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Uge-quiz hos hhv. Ekstra Bladet og Jyllands-Posten

07 9

Udgivet af henrik under medier, reflektioner | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

En hurtig observation: Både Ekstra Bladet og Jyllands-Posten (og givetvis også andre aviser), har hver uge en quiz, med 10 spørgsmål om ugen der gik. Betragt lige de fem første spørgsmål fra hhv. Ekstra Bladets og Jyllands-Postens quizzer:

# Jyllands-Posten Ekstra Bladet
1 Hvad er hedder den nye tyske præsident, der først blev valgt i 3. afstemningsrunde? Den 54-årige filmstjerne Mickey Rourke er tilbage igen efter en katastrofekurs. I New York luftede han både sit nye hår og sin 24-årige modelkæreste. Hvilken nationalitet har hun?
2 Hvad hedder den truede lakseart, der i ugens løb kom i fokus i forbindelse med et naturprojekt ved Varde Å? Mette Walsted Westergaard har i 15 år arbejdet som frivillig på Roskilde Festival, og hun er også med i år, selvom hun er gravid i ottende måned. Hvem venter hun barn med?
3 I hvilket land vil den nu fyrede sportsdirektør på Team Saxo Bank, Kim Andersen, oprette et nyt cykelhold? Vicki Berlin med tandbøjler og iøjnefaldende deller i g-streng får stor ros for sin rolle i en dansk sommerrevy. Hvilken revy skal man se for at opleve hende?
4 EU’s statistikkontor Eurostat har for nylig udgivet en opdateret skattestatistik for samtlige EU-lande. Hvor højt er det samlede danske skattetryk? Man kan opleve Michael Meyerheims talkshow på denne tv-kanal, som har den største seer-fremgang i første halvdel af 2010. Hele 22 pct. flere seere. Hvilken kanal?
5 Årets Roskilde Festival løber af stablen i denne uge. Hvem er festivalens danske hovednavn? Peter Schmeichel skal i en alder af 46 år være bedstefar. Hvad hedder hans søn – den kommende far?

Man spotter straks en forskel i indholdet og uden i øvrigt at blive Margrethe Vestagersk, kan man også med en vis rimelighed nok også konkludere, at forskellen i indholdet nok også afspejler forskellen i målgrupperne :)

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Jeg ville gerne betale for en online træningsdagbog…

07 6

Udgivet af henrik under IT, internettet, medier, motion, reflektioner | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

… hvis bare der fandtes en, der havde de funktioner jeg mangler. Rent faktisk er der ikke blot tale om, at den skal have de funktioner jeg mangler; resten af verden skal også integreres i en større enhed :)

Sagen er nemlig den, at jeg en gang i mellem futter over i den lokale Fitness World og træner der og andre gange tager jeg blot en løbetur på gader og stræder, i naturen eller hvor jeg nu befinder mig. Når jeg løber er det så let: Jeg har en Garmin Forerunner 405 puls-/GPS-bandit, der holder styr på tur, distance, tid, puls o.s.v. Når jeg er i træningscentret skal jeg – manuelt – selv indtaste træningspasset, i hvad jeg nu måtte bruge af træningsdagbog (den dag – jeg har efterhånden prøvet en del). Til gengæld følger jeg et rimeligt ligefremt program når jeg træner – over tre variationer. I træningscentret bliver min ankomst i øvrigt registreret på en computer med et login via mit medlemskort, der har en magnetstribe og bliver kørt igennem en kortlæser. Efterfølgende vælger jeg hvad jeg er mødt op til (tilstedeværelse el. holddeltagelse) på en tryk-følsom skærm og slutter af med at logge ud.

Og her var det så jeg tænkte: Hvis nu der fandtes en online træningsdagbog, med en veludviklet API og man i øvrigt fik vredet armen om på Garmin og Fitness World, kunne min indcheckning hos Fitness World automatisk blive indtastet i træningsdagbogen og mine løbeture, automatisk blive overført fra Garmin. Det ville helt klart være bedre, end mit nuværende system, der er en blanding af Garmin Connect og små fedtede sedler, som alligevel er ulæselige når jeg skal have dem tampet ind. Det ville give mig et meget bedre overblik over hvordan, hvornår og hvor meget jeg træner, samtidigt med, at jeg ville kunne dyrke end mere effektiv træning. Hvis jeg så også kaster Wii Fit Plus ind i bunken, så ville den centrale træningsdagbog også kunne registrere min semiobskure adfærd på Wii Balance Boardet og når jeg slynger omkring mig med Wii håndtag. Dette ville give endnu en dimension til træningsdagbogen (Wii Fit Plus har i øvrigt en udmærket træningsdagbog, men den er også kun integreret med Wii!).

