On Intellectual Property Rights and copyright...

To all of those who believe that it is their right to steal, take, or copy the work of others there are a couple examples in the news (well, came into my ambit) in the past two days.

First was an article in AP magazine. Oh, you will find this on the 'net but it is a real live paper type version that I have borrowed from the library.

It concerns an English photographer who saw one of his images being used in a magazine and he new darned well that he had not given permission for its use. He enquired and found that the "right" had been purchased from Flikr.

So, there is the first warning. If you are using Flikr for image storage, their "Terms and Conditions" retain the right to use any image and to sell that right to others. It does not limit the "owners" right in any way, but the "owner" does not retain a sole right to his IP.

All of that is quite legal, proper and above board. But how many really sit and read all of the fine print?

The second centres on a young(ish) guy from down south a-ways. Known as "the nek minit" man. He made a quick video which went viral, making "nek minit" the latest in inter-galactic patois.

He has been selling t's with "Nek Minit" on the front in Wellington, proceeds going to his work in reducing bullying in schools. He has (apparently) a detailed and intimate knowledge of that subject. Just down the road, one of the national shop chains in selling t's with "Nek Minute" on the front, proceeds to the chain and an Australian t maker.

There is another NZ company which has registered "Nek Minit" as a trademark. As of last night they had agreed to sell those rights to the man provided he comes up with the cost (a couple of hundred) to reimburse the cost.

On being occupied, and the process of occupation...

There was a time, within my lifetime, that "occupied" had meanings ranging from "being used" as in a house or toilet, to "doing something" deriving from the idea of "occupation". The active meaning of the latter has now transmogrified to include the first, so that the idea of "occupation Wall St" and its international derivatives has made a profession of inhabiting a space to prevent its use by others. Perhaps on reflection that idea is not as new as it has been presented. F'rinstance it was a regular family occurance for one member (usually my mother) to complain about the toilet being used as a reading room; a practice that went as far as the old man installing a small bookshelf on the wall behind the toilet so that books were not left on the floor.

So that history has somewhat coloured my attitude to those who have occupied Wall St, or closer to home, Aotea Square. Add to that a strong feeling that it was the wrong people making the wrong protest about the wrong thing and you might begin to understand why the ol probligo has been fairly quiet on the occupy front. OK, and to take the point from a recent post me old mate Al put up, I will explain why.

The wrong people? It is usual in recent times for protest to be led by the young, the idealist, those who want to improve this world for their own benefit. There is nothing wrong with that really, but I do think that the protest should be led by those who have put their faith in a system in expectation that they would gain due benefit for their participation and have been sadly let down as a consequence of their trust.

The wrong protest? The right protest would be against those whose actions led to the loss. The bankers are in part to blame, no question! But I do not believe them to be the reason, though they are part of the cause. The politicians are no more to blame than the bankers. Politicians respond to the same kind of pressures as bankers; to give people what they want. I don't think that individuals are at fault either. So to protest about the "profits made by the bankers" is a waste of time in my book. And that leads to the last...

The wrong thing? The fault really starts with the fundamental nature of our society; the basis of which is measuring societal success in terms of profligance, material and monetary wealth rather than ethic, virtue and contribution.

To which end comes a book review that is very a propos the general theme. Debt (written by David Graebe) is a book which I shall be reading as soon as I can lay my hands on a copy through the local library.

Debt's striking synchronicity with OWS should not overshadow the fact that it's also a formidable piece of anthropological scholarship. The book spans the concept's evolution from the great Axial Age civilizations—adapting Karl Jaspers's label to describe the period between 800 BCE and 600 CE in Greece, India, and China—into the age of global conquest, and finally though its bizarre mutations over the past forty years. As Graeber shows, debt could not have taken the form that it did during the Axial Age without the appearance of currency, but it was also far from being only, or even principally, an economic matter. Debt was originally a moral and cosmological notion, about our debt to the gods (in India), to our parents (in China), or to the cosmos (in Greece, and sometimes in India).

I need to put the idea of debt into the context of my opening argument. Bear in mind here that I am using "debt" in both sides of the transaction; it is an obligation, it is the act of being obliged to another, of owing.

The change that has taken place is from a communal debt to creator, to cosmos, to the principle of personal debt. The measurement of personal debt I suspect does precede currency by some great margin. As evidence of that I can point to Maori who, before European contact, had a strong sense of personal indebtedness which could lead to either death or enslavement as payment of those debts. There was no monetary measurement of either cause nor settlement; cause could include losing mana (societal position) to the "debtor" requiring utu (revenge for the loss and reinstatement) as payment.

