I am at Ars Electronica Center again and this time I am watching a panel on the future of freedom of information. On the panel is Cindy Cohn, legal director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, Erich Möchl of quintessenz, Juliane Alton of IG Freie Theaterarbeit and Konrad Becker of public netbase. This panel is on „Implications and consequences ‘codes‘ like DRM (Digital Rights Management) have on the free flow of information“.

The panel is part of the Radio FRO Conference at Ars Electronica. Radio FRO itself (Freies Radio Oberösterreich) is the only independent radio in Austria and has its home just a few meters away from the AEC.

Cindy is explaining the current situation in the USA concerning copyright laws and – more important – „meta-copyright“ laws banning tools that might be used to produce an illegal copy of any copyrighted material. These laws are not only a problem by criminalizing simple tools that might be of good use for lawful activities, it is also limiting the use of the remaining „fair use“ laws that still exist.

Actually, there are quite a lot of loosely and strongly interrelated law initiatives going on that endanger freedom of speech and freedom of information and out general freedom in the digital world. One of the more problematic things is that blind politicians of the European Union think some of them are a good idea and the recent activities towards allowing patents on software in Europe is one of the more annoying. If this is something that hasn‘t already reached your ear, you should read about it at the site on software patents of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure

Software patents are real danger. Today, patents are not primarily used to secure a company‘s product but to prevent other companies from intruding their markets or even to drive out other companies out of business. The ugliest form are the trivial patents like Amazon‘s One-Click shopping: when Netscape „invented“ the HTTP cookies, it was totally clear that it would be used as a shopping supporting tool. But the actual use of it is now patented by Amazon and if you want to use it on your web site, you have to pay Amazon (or give the access to one of your patents in return – if you have one). This both totally ridiculous and frightening.

Apart from software patents,the panel also touches the general problems with peer-to-peer file shaing and the „redistribution“ of copyright-protected material on the net. The main problem is always that there is no clear recommendation on what the artist should do instead. Of course, it would be more helpful if they could use the net to advertise, distribute and sell their work but that alone does not solve the problem. The open source scene is usually quite split on this topic, talking religiously on the stage and copying MP3s backstage. Konrad Becker states that Courtney Love and her band sold one album one million times and basically gained nothing from it. So it seems that any other solution than the current system will be helpful anyway. I basically agree but I still miss the right ammo to confront artists with easy-to-swallow arguments.

However, the copy-phenomenom won‘t go away and alternatives to the current restricted licenses for creative works are necessary. One of these projects is called Creative Commons who provide a range of licenses for different needs. Somebody in the audience here mentions Bruce Schneier‘s Street Performer Protocol which might be helpful to some artists (but which I doubt is a a solution for everybody).

The most beautiful installation at the exhibition at Ars Electronica Center is called Protrude, Flow by two girls (Sachiko Kodama and Minako Takeno) from Japan. The installation is a combination of six strong, computer-controlled magnets and a black, thick fluid. The fluid is made of a mix of paraffin oil and metal dust which produces a slimy animal that can be pushed and pulled by the magnets.

Five of the magnets are below a metal plate where the fluids resides. The sixth magnet sits on top of it in the middle pulling the fluid up while the other magnets attract the fluid either to the middle or one of the four corners.

The result is a awesome beauty, a hybrid of flow and magnetic field structures. The fluid conglomerates shaped like a hiding hedgehog in one moment and jumps up in sparks in another. Fucking beautiful and able to stun the spectator for more than a moment.

The creators have also attached a microphone to the installation. The microphone was hanging from above and it‘s impact was merely visible as the room was quite noisy and it was pretty unclear when it was actually switched on and when it was just the computer program that was in control of the magnetic melting pot.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera as I would have loved to provide a movie for you. Haven‘t found movies of it on the web so far either. If you have or have found one, please post a link as a comment here. Thanks.

After driving 750 km yesterday, I have finally arrived at Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. I had my first look at the expositions today and now I am relaxing under a huge sound installation at the river Danube and the cool guys are flooding the area with WaveLAN. Well done.

The Ars Electronica Center can be considered the Wimbledon of media art. Everybody gathers here to get his update on „what‘s cool“. I doubt the festival lives up either to visitor‘s expectations or the media‘s hype but this is probably true for most well-known events. At some point, they are just living from being the first or at least the ones with the best PR.

Media art itself is a strange animal. There are some impressive installations here but most of the stuff is usually a bit disappointing. It is still to early to draw a final conclusion so I will just report on a couple of installations that did impress me before I start ranting on the rest :-)

Most of the stuff is boring, but sometimes, interactive art installations really make a difference. Check out this interactive installation named Pissoir, where pissing becomes an creative activity. [via just 21 hours away]

The staff at MacTeens.com found a bunch of US Government organizations‘ logos in the login screen resources of the upcoming Panther release. Seems as if Apple is prepared to provide some kind of ready-to-run government OS installations. Not sure if this is a good thing or not but at least this means there is some extra awareness noticeable for the Mac [via MacRumors]

It is 2003. I finally made MP3 available in my car. Unfortunately, if you want to get a decently designed car radio these times, you are doomed. All the devices tend to glow bright and blue and red and seem forced to animate every single frequency in the display. However, I went for a Blaupunkt Daytona MP53 which can be fed with a MP3 CD.

Even better, this feature works. I just burned a CD with iTunes and voila! I now have a cheap method of playing back up to 15 hours of music from a single audio medium. k3wl. Even better, the device provides support for an external input, so I can plug-in any iPod, PowerBook or whatever in to my car stereo. I hope this doesn‘t force me to buy expensive amplifier equipment in the end :-)

In a couple of weeks I am going to do the Marathon thing again. On skates. After a pause of no more than nine years. I guess it‘s going to be exhausting. At least I hope to reach my two primary goals:

1. Do the whole track (42,19km)
2. Make it in under two hours

The latter point means reaching an average speed of 21 km/h. That‘s quite fast, although the trained professionals are able to complete a marathon on skates in a bit more than one hour. I am far away from that kind of performance.

To have some fun and to let you – my dear readers – participate, I am going to have a Benefon GPS/GSM telephone with me which will be sending out my current position in GPS coordinates to a server that will (hopefully) provide a table with the times, my current speed and a map of where I am. So if you have nothing else to do, you can follow me virtually on the Web. At least I will have some precise tracking data for me to play with after the Marathon.

Brent Simmons has released version 1.0.4 of NetNewsWire. The release notes list an impressive change log including <xhtml:body> support (allowing parser-friendly inclusion of XHTML content in RSS feeds) and gzip support for HTTP transfers (reducing the amount of traffic produced significantly if the server supports it). Good work, Brent.

There is a helpful FAQ for using iChat behind a Vigor router.

I was told it is just a working title, but working titles tend to be pretty final anyway. So the successor the Camp is going to be named HEX2005 [via Notes from my terminal].

It seems as if the dual four-year strategy (having one big event in Germany and one in Holland every four years) is going to continue. Which means that the CCC has to follow up in 2007. However, I am sure we are going to contribute to HEX (or however it might be called in the end) in one way or the other.