sandipb.net

If you need to use a work on the Internet, you need to be aware (and careful) about its copyright. After all, copyright restrictions are becoming more and encompassing by the day. But what if you want to use content which is specifically in the public domain? How do you find out if the work you are thinking of using has passed into the public domain?

For work created in US, the following applies:

If the work was published before 1923, then it’s in the public domain in the U.S., so anyone can use it.
After 1923, up to 1964, it’s in the public domain unless copyright was officially renewed. All formal renewals have been listed by the Copyright Office, each year.

So for the work created between 1923 to 1964, how do you get the information on the net whether a copyright has been renewed?

You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn’t digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly typed in every word.

Now Google has merged both the databases and offered them as a single downloadable XML file in the public domain. Nice!

Anyone reading this who knows the Indian copyright laws for the same?

My first 419 mail in hindi!, originally uploaded by Sandip Bhattacharya.

Came to the moderator address of ILUGD. Interestingly, it was sent from a gmail account but asks you to mail to an yahoo account instead.

No, my question is not what you think. I am not suggesting that we will have the riots out here. Hear me out.

We all the know the infrastructural and administrative mess that is there in Bangalore (and Karnataka). The problems had been “legendary”. Even before I had moved to Bangalore in 2006, I used to read all the problems in Hosur road, and the brief flicker of noisy protests by the IT sector in that regard. Well, we all know things have got worse - I see the generators in my company - situated in a tech park right in the heart of the city - running for most part of the day, there are daily power cuts like clockwork in my area, municipal water hasn’t reached the areas of the city which are now the hotbed of residential real estate in the city, traffic is unimaginably bad in front of my house on a major road and bad elsewhere, roads are in a terrible shape with absolutely no repair work to be seen … I could go on and on.

This is a question to all the people (like me) who are suspicious of BJP and regard it as a divisive party. How much would you be willing to concede to BJP if Yeddyurappa does all the wonderful things to Bangalore just as what Modi did to Gujarat?

Don’t snicker at this question! Just think about it! What if …

• Roads all over the city are repaired and attended to swiftly in case of breakage
• BMTC buses are all converted to Volvo or Marcopolo, run on time, run throughout the day and are disciplined.
• Power problems are tied up by fixing old equipment and reducing T&D losses
• Government invest heavily into regular and traffic police, and suddenly the roads are more disciplined
• Water network is setup on a war footing,and the areas which have been thriving on borewell water start using municipal water.
• Forest department is galvanized into making Bangalore as green as it was even five years ago

In short, Bangalore becomes a great place to live in, industries boom, there is prosperity all around. You heave a sigh of relief about the house you had just bought by pledging your first born.

In other words, Yeddyurappa manages to do to Bangalore(and eventually Karnataka) what Modi has supposedly done to Gujarat.

If such progress happens to this state, how would you look at Yeddy for a second term, looking beyond all the low profile insidious communal structure that they will setup in the administration? (Remember this question is for those who voted against him this term)

If you are still negative, I would ask you again - Don’t just react on the spur. Think about it for a moment. Close your eyes and imagine what life in Bangalore would be if Karnataka becomes the next Gujarat. (read the list given above once more if it helps )

Is it worth consorting with the “devil” for? Or would you like another term of the Gowda family or the always-aimless Congress with the consequent breakdown of the state again.

I closed my eyes and imagined. It was a very tempting thought. And for the first time, my negative opinions about the people of Gujarat electing Modi again and again, subsided. For I can now understand the difficult choice they had.

(For the critics of Modi’s claims, that reference I gave was not the only one which talks about the improvement he made in the state. Independent social and business reports, whose references I am a bit tired to dig up, confirm a significant improvement)

visa bill pay, originally uploaded by Sandip Bhattacharya.

Uh oh. Doesn’t increase confidence too much, does it?