Samtidigt kunne træningsdagbogen også forbindes til sociale tjenester som f.eks. Facebook og FourSquare.

Facebook nyhed fra Endomondo

Ovenstående er fra min nyhedsstrøm på Facebook. Og den er ikke et særsyn. Jeg ser oftere og oftere nyheder fra Endomondo, Garmin Connect, Nike Running og venner. Sikkert fordi alle tre steder er udstyret med muligheden for at dele en aktivitet med Facebook med et enkelt klik – eller måske endda helt automatisk. Det fortæller mig, at folk gerne vil dele deres fysiske aktiviteter med omverdenen (givetvis en del af tidens perception management – indrømmet; jeg har selv gjort det også…) og den centrale træningsdagbog kunne såmænd også gøre det automatisk. Eller FourSquare. Tag nu Fitness World, Århusgade i København: På deres FourSquare side er der lige nu ikke færre end 34 forskellige mennesker der har checket ind, 211 gange i alt. Det vil folk sjovt nok også gerne dele.

Så jeg syntes faktisk jeg har to stærke argumenter, for en centraliseret træningsdagbog, med en åben API – eller blot en åben fælles API, som alle producenter og træningsdagbogsproducenter, skulle prygles over på.

Og når nu jeg i øvrigt også er dykker, ved der er online dykkerjournaler (jeg fører dog en papirs-en-af-slagsen), skal de jo selvfølgelig også integreres. Så – kom i gang! :)

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Why the ‘The Wall’ interactive exhibition in Copenhagen fails – bigtime!

05 1

Udgivet af henrik under IT, fotografering, medier, samfundet | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

The wall - standing at Kongens Nytorv

The Museum of Copenhagen has introduced a new interactive exhibition: VÆGGEN. Which literally translates to ‘The WALL’. It’s a great idea spanning several media, and it could have been great. But from my perspective it fails. Big time.

Now the basics of this idea is two elements:

Using either a multi-card-reader in the container or the homepage people are able – and actually encouraged – to upload photos showing the daily life of Copenhagen through all times. That way we can all benefit from these photos and enjoy them. In concept: Great.

But it doesn’t work. I have visited the container twice. People simply can’t handle the interface. For two reasons. First the touch-interface isn’t working very well. It’s imprecise and it’s really hard to handle clicks. Being familiar to the friendly touch interface of my HTC Magic or my brothers Apple iPhone, I’d say I have a pretty good feel on touch interfaces. But the container doesn’t work. And it isn’t because I’m a spoiled duck. The elderly women, the young guys – everyone had problems getting the interface to act properly. I’ve also tried uploading. Getting through the upload system was a real chore. Even though I already had registered on the website the day before it was a long and slow process, which involved me having to enter my password in public – viewable to everyone and all. I wouldn’t even put a guess on how the registration process is… And apparently the card reader couldn’t handle my Nikon formatted SD-card – it didn’t show any photos – though it is a plain FAT-32 8Gb SanDisk SDHC with .jpegs and raw files. Really – nothing fancy there.

Now besides the techno-trouble the interface is horrible. Both in the container and on the web-page. Navigating though time and places is really not very unintuitive. Try taking a tour of the most recent photos of the Indre By neighbourhood. I really don’t think it’s all that very well arranged, but in all fairness: It works. And it is way better than the one in the container, where one is required to drag a slider though times and selecting places and then do some sort of circle movement to get though a roundel of photos.

Now – back to the main page of The WALL. See the headings ‘LATEST UPLOADS’ and ‘LATEST COMMENT’? Those aren’t clickable. You are stuck with the latest three uploads and the latest comment. See the RSS-feed? No. Neither do I.

I haven’t been able to find out exactly what the prizing of this project is, but judging from the Who made The WALL-page, it’s a fair guess that the prizing is above the EU tender threshold (no – I don’t believe they have voluntarily done a EU tender), which would make it more than 200.000€. And those are at least partly contributed by Copenhagen City Council, The Labour Market Holiday Fund and The Heritage Agency of Denmark.

