Copying is not theft

Many publishers often refer to copying they don’t approve of as “piracy.” In this way, they imply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. Based on such propaganda, they have procured laws in most of the world to forbid copying in most (or sometimes all) circumstances. (They are still pressuring to make these prohibitions more complete.)

The supporters of a too-strict, repressive form of copyright often use words like “stolen” and “theft” to refer to copyright infringement. This is spin, but they would like you to take it for objective truth.

Unauthorized copying is forbidden by copyright law in many circumstances (not all!), but being forbidden doesn’t make it wrong. In general, laws don’t define right and wrong. Laws, at their best, attempt to implement justice. If the laws (the implementation) don’t fit our ideas of right and wrong (the spec), the laws are what should change.

People should have right to copy and share what they own. When you purchase something you should be able to do whatever you want with it and that means you should be able to copy it, share it, keep it secret, use it as you wish, burn or destroy it, or even throw it away without using it. If it’s yours, it should work as you wish, not as someone else says.

Many refer to copying as piracy or theft to manipulate you so you think you’re doing something ethically wrong but copying is not theft. In theft, you take something from somewhere or someone but with copying you’re just creating a new piece of that thing.

Imagine your car gets stolen but it’s still there!

If you don’t believe that copying not approved by the publisher is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word “piracy” to describe it. Neutral terms such as “unauthorized copying” (or “prohibited copying” for the situation where it is illegal) are available for use instead. Some of us might even prefer to use a positive term such as “sharing information with your neighbor.”

A US judge, presiding over a trial for copyright infringement, recognized that “piracy” and “theft” are smear-words.

Part of this post is taken from GNU.org web site.

Happy birthday Aaron Swartz

Swartz in 2012 protesting against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

November 8 is Aaron Swartz’s birthday. He was involved in the development of the web feed format RSS, the Markdown publishing format, and the organization Creative Commons. He is also a co-founder of Reddit.

Born in 1986, his work focused on civic awareness and activism. He helped launch the Progressive Change Campaign Committee in 2009 to learn more about effective online activism.

Sadly, he was charged with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of 1 million dollars in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release. Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison. Two days after the prosecution rejected a counter-offer by Swartz, he was found dead by suicide in his Brooklyn apartment. In 2013, Swartz was inducted posthumously into the Internet Hall of Fame.

I suggest watching “The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz” documentary video. It features interviews with his family and friends as well as the internet luminaries who worked with him. The film tells his story up to his eventual suicide after a legal battle, and explores the questions of access to information and civil liberties that drove his work.

Global Encryption Day

Today is the first Global Encryption Day. On this day, we ask people to Make the Switch to encrypted services like Tor. Encryption is our most vital and important tool against surveillance and privacy/security-violating services and programs.

Our digital life is secured and private because of encryption. Encryption allows us to survive the dangerous time we’re living in. When our data is collected in every way possible, encryption makes us able to fight; to fight for our lives, fight for our privacy, fight for our security, fight for our freedoms, and fight for our rights.

When governments and organizations/corporations are trying hard to profile us in any way possible, encryption makes us able to resist. When everybody is trying to violate our privacy, or jeopardize our basic human rights, encryption makes us able to resist.

On Global Encryption Day we ask people to switch to encrypted services and programs:

  • For instant messaging, I use XMPP which is encrypted by OMEMO,
  • For voice/video calls, I use Jitsi, which has end-to-end encryption,
  • I only use web sites that encrypt my connection using TLS (HTTPS),
  • I use GNU+Linux operating system which lets me encrypt my computers’ hard drive,
  • I use LUKS/LVM to encrypt my portable hard drives,
  • I use GPG/PGP to encrypt my emails,
  • I use KeePassXC which encrypts my password vault,
  • I use Nextcloud which encrypts my files on the cloud,
  • and I use many more services and programs use encryption to make sure I’m private and secure.

In honor of this inaugural Global Encryption Day, the Tor Project, along with 148 other organizations and businesses have signed the Global Encryption Day Statement, calling on governments and businesses to reject efforts to undermine encryption and instead pursue policies that enhance, strengthen, and promote use of strong encryption to protect people everywhere.

