Intellectual Property

The first that comes to my mind when I think of intellectual property is the still ongoing discussion about the right to download music and movies for free. File sharing networks as Napster, Limewire and BitTorrent are names that are familiar with these types of free sharing of artistical works. I must admit that I have tried this out myself for several years ago. I did it to check out new music that could be interesting to buy on a CD. It’s very convenient when you have heard a song, but you aren’t sure what the rest of the album is like. Instead of travelling down to the local CD shop, you can check it out for free in your living room. Artists can get more listeners when it’s for free, and that’s an advantage for the artist. Maybe they can get a bigger audience on their concerts, and make money that way instead? Is this a fact? For most of the artists it’s not 



Well, the argument that the artists could make more money on concerts could fit those who download music on sites I’ve mentioned above. For those of you who have problems with walking down to the nearest CD shop, there’s an alternative. You can for example buy the Mp3 version on Itunes or Platekompaniet. Then you will not commit a crime. Yes, it’s a crime. In fact it’s comparable to walking into a shop and put a CD in your wallet, and go out of the store without paying for it. Many have problems with seeing this aspect, because no one is watching them. They think they are anonymous, and if nobody can see them it’s ok. Another issue is that they don’t feel they are taking something physical from someone. They’re just downloading a file from the free Internet. Yes, the idea is that Internet is for free, but it doesn’t mean that everything on the Internet is for free. For those of you who download the music because you think you have the right to do it because Internet is free to use for everyone, there is something called intellectual property. The artists don’t get money for their work when you download music for free. Is this right? I don’t think so. In fact we have a law against this in Norway: åndsverkloven

According to this law, the artist have the legal right to be the only one to reproduce, publish or to sell his or her product for a certain period of time. So with the law in hand, it's pretty clear that you can't share the artist's product without having a permission to do so. But in the end I think it should be your conscience that stops you from taking money out of the hard working artists' pockets. They deserve the money to keep on making the music you love to listen to. If they don't get a wage for their work it might stop them producing music.

I don't think you would have liked that someone rented out your cabin without your permission, when you weren't using it, and took money for it. Have you ever thought about that...?

Privacy and Data Retention

On Facebook you can achieve an enormous amount of friends in a short period. Maybe all of these friends are not very close, but former colleagues and maybe people you have just met once or twice. Perhaps you don’t want all of them to see pictures of you…? It’s easy to upload pictures and to publish them on Facebook. When you have published your pictures or videos, it’s possible for all your friends to watch them, comment them or to tag them.

Here is a video to help you choosing the right privacy settings on Facebook.

If you have published pictures on Facebook, using the “everyone” setting, it’s interesting to know that when you signed up you allowed everyone to use your pictures. This includes people outside Facebook!
In general it’s common decency to ask the person who’s on the picture if it’s ok to publish it, especially if there’s children involved. For your own sake it’s smart to reflect on what kind of pictures you want to upload. It may not be that clever to upload pictures from the time you were a russ. These pictures might haunt you when you start searching for a job. Many employees google people they are having on job interviews (statistics on googling before job interviews). A more severe thing about publishing pictures on Facebook is what I mentioned earlier about pictures of kids. Pictures of kids are published very often on Facebook, and many parents don’t know what kind of consequences these pictures can have. In fact Redd Barna is warning parents about publishing pictures of their children. To avoid that children are being exposed to a bad person taking advantage of them or pictures of them, you can take some precautions (mentioned in the video above). Maybe that’s not enough...?

To prevent such actions we may need help from the state to do something more drastic. There is a discussion going on about data retention in Norway, and in other countries in the western world as well. Yesterday in fact, this law about data retention was adopted by Stortinget in Norway. This new law is called Datalagringsdirektivet. This means that data can be stored for as long as 6 months. In fact Facebook can store user data  for a indefinite time. People who wanted a new law about data retention think it is a necessary consequence in order to prevent or detect a crime. They think we can stop criminals and terrorists before they act. That’s of course a very good argument, but at what cost...?

Opponents against making a new law about data retention are argumenting that we will get a police state with surveillance of the regular guy (mass surveillance). Maybe they are asking adequate questions about how they are going store the data safely enough. When you publish something on the internet it is stored somewhere. Everything you put out there is available on a server that somebody has access to.  It reminds me of the reality show Big Brother and the movieTruman Show where you can’t do anything without being watched. I don’t think many of us would like that. I think we still want our privacy…

As I have pointed out earlier it’s clever to know about your possibilities for how to block information from people that aren’t supposed to see it on your profile on Facebook. You should also be aware of the possible consequences for you, and maybe your children, of not doing anything with your privacy settings. If you have an open profile many people can get access to private stuff you have published. If you already have experienced that your private pictures have been used without your permission, and you have tried to stop them, you can get good advices on this web site. Facebook may have the settings to protect your privacy, but they don’t automatically fix them for you. At the end of the day you have to find the right settings yourself…