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Wikipedia: More oneliners – less unassumingness?

04 18

Udgivet af henrik under Wikipedia, internettet, mennesker, reflektioner | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

On Danish there actually are two major Wiki-based encyclopaedias:

One is Den Store Danske (lit.: The Big Danish) (DSD) and the other is – of course – The Danish Wikipedia (DaWiki).

After a discussion on intelligence last night, we – as so many times before – ended up with the DaWiki article on the matter. Unfortunately – being slightly drunk and all – we didn’t find our answer there and moved on to DSD where the answer was clear and useful – and ultimately solved our debate (or at least, changed the direction of our debate).

Now here the first paragraph from DSD (my translation) on the subject of intelligence:

intelligence, (from lat. intelligent ‘insight’; the ability to perceive, comprehend, understand), expression of potential of or competence to ie solving problems, thinking and acquire new knowledge.

And here’s the first paragraph from DaWiki (again – my translation) on the subject of intelligence:

The world intelligence derives from the latin verb intelligere, which means “to comprehend”. There isn’t an agreement on, what the term intelligence implies. The common meanings are the ability to learn or the ability to solve new tasks, without any previous knowledge regarding the procedure. Intelligence is tied to the processes in the cerebral cortex. It might have something to do with the capacity of the brains neocortex, ie. how many neural process it is able to handle simultaneously while solving a task. In recent years it have become common to use the term, to describe the total sums of characters and skills; as a result of this, the term are watered down to a level, where it doesn’t relate much to the intellect.

Now for the DSD translation I had to do two dictionary lookups. For the DaWiki I had to do 12 – and I had to use the English Wikipedia to translate some Danish technical terms to their English counterparts.

Now. One of my accomplices in drinking yesterday is a teacher. Teaches 10-15 years old and they uses the internet. And they use the Wikipedia, because my friend is one of the younger and more rebellious teachers. Now while his older collegus don’t use Wikipedia their main argument is, that it isn’t a realiable source. The MediaWiki system (which runs all the wikipedias) has a function called Flagged Revisions, which is used to mark the content as releable. DSD already uses this function, and on DaWiki the discussion about introducing this function is already ongoing. But for my rebeloius teacher friend relaiablity isn’t the issue with DaWiki. It just makes DaWiki another platform which helps the pupils of the basic concept of source evaluation, which is to be developed as a basic skill in a modern world with a gazillion of sources.

His problem with DaWiki is that it is to correct for his young pupils. It’s a lack of ‘unassumingness’. The articles are mainly written by dedicated knowledgeable people, which of course tries to write it for an unassuming people. On DaWiki we actually have a template to be put on articles which contains expert-written texts, but that only takes us that far, because we’ll always value correctness above anything else. And at large that’s at a cost of unassumingness. And to be fair – this isn’t only relevant to the Danish Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia is also struck by this, though at a lesser degree, because of it’s more outspread base of editors.

At one point we – at least on the Danish Wikipedia – might have to begin reasserting at what direction the Danish Wikipedia is to take. A Wikipedia where unassumingness is allowed for or where every single sentence, has to be 100% correct, verifiable and unambiguous….

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exit Flickr; begin 23hq

04 3

Udgivet af henrik under IT, fotografering, internettet, medier | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

I’ve been a Flickr user since march 2007, but as of today this has come to an end. I’ve even been a pro-user for three years – obviously this has also come to an end.

There are in fact several reasons for my departure from Flickr, and in all fairness I do have had more good than bad experiences with Flickr, but certain factors has just gained to much weight now. My main reasons for departing from Flickr are (in prioritized order):