As an individual, you can get involved with Global Encryption Day by:

Anti-vaxxers don’t want you to see all the pictures!

Picture of two kids. The left one didn't receive the smallpox vaccine and has smallpox all over him, the right one has received the vaccine and is not infected.
The right kid received the smallpox vaccine, the left one hasn’t.

This is a genuine photograph that was taken in the early 1900s by Dr. Allan Warner of the Isolation Hospital at Leicester in the UK. Warner photographed a number of smallpox patients in order to study the disease.

The two photographed boys were the same age and both had smallpox. The only difference is that one of them was vaccinated and the other was not. The smallpox vaccine was one of the oldest man-made vaccines that many people refused to inject due to fear and superstition, and as a result the disease was not completely eradicated.

Dr. Warner believed that the best way to challenge fear and misinformation about vaccination was to show the horror of the disease and the clear evidence of vaccination in the workplace through photography. Smallpox was eradicated worldwide after widespread vaccination in the 1960s and 1970s in the early 1980s.

The Internet Archive has digitized the atlas of clinical medicine, surgery, and pathology. From page 426, you can see various pictures that anti-vaxxers probably don’t want you to see.

Vaccination has helped us to survive, and it’ll do the same in future.

Little things in life

The last two years were difficult for everybody. Well not everybody, many capitalists got richer because of the situation and many lived an easy life because of their wealth. But it was pretty hard for rest of us. The crisis is still ongoing and many still are in danger or face restrictions.

Honestly, my life hasn’t been much changed much. I spend most of my time alone and I don’t have much to do with people. Socializing is not my thing and I have a very small circle of friends. I’ve traveled during this time and I have spent some time with my family, like I always did. So not much changes here.

I appreciate being alive and I appreciate every big and small thing happened in my life which formed the current me. However, I’ve been thinking about how I’m here where I am and found out that every small thing happened in my life were as effective as every major one. Every small thing changed me a little and directed me to where I’m standing.

In fact, if it wasn’t for those small things, I wouldn’t be here. I appreciate small joys of my life. I appreciate them as much as I appreciate every other small major happiness or sadness I experienced or am going to experience.

For example, since 2012 when I got familiar with free software, I admired what Richard Stallman does and now I get the chance of working with him in GNU Project, directly. Or since about a year ago, Alexandre Oliva follows me on a social network I’m in.

I love the happiness I feel when I buy new clothes. I love the happiness I feel when I but a new accessory for myself. I feel alive when I eat a new food. I feel joy when someone thanks me for what I did for them. Like, every week, I get few messages from people who are new in free software movement and they tell me they’re contributing to the movement because my work inspired them; that makes me feel I’m the coolest person alive.

I enjoy my life with these little things. Small things that may not matter for anybody else. I enjoy being alive exactly for these little stuff. I know the day I don’t get happy for these small stupid stuff, I’m not alive any more.

I’m very happy that I can write a blog. I’m very happy that I can talk to people I love. I’m very happy to have few very good friends. I’m very happy I own my own business and I work with people I like.

I’m very happy because I can go to beach. I’m very happy because I give love to people. I’m very happy because I help those in need. I’m very happy because I have no regrets, I know I did what I could, maybe I could do better, maybe not, but I have no regrets.

I’m happy, I’m hopeful, and I’m alive.

What is RSS (Really Simple Syndication)?

I always encourage people to use RSS or Atom feeds to subscribe to people’s blogs but many people need an introduction and explanation about RSS and Atom.

Let’s talk about RSS, as it’s not much different with Atom. RSS is basically a web feed that is readable by computers. A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. It means that whenever the blog or news feed gets updated, the user can receive the update in user’s feed aggregator.

Writers or so-called content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe a channel to it by adding the feed address to a feed aggregator client (also called a feed reader or a news reader).

The information could be blog entries, news headlines, or audio or video files. RSS documents usually contain complete or summarized text, metadata, and author and publishing information.

There are some distinct advantages to using RSS. Instead of visiting the individual websites, RSS feeds can help provide users with updates and information from different sites in one convenient place. For example, instead of visiting 30 websites every day, I just open my feed aggregator and hit the update button, and I get the latest published writings or media from those blogs or news sites I’m subscribed to.