In the barter economy, survival would have depended upon ethic and virtue (like simple honesty) in dealings between individuals. Hence an agreement to provide in return for a provision (work for work, work for material object) could also operate without the need for currency.

I suspect that currency was put in place primarily so that those in power - the mafia of the time - could easily obtain a portion of the value of each individual's global indebtedness. That value in return was used to obtain the services necessary to maintain the power to collect; the coertion that libertarians like to hate.

To return to the review -

The guiding principle of Graeber's sweeping global history is that debt must not remain the exclusive property of economic historians, and moreover, that anthropologists are better equipped to take on the issue. The foundational myth on which economics rests, and which Graeber relishes debunking, is the "touchingly utopian" idea that money emerged directly out of primitive barter systems and had only to do with interest-maximizing exchange. Arguing against this from an anthropological perspective, Graeber claims that debt is the basis of society, and as such is inherently ineliminable. He illustrates this point through the example of debt to one's parents: to seek to cancel that debt would be impossible. Graeber describes a system of gift-giving in traditional societies that takes place over time, and involves gifts of slightly more or less value than the ones that preceded them, thus ensuring that everyone is always slightly in debt or in credit to everyone else. This sort of debt, he says, is nothing less than the continual creation of society. It is not so much that we owe something to society, but that society "just is our debts."

But there is also a foundation principle that has not changed in all of that time; from the time of the Axis Wars. It is a principle that I would dearly like to see whether Graebe has picked up on; it is the main reason for wanting to read his book. It is the action that society took against people who did not comply with the "accepted debt" under which they lived. In times past (and I base this on the Ancient Greeks in particular) the consequence of not complying with societal expectations was to be excluded from the protection of that society. That would mean living in what was essentially enemy territory, making and getting as best one could; truth be told it was an effective death sentence.

That prompted the idea that the process of indebtedness has changed indeed, and changed most rapidly over the past 300 years. The bridge at that time between cottage industry to industrialisation saw changes to society, and not least to the processes of economics. That change continues. It is evidenced by the recent (the last 40 years) change toward the "technology based" society.

The debt to society no longer exists. Debt has evolved to the extent that it is now expressed solely in currency terms. Debt is now owed to others, in return for complying with societal expectations.

From the review, it seems that I will not at all agree with Graebe's conclusion, no matter how much I might agree with his rationale.

[Graebe] believes that ... at a moment when capitalism seems unsustainable, the great hope for the future is to turn back to traditional human economies of mutual, loving indebtedness. For Graeber, capitalism is as much a fantasy as any utopian option: "We could no more have a universal world market," he writes, "than we could have a system in which everyone who wasn't a capitalist was somehow able to become a respectable, regularly paid wage laborer with access to adequate dental care. A world like that has never existed and never could exist. What's more, the moment that even the prospect that this might happen begins to materialize, the whole system starts to come apart."

One of the problems of history is that there is no winding back the clock. I do not think that a graceful return to (for example) an agrarian society is any more possible than the Russians or the Chinese have tried to make it. It may come about if there is a cataclysmic close to industrialisation - the kind of cataclysm that made the dinosaurs extinct be it physical disaster or disease.

I think that what I am struggling with is the separation of "capitalism" as an economic process from the underlying engine that "requires" continual growth. To that extent I know that I already disagree with Graebe but I acknowledge that the disagreement could be based upon differing ideas of what "capitalism" is.

If there is an evolutionary step to come from the current and future economic crises it is going to have to start with a re-evaluation of the relationship between society, capital, and the idea of indebtedness. In particular, the idea that societal expectations can be met by possession of material wealth will have to change; the idea that societal wealth can be represented by increasing personal indebtedness will have to change; the idea that there is a free lunch for some may have to go as well.

Idle Sunday Observation -

One of the most recent links offered by ALD is to the New Humanist, a correspondant by the name of Johnathon Re'e (there is supposed to be an accent on the first e). He is offering yet another repatitive and boring rationalisation on the relationship between atheists, atheism, and the Christian religion.

Why is it that 99% of the modern atheists (I can not in truth say 100%) follow the well-trodden path of single religious atheism. As he does this, Ree has pointed out the inconsistency of his own argument. His observation that Christians were considered atheists by the Romans of the time follows the single religion path to its source.

