Turukhtan

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

The amazing world of Swedish copyright laws

In my course on Publishing, we are currently immersing ourselves in the legal aspects of book publishing.

One of the course books is on general copyright laws ("Upphovsrätt i reklam och media" by Thomas Carlén-Wendels), and has a chapter about copyright laws on the Internet. There, one can read a fascinating paragraph about how, since the changes in the Swedish copyright law in 2005 (which were mostly supposed to crack down on piracy and illegal filesharing), any links leading to copyrighted material are technically illegal.

That means not only "direct linking" to an image, movie, music file etc. that someone else has made available on the net (which is generally already considered somewhat bad manners - accepted procedure is, rather, to link to the web page where the file is embedded, or where the originator has a link to it). But it also means any *page* with copyrighted text, images, film, music, layout, etc. that has "inventive step"/"non-obviousness".
And by making a link to that page, you "make it available for the general public", an action that is usually the same as "publishing", but turns a bit tricky when it comes to the Internet. If you don't have explicit permission by the originator to make the page available for the general public, you're breaking the law.
Since the Internet is pretty much built on the very principle of links without explicit permission, this is kind of funny.

The paragraph ends with the slightly sarcastic note that "there might be reason to not shut down the Internet until the new link issues have been tried in court ..."

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(I'm not breaking the law with my link to Wikipedia in this entry. That publication is under the GNU Free Documentation Licence ... %)

Posted at 4:29 pm by turukhtan
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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Today would have been Mitsu's 12th birthday ...

I made a video of the film clips of her that I hadn't yet used. I couldn't decide for a song, so I took three in one:

(19 Mb, 7.19 min, wmv - right click and save link as!)

Posted at 4:58 pm by turukhtan
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Sunday, October 08, 2006

Killed in action

(The quote is from an interview with Karol Wrubel, further down on this page at the Danish support committee for Chechnya.)

I returned to Sweden today, due to my busy schedule completely oblivious to the fact that Anna Politkovskaya had been assassinated yesterday. I'd bought her recent book, "Putin's Russia" (Swedish edition, English edition), just a couple of weeks ago at the Gothenburg book fair.

Her newspaper, Novaya gazeta, points out that there are only two possible versions of who might be behind it. Either it was the revenge of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Prime Minister of the Federal Government of the Russian republic of Chechnya, a puppet of Moscow with his own private army, repeatedly accused of atrocities, and whose activities Politkovskaya had been writing and speaking about a lot.
"Or", the newspaper continues, "it could be those who want suspicion to fall on the current Chechen Prime Minister, who, now that he has turned 30, could aspire to become President". (Which, of course, is a subtle way of accusing certain people in the Kremlin ...)

"Risk is a usual part of my job", Politkovskaya has been quoted to say, and she and her family were probably well aware of the possibility of her being assassinated. She had received numerous death threats over the years, and when she was on her way to report on the school siege in Beslan 2004, she was apparently poisoned, but survived. People have been killed for giving her information, so maybe her conscience wouldn't let her quit working.

She herself most likely was expecting and - though she said she was always afraid - perhaps even accepted this kind of death, because she knew it was the price you have to pay for doing the kind of work she did.
It makes me very angry that she was indeed assassinated in the end. And this anger I will channel into everything I do.

Posted at 2:27 pm by turukhtan
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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Me at the Gothenburg book fair

(Photo by Ainur.)

It's been a while already, but since Ainur put up these pictures I might as well mention it here.
For some reason, they had these lovely Monokuro Boo cushions in the children's book lounge. A guy from the newspaper Sydsvenskan came by at some point as we were sitting there and took our picture. It was in the newspaper the day after, with us having strange expressions, labelled as "from Malmö" (we never said that ...) and Ainur's name terribly misspelled ... Ainur hasn't gotten her ass off the wagon to scan it yet.

At "SerieLoungen" (the comic book lounge) some people actually bought 8 issues of my comic books. Yay!
The theme of this year was "free speech", so there were more interesting seminars and other activities than usually.

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Something bad is going on with my web host, but I hope it will be okay soon.

In a couple of hours I'll take the train to Copenhagen airport and fly to Berlin again, so I should go pack my things ...

Posted at 11:01 am by turukhtan
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Monday, September 18, 2006

Inte helt oväntat, tyvärr ...

I riksdagen:

Högerregering med moderatstatsminister. Inte för att moderaterna fick flest röster, utan bara för att högerpartierna slagit sig samman och på så sätt med nöd och näppe fick majoritet.

