As the press release from the publishers quoted above notes, Diglot Books were able to use iTunes to offer their ebook instead. Some might say this is a case of out of the frying pan into the fire, since in the past Apple too has shown itself inflexible in terms of what it will and won't accept. Had Apple refused to carry the title for whatever reason, it's arguable that the Cornish language, still struggling to re-establish itself after dying out a couple of hundred years ago, would have suffered as a result of this lack of access to the main ebook distributors.

Promoting Cornish may not be high on everyone's list of priorities, but Amazon's refusal to publish the first ebook in the language provides another worrying example of how it is failing to use its increasing global power responsibly.

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• A father spoke to his son in only Klingon for the first three years of his life. He was apparently interested in whether his kid, who was just going through his first language acquisition process, would pick up Klingon just like any human language. And, yes, the kid did start to learn it. [url]
• What it takes to learn Chinese, or any other foreign language, is simply lots of hard work. You don't have to be talented. Just follow the "10,000 Hour Rule," and practice, practice, practice. [url]
• Scientists in China think they've figured out a better way to teach Chinese. Using network theory, they developed a learning strategy that exploits the structural relationships between Chinese characters, which are actually composed of a fairly limited number of sub-characters. [url]

This anglocentricity can have some unexpected knock-on effects on how people use their native tongues online, as this article about the plight of the written Polish language explains:

Computer and phone keyboards require users to punch additional keys for Polish alphabet. To save time, Poles often skip the nuances, and sometimes need to guess the meaning of the message that they have received.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

When Industrial Age Bob and Joe started inventing less tangible things, like electricity, stocks, bonds and licenses, however, things got more complicated. What Bob took, Joe, in some sense, still had. So the law adjusted in ad hoc and at times inconsistent ways. Specialized doctrines were developed to cover the misappropriation of services (like a ride on a train), semi-tangibles (like the gas for streetlights) and true intangibles (like business goodwill).

In the middle of the 20th century, criminal law reformers were sufficiently annoyed by all of this specialization and ad hoc-ness that they decided to do something about it.

In 1962, the prestigious American Law Institute issued the Model Penal Code, resulting in the confused state of theft law we’re still dealing with today.

In a radical departure from prior law, the code defined “property” to refer to “anything of value.” Henceforth, it would no longer matter whether the property misappropriated was tangible or intangible, real or personal, a good or a service. All of these things were now to be treated uniformly.

Before long, the code would inform the criminal law that virtually every law student in the country was learning. And when these new lawyers went to work on Capitol Hill, at the Justice Department and elsewhere, they had that approach to theft in mind.

What is it about copyright that doesn't work in the digital society? Why do millions of people think it's OK to break the law when it comes to file sharing in particular? Sociology of law researcher Stefan Larsson from Lund University believes that legal metaphors and old-fashioned mindsets contribute to the confusion and widening gaps between legislation and the prevailing norms.

Our language is made up of metaphors, even in our legal texts. Stefan Larsson has studied what consequences this has when digital phenomena, such as file sharing and downloading, are limited by descriptions intended for an analogue world.

"When legal arguments equate file sharing with theft of physical objects, it sometimes becomes problematic", says Stefan Larsson, who doesn't think it is possible to equate an illegal download with theft of a physical object, as has been done in the case against The Pirate Bay.

Using the compensation model employed in the case against The Pirate Bay, the total value of such a site could be calculated at over SEK 600 billion. This is almost as much as Sweden's national budget, says Stefan Larsson.

In Stefan Larsson's view, the word 'copies' is a hidden legal metaphor that causes problematic ideas in the digital society. For example, copyright does not take into account that a download does not result in the owner losing his or her own copy. Neither is it possible to equate number of downloads with lost income for the copyright holder, since it is likely that people download a lot more than they would purchase in a shop.

"The problem is that these metaphors make us equate copyright with ownership of physical property", says Stefan Larsson.