When will "atheism" and its promoters be able to take the truth of their own belief to its foundation? The "well-trodden path" (is it the narrow path to heaven of the Christians?) should be the broad highway that excludes all theism. Does Ree's rejection of Christianity reject Bhuddist or Hindu beliefs as well?

Aldous Huxley was brave enough to analyse the common ground between all the major religions (his "Perrennial Philosophy") rather than to express a full atheism. That book should be a required reading for anyone who leaps to print on the subject of atheism. Not only should it be read, it should also be understood and appreciated as one expression of the foundation of all religious belief.

I profess to have no religion. That to me is atheism. I do not need to support or even debate what it means. That it is my belief makes it as valid in every sense as Catholicism, Jaine, Sufism, Bhuddism, Islam, or Southern Baptist.

In no way does that make me amoral. The counter that atheism is the same as amorality does not cut the mustard. I live by the morality of my up-bringing, of the society in which I live. That does not in any way counter my belief, counter the fact that I have no belief in any religion.

The thieving BAS-TURDS!!!

News out last night that it is now possible to buy DVD copies of “Boy”, Taiko Waititi’s film that we enjoyed so much (see my earlier review).

“Good ho!!” You might think.

I don’t.

These are pirated, cheap, stolen copies.

They are being sold by cheap, thieving pirates.

The copies are bought by cheap nobodies who have no morals and even less sense of property.

It took less than 6 hours for the number of outlets on the ‘net to grow from one to over three hundred.

What does that say about our society?

There is a large and growing number of cheap, thieving, piratical, unprincipled, money-grubbing BAS-TURDS.

And they think the Somalis are bad?

On the idea of utopia...

I presented TF with a challenge that he has responded to both promptly and with some considerable thought. I do not propose to present my alternative as a criticism of what he has written. What must be appreciated is that we do, obviously, come from very different backgrounds; similar cultures with a partially shared history; but like the finches in the Galapagos we are the products of habitats which have evolved in very different ways to fit very different “ecological niches”.

So perhaps I can start by echoing his entrance; it is the universal desire of every parent that their family should live in happiness and security. That echo draws the very first contrast. Not only do I wish that for my family and for TF’s, I wish it too for every family on this earth irrespective of breed, and belief. Therein lies the first major challenge as well, for it is true that not every person is born equal on this planet. Not at present that is. Bear witness here that I am taking “equality” here in its broadest and most general sense; I have just eaten lunch. I have just eaten food valued by our system at NZD0.75, USD0.55. In many places on this earth that value would comprise a week’s food for one person, not because their food is cheaper you understand but because that is as much as they are able to buy. At that point I meet the first of the “impossibilities”; I can not increase the “happiness index” (for want of a better term) of those people without decreasing that of others. The ability of this planet to support the increasing demands of our societies is limited. That limitation is distorted to a great degree by the fact that a small fraction (of which I am a member as much as is TF) of our global population are able to obtain, control and consume the greatest part of those resources.

The second truth that TF included with that first was his right “to make a living without governmental bureaucrats mucking up the works or worrying about world affairs and political upheaval.” Again, I must – can only – agree. So too does every other person on this earth have that right. There is a subsidiary thread that starts at this point and which I will return to pick up toward the end. For the moment, there is any number of books that can and have been written on the topic. Which brand of solution you want to select will depend from the type of political outlook you have. It has to be accepted that “government bureaucrats” is one of those simplistic generic terms that are floated by people who really mean to include all who are involved in the process of government from elected representatives to the desk clerk and receptionist and refuse collector. Again that sentiment has to be included as a universal. My response to the line of argument which usually follows is that every society ends up with the government it deserves. The challenge here is to accept that fact and also to have the tolerance to accept those differences. That challenge is also as universal as the sentiment.

I am also in agreement with TF’s quotation from The Federalist. Again, I can not escape “the shades of difference” between us. Where TF sees Federalist as “…if everyone acted to the best of their ability…” I can not dispute that. I must however lay alongside that the thought “…all must be allowed to act to the best of their ability…”. In that subtle distinction lies all manner of challenges for those of us who live in advanced and rich communities. Again, I come to the subsidiary thread I referred to in the earlier para. Now is not yet the time to pick up that thread. Note too that I do not make “money” the problem here any more than does TF.

At this point in his piece TF and I really do part company. I have said many times that I respect his beliefs. That I do in the same way as I respect the beliefs of the Sikh lady in the desk behind me, the Presbyterian boss, the Catholic lady my wife plays tennis with or the Buddhist Chinese family over the road from us. Therein lies a very major difference in point of view, of world view, in the nature of our respective utopias.

