Freedom Dreams

This weekend has been a kinda crazy hectic for me one, for various reasons, not all of which I will go into here. But one of the big ones was spending Saturday in London at ORGCon – the Open Rights Group’s first conference. It was great to be able to see people such as Cory Doctorow, Tom Watson and Julian Huppert (who will soon be my MP) speak for the first time. There were many interesting points raised by people at the conference, and I thought I’d discuss a few of these here.

There was much discussion in the first keynote about publishers use of copyright and DRM to restrict people. One point I thought was made well related to the possibility of using anti trust law to stop large content vendors (such as Amazon or iTunes) abusing their position. However, these firms are not actually monopolies, but rather laws such as those criminalising DRM circumvention give the power to abuse the market, to companies below monoply level, by allowing them to lock customers into their walled gardens. Thus, it is these laws that are the problem, rather than the nature of these companies.

One thing that struck me was how depressingly idiotic decisions relating to copyright law have been. Apparently, courts have suggested that resampling as few as 3/4 notes could constitute a copyright violation. The biggie that struck me was the stupidity of retroactive copyright grants. As late as 1978 the copyright term was 28 years (plus an optional extra 28 years, which quite a low number of people opted for) – which means absent this legal change, these works would now be open to us. But, as it is, we now as individuals have little access to the works created within our lifetimes. An even worse case is orphan works, who’s copyright owners can not be found, so no-one can use, and because copyright has strict liability, good faith assumptions are not good enough! Of course, copyright was originally meant to inspire creativity, so giving copyright extensions to people who are already dead, as happen with much of the retroactive extension, makes no sense at all.

“The odds of copyright extensions incentivising dead authors are relatively low.” — James Boyle

“Don’t they know the difference between composing and decomposing.” — Jennifer Jenkins

Its rather bitterly ironic, when you think about it, that in today’s time we have the technology for the mass dissemination of our shared culture and creativity, but we have legal barriers to doing so.

“Before the 19th century, musicians just needed to play, in the 19th century you also needed to be able to play and be literate. In the 20th century you needed to be an be able to play, be literate, and be a sound engineer.
In the 20th century you need to be able to play, be literate, be a techie, and be a laywer.
Is this a good progression?”
(Pirated from PPUK)

One of the of the other major issues were the two big horrible legal documents at the moment – the DEA and ACTA.

The Digital Economy Act (DEA) as the bill has now unfortunately become was a major point of discussion of the panel with the MPs. Apparently a cross party group is being formed to help seek the repeal of the bill, and some of the bills its measures do require Super Affirmative Resolutions (further consultation with the Commons, although maybe just in committee) before they can be enacted. There is also all the rhetoric around Nick Clegg’s Freedom Bill and Your Freedom website, but I still remain quite skeptical.

Also, some of the issues of the bill have gone to an OFCOM consultation which ends this coming Friday the 30th. I’m going to see how easy it is to respond to these consultations, and try to lend my voice to the discussion. I don’t know how much effect it will have, but I think as many people should try this as possible to send a very clear message.

Meanwhile, the issue with ACTA – Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by name, but actually a treaty on “Intellectual Property” enforcement measures – is that its hard to follow exactly what is happening since the whole procedure is so secretive. Countries are deciding on issues that will strongly influence future law without any real democratic input or observance. One draft copy of the agreement was released a few weeks ago, but it is only the leaked copies that have the information on what entity is trying to add what conditions.

The interesting thing I learnt yesterday is that ACTA will make stipulations about criminal sanctions on copyright infringement. This could include things as broad as aiding and abetting infringement – which is very concerning about its possible use in squashing speech about file sharing. However, the criminal sanctions provide a weak point to attack, since some degree of proper democratic process must happen within the EU for such things to become law.

A last point about ACTA is that it is not just the text of the agreement that matters. Even if the text of it improves, it will set a precedent for agreements on other issues to be pushed through without proper democratic scrutiny.

