A Networked World

In the hands of parasites and thieves

We expect the Americans to try and steal everything that is not nailed down, its the normal process of the empire to appropriate everything. But to find a New Zealand government ministry assisting the theft is a bloody disgrace.

A rural library in Horowhenua says a United States company has hijacked the computer system it invented and taken the trademark on its Maori name.

The Horowhenua Library Trust devised a software system called Koha 12 years ago to manage catalogues and lending information.

The system is free and widely used by other libraries, churches, schools and corporations around the world.

However, the trust's head of libraries, Joann Ransom, says the American company LibLimehas been granted provisional rights to the name Koha by the Ministry of Economic Development.

She says LibLime is trying to adapt the Koha system for its own private client base.

"We did something really good and we gave it away to the world and it's been a glorious thing globally for 12 years. And now this American corporate wants to take it," she says.

Ms Ransom says she is astounded an international company could trademark a Maori word.

The library has three months to object to the decision and Ms Ransom says it has little money to pay for a legal case.

via www.radionz.co.nz

We live in a world where only those things that are done for profit may be done and that anything being done without a desire for profit can be treated as optional until some way can be found to profit from it.

Those who have assets that are not being used for profit can have those assets expropriated for the benefit of anyone who seeks to profit from those assets. 

Theft of IP, theft of living treasure in the form of the Maori language within which Koha is a significant cultural factor, theft of the value that has been created by a great product that enables libraries all over the world to conduct their business without paying excruciating fortunes to commercial interests.

And there is the crime that Koha has committed. Because we have now reached that stage where any task done for free is defined as theft of profits from someone trying to profit from that activity and that must be stopped.

The people in MED who have sanctioned this are complicit in the crime and at the very least need to be hauled into the street,tarred and feathered and dumped in Wellington harbour then charged with polluting the environment.

I will also give good odds that someone will, once the deal is done, get "head hunted" by an affiliate company for a nice lucrative job. No crass, brown-paper-bag-full-of-cash corruption is needed in this corrupted system, just a nod and a wink.

Actions needed.

1. Internet NZ needs to step into this and fund the case against this theft
2. Tweet it, FB it, letter to the editor it, and for Kiwis 3 days out from an election, kick some pollieass.

What a disgrace.

#NetHui and Digital Literacy

At last week's excellent NetHui, run by Internet NZ, I was asked to plug in 5 minutes worth on Digital Literacy. As usual, I tried to give it a bit of a spin. (starts at 41.12 and runs 6 minutes - the cut [poor sync] is Download Nethui_digital-literacy)

Here's the full version that probably takes a bit more than 5 minutes.

As one of the other presenters suggested, Digital Literacy means different things to different people and I want to pick up on some points raised by Mike Dickison and maybe be push them out a little, perhaps just shove them off the cliff.

For me digital literacy includes knowing when to take one of these and stick it in your mouth.

The reason for this is simple; in Miami Beach on Memorial Day this year, a bunch of out-of-control cops pumped over 100 shots into a private car in a public place, killing an unarmed black man inside (now there's a surprise) and wounded some bystanders.

A young man called Narces Benoit saw what was happening and whipped out his cellphone to record the scene. One of the cops noticed what he was doing, broke off his shooting gallery duties and came charging at Benoit, waving his gun and screaming at him to get out of his car and hand over the cellphone, which he did.

The cop them smashed the cellphone under his boot and arrested Benoit. Nevertheless, within a few hours, the video of the event was going viral on Youtube because, when he saw the cop rushing at him, Benoit had the presence of mind to take out of the phone his digital media storage card and put it in his mouth.

The difference between Benoit and the cop is what I call Digital Literacy.

A few months ago in the Australian Navy, a female recruit was having a sexual relationship with another recruit. The guy in question thought it would be terribly cool to capture the "action" with his webcam and broadcast it to his mates. She was not happy and complained to her commander about the breach of trust and privacy. He essentially told her not to be a spoilsport and swept the matter under the rug.

The young woman became even less happy and shared her experience on facebook. Within days her commander and his boss and his boss and HIS boss were all publicly on the mat, caps in hand, staring at their shoes and explaining HOW they were going to solve the problem of their appalling leadership.

The difference between the young woman and the Australian Navy is what I call Digital Literacy.

