New Zealand has had a look at how the US software patents work and the mess they’ve made of things, so they’ve written up a bill stating that software is unpatentable.

NZCS News – – NZ Computer Society.

This shows how from every $1000,- of revenue, the average music artist makes around $23,- out of which the record company then recoups ‘expenses’.

” In a traditional loan, you invest the money and pay back out of your proceeds. But a record label deal is nothing like that at all. They make you a “loan” and then take the first 63% of any dollar you make, get to automatically increase the size of the “loan” by simply adding in all sorts of crazy expenses (did the exec bring in pizza at the recording session? that gets added on), and then tries to get the loan repaid out of what meager pittance they’ve left for you.

Oh, and after all of that, the record label still owns the copyrights. That’s one of the most lopsided business deals ever.”

RIAA Accounting: Why Even Major Label Musicians Rarely Make Money From Album Sales | Techdirt.

Of course, Hollywood does this too but on a much larger scale.

Which is why we need copyright laws – to protect the big companies. Screw the artists!

Star Wars creator George Lucas is trying to stop a company from making a high-powered laser that bloggers around the world have dubbed “a real-life lightsaber”.

The laser is cool, but isn’t called a lightsaber by the producer. It’s bloggers that made teh comparison.

This goes to show how outdated copyright law is: the original star wars movies stem from the 70s and Lucas is still scraping the bottom of that barrel… let him work like the rest of us and come up with something new!

A lot of people are blaming Lucas and calling him a douchebag, but to be fair, it’s the law that’s allowing him to do this, so even though he’s stretching things, he may be within his rights. The system needs to change to make it clear that this kind of thing is ridiculous.

via George Lucas, Star Wars creator, tries to block ‘lightsaber’.

The Dutch government has released the current text of ACTA and invites comments on it.

Overheid.nl | Consultatie ACTA.

I’ve run through the text and this is my take:

2.3.2. Each Party shall further provide that its judicial authorities shall have the authority to order that materials and implements the predominant use of which has been in the manufacture or creation of [infringing] [pirated or counterfeit] goods be, without undue delay and without compensation of any sort, destroyed or disposed of outside the channels of commerce in such a manner as to minimize the risks of further infringements.

So they’re going to destroy computers and networks because they might be used to copy something again some time? Will they be burning notebooks, pens and pencils as well?

2.5.X. Each Party shall provide that its judicial authorities shall have the authority, at the request of the applicant, to issue an interlocutory injunction intended to prevent any imminent infringement of an intellectual property right … Each Party shall also provide that provisional measures may be issued, even before the commencement of proceedings on the merits,

so if a party decides they think someone may be about to copy them, they can get an injunction and go about destroying and / or confiscating material (as described in 2.3) without having to display any evidence! I can see newspapers magazines using this on one another quite happily. They limit this some in 2.5.3 but the wording: “to provide any reasonably available evidence” leaves much lattitude.

Liability

2.14.1
Willful copyright or related rights piracy on a commercial scale includes:
[(a) significant willful copyright or related rights infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain; and

Which means you can’t make parodies, cartoons where the characters wear Ralph Loren shirts may be subject to criminal persecution, etc.

2.14.3 Each Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties to be applied [in accordance with its laws and regulations,] against any person who, without authorization of the holder of copyright [or related rights] [or the theatre manager] in a [motion picture or other audiovisual work], [cinematographic work] [knowingly] [uses an audiovisual recording device to transmit or make] [makes] a copy of [, or transmits to the public] the motion picture or other audiovisual work, or any part thereof, from a performance of the motion picture or other audiovisual work in a motion picture exhibition facility open to the public.

Which means – you can’t back up movies you bought, you can’t show them to your friends, you can’t watch it in a park and you can’t use any of the footage therein for any purpose whatsoever, eg. to edit your own home film and / or parody.

2.18.3
(b) condition the application of the provisions of subparagraph (a) on meeting the following requirements:
(i) an online service provider adopting and reasonably implementing a policy[58] to address the unauthorized storage or transmission of materials protected by copyright or related rights
(ii) an online service provider expeditiously removing or disabling access to material or [activity][alleged infringement], upon receipt [of legally sufficient notice of alleged infringement,][of an order from a competent authority] and in the absence of a legally sufficient response from the relevant subscriber of the online service provider indicating that the notice was the result of mistake or misidentification.

Which means an ISP has to become some sort of copyright enforcer And they have to start censoring the internet – that’s not their job! They provide access to internet!

But option 2 3a gets worse:
Each Party shall enable right holders, who have given effective notification to an online service provider of materials that they claim with valid reasons to be infringing their copyright or related rights, to expeditiously obtain from that provider information on the identity of the relevant subscriber.

So without legal due process, ISPs are expected to give out personal information on their customers to ‘rights holders’ who don’t have to prove they are, in fact, rights holders of anything.

4b the manufacture, importation, or circulation of a [technology], service, device, product, [component, or part thereof, that is: [marketed] or primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing an effective technological measure; or that has only a limited commercially significant purpose or use other than circumventing an effective technological measure.]]

Which means you couldn’t invent the tape recorder, VHS, DVD recorder, photocopier maybe even the harddisk.

6 (a) to remove or alter any [electronic] right management information
(b) to distribute, import for distribution, broadcast, communicate, or make available to the public copies of works, [or other subject matters specified under Article 14 of the TRIPS Agreement] [performances, or phonograms], knowing that [electronic]rights management information has been removed or altered without authority.]