With RSS, subscribing doesn’t need email! You won’t be asked to give away your email address to any blog or site, and that site won’t be able to sell your data to anyone. RSS just simply visits or opens the blog’s RSS file and checks for new writings or media, and will show it to you in a human-readable way.

Just like how you read this blog post on your web browser, but RSS gives you ability to read everything on your own computer without being forced to open my blog.

Sample of a feed aggregator program (Liferea), featuring Chris Wiegman‘s blog post.

So what is Atom?

“The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.” That was Wikipedia. In human terms, Atom is basically RSS with extra steps.

I personally prefer Atom feeds over RSS ones because Atom benefits from on-going innovation and is a standard. The Atom Syndication Format was published as an IETF proposed standard in RFC 4287 in December 2005, and the Atom Publishing Protocol was published as RFC 5023 two years later, in October 2007.

While the RSS vocabulary has a mechanism to indicate a human language for the feed, there is no way to specify a language for individual items or text elements. Atom, on the other hand, uses the standard xml:lang attribute to make it possible to specify a language context for every piece of human-readable content in the feed.

Also, the Atom working group chose to use timestamps formatted according to the rules specified by RFC 3339 (which is a subset of ISO 8601, my favorite time format).

How to use it really?

Subscribing to blog feeds may be the easiest thing you can do with your computer. First thing you need is a feed aggregator program. I use Liferea, which is a free (libre) program. There are a lot of other programs you can install. Thunderbird and Evolution email clients come with a built-in feed aggregator. If you use Nextcloud, the Nextcloud News app is super cool. Another suggestion is Akregator which is developed by KDE.

Second, you need to go to blogs or news sites you like and grab their RSS or Atom feed URLs. They usually provide their URLs somewhere in their site, possibly using the “subscribe” or similar phrases. An easy way to detect feed URLs is using web browser add-ons. I use Feed Indicator add-on on my Firefox-based browser. You can search similar terms to find more add-ons.

Third, you should copy the link of the RSS or Atom feed and paste it in your feed aggregator program new subscription form, and hit subscribe or OK or whatever it is. You’ll find out.

That’s it. You can now ask your program to update the feeds to get latest published writings or media on your favorite blogs or sites.

Logic and statistics

A chart showing murder rate in United States and market share of Internet Explorer. It shows that as market share of Internet Explorer was lessened, murder rate also declined. It implies that murder rate and Internet Explorer have impact on each other.

Internet Explorer market share has a direct impact on murder rate in United States, as you can see in the picture. Doesn’t it make sense? Internet Explorer was too slow and most people only used it to download other web browsers in recent years.

I assume that using Firefox also decreases the murder rate. It’s much faster, it’s published from a non-profit, it has fire and fox in it, and it has so many great features, more than enough for web browsing.

You could say this is bullshit, but I presented stats and you can’t prove what I’m saying is wrong. You may say it’s completely unrelated and there are many many other really influential factors about amount of murder, but I can simply deny all the facts you present and stick with my own stats and judgement.

You can’t convince me, I have the stats, and the lack of proper knowledge about the matter and inability to reason in me will prevent me from having a proper discussion or debate with you.

The problem with many of us who enter endless discussions is that we’re filled with wrong set of ideas about the discussion and about the person we’re debating. We don’t accept any fact or idea unless it supports our mindset. We don’t accept anything that may suggest we’re wrong.

We pick sides and we get filled with ideas of people on our side, while we can’t see anything on the other side(s). I don’t know what is that, pride, false confidence, desire for power and dominance, or else, but I can see that in myself and many many other people, and it’s wrong.

Maybe one day we can change this. I’ll try my best to change this about myself.

Public health insurance and my COVID experience

I’m not sure which variant of COVID I got. For past two weeks, I’ve been experiencing worst feelings I’ve ever known. I was/am constantly tired, full of pain and unable to taste or smell stuff. I’ve been hospitalized for past four days and it’s the first day I’m off of hospital.

