Cybersurf

Last week saw the launch of the South African chapter of Creative Commons. This is a new way of looking at copyright protection of intellectual property.

First of all – why has it become necessary to have new types of Copyright laws?

The reason is that new technologies, and especially the internet, have made it very easy to put intellectual property out into the public domain – and have made it very easy to copy intellectual property – or IP as cool people say.

To sum it up with a slick phrase – “we live in a cut and paste society”

Essentially, the Creative commons people argue that existing copyright law is insanely complicated, too restrictive, limits creativity and only serves the interests of large corporates.

They are not against copyright law per se – they merely argue that it is not flexible enough.

At the conference, a representative of Creative Commons in Brasil – and once again Brasil is in the forefront of innovation – cited a case where policemen went into copy shops pretending to be students. They asked the counter hands to make photocopies of some academic material, and when the copies were produced, the counter hands were immediately handcuffed and sent to prison.

Here in South Africa a man was recently sentenced to three years in jail – no option of a fine and no suspended sentence for pirating software – I don’t know if rapists are treated that harshly.

The point is big businesses, and particularly American corporates, control a huge chunk of intellectual property all over the world.

This is done through a World Trade Organisation agreement known as TRIPS – an acronym for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.

At the moment, talks between the Southern African Customs Union and the US have been stalled because SACU negotiators believe that the agreement, as it stands, would concede far too many advantages to large American companies.

Creative Commons is a flexible way of protecting your intellectual property. For example, you might publish a book, and allow people to make copies of your work, provided they do so without commercial gain.

A locally published magazine, invites musicians to send in songs for release on a free CD. Naturally many little-known rock groups are only too happy to put their songs on the CD because of the free publicity they get.

One of the big advantages of the Creative Commons licence is that each licence has three versions – or layers as they prefer to call it – the first layer is plain English so that even I can understand it, the second layer is legal gibberish to give the lawyers their jollies and the third layer is in machine code so that your computer can understand it.

To find out more about Creative Commons you should go to …. http://za.creativecommons.org/ - or click along to the Cybersurf blog, where I will put up the address to the South African chapter as well as several other useful links.

The Cybersurf blog is at Cybersurf.blogspot.com…. one more time Cybersurf.blogspot.com and by the way the blog is protected by a Creative Commons licence.

Thanks for listening and till we meet again, remember to keeeeep on surfing.

Relevant Links:

• Creative Commons South Africa
• Creative Commons
• Southern African countries reject the European Free Trade Association's proposal
• Intellectual property: protection and enforcement - WTO site

// posted by Steven Lang @ 9:09 am 2 comments

Last week saw the successful conclusion of Futurex – the largest annual computer faire in the country. Already a well established event on the agenda, this time the expo was co-hosted together with Linux world, which upped the geek factor to new highs.

Futurex had more than its fair share of new gadgets, some of them showing how truly inventive South Africans can be. My favourite was the SimPILL, invented by Dr. David Green especially for people who need to take pills regularly at the same time everyday.

The SImPILL is a plastic container with a small GSM device attached to it. If you forget to take your medication and do not open the container at the correct time, it sends an SMS to your cellphone to remind you to take the pill – if you are really stubborn and still don’t take the pill, then it automatically sends a customised SMS to your caregiver – who could be a relative, or a nurse advising him or her that you still have to take that pill.

If after all of that, you still don’t respond, the bottle sends and SMS to a computer at the clinic – and then you’ll be in real trouble.

The Linux World expo was fantastic with lots of enthusiasts happy to explain why we should all convert to Linux – there was almost a missionary, evangelical zeal to the message. I like the idealism behind it all, and anything that can dilute the existing monopoly on operating systems has to be good – but I believe that Linux still has a way to go before it can compete for the market on desktops.

Last year, I installed the Fedora OS on my home computer and it drove me nuts. It must be a lot of fun for the professional geeks, but for us ordinary geek-wannabees – not yet.

However, the Openoffice suite of open source software is fully useable and getting better all the time. I regularly use Open Office one and it is OK – however, I am told that OpenOffice Two is on the verge of being launched onto the market. A colleague has tested the beta version and says it is a vast improvement. His company with a staff of over twenty – including a dozen or so programmers only uses the free open source office suite.

Quick change of direction now – this last week has seen a surge of fake e-mails pretending to represent local banks – and requesting customers to validate their banking details. The latest wave of fakes is good – they set up fraudulent web sites that very accurately mimic your regular bank – and we are talking about FNB, Standard and ABSA. Be very careful – do not respond to such unsolicited e-mails. If you have even the slightest doubt about such an e-mail – kill it.

When you do your online banking make sure that you type in the address yourself – do not click on a link that someone sends you.

Two good tips – when doing your online banking – make sure that the address is secure – you will see that it begins with https – and it is the “s” that is critical. Also make sure that you can see a closed padlock ion the bottom right hand side of you screen.

And before we wrap for today – be sure to look our for the Portfolio hearings this week on the Convergence Bill. The Bill has been the cause of much unhappiness between the private sector and the department of communications. According to ITweb, the latest version of the Bill does not take into account any of the submissions made by the public.

Look out – big bun-fight on the way – and to find out more about it – I will put some valuable links on the Cybersurf blog which is strategically located at Cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time Cybersurf.blogspot.com

That’s it for today - thanks for listening and remember to keeeeep on surfing.