Whatever a utopia might be, however a utopia might “work”, its very first fundamental must be of tolerance and acceptance of difference. To do otherwise must create the tensions and the distinctions that TF has striven to avoid. It is not just differences of religion. It is as basic as differences in personality, in ambition, and in capability. All of these barriers to utopia have been well discussed at many levels; from learned papers in universities to science fiction novels.

What those differences do however is to stir the contentious pot of supremacy. TF avoids this potential through the simple mechanisms of exclusion and close focus. His utopia depends (including "hangs from") on the thread of "one-ness" of culture and religion. There are no alternatives. Again we find that thread.

It is easy to argue that my utopia has the defect of the opposite; that variety and inclusion introduces the seeds of destruction. I have to agree. There would need to be agreed means of imposing rules; ensuring common justice; guaranteeing equitable and universal rights. Conflicts between cultures and ideas have always been at the heart of the development of our species. But the greatest barrier to my utopia is that of conversion and change. To reach my dream, I need to face that my standard of living will be lower; that others will benefit in far greater measure than I. Of even greater measure, I have to persuade the richest 20% of the world's population to join me in giving up what they have.

The differences between TF and I might be expressed as –

TF sees his utopia as existing only through the culture and society in which he lives. He excludes difference. I don’t imagine for a moment that it was intentional. I believe though that (in my family at least) the spoken word that reveals underlying and hidden truth is often referred to as a “Freudian slip”. For someone like TF to speak his present reality as the foundation of his utopia is no grounds for criticism. It must be accepted as his expression of his truth.

My reference at the beginning to “evolution” was intentional. It is one of the very many differences that TF and I have. He has certainly not tried to persuade me that his paradigm is “correct”, and I have respected that by not challenging his viewpoint when expressed (perhaps other than an occasional mild poke in the ribs).

The point I have reached is this. My comment, the one picked up by TF, was born from the feeling that the existence of any person’s utopia is very dependent upon the evolution of that person’s society, even their family. The other extreme from TF might be the utopia of a member of Taliban, or Ibo, or Inuit. The fundamentals might even be similar; peace, wealth, rights. It is the means of expressing, attaining and measuring those goals that will differ far more fundamentally.

This is where I must end before I write a book. It is also where I must pick up that secondary thread I have had trailing through this whole piece. It is not a right or wrong distinction; it is a fundamental difference in our personalities, our up-bringing, our societies, our environment.

For better or worse, I have been blessed by living in a society that is based on difference and acceptance of those differences. I have been blessed by the fact that I have grown to accept differences, perhaps to an even greater degree than my own brother. I do not believe I could live in TF’s utopia. It sounds to me as though it would be too homogeneous, too narrow, for the ol’ probligo to fit. I do not believe for a moment that TF will accept my version for similar reasons; too liberal by half, and it excludes God, specifically his God.

I am not able to codify or to even develop the fundamentals of my personal utopia beyond what I have written here. I have developed these ideas over many years without ever having thought to formally express them prior to this conversation.

I have not cried the support of learned people and religion. This is all my own work.

I stand by it.

Thoughts of Murder

Over the past three weeks or so we have seen the conclusion of two, both quite bizarre in their way, and quite different, murder trials.

In the first (in chronological order) a man faced charges of murdering a man in his sixties with a banjo. Memory says that it was “forced down the victims neck”, a somewhat terrifying picture to imagine. The defence was based on “provocation” as the victim had (it was testified by the accused) made sexual advances to the accused.

The second, which concluded yesterday also used “provocation” as a defence. The victim, a very good looking young lady and intelligent economics graduate, was stabbed 120 times by her ex, an economics lecturer who had been teaching the victim over the previous several years. His defence was unsuccessful (he was found guilty of murder rather than manslaughter), and there is a considerable uproar about his use of it.

Which raises the very interesting aside that it is OK to be provoked by unwanted sexual advances from a homosexual male, but it is not OK to be provoked by a beautiful young lady.

Alright, that does misrepresent the truth somewhat. The second instance involved taking a fairly large knife with him when he went to return “unwanted gifts”, a man who is “severely narcissistic”, and a considerable element of premeditation. It is that latter factor that did not come out in the first case, and which might (I believe “could”) be a significant factor in the application of provocation as a defence. It needs to be said that in the past ten years there have been several cases (I recollect three) instances where a likely murder charge has been reduced to manslaughter because of the actions of the victim and all were the killing of homosexuals.

