I’ve got this strange blonde woman…

Well, she’s got herself. Renée and I met on the net a while back. We are both writers, and both interested in a wide range of subjects. Our discussions get pretty wild sometimes…

Renée is a college teacher. My wife worked in teaching. So when Renée talks about teaching, I understand some of what she is saying. I’ve had some exposure to the profession, even though it’s been over thirty years since I’ve been in a classroom.

Renée decided to run a series about teachers who “made a difference”, and asked regular readers of her blog to contribute. You know there was this one guy in High School, who taught me that the impossible wasn’t?

Go read the story at Renée’s blog.

Then sit back and thank God, G-d, Allah, or whoever for teachers, who are usually underpaid, overworked, and among the least appreciated members of our society, but without which, it wouldn’t function.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Friday February 3, 2012

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

I’ve written about Copyright since 2008. My original articles were explanatory, for friends and relatives. That changed when Doctor Mihály Ficsor borrowed Barry Sookman’s blog. That post, which consisted of so many inaccuracies that I couldn’t count them, got me involved.

Unfortunately almost no one involved understands the subject completely. I’m including myself in this. I am not a lawyer, and do not pretend to be one. I do know business, technology, the arts, and distribution systems.

I also know humans. I spent a long time working as a sales rep cold calling some of the largest companies on the planet, and making sales to them. I managed to break into customers that were big enough to buy Sony Corporation in total, not just Sony BMG, the music arm.

The members of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America aren’t all that impressive to me. Nor are their lawyers. While I was working in sales I ended up going head to head with some of the legal big boys in Washington D.C. and Sacramento.

So where am I going?

A while back I made a prediction. I made it off the cuff, and I didn’t draw too much attention to it at the time. My reasoning was fairly simple, and based on history.

1. When Microsoft gained a majority market share in the computer operating system market, they changed their contracts to block manufacturers from installing alternative operating systems. This anti-competitive move killed several competing software manufacturers, leaving only Apple, who made their own hardware, and the GNU/BSD and GNU/Linux operating systems which are freely given away.
   Because of this action, Microsoft was found guilty of anti-trust violations in the United States and several other countries. Many people still refuse to believe that Microsoft was guilty of killing off its competitors, even though the court documents are readily available.
2. International Business Machines (IBM or Big Blue) fought a long running war with the United States Department of Justice over anti-trust allegations. IBM required its mainframe customers to purchase IBM software as part of the package when they purchased the computer. Wikipedia has a good article about this.
3. The California Air Resources Board was required by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution. One target was automobiles. CARB however soon ran into a severe problem. To gain further reductions the automobile manufacturers had to use more advanced computer systems.
   The manufacturers regarded this as a means of retaining service customers. They refused to sell the tools to diagnose faults in their Electronic Control Units (ECU) to independent repair facilities. CARB passed a rule requiring the manufacturers to sell these diagnostic tools for fair market prices to anyone (DOC FILE WARNING).
4. The Ethyl Corporation was founded to manufacture and sell leaded gasoline as an anti-knock additive. Ethanol could have been used, but there wasn’t any money in ethanol (ethanol was used in Europe until after World War II), which could be grown by any farmer. Tetraethyl Lead was a manufactured product, and could be sold for a reasonable profit. That it was a neurotoxin, that poisoned the workers that manufactured it, the customers that used it, and the people who lived near roads was a minor detail. Curiously ten years after Tetraethyl Lead was phased out of use crime rates started dropping. That this is what would happen in cases where lead poisoning was slowly being flushed from the body is probably only a coincidence. See Declaring victory: Getting rid of ETHYL Leaded gasoline took too long and cost too much, but it’s still a great achievement… and Charles F. Kettering and the 1921 Discovery of Tetraethyl Lead In the Context of Technological Alternatives.
   Ethyl Corporation fought the introduction of Unleaded Gasoline. They then fought the phase out of Leaded Gasoline. Without Leaded Gasoline the company has no reason for existence, public health be damned.
5. This one is apocryphal. My uncle was in the Canadian Army in World War II. Actually a couple of uncles were. My dad was turned away by the doctor because he had a heart murmur. My uncle told me that they were still using bolt action Lee Enfield rifles in his regiment because the manufacturer had managed to sell someone in procurement on how safe they were compared to automatic weapons.
   I don’t know if the story is true, but I do know that he carried a Lee Enfield bolt action rifle during his term of service. The German soldiers he was fighting against all carried automatic weapons. It doesn’t do you much good to have a safe weapon if you are dead.

I think you see the pattern here. In each case, the dominant market holder took action to stay the dominant market holder, AGAINST the best interests of the consumer. Money, money, money, money!

You’ll also notice that I avoided mentioning any of the long history of the entertainment industry’s own battles with technology.

At this point I need to take a long quote from an earlier article titled Doublespeak from Sookman, dated January 2, 2010. It was actually the last article posted on my original Blogspot blog before I migrated everything to MadHatter.ca.

DoubleSpeak from Sookman

Hum, what to say. Barry publishes an article titled ITIF Report: Strategies for Reducing Digital Piracy.

Now that is exactly what the report is named, no doubt about that. And Barry’s quotes are accurate. But…

Barry isn’t stupid. Doctor Robert D. Atkinson, President of The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation isn’t stupid either. It appears that they know George Orwell too damned well. Remember that beautiful line in Orwell’s classic book 1984, ‘We have always been at war with Eastasia?’

What we have here is a classic form of Doublespeak. To quote Wikipedia’s article on Doublespeak, ‘Doublespeak (sometimes called doubletalk) is language constructed to disguise or distort its actual meaning, often resulting in a communication bypass. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g., “downsizing” for layoffs) or deliberate ambiguity.’

The euphemism here of course is piracy. What they actually mean is copyright infringement.

But wait you say – doesn’t everyone use the term piracy for copyright infringement? I mean there’s even a Pirate Party which has evolved into a worldwide political movement. Much to my surprise, I found out when researching this article that the usage of the term piracy for copyright infringement actually predates the concept of copyright infringement! From Wikipedia:

For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is also commonly referred to as piracy (an early reference was made by Daniel Defoe in 1703 when he said of his novel True-born Englishman : “Its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates”[2]). The practice of labeling the act of infringement as “piracy” actually predates copyright itself. Even prior to the 1709 enactment of the Statute of Anne, generally recognized as the first copyright law, the Stationers’ Company of London in 1557 received a Royal Charter giving the company a monopoly on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Those who violated the charter were labeled pirates as early as 1603.[3]

The legal basis for this usage dates from the same era, and has been consistently applied until the present time.[4][5] Critics of the use of the term “piracy” to describe such practices contend that it is pejorative and unfairly equates copyright infringement with more sinister activity,[6] though courts often hold that under law the two terms are interchangeable.[7]

Fascinating. So historically the term ‘Piracy’ was used for ‘Copyright Infringement’ before ‘Copyright Infringement’ legally existed. But we are getting sidetracked. One side of the argument is trying to paint the other side as thieves and murderers. Not a very nice move on their part.

