Police In South Africa Looking To Arrest Guy For Tweeting The Location Of Speed Traps

from the free-speech? dept

While in the US there’s still an ongoing debate about whether or not it’s okay for people to videotape police in public, it seems like things are much worse in South Africa. Apparently, there’s a guy there who’s been Twittering the location of various police speed traps and roadblocks. Now, you would think such information would be perfectly legal. If you see a speed trap or a road block, and you tell someone else about it, that’s just free speech reporting on factual information that you saw. Not in South Africa apparently. There, the police are trying to figure out who the guy is to arrest him, claiming that he’s “obstructing or defeating justice.” While I’m certainly not familiar with South African laws, that does seem to go way beyond what typical obstruction of justice laws are designed to protect.

Filed Under: free speech, south africa, speed traps

Southern African Music Collection Society Fighting Attempt To Put Public Domain Works Under Copyright

from the yes,-but... dept

I was recently chatting with Will Page, the chief economist for PRS, whom we’ve interviewed before (and will be interviewing again soon) about his recent trip to South Africa, and he sent over a document put forth by SAMRO, the South African music rights organization, speaking out against a new copyright bill (pdf) in South Africa that would take certain aspects of “traditional knowledge” and put it under copyright. Yes, it’s an attempt to remove works from the public domain, and protect them with copyright. This concept isn’t new. We’ve seen plenty of other countries put copyright or copyright-like protections over traditional knowledge in an attempt to either block others from using it, or to try to exploit it commercially. For example, we recently discussed an attempt by Kenya to do something similar, just a few countries over.

My first reaction was to be surprised. After all, when was the last time you saw a music collection group support the public domain or the idea of widespread shared culture? Hell, in the US, we have ASCAP telling us that things like Creative Commons are dangerous and must be fought. However, the more you look at it, the more I understand where they’re coming from. There are three potential reasons. First, is that modern musicians — of course — pull tremendous inspiration from the public domain, and locking that up would directly harm the musicians that SAMRO represents. Second, chances are the new copyright on “traditional knowledge” wouldn’t also create a collections opportunity. Third, it’s made clear in the article that the concerns aren’t so much with the idea of locking up traditional knowledge, just that it would get lumped in with existing copyright law. The specific fear is that this will create problems for existing copyright coverage. In fact, SAMRO does seem okay with locking up traditional knowledge if done in some other manner, separate from copyright. So, it’s not quite as “enlightened” as it might first appear. Still, it is nice to see an industry organization at least recognize that a public domain is important and that copyrights are monopoly rights (something many like to deny, for no clear reason).

Filed Under: public domain, south africa, traditional knowledge
Companies: samro

South African Government Trying To Pass New Law To Muzzle The Press

from the free-speech-be-damned dept

Kevin Donovan points us to news of a proposed media law in South Africa that could seriously muzzle the press by letting the government easily declare certain information to be in the “national interest,” and then setting potential jail sentences of 3 to 25 years to anyone who reveals that information. What’s got people scared is how broadly defined “national interests” are: “all matters relating to the advancement of the public good” and “the survival and security of the state.” Is reporting on corruption in the government potentially against “the survival and security of the state”? Possibly. And with the press revealing some scandals recently, the government hasn’t been too happy:

But fears about the government’s motives have flared since Aug. 4, when a Sunday Times reporter, Mzilikazi wa Afrika, was arrested on fraud charges. Days earlier, he and another reporter had written a front-page article reporting that the national police chief, Bheki Cele, had approved what the paper called a suspicious property deal with a politically connected businessman without competitive bidding.

The newspaper and Mr. wa Afrika said he was seized by officers who had no warrant for his arrest, even though he was on his way to turn himself in, and he was not provided access to his lawyer for hours. The police searched his home, he said, taking his reporting notebooks. During questioning the following morning, the police asked him if he had been trying to discredit senior A.N.C. officials, he said.

The article does admit that some of the reporting on the government has been sloppy at best, but that’s hardly an excuse to potentially create a massive press censorship policy.

