The Bangus Ultimatum

I guess we bloggers are allowed to celebrate our little victories. Even when they do get reversed. Sort of.

So they google-bombed Arroyo. Someday, when a friggin’ psycho looks for “sinungaling”, the Office of the President’s website will appear. Maybe we’ll have a regime change. Maybe we’ll get rid of Presidentialism forevermore and none of this will really matter. But hey, we google-bombed Arroyo, man! Whoop-tee-doo!

Somehow, this doesn’t feel as right as changing the google zeitgeist for “pinay”. Overall, that’s a positive effort/karma ratio. (Perhaps because all we wanted to change was mere perception. Perhaps because none of it involved grave violations of the Constitution.) Sorry, Young Radicals, but that just doesn’t work for me.

It reminds me of what Dr. Joshua Ellis had to say about our increasingly bifurcated civilization:

Meanwhile, most of the people with any genuine opportunity or ability to effect global change are too busy patting each other on the back at conventions and blue-skying goofy social networking tools that are essentially useless to 95% of the world’s population, who live within fifteen feet of everyone they’ve ever known and have no need to track their fuck buddies with GPS systems. (This, by the way, includes most Americans, quite honestly.)

…

The upshot of all of this is that the Future gets divided; the cute, insulated future that Joi Ito and Cory Doctorow and you and I inhabit, and the grim meathook future that most of the world is facing, in which they watch their squats and under-developed fields get turned into a giant game of Counterstrike between crazy faith-ridden jihadist motherfuckers and crazy faith-ridden American redneck motherfuckers, each doing their best to turn the entire world into one type of fascist nightmare or another.

I believe that blogging can play a role in real social change. To do that, however, we have to be brave enough to step outside our candy-colored, plasticine pods, and realize what is truly at stake out there.

Lego’s Canadian patent on its blocks has expired, and competitors like Mega Blocks *should* have had the right to create “compatible” bricks. That’s the way the Intellectual Property System works (or at least the utilitarian flavor we subscribe to): you’re given a chance to exclusive rights (essentially, a legal monopoly) over your work, but after a while it should belongs to everyone. Ideas aren’t like physical objects – distribution does not translate to lower density, and value is not derived from “fencing off”. If I get your poem you do not have one poem less. The theory our law is based on is not a “natural right” to ideas, but an economic hypothesis – to reward creativity, and to induce the development of arts and science.

That’s why it’s reprehensible when Lego tried to short circuit that balance by “extending” its expired patent by resorting to trademark protection. Lego’s theory seems to imply that consumers are so stupid we can’t tell Lego branded blocks from lower-priced Megablocks. Good thing the Canadian judges would have none of that.

((Reposted from the iBlog blog))

The EFF is raising funds to help it keep fighting for blogger’s rights (Those who have cash to spare, especially in the US, I hope you donate or join).

The link contains a list of rights that the EFF has secured (or is in the process of securing) for bloggers:

You Have the Right to Blog Anonymously. EFF has fought for your right to speak anonymously on the Internet, establishing legal protections in several states and federal jurisdictions, and developing technologies to help you protect you identity. With your support, EFF can continue to defend this right, conducting impact litigation to establish strict standards to unmask an anonymous critic in more jurisdictions.

You Have the Right to Keep Sources Confidential. In Apple v. Does, EFF is fighting to establish the reporter’s privilege for online journalists before the California courts. With your support, EFF can defend news bloggers from subpoenas seeking the identity of confidential sources in more jurisdictions.

You Have the Right to Make Fair Use of Intellectual Property. In OPG v. Diebold, Diebold, Inc., a manufacturer of electronic voting machines, had sent out copyright cease-and-desist letters to ISPs after internal documents indicating flaws in their systems were published on the Internet. EFF established the publication was a fair use. With your support, EFF can help fight to protect bloggers from frivolous or abusive threats and lawsuits.

You have the Right to Allow Readers’ Comments Without Fear. In Barrett v. Rosenthal, EFF is working to establish that Section 230, a strong federal immunity for online publishers, applies to bloggers. With your support, EFF can continue to protect bloggers from liability for comments left by third parties.

You Have the Right to Protect Your Server from Government Seizure. In In re Subpoena to Rackspace. EFF successfully fought to unveil a secret government subpoena that had resulted in more than 20 Independent Media Center (Indymedia) news websites and other Internet services being taken offline. With your support, EFF can hold the government accountable for investigations that cut off protected speech.

You Have the Right to Freely Blog about Elections. EFF has advocated for the sensible application of Federal Election Commission rules to blogs that comment on political campaigns. With your support, EFF can continue to protect political blogs from onerous campaign regulations.

You Have the Right to Blog about Your Workplace. EFF has educated bloggers on their rights to blog about their workplace and developed technologies to help anonymous whistle bloggers. With your support, EFF can help shape the law to protect workplace bloggers from unfair retaliation.

You Have the Right to Access as Media. EFF has educated bloggers on their right to access public information, attend public events with the same rights as mainstream media, and how to blog from public events. With your support, EFF can fight for bloggers’ right to access as media.

Know Your Rights and Prepare to Defend Them. EFF has created the Legal Guide for Bloggers to give you a basic roadmap to the legal issues you may confront as a blogger and a guide on How to Blog Safely. With your support, EFF can expand and update these guides.

I guess I can say that we’re fortunate that we don’t have the pressing need for an EFF. For now, at least. The PCIJ TRO may mean it would only be a matter of time. Anyone know any efforts to organize? How can iBlog (and its convenors) help?

Or maybe, no more Windows exposure for my XEmacs

Had to remove XEmacs from my Windows partition. No, I’m not quitting on my favorite editor. It’s just that I want to give more disk space for my brothers (who use Windows) and just stick to XEmacs on Linux. Running XEmacs on Windows felt a bit like cheating – like enjoying a pizza in the library – like you’re not really supposed to have that much fun in Windows. There were also a dozen small things that you had to deal with when you try to maintain code originally meant for Unixens on a Windows machine (i.e. mapping files and directories), such that putting in new libraries (with install instructions assuming a Unix context), can be quite pain. Until now I haven’t figured out how to make the Windows version play well with LaTEX and PDF, as well as Emacs Wiki and PlannerMode.

Well, just law school, actually. But we do have our share of witchcraft and wizardry. We have lingering ghosts and our share of dragons and dementors. Dark and difficult times lie ahead for me and my blockmates.

I’m currently reading and re-reading Duncan Kennedy’s “How Law Schools Fail”, which, unfortunately, doesn’t show up in Google. It’s an article in the Yale Law Review first published in 1970, describing the “malaise” of hostility, myopia, and apathy that polluted Yale Law back then. I might as well be reading about the UP College of Law in 2005: Professors and their arsenal of sadism, their unjustified disdain of subjects outside law. Students dividing into extremes of buying into the system or just settling into stasis. I hope to discuss the article further soon, if only to hold a mirror against the past three years of studying law school, and how it changed (or warped) me so.

I’m also a teacher now, in the UP CMC. I hope that I’ll never have to resort to dominance, to paternalism,to ridicule, to “icy indifference” to teach my lessons. I hope I never forget what the rule-readers and the bureaucrats fail to understand: that beyond the arbitrary walls and narrow categories they cling to, the wings of a thousand butterflies are beating, seeding the atmosphere with storms; that magic can still happen; that the human voice can never really be stilled.

Heroes used to be not only immortal but stable. They’re cast in stone, unchanging. I’m not sure if it’s postmodernism or plain marketing at work, but that doesn’t hold true anymore, at least for heroes of the super type: entire multiverses of fictional heores are rebooting and reimagining all the time these days.

I suppose it’s a matter of changing expectations. Steven Denbeste, for example, is no longer impressed with the Jedis. Not after seeing the planet-destroying powers of Super Saiyan warriors in Dragonball Z.

Having been a comics fanboy (I’m having a slight resurgence, thanks to Mr. Ellis), I feel the same way with most of our Pinoy superheroes (I manage to sort of keep track, for “academic purposes”). I mean, sure, Darna can fly and has super strength, but “flyers” with super strength are a dime a dozen in the Wildstorm Universe. With meticulous planning and the right technology, she can be easily dispatched by trained operators like Stormwatch: Team Achilles. It was wise for the Mango Comics version to give her “upgrades”: she now has psi-powers comparable to Jean Grey’s, and she doesn’t have to swallow that damn stone all the time. In the TV version, she at least has energy-based ranged attacks.

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be impressed with Panday. I’m not talking about the teleserye production. I’m talking of Panday as an archetypal hero. I mean, when you get down to it, the Panday is just a warrior/swordsman with a mystical sword and great martial skills. His only weapon is a dagger that can morph into a sword and cut virtually everything (and probably render fire damage). Big hairy woo. He can’t tap to an energy field. He has no psychic powers or spellwork. He has no ranged attacks. Wouldn’t last 15 minutes in Ragnarok Online. Would probably die force-choked in a fantasy battle with Darth Vader. Would probably be beaten by any of the Sailor Warriors. Pathetic.

I do hope they give him an upgrade. I know it takes more than sheer power to be a hero, but please, give us something that won’t get out geek chops busted.

Local blogs are abuzz with the TRO on the PCIJ.

Certainly people have a right to privacy and their good reputation. At the same time, people have the right to free speech and a free press. In theory, the courts and legal processes will strike the necessary balance.

Sometimes, however, the scales aren’t calibrated right in the process. Governments and corporations have vast resources, and all the time in the world to pursue litigation – something an ordinary blogger or forum poster does not have. Sometimes just filing suit, without any reference to the merits of the situation – would be enough to pull the plug.

I used to call this kind of thing legal sleazeballing – the “proper” term, it turns out – is Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (or simply SLAPP): “…a form of litigation filed by a large corporation or in some cases, an individual plaintiff to intimidate and silence a less powerful critic by so severely burdening them with the cost of a legal defense that they abandon their criticism.”