OK you say – everyone called copyright infringement piracy. Why should I? Let me posit you a question. If your entire Ninth Grade high school class decided to take swan diving lessons from the Observation Deck of the CN Tower without parachutes, would you allow peer pressure to make you join them?

Right. You wouldn’t. You’d think they either were idiots, or pod people. But you wouldn’t follow them. So when you are talking about copyright infringement, call it copyright infringement – not piracy.

And remember – these people aren’t idiots. They are using DoubleSpeak to try to gain an advantage in the discussion about Copyright and it’s place in the modern world. By using a pejorative, they wish to convince the general public that their side is in the right, without there being a substantive discussion of the benefits and costs to the public of our current copyright regime. Even more important to them however is that they do not wish under any circumstances to get involved in a discussion of the benefits and costs to the artists of our current copyright regime! Oh my god, that would be terrible!

No. I’m serious. I’m not sure that Barry understands this. He isn’t an artist after all (artist being defined as writer, composer, musician, film maker, photographer, painter, etc. – in simple terms a human or other intelligent being capable of producing works which can be copyrighted). I’m not sure that Robert Atkinson understands it either, after all he’s a gunslinger for hire whose organization has taken conflicting positions in the past. Both will claim loudly that what they are doing is for the benefit of the artists, while a rational evaluation will show that it’s not the artists that benefit – it’s the middlemen. Specifically the CRIA, RIAA, MPAA, IFPI,, etc., etc.

So what exactly is going on if Barry doesn’t understand what he’s doing? Well, let’s take a look at a story that was in Barry’s Computer and Internet Law Updates for 2009-12-28 about an Italian case where a court has ruled that BitTorrent Sites May Be Censored In Italy according to TorrentFreak (note that this story was sent from Barry’s Blackberry – if you wish to go directly to the article click here.

I don’t know what the legal costs have been for the IFPI (probably the industry organization involved according to an earlier TorrentFreak article), but you have to question if the looked for increase of sales would cover them. There is no proof that I know of, that blocking downloads actually causes an increase in sales. But let’s assume that there is. If 1% of the cost of a $10.00 US Compact Disc was be used for copyright enforcement ($0.10 US), and the cost of legal representation was $10,000.00 US, then they would have to sell an additional 100,000 Compact Discs to break even. But could they afford to spend 1% of their revenues on enforcement? What if they only spent 0.1%? In that case they’d have to sell an extra 1,000,000 Compact Discs. The math makes sense. The economic reasoning doesn’t.

When you add up every other ‘Enforcement Action’ that has been taken against ‘Piracy’ the economic justification makes even less sense. So as my Dad would have put it – ‘What the hell is going on here?’

After banging my head against the wall for a long time, I’ve finally come up with a theory of sorts. It fits the facts. It makes better economic justification than ‘Enforcement.’ But it does sound a little bit paranoid. Like something a crazy ‘hatred-driven style of Maoist Guard’ might come up with… So let me lay out the evidence that I’ve seen. Almost all of it is public, so unlike the other side I will provide documentary links (yes, I’m being nasty again). When my evidence is anecdotal, I’ll tell you.

*****

Case 1 – OINK.CD

OINK.CD – Oink’s Pink Palace was a torrent site that specialized in music. Music professionals such as Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was a member. If we can take the industry representative (IFPI) who spoke to reporter at face value the reason for the raid on OINK.CD was pre-release music. Think – pre-release music. Just where would they have gotten that? In other words the industry was using the police to shutdown a service that their own employees were using! They couldn’t catch them on the inside, so they dumped on Alan Ellis, even arranging for a BBC camera crew to film the raid on his flat. Based on statements made by police at the time, it appears that the IFPI lied police and prosecutors (the police statements were bizarre to say the least).

Now this is where it gets anecdotal. I have friends in low places, and they allege that some of the alleged 60 pre-release albums were deliberately uploaded by the labels. If this is true, and it comes out in discovery (this case is under British law, and it is a criminal case, Regina V. Ellis, so I do not know if Mr. Ellis would be able to do discovery on the IFPI or the labels), it could cause problems for the prosecutors.

For an excellent article about the implications of the OINK.CD enforcement effort check out this article at Demon Baby.

Case 2 – EliteTorrents
EliteTorrents was a general torrent site. To the best of my knowledge it is the only torrent site that has the distinction of being taken down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their crime? A movie industry insider uploaded a ‘pre-commercial release work’ which hasn’t been identified, but is rumored to be Star Wars Episode 3. Right. A movie industry insider commits an act of copyright infringement (is it copyright infringement if the act was done by someone who worked for the company? It couldn’t be classified as theft – nothing is missing!) Unfortunately for EliteTorrents the torrent (not the video) was uploaded to their server. Result is that the site admin spends four years in jail, another admin gets eighteen months, and an uploader escapes jail but looses his job. Whether he is the uploader who actually uploaded the file that brought everything down isn’t mentioned, but it is doubtful, since he worked for Lockheed Martin. Oh, and a movie exec says that the release made no difference at the box office.

Case 3 – Demonoid
Demonoid is an odd one. While it is a private tracker, it is so high profile that you could consider it the CIA of the tracker world. Demonoid has been up, and down, many times over the last few years, changing country of origin at least once because of legal issues. Wikipedia has an article describing this.

Case 4 – The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay is probably the most infamous torrent site, and people who were involved with it started the original original Pirate Party in Sweden. The Pirate Bay claims that it is legal under Swedish law, and usually posts legal threats to their website, often with smart aleck responses.

In 2008 Nine Inch Nails released their newest album under a Creative Commons license on The Pirate Bay. Their move was apparently a great success, with the band making a good profit. They’ve also allowed their fans to put together their own packages like this one and use the Pirate Bay for distribution.

More recently Director Hanna Sköld released her feature film Nasty Old People. On the front page of her website she put a torrent link. The tracker she choose to host her torrent was The Pirate Bay. It was a great film, if you haven’t seen it I highly recommend it. Oh, and she’s taking donations, I sent her $20.00 US to thank her for her work.

*****

So looking at the cases above, and considering how little economic benefit that industry has gotten from them, why are they doing this?

Easy. It’s an anti-competitive act. If the requirement for Internet Service Providers to block The Pirate Bay stands, Italians won’t be able to enjoy Hanna’s film, or the latest Nine Inch Nails album. By blocking the alternative distribution methods that independent artists are adopting (Finnish producer Samuli Torssonen also uses The Pirate Bay), they limit the market that the independents are using to reach their customers. If the independents can’t distribute using the alternate channels, their only choice is to use the big, established, distributors.

Now that may sound paranoid, but look at the evidence. The actions that the industry organizations are taking aren’t cost effective if what they are doing is trying to increase their sales by blocking ‘supposedly illegal’ downloads of the product they distribute. However if they can manage to convince legislators that Torrent technology should be made illegal, then a competing distribution system cannot form, and all distribution continues through them.

Anti-Competitive Acts – MegaUpload

The five cases I mentioned above involved anti-competitive acts. The four cases I mentioned two years ago also involved anti-competitive acts.

Two years ago I saw the industry making anti-competitive acts. Now we have SOPA. They can take down any website, and if they mess up and take down the wrong site, you can’t sue them, they are golden. But they can sue you. Does that sound fair?