About the same time, footballer Ryan Giggs was having an affair with model Imogen Thomas and when it was discovered he sought the help of the UK Supreme Court which obligingly issued a "super injunction" forbidding the publication of the facts.

Within hours, over 70,000 Twitter users had turned the super injunction into a legal fiction.

The difference between the Supreme Court and Ryan Giggs fan base is what I call Digital Literacy.

And all over the Middle east and North Africa this year, people have risen up, trying to throw off a generation of oppression, corruption and violence against them. Now we have had revolutions for a long time, but in the past they have needed a core of intellectual, philosophical and operational leadership, surrounded by a cadre of activists willing to take the message into the community.

Those roles are now being taken over by the whole community using social media tools. It is that takeover and the loss of the privileged position of leadership that I call Digital Literacy.

In Christchurch's major earthquakes, at risk of their lives and while their buildings and their city crumbled around them people grabbed their cellphones and videoed the event as a way to record their own experience to share with others and possibly to provide evidence of what happened to them if they didn't make it out.

That too I call Digital Literacy.

Literacy of any kind is not just being able to read and write the words, it is understanding the meaning, the significance and the context of the communication, then knowing how to manipulate them.

The best example I can think of is the advent of film to entertainment. The first films were little more than stage plays with a camera placed in front of them to record the action. But it wasn't long before we saw the appearance of film literacy, using the unique language of the cinema to tell the story in its own way. The language includes backgorund music, closeups, tracking and pan shots, framing and the million other ways to use a camera that are not available to stage plays.

So we cannot expect that Digital Literacy will look in any but the most superficial ways, like hard copy literacy. In fact, by my definition Digital Literacy is happening all around us, all the time, with increasing frequency.

For 20 years we have talked about the ICT Revolution, blithely ignoring the fact that all revolutions break stuff, and the thing they break first and most irreparably, is the status quo, to expect the revolutionaries to restore the powers of the old guard is nonsense.

Digital Literacy does not consist in being able to write a CV in a word processor nor manage our accounts with a spreadsheet, they are far too often, a way for the old guard to try and force the revolution into a mould with which they feel comfortable.

Our problem is that digital illiteracy is rife in Government, business, education, health, justice and the NFP sectior, very often among those who are pushing hardest for solutions.

The real digital literacy challenge that we have is to shift the old guard into actual digital literacy so that our organisations, which have real, and vital, work to do, can engage with, communicate with, work with an increasingly digitally literate community; so that they can swim in that literacy instead of drowning in it as they are doing right now.

MY problem is that I   have no idea how the hell we are going to do that.

Digital Literacy does not consist in being able to write a CV in a word processor nor manage our accounts with a spreadsheet, they are far too oftten, a way for the old guard to try and force the revolution into a mould with which they feel comfortable.

The real Wikileaks secrets

Most of what we have seen from the Wikileaks cables is mere confirmation of what we suspected all along, mostly that our politicians and other leaders routinely lie to us about what they are doing and, especially, why they are doing it.

In some cases that leads to dead people as have illegal or unwinnable wars such as in Iraq and Afghanistan and it is seriously rich to have people with buckets of blood on their hands lecturing Wikileaks about the possibility that people may be compromised.

There is a difference between those who cause harm inadvertently while trying to out a criminal and those who commit the crimes in the first place. Ask any cop who has accidentally killed someone who walked into the line of fire at the wrong moment, for example.

But the real secret that is causing so much panic is not the diplomatic chitchat and scandal, schadenfreude-inducing though that may be; what is causing all the sturm und drang is the meta message that is coming down the line and will get much liuder and much clearer as the commercial and banking data comes out.

That message is this, the game is rigged. Like this, for instance

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – A WikiLeaks cable indicates that BHP Billiton tried to sabotage a proposed investment by China's Chinalco in rival Rio Tinto, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

“The cables sent from Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan's chief of staff to US officials describe how BHP "played its cards with consummate skill" in lobbying the government to delay a decision on a deal between Rio Tinto and Chinalco,” the ABC report said.

In February 2009, Chinalco agreed to invest $19,5-billion in Rio Tinto and its operations to obtain an 18% stake in the world's third-biggest mining company, which at the time was battling to shift debt.

But Rio broke off the deal in June, opting instead for a big rights issue and a since-scrapped iron-ore joint venture in Australia with BHP.