However, despite all this, there was much optimism at the event (James Boyle had apparently hoarded some during the dot-com era). It was suggested that, people will migrate away from closed platforms such as the iPad, but such shifts will happen at a slow pace, so we may not realise it. Similarily it was said that the movie industry’s new Ultra-violet DRM standard, is simply the last gasp of DRM in an arena where it just isn’t working (people aren’t bothering buying DRMed movie downloads).

So, that concludes my little summary of the event. If you care about these issues I hope you will consider joining (if you haven’t already) the Open Rights Group, as I have done recently. They were kind enough to let me into ORGCON for free, as well as sending me a copy of Silent State. Hopefully I’ll get chance to read that soon and possibly post a review here.

A lot of things seem to have happened in my long absence from blogging. The UK got more draconian laws (the Digital Economy Act), then not long after, a new government – in the form of a Conservative LibDem coalition. On the internet, google released their WebM codec, and refused to keep censoring results on China’s behalf. Meanwhile, Apple keeps releasing its extremely locked down devices. The Bilski case has finally been settled, and everyone’s talking about HTML5. Even Microsoft.

The new uk government has released a site for you to reclaim you Freedom! - http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/ – or, so they say; what will actually become of this remains to be seem. It seems to have become fashionable recently to support many of the sorts of freedom and openness that I care about – open source has practically become a buzzword, similarly with civil liberties.

This does bring  a lot increased awareness and participation – governments have been making lots of pledges to use more open source, and companies like to be seen supporting it. However, it has the threat of your message being diluted by people with a weaker version, because that suits there interest. If you genuinely care about openness of code, you probably don’t want people learning about open source from Microsoft!

The terrain has changed in other ways too. Microsoft is no longer the big deal it was ten/fifteen years ago. The most restrictive computers on the market today – Apple’s iPads. All the more dangerous, because people do not realise what they are losing. The same issue exists with the web – as web application and web services become increasingly popular, the issues of trusting others with all data/functionality become greater, but, again people don’t realise as it is not on their computer.

But, in areas we are making progress. The technology web is very open, as it always has been. And, hopefully, it will continue to remain that way. Although browsers “HTML5ier than you” contest irritates me, the HTML5 spec is gradually getting stanardised across browsers. And, google’s new WebM codec provides a royalty-free way of open web video. But, once again, the stumbling block appears to be Apple.

In the legal realm, it is always difficult to tell how things are progressing, with how judgement are made being complicated and unpredictable. The Bilski patent case ended with the patents being rejected, but the court stopped far short of throwing out all software patents. In the EU, legislation for net censorship is starting to form, with the classic excuse of “think of the children”.

Here in the UK, we’ve had the terrible Digital Economy Bill become law. This bill had sections that would allow the government to cut off people’s internet and block “locations on the internet” (what does that even mean?!) for alleged copyright infringement. However, we have had a change of government, and they may not do all these things. However, they still have these powers, and I hope that the Act is repealed (although this doesn’t seem too likely).

With all these changes, and varying degrees of victory/defeat, it is difficult to see which way we are heading. There are so many areas that seem hopeful, but all to often, there can be much talk, and little results. Of course, it goes without saying, that we have a long way to go, and we must always be vigilant to be aware of the liberties we have lost. In this vein I would urge anyone in the UK to get to ORGCon if they can. I’ll be there, and it seems like a great opportunity, to look back at what was happening recently, and plan how we will protect our freedom in future.

Long time no blog. I’ve been busy with university for the past few months, but now that the much dreaded exams are over, I’ve had a temporary influx of free time – (before I start working part-time over the summer again) – so, I decided I would install Arch.

For the past couple of years I’ve been mostly using Ubuntu as my main operating system. Its the Linux distribution distribution I’ve used most, because its the one I properly got started with (after briefly trying SimplyMEPIS and SUSE), and I haven’t felt the need to switch.

Ubuntu has many good qualities as a distribution, it tries to be as user friendly as possible, and has a regular release cycle. However, I’m no longer a basic level user, so some things were getting annoying. The Ubuntu team likes to make certain design decisions on how stuff will work and look. Whilst this is fine for what a basic user wants, for someone who wishes and is able to configure there system to look and work how they want to, this can be annoying. The most recent example would be the movement of the window buttons to the left hand side, which messed with my setup.