MegaUpload FBI Anti-Piracy Warning

Then of course we have MegaUpload. MegaUpload had the guts to hire some major talent to record a song extolling the virtues of the site.
Universal Music wasn’t amused, and used a Digital Millennium Copyright Act take down notice (an American thing – suggest you follow the link if you haven’t heard of that weird law) to get the video pulled. TorrentFreak covered the story as it unfolded here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

So then the FBI takes the site down. Fast. Curious how that happens just when Universal seems to be backed into a legal corner. TorrentFreak probably has the best coverage, most mainstream publications don’t understand the issues in play, the articles in order of publication are here, here, here, and here.

I have a suspicion that the district attorney has put his hand in a meat grinder with this one. Before my body got too crippled to allow me to work I used to use file lockers all the time.

When you are trying to transfer large Computer Aided Design files (Solidworks, Pro-Engineer, AutoCad) that sometimes were ten gigabytes in size, email just didn’t cut it. When you had to transfer them that day, well, it was too damned expensive to rent a seat on an airplane to ship a couple of DVD-Rs, never mind that after 9-11 everyone was so damned paranoid that you’d have to send a body with the disks.

So a file locker was the only cost-effective way to move large CAD files. We weren’t the only company using file lockers to do that. Just about everyone was. It was faster than trying to get your corporate IT department to set things up on the company servers, and when you are working against a deadline to get a new model of machine out the door, well, you either do it, or you are looking for a new job.

Exactly how much material on the MegaUpload servers was “Legally” there? If the answer is, as I suspect, well over 90%, the District Attorney will be in conflict with Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U.S. 417 (1984), the infamous Betamax case. And if District Attorneys in Virginia are elected, and the DA involved was hoping to ride this case into higher public office, he could be in for a rude awakening. Just ask the police involved on the OINK.CD raid. Or rather try to. The second you get them on the phone and they hear what you want to talk about they go strangely silent…

Anti-Competitive Acts – Veoh

What about Veoh? The original Veoh went bankrupt defending itself from a lawsuit over copyright infringement, a lawsuit it eventually WON. It might be able to collect some attorneys fees. Might. Doesn’t do the people who worked there any good. Doesn’t do the investors any good. Can they sue Universal Music Group for damages to their company? Should there not be sufficient deterrent against filing useless copyright cases like this?

Just exactly how many jobs did Universal Music Group kill this time?

Anti-Competitive Acts – Dajaz1.com

Anti-Competitive doesn’t fully describe this one. The right hand cut off the left hand with a chain saw, and then the patient refused medical help. “I just nicked myself with my nail clippers is all!”

Dajaz1.com was a popular music site. A lot of performers sent their latest music there to get it played, and get it talked up. Music that was talked up on Dajaz1.com sold better. The major labels all used it as a promotional site.

And they they got raided. Operation In Our Sites. Web site taken down, a Justice Department logo goes up. Justice Department claims that it was a massive pre-release music trading operation. Curiously one of the songs that was used in the complaint, which will filled out by an RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) staffer was by an artist that wasn’t signed to an RIAA label. Oops.

This one could have come out of a Monty Python skit. Seriously. I’m going to borrow a quote from Mike Masnick, because his intro is a classic:

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine’s offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company’s printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine’s lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that’s a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

But, in a story that’s been in the making for over a year, and which we’re exposing to the public for the first time now, this is exactly the scenario that has played out over the past year — with the only difference being that, rather than “a printing press” and a “magazine,” the story involved “a domain” and a “blog.”

There are so many things about this story that are crazy, it’s difficult to know where to start, so let’s give the most important point first: The US government has effectively admitted that it totally screwed up and falsely seized & censored a non-infringing domain of a popular blog, having falsely claimed that it was taking part in criminal copyright infringement. Then, after trying to hide behind a totally secretive court process with absolutely no due process whatsoever (in fact, not even serving papers on the lawyer for the site or providing timely notifications — or providing any documents at all), for over a year, the government has finally realized it couldn’t hide any more and has given up, and returned the domain name to its original owner. If you ever wanted to understand why ICE’s domain seizures violate the law — and why SOPA and PROTECT IP are almost certainly unconstitutional — look no further than what happened in this case.

I strongly suggest reading Mike’s article in full. Then go to the source. Yes, Dajaz1.com is back up and running, and Mel is mad as hell, and isn’t going to take it any more. Among the published papers for SOPA is a list of websites that no one is allowed to sell advertising to. Remember, this is a site that the Justice Department ended up deciding that they could not bring charges against. So what does the site find?

GroupM Advertising Restrictions.

Media Vendor shall not display or permit the display on any page where the ads or other Deliverables placed hereunder appear or in any manner associate the Advertiser or any content provided hereunder with any web site, person or entity (or content related thereto) that is in the business of copying, distributing, or publishing, or facilitating or enabling the copying, distribution or publication, of material without authorization from applicable copyright holders, including but not limited to peer-to-peer sharing sites and sites containing pirated content. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, in no event may the ads or other Deliverables hereunder be displayed or otherwise associated with any of the web sites listed here

Yep. They are a “Group M” restricted site. No one can sell them display advertising. They aren’t doing anything illegal. But the music industry doesn’t like them, wants them shut down, and by god they are going to damned well be shut down, even though it is the music industry that has been sending them all of the music they’ve been playing!

Here’s the document. The text above I had to put together, since it was split between the first and last pages for some reason.

57541331-GroupM-Blacklisted-Websites

It just so happens I was trading tweets with Michael Geist this afternoon. I disagree with Michael violently at times. It isn’t that I think he’s stupid. I just think that there are areas where he needs to be educated. Quickly. Anyone who thinks that DRM/TPM actually works has massive holes in their education.

But there are things he knows that I don’t, and I’ll happily use his expertise when I can. Michael wrote an article titled Cyberlaw 2.o for the Boston College Law Review in 2003. In it he covers “Denial of Advertising” as a method of controlling websites. You can download the article here.

Now you know one reason that this website has no advertising.

Back to Dajaz1. Mel has been writing about what happened to them, and could happen to anyone else, even without SOPA. You can ignore what Mike Masnick said. You can ignore what I said. You can ignore what Michael Geist said. You can ignore what TorrentFreak said.

But you can’t ignore Mel, because it really happened to him. Read his stuff and think about it. And if you host anything in the United States, make plans to get it out of there fast, and to adopt a domain extension that the United States does not control.

Reality Check: Show Me The Language (Part 1)

Reality Check: Rogue Websites & Private Right Of Action (Part 2)

Reality Check: Debunking Representative Ted Duetch (Part 3)

Reality Check: Save The Artists Errr The Trade Groups! (Part 4)

In Closing

I really don’t think anyone understands what will happen to the United States if SOPA/PIPA passes. And they will be back. Just as big, and probably twice as ugly, but better hidden next time.

I’ve run some numbers myself, and what I’ve come up with scares me silly. I come up with the Entertainment Industry loosing 500,000 jobs, and the Consumer Electronics/Internet Industry loosing 4,500,000 jobs. You think the current recession in the United States is bad, let them pass SOPA/PIPA, and you’ll really have something to cry about.