The Chinalco agreement had followed an earlier failed hostile takeover bid by BHP Billiton for Rio Tinto.    

All of the players involved knew what was going on, not one of them lacks the resources to know what the others are actually doing behind the scenes, the only people who must not find out that the pollies and the captains of industry are rigging the game is us.

As long as we can be convinced that we have to play the capitalist (or communist or theocratic) game and that there are rules which, if followed, can lead to "success" we will keep doing our best and blaming ourselves for any failures.

But once we see clearly that the whole game is rigged by those who have been playing longest, we will first withdraw our participation and, when they try to enforce play, out will come the torches and pitchforks.

THAT is what is getting so many panties in a bunch in the capitals of the world.

The damage done by Wikileaks

I'm sure that it comes as absolutely no surprise to any diplomat nor their employing government, that their counterparts from other nations routinely lie to them about pretty much everything. Nor should it come as a shock that some of their counterparts think of them as idiots or worse.

A diplomat is someone who lies professionally for his country and any diplomat not fully aware of that is a liability and should be fired forthwith.

So it is unlikely that the Wikileaks data dump provides anything more than confirmation of normal suspicions and, being diplomats, these people will have no trouble whatever continuing both to deal with, and lie to, each other with unruffled feathers for many years to come, their personal flutterings soothed by regular application of canapes and booze.

On the other hand, what the leaks can very much damage is the credibility and safety of governments at the hands of their employers, viz, us.

While most of us have a default position that our masters, elected and otherwise, treat us and our aspirations and needs with dismissal when it is not outright contempt, it is another thing altogether to discover how regularly and egregiously they betray our interests in the pursuit of their rarefied and esoteric goals in the Great Game.

Wikileaks has the mission of fleshing out and adding fine detail to those betrayals and in doing so they undermine the pretenses and obfuscations and credibility, the authority of nation states in relation to their own people.

THAT is why the bastards are screaming in moral panic; that is why they are plotting the destruction of the torchlight shone straight into their corrupted hearts.

That is why we all have a duty to support Wikileaks, because it has the potential, at last, and in fact, to keep the bastards honest.

Update:  What is the betting that, if sweden is able to have Julian Assange extradited, the rape case will be dropped but he will be held because there is an application from the US for his extradition to their jurisdiction? I'm going with about 80%.

Plus, after spending so many uyears in a very happy association with sweden and its reputation for openness, I'm bloody horrified by their role in this.

Mega

Lomania

The sooner this guy self destructs, the better for us all. Tamaki's 700 'sons' swear oath of loyalty

The leader of Destiny Church, Brian Tamaki, who not long ago anointed himself bishop of the church he founded, has now proclaimed himself the church's "spiritual father" and designated the male members of the church as "spiritual sons".

At a special service during the church's annual conference in Auckland at the weekend, about 700 male members of the church swore a "covenant oath" of loyalty and obedience to Mr Tamaki and were given a "covenant ring" to wear on their right hands.

A church document describes the covenant as "a solemn oath of commitment that is binding, enduring and unbreakable. You are bound to covenant ... Covenant is an irrevocable, undissolvable oath of commitment".

There's another word for that kind of relationship; slavery. And if these 700 "sons" don't wake up to their "father's" serious ego problem, they will become his shock troops next.

There's a time to stop this dangerous crap, and it is now, before it gets out of hand. He has feet of clay like the rest of us, someone needs to dig them up pronto, although he is as cunning as a fox, he already has the antidote in their veins.

"You will hear all sorts of statements and opinions but you must be
prepared to ignore them and consistently hold him in the same high
regard no matter what you hear."

Somewhat surprisingly, the protocol says that Mr Tamaki is human and does make mistakes.

However, the sons must "be prepared to defend against any problems arising out of his mistakes.

A
loyal man is supposed to 'cushion' the effect of a mistake on Bishop
and to protect him. NEVER intentionally expose his weakness."

Now, we know that he knows that there is something under the covers. All that matters is what that something is.

The PM is SHOCKED!

Now, what brought this on I wonder?
Key attacks rich people who claim welfare - National - NZ Herald News

Prime Minister John Key says wealthy people who are legally manipulating their financial affairs to ensure they benefit from Working for Families are "rorting the system" in a way that is unfair on other taxpayers.