The release cycle often annoys me too. I usually want to be running the latest release of software, for whatever new features, and to have to wait 5 months for this to filter through can be frustrating. Either that or I spend the time installing extra repositories and hope they don’t conflict. Plus, when it comes to upgrading, some stuff invariably breaks. Whilst this known time of breakage works for some people, I’d much rather just get the newest stuff, when it is availible.

Which is why I switched to arch. Its rolling release, which means precisely that – packages are updated whenever there is a new version -so there are no “releases” as such, you just get the packages you want. This is probably the greatest feature of arch for me. Arch also has a really nice package management system for these systems, which is binary (so no days compiling like gentoo), and amazingly simple to understand (unlike DEB, which is fine for users, but a pain to work with as a developer).

The other big difference between Ubuntu and Arch is how they treat the user. Ubuntu tends to make it easy to get going, but configuring stuff can be a pain. Arch, on the other hand requires some technical knowledge to set up – although, it wasn’t as difficult as I feared it might be. However, because Arch makes you set up your system yourself, it gives you much more control over how your system works, and goes out of its way to make things nicely configurable. For example, it has a really simple init system, which is really simple to edit.

Of course, as with anything, there are some annoyances with arch. One of these is that its package database is not as large as Ubuntu or Debian’s. For some packages I’m used to being standard, such as Gwibber, I needed to compile from source. On the other hand, arch has the AUR, which provides a really easy way of installing packages from source that people have already built packages for.

So all in all, I’m rather pleased with mi new Arch install. It requires some technical knowledge and time to set up, but it certainly has its benefits. Arch is certainly not for everyone, but if you feel like you would like more control and understanding over your system, then perhaps you should give it a try.

There’ve been quite a few interesting things that have happened me over the last week. Firstly, last Thursday, I finally (after 2 months of waiting), received my A-Level results – AAAA, in Maths, Chemistry, Physics and General Studies – so, I will definitely be going to Cambridge University in about a month’s time. Also, well done to everyone else who got their results, A-Level and GCSE, and good luck with your new colleges/universities.

Secondly, last weekend, I went with the rest of DFEY, to Young Rewired State -  an event to get young (~15-18) coders doing cool stuff with government data. Me, Joe and Richard worked on creating something to give bloggers opinions on the various bills currently going through parliment – Blog-o-tics. This uses Google blog search, and then does a manual count of predefined positive and negative words – as a result, it is heavily inaccurate, as our word lists were limited and language can be used in confusing ways (this is not *good* at all). I do plan on reworking blogotics to use a different, more reliable source of sentiment data at some point, but I’ve not got round to it yet.

The event it self rather good, and accommodation and travel costs were kindly provided. The venue used was Google’s UK offices, which was quite cool. The food was okay, not amazing, but much better than at 2morro (the other event DFEY attended this summer). The whole thing seemed quite well structured, each group had a mentor to help them along. I would very much like to thank Prem (who also blogged the event) for being our mentor. I don’t think our group would have managed to pull it all together without him.

Finally, this week I’ve be coding the innovative new Web2.0 app, pokebook. Which has just as much importance and relevance for the future web as its ad campaign suggests.

Over the past few years, Web 2.0 has become all the rage. Closed web apps and social networking services, however have a serious problem – the user’s lack of control over their data, and their inability to interact well with other services. However, it is good to see that the “free software community” (for want of a better term), are increasingly starting to compete offering open Web Apps. Laconica/identi.ca, for micro blogging, libre.fm for music “scrobbling”, and most recently daisychain, which should soon be a facebook competitor.

