European Elections: get out and vote!

The European Elections are happening this weekend. In Portugal, they're on Sunday, but my first message goes to all Europeans: go out and vote. You think we're heading in the right direction? Go out and say it. You think we're heading in the wrong direction? Go out and say it. You're not planning to go out and vote because you're fed up with politics and politicians? Well, if you're fed up with the ones you have, go out and vote for others - if you don't, others will choose for yourself, and you'll still be fed up. In summary: there's no reason not to vote.

My second message goes towards the Portuguese people. I am not going to tell you how to vote: that's really up to you. You have a life, and your life is deeply impacted by European politics. The countries finances, the money you have on your pocket, even the currency you use, the taxes you pay, the choices you're able to make, the laws you have, the things you do. So, even if you think you're not, you're fully capable of choosing for yourself, and to choose who will better defend your interests. So, with that in mind, I urge you pay attention to the choices that are laid out in front of you. You have sixteen (16!) parties to choose from. Pick one, go out, vote.

These are your options next Sunday:

Aliança Portugal (AP: PSD + CDS-PP)
Bloco de Esquerda (BE)
Coligação Democrática Unitária (CDU: PCP + PEV)
Livre
Movimento Alternativa Socialista (MAS)
Nova Democracia (PND)
Partido Comunista dos Trabalhadores Portugueses (PCTP/MRPP)
Partido da Terra (MPT)
Partido Democrático do Atlântico (PDA)
Partido Nacional Renovador (PNR)
Partido Operário de Unidade Socialista (POUS)
Partido pelos Animais e pela Natureza (PAN)
Partido Popular Monárquico (PPM)
Partido Socialista (PS)
Partido Trabalhista Português (PTP)
Portugal pro Vida (PPV)

I've also made a small summary and comparison text about the position of these parties, if you're interested. I'm sorry it isn't as complete as I wished it to be, but it might be helpful all the same. If you're interested, read it here.

Sunday is a great day: one of those days you can make a difference, where you can speak up and say what do you want in your life, your future. Don't let others decide for you. Vote!

The Impact of Illegal Downloads On Total Sales

One frequent rant of mine is the fact that there's no credible study about the impact of "illegal downloads" (not my wording) on total sales, and that, yet, there are lots of policies being made based on plain wrong "studies".

Lately, many things are happening (including arguments behind the approval of the Gallo Report) around Tera Consultants' "Study on the impacts of digital piracy on the EU's creative industries" (March 2010). If we carefully read the report (yes, reading more than just the abstract), thou, we find lots of interesting things. For instance, the fact that the study didn't research the "impact of illegal downloads on total sales", but, instead, decided to have a non-scientific approach to find some kinds of "average values" from the eight "relevant studies" on the issue. Well, in fact, they used the summary from those eight relevant studies presented on Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf (2009 - a working draft). And here, I have a couple of things to highlight:

1) Instead of using Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf latest release paper, they decided to use a working draft;
2) Instead of using Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf conclusions (that can be summed up as "file sharing can be blamed for part of recorded music revenue declines, [but] that hasn’t eliminated artists’ incentive to create and consumers have benefited from increased choice"), they decided to use only a decontextualized table from that report;
3) Many flaws were pointed to the Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf research, but let me talk about one: while in their 2005 paper, where they found no negative impact of illegal downloads on total sales, they used their own data, in this new paper - guess what - they used the same as Tera Consultants: a non-scientific approach to find some kinds of "average values" from the eight "relevant studies" on the issue.