I’m better now. I got Remdesivir as medical treatment and doctors took a good care of me. Currently, I get tired after few minutes of activity but doctors say it’s normal. They ask me to drink liquids a lot, specially juice and water, and get Vitamin C.

They also asked me to get rest a lot and eat food (even if I’m not hungry because of the virus) because it’s essential to regain my energy.

One thing that helped me a lot during this time was my health insurance. My previous insurance was expired starting this year (Persian Jalali calendar) and I was not insured. The previous one was from family company but starting this year I was not eligible for it and I forgot to get public insurance until I was about to get hospitalized.

However, lucky us, there’s a great insurance system in this country. Every person is eligible to get medically insured by government. There are different types of insurance and people can choose between them, paying different fees based on your need but the basic plan which covers all public hospitals is free.

I signed up for the basic plan the day before I went to hospital and my insurance started the day I went to the hospital. All my bills were covered by government and I paid only 20% of the costs because of the insurance. The treatment was expensive and I would’ve face some difficulties paying all the bills without insurance.

Many people are facing a lot of difficulties during these times. The economic situation in whole world is pretty messed up and many are unemployed, facing trouble to live a normal life yet to be able to pay for expensive treatments for COVID.

I always advocated for public health insurance from government. I don’t care how some rich people may oppose it or how some people throw shitty “economic” reasons in the conversation but everybody deserves health insurance and nobody should be forced to pay a lot of money to get taken care of in hospital. Nobody should be full of stress about whether one can pay for one’s health or not.

I am proud that I live in a country with public health insurance and I will encourage everyone to vote for such system if there’s none where one lives. It’s basic human right and it’s needed for all.

Those who decide for us

Who you see in the video is Antony John Blinken‎, United States’ secretary of state, who apparently doesn’t know who is the former president of Afghanistan.

In the video, he says he’s been talking to President Karzai, instead of Ghani. Hamed Karzai was one of the former presidents of Afghanistan, long ago.

These are the people who are deciding for us. Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. are all highly influential of USA’s politics and these people. These are the people sitting in front of negotiation boards, war councils, so-called democracy committees, human rights watches, and everything else.

They have no clue of what is happening to people, they don’t feel the pain, they don’t face any consequences, and they have no understanding of the destruction they cause, yet they are deciding for us.

Check this video:

This is an Afghan/Australian citizen, captured and beaten by Taliban in Kabul airport, recorded this video few moments before his death. He talks to the Talibs saying “if I was fully Australian, you would’ve respected me but now, because I talk Persian, you beat me…”

In his last sentences, he says he’s Australian and then… death.

These were only two of the thousands of videos of crimes against humanity, happening daily in our region here. Just two videos, less than 1 minute.

Priorities

There’s news that the Germans in Afghanistan evacuated beer cans but failed to bring Afghan people and employees. When you check the priorities of governments and those in power, you understand more about how the world is being controlled and how those in power feel about people.

There are pictures of a C-17 airplane full of people running for their lives. Many got into the plane and many were left behind but the more saddening part is that there were seats for dogs but no place for more people who were in danger of death.

Taliban finally occupied the whole Afghanistan, well except for Panjshir where Ahmad Masoud, son of Ahmad Shah Masoud the popular guerilla, is holding resistance. Taliban is promising a different picture but we all know that’s a lie. They keep killing everybody, discriminating against women, enslaving children, and forcing their ideologies on people.

Taliban is no different than any other terrorist group. They are currently seeking for global acceptance, so they lie about their goals and behavior. They use newly available resources to them, such as country-wide television, for propaganda and facade.

Now, in this situation, other countries are listing their priorities and in those priorities there seems to be no place for people. They are thinking about natural resources in Afghanistan, drugs, guns, businesses, military industry, etc. The question is, where is the people in those lists?

Whenever we hear politicians talking about the situation in the region, we hear them talking about the good for people and how they’re fighting for human rights, but when we check their actions, there’s only good for themselves and their businesses. Why is that?

We people get manipulated a lot, and maybe we do something about it. The result of us being manipulated sometimes is to pay more taxes or be restricted in some ways, but the result of Afghan people being manipulated is them being killed.

Priorities. We need to check and sort our priorities RIGHT.