  1. The interface. It’s not very intuitive, and after three years I still get lost sometimes.
  2. The staffs “infatuating” concern with being nice and only doing what’s politically correct. Of course being evil and all shouldn’t be a goal by itself, but when honest opinions are being suffocated with “Now that’s not being nice. Let’s close this thread.” it’s taken to far…
  3. Their more and more aggressive censorship and oppression of freedom of speech. This is somewhat connected to the point above, but when you remove a collage made in protest of theft, limit accessibility for an entire country or closes a guys account simply because he posted critical comments of president Obama it’s over the limit. Not cool.
  4. Statements like “Let’s close this puppy” when a thread has reached a conclusion and “Flickr has the hiccups” when there is a technical malfunction of sorts really rubs me the wrong way. I’m an adult. As are most Flickr-users. Please – oh pretty please – treat us like adults and not five years. We can handle the real world you know.
  5. The Flickr tagging system. Separating tags by commas is pretty much standard. I’d say that something like 19 out 20 systems does tags this way. Flickr separates them with spaces and uses “’s for tags with more than one word. Why not go standard?
  6. I’m bound to a Yahoo!-account. Why? Use OpenID or something fancy, but don’t force me to create and use an account I wouldn’t have otherwise (Panoramio suffers from the same – it’s just Google-accounts there…)
  7. Lack of control of the layout. I have like six options for the layout of my pages. That’s it. No changing colours. No custom sizes. Only the six ways Flickr has defined. And I don’t prefer white background…

So – there is enough of reasons for me to depart Flickr. After reviewing the main alternatives: 23hq, Picasaweb, Panoramio, PhotoBucket, photoSIG and Zoomr and ended up choosing between 23hq and Picasaweb. I’m already a Panoramio user, but it simply offers to little as a primary photo-sharing site (like where are groups?). PhotoBucket and Zoomr are even lower cut. photoSIG did present some interesting elements (like a very clever rating system), but it’s more a photo evaluation site than an actual sharing site.

Picasaweb is actually pretty good, but I can’t see it being a photo sharing site. It’s more like a digital photo book which isn’t quite what I’m after either. So I ended up with 23hq and here’s why:

  • I decide the layout. At least way more than compared Flickr.
  • It has albums and groups (though no sets).
  • It’s a Danish company. Yes that actually counts for something for me :)
  • It’s under constant development. New features seems to be added regularly and the developers actually listens and act upon user-input.
  • I can also choose a license of my favourite flavour here.

Of course 23hq isn’t all happy-happy-joy-joy though. It doesn’t seem to be able to extract geotags from EXIF, it has a way lesser user-base, it does also have a horizontal limit in the gallery and I’m having trouble getting their uploader working on MacOS X. Also I now have to find a replacement for Flickr Uploadr, which works rather good (for Flickr).

So this is what I’ve went from and to:

My Flickr streamThe Flickr-stream. Three photos horizontal is the maximum, so there is a lot of waste-space. Also it’s white-only background.

My 23hq stream23hq. Now I can at least have five images in a row, but there is still some waste-space. Also note the nice black background :)

And getting there? I’m using this cool little freeware tool called Migratr. It does moving, titling, descriptions and albums automatically. That’s pretty sweet. It isn’t 100% perfect; I’ll have to do a little neating of all the photos (1.204 items), but it has certainly saved me a lot of work. Me like :)

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Who says blogs are free anyway?

03 19

Udgivet af henrik under kommunikation, medier, mennesker, reflektioner | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

A friend of mine complained about blogs a couple of days ago. What he expressed is perhaps a common misconception of blogs, among people who are less at home web 2.0: Because the technology is designed to allow users to interact with each other, it must always be so. Unfiltered. Unedited.

It’s not. Free isn’t free – not even as free software:

“Free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”

Someone may have a blog. This someone may also, make use of a free blog-framework like Wordpress or on a free blog-service like wordpress.com. This someone may also allow for other users, to comment on the blog. And our someone, may even allow for everyone to add comments, without approving them. And that’s about as free as it get.

Wordpress comments spam

Spam comments on a Wordpress system

Because even in a free world, with free speech there may be limitations. Say our someone allow everyone to add comments, without approving them. Welcome spammers. Allowing everyone to comment on a blog, without approving attracts spammers to the comments system, like honey attracts bees (except spammers are a bunch of greedy, lazy fuckers and bees are eager and following their instincts).

Of course the entire spammer-thing, can be avoided using i.e. captcha-systems, but this may be an cumbersome obstacle for visually impaired people, and a tiny part of the freedom has gone.

A manual approval of comments is a way to avoid spammers. But it will also present a delay from a comment is posted, and until it is actually shown on the site. And there is a human filter involved. My bet is that most blog-editors, will only filter spam, but I know of at least one blog – with a (semi-) political-agenda, where all comments have to be approved. Comments which are in disagreement with the blog-posts are simply rejected.