It will impact Canada too. If our largest and closest trading partner gets hit that badly, we are going to take a massive hit as well. It won’t hurt us as badly. We can still export raw materials to Europe and Asia, but a lot of what we export to them comes back to the United States as finished goods. Normally.

The United States will not believe that their own legislation caused the recession to deepen. They’ll insist on trying to export it to other countries, where it will have similarly disastrous effects.

This is not going to be fun. Not fun at all.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday January 21, 2012

Regards

Wayne Borean

January 11, 2012

Your 2011 year in blogging

WordPress.com presents

Wayne Borean

2011 in blogging

Happy New Year from WordPress.com!

I I▶

⌘

About the fireworks

Each rocket represents a post published on this blog in 2011. And because we like to share, we made the fireworks available as a jQuery plugin on Github.

Some browsers are better suited for this kind of animation. In our tests, Safari and Chrome worked best. Your overall score is not known (details).

We made beautiful, animated fireworks to celebrate your blogging! Unfortunately this browser lacks the capability. We made a slide show to fill in but we hope you will come back to this page with an HTML5 browser. In our tests, Safari or Chrome worked best.

To kick off the new year, we’d like to share with you data on your blog’s activity in 2011. You may start scrolling!

Crunchy numbers

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 58,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 21 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

In 2011, there were 71 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 464 posts.

The busiest day of the year was February 8th with 1,538 views. The most popular post that day was Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated.

This report only shows data since you connected Jetpack.

Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated (1/6)

Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated (2/6)

Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated (3/6)

Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated (4/6)

Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated (5/6)

Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated (6/6)

Libre Office VS Open Office – Looks And Stability

One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them (1/4)

One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them (2/4)

One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them (3/4)

One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them (4/4)

The Anatomy of Anonymous – An Analysis Of Probable Future Actions (1/2)

The Anatomy of Anonymous – An Analysis Of Probable Future Actions (2/2)

The Death Of Mono Or How To Annoy Thousands With Four Words

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books (1/6)

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books (2/6)

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books (3/6)

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books (4/6)

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books (5/6)

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books (6/6)

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011a – Hephaestus Books – Follow Up

The Provenance of Florian Müller – Updated

How did they find you?

The top referring sites in 2011 were:

• stumbleupon.com
• facebook.com
• fsdaily.com
• twitter.com
• torrentfreak.com

Some visitors came searching, mostly for libre office vs openoffice, aaron barr, anatomy, libre office vs open office, and libreoffice vs openoffice.

Where did they come from?

North America
• 64.4% The United States
• 34.5% Canada
• 0.6% Mexico
• 0.1% Puerto Rico
• 0.1% The Bahamas

Europe
• 28.2% The United Kingdom
• 8.4% Germany
• 8.0% France
• 4.0% Sweden
• 3.8% Spain

Oceania
• 89.4% Australia
• 10.2% New Zealand

Asia
• 23.0% India
• 13.3% Indonesia
• 8.7% Malaysia
• 8.5% Japan
• 6.2% Philippines

South America
• 60.9% Brazil
• 17.4% Argentina
• 6.5% Chile
• 4.3% Bolivia
• 4.3% Uruguay

Africa
• 39.7% South Africa
• 19.0% Egypt
• 9.5% Kenya
• 4.8% Sudan
• 4.8% Tanzania

Most visitors came from The United States. Canada & The United Kingdom were not far behind.

Attractions in 2011

These are the posts that got the most views in 2011. You can see all of the year’s most-viewed posts in your Site Stats.

• 1 Anonymous v. Computer Insecurity Expert Aaron Barr – Updated 18 comments February 2011
• 2 Libre Office VS Open Office – Looks And Stability 7 comments January 2011
• 3 Server Operating System Market Share – Lies, Lies, And More Lies 3 comments November 2010
• 4 One Soul Thrust – Who Is Lying To Them 45 comments March 2011
• 5 The Anatomy of Anonymous – An Analysis Of Probable Future Actions 2 comments February 2011

Some of your most popular posts were written before 2011. Your writing has staying power! Consider writing about those topics again.

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See you in 2012

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Thanks for flying with WordPress.com in 2011.

We look forward to serving you again in 2012! Happy New Year!

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I’m on holiday this week, visiting my mother-in-law, the poet laureate of Temiskaming District. I’m also recuperating from fixing my computer, and other stuff. No, it didn’t include a hangover. I gave up drinking twenty-five years ago, and I have to admit I’m surprised that Molson’s Breweries didn’t go when I did.

In the meantime, watch the video. That’s where I am, though things are a bit more modern. We actually have internet service up here!

But it really doesn’t look like the north. There’s hardly any snow. I’ve come up here for years, and I can’t every remember a January with this little snow. I’ve been here in September, and been caught in a snow storm.

I’ll try to post pictures later today or tomorrow. Seriously. This is totally incredible. I’ve talked to some of the locals, and none of them can remember a January with this little snow.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Tuesday January 10, 2012

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

If you think the Long-Gun Registry was a debacle, think again. Wait till you see the CPU Registry.

Back in September of 2010 I wrote an article titled Technical Protection Measures – When They Work And When They Are A Disaster. It covered why Technical Protection Measures aka Digital Rights Management aka Digital Restrictions Management do not work, and have never worked.

The article upset quite a few people, including curiously several companies that do not currently use DRM, and in fact saw their sales rise dramatically after they stopped using it. Yes, we are talking about the Big Four Record Labels. Their employees often post comments in the Balanced Copyright Facebook Group (which has open membership – anyone is welcome to join).

One of the points that I made in my TPM/DRM article is that General Purpose computers, like my MacBook Pro, or any computer running Microsoft Windows, are designed to copy. That is their primary purpose. Any attempt to stop them from copying is going to have limited success.

In fact to stop a computer from copying, you have to make it no longer a computer.

Let’s Consider the iDevices

Are the iDevices (iPod, iPad, iPhone) computers? Yes they are. They are really good at copying. Apple has built some limitations into them, but these can be worked around by a judicious use of that all around Grandma hacker tool called email. Yep, email the file, change the name, and email it back. You now have a copy…

The iDevices have a sandbox for each application, in which the files are kept. It is possible to move files from application to application in a variety of ways, but in most cases you don’t need to.

Copying as illustrated above is simple and easy. Just change the file name while emailing it.

The same works with Android phones/tablets.

Specialty Computers

Automobile Engine Control Units use a general purpose computer central processing unit, some memory, a mother board, and a few other pieces.

The ECU is locked down. There are legal reasons why the ECU has to be locked down (any change in the ECU will change the vehicle emissions, making the vehicle no longer emissions compliant). An ECU is a single purpose computer with locked in programming. It is extremely limited in what it can do, and can have severe problems if it finds itself in a situation it wasn’t programmed to handle (for example if a car.

Take Mexico City for example. It varies between 7,940 and 12,894 feet above sea level. If your ECU isn’t programmed to handle the lower oxygen content of the air at that elevation your car won’t work properly. Early computerized engines had problems with high elevations. Current cars work seamlessly at those elevations.