However, the one thing I have not yet managed to find a good replacement for, is Google Mail (Gmail). To this end I have resurrected my long dormant libreapps project. I’ve got the site back up and running, and my two “Apps” functional – mail and rss.  Anyone interested in testing/evaluating these as they are should ask me for an alpha account (this is only to make sure no-one expects stuff to Just Work, and so I can keep track of resources), or if you’re adventurous, check out the source code (bit of a mess atm). The site is still in a very alpha, or even pre-alpha type state, but any feedback would be appreciated.

The RSS code on libreapps is TT-RSS (GPLv2) but the Mail code I have written myself, and had previously released as AGPLMail. Now, however, I have released it under the MIT license (the most permissive commonly used license there is). Why? Well, firstly, I’m no longer happy with using the governmental force of copyright to affect what people do with my code (see this blog post). Yes, I disagree with people not sharing the source to code they write, but I am not willing to threaten/hurt them to make them change their mind. This is a very contentious and political issue, but, there are other reasons why I think the AGPL is not as great as some claim.

Firstly, compatibility – this is the killer with any copyleft license. Because I am using TT-RSS, my core libreapps code needs to be at least as permissive as GPLv2. Since I plan to add other apps, most likely under other licenses, my core code needs to be permissive so it is compatible with all.

Next, how much “protection” of a Web App does the AGPL actually provide? It is supposed to force the release of the code of a hosted modified version. But, what defines modification? Or, rather, where. Obviously, changing one of the files of the application is modifying, but the (A)GPL is supposed to also cover linked works. But, with webapps, it is possible to make a site that behaves differently with out technically linking (eg. php include). One example I can see is an ajax script added to the main app (and source released)  could pull data from closed app, and the user experience would be the same. Also closed software could read/write to the db of the AGPLed software without technically being linked.

So, whatever the license of a web app, there are ways to change it and not return source. And, it is hard to prove anything, all that is returned to the user is html and js files – they can not be sure how they are generated. Returning source for AGPL apps relies partly on good will, something that also benefits an MIT app.

However, there is a more important point here. I would argue that it is not really the software that is the biggest issue in webapps – it is the data. Writing a twitter, facebook or other webapp clone is perfectly possible, and compared to some tasks, not that difficult. However, what really sets open web apps apart is primarily the availability of source, its the fact you can run your own copy and, crucially, communicate with the original site. The AGPL can do nothing to stop someone creating a large laconica instance with the federation turned off. A federatable twitter is many times better than one with source code released. (Interestingly, facebook actually releases some of their source code, but, for the reasons above, it is useless).

Finally, one of my other personal reasons for choosing MIT it means I get more users of my software I write (people can reuse snippets/functions in whatever they are writing, for example). True, someone could create a non-free fork, but, they would be silly to do so. For those who “hate freedom” there is Goole Mail/Apps. The main thing that makes libreapps mail valuable, is not the code itself, but the fact it is open/free.

So, that’s why I use MIT, even for Web Apps. However, it does really mostly boil down to my dislike for the governmental copyright system – the above are just reasons why I don’t feel like I’m missing much. I know many people don’t come from that angle, so AGPL makes sense to them. That’s fine. I’m happy to support any web app that federates and gives me access to source. I’m an identi.ca user, and am looking forward to trying daisychain. Hopefully though, people will now understand why I personally use MIT, and respect that.

I’m a voluntaryist, this means that I believe all human interactions should be voluntary – I don’t think that the initiation of force is an acceptable means to any end. As a result, I don’t support the fundamental basis of current governments – I consider the way they forcefully gather money and forcefully change people’s behaviour to be immoral.

So, the most “purist” thing to do would be to take a moral stance and refuse to participate in this system that I found immoral. This is an idea that does have some legs, if enough people made a clear, peaceful decision to do this, it would have a massive effect. This is why I’m so excited about what the Free State Project is trying to do. However, the truth is, if I tried it as a single individual, it would end up with me most probably in jail, alone, and looking to everyone like a crazy nutcase.

For this reason, and partly because I have little other choice, I am still part of the system. If I want to have the ability and the means to maybe be part of the Free State Project one way, I can not cause too much fuss here.