And of course nobody has ever dictated that blogs must come with an enabled comments system. It is possible for blog-editors, to simply disable comments. Then no-one can comment on anything.

Finally – while a blog-service provider like wordpress.com, has a pretty open and free set of Terms of Service, which allow for most stuff, other blog-service providers may have more strict rules. On the Danish urbanblog.dk for instance, a user signing up have to accept that “the service provider, will on a case by case basis, determine what content is acceptable“. And I know of at least one case, where a blog was closed without any warning, notification or explanation from its blog-service provider.

My conclusion is thus, that neither blogs (nor any other web 2.0 service) are a guarantee for freedom. Of course not. Technologies never are…

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Twitter and Danish copyright

03 16

Udgivet af henrik under Twitter, immaterielle rettigheder | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

It was actually this tweet by @kim_bach which spawned the first thought to this post. It translates to:

Just noticed that@shevy has a copy of my tweets on his blog http://bit.ly/czOjsG, this is a violation of my copyright

And later it is continued with:

@Illuminall well in Denmark Danish law applies, no matter stupid and illegal/non-valid TOS, yes it is crazy http://bit.ly/czOjsG

This provides several interesting topics for me to comment on :)

Validity of TOS

This is by far the simplest. A TOS (Terms of service), or parts thereof, might not be valid and/or legal in Denmark. As always when there is a contractual relationship across borders, where the law differs strongly, it is disputed whereas it is the legal standing in the country of the contract provider (here USA, home-country of Twitter) or the contract acceptor (here Denmark, home-country of the user @Kim_bach), which has the final validity. The TOS of Twitter clearly states that it is USA, but what if the TOS doesn’t hold water in Denmark?

The Danish Law on Contractual Relationships (danish: Aftaleloven) §38b requires that any binding contractual deal (like a TOS) is the result of individual negotiations. With exceptions of TOS’ that are simply quotations of current legislations, to my knowledge no court decision in Denmark, has yet ruled in favor of a TOS being a valid contract (either on web-pages nor in programs), and thus the legal implications herein are not withstanding in Denmark. But for the sake of the rest of this post – let’s say they are :)

Are tweets protected by Danish copyright?

Unlike the common definition of copyright (which is based on English tradition), the Danish copyright is based on the French tradition of authors right (droit d’auteur). As a result of this, emphasis on Danish copyright is on the creators “ideal rights” to the created work (droit moral) as opposed to the UK copyright tradition, which allowed for a complete transfer of the creators rights, to the rights for unlimited copy and distribution (copyright).

The two major implications of this, is that the creator of work in Denmark always hold the ideal right (moral rights) of the work (a Danish derivative of the droit de retrait et de repentir) and thus the creator can only transfer the right to copy the work and distribute these within limits, but also that the creator can’t renounce the right to be attributed (the droit à la paternité) under any circumstances (actually it has been debated, wither this makes it legal for works created in Denmark or by Danish citizens, to be released under Creative Commons, but that’ll remain unclear until a court-decision has been made).

So far it would seem that the distinguished user @Kim_bach is actually correct. But! There is a very central definition to be debated.

What constitutes a work?

Now in order for tweets to be protected, they have to constitute as works. The base of what constitutes a work is pretty wide. The legal precedences for this is, that the two criteria has to be fulfilled:

  • The creator of the work, must have created the work by own (independent) effort, and
  • the work must be an expression of original thoughts.

There is no further specific rule for this, but there has been several court decisions that gives a guideline. In general editorial works (which tweets is most likely to be considered as) are protected by Danish copyright. But there has also been cases, which deem that notes and notices are not, because it is not possible to express original and independent thoughts in such short forms (cases 1976-700 U, 1976-552 H and 1974-1019 H). Unfortunately the court-decisions for this is rather old (1970’s), but as far as I have been able to research, there has not been newer court-decisions changing this, so these are most likely to stand.