The CPU in a Microwave Oven is also limited in what it can do. It has limited inputs and outputs. The same is true of the computer in your DVD and Blu-Ray players.

But…

The limitations aren’t actually in the Central Processing Unit itself. Every CPU manufactured is based on a Binary number system. Binary math is very simple. There are two positions that a switch can be in, on or off.

Because the basic CPU chip is so simple, locking it down is impossible. On. Off. There’s only two possible things that can happen. On. Off.

A TPM/DRM system needs to be complex. It has to make decisions on what is and isn’t an allowable action, and it needs to make those decisions thousands of times per second. A general purpose computer needs make none of those decisions, it just needs to check whether a bit is on or of, and it can do that Billions of times per second.

That’s why DRM/TPM schemes fail. Simplicity beats complexity every time. Simplicity is also faster than complexity.

But You Mentioned a Registry?

Futurist hat on. Think about it. Any CPU, and I mean any CPU, out of your cell phone, your microwave oven, out of your DVD player, out of your video game machine, out of your digital camera, out of your camcorder, out of your automobile engine, out of your in dash entertainment center, out of your active electric guitar, out of your dumb phone, out of your smart phone, out of your digital alarm clock, out of your television set, out of your electric piano/organ, out of your bread maker, out of your television set top box, out of your sewing machine, out of your lawn mower, out of your powered wheelchair/scooter, out of your GPS Device, etc. all work the same way.

So, assume that some government decides to pass a law making the sale of “General Purpose Computers” illegal like they did in the Soviet Union. OK, they’ve passed this law. Now they have a huge problem, because all of these people who want General Purpose Computers start “kit bashing” to build their own, using the CPU units out of all of those  machines that have general purpose CPUs designed into them.

At which point some Brainiac realizes that they need a CPU registry. Just think. All of those items rolling off the assembly lines for the last thirty years with General Purpose Central Processing Units. Many automobiles have fifty of them!

So the only way to keep those CPUs out of the hands to kit bashers who would otherwise use them to build General Purpose Computers would be to register every CPU sold into the market, track it from original sale to a consumer, to the point where it is scrapped.

We are talking the biggest, most invasive, horribly messy out of control bureaucracy that you could ever imagine. It would make the Soviet Union look like an example of moral probity.

At This Point You Think I’m Joking

Unfortunately I’m not. This is the sad thing about being a futurist. There are times when you pray that you aren’t going to be right. I’m praying that I’m not going to be right, but things have already moved too far in the direction that I talked about back in September 2010.

Logic at this point says that I warn you. I hope that I’m wrong. I hope that I end up sounding like Chicken Little. The problem is that they way things are looking with SOPA and  PIPA (there’s good coverage of both on Techdirt), I’m afraid that I’m not being alarmist enough.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Monday January 2, 2012

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

Kleo and I got a nasty reminder about password security today. A fellow writer’s preteen daughter has a Facebook account. Yes, I know the rules say that you have to be over a certain age, and she is barely that age.

I’ve never really thought that those rules made a hell of a lot of sense myself. In fact I’ve thought that online age restriction rules should be made a criminal offense. Of course everyone knows that I’m crazy.

Today I got an invitation from this young woman to join up on a sex application. I know that she isn’t into sex yet. She thinks that the concept is icky, and like most kids her age hasn’t connected the dots to realize that she is the result of OHMIGOD SEX!

Yeah, we were all that innocent at some point. So I sent her dad a warning, so he could secure her account. Then I started thinking about my own accounts. Have I got any weak passwords?

Yes, I do.

I’d gone over my passwords several times, but for some reason I’d never gotten around to fixing my Twitter password. I don’t know why I hadn’t done that. But I hadn’t.

So I tried to change it. Yes, tried. Twitter has some nice software. Their password change system sucks. It took me a half hour to get the password changed, and I’m an experienced programmer.

And I still haven’t gotten all the devices fixed. I cannot get the change to take effect on the iPad no matter what I do. Curiously the iPhone took the change the first time I tried it.

No wonder people don’t change their passwords to make them more secure. When companies make it this hard, they just give up.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Sunday December 11, 2011

John Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare painted in 1781

Here’s something that should have horror fans shivering in their boots. John Manning is editing an anthology titled “What Scares the Boogeyman” for Perseid Publishing!

Since John is a friend of mine, I prevailed upon him to send me some of the stories he has accepted for publication. Folks, you are in for a treat!

What Scares the Boogeyman will be published in the Autumn of 2012. Halloween may never be the same. Some of the stories John has accepted and issued contracts for are:

• The Fear of the Lord – Robert M. Price
• The Road to Afghanistan – David Conyers 

• Failure to Comply – Michael H. Hanson
• The Testament of Tuff – C. Dean Andersson

I also know about some of the ones that haven’t had contracts signed yet. All I can say about those is that you will be blown away, totally and utterly blown away. I mean what can you do with Bad Mustard?

Regards

Wayne Borean

Wednesday December 7, 2011

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

Syn·the·sis: the combining of the constituent elements of separate material or abstract entities into a single or unified entity ( opposed to analysis, ) the separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements.

The problem with most evaluations of publishing is that the evaluators are looking at each item. They are not looking at the organic whole.

Why is Synthesis Important?

Most people think linearly. They easily understand 1+1=2, just like my beagle hound understands that if she follows a scent, she will find the animal that laid the scent trail at the end of it.

There is nothing wrong with linear thinking. Linear thinking makes day-to-day life possible. If you don’t understand that driving on the wrong side of the road is likely to kill you, you are likely to become a Darwin Award winner. Linear thinking allows you to avoid that.

At the same time linear thinking means that you miss things. Let’s take Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky, the two greatest hockey players of all time. Both had an ability to evaluate the positions on the ice of the players on both teams. Both racked up a huge number of assists by being able to use this ability to pick the player who was in the best position to score. Often it wasn’t the player closest to the net, which is the linear answer.

In publishing we are seeing linear answers to a non-linear problem. This means that the answers that people like Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Shatzkin, Bob Mayer, Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, and a variety of other people are coming up with are often wildly off base.

They aren’t stupid. It is just that they are thinking in a linear manner, when the problem they are addressing isn’t linear.

As an aside, I strongly recommend reading all of their blogs if you are interested in where publishing is going in the next few years. While I’m criticizing them for thinking in the wrong manner in their evaluations, they have a lot of really good stuff that you can learn from.

Non-Linear Thinking Applied to Publishing

Publishing is a child of society. As such it is connected to all other parts of society, effects, and is effected by them. Some connections are more direct than others.

The increase in literacy in North America in the 19th Century caused an increased market for literary works to develop. That is an easy effect to foresee.

The increase in fiction first from radio plays, later from films, and then from television also drove an increased demand for books. This was a non-direct effect, which was not foreseen. In fact it was expected that there would be a reduced demand for printed fiction, as everyone would be watching television.

There is a logical connection though. As audiences consumed increased amounts of fiction, they developed a larger appetite for fiction. It isn’t a direct connection. It isn’t a connection that the majority expected. It is the connection that occurred.

Synthesis

Today I saw an article about how the United States Postal Service is planning to cut service to five days per week. There are other cuts planned as well, and apparently this is causing a lot of concern in the United States, as it means that next day delivery is going to be a thing of the past.