For example, for my education, I’m going to go through the government managed university system, just as I have gone through the state education system. This is because there is little viable alternative way for me to learn in the area I do best in – pure sciences. Whereas more vocational skills would have ways of recognising achievement with little government involvement, it is near impossible to get a job involving pure science without a degree from a (state managed) university.

However, there are some parts that I feel are less clear. I’ve also applied for a government grant, as I’m from a lower income family. I don’t feel great about this, but if I didn’t get it, it would probably be my parents being strained, and they’ve had much of their money go into the system, so I don’t feel I’m leeching. Its not ideal, but there’s little I can do. I believe that a voluntary system could easily match this government grant, but since the government exists, no-one else feels they need to be there to provide it, or where they do, expect me to be already receiving this grant.

Another, less obvious way I’m still involved in the government system is through the software I release. Since I object to the government force that copyleft relies on, all my software is now permissively licensed. However, a permissive copyright license is still a copyright license. Permissive licenses use the threat of force to make people retain attribution – and, this force has been made real through the legal system, on at least one occasion. However, I am in favour of giving attribution to the source of a work – and a free markets would have systems like ostracism to support this. But, since we don’t have a free market, I use the “magic words” of copyright legalease show my intent in a way other people understand.

Finally, I have a current example. I am currently working as a coder on a project that is funded by a government agency. Although this seems contrary to my ideas, at first, its not that simple. I’m working as a contractor, for a contractor, and both my, and my direct employer’s services are market ones that exist already in the market. Also, my employer are an research/monitoring company, so they at least will help avoid some of the inefficiencies in our current government system. Lastly, the project I work on mostly is about getting certain government information into a more open format so that more people can do to this. Encouraging this openness is a good idea whilst we still have this system. A more open state is still bad, but preferable to a closed one.

In conclusion, although a fully voluntary society is my ideal, we are an awful long way off. Whilst I still live in a country with a largely socialist mindset it makes sense for me to just “go along” some of the time. That way, more people are likely to listen to me, since I won’t be looked at as a lone crazy weirdo. However, the rules change completely once liberty minded people get together in larger numbers, and to this end I hope to one day participate in the Free State Project.

It’s a bit since my blog post. In that time I’ve been on holiday, upgraded this blog to WordPress 2.8.2 and myself to 18 (ie. years old ).

So, intellectual property. A good recent example to use to discuss this would be the recent Orwellian Kindle case. The irony in this case that it was actually 1984 animal Farm that Amazon chose to delete from users machine. (Yes, really. I almost didn’t believe it myself). The obvious question is, this this action right, or not.

I don’t think it is particularly productive to attack Amazon for actions in this case. Amazon was acting on behalf of the copyright holder, in order to comply with copyright laws. It could be argued that they should not have implemented the DRM in the first place, but many of the book publishers pressured them to do so. And, more importantly, DRM would not have the (partial/percieved) effectiveness it has, if it were not for copyright and laws against cracking DRM (eg. the DMCA).

So, instead lets look at the laws, and whether they are right or not. The laws here, covering copyrights and patents (trademarks are not such an issue), are often referred to as “intellectual property”. This leads to much confusion when trying to discuss whether these laws are moral. Some people claim that creative works are effectively property, and unauthorised copying is akin to stealing, so should be stopped. (This stealing analogy is even used by publishers organisations, that should really know better that the law does not link copyright and theft at all). Others don’t go quite this far, but say simply that the authors of creative works have a right to be able to benefit from their work. (There are example after example in the free software and free culture movements as to why “IP” laws aren’t necessary to make money).

As a voluntaryist believing in the basic natural rights to life, liberty and property. Its a black and white choice, and has nothing to do with existing laws. Either “intellectual property” is real property, subject to the same type of ownership, or it should not be controlled at all. The issue of whether “IP” is moral, for me, hinges on whether it is property. And, I do not think it is.

First of all, lets look at the concept of property in the first place. Why does the idea exist, and why is it better than alternatives. As far as I know, property exists as a way to manage resources. The exact same meal can not be eaten by both me and and the person next to me. So, property is about exclusivity. Something is mine because I am the only one who uses it (or more accurately, the one who decides how it is used).