So my short answer would be: In my opinion tweets are not protected by the Danish copyright act. Sorry Kim :(

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Danish design right and free media licensing

03 3

Udgivet af henrik under fotografering, immaterielle rettigheder, internettet, medier, reflektioner | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

I’ll continue my little series (it’s now officially “series“) on free media licensing, with a post about Danish design right. This time though, I have the advantage of writing on a subject, I’ve actually covered in part before: First on Wikimedia Commons in a posting about Danish design right on Commons and second on a Danish forum-thread regarding police design – and thus I have two nice examples for this post :)

Basically Creative Commons only deals with copyright issues. In effect issues like personality rights (as discussed before) and design rights aren’t covered. So while a media may be freely licensed, this doesn’t allow for free, any or all usage. As a result: Free media isn’t free! (if you don’t feel like reading the entire post, just skip to the 8 line summary at the bottom)

Take a look at this:

'S-tog logo' by 'Henning Makholm (not the creative author of the logo; merely constructed the SVG file)' on Wikimedia Commons (used here under terms of Danish Copyright Act §22)

This file is available as Public domain on Wikimedia Commons, because (as the licensing template states):

This image, or text depicted in it, only consists of simple geometric shapes and text. They ”’do not meet the threshold of originality”’ needed for copyright protection, and are therefore ”’public domain”’. Although it is free of copyright restrictions, this image may still be subject to other restrictions. See WP:PD#Fonts or Template talk:PD-textlogo for more information.

Yes – there is actually a notice stating that other restrictions may apply. Which is why the media-file also has a trademark-warning:

This work contains material which may be subject to trademark laws in one or more jurisdictions. Before using this content, please ensure that you have the right to use it under the laws which apply in the circumstances of your intended use. You are solely responsible for ensuring that you do not infringe the rights to this trademark. See our general disclaimer. The use of this trademark does not indicate endorsement of the holder by Wikimedia Commons or the Wikimedia Foundation, nor vice versa.

Okay – so Wikimedia is all safe. But here’s the tricky part. In Denmark we got a design protection law (Danish Design Act), which states as follows (my translation):

§9. The design protection right, with exceptions as mentioned in §§ 10-12, that nobody without consent from the design owner, may use the design. Such use covers production, offers, marketing, introducing, executing, performing or use of a product, which utilises or stores such a design with the forementioned purposes.
Pt. 2. The design protection right, as mentioned in pt. 1, includes every design, which does not provide the informed user with a different general impression. When judging the extent of the design right protection, the amount of liberty, which the designer had when developing the design, should be taken into consideration.

§10. The design protection right can not be exerted when
1) the design is used in a sole private context,
2) the design is used in a experimental context, and
3) the design is quoted or used for education, given that the use of the design is in accordance with good practice and doesn’t harm the intented usage of the design and given that the source of the design is is attributed.

§11. The design protection right can not be exerted when
1) the design is used on ships and aerial vehicles, registered in other countries, if those are temporarily in this country, and
2) the design is used on imported parts and accessories, with the purpose of reparing and performing repairs of the forementioned ships and aerial vehicles.

§12. The design protection right does not cover actions, connected to the designs, which the owner, or with the owners conscent, is marketet within the European Economical Coorporation.

Now while it may be freely licensed and available on Wikimedia Commons, which is hosted in USA, because it doesn’t meet the US threshold of originality, it may still be a protected design in Denmark. And here’s the kicker:

The design on the media file above is actually protected!

Yes. It is protected as VA 2000 02965! You can’t freely use the media-file above in Denmark (nor any EU member state, because of Directive 98/71/EC). Of course the provisions in the Danish Design Act §10 allows me to use it on this page (which is solely private). But if you are in a NGO in EU or similar you are busted. Wikimedia could have been, had its servers been placed in a EU member state.

But how far can this right be exerted? The Design Act §9 states that (with certain exemptions) “nobody without consent from the design owner, may use the design” (the Danish term for ‘use’ is ‘udnytte’). The Danish term for ‘use’ is a little flaky. Would this image be protected?

'A picture of the Danish Raill Station: Allerød' by 'Thomas Christensen' on Wikimedia Commons

Well – for me: Of course not (I’m private). But if a Danish media agency would like to use it in an advert. I actually think it is. So even though this image is released under a license that allows for commercial usage (Creative Commones Attribution Share-alike 3.0), commercial use in Denmark probably isn’t allowed anyway. Of course the media agency could replace the S-togs logo with a solid black box, and then it would most likely be allowed, but would they want to? Doubtful.