A lot of people I know have said that they will never, ever, switch to EBooks. But it is getting harder to find places to buy books. The places that do mail order have just become less efficient through no fault of their own. The article mention how this could impact Netflix. Do you think that Netflx saw this coming, and that this is possibly why they tried to split off the DVD mail order, and electronic delivery parts of the business?

Exactly how will this impact Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and the other online book stores that depend upon the U.S. Postal Service to deliver hardcopy books? If the effect is reduced sales of hardcopy books, how will this impact the Big Six Publishers?

I made my prediction a while back. I predicted that the Big Six are headed for bankruptcy. Dean Wesley Smith disagrees with me. He pointed out that they are showing increased profitability because of the reduced costs of producing ebooks.

In the short-term, Dean is right. Ebooks will make the publishers money. In the long-term he is wrong. Dean thinks that a lot of writers who will never, ever, make the switch to independent publishing, or will never switch to using small publishers like myself who pay higher royalty rates.

It wasn’t that long ago that a friend of mine thought he got a great deal. He bought my entire 8-Track collection for $50.00! He got fifteen or twenty 8-Track tapes. I got enough money to buy four cassette tapes. A year later he couldn’t sell the 8-Tracks, and ended up storing them in his garage, when he switched to cassette.

Dean is thinking linearly, like my friend Clark was. This year, he is right. Next year, he won’t be. Writers are talking. They are comparing notes. Which publisher gives the best deals. Which publisher treats writers like human beings. How hard is it to publish themselves.

How hard is it to ship signed copies of your books from your house to your readers…

This is not a Simple Situation

Think about it:

• The Kindle, Nook, iPad, Playbook, and Android tablets
• U.S. Postal Service cutting service
• Hard cover book quality dropping
• Paperback book quality dropping
• Amazon and Smashwords making Independent Publishing easy
• The Internet making electronic delivery fast and low-cost
• English has become THE international language, opening up a huge market for English language books
• Hardware costs for e-book readers are falling towards zero
• The hard copy book delivery system in the English language countries is badly broken
• The number of readers has probably hit the highest level ever

Add all of this up, and what do you get? A firestorm. A firestorm of adoption of electronic books. Electronic books cost less to produce than hard copy books, allowing small independents like myself to compete on a relatively even basis with the large companies. Or for that matter the individual writers to compete. The only reason that I can exist is that some writers are willing to hire me TO WORK FOR THEM.

There are factors that I’m probably missing. I have only a limited amount of time to read the news. I’ve got editing that I have to do, and my own writing.

But I’ll bet that I’m closer to right than anyone else is.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Sunday December 4, 2011

Copyright Wars Volume 4 Cover Page

Copyright Wars Volume 4 has now been published. It was rather fun reading the old posts, and looking at the things that have changed, and have not changed since I originally wrote the articles.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday December 3, 2011

My comments are indented in italics. Note that I’ve made minor edits to the original, to correct a couple of spelling errors.

Dealing with comments about Attawapiskat

I still intend to get a series of posts out clarifying issues like First Nations housing, health-care, education and so on, but I have a confession.  I haven’t been staying away from the comments sections of articles about Attawapiskat.

I know.  It’s not healthy.  There are so many racist rants and outright ignorant responses that it can bog you down.  Where do you even begin, when the people making these comments do not seem to understand even the bare minimum about the subject?

If anything she understates how bad the comments have been. If you read the comments on the news sites or on blogs, many of them boil down to “those lazy no good natives.”

What most people seem to forget is that Canada and the United States exist because a bunch of adventurers with guns came and pushed the original inhabitants out of their lands. The same is true of all the countries in North and South America.

Well, I try to answer questions with facts.  Here are some of those facts, if you’re interested.

Harper said Attawapiskat got $90 million, where did it all go!?

Yes, Prime Minister Harper is apparently scratching his head about where $90 million in federal funding to Attawapiskat has gone.  Many commentators then go on to make claims about lack of accountability, and no one knowing what happens to the money once it is ‘handed over’ by the Federal government.

Here she is being politer than I would be. The Prime Minister is playing politics. He is also lying by omission. He doesn’t mention how much money the Federal Government has given to the oil companies developing the tar sands.

He also doesn’t mention how much money the government is going to waste on the F35 fighter acquisition, a topic I’ve written about before.

He is using misdirection to attempt to redirect blame for the problems that Attawapiskat has away from the Conservative Government. Admittedly part of the blame can be placed on the prior Liberal Government. Part. The Conservative Party has run the Government since the 2006 Federal Election, so they have had nearly six years to address the problems on the reserves.

Let’s start simple.

First, please note that $90 million is a deceptive number.  It refers to federal funding received since Harper’s government came into power in 2006.  In the 2010-2011 fiscal year, Attawapiskat received $17.6 million in federal funds (PDF).  The document linked to shows the breakdown of federal funds in case you wanted to know how much is allocated to things like medical transportation, education, maternal health care and so on.

Thus, $90 million refers to the total of an average of about $18 million per year in federal funding since 2006.

[As an aside, you will often see the figure of $34 or $35 million in funding given to Attawapiskat a year.  This actually refers to total revenues.  As noted, federal funding was $17.6 million, and provincial funding was $4.4 million.  The community brings in about $12 million of its own revenue, as shown here.  So no, the 'government' is not giving Attawapiskat $34 million a year.]

Okay fine, but where did it go?

Attawapiskat publishes its financial statements going back to 2005. If you want to know where the money was spent, you can look in the audited financial reports.  This document(PDF) for example provides a breakdown of all program funding.

Just getting to this stage alone proves false the claim that there is no accountability and no one knows where the money goes.

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada (known colloquially as “Indian Affairs”) requires all tribes to provide audited financial statements. While the Prime Minister would not know “off the cuff” the financial status of a particular tribe or reservation, the Department does.

The Department reports to the Minister. The Minister should know of problems. The Minister is responsible for working with the bureaucracy to ensure the health and welfare of the natives.

But $90 million could have built the community 360 brand new houses!!

Assuming, as Grand Chief Stan Louttit of the Mushkegowyk Council has stated, that a new house costs $250,000 to build in Attawapiskat (with half of that being transportation costs), then yes, 360 new units could have been provided by $90 million.

This figure might seem high, however there are several factors to be considered. Attawapiskat is in a remote area, so transportation of materials is a significant cost. And houses in the far north have to be built to withstand extremes of temperature.

However, this money was not just earmarked for the construction of new homes.

An important fact that many commentators forget (or are unaware of) is that section 91(24) of the Constitution Act of 1867 gives the Federal Crown exclusive powers over “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians.”

You see, for non-natives, the provinces are in charge of funding things like education, health-care, social services and so on.  For example, the Province of Ontario allocated $10,730 in education funding per non-native pupil in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.  For most First Nations, particularly those on reserve, the federal government through INAC is responsible for providing funds for native education.

Which points out an issue. Currently you can have a reservation next to a town. The regulations and funding for the two come from different places, and are different. This makes for inefficiency.