Does this kind of exclusivity exhibit itself in the information  world? Yes and no. Digital content can be copied very easily which blurs the line of what belongs to who. If I create an image, and send a copy to someone, who owns that copy? If we’re talking about property, if someone creates an object similar to mine, with their own materials, it obviously belongs to them. So, similarly, if someone recreates on their own machine, a file like I have on mine, their copy belongs to them. This means, if you want property like protections, that kind of exclusivity, there is a way – just keep your file to yourself!
(Of course, this issue of server side, or “cloud” software comes up here, but thats an issue I’ll look into in depth in another blog post.)

Of course, my way of thinking about property isn’t the only one. Objectivists maintain that property is created as a result of man’s mind. Raw materials are useless without the cleverness to transform them. Since property comes from the mind, then thoughts, ideas can also be property – intellectual property. The problem I see with this is, where do you draw the line?

Owning property means being able to morally use force to protect it. If someone copies my idea or creative work without permission, Objectivists presumably would argue the same is the case. But what if my idea is simple, or obvious. How do you manage fair decisions on what belongs to who, who has been influenced, and who has been “stolen” from. How do you be sure who the original creator is? And, ultimately, to whom do you want to give the power to make these decisions. Trust not to make decisions that limit creativity, that are in there own interests?
(The current patent system is a woefull example of this. The running of the system is influenced by lawyers who want as much paperwork and as many lawsuits as possible, in order to benefit themselves.)

Another argument is that intellectual property can be seen as an extension of contracts. I could contractually lend or give an object to someone (for example, to pay in installments). That object is used by them, but I still retain ownership. In the same way, I could also contractually lend a digital work to someone, on the condition that the don’t copy it. Breaking such a contract would, in my eyes, be immoral. But, if you are given the digital work by someone else, without my permission, you are not breaking any contract! Only the person who originally got the work from me is.
(In this way EULAs would also be pointless without copyright. It only takes one person to break it, and people can choose not to be bound by them.)

In conclusion, I think the idea of “Intellectual Property” is frankly silly. We would be a lot better off without copyright or patent law (despite what even stallman might say). As for DRM, without copyright laws, and DMCA-like laws, these measures would make no business sense. Even if a company were to try it, a mass boycott would be much easier without this government-perpetuated myth that copying is theft.

There’s an oft reappearing topic of debate in Free Software circles, about whether Free Software is really about freedom. I want to give a different take on this issue, using some ideas from classical liberal philosophy.

The debate that I see most often starts when a strong free software supporter suggests that we should use exclusively free software on our machines. To this, someone else may respond that, surely such a policy is restricting a users freedom to run whatever software they want, including proprietary software.

I want to address this issue in a different way, by asking, what is freedom? According to the FSF, freedom in software is composed of the freedom to #0 run the program in any way, #1 study the program, #2 distribute  the program and #3 modify the program.

Fair enough, but what is freedom in a more general sense? Dictionary definition time – “The condition of being free of restraints.”. Yes, there are many different ways of defining freedom, but this is the one that I, as a voluntaryist would most agree with. It its the simplest and most consistent way of thinking about freedom – you are free if you are not being restrained – that is you are not having force initiated against you.¹

So, how does this conception of freedom tally with the FSF’s. Looked at one way, not too badly. Being free from restraints (if you don’t hurt anyone or their property), in the area of software, would mean no copyright law. This being the case, you would be able to use and copy software as you saw fit (“freedoms” #0 and #2).

However, there’s a problem with this. In order to exercise the supposed freedoms #1 and #3, there is, as the FSF says, a prerequisite, the source code. Of course, in the sense of real freedom, without copyright law, you would not necessarily be given the source code, a programmer might choose to withold it. However, you could choose to use only software that is “open” (has source code), and the majority of software would probably be this way, since there isn’t the incentive of a copyright monopoly over the work, and open code makes it much easier for benevolent people to participate.