Relevant Links:

• Overview of South African telecommunications law, convergence and the Convergence Bill [B9-2005] Part 1: http://www.nicciferguson.com/journalentry.q?journalId=116
• ICASA - Legilsation: http://www.icasa.org.za/default.aspx?page=1003
• Department of Communications: http://www.doc.gov.za/main.htm
• FNB call centre: 0860 054 321
• Standard Bank: 0860 123 000
• ABSA: 0800 414 141
• Nedbank: 0860 115 060
  

// posted by Steven Lang @ 9:53 am 0 comments

This site is designed for anyone, who wants to find out more about adventures in the Drakensberg, but let Charles tell us more:

IN: This site is . . . .

OUT: . . . . previous expeditions.

Charles Webster telling us all about the bergfree.co.za site – and now for some good news from Telkom – Steven White has some infomration on new broadband offerings:

IN: We’re planning a one . . .

OUT: . . . . like a dial-up service today.

Steven White of Telkom telling us about a new one megabyte broadband service.

If you are at all interested in infomration technology matters, and you happen to be in the Johannesburg area this week – don’t forget Futurex – the biggest ICT exhibition of the year at the Sandton Convention Centre as from Tuesday.

And with that, we wrap up today’s edition of Cybersurf.

If you would like to read this script and find some related links, please go along to the cybersurf blog which you can find at cybersurf.blogspot.com – repeat Cybersurf.blogspot.com

Thank-you for listening and be sure to tune in again next Monday, same time, same place – for more Cybersurf.

Relevant Links:
Bergfree: www.bergfree.co.za
Telkom: www.telkom.co.za
Futurex: www.futurex.co.za

// posted by Steven Lang @ 8:53 pm 0 comments

Instant messaging is very big in some communities, but has not really caught on in South Africa. Voice over IP is growing rapidly overseas, but has only been legal in this country since April.

One of the world’s leading instant messaging services known as QQ now allows for voice and video chat. You can find out more about it at www.qq.co.za – that is a q and a q the letter in the alphabet after P and before R – so it is a very short address – QQ.co.za

We are joined on the line by Russel Dreisenstock, General Manager of MWEB Home to tell us what QQ really is:

IN: “QQ is an instant messaging . . . .

OUT: . . . . . available free to everybody. 2’29”

Thank-you Russel Dreisenstock, General Manager of MWEB Home.

I confess that I have not used the system yet – but it sounds really great, and if anyone would like to find out more, I will put the links up on the Cybersurf blog which you will find at cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time, cybersurf.blogspot.com.

That’s it for today, thanks for listening and remember to keeeep on surfing.

Sig tune out

// posted by Steven Lang @ 2:31 pm 1 comments

I attended the AfriNIC two meeting in Maputo Mozambique, where a whole bunch of super-techies discussed a whole bunch of super techie things such as IPv6, reverse DNS and who should go to APRICOT. This “intro” was not meant to scare normal listeners off – it was designed to show you how intimidated I was when I saw the program.

First of all, what is AfriNIC?

AfriNIC is the internet numbers registry for Africa. All web sites in the world have an internet address, such as sabcnews.com for example – but these addresses are actually codified numbers, when your computer looks for an internet address it does not look for the words - sabcnews.com – it looks for the coded number – or IP address.

All the IP addresses in the whole world are allocated by ICANN – or the Internet Corporation for Assigned names and Numbers. ICANN obviously cannot give numbers directly for every single web site in the world – it allocates large blocks of numbers to regional internet registries. AfriNIC is one of five such Regional Internet Registries.

The Regional registries in turn allocate blocks of addresses to Local internet registries or internet service providers where you or I can purchase a single internet address.

The significance of last week’s AfriNIC meeting in Maputo lay in the fact that it was the first such meeting of the organisation after its official recognition by ICANN. Up until March this year, African internet service providers had to receive blocks of numbers from either the European, North American or Asia Pacific registries.

Now the African continent has its own regional internet registry – you can find out more about it at www.afrinic.net – let me spell that out A F R I N I C dot net.

At last week’s Maputo meeting, the other four regional registries made presentations giving advice on how they apply certain policies and us Africans discussed how these policies should be applied.

Note that I said, us Africans – I chose the word carefully because that is all you need to qualify to be able to give input into AfriNIC. It was an open meeting, where any African can just walk in and participate in discussions that will determine how the internet is administered in Africa. If you missed it, don’t worry, there will be others – in fact the next one is in Cairo in November.

Of course most of us will not be able to pop off to Cairo just to attend the meeting – But you can provide as much input as you want on the afrinic.net web site.

Go to the Contacts section and there you will find all the relevant addresses as well as policy mailing lists.

And do not be intimidated by the Geek speak – it is really not that tricky and I have found that if you do not understand something, they will be only to happy to explain it again, and in my case – again and again.

That’s it for today – if you would like to read the script for this program – you will find it at Cybersurf.blogspot.com – one more time – Cybersurf.blogspot dot com

Thanks for listening, and remember to keeeep on surfing.

Relevant Links:

AfriNIC: - http://www.afrinic.net

AfNOG: - http://www.afnog.org/

Working Group on Internet Governance: - http://www.wgig.org/

Telkom: - http://www.telkom.co.za

World Summit on the Information Society: - http://www.itu.int/wsis/

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers: - http://www.icann.org/

On SABCnews.com

AfriNIC prices slashed to attract new members (Apr 28 2005 11:00)

Goodwill for the future of the internet in Africa (Apr 27 2005 07:30)

New internet addresses present new opportunities (Apr 27 2005 07:30)

// posted by Steven Lang @ 7:40 am 0 comments