• A prototype device for two-way communication with dolphins is going to try to talk with wild dolphins near the Florida coastline. This project is also trying to co-develop a language with dolphins, instead of trying to force a human-made language upon our flippered friends. [url]
• Pet parrots released into the wild are apparently teaching other birds how to say some human expressions. And just like high school kids learning a foreign language, these birds have picked up a lot of swear words. [url]
• Chimps that were taught sign language have been observed teaching sign language to their young. Monkey see. Monkey do! [url]
• To discover more interesting biological curiosities, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

• A database of metaphors from a wide variety of languages could help develop software that's better at understanding human language. Darmok and Jilad at Tanagra, Captain Picard! [url]
• Dolphins have been known to keep track of about a hundred different "words" -- and using some waterproof computers we might be able to decipher some dolphins talking. So long and thanks for all the fish... [url]
• SETI is betting that mathematics is the universal language to begin an alien-human conversation. 0101001000100001 or ELSE! [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

The papers include a statement from the Court which declares that “..the names of these sites [when they include the word 'torrent'] encourage illegal activity. Torrent sites are accessed by users of the BitTorrent protocol which has a main, if not unique purpose, of enabling downloading of copyright protected works.”

In a nutshell, having the word “torrent” in a domain name can be reason enough to presume bad intentions.

Well, the MPAA, never shy to jump on the hyperbole train, is doing its best to make the debate about patriotism, rather than the actual issues, by cloaking itself in the American flag.  Michael O'Leary, Vice President of the MPAA, spoke at a hearing with the House Judiciary Committee's Intellectual Property, Competition, and Internet Sub-Comittee (say that three times fast).  Look at the whole quote first:

"The key foundation of American industry, the expectation that hard work and innovation is rewarded,  is imperiled when thieves, whether online or on the street, are allowed to steal America's creative products and enrich themselves along the way.  Rampant theft of American intellectual property puts the livelihoods of the workers who invest time, energy and fortune to create the filmed entertainment enjoyed by millions at risk; to these men and women and their families, digital theft means declining incomes, lost jobs and reduced health and retirement benefits. We believe that rogue sites legislation, combined with the Administration's work with intermediaries and enforcement by the IPR Center, will go a long way towards shutting down the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works and close a gap in the intellectual property law."

Three sentences with so much intellectual dishonesty, subtle word games, and nationalism wrapped up in a tidy knot that it's sickening.  First, to get it out of the way, note the word games being played through the legally incorrect use of the words "thieves", "steal", and "digital theft".  This is the game they play with words and thought.

But more prominent is the plea for American nationalism in his words.  Like so much bad policy before it, COICA legislation (which has been dutifully renamed "rogue sites legislation" by O'Leary, as the word games continue) is being wrapped by supporters in the flag.  We've seen this movie before and we know how it works.  The Patriot Act was wrapped in the American flag (more word games) because if the time spent saying, "This here bill is good for 'Merica" was spent actually explaining to people what it was, the public outcry would be heard loud and clear.  It's the same with COICA, as the MPAA subtlely informs us that taking down "rogue" sites without true due process is somehow as American as Superman and apple pie (pay no attention to the innocents caught in the crossfire).

But as long as O'Leary wants us to pledge allegiance to flag of the Motion Picture Association of America, I have a couple of questions.  Is applauding government censorship American?  Is it American to push around our fellow nations of the world to adopt laws simply because our industry wants them to?  Does the land of the free and the home of the brave really mean tucking your tail between your legs and running to daddy government because you don't know how to maximize your profit margins in the digital world?

I'll tell you what, O'Leary: I'll start taking lessons in patriotism from the MPAA about the same time I accept an invitation to the Ku Klux Klan's symposium on racial tolerance... 

I don't see why it matters if I use gigabytes of data on my phone or on my phone and laptop. At the end of the day, I still pay for it.