Filed Under: censorship, journalism, south africa

BSA Tries To Use Totally Made Up Stats In South Africa To Change Copyright Laws

from the lies,-damn-lies,-and-the-bsa dept

Every year, in May, we report on the latest release of the BSA’s totally bogus stats about “worldwide software piracy.” The stats are so laughable that even the firm that put them together for the BSA, IDC has claimed that the BSA is being misleading with the stats. In years past, we’ve done a detailed analysis of how the BSA’s stats are misleading, but one bit of news that came out last year that was even more interesting is that in the majority of countries listed in the report, IDC does no actual surveys. Instead, it just makes up the numbers.

Glyn Moody points us to an article looking at the report’s coverage of South Africa, and notes not only did IDC/BSA not survey anyone in South Africa, they’re using these totally made up numbers to push for new copyright laws. As for how ridiculous the numbers are, well, here’s the quick explanation:

How was the 35 percent rate arrived at? It’s a guess, or rather, a combination of guesses combined with some market data and presented as a final authoritative percentage.

South Africa wasn’t surveyed at all for the current report.

The BSA says surveys were conducted in 28 countries representing “a mix of geographies, levels of IT sophistication, and geographic and cultural diversity”. These included, among others, China, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Germany and Italy.

IDC extrapolates numbers from the 28 countries to form conclusions about the 111 that appear in the final report. But even for those countries that are surveyed, the sample size is woefully small given the number of PCs there are in the world: just 6 000 consumers and 4 300 business respondents are the world’s global proxy for the final results. This works out to 150 businesses per four countries.

What’s the statistical error and standard deviation of this sample? The BSA in the UK told Brainstorm that the study “is not a statistical estimation or survey that lends itself to probability analysis, so there is no standard deviation.”

How then is the number of applications per South African PC calculated? Using, er, statistical analysis.

Yup. It’s not statistics when that makes IDC/BSA look bad. But when you ask them how they made up their numbers, suddenly it’s a statistical analysis.

But where it gets worse is that the BSA in South Africa is apparently using these totally made up “findings” to push for ever more draconian copyright law in South Africa:

Andrew Rens, an intellectual property lawyer with the Shuttleworth Foundation, is unimpressed with the proposed changes.

“Over the last five months lawyers for the BSA, as well as the BSA chairperson, have been quite vocal about changes that the BSA wants made to South African law,” he says. “Those changes would shift the onus of proof so that when the BSA brings a case against someone, that person would have the onus of proof on him. They claim that these changes are necessary to combat the allegedly high level of software infringement in South Africa. But now it emerges that the claims themselves are suspect….”

The Brainstorm article includes some laughably generic “woe is the software industry” quotes from the local BSA representative. It also does a nice job debunking the ever-popular “ripple effects” that the BSA loves to tout, but only counts in one direction (ripple effects work both ways), and ignores the fact that it’s often double, triple or quadruple counting the same dollars. It’s nice to see more publications challenges the bogus BSA numbers. It really does make you wonder why so many press reports still quote them as if they were actually representative of something real.

Filed Under: copyright, south africa, stats
Companies: bsa

South African Politicians Want To Ban All Porn Online

from the how-do-you-define-porn dept

What is it with politicians who don’t understand basic concepts? Apparently, the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs in South Africa, Malusi Gigaba, thinks that it’s possible to ban online porn. When people pointed out that it’s just not that easy, he responded thusly:

“Cars are already provided with brakes and seatbelts… There is no reason why the internet should be provided without the necessary restrictive mechanisms built into it….”

Well, actually, Mr. Gigaba, there are plenty of perfectly legitimate reasons. Brakes and seatbelts have pretty easily defined tasks: slowing a car down and preventing you from flying forward in the event of a sudden stop. You can engineer that easily. What you can’t engineer is a definition of porn that works. What is pornography? To each person it might be entirely different. How do you build a system that knows?

Furthermore, of course, there’s a question of why you would even want to do so. That’s not made at all clear in the article, but if you’re talking about consenting adults trying to find some porn online, what’s the problem with that?

Filed Under: ban, malusi gigaba, porn, south africa

Kulula Responds To