So, let's look to those eight "relevant studies":

• Hui and Png (2003) - If you actually read the article you see that the authors acknowledge that:
  
  • their data is completely dependent of the piracy numbers provided by the IFPI (mind you, the most interested party)
  • they acknowledge that they ignored the need to research the demand-side externalities positive impact of piracy on sales (as proven to be needed in Conner and Rumelt (1991); Nascimento and Vanhonacker (1988); Shy and Thisse (1999); Takeyama (1994))
  • in the same way, they didn't estimate the positive impact of piracy on sales thanks to means of more effective price discrimination (as proven to be needed in Bakos et al. 1999; Besen and Kirby 1989; Jacob and Ben-Shahar 2002; Liebowitz 1985; Takeyama 1997; Varian 2000)
  • Last, and yet the most important (in my opinion), their study only analyses data until 1998 (that's right, 12 years ago!), and they highlight that this is all data "before Napster" (dare I say, now, "before p2p", "before torrents", "before pirate bay", "before web 2.0", "before social music services", ...), and that's a really important behavioural shift, that probably changed all the ecosystem of illegal downloads and their impact on total sales
  In other words, this study should not be considered;
• Peitz and Waelbroeck (2003, 2004)
  
  • they use as data source the IFPI World Report of 2003 that provides industry data from 1998 to 2002. As pointed before, IFPI is the most interested party in influencing the results, so the validity can be argued;
  • they assume, because they don't know how to estimate, that the quality of music (which englobes que quality of the music release - compare, for instance, a signed limited edtion 12'' 2LP with the album in DRM-encumbered 128K digital file...) has no influence in buying habits (assuming, thus, that the number of people who use "piracy" to "try before buy" is zero, which is obviously wrong - simply ask your friends);
  • they assume that each "act of piracy" is equivalent to the loss of a CD sale (which is obviously wrong), and then...
  • they assume that you can do a direct correlation between the rise of usage of p2p networks and the fall in music sales, just because they saw a bigger fall in sales at the same time they saw a fall in music sales
  • They state that with broadband, non-piracy times can be spent doing a number of "replacement activities" other then enjoying music, and so people have less time - thus attention - to the music market. Yet, they fail to try to correlate attention-shift with loss of sales
  • In the "Discussion" section, they point out several flaws on their model (like the fact that they don't measure "intensity" in piracy activities, or that they aren't considering the non-renewal factor (the industry failed - at least until 2004, where the study focus - to keep their renewal cycle, when people were buying the same album in a different format, cassette replacing the vinyl record, CD replacing the cassette or vinyl, we just weren't seeing people buying the album in a DRM-encumbered digital format after having it on CD or a "previous" format) as a cause of loss of sales). Yet, they decide to ignore those observations on their conclusion...
  In other words, this study should not be considered;
• Zentner (2006) - Now, this is actually an interesting study, it just isn't a good study to taking a conclusion on our particular issue. In fact, as the origin dataset did neither contain information on quantities of music purchased nor on intensities of music downloads, he assumed that it was not directly possible to calculate the impact on record sales, and thus, for that specific part, he decided to assume things (and that's stated quite obviously on the article): "if 15 percent of the population downloads music, if downloaders are twice as likely to buy music than nondownloaders, and if – conditional on buying – downloaders and nondownloaders buy the same quantity of units". Notice that he didn't get inspiration for this assumptions in any study at all.
• Michel (2006)
  