To me a data service is lot like my water line. I pay for what I use. Now I can drink that water, use it on my phone; wash clothes with it, use it on my PC; or shower with it, use it on my iPod Touch. Whatever. When all is said and done, I've still paid for the water or service and I've not stolen anything.

No, the real problem here isn't users. It's the carriers who charge us extra for the 'privilege' of deciding how we're going to use the data/water we receive from them.

Viewed up close, copyright bears little resemblance to the kinds of property that conservatives value. Instead, it looks like a constantly expanding government program run for the benefit of a noisy, well-organized interest group -- like Superfund, say, or dairy subsidies, except that the benefits go not to endangered homeowners or hardworking farmers but to the likes of Barbra Streisand and Eminem.

It looks like Superfund in other ways, too. Copyright is a trial lawyer's dream -- a regulatory program enforced by private lawsuits where the plaintiffs have all the advantages, from injury-free damages awards to liability doctrines that extract damages from anyone who was in the neighborhood when an infringement occurred. ... It's asbestos litigation for the Internet age.

Conservatives -- and especially libertarians -- seem like a cheap date on this issue. You'd think libertarians would have been in the forefront of objecting to governmental intrusions into our lives at the behest of a special interest -- let alone the creation of a new class of quasicriminals, defined as more or less everyone who entered high school after 1996, who can be investigated and prosecuted whenever the government or some member of industry decides that they are too troublesome.

Come to think of it, maybe I can persuade readers here that TSA's new enhanced security measures are just fine -- as long as we enforce the rules by giving all the passengers on the plane a "property" right not to travel with people who refuse body imaging and enhanced patdowns. Instead of relying on oppressive government regulation, we’d just let the passengers collect millions in "statutory damages" from noncompliant travelers.

It's technically correct that "copyright infringement" and "theft" have distinct legal meanings, but so what? The idea that the legal distinction between the two terms forecloses any colloquial comparison is invalid. "Theft" in the legal sense has always meant something far narrower than "theft" in the everyday sense. In early English common law, for example, the crime of theft only included the taking of another's property by force or by stealth. It didn't include the taking of property by deception or trick, and it also didn't include the taking of property by someone in whom the property was entrusted. While today we would have no problem saying a delivery truck driver engaged in "theft" if he kept a package instead of delivering it, earlier courts had to jump through several hoops before reaching the same conclusion.

The debate over the labels we give to copyright is interesting in an academic sense but largely meaningless in the real world. Creators often use words like "theft" to reflect how they feel about acts of infringement. Shifting the focus from the colloquial meaning of the word to the legal meaning accomplishes little more than arguing for the sake of argument, while misusing language from case law only forecloses a fuller understanding of the law.

But what keeps me interested in the politics of piracy is how it can speak the language of spectacle, which can be a powerful tactic and technique for broadcasting a political message. Here I'm just paraphrasing and cribbing the work of Stephen Duncombe, who has argued, I think quite persuasively, that we cannot rely solely on reasoned debate for building political programs. Duncombe does not argue that we must toss out rationality and truth seeking (these are absolutely necessary) but notes how on their own or if not clothed in some other cloak, they may not be enough to convey and compel, especially in this day of total media saturation. Or to put a but more poetically by him "Reality needs fantasy to render it desirable, just as fantasy needs reality to make it believable."

Much (though not all) of contemporary digital piracy follows the logic of spectacle. It builds and conveys a fantastical drama of right and wrong, of new possibilities, of freedom from the noose of the law; it signals and speaks to the thrill and fun in twisting, even breaking, existing structures and constraints; and provides a window into another way of acting/behaving. In many cases what it provides is a commons (and I will be exploring it in depth in my class next semester on the commons) and many folks, I imagine, turn to piracy simply for the free stuff, and a number of them come out of the other side transformed into copy fighters willing to engage in a politics beyond sharing stuff and waving the pirate flag.

"BT is clinging on to an old business model which is supported by illegal downloading. That's not only unfair to artists and creators, but penalises BT's many customers who use the internet legally,"