Technically the reserve is supposed to run its own school, while it might be more economical for the reserve and the town to use the same school, with most of the same classes and teachers. Regulations for houses on the reserve are different than in the town. They are built to different specifications. Again this leads to inefficiencies. This could he addressed by allowing the reserves to adopt provincial regulations, however this common sense idea would never pass Indian Affairs.

How is this relevant?

It helps explain why the entire $90 million was not allocated to the construction of new houses.  That $90 million includes funding for things like:

• education per pupil
• education infrastructure (maintenance, repair, teacher salaries, etc)
• health-care per patient
• health-care, infrastructure (clinics, staff, access to services outside the community in the absence of facilities on reserve)
• social services (facilities, staff, etc)
• infrastructure (maintenance and construction)
• a myriad of other services

These costs are often not taken into account when attempting to compare a First Nation reserve to a non-native municipality.  In fact, many people forget that their own health-care and education are heavily subsidized by tax dollars as well.

So from the $90 Million that Prime Minister Harper was talking about, you have to deduct Education and Health Care. Now how much is left for housing?

This is why I said that the Prime Minister’s statement was political, trying to draw blame away from the current Government.

What’s the point here?

How much money was actually allocated to housing in 2010-2011?  Page 2 of Schedule A(PDF) shows us that out of the $17.6 million in federal funds, only $2 million was provided for housing. Yes, even $2 million would be enough to 8 brand new homes, if those funds were not also used to maintain and repair existing homes.  The specific breakdown of how that money was spent is found in Schedule I.

$2 Million sounds like a lot of money to maintain homes. But you have to look at the numbers. We had to replace our furnace. That cost us $10,000.00 (which included replacing the air conditioning unit and the water heater). We’ve also had to do other work on the house, which included fixing the fences, the interior doors, light fixtures, cabinets, etc.

Our house was in good shape to begin with. The worse shape the house is in, the higher the costs to keep it liveable.

Many of the houses on the reserves are in terrible shape. So the $2 Million is not enough to keep the current houses liveable, much less provide any money to build new houses.

Now, I admit I am confused about something.  The Harper article states:

According to figures providing by Aboriginal Affairs, the Attawapiskat Cree band has received just over $3 million in funds specifically for housing and a further $2.8 million in infrastructure money since 2006.

That is actually less than I estimated it would be, going by the 2010-2011 figures.  I estimated $10 million for housing, but INAC (now Aboriginal Affairs) is saying it was $5.8 million.

Anyway, that isn’t too important.  The point is, if INAC is correct, only $5.8 million has gone towards housing for Attawapiskat.  At most that could have built the community 23 new houses, if Attawapiskat had merely let the older houses go without any repairs or maintenance for 5 years.  Letting existing homes go like that is not a great strategy, however.

The point here is, $90 million sounds like a huge amount, but the real figures allocated to housing are much, much smaller.

Fine, they got $5.8 million for housing, surely that is enough?

Again, assuming 23 new homes were built, and all older homes were left without maintenance and repairs, and the people in charge of housing worked for free and there were no other costs associated with administering the housing program, Attawapiskat would still be experiencing a housing crisis.

It is estimated that $84 million is needed for housing alone to meet Attawapiskat’s housing needs (you’ll find those figures in a small table on the right, titled “Attawapiskat by the numbers”).

Note that the $84 Million is for housing alone. It doesn’t include roads, sewage, water mains, etc.

The Feds are just handing that money over and the Band does whatever it wants with it!

Many people seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that First Nations have self-governance and run themselves freely.  This is far from the truth, but given that most Canadians are familiar with the municipal model, the confusion is actually understandable.  It isn’t as though Canada does a very good job of teaching people about the Indian Act.

Section 61(1)(a-k) of the Indian Act details that: “With the consent of the council of a band, the Minister may authorize and direct the expenditure of capital moneys of the band” for various purposes.

What this means is that Ministerial approval is actually a requirement before any capital expenditures can occur on reserve.  In practice, a Band will generally pass a Band Council Resolution (BCR) authorizing a certain expenditure (say on housing), and that BCR must be forwarded to INAC for approval.

That’s right.  Most First Nations have to get permission before they can spend money.  That is the opposite of ‘doing whatever they want’ with the money.  Bands are micromanaged to an extent unseen in nearly any other context that does not involve a minor or someone who lacks capacity due to mental disability.

Any claims that INAC has no control over what Bands spend their money on is false.

I would hope by now you’d ask the following question:

If INAC has to approve spending, why is Harper so confused?

There is a tendency to believe that our government officials do things in a way that makes sense.  This, despite the fact that most of us don’t actually believe this to be true.  We want to believe.  I know I do.

So upon learning that the federal government is the one in charge of providing services to First Nations that are provided to non-natives by the province, we might assume that the provision of these services are administered in a comparable manner.

Not so!  And it actually makes sense why not, when you think about it for a moment.  Have you ever seen a federal hospital, for example?  No, because hospitals are built, maintained, and staffed by the provinces.  Thus, when a First Nations person needs to access health-care, they cannot access federal infrastructure.  They must access provincial infrastructure and have the feds rather than the province pick up the tab.

If only it were as easy as federal funding via provincial structures.

The Auditor General of Canada speaks up.

The Auditor General of Canada released a report in June of this year examining Programs for First Nations on Reserve.  A similar report was published in 2006.  This report identifies deficiencies in program planning and delivery by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), Health Canada, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), and the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.

The reports also provide a number of recommendations to improve these deficiencies.  The 2011 report evaluated the progress made since the 2006 report, and in most areas, gave these federal agencies a failing grade.

Failing grades for Indian and Northern Affairs in Auditor’s General reports are consistent. To the best of my memory, Indian and Northern Affairs has never once gotten a passing grade.

If any other ethnic group was affected, something would have been done.

Don’t worry, there is a point to this, stay with me.

The 2011 report has this to say:

In our view, many of the problems facing First Nations go deeper than the existing programs’ lack of efficiency and effectiveness. We believe that structural impediments severely limit the delivery of public services to First Nations communities and hinder improvements in living conditions on reserves. We have identified four such impediments:

• lack of clarity about service levels,
• lack of a legislative base,
• lack of an appropriate funding mechanism, and
• lack of organizations to support local service delivery.

I know this is going to look like mumbo jumbo at first, so let me break it down a little for you.  This will help explain why millions of dollars of funding is not enough to actually improve the living conditions of First Nations people, particularly those on reserve.

Lack of clarity about service levels

As explained earlier the federal government is in charge of delivering services that are otherwise provided by the provinces to non-natives.  The Auditor General states:

“It is not always evident whether the federal government is committed to providing services on reserves of the same range and quality as those provided to other communities across Canada.”

Shockingly, the federal government does not always have clear program objectives, nor does it necessarily specify specific roles and responsibilities for program delivery, and has not established measures for evaluating performance in order to determine if outcome are actually met.

What!?

That’s right.  The federal government is not keeping track of what it does, how it does it, or whether what it is doing works.  The Auditor General recommends the federal government fix this, pronto.  How can a community rely on these services if the federal government itself isn’t even clear on what it is providing and whether the programs are working?