…

Crap. You can add billers to the website, but you got to call up customer service to remove them? @#$@#$%

(testing blogging from flickr)

Update: Instead of just griping like me, Balaji went ahead and wrote to Visa Bill Pay. It only got him canned responses though.

Update2: Testing pingbacks for balaji.

On April 8, 2008, Powerhouse Museum based out of Sydney, Australia, released their publicly-held historical photographs for access on Flickr, becoming the first museum in the world to do so. Earlier on Jan 16, 2008, the Library of Congress had released over 3000 photos on Flickr.

What is common between these two contributions was that the rare photographs were in the public domain - they had no known copyright and are therefore free to reuse by anybody in the world. It was an effort, not just to preserve the photos (which the institutions were already doing) but to make sure that the public benefits from this material for the commons. Many of the photographs are from the earliest days of photography (late 1800s) and provide a fascinating detail of those times.

The effect of sharing these details has been electric. Here is what these institutions found out:

Power house musuem reported that in one month:

• They got 39,685 views - “That’s more than an entire year on the old Tyrrell website (which, incidentally, has more images and is better indexed by Google)”
• 75% of our traffic comes from within Flickr, 13% direct, 10% from other websites linking, and less than 1% from search.
• Tonnes of tags have been added and they have been of a quality that we’ve not experienced in our other tagging projects.

The Library of Congress blog post and the Flickr one reports that in less than two days:

• They had 650,000 views of photos!
• 4,000 unique tags across the collection
• Over 500 comments!

The advantages of putting photos of the commons out “there” the commons is undeniable. I start thinking about the state of the commons in our country. Even if we take the case of just photographs(amond the many other property of our commons), where do we preserve our photographic heritage in India? How much of it is accessible by the public. By being accessible I mean not just viewing them in a moldy frame in an equally moldy museum, but actually get to use them in our work?

Who preserves India’s photos? Do we have a national photo museum like the Library of Congress? I need to find out more.

Ah. Of course. Thanks. I will do just that … wtf??

The story so far:

1. December 2006: 7 ECMA approves OOXML as ECMA-376
2. December 2006: ECMA submits ECMA-376 to ISO for consideration as an ISO standard under the fast track process
3. September 2007: ISO ballot process votes against adoption of the specs as a standard
4. April 2008: OOXML gets approved as an ISO standard
5. South Africa, Brazil, India, Venezuela, (possibly Denmark too) have for the first time in ISO history, appealed against the decision to make OOXML an ISO standard.

So what happened between (3) and (4)? Stories are now emerging of the tactics used by the organization behind the OOXML standard.

India

Prof Deepak B Phatak (IIT Bombay) writes in an open letter to the BIS committee which worked on the Indian response to this standard:

The final Indian position at ISO was decided by the committee on 20th March 2008, which retained Indian ‘disapproval’ vote.

…

Microsoft started filing complaints to various Indian authorities in early March 2008, claiming bias on part of several members of the committee because of their presumed membership of a group called ‘ODF Alliance India’.

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Worse, the complaints have painted these organizations and their representatives, including the Indian delegation which attended the BRM, as acting against the Indian National interests.

…

The meeting of the committee on 20th March 2008 had clearly and unambiguously finalized the Indian position of retaining the earlier disapproval vote. In spite of this, Microsoft continued to make representations to top Indian leadership, pressurizing them to change the Indian vote. This act, in my opinion, goes well beyond the behavioral boundaries for a non-Indian commercial entity, amounting to interfering with the governance process of a sovereign country.

Not that this succeeded in changing India’s vote at the final ballot. India still admiringly voted aginst the standard.

However, India’s appeal was against the way in which the final decision was taken - instead of the established method of technical discussions in solving issues with the standard, only a few issues were resolved while the rest were just put to vote. A vote which went like this - 6 for, 4 against, 22 abstained/no-position. Out of the 6 voting for the standard, only 4 had participation status, while two had observation status. All the 4 voting against the standards were participating countries.(These numbers are from Prof. Phatak’s post. I find the break-up of the ‘for’ votes contradictory to the numbers stated by ISO about the final result. ISO mentions all the positive votes to have P status).

