O niekoľko dní svetová politická elita pravdepodobne rozhodne, či sa skupine amerických mediálnych korporácií a právnikov podarí presadiť spôsob, ako sa bez súdneho splnomocnenia preberať kohokoľvek internetovou aktivitou a konfiškovať laptopy na letiskách. Nech si v OSN, WIPO či krajinách mimo G8 hovorí kto chce čo chce..

..na programe summitu G8 v Tokyu, ktorý začína zajtra, je totiž popri rozvojovom programe pre Afriku, klimatických zmenách, terorizme, zastavení šírenia nukleárnych zbraní a strastiach svetovej ekonomiky aj — prípadné schválenie dokumentu ACTA, ktorý má výrazne pritvrdiť v potláčaní porušovania duševného vlastníctva. Dokument ide omnoho ďalej ako momentálne debatovaný IPRED2, ktorý je v EÚ namierený proti komerčnému pirátstvu.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a proposed plurilateral trade agreement that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. The agreement is being secretly negotiated by the governments of the United States, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Canada, and Mexico. If adopted at the 34th G8 summit in July 2008, the treaty would establish an international coalition against copyright infringement, imposing a strong, top-down enforcement regime of copyright laws in developed nations. (wikipedia)

Návrh dokumentu, ktorý bol uverejnený koncom mája na portáli wikileaks.org, hovorí o viacerých nových opatreniach. Bezpečnostní pracovníci na letiskách a iných medzinárodných hraniciach majú byť oprávnení prevádzať náhodné ex officio prehliadky laptopov, MP3 prehrávačov, a mobilov. V prípade objavenia nelegálne stiahnutej alebo grabnutej hudby, filmov alebo softvéru majú môcť cestujúceho pokutovať a jeho prístroj(e) skonfiškovať alebo zničiť. Internetovým poskytovateľom má byť udelená povinnosť poskytovať informácie o podozrivých porušovateľoch autorského práva bez súdneho príkazu, čo by uľahčilo hudobnému priemyslu žalovať zdieľajúcich užívateľov, a autoritám zase odstaviť nekomerčné torrentové služby. ACTA by vytvorila svoj riadiaci orgán mimo existujúce medzinárodné inštitúcie ako WTO, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), či Organizáciu spojených národov.

Dokument vzišiel v minulom októbri z iniciatívy americkej (kvázi-)ministerky obchodu a piatich členov Kongresu z výboru pre IP a pirátstvo, ktorých volebné kampane boli, ako inak, sponzorované korporáciami ako Time Warner, News Corp, Sony Corp, či Walt Disney.

Viac informácií:

Projects developed during recent months in Prague’s Institute of Intermedia including guest works from Brno’s FaVU are not to be missed on 25 June. Audiovisually sensible corridor will bring you to the haptophone seats, interactive suits, mechanical toys generating electroacoustic notations, 3D theatre play in CAVE environment, virtual model of Electrotechnical faculty building, video documentation of the reconstruction of 1920’s sound detection and monitoring military device, and other works.

Next Transmediale festival (27 Jan - 1 Feb) will deal with the melting polar ice, climate change and global warming.

Ars Electronica announced the topic for its September festival: A New Cultural Economy. The Limits of Intellectual Property, having the symposium curated by Joichi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons.

Several art and technology workshop series are planned for the summer.
The Letovice castle in CZ (6-13 July) will host the NonstopWorkshops on Pure Data, animation, and video editing. On Kemiö island near Helsinki (7-13 August) the first Pixelache Summerschool will focus on electronics and solar energy. Afterwards (18-29 August), at 1scale1 studio in Malmo, David Cuartielles & co are preparing the 7workshops7 for physical computing, Processing and Arduino.

Creative Commons license is about to be ported in Czech Republic in coming months. Marek Tichy from human rights NGO Iuridicum Remedium; Lukáš Gruber, project coordinator for web archive at the National Library of the Czech Republic; Independent Authors Alliance; and Faculty of Philosophy & Arts at Charles University, are involved in the process. For the autumn, Academy of Art’s DigiLab is preparing the public presentations of the projects using the CC licenses in Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Kitchen Budapest celebrated first anniversary this Sunday and Monday. Several dozens projects were presented at Fogadó building in Millenáris Park in Budapest, accompanied by discussion on private funding of artist institutions.

Reheat - 180° im sommer, sound art festival, will be held on 23 August in Kleylehof, near Nickelsdorf. Alfred Stohl, Andrea Brandao and Dr. Didi Bruckmayr, Antonia Baer, Chris Janka, elffriede, Flora Watzal, Gina Hell, iftaf - institut für transakustische forschung, Lisbeth Kovacic, Maja Osojnik and BulBul, Martin and Peter Brandlmayr, Tronstoner, Radu Malfatti, Red White, Sabine Maier, Sabine Marte, Tim Blechmann and others will be around.

Last weekend, first Barcamp was held in Bratislava, bringing up wide range of technological issues. Besides hypertext literature, ontology of folksonomy, webserver security, also internet copyright law and Creative Commons in Slovakia were discussed. Porting this license to Slovakia is still stagnating, there are two strains in author’s law holding back the process: firstly, the agreement about the use has to be officially signed by the recipient (on paper, or by electronic signature) - clicking OK on the website before downloading is not enough; and secondly, the legal details of the recipient have to be specified within the agreement, in other words, law doesn’t allow the unspecified users, eg. the public. This is actually how we found out, that basically all copylefted software and other material (CMS systems, blogs, database servers, Linux operating systems) is used illegally in Slovakia. Why? Since the copyleft is not supported by the local law, the user then works with the content under copyright, and is, firstly, vulnerable for using the copyrighted material without permission, and secondly, in case of further distribution, he or she restricts the rights granted by the copyleft license, which is in condradiction to its legal requirements. Thus it is in the interest of all copylefted or GNU GPL’d software users to improve the author’s law in Slovakia.

On Tuesday, Ars Electronica published the results of this year’s awards, Media.art.research award was introduced for the first time, and goes to publication Interact or Die! There is drama in the networks edited by Joke Brouwer and Arjen Mulder, collecting the essays dealing with “self-organizing, epigenetic and transductive” aspects of the matter. Other AE prizes.