Inga småpartier kom in i riksdagen. I F!:s fall (1 %) kommenteras det så här av Sören Holmberg, professor i statsvetenskap, i DN: "Jag tror det avgjordes för ett år sedan i och med de uppmärksammade tv-programmen som ledde fram till kritiken mot Roks. Namnet förknippades också med interna strider som visades i medierna."
Uppenbarligen är folk för dumma för att tänka själva och se igenom det mediala kriget mot F!, liksom Evin Rubars oprofessionella journalistik i dokumentären i fråga, med suggestiva montage, rumphuggna intervjusnuttar och guilt by association, samt att rent av lägga ord i munnen på personerna som intervjuas. (Kommentarer kring detta: 1, 2)

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I landstinget:

Skåne län: Sossar i majoritet. (Miljöpartiet: 4,3 %)

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I kommunen:

Kävlinge:
1. Sossarna (38,5 %)
2. Moderaterna (26,1 %)
3. Sverigedemokraterna (13,1 %)
...
7. Miljöpartiet (2,6 %)

Frustrerande var ordet. Sossar och moderater kommer dock förmodligen att fortsätta samarbeta, så att det främlingsfientliga SD inte kommer att vara med och styra i kommunen. Men SD har varit väldigt framgångsrika i hela Skåne. Och vad säger det om väljarna ...?

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Avslutande länkar:
Valet är en illusion.(Även om jag personligen tycker att man ska rösta, men utan att för den skull "överlämna sitt ansvar" och låta sig passiviseras.)
Övervinn cynismen!

Posted at 9:33 am by turukhtan
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Sunday, September 17, 2006

Former office, future home

(Click it to see it bigger & read my comments.)

And I will get back to my thesis ... real soon.

Posted at 6:03 pm by turukhtan
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It's about time we all get out and vote for love!

Today we have general elections. Though I think parliamentary democracy is a big joke that creates power-abusing opportunists in every political party, I also think it's important to use the little influence that this system does grant us who are not professional politicians.

A problem might be that there are no decent alternatives to vote for. There are a couple of somewhat decent parties, but they are all so small that they are very unlikely to get into the Parliament, because most people blindly vote for the mainstream parties.

Anyway, in both the municipal and county council elections, I voted for the green party (hoping they might do something about Scan's gigantic slaughterhouse here in Kävlinge, and perhaps pull through some decent agricultural policies).
As for the parliamentary elections, I voted for F!, one of the somewhat decent smaller parties. They might not get into parliament, but I couldn't vote for any of the mainstream parties.

Being dressed like this, the Social Democrat lurking outside the voting locale didn't try to give me any Social Democrat ballots ... Maybe I looked so determined that he didn't care to even try? (At the EMU referendum a couple of years ago, it was a woman who wanted me to vote 'yes'.)

Posted at 3:54 pm by turukhtan
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Friday, September 15, 2006

Links of the day

Gipi, one of my very favourite comic book authors, signing books in Angoulême:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/36983

http://www.dailymotion.com/aaapoum/video/xsjx_gipi-2

Check out how he holds his pencil!

Posted at 4:10 pm by turukhtan
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Friday, September 08, 2006

Some black and white photography

There are some in colour, too. I was photographing stuff I'll sell online (trying to get rid of as much as possible before I move), and one of the things is a Soviet army cap ('pilotka'). Since my face is the way it is, it was really hard to get a photo where both the cap and myself looked all right. In the process, I got quite a few funny and 'artistic' pictures.

(A propos 'pilotka', as I was confirming that the one I have is just an imitation, I involuntarily found out during my research that 'pilotka' is yet another Russian slang word for the female genitals. I guess it's because of the, uh, quite obvious shape. Argh, I swear, after this nothing will ever be the same again when I see Soviet soldiers! I won't be able to see anything but this huge olive green pilotka on their heads ...)

Posted at 12:36 am by turukhtan
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Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Bilal vs. Moore

(Being possessed by gods and forced to have sex in comics)

As I watched "Immortel (ad vitam)", the film based on the comic books "La Foire aux immortels" and "La Femme piège" by Enki Bilal, I came to think about another comic book - "Promethea" by Alan Moore (etc.).

See, in Bilal's comics, Alexander Nikopol gets possessed by the god Horus, who uses him to have sex with one of the infinitely rare women who can procreate with a god - the beautiful blue-haired Jill:

Whereas in "Promethea", Sophie Bangs is possessed by the demi-goddess and 'mystic warrior woman' Promethea, and at one point has to take on her Promethea shape to have sex with a dirty and disgusting old man so he'll teach her magic.

The stories are a bit different, as Sophie is actively using Promethea to get what she wants, and it's supposed to be a bit of a 'challenge', as it obviously would be boring if she'd get all that knowledge for nothing. Nikopol, on the other hand, just gets caught up in the schemes of Horus and has little control over the proceedings.

But I still found this sequence of "Promethea" extremely disturbing ... Maybe not so terribly much before and during the act, but *definitely* afterwards, when Sophie has changed back into herself, and they start doing these little intimate things like him helping her with her bra ... Ewwwww ...

...

So, anyway, I won't draw any conclusions from this comparison. That's up to you ...

Posted at 8:39 pm by turukhtan
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