A Treasury paper for the Tax Working Group says 9700 families with investment properties also receive Working for Families tax credits - and many were boosting their entitlements by offsetting their incomes against rental losses on their properties.

The paper also said there was growing evidence high-earners were using other ways to "shelter" their incomes to ensure they maximised what they could get from Working for Families.

The former Labour finance minister also says that this was not brought to his attention as minister.

Oh come on boys, give us a break. The rich have ALWAYS rorted the system, they have always used their accountants to create tax shelters that enable them to avoid paying tax and, if the shelter didn't exist, they have been damned successful at getting successive governments to create them.

Evidence: when we paid off our mortgage a few years ago the so-called financial adviser we had at the time declared that the next step was to get us into more debt. The sole reason for doing so was to use the engineered losses on the "investment" to generate tax rebates.

Always with the threat that if the state did not comply they would up stakes and take their money somewhere else.

On the other hand, I look forward eagerly to the publication of the names of these families, the amount they have received in benefits and the value of the shelters behind which they stash their money.

As usual, Tumeke is on the ball.

NZ Internet filter comes out from under the radar

While Australia has been suffering under yet another fruitless attempt to censor the internet on the grounds of protecting children, the NZ government has just gone ahead and done it without public consultation. And now the scheme has met daylight. Internet filter sparks outrage

The Government is spending $150,000 on website "filtering" software, outraging some bloggers who say the move amounts to censorship of the internet.

Since 2007 the Department of Internal Affairs' Censorship Compliance Unit has worked with a small group of internet service providers on a "trial" project to block access to websites distributing child pornography.

The project, using hardware and software supplied by a Swedish technology company, thwarts access to more than 7000 websites known to offer child sexual abuse material.

If computer users subscribed to the ISPs involved in the trial - which now include TelstraClear, ihug, Watchdog and Maxnet - attempt to access sites on the DIA's blacklist they are re-directed to a message explaining the site has been blocked.

Until now the DIA's filtering project has been run on a shoestring Budget of $2000 or $3000 a year, but the department won $150,000 in this year's Budget to buy software to expand the system beyond a trial. The money was part of a $661,000 Budget increase for "censorship enforcement activity".

In a letter to Wellington blogger Thomas Beagle, Censorship Compliance Unit manager Steve O'Brien said because New Zealand's censorship legislation - the Film, Videos and Publications Classification Act - contained no specific authority for website filtering, ISPs' participation in the trial had been voluntary.

O'Brien said the country's largest ISP, Telecom, along with ihug owner Vodafone, had "expressed their willingness to participate" in the expanded programme.

In his blog, Beagle wrote he was concerned there was no "external oversight" of websites added to the department's blacklist.

"It is being implemented in a very 'under the radar' way so as to avoid the fuss that has been raised in other countries such as Australia," he said.

"If we are going to implement internet filtering I believe it should be done openly and through law."

[...] Mauricio Freitas, the Wellington-based founder of popular technology website Geekzone, also blogged about his concerns there was no oversight to the filtering process, meaning it could be extended beyond blocking child porn sites.

"[T]here isn't a publicly available list of blacklisted websites, and no guarantees that a secret meeting between government agencies wouldn't in the future add other 'categories' to this list," he said.

It is unfortuante that those defending civil liberties have to make common cause with the least desirable elements in society first, its how those who are prepared to undermine everyone's civil liberties slide these ideas in under the radar. And we are always assured that "only those dreadful people will be affected", until they aren't. Pastor Martin Niemöller turns out to be right most of the time.

For more on this issue check Kiwi blogger The Compleat Thomas Beagle and if you are a member of Internet NZ, you might want to ask them about this statement on the topic that they sent him.

Governments have the right to determine what is and what is not objectionable, and to take action against that. InternetNZ’s view is that only objectionable material, as defined in the Act, could be a legitimate case for censorship.

As Beagle says, "I think we have to interpret that as Internet NZ being, if not in favour, at least not being against the net filtering scheme. This is an interesting contrast to the mission statement on their website:"

We work to keep the Internet open and uncaptureable, protecting and promoting the Internet for New Zealand.

Our objective is “high performance and unfettered access for all” so the Internet continues to operate in an open environment that cannot be captured by any entity or individual for their own ends.