Again, you can’t use parts of anything for any reason and you’re not allowed to make edits. This would include the use of quotations in books, photocopies of pages in libraries,

3.3.5
[5. State parties shall endeavour to provide technical assistance in the following areas:
(a) Promoting the culture of intellectual property.

What? Why? I don’t think IP is a good culture to promote, it’s a call for stagnation. There are plenty of articles showing this, as well as articles showing that lacking IP, especially in the fashion industry, drives innovation.

Large problems:
ACTA leans heavily on the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which itself leans on the 1971 Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works – how can a 1971 document still be relevant in this digital world? Especially when ACTA for at least a third concerns software piracy. Not only the medium but also the way the inhabitants of the world percieve it (as opposed to large corporations) has changed. In order to guarantee your IP you need to spend vast amounts of money, thus favouring the large IP companies at the expense of the smaller IP companies.

Measuring the role of online in the consumer journey from research to purchase

The CCB is a free online research tool providing consumer insights across 27 countries and 36 product categories.

Using the tool, you can understand and interrogate how consumers across markets use the internet to buy and research different products

Consumer Commerce Barometer.

The Combined Online Information System COINS is a database of UK Government expenditure provided by government departments. The data is used to produce reports for Parliament and the public including: expenditure data in the Budget and Pre-Budget reports; Supply Estimates; Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses PESA; the monthly Public Sector Finance Releases. It is also used by the ONS for statistical purposes.

This is the raw data, so you can do with it what you like.

via Combined Online Information System | data.gov.uk.

England, the home of tidal energy generator projects, has a new one: a Swedish startup has models of a turbine attached to a kite wing and rudder tethered to the ocean floor.

‘Underwater kite’ aims to turn energy tide – CNN.com.

So these guys who were busted by the bankers in the credit crunch have found a way to fight back: sue the credit collection agencies on technicalities. They win a lot of settlements, get out of their debts and make some money!

Dallas News – Better Off Deadbeat: Craig Cunningham Has a Simple Solution for Getting Bill Collectors Off His Back. He Sues Them. – page 1.

Some background on the cost/value of gold and fiat currencies.

In a world with multiple fiat moneys, the zero value of money equilibrium lurks for each of the fiat currencies, including gold.  Admittedly, as regards gold, so far so good.  Gold has positive value.  It has had positive value for nigh-on 6000 years.  That must make it the longest-lasting bubble in human history.

http://blogs.ft.com/maverecon/2009/11/gold-a-six-thousand-year-old-bubble/

St. Anthony’s Central hospital charged a man $730,- for a couple of tablets he takes regularly at home. The cost for him at home? Around $30,-. After a complaint he got a 40% discount. Still ridiculous.

Patient Disputes Mark Up In Medication – cbs4denver.com.

The Germans want to create a swarm power plant by putting gas fired fridge sized units in people’s basements. They should release less CO2 than other power methods and they want to roll out 100,000 in the coming year, which will create the same amount of power as 2 nuclear plants. They’re calling it SchwarmStrom and sounds like a grand plan to me!

Lichtblick wants to charge people to set up their own powerplant, and then controlls them. So people are payed a modest rent to have the powerplant in their houses. Now I think I’d rather have my own powerplant and plug it into the Lichtblick network. Then they can pay me for any extra power I generate, don’t use and give them, which they can then in turn resell to people who don’t have their own powerplant.

Home power plants project unveiled in Germany | Grist.

Super Repo men get back your 747, learjet, whatever. They’ll reposess from men with guns, whole helicopter fleets, whatever. They make low to middle 7 figures every year. James Bond, eat your heart out..

Apple has decreed that any user may buy an application and have it refunded within 90 days – but that Apple will keep the protection money – euhm commission. So who pays the commission? The developer!

All those greedy content producers trying to hang on to their old delivery and economic models by their fingernails must be crying about this: Monty Python decided to put all their content onto YouTube for free and in high quality with links to their stuff. This raised their sales by 23000%. So it’s not about criminalising your customer base after all: it’s about making your content accessible, making it easy for your customers to buy the content they want from you, but most of all: making good content for your customers to buy!

The size of the bailout plan is truly staggering. Not just a little bit huge but immensely massive. Did you know it was larger than the following combined:

In the US wind farm power is so subsidised, that in Texas power prices around 33% of the year were negative, ie. the more power a consumer user, the more they got paid to use it!

In a surprise move, e-gold was dumped on by the US justice system because prosecution stated they must have known crooks were using the system to transfer money. Doesn’t this now mean that all banks in the US have to be slapped in the face, because, well, let’s face it – there are a load of crooks and they all need to put their money somewhere. Which means that all banks know their services are being used by crooks.

This is one of the reasons why defence contracting costs can go through the roof. This man wants to donate a high grade piece of marble and the costs of transporting it to the US military graveyard to fix a break on the Tomb of Unkowns. The cost of the marble, selected from the same mine as the original piece, was $31.000,-. The military won’t take it though, as they need to set up a tender, set up a committee to oversee the setting up of the tender, set up a committee to check the tender and the results etc etc etc. which means the cost of the project is a whopping $170.000,- to set up for the bid and $2.2 million (!) for the actual marble and transport thereof.

Where cocaine smugglers used to use cigarette boats, very fast boats and small aircraft to move drugs into the US, now they’re using partial submersibles, which travel just below the surface of the water and are easily scuttled. If the crew is caught by the navy, they sink the ship and the navy is left with a rescue mission, no proof and none of the crewmembers willing to talk, as they’re very aware that there is no evidence left.