  • The author states that "a possible problem with this approach is that computer owners who did not engage in file sharing may have decreased their music purchases for reasons unrelated to file sharing (yet inherent to owning a computer)", which is not considered in this study. As stated previously, it is fair to assume that there is an (unaccounted) percentage of non-sales directly related to this fact;
  • An analysis in this study's "Table 1" suggests that trends and influences greatly vary year by year, possibly in a two-years basis. This is actually why the researcher has data from 1995 until 2003, and yet can only assume a relation between file sharing and CD sales in 2002-2003. Also, in "Table 4" analysis, the author concludes that "the relationship between computer ownership and CD expenditures [, the only relationship being studied in this paper,] weakened from 1998 to 2003. In III.B), the author identifies other four reasons why this paper might not be valid, but the really important thing to quote is in the conclusions section, when the author state, above all, that "results should be used carefully when predicting the long-term viability of the music industry in an environment where record labels (or artists) compete directly with free file-sharing services". While it is arguable what the author means with "long-term", with the previous data we can assume that a) we can identify 2 year cycles, b) in 5 years the relationship weakened, so, if that trend is maintained (which is arguable, but wasn't in Mars' report) nowadays, 7 years later, the relationship might be completely dissipated, so...
  ...taking the previous items in consideration, it is fair conclude from the article data itself that this study can't be considered valid nowadays;
• Montoro-Pons and Cuadrado-Garcia (2006) - This study doesn't appear anymore in the table in the final version of Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf's paper;
• Hong (2004, 2008) - This study was centred only and exclusively on the impact of Napster in 2000. As stated before, and shown by the other papers, we can't infer the current correlation between "piracy" and music sales from some event that happened a decade ago;
• Leibowitz (2008) - the conclusion of this paper, and on Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf's paper, is quite different from what's presented by Mars' study: in fact it concludes that if we consider all markets (where the universe was 89 different US markets), we cannot relate internet usage with changes in music sales;
• Leung (2009) - This is a nice study made by using data from college students of seven different undergraduate classes (from the tone of the paper, I'm assuming this is on USA, but I'm not sure). We're talking about heavy music consumers with no money (they buy four or five digital tracks per month, and one CD every two months). The study implicitly also shows, while it's not its focus, that those students would buy more if they had more money (or if the cost of CDs, iTunes tracks and iPods was less than it is). So, I'll argue that this is a nice study but only representative of a small subset of the global "pirate" reality, specially different from the EU reality, where we have differences like the fact that more than 40% of our countries don't have access to the iTunes music store. Actually, I can go ever further, and tell you my belief (no, I don't have any study showing I'm right or wrong, that's the real issue on this blog post...) that, since you can see that this college students consume nowadays much more music than others (for instance, people with 15 more years than them, even if those others have a lot more money) that it was the setting in which they live - including the cultural influences made by the existence of "digital piracy" - that made them such music fans, and when they grow to have more money, they will be better consumers than they are nowadays. In other words, this is a nice study, but one that only proves that there are lots of dimensions to the problem which need to be researched until we can take any scientific conclusion regarding the impact of piracy in music sales.

So, what I have to say about Tera Consultants' study, and everything else that uses it as a base to take a conclusion or decision? Only that I'm really ashamed, as an European citizen, that we pay blind attention to any study, specially studies commissioned by entities like ICC, whose body of members include three of the four major labels.

Are you European? It's urgent, Europe needs you

There is a very important EU vote taking place on July 7th on some amendments to telecommunications legislation that threaten to sneak in a number of catastrophic measures:

European Internet users could be blocked from lawful activities by mandatory spyware, in the interests of their security. The right to use free software for internet access would therefore not be assured anymore. The neutrality of the Internet is also directly attacked, as is the principle that technical intermediaries have no obligation to prior surveillance of contents. Other amendments will de facto enable administrative authorities to obligate ISPs to work with content producers and rights-holders' private police, including the sending of intimidating messages, with no judicial or regulatory oversight.
These measure goes further than the French "graduated response" project, which has been subject to widespread opposition, including by the European Parliament on April 10th. That is undoubtedly why those amendments have turned up on early july, and why those drafting them use subtle rhetoric and crossed-references to make the overall text harder to understand (more than 800 amendements on 5 directives were tabled).

This is really serious: I urge you if you possibly can to write to your MEP. You can do it using the fab WriteToThem service, which makes it as easy as can be. Make sure it gets to them before July 7th (yes, it's tight – that's how sneaky they've been).

If you don't know what to write, here's a great letter you can use as a template.

Green Party says: sharing is not stealing

I've told you before how much I hate that "piracy is stealing" bullshit we're forced to see everytime we are paying to those guys who are lying to you: for instance when you go to the cinema, you're forced to see a stupid video like this ( http://www.youtube.com/v/l5SmrHNWhak&rel=1 )...



Of course that, being such a lie as this, and for so many time, people started to create their own rebutal clips, like this ( http://www.youtube.com/v/MRVHUbrbEUA&rel=1 )...



But what's cool now is that there's a new video out there, with the slogan "I wouldn't steal", that is a part of a Green Party campain [1]! Let's hope this will have some political attention...



