injunction against Bell’s traffic throttling. Sweden court applied American copyrights law to the Pirate Bay’s case, despite a really clever defense on their part, one that shown a better understanding of new technology.

Government doesn’t want the citizen to be in control of those new technologies. They are letting corporation take this control out of our hand, and soon we will be charged more and more to use it.

Pirate Bay guilty

I don't know if you were aware of the trial surrounding the larger torrent tracker, the Pirate Bay. You might like to know that they just got fined and jailed. This news will bring an important shift in the way copyright and intellectual property will apply to the digital world. The court just enforce old law to new phenomenon, forcing their categories to brand new concept. Quite the radical opposite of Trent Reznor view of the problem.

Old institutions can't really evolve, can they?

Court jails Pirate Bay founders

A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.

Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.

They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.

Record companies welcomed the verdict but the men are to appeal and Sunde said they would refuse to pay the fine.

Speaking at an online press conference, he described the verdict as "bizarre.

"It's serious to actually be found guilty and get jail time. It's really serious. And that's a bit weird," Sunde said.

"It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.

"We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

“ It is almost certain that The Pirate Bay will keep on sailing, long after today's court judgement ”

The damages were awarded to a number of entertainment companies, including Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI, and Columbia Pictures.

However, the total awarded fell short of the $17.5m in damages and interest the firms were seeking.

Speaking to the BBC, the chairman of industry body the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) John Kennedy said the verdict sent out a clear message.

"These guys weren't making a principled stand, they were out to line their own pockets. There was nothing meritorious about their behaviour, it was reprehensible.

"The Pirate Bay did immense harm and the damages awarded doesn't even get close to compensation, but we never claimed it did.

"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that," he said.

The four men denied the charges throughout the trial, saying that because they did not actually host any files, they were not doing anything wrong.

A lawyer for Carl Lundstrom, Per Samuelson told journalists he was shocked by the guilty verdict and the severity of the sentence.

"That's outrageous, in my point of view. Of course we will appeal," he was quoted as saying by Reuters news agency. "This is the first word, not the last. The last word will be ours."

Political issue

Rickard Falkvinge, leader of The Pirate Party - which is trying to reform laws around copyright and patents in the digital age - told the BBC that the verdict was "a gross injustice".

"This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.

"There is a lot of anger in Sweden right now. File-sharing is an institution here and while I can't encourage people to break copyright law, I'm not following it and I don't agree with it.

"Today's events make file-sharing a hot political issue and we're going to take this to the European Parliament."

The Pirate Bay is the world's most high profile file-sharing website and was set up in 2003 by anti-copyright organisation Piratbyran, but for the last five years it has been run by individuals.

Millions of files are exchanged using the service every day.

No copyright content is hosted on The Pirate Bay's web servers; instead the site hosts "torrent" links to TV, film and music files held on its users' computers.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/8003799.stm

Published: 2009/04/17 12:32:07 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Wikipedia licensed under GPL

I just notice that the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is licensed under the General Public License (GPL). This is the same license used for Free Software (free as in freedom, libre). This license made a schism in Free/Open Source Software movement. Both Free license (GPL) and the Open Source license (the most known is the BSD license) permit modification and distribution, BUT the GPL required that every re-distribution be published under the same license.

For example, if you want to take a part of code from a GPL licensed program to include it in closed-source software, you will need to publish it under the GPL license and make it open. That's the reason that the GPL license is called "viral license" (Weber, 2005: 53).

In sum, if you take citation from Wikipedia, you should make your paper available under the GPL license.

Weber, Steven. 2005. The Success of Open Source. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Open Source Economic Model

One may wonder why would someone invest time and money into software that is going to be given away. Profitability of the Open Source model always has been a major source of questions. In a recent study, about 38% of the programmers involve in open source were paid for collaborating in those projects (Lakhani and Wolf, 2007: 9). Who's paying those developers to build new software? Ubuntu server host thousands of gigabytes of data that all the users can access freely. All this has a cost, and someone need to pay for it.

The open source economic model can be divided in two aspects: why does company pay for developing open source software, and how corporation like Canonical, the corporation behind the Ubuntu project, intend to profits on building such a project.

First of all, to understand why a company would invest in open source development, we need to take the point of view of the client. With proprietary software, large enterprises are paying large amount of money for licenses, so they get involve in open source project for their own benefits. Software only have a marginal cost for distribution, so all the money made through the selling is profit once the development has been paid for. Large companies, exploiting thousands of workstation are paying a large share for the development of a product. And they can't influence the final product.

That's the reason that many of them, instead of paying for license, are paying developers to help improve Open Source project. The final product of Open Source project doesn't have a licensing cost, so all they have to do is to pay for the developer. Moreover, having their own developer on the project give them the opportunity to influence and control the final product through their participation, a power that they would not have through proprietary software.

Often many corporations have developers involved in a project. In those cases, we can affirm that open source development is mutually funded. Since most corporation involved aren't selling the software, but using it to improve their productivity, there is no reason not to cooperate (Moreira de Sa Coutinho, 2006).

The second reason a corporation will get involve in funding of open source projects is the derived service they intend to sell. For example, Canonical Corporation have been funding the Ubuntu project since the beginning and has yet to see profitability, but they expect to meet it soon (Shankland 2008). How? By selling support service to corporation. As Krishnamurthy put it:

"Enterprises are willing to pay for accountability. When they have a problem, they do not want to send a message to mailing list and wait for support that may or may not be of the highest quality. They have no interest in sifting through technical FAQs to find the answer. Therefore, there is money to be made in services such as support for installation, answering technical questions and training employees to use the product."(2007: 283)

Enterprises are also willing to pay for long-term agreements with distributors to ensure that their products get updated regularly. This is what Canonical Corporation is exploiting. Selling desktop software isn't an option anymore, as Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of Ubuntu and Canonical note it:

"I don't think it will possible to make a lot of money, or maybe any money, selling the desktop. We're not going to try to make money selling the desktop. We force ourselves to look to services-oriented business models. I remain confident this is the right business model for the industry. Linux is the forcing function that (means) the broader software industry will shift in business models away from licensing the bits and to services." (Cited in Shankland 2008)

So far, this has been a viable economic model that is growing and getting more and more success. Open source software is not only for hobbyist anymore and business can be build around those models.

Krishnamurthy, Sandeep. 2007. An Analysis of Open Soure Business Models. In Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, ed. Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam, and Karim R. Lakhani, 267-278. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Lakhani, Karim R., and Robert G. Wolf. 2007. Why Hackers Do What They Do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software Projects. In Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software, ed. Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam, and Karim R. Lakhani, 3-21. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Moreira de Sa Coutinho, Joao. 2006. Le logiciel libre (1) Aboutissement du Capitalisme. March 4. http://www.domainepublic.org/capitalisme.html.

Shankland, Stephen. 2008. Ubuntu 8.10 due Thursday. Profits? Not so fast. Business Tech - CNET News. October 27. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10075890-92.html.