In this way, real freedom – that is, no restraining copyright law – fits very nicely with principles of free software. However, the same does not work so well the other way round. It may seem outrageous to suggest free software advocates, such as the FSF are working against real freedom and initiating force – after all, for all their heckling, they don’t actually force people to use software – but, in other ways they do.

As I said, to be actually free, you must not have the implied force of copyright threatening you. With this in mind, take a look at the GPL – what is it? A copyright license, and a fairly restrictive one at that.Yes, it is a free software license, because it doesn’t restrict any of the four specific software freedoms. But it restricts plenty of other things, you being able to distribute only parts of it (ie. binaries), or, combine it with non-compatible code and distribute (potentially very useful). These things are restricted with the threat of force. A threat, that through the legal system (SFLC lawsuits) has been carried out in some cases. Such restriction by force, is, in my eyes at least, anti-freedom and immoral.

However, in case it was obvious, these are not reasons for me to be making a big move away from free software, as I said, free software fits well with my sense of freedom – I strongly support the idea of being free to do what you want and having source code. Proprietary software is a much worse use of immoral copyright force. But, I disagree with the use of copyright, to advance the specific software freedoms, as it leads to other freedoms being lost – this is especially so with copyleft.

So, instead of fighting copyright with copyright, and amassing users to free software systems, we should try to abolish copyright, to try to make all software free. After all, do we really think we will manage to switch a majority of users away from the dominating OSes any time soon? Abolishing copyright might seem the harder thing to do, but it is much easier for ordinary people to get behind, without needing to switch much software etc. (of course, it would be good if they did). Now is as good a time as ever due to the outrage over ridiculous bittorent fines.

One final note, the emphasis on anti-copyright rather than 100% free software is why I now conceed to convenience in certain matters – namely, I now use adobe flash plugin on an ubuntu system.

#1 – Defensive force is of course another matter. You still have freedom, I would say, if you would have reasonable defensive force used against you if you hurt someone else.

Soo, its over a week since my exams ended \o/… now I just have the long wait for results day near the end of August. So, now I have time to write a long overdue blog post. There are two things that make this blog post different to previous ones…

Firstly I’ve started using the microblogging service identi.ca again. For the uninitiated, identica (I never know whether to include the full stop or not) is basically a free software version of twitter, which uses an open protocol. (The software is actually called laconica, and anyone on one laconica instance can follow anyone on any other laconica instance.) I’m not on twitter because, most the people who’d want to read my messages (people in the free software/open tech movement) are on identica (or some other laconica site) anyway.

I’m not entirely sure how to use identica yet. I don’t mean with regards to the technical aspect, type 140 characters or less into a box on the website, or in a client such as Gwibber, and you’re away. No, I mean what to type, how, and when in order to make it most useful for me. At the moment I’m probably overusing it a little at the moment, but I think what it boils down to for me is a notebook. A notebook that is published for others to see, should they find it interesting. But equally, a notebook for me to look back at. For example, I’m writing this blog posts using some of my notices as reference (tags make this especially useful. I don’t know if you can show tags for just one user yet though).

And the second thing? I’m writing this blogpost using yet another different keyboard layout, colemak. This is the second time that I have switched layout, the first being to dvorak. Colemak is still slightly less popular than dvorak (it is third after dvorak and qwerty). So what made me switch? The fact that I had several weeks to spend doing something rather pointless… well kindof. But colemak does have some nice benefits. Your fingers move much less than on either qwerty or dvorak (dvorak places emphasis on hand alternation instead). But what really sets colemak apart from dvorak? Its pragmatism.

Okay, I’m not sure that’s quite the right word, but it sounds good. Basically, whereas dvorak moves keys, including punctuation, all over the place, making it harder and more formidable to learn, colemak moves only letter keys and not all of them at that. Many of the loss common keys, especially those on the bottom row, are in exactly the same place as in qwerty. This is ro much so (especially to the far left) that I showed the layout to a friend, who said, “thats not much different to a normal keyboard”. That would never happen with dvorak.