(This post has embeded flash videos, if you don't see them and don't want to click in each one individually, consider seeing the post in the blog and not in your RSS reader)

[1] - http://www.iwouldntsteal.net/

DRM: Send a letter to EU

As I've told you [1] a couple of days ago, Viviane Reding, European Union commissioner for information society and media, issued a report sanctioning a "transparent" DRM framework for the EU. This irresponsible and senseless report comes just a day before Sony BMG announced that they would join Warner Music Group, EMI, and Vivendi's Universal Music Group in selling DRM-free music downloads in the United States.

If, as me, you oppose this attempt by the EU to sanction, promote, or endorse DRM technology platforms, please sign this letter [2] and let Europe know you're against DRM!

[1] - http://smallr.net/drm-EU
[2] - http://www.defectivebydesign.org/EU_Letter

European Commission adopts strategy for "Creative Content Online"

So, the European Commission decided to "adopt a strategy" for "Creative Content Online". Scary, huh? It is more when you read the press release [1]:

I'll quote some just to give you a glimpse:

The Commission therefore seeks to establish a framework for DRM transparency concerning, amongst others, the interoperability of different DRMs, and ensuring that consumers are properly informed of any usage restrictions placed on downloaded content, as well as of the interoperability of related online services.

All stakeholders are invited to take position on the elements listed in the Annex to the Communication by 29/02/2008... Let's see who's going to answer that call.

[1] - http://smallr.net/creative-content-eu

ping

This weekend I saw a curious thing: Ubuntu made the right choice of having the reportbug-ng package in their distribution, but they forgot to change it to check Ubuntu bugs and report to Ubuntu instead of doing that to Debian. So, there's not a bug report against Ubuntu's bugreport-ng [1], even if tagged as "wishlist" (something I don't think is correct, and will try to see changed).

On other issue, IFPI is pressing Europe [2] to adopt some silly stuff like the recent Olivennes disagreement [3], and European politicians seem open to the idea of ISPs policing and interfering with their customers' communications on behalf of rightsholders.

We all know that Amazon is generally "cool", but they have some bad stuff too. Cory Doctorow decided to talk about it [4].

Finally... I'm a sucker for these things, it's not the first time and I doubt it will be the last that I see some piece of unmaintained software going offline and I having to taking over it. This time it was Crystal [5], a text-based MUD client that has support for both telnet and telnet-SSL. A new version was released, I have already plans on how to attack the "TODO" and I even made a Debian Package, that I'll try to make official [6].

Which reminds me to ask: any DD out there wanting to sign my GPG key? ;-)

---

[1] - http://smallr.net/ubuntu-bug-175508
[2] - http://smallr.net/IFPI-vs-Europe
[3] - http://smallr.net/olivennes
[4] - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/11/amazon
[5] - http://talkerspt.no-ip.org/~mbooster/crystal/
[6] - http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=455759

WTF?

OK, here's a "What the F**k?" for today:

• European Comission legits Microsoft Software Patents [1]. WTF? I mean, you can't patent software in Europe [2], but you let Microsoft patents affect Europe? Where's the logic? The sentence the royalties for a worldwide licence including patents will be reduced from 5.95% to 0.4% - less than 7% of the royalty originally claimed is written as if there's something good about this, but as a matter of fact you can read this as "you have to pay for patent infringement or patent royalties to Microsoft in Europe, even if software patents aren't valid in Europe". I wonder what is going on in this guys heads...


• Portugal is going to have something called "Cartão do Cidadão", a "Citizen's Card", obligatory, that will replace out ID card among others. It seems that there's going to be a security conference in Portugal [3] where Accenture is going to talk about the Citizen's Card security scheme. Now, what puzzles me is VD's reaction on it [4] (VD was somewhat involved in the Citizen's Card project, BTW):

  in one hand the Digital Card is a portuguese Government prime security project and in the other, a local consultant company (which acts as a contractor for the Government) will be addressing his first security details at a conference, or at least I hope, it will be just a mist of conjunctions and speculation, due to the project security details and particularities

  Now, if the security of this project is of such importance (as, I agree, it is) what's wrong about talking about the security scheme? Don't you trust it? Because if you don't than it would be better not to have the card... Are you defending security through obscurity [5]? I really hope not [6]...