I’m pretty unsure exactly how far the design protection right is extended. Take a look at this photo:

'In snow: Stampede' by 'Hebster' on Flickr

Could Mercedes, Peugeot and owners of the other designs depicted on this image extend the design protection, to deny this image to be used for commercial purposes?

I doubt it – no specific design are at the main focus nor are a major part of the image. But there is no rule of thumb for this…

And here is the final catch – this time in the Danish Penal Code §§132 which states that, anyone who uses designs reserved for Danish or foreign governments, authorities and military (imitating). Take a look at the pictures below. The first is the common design of a Danish police squad-vehicle (in its current design). The second is a private security vehicle in Denmark.

Danish Police car by 'Michael G. Madsen' on Beredskabsbilleder.dk (used on this blog with authors written permission) Danish security van by 'HSC' at Vagtkontakt.dk (used on this blog with authors written permission)

What’s worth to note in this case, is that the Danish police actually used the penal code §132 and ordered the design removed from the security van (the design is actually registered as VA 2004 01434, but I doubt that changes anything). So even if one had made a free design, one couldn’t use it, if it had to much resemblance to a design protected by the Danish penal code §132.

The mandatory short summary

In Denmark (and most of EU which is based on the same legal traditions and principles) a media-file may be free, but using the content in the file might not. This is the case where the main-focus of the content is protected by either the Design Act, where a person depicted is protected by personality rights (which even extends to appearances in public), where the content might imitate Danish or foreign governments, authorities and military. Freedom in this case, will also be looked at differently, depending whether it is for commercial or private use or simply what the intentions is with the usage.

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Free license based business model? No way. But that’s okay..

02 27

Udgivet af henrik under Forsvaret, IT, immaterielle rettigheder, medier, reflektioner, sociale medier | Ingen kommentarer (endnu)

After my advocacy-like posting yesterday about Creative Commons (CC), I’ve received a mail which included the following question (my translation) from a Danish journalist student:

Your comments about the problems with Creative Commons does hold some merit, but I think that you are missing the main problem with Creative Commons licenses: That it isn’t possible to create a business model revolving around Creative Commons (or Public Domain and other similar free licenses for that matter).

She is right. At least from my point of view there is no solid business model, that can be made from using CC exclusively. But I don’t think there has to be anyway.

Talking about content and content propagation, one has to take a look at the three pillars of content: Content providers, content hosts and content consumers

The main argument for content providers to release content, under a free license is that it will most likely provide more exposure. The main draw is that the provider looses control of the content. For a happy amateur-photographer like me, the later isn’t really an issue: My photos are most likely never going to produce any income to me anyway.

For content hosts free licensing may work both way. In a world of advertising based hosting providers, the prospect of increased exposure for free media may be beneficial. But on the other hand I don’t see a long and happy future for on-line advertising (at least not as we know it now). It’ll probably turn out to be micro-payments presenting content or term-payments for hosting content. For the latter Flickr has surely shown, that it is possible.

The content consumers gain the most of free content. For students, Wikipedia, schools and others the increased availability of free content, will most likely bring them a larger source-base. And a larger source-base will most likely provide them with more possibilities to find the right content – or find better substitutes for content as of now.

Free government media may be beneficial for content providers as well

But that said, I do see some situations where CC may be beneficial to content providers as well, like the future of the mail-writer. Danish governmental agencies produces quite a lot of material in the form of photographs and texts. Three obvious examples could be:

For the latter portions of the material are already free; certain texts like laws can’t achieve copyright status in any form. But other media on Folketingets homepage are released under a license, that’s not unlike (but isn’t quite) CC Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike 3.0. Which doesn’t allow for commercial use. The two former doesn’t (immediate) allow for any form of commercial use of their products. But why? The production of the media is most likely already paid by Danish tax-payers (and with a company tax of 25% and a personal income tax of 59% I’d say it’s paid), and whatever minor monetary income the institutions may produce by selling must be next to nothing compared to the tax-procurement. So release the products. Make them public domain, so that the companies and people in Denmark (and outside as well for that matter) may benefit from it. And so would the journalist who wrote the mail to me. On a side note: There is a  not entitlement to domestic copyright protection for certain media made by US government institutions, which works not unlike my above suggestion.

