Taxing Free Online Content

Absurd as it may sound, that is effectively what the draft of an NTC Memorandum Circular may end up doing if it is implemented: taxing online content from the Philippines!

The draft Memorandum Circular, dated December 22, 2008, is entitled “GUIDELINES ON THE PROVISION OF CONTENTS, INFORMATION, APPLICATIONS, AND ELECTRONIC GAMES“. In section B Registration, number 1, the document states:

Contents, Information, Applications and/or Electronic Games Providers, Contents Developers, Information Sources, Applications Developers, and Electronic Games Developers are required to have commercial presence in the country and shall secure Certificate of Registration (COR) from the Commission.

The NTC document defines “Providers” as:

… persons or entities offering and providing contents (or information, applications, or electronic games — additions are mine) to the public for compensation through the networks, systems and/or facilities of authorized networks, systems and/or facilities providers.

Take note, it says these are those who provide something for compensation. At first blush, this would seem to exclude most bloggers, those who post on forums and social networking sites, and others who don’t really get paid for putting content online.

On the other hand, the NTC document also makes these other definitions:

Investigating the OOXML Vote

Although Microsoft managed to get its OOXML ratified as a “standard” via a spectacularly flawed fast-track process, that travesty has caused quite a ruckus in the ISO itself, and may have mortally wounded the credibility of the standards approval process. It’s not all over yet, however, as reported in the ZDNet story, “Venezuela and India appeal OOXML ratification“:

“After the two-month appeal period, we now have four appeals — Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela,” Jonathan Buck, the director of communications for IEC, told ZDNet.co.uk on Monday. “The appeals are now with our CEOs, IEC General Secretary Ronnie Amit, and ISO Secretary General Alan Bryden, who have a 30-day period to make sure appeals conform to directives.”

Since groups in at least four other countries have had the courage and integrity to question how their representatives could have voted “yes” to such a mockery of standards and the approval process, perhaps it’s about time Filipinos do the same. When will an investigation of the Philippine vote take place? After all, the Philippines voted to approve a “standard” whose final form had not really fully discussed, and which cannot even be implemented by it’s creators (Microsoft). How can the interests of the Philippines be represented by such silliness?

Those in the Philippines who voted to approve the OOXML non-standard should not be allowed to get away scot-free with such a disservice. It’s about time someone send a letter of protest — not just to ISO but to the Commission on ICT as well!

Resources

Groklaw has done a great job keeping track of “ISO-Gate”, which is quite an appropriate name for this fiasco. Some resources include:

• An Open Letter on OOXML Happenings in India
• A Reminder: ISO’s Code of Ethics & What Happens Next – Update: Venezuela Appeals Also
• Now an OOXML Protest from Denmark’s OSL – Updated 3Xs: Official English Translation

Making Elections Open and Transparent

A group of concerned citizens called the Advocacy for Open Systems in Elections is offering a free, open source solution for automating the counting of election results. Ito Gruet, a member of the group, was interviewed by Erwin Oliva of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, and the video of the interview is available on the Inquirer website as “Pushing open source solutions for elections“.

Gruet revealed that the group advocating the use of open standards and open source software for the automated election system, which would help ensure the transparency of the electoral process. Gruet explained:

Basically it’s to ensure that we are able to track and trace back to a source document and audit the results of the elections. And what we are proposing is the we make this process tranasparent to the public… to all the voters. Transparent in terms of the technology to be used, so we should be using open standards. We believe that the software should be open source so that people in the know can look at it, can review, and see if it’s really a working system. Transparent in terms of the data itself, which means that results should be easily verifiable by the public, and anybody can do their own tabulation.

Ya Gotta Hear This (Updated)

I thought that I had heard the worst ravings and silliest nonsense from some of SCO’s people concerning their claims about Unix and Linux. SCO, after all, claimed that some of their code was in Linux, but never managed to prove it.

(Image on the right is from the film “Reefer Madness.”)

After over six years, it seemed that the case was winding down: Judge Dale Kimball ruled that Novell, not SCO, still owned the copyright to Unix; and SCO filed for bankruptcy. Despite some news that SCO might be bought out and get enough money to continue the case, to me it pretty much boiled down to when — not if — SCO would just plain lose once and for all. Now, like some bad gas emanating from a crypt, we hear this latest whopper from SCO CEO Darl McBride, as reported by Ars Technica in “Deluded SCO CEO on witness stand: ‘Linux is a copy of UNIX’“:

McBride said that SCO holds the rights to UNIX and that “many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers.” Specifically, he said, “We have evidence System V is in Linux,”—directly contradicting what Sontag had previously testified. Due to the witness exclusion rule invoked by both parties, McBride was not present during Sontag’s testimony and wasn’t aware of what had been said. McBride’s claims also directly contradict internal SCO memos from 2002, which reveal that the company’s own extensive source code audits had uncovered no UNIX code in Linux. McBride attempted to reinforce his argument with analogy. “When you go to the bookstore and look in the UNIX section, there’s books on ‘How to Program UNIX’ but when you go to the Linux section and look for ‘How to Program Linux’ you’re not gonna find it, because it doesn’t exist.” Then came the real humdinger, and my jaw dropped when I heard the following come out of his mouth: “Linux is a copy of UNIX, there is no difference [between them].”

Go GPL!