This may be a silly thing to be picking up on, but its important. As much as I like to be weird and different, it would be great if more people started trying more efficint layouts. Not only is colemak easier to learn coming from qwerty, it also simply looks less intimidating – making perple more likely to give it a go.

Confession time. I didn’t actually find colemak any easier to learn than dvorak, but that is because i was previously using dvorak full time, and dvorak and colemak are *very* different. However, the similarity to qwerty did manifest itself in a different way: it was much much easier to switch between colemak and qwerty than it had been between dvorak and qwerty. In fact, for the first couple of days, whilst I was learning, I used qwerty at night to type faster to people.

This is in *massive* contrast to dvorak. Whilst dvorak destroyed my qwerty skills at first, and i never properly recovered them, using colemak actually seems to have improved my qwerty typing! This ability to have both the common and the efficient layout at a good proficiency, without them conflicting inside your mind, is what really sets colemak apart from dvorak in my opinion. The fact is, as efficint as a layout might be, you’re still going to run into qwerty quite often in this society we are in, and colemak allows you to have the best of both worlds.

I’ve been practising and learning colemak for just over a week now. Its now very usable, although, maybe not as fast as I would like. More than good enough for writing an 800 word blog post. And, the problem in my case is not with colemak itself, it is coming to it from the weirdness of dvorak.

So, do I think most people will be using colemak it any time soon? No, afraid not. However, I do think its a great alternative, and hopefully, as aproachable as it is, will attract a growing userbase, in the geek community at least.

Today I found out (although not very reliably), that someone I had known last year at school had been arrested, possibly on terrorism charges. This person had been producing homemade bombs, and was apparently planning on trying to blow up the school. This person was an anarchist.

When the media, or the majority of people refer to anarchists, this is the type of person they are thinking of. Someone who is violent, is a threat to people’s life and property. And can you blame them? This person called themself an anarchist, and, in point of fact, was one. They believed in a society without government.

However, the propblem with the idea of anarchy, is that it is a negation – without government. I oppose a government, and therefore am technically an anarchist. Do I agree with this person’s actions? Not in the slightest.

The thing with anarchy is that it is a negation, of a broad, complex, and arguably misunderstood thing. By most people, the government is seen as an agent of order – thus anarchy is seen to be a society without order. In fact, from talking briefly with this particular anarchist, a society without order is exactly what he wants – and violence is a means which he will use to achieve it.

Why I so strongly disagree with his actions can be seen when you consider my view of government. Government is an agent of violence, of coercion. It is this violence I wish to be rid of – my anarchy is a society without instituionalised force, a voluntaryist society where people interact with each other peacefully and civilly. This is almost the opposite of what is wanted by this other person.

We need to focus on the positive. What we want not what we don’t. People might also presume that since we are against the state, we are against the “enslavement” of property; that we are anarcho-syndacists. We need to stop presenting ourseves as anti-state, although we are. We need to change ourselves from being anti-state to pro-freedom, pro-voluntary interaction and pro-individuality. And I know all this has been said by others before. But it is now that I realise the importance of it. I plan to stop using the word “anarchy” – I will say what I am, what I am not.

However, back to this person – I do sympathise to a degree. I think he may genuinely have caught a glimpse of what is wrong with modern society. But they have misidentified it, and are trying to correct it in a way that, will in fact make things worse. Violence is not the solution, it is the root cause of our problems. Attacks such as his just give the government a reason to be more oppresive.

So, although we should always be clear to distance ourselves from people such as this. But they’re part way to where we are. They know the state is bad, but don’t know way, don’t realise that violence is the problem. So, what I wonder now, is can we help them progress further. I knew this person, and knew of his beliefs. If I had managed to help him understand voluntaryism, might he never be where he is today. Could I have saved him risking time in jail, and converted him to a pro-freedom but anti-violence activist?

I don’t know. I think he may have been to far gone. But the point is, some people are straying towards traditional violent anarchism, and we need to stop them, show them the real problem, and the real alternative. Voluntary action, not chaos, is the real remedy to the state.