Is Government-run internet filtering “capture” and what does that mean for “unfettered access”.

Beagle, rightly, wants to know what they are talking about in their discussions with the DIA.

Twitter feed for the topic.

A voice of common sense

What Brian Rudman says : Referendum smacks of wasted money

Over the next few weeks, $8.9 million of taxpayers' money is going to be wasted on this meaningless, non-binding referendum. That's a quarter of the amount Barnados spent helping children in need last year.

It's more than half the Government funding for adult education, a programme which will be cut from next year to pay for meaningless extravagances like this.

The 200,000 Kiwis who take night classes might like to remind the smackers of this ... or feel guilty that they were among the 300,000 people who signed the petition calling for a referendum.

Also feeling guilty should be the law-makers and the bureaucrats who created a system which allows such a meaningless question to be put to voters.

"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand." This question is so loaded as to be incomprehensible.

What does "good parental correction" mean in this context. What is "a smack". It also suggests that a smack, in this context, is a criminal offence. But it isn't. Two years ago, a grand coalition of parliamentarians - 113 to 8 - cobbled together a compromise to allay any such fears.

So we're wasting $8.9 million to express our opinion on something that isn't happening now and that no one has any plans to introduce.

In the deal hammered out between former Prime Minister Helen Clark and her successor, John Key, police were given the discretion not to prosecute a parent for the use of force against a child "if the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution".

What the act (that the slap-happy fundies so oppose) did do was remove the anomaly that allowed a parent to thrash a child and then later in court, use the defence of "reasonable force for the purpose of correction". It's a defence not available to brawling adults. Nor to an adult disciplining a child who is not their own flesh and blood.

Too many people are addicted tol violence as the solution to their feelings of fear and frustration, especially when it comes to kids.

These same people are, in this case, liars and fear mongers and, since they force me, I will be voting Yes. If they want to be backed RIGHT into a corner, lets give it to them.

Unconscionable chiropractic behaviour

Thansk Jonnie for the pointer to Derren Brown's piece Simon Singh stands up to libel claims. Derren says:

I have put my name to a petition that feels that libel laws should not be used to silence discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence. This is following the British Chiropractic Association bringing a libel case against Simon Singh for questioning the evidence relating to their claims. It seems to many people, including your blogger, that the response to this should be open debate and defending of claims, not suing the respected author of an article for highlighting such doubts.

Simon has taken the brave move of appealing the pre-trial ruling, and Sense About Science have joined with him to gather support for the freedom of speech issue that underpins this. It can all be read about here. Simon is quoted as saying:

“It has been a stressful and frustrating twelve months since I published my article on chiropractors and their attempts to treat children with conditions such as asthma. The British Chiropractic Association’s decision to sue me for libel has been an enormous drain on my time and energy.

I have a horse in this race. I've had asthma all my life, Chiroppractic treatement has done wonders for my back when it was in acute pain, but using libel laws to silence debate on evidence is utterly unconscionable.

And absurd. We have so-called debates all the time about the effectiveness of medical treatments from triple vaccines and whether they cause autism (my 2c, even if they do in a very few cases, the risk is justified) to the plethora of drugs that have nasty side effects or don't work as well as the advertising suggests. This demand to be beyond criticism is all part of the corporatisation of society and its in the process of stopping. Chiros need to get with the programme, get down off their pedestals and defend their practiose or get into another line of business.

Another fascist gene expressed

I thought the NZ government had gone pretty far down the nutso legislation road with our incompetent Copyright protection laws, but this takes the cake. Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day.

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

Some questions

1. Is there now a global compact among nations now to co-ordinate their blacklists? What business does Australia have blacklisting denmarks' blacklist/ What POSSIBLE difference could it make?
2. Anti-abortionists may be misinformed and some advocate violence against women who have abortions and their practitioners. Here's the news, rational people want to know who these advocates are. Hiding them is the worst possible disservice to informed debate.
3. Big one. How in hell am I suppsoed to know whether i am linking to a banned website if I can't LOOK IT UP. Oh wait, some bureacratic snoop will TELL me.
4. Does publishing the URL of the banned site constitute LINKING to it? don't ask, tese bunnies wont know what you are talking about.

Rule 1.
NEVER permit bureaucrats to make decisions about our freedoms.