Brazil

Peter who was part of the brazilian delegation reports what happened in the ballot and why brazil is appealing against the vote:

When Brazil decided to vote NO on OpenXML, the kindergarten argument of “lack of time to read everything” wasn’t used. We’ve made an tremendous effort to review the specification and we vote with a complete technical knowledge of the facts.
…

According to him, the ballot process went like this. On Sunday evening(before the meeting), all delegations were told that they have to reach some decision by Wednesday to resolve all the outstanding issues against the standard. By Wednesday, only 18% of the 1027 issues could be covered (also in these 18% many were simply asked to be taken offline because they weren’t enough time).

On Wednesday, the delegations were told that the rest 80+% of the issues will not be discussed and simply put to vote. The final vote resulted in the approval.

He writes about the people who didn’t vote (NB = National Body).

At that moment, there was a very interesting protest of a delegation which said that they didn’t went Switzerland to vote, which could be done from home (they were there to discuss) and the answer: “Patience…”.

Another NB protested saying that they only received the document containing the answers to their own questions and didn’t even had the opportunity to read and discuss the whole responses document (1027 responses on a 2500+ document). For this reason the option “We do not wish to record any position” was created on the ballot. That highlighted problem also happened on other NBs and there are NBs that simply voted on proposals that they never even read! (This is really cool, right?).

This joke of a standards process (in which only 6 of the 33 members actually had a positive position on the standard) is what India, Brazil and the other countries are complaining about.

A very interesting critique on atheism and the methods used by atheists to explain their position. The author Edward Tingley, a philosophy professor, bases most of his arguments against the material written by Blaise Pascal on applying the scientific mind to discover the existence of God.

The professor goes on to demonstrate how, in his opinion, it is hypocritical for atheists who profess a scientific approach to disregard the very fundamentals of the scientific temper that they are supposed to defend.

He points out the mindset from where Pascal and other atheists begin their attempts at discovery:

He likes a world in which he can stop thinking about something when the hard evidence for it gives out: That is a beautifully simple world. “If I had to sum up my own atheism, I would have to say that it amounts to this: I have no interest in the supernatural.” Let’s “simply dismiss the whole issue of whether ‘God’ exists as not worth any discussion.” “It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and naturally hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”

He attacks the common point raised by atheists about the lack of evidence thus:

We need evidence that God exists. Agreed. What kind? Is there only one kind? Scientific evidence. And what is that: material evidence? Is that how science works? Didn’t the nature of evidence expand as science went deeper into what is? Aren’t there new and unexpected kinds of evidence?

Even scientists don’t quit when the old sort of evidence runs dry. Not quitting—going beyond the established sort of evidence—is a virtue of science.

What would we say to the pre-Darwinian who did not believe that biodiversity could be explained? (“It all had to be put here,” he insisted. “There is no material evidence for a mechanism of biodiversity.”) Was natural selection material evidence?

He sums up atheists or unbelievers thus:

Who, then, is this person? He is not a skeptic at all (someone who, for want of solid reasons, refuses to commit)—he commits. He is not a lover of reason over passion—he chooses the possibilities he cares about because those are the ones he likes. He is not a skeptic who in the absence of evidence withholds belief—he is a believer.

I found the article a bit dense at times but on the whole very well articulated, in fact the best skepticism of atheism that I have read till date. It made me think quite a bit about my belief in atheism. Come to think about it, there are so many things in common between atheists and believers:

• We think to some extent about our own “faith”, but mostly we rely on either a consensus of what people of our faith believe, or some seers (or great minds) who have done deeper thining for us. We normally don’t go the whole hog ourselves.
• Both of us don’t have evidence to either prove or disprove each other. But in the absence of an answer, we go ahead with what we are comfortable with and commit to our beliefs, most probably not bothering too much in enquiring further.

