25/03/2008
South Park Studios has done something remarkable today. They have made all of South Park’s episodes availble on their website – to anyone in the world, not just the US. There have been numerous examples where movie studios and tv channels have given audiences the possibility to watch shows online, but they are usually limited to the national level, due to legal issues.
It will definitely be interesting to see how South Park’s success will pick up in the near future and what sort of traffic they will be reaching when all the pirate downloads are suddenly made obsolete.
23/03/2008
I had the pleasure of having lunch with the former supreme administrative court justice Lauri Tarasti last week. He is writing a suggestion on the governance of the Finnish copyright law to the government of Finland and he wanted to hear my opinions on the law based on my work during the renewal of the law in 2005.
What I found interesting about him was the casual manner in which he went about, but he could afford it due to the massive understanding of the governance of issues in the Finnish judicial system. We went about discussing the backgrounds of the law, as one needs to understand the law to some degree before you can suggest who should be in charge of it. I told him about Lessig’s work in the US and how this has affected my thinking of the law and the matter in total. To my surprise when we discussed about the lenght of the current copyright law, he already knew of the Mickey Mouse theory.
However, I must say that our work during the autumn of 2005 was not in vain. A group consisting of four ministers, MO Justice, MO Education, MO Communications, MO Trade and Industry, has been formed to broaden the base on which these important decisions are made. Before, in 2005 more precisely, the sole decision of the law was made by the minister of education, Tanja Karpela – which we can all remember was very one sided and poorly prepared. Therefore I could conclude that we did manage to get something done!
It was a very interesting lunch with Mr Tarasti and he promised me to send the results of his work in May once he gets them ready. I’ll try and post the results as soon as I can.
4/01/2008
I heard some very exciting news just a moment ago; Sony BMG drops DRM!
The fight that I was involved in as well through Olen Rikollinen? -campaign was not carried out in vain. All the largest record labels have finally dropped DRM (or have publicly announced to do so).
This just made my day.
12/12/2007
That’s Hans Rosling going on about how we destroy our planet. He’s one of my new heroes :) The other two are definitely Kevin Rose and Evan Williams – two guys who have done incredible things online in terms of social web.
It’s 3.19 am, been awake for almost 24 hours, it’s time to get a few hours sleep and go conferencing again tomorrow. Like my friend said, or almost accused me of – I do actually do feel being here a bit like being in a candy store.