Shih Tung’s Wordpress Blog

Another link filed for future reference http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/aug/26/filesharing-pirate-party-uk-downloads

“At the moment, big businesses is saying that we steal handbags, and we say let’s talk about what copyright is about,” he says. The original purpose of copyright, created by the Statute of Anne of 1709, was to encourage the creation of artistic works by granting a right to copy for 14 years….[The EU] has extended copyright to 95 years…

The term of copyright has been marching forward but along the way, the purpose of it has been lost, according to Robinson. Instead of encouraging artistic creation, modern copyright has made certain companies cultural gatekeepers, he argues, adding, “copyright is serving the needs of music labels, not the needs of the public, the public domain or even the artists”

Tagging two articles from Der Spiegel until I can get round to commenting on them. First on how the growing use of technology has given companies and governments the ability to spy on and even remotely erase private documents stored on individuals’ electronic devices. Second on the US government’s demands to be given the right to spy on Europeans’ financial transactions.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,637640,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,638509,00.html

Filing for future reference till I have time to comment on this.

http://www.thepublicdomain.org/2009/07/17/were-we-smarter-100-years-ago/

Were we smarter 100 years ago..?

I have been rereading the legislative history of the 1909 Copyright Act. I have come to the conclusion that 100 years ago we were smarter about copyright, about disruptive technologies, about intellectual property, monopolies and network effects than we are today. At least, the legislative hearings were much smarter. The hearings I am looking at took place in 1906 — thanks to the wonder of Google books you can read them yourself, if you are really nerdy.

The Sunday Times ran an article on this list of restaurants that don’t serve free water

The most interesting part of this article was this quote from Tapas Tree,

The marketing and sales manager for The Tapas Tree Group, Ms Lyn Yip, said: ‘We find this list to be libellous, and will not hesitate to engage our lawyer if we are not removed from the list and the situation is not rectified immediately.

‘We live in a time when the influence of Web opinion cannot be ignored, so bloggers have to approach their entries with responsibility, especially when composing defamatory lists.’

I have never been to Tapas Tree and given this response from them, I don’t think I ever will. If they have a problem with a blog, the appropriate response is to contact the author and ask to have it corrected. The fact that they threaten legal action as a first response gives me a good idea of what kind of service I can expect when I go there. In fairness, it is possible that the Straits Times distorted their words in search of a good story, but unless they retract that threat, I think I will drop Tapas Tree from my list of restaurants to check out.

In a reply to a question in parliament last month, Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts Lee Boon Yang said that the government was studying the introduction of data protection legislation, but this was a “complex issue” and the “review will take some time.” (Follow links for Straits Times report and extract from Hansard.)

As it turns out, the government really has been reviewing Privacy (sometimes known as Data Protection) legislation in Singapore for a v..e..r..y long time – 20 years in fact. Way back in 1989/90, the Singapore Academy of Law sub-committee on Technology and Law recommended that Singapore adopt Data Protection legislation modelled after that in Europe, Japan and other developed countries. Newspaper reports here. A summary of the sub-committee’s report is here while the full Working Paper is here (long). 

Obviously, no Privacy Laws were adopted, though the issue has bubbled back up to the surface several times. For example in 2002, then again in 2006, when Lee Boon Yang said that an inter-Ministerial committee had been formed and would make its recommendations in the middle of that year.

Every time I read about the Gaza Strip, I can’t help thinking about The Pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoir of imprisonment in the Warsaw ghetto, smuggling weapons for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and eventual survival with the aid of a regular German Army officer. The book was also made into an Oscar-winning movie. Sadly, except for the gas chambers, the parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto and the Gaza Strip today are painfully obvious. At least for citizens of a post-colonial Asian state.
Making a donation for Singapore relief agencies’ work in Gaza

Can’t believe I wasted several hours over the last few days trying to install Adobe Photoshop Elements. Despite that fact that the splash screen for the trial version has a dialog for you to enter a serial number, you cannot actually activate a trial version with a purchased serial number. You must download the non-trial version from your Adobe “account” and use that installer to install a version that can be activated with your serial number.

The trial installer was still on my Desktop (after all, I had only downloaded it < 30 days ago) and I had been using that one to go through umpteen cycles of uninstall, delete all Adobe preferences, reinstall and get my serial number rejected before I noticed that I had another installer in my download folder with a slightly different name but which had a later creation date. After I used the second installer, the serial number was finally accepted !!

So for the record, the Trial installer file name was PSE_6.0_MAC_TB_WWEFGJ.dmg while the purchased version was called PSE_6.0_MAC_WWEFGJ.DMG. You must uninstall the trial (using the installer on the TB disk image) and then download the purchased installer using the Adobe Download Manager and install this version (i.e. the disk image without “TB” in its name).

Absolutely atrocious out-of-the-box customer experience. Aggravated by the online customer support agent who simply closed the case after telling me to call the 800 number for assistance.

I can’t understand why they have to have  different installers for the trial and full versions – they’re each 1.3 GB and take a long time to download. Or if they have to be different, at least remove the serial number dialog from the trial version so that we don’t waste time trying to activate a software which can never be activated and know that we have to download a different version.