Lack of a legislative base

“Provincial legislation provides a basis of clarity for services delivered by provinces. A legislative base for programs specifies respective roles and responsibilities, eligibility, and other program elements. It constitutes an unambiguous commitment by government to deliver those services. The result is that accountability and funding are better defined.”

The provinces all have some sort of Education Act that clearly lays out the roles and responsibilities of education authorities, as well as mechanisms of evaluation.  There is generally no comparable federal legislation for the provision of First Nations education, health-care, housing and so on.

As noted by the AG, legislation provides clarity and accountability.  Without it, decision can be made on an ill-defined ‘policy’ basis or on a completely ad hoc basis.

Lack of an appropriate funding mechanism

The AG focuses on a few areas here.

Lack of service standards for one. Were you aware that provincial building codes do not apply on reserve?  Some provincial laws of ‘general application’  (like Highway Traffic Acts) can apply on reserve, but building codes do not.  There is a federal National Building Code, but enforcement and inspection has been a major problem.  This has been listed as one of the factors in why homes built on reserve do not have a similar ‘life’ to those built off reserve.

Poor timing for provision of funds is another key issue.  “Most contribution agreements must be renewed yearly. In previous audits, we found that the funds may not be available until several months into the period to be funded.”  This is particularly problematic forhousing as “money often doesn’t arrive until late summer, past the peak construction period, so projects get delayed and their costs rise.”

Lack of accountability.

“It is often unclear who is accountable to First Nations members for achieving improved outcomes or specific levels of services. First Nations often cite a lack of federal funding as the main reason for inadequate services. For its part, INAC maintains that the federal government funds services to First Nations but is not responsible for the delivery or provision of these services.”

The AG also refers to a heavy reporting burden put on First Nations, and notes that the endless paperwork often is completely ignored anyway by federal agencies.

Lack of organizations to support local service delivery

This refers once again to the fact that there are no federal school or health boards, no federal infrastructure and expertise.  Some programs are delivered through provincial structures, while others are provided directly by the federal government, with less than stellar results.

As the Auditor General states, “Change is needed if meaning full progress is to be realized“.  There is extreme lack of clarity about what the federal government is doing, why, how, and whether it is at all effective.  No wonder Harper is confused!

Again, the Auditor General reports have consistently reported problems like this with Indian and Northern Affairs. But there has been no progress.

One has to wonder why a government which is so effective in other areas, is so ineffective in this one.

Tired yet?

Don’t worry, the commentators aren’t finished, and neither am I.

The Chief of Attawapiskat made $71,000 last year while her people live in tents!!!

Apparently we are supposed to be outraged at the excess involved here.  This of course follows on the heels of a report by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation about ‘jaw-dropping’ reserve salaries.  It’s become fashionable to rant about Chiefs making more than premiers (though no one could make that claim here).

Attawapiskat publishes its salaries, travel expenses and honorariums (again, nothing being hidden here).  Chief Theresa Spense was paid $69,575 in salary and honorariums in 2010-2011, and had $1,798 in travel expenses for a total of about $71K.

If you are like most people, you don’t spend a lot of time looking at what public employees actually make.  What number wouldn’t shock you in the absence of such context?  $50,000?  $32,000?  I suspect any amount would be offered as some sort of proof of…something not right.

Well okay.  Why don’t we take a look at some other salaries?  But first, note that Ontario Premier McGuinty made $209,000 in 2010, and apparently over 100 public service executives made more than he did.

It is difficult to do a really accurate comparison of salaries, because Ontario’s Public Sector Salary Disclosure Act (doc) of 1996 only requires that salaries over $100,000 be reported. (in addition, if the salaries are reported elsewhere, they are not necessarily included in this report)  However, the annual reports are a fantastic resource.  Here is the list of various public sector employees making over $100K a year.  I offer this merely in order to ask…were you aware these people were making this amount of money?

I sure wasn’t.  These are salaries paid by tax dollars too.  I have no idea if the Director of Quality Services for the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation should be paid $147,437.58 a year (sorry to single you out, sir, I chose randomly).  If this Corporation were in the news and having financial difficulties, I have no doubt this salary would be brought up as somehow relevant…but is it?

I don’t know if it is.  That’s the point.  I don’t think the people bringing it up know either.  I haven’t been able to find a source listing the salaries of mayors of municipalities in Ontario to compare to Chief Spense’s salary.  Then again, I doubt anyone would seriously claim that if she worked for free, the housing crisis in Attawapiskat would be over.

For that matter it could be argued that Chief Spense is one of the most effective executives out there. She has managed to somehow keep things together, despite a totally inadequate level of funding.

And she had the good sense to finally scream for help when it became clear that the level of Government which is responsible for funding her reserve was not doing so. That it caused certain people in that Government to be embarrassed isn’t her fault, though it seems that they intend to try to pin the blame on her.

The more you know…

I’m sure I’m forgetting some of the common accusations and arguments being made about Attawapiskat on various forums and comments sections of online news articles.  I might update if necessary to address them, but I think you now have at least a base to begin with, whether you honestly just want to understand the situation a little better, or want to fight those comment battles.

If you would like an on-the-ground perspective, please check out Smoke Signals from Cree Yellowlegs. (a song starts playing automatically so have your speakers turned down)

Above all, my relations, don’t let it get you down.

You will see people call for the abolition of the Indian Act, for the abolition of reserves and the ‘assimilation’ of First Nations into ‘Canadian society’.  You will see horrible things said about aboriginal culture.  What you will rarely see are people responding to facts.  Don’t be discouraged when facts are brushed off in favor of accusations.  We do have the power to educate those around us, and even if we can’t reach the most vocal of bigots, we can reach the ‘average’ Canadian who is merely unaware rather than necessarily outright hateful.

If in Ontario is was suggested that the Catholic schools be defunded, there would be a terrible uproar. I’m mentioning this as an equivalent.

A note to those taking the time to comment

I am trying to keep up and answer your questions, but the amount of views and comments this post is getting is unbelievable!  Wow!  Thank you so much for reading and taking the time to say a few words or ask questions!

I will try my best to get back to you as quickly as possible, but there may be delays.  Please be patient:)

Update and personal request: I wrote this article so that I could get out of the adversarial environment of the comments sections referred to.  Please help this comment section avoid descending into more of the same.  I do not want to censor people, but if your comments are only angry accusations and you show no willingness to engage in a dialogue, I am not going to give you a platform to engage in this.  Keep it classy, nitôtêmitik.

*****

There is no simple answer to the problems on the reserves. There is however a single failure point, and that is the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. The department has a long history of ineffectiveness under successive Conservative and Liberal Governments.

I’m not trying to place the blame on the bureaucrats. They can only work with what they are given, and that is far too little.

Consider Bill C-10: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (minimum penalties for offences involving firearms) and to make consequential amendment to another Act. The aim of the bill is to reduce crime. At least that is what we have been told. Unfortunately crime is already at an all time low. This bill will put more Canadians in jail, where instead of paying taxes, they will be costing taxpayer dollars.

Effectively the Harper Government is admitting we have the money, but that they aren’t willing to spend it on the Reserves.

I call that treason.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday December 3, 2011