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The problem isn’t (entirely) Creative Commons – it’s people

02 26

Udgivet af henrik under IT, Wikipedia, immaterielle rettigheder, internettet, reflektioner | 1 kommentar

I just found this old post from the This Picture Sucks blog, about the New Jersey Local News‘ supposedly correct use of a Creative Commons image from Flickr in an article. But it isn’t. And this shows to problems with Creative Commons (as seen from a Danish point of view).

Most people only reads the human-friendly version of CC-licenses

Looking at the photo now it is licensed as CC Attribution 2.0 Generic, and I’d say it is safe to assume that this hasn’t changed, because the blog post also links to this. This license clearly states that:

You may distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work only under the terms of this License, and You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy or phonorecord of the Work You distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform.

If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if applicable) of the Original Author if supplied; the title of the Work if supplied; to the extent reasonably practicable, the Uniform Resource Identifier, if any, that Licensor specifies to be associated with the Work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the Work; and in the case of a Derivative Work, a credit identifying the use of the Work in the Derivative Work (e.g., “French translation of the Work by Original Author,” or “Screenplay based on original Work by Original Author”).

While the article actually does include a link to the photo-author, NJ.com doesn’t “include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier for, this License with every copy” and doesn’t “keep intact all copyright notices for the Work”.

And here is the problem. Most people only read the very user-friendly simplified presentation of the license but not the full legal text, which is only linked to by a small discrete link in the bottom of the user-friendly version.

Now there is a reason why the full legal text contains 1763 words compared to the 267 words in the user-friendly one. And that’s because parts of the full license text is skipped. Now this may be okay when you are little Ms. Moe, who is about to license your photos on Flickr or any other photo-sharing service. Because generally the user-friendly version presents less rights than the complete license text, so Ms. Moe doesn’t experience much of a loss (given that she has actually read and understands the user-friendly version – which is a common problem with people marking their photos as Creative Commons on Flickr).

But at the other end, there us the users of the CC-marked media. These people doesn’t often read the full license. And doesn’t conform to it. I’ve seen newspaper articles having used a photo from Wikimedia Commons simply attributing it to ‘Wikipedia’, though the image source page, clearly directs the manner, to which the photo should be credited. I’ve also seen one of my own photos used in a presentation by a Danish government official (whom actually turned out be a lawyer) without any sort of credit. Confronted afterwards he stated, that he thought that media from Wikipedia was “simply free”. Wrong. He didn’t even read the user-friendly version… As it is now, users of Creative Commons media, aren’t encouraged to use the full license, neither at Flickr, at Wikimedia or at most other sites – but they should be.

Model releases

Another point is model releases. In Denmark the penal code § 264 d states (my translation):

With fine or imprisonment for up to 6 months, a person whom unfounded distributes or uses messages or images, showing a person in private settings or showing a person during circumstances, which can be demanded deprived from the public. This provision also includes messages or media which shows a dead person.

By court decision this also extends to photos of people doing model work.

So I may actually put a picture on Flickr, license it as CC Attribution 2.0 Generic (the same as above), but that doesn’t give a newspaper the rights to use it without the models consent. Confusing? Yes.

And in June 2007 this actually became very much an issue, when Australian Virgin Mobile used a CC-licensed Flickr photo in an advertising campaign.

Of course there is the ever-lasting problem with the Internet: Which national legal code applies? If I as a Dane upload a photo of a person, pictured in Denmark, but the photo is used by an News-company in USA, does the Danish penal code apply to the American News Company’s usage?

For that very reason Wikimedia Commons has, and uses, the template Personality rights:

Wikimedia Commons Personality Rights Warning

But what if my photo is used by (insert what-ever group you wouldn’t want to use your photo here)?

That is the common problem with this kind of material. Like a friend of mine told me a couple of weeks ago:

I’d really like to release my photos as Creative Commons, but what if it ended up by being used by some neo-nazi group or a anti-gay-rights group?

If the group in subject is observing the license completely, the user will be let to the human-friendly page, which clearly states:

You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

And that’s a vital point here: Using your photos is free. It has nothing to do with political views or anything. It’s simply free. For everyone. Actually I’ve been told, that one of my photos at one point was used by an Anti-War group in Denmark (the same as used by the government official above). Given my occupation as a naval officer, I really don’t endorse those groups. But I do endorse the freedom of speech and the ability to use my free images.

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