In 2007 the Law Commission (a NGO body comprising selected jurists) recommended the repeal of the statutory defence of provocation. That call was never acted upon by the previous government in good part because it was always in the potential for use as a defence in cases already before the Courts and gaining a just cutoff was going to be difficult.

There are several levels to this debate on murder, the legal distinction to manslaughter, and the various “defences” against murder charges (other than fact and evidence naturally). I do not know (and I suspect not) that NZ law has any provision for “justifiable homicide” – the kind of situation where a person kills another to protect a third party for example; not self-defence but one step removed. There is the question of provocation as outlined. There is the insanity defence; “not of sound mind” which has become mired in debate about the difference between personality defect (which the accused in the second instance above certainly had in bushels), mental illness such as depression, paranoia, or schizophrenia, and true insanity as the imperfect mind unable to relate to society or to morality. (I recall one expert describing an accused as “effectively unable to consciously decide to kill”, with a consequential insanity verdict and the Judge ordering indefinite detention in a secure psychiatric facility.)

There has been a similar, though not parallel, debate involving the law and charges that result from killing another with a motor vehicle. There is a progression from “careless use causing death” through to “reckless” before manslaughter can be considered. I don’t know of any instances where a vehicle has been found to be the instrument of murder; doubtless it is possible.

So, how does the law in NZ stand on the matter of killing? As I see it; confused, confusing and far too complex. It is too easily misunderstood. It is too easily misapplied. The rules are not clear. A Judge can spend hours instructing the jury on the boundaries between murder, manslaughter, the level of proof required, the application of “reasonable doubt”. I have to say that the definition of all of those elements comes from many years of precedent. Each decision that gets close to the line makes the definition just that little bit more difficult to see. It must also be said that codifying the definition in statute would be a horrendously complex undertaking without perpetuating the legal niceties of “the reasonable man”, and hence not really providing a solution to the present confusion.

There is an interesting twist in the tale at this point.

The law that governs manslaughter and resulting sentencing is sufficiently flexible that a life sentence could well result, the same penalty as is compulsory for murder. When you add to that the application of non-parole detention (the longest of which to date is 30 years) and there is little difference between the two crimes.

I think that is a good thing.

But, to the beginning...

Is the defence of provocation defendable, or should it be removed from the statute books?

Krystallnacht - 11/10/1938

Next Monday night - 10 November - is the 70th anniversary of that horrendous night in Germany's history and the start of the Jewish exclusion and Hitler's eventual attempts at extermination of the Jewish race in Euorope.

I shall remember them.

But that is not all.

There millions of others killed since then - in the furtherance of political ideals and the personal lust for power - who should also be remembered;

Cambodia
Rwanda
Congo
Zimbabwe
South Africa
Russia
China
Chile
Argentina
Palestine
Lebanon
Israel
Somalia
Sudan
Mozambique

And let us also remember those who performed these atrocities.

Most importantly, let us all remember that we did little and nothing to prevent or stop them. In some instances we have been guilty of actively assisting those who kill.

Commend the innocent to your Gods.

Taste and propriety and the law

This has been bubbling through the local media for some months now. It centres on one man - an self-promoted "pornographer", his annual trade fair and the proting "street parade" otherwise known as "Boobs on Bikes".

The City Fathers (or perhaps that should now be "Mothers") have gotten themselves painted into the corner marked "Moralism and Propriety". Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say and I might agree.

Granny Herald reports this morning that the City Mothers do not have the right to stop the "BoB" parade.

Judge Nicola Mathers yesterday dismissed Auckland City Council's case for a court injunction to stop pornographer Steve Crow holding the event.
...
Judge Mathers said it was not a court of morals and it was her job to stick to the law.

The case boiled down to a new council bylaw and a council decision to turn down a permit for the parade on the grounds it was "offensive".

Judge Mathers said she took into account the attitude of the police in not opposing the parade, the lack of any public disorder and the fact 80,000 to 100,000 had voted with their feet and watched the parade.

"[That] leads me to the view that the bylaw is uncertain and or unreasonable in the way it refers to offensive," she said.

That's right, the ruling against the City Mothers was made by a woman.

It is not the ruling that is the problem here, nor is it the parade itself (I will NOT be going BTW - it is not one bit a probligo thing; tasteless in my opinion).

There is a forked tongue in here. There are two standards being applied.

The leading light against the parade is one Cathy Casey.

I wonder if she would support women breastfeeding their babies in a cafe or restaurant as fervently as she opposes the BoB parade?