[1] - http://tinyurl.com/yodduw
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patent#Europe
[3] - http://www.vantagem.com/VS07.pdf
[4] - http://lists.paradigma.pt/pipermail/tce/2007-October/000137.html
[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity
[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity#Arguments_against

Warner might raise offer for EMI

After Terra Nova doing an offer to EMI that was accepted, EU regulator frees Warner Music to raise offer for EMI, which I find odd. Anyway, the stock market is already waiting for a new bid from Warner, so I guess we'll have more news on this issue preety soon.

So, what do I find of this? Well, while some think that Terra Firma's guidance is going to be worse than nowadays EMI, at least I think that nothing worse than being bought by Warner could happen. What would be trully great was if somebody else took them. Since that seems improbable, let's just hope that Warner stays quiet.

Conference on future of European patent system

On 15 and 16 May, over thirty experts from universities, institutions, government, and industry gather in Brussels to discuss the question "What future for the patent system in Europe?"

Among the speakers are William Kovacic, US Federal Trade Commissioner, Ron Marchant, former Chief Executive of the UK Patent Office, Prof. Reto Hilty of the Max Planck Institute, and South African entrepreneur and industry leader Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, Ltd.

Brian Kahin of Washington-based CCIA, one of the organisations behind EUPACO, explains: "while the recent Communication from the Commission, 'Enhancing the patent system in Europe', focuses on the problems of the Community patent and the European Patent Litigation Agreement, it acknowledges the need for a holistic approach to patent policy. EUPACO-2 is a milestone event that addresses four main issues: costs and benefits, quality, diversity, and institutions."

eupaco.org

Tell the European Parliament to Fix IPRED2

On April 24th, the European Parliament will vote on IPRED2, the Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive. With one stroke, they risk turning thousands of innocent EU citizens and businesses into copycriminals. Only you can stop them.

If IPRED2 passes in its current form, "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement on a "commercial scale" in the EU will become a crime.

Penalties for these brand new copycrimes will include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.

IPRED2's backers say these copycrimes are meant only for professional criminals selling fake merchandise. But Europe already has laws against these fraudsters. With many terms in IPRED2 left unclear or completeley undefined - including "commercial scale" and "incitement" - IPRED2 will expand police authority and make suspects out of legitimate consumers and businesses, slowing innovation and limiting your digital rights.

IPRED2 and Business

The entertainment industry spent millions suing the makers of the first VCRs, MP3 players and digital video recorders, trying to use copyright law to kill those innovative products because they threatened old business models. Fortunately, the industry was unsuccessful.

IPRED2's new crime of "aiding, abetting and inciting" infringement again takes aim at innovators, including open source coders, media-sharing sites like YouTube, and ISPs that refuse to block P2P services.

With the new directive, music labels and Hollywood studios will push for the criminal prosecution of these innovators in Europe, saying their products "incite" piracy - with EU taxpayers covering the costs.

Under IPRED2, these same entertainment companies can work with transnational "joint investigation teams" to advise the authorities on how to investigate and prosecute their rivals!

IPRED2 and Your Digital Freedoms

Criminal law needs to be clear to be fair. While IPRED2 says that only "commercial scale" infringement will be punished, the directive doesn't define "commercial scale" or "incitement." Even IP lawyers can't agree on what are "private" and "personal" uses of copyrighted works. One step over that fuzzy line, however, and anyone could be threatened with punishments intended for professional counterfeiters and organized criminals.

How can ordinary citizens feel safe exercising their rights under copyright and trademark law when serious criminal penalties may be brought against them if they cross the line?

Tell the European Parliament to Fix IPRED2

The excesses of IPRED2 need to be reined back. Sign this petition now!.

EU Commissioner criticizes iPod-iTunes tie-in

According to this article, EU Commissioner is criticizing iPod-iTunes tie-in by the use of DRM systems, following the steps of several European countries, specially on Norway.


For me, the most interesting thing on this is that:

"[the Commissioner] plays to discuss these initiatives in Brussels later this week."

Let's wait and see...