The GPL has won another victory — its biggest so far. Linux-Watch, in the article “Biggest legal victory ever for GPL“, reports:

The Software Freedom Law Center filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Dec. 6 against Verizon Communications on behalf of its clients, the two principal developers of BusyBox. The suit alleged that Verizon violated the GNU GPLv2 by distributing Actiontec MI424WR wireless routers–which contained unsanctioned GPLv2 code–that were used with Verizon’s fiber-optic Internet and television service, aka FiOS.

On March 17, the SFLC announced that Verizon has come to an agreement with the SFLC and the BusyBox developers, which enables them to dismiss the GPL enforcement lawsuit. BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems. The popular development tool kit is licensed under GPL. Verizon and Actiontec violated the GPL condition that redistributors of BusyBox are required to ensure that every user of the code, or a device containing the code, must be provided access to the program’s source code.

To date, Verizon is the biggest company to be accused in court of a GPL violation. The fact that the case has ended in a settlement should set a good example for others to follow should they ever find themselves in the same position. Hopefully this will also send a strong signal to those who may think that they can get away with not complying with the terms for using GPLed code.

To learn more about the GPL, its history, and its terms, here are some important resources:

• Here’s the GNU General Public License (GPL) itself: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
• The GNU GPL on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License
• The Open Source Initiative (OSI) page for the GPL: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.php

Microsoft’s Interoperability Propaganda

Microsoft-Watch columnist Joe Wilcox is at his best when he tells it like it is. He’s a bit like John C. Dvorak but with less crankiness. In his March 6 post entitled “Interoperability by PR Is a Gambit“, Joe pulled no punches when he gave readers the lowdown on Microsoft’s commitment to interoperability:

Microsoft’s idea of a Document Interoperability Initiative is to put together a bunch of businesses that profit from file format incompatibilities. And that is supposed to demonstrate — quoting from the press release — “Microsoft’s commitment to implement a set of strategic changes in its technology and business practices to expand interoperability through the implementation of its interoperability principles.”

The Document Interoperability Initiative is shameless propaganda along the lines of Monday’s Internet Explorer 8 standards announcement. Real initiative (pun intended) would be a group that included Adobe, Apple, Corel, Google, OpenOffice, Sun and other developers of software that produce documents and/or have their own desktop file formats.

Other forms of “openness” and “interoperability” on the part of Microsoft have been found to be far less substantial than the hype contained in the company’s announcements. You have, for example, Microsoft’s promised release of voluminous documents on the APIs of its major applications, apparently to comply with the directives of the EU Commission. In its February 21, 2008, press release, Microsoft announced:

DRM in the Philippines?

Has Philippine Senator Edgardo Angara become a proponent of Digital Restrictions Management (DRM, also deceptively called Digital “Rights” Management by its proponents)?

Last July 3, 2007, the Senator filed “AN ACT AMENDING CERTAIN PROVISIONS OF REPUBLIC ACT NO. 8293 OR THE “THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES” AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES”, also known as Senate Bill 880. The bill’s short title, “AMENDING R.A. NO. 8293, TO INCLUDE INTERNET PIRACY”, can give you an idea of its general purpose.

For much of the bill, the focus is on minor changes to existing laws on copyright enforcement, fair use, personal importation of copyrighted works, registration of copy right, copyright infringement, and related procedural matters. In the beginning and at the end of the bill, however, definitions and measures are introduced which give legal protection to DRM techniques by prohibiting ways to circumvent them.

At the beginning of Bill 880, the terms “effective technological measure” and “rights management information” are defined as follows:

SECTION 229A TECHNOLOGICAL PROTECTION MEASURES

“EFFECTIVE TECHNOLOGICAL MEASURE” MEANS ANY TECHNOLOGY, DEVICE OR COMPONENT THAT, IN THE NORMAL COURSE OF ITS OPERATIO N, CONTROLS ACCESS TO A PROTECTED WORK, SOUND RECORDING, OR OTHER SUBJECT MATTER, OR PROTECTS ANY COPYRIGHT OR ANY RIGHTS RELATED TO COPYRIGHT AS PROVIDED BY THIS ACT.

171.13 “RIGHTS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION” MEANS INFORMATION WHICH IDENTIFIES THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE; THE AUTHOR OF THE WORK, PRODUCER OF THE SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMER OF THE PERFORMANCE; THE OWNER OF ANY RIGHT IN THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE; OR INFORMATION ABOUT THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THE USE OF THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE; AND ANY NUMBERS OR CODES THAT REPRESENT SUCH INFORMATION, WHEN ANY OF THESE ITEMS IS ATTACHED TO A COPY OF THE SOUND RECORDING OR FIXATION OF WORK, PERFORMANCE OR APPEARS IN CONNECTION WITH THE COMMUNICATION TO THE PUBLIC OF A WORK, SOUND RECORDING OR PERFORMANCE. NOTHING IN THIS ACT REQUIRES THE OWNER OF ANY R IGHT IN THE WORK, SOUND RECORDING, OR PERFORMANCE TO ATTACH RIGH TS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TO COPIES OF IT OR TO CAUSE RIGHTS MANAGEMENT INFORMATION TO APPEAR IN CONNECTION WITH A COMMUNICATION OF THE WORK, SOUND RECORD ING OR PERFORMANCE TO THE PUBLIC.