Kevin Kelly’s back!

I’ve always had a place in my mind for this guy. Here’s his latest piece: Scan this book! Kelly claims that the days of the printed book are over and done. We’re entering the era of universal library and snippet online-reading. Well, nothing new so far.

One of his more interesting claims is that 75% of all books in libraries are orphan – that is, out-of-print, under copyright, without clear understanding of who owns the scanning rights. But he doesn’t see that to be a major problem because the “copy” is dying. Forget copyright, Kelly says, because scanning is so easy and cheap. If it’s not Google, it will be the Chinese. In Kelly’s world, the almighty technology will always prevail.

Where Kelly shines is his compelling and clear argumentation. He is an excellent writer. However, his weak side is the prophetic, always-optimistic tone. With some practical experience, I do have reservations regarding the death of copyright and the “conservative” industries behind it. If the dot-come boom busted, contrary to Kelly’s visions, why would this time be different?

Go for a copy

It seems I’m gonna be back on TV. The topic is not that surprising: p2p and copyright. The good news is that it’s on the national TV1 next Tuesday, at 7PM, and it’s gonna be a live debate!

Now I’ve been thinking something “new” to say.

One idea is to talk a few liners about disappearing tolerance in the society. When I was a ten-year-old kid in the 1980s our principal in the school asked us to bring in Commode 64 game tapes (copied, for sure). The school had bought a new double-deck system, which did quick and high quality cassette copying – this time for the principal’s son’s new computer. Local electronic stores that sold computers also loaned out game tapes and disks for computer buyers. For copying, of course. Another principal in the high-school was telling us proudly how his son had circumvented Lotus 1-2-3’s copy protection on a high-end PC machine. So far from being suspected, we computer kids were honored as being technologically on the edge, much smarter than our parents.

Now all of this is being turned upside down: we are being told that copying is crime and leads to heavy fines and criminal punishment. We have just degenerated to dumb pirates and the suit guy is again the vice guy. Share a copy, hack a system, and the rest of your life will be ruined. My puzzle right now is, if I am just some sort of techno-hippie that happened to live like the previous generation did in the 1960s? Smoked their stuff and did their acid tests, legally, or at least without much interference, whenever they felt like it. Until the jerks in the suits noticed, and everything cool and advanced was quickly regulated as unwanted behavior. First we had war on drugs and now it’s all about war on piracy… Yes, I don’t even need to mention the real word they want to associate all this into: terror.

Trading places

A real estate start-up called Igglo has received a lot of media attention in Finland recently. Their catch: to create a stock market for homes. The guys have pictured practically every building in the capital region and now ask people to submit expressions of interest for any building they like. The Igglo guys then probably call through the residents. They claim to save costs since they take “only” 2.85% fee for print-media sales or 1.85% for web-sales. Finally, Igglo tries to create an open database of actual home prices building by building.

I browsed their site and ads through with some interest since just last week we sold our flat in Helsinki and bought a new home from Espoo. Igglo certainly was not involved… on that basis, my 5 cents go as follows. Igglo might sink deep because:

(1) Housing market is not like stock market. If some asshole calls or mails me because someone has “crossed” our home in some fucking website I call that spamming. It simply sucks. I hate spam. My experience tells that the housing market is a services market all over the place. You simply cannot commodify it. And you don’t market services through spamming.

(2) They are not that cheap. Sure, the major agents in Finland quote 4.88% fee as a starting point but practically they will quote you immediately something like 3.5% if you just ask “how much is this really gonna be”. Ask more and you soon understand that the sales guy gets his/her monthly salary from the fee (typically 40-60%). So the question is, how much salary does he/she need. I think 2-3K is definitely a decent salary for such a job so you end-up in something like 5K if another 2-3K goes to the firm. Our fee was 5K. Because the sale price was 240K, that means basically a 2% fee for one of the major agents. Igglo’s 2.85% is therefore at least 30% too much. – Igglo’s web-price is ridiculous. If I put my home in a competing website like Oikotie that will cost me less than 50 EUR per week, or 0.000x% of the sale price.

(3) Their pricing database is not credible since they have access to their own sales only. Finnish government will probably launch an official database later this year.

The best part of Igglo is its nice website. Map search and the building database do work. Thus, when Igglo dies, I hope the map is not held ransom but let free. We’d get almost Google maps for others to build on.

GPLv3 – the goodies

Ok, enough posts over the net on GPLv3. Now my 5 cents on the content issues. I have three of them:

1. Digital restrictions management. First of all, I sincerely hope that the term chosen by Stallman gets more widespread acceptance. It’s not about rights but restrictions, since DRM typically extends “rights” out of copyright’s scope. That GPL is incompatible with DRM should be clear thus by definition: GPL covers copyright and will never expand any further. The notion that GPLv3 code does not constitute an “effective technological measure” is a nice direct reference to the critical language in EU copyright directive: if it would be “effective”, then all the DRM restrictions in that directive would apply. Now, the directive is circumvented.

2. Patent licensing. The default approach taken is very good. There are other licenses, which try to prevent the starting of patent lawsuits. Stallman seems to assume that suits may have other purposes than attacking free software. The approach should make the big patent holders feel safer with their portfolios without underminig free software in any way.

3. Copyleft provision. It is now clearer and, most importantly, the coverage is not extended. There were fears that they would try to extend copyleft to network (or public) use on the Internet (client-server model). Again, big companies should feel safe that the client-server model continues to be an accepted free software business model.

All in all, the content of the current draft is great and I do support it. My major reservations concern the language used.