I believe professor Tingely has a very important point to offer which I am beginning to agree with, the more I think of it - the correct “faith” for a person who believes in science, logic and rationality, is Agnosticism, not Atheism. For being an atheist is to stop seeking. And whether it is the meaning of life, or God or the medicine for AIDS/Cancer, how can you find conquer new frontiers if you have stopped seeking?

But even after having convincing arguments on a lot of points, it still did not answer one of the questions that I always had - why should one be looking for this answer at all? What is all this frenzy about finding the “one larger being above us all”? Why should one perform such a spiritual quest at all? As in the words of Isaac Asimov -

I have never, in all my life, not for one moment, been tempted toward religion of any kind. The fact is that I feel no spiritual void. I have my philosophy of life, which does not include any aspect of the supernatural and which I find totally satisfying. I am, in short, a rationalist.

The conclusion to that statement might be debatable, and Edward Tingle has also partially talked about this line of thought, but professor’s article still doesn’t answer my question fully.

(Reference to prof. tingle’s article found here)

Just saw this reported in our internal company mailing list.

Operators at various petrol bunks in Bangalore (and possibly in other cities), are cheating passengers by breaking up the delivery of petrol in two steps, and distracting them in between the steps. Most of us are conditioned to check only when the meter first starts running, and when it finally ends. If the petrol is given to us in two batches, some of us either miss (or are distracted) at the point when the meter needs to be reset to start the next batch. Operators take this opportunity to make a quick buck at our expense. Here are two such experiences.

http://community.livejournal.com/bangalore/276353.html
http://codecritic.in/blog/index.php/bangalore/great-indian-petrol-pump-fraud/

The incompetency of our police and government in handling our security is often sought to be hidden by fear mongering. Knee jerk reactions like banning liquids in airlines, utterly stupid checks while entering malls, and the topic of this post, actively discouraging photography at all public places. Citizens and private organizations, getting these clues from our public administrators, in turn have made life hell for amateur photography enthusiasts worldwide.

Some years back, I was almost handed over to the police by some folks in our neighborhood for “suspiciously” taking photographs in streets in the night. The fact was that I had just bought a new camera, and was learning how to take photos in the night(This was the photo that I was trying to shoot).

This is different from being asked not to shoot in private places where the reasons could be of trade secrets(this particular place said they didn’t want their bar to be photographed), etc..

I am talking of instances, like when security at a mall (city centre, mumbai) once asked me not to take photos inside the premises “for security reasons”. What @#$ security reasons are that? Some dumb terrorists openly taking photos, and going back to draw elaborate bombing and shooting patterns? Have they been watching hollywood movies?

This attack on the previously simple artistic pursuit of photography is happening all over the world. Here is a photographer harassed in Britain by police. Here is a flickr thread where this is discussed, and several such incidents reported around the world. There have even been complaints about photo websites like flickr taking unilateral steps against public photography because of some unsubstantiated complaint.

A British police ad warning public about suspicious public photographers

BBC has an excellent article on this growing problem. One of the comments of this article sums up the photographers point of view:

My hobby is walking around cities taking photos of interesting places that never make it on to the postcards. Only last weekend I photographed Postman’s Park and the Gherkin (looking up from the ground). It just struck me that taking those photos could be seen as somehow dodgy - and that’s wrong. Why has an activity that thousands of people do, and take pleasure in, and become good at, become something suspicious because a terrorist took a few snaps? And let’s face it, most terrorist targets are the kind of thing that gets displayed on postcards anyway.

There is currently an online petition to the British government to clarify laws on public photography.

One outcome of these problems to photographers was the establishment of photorights.org, started by the Editorial Photographers UK (EPUK), a photo professionals discussion group, who say that this campaign was started to document and record the actions of those who through lack of comprehension, bone-headed officiousness, vested interest or malice, wish to contain and control photography.

I wonder if this issue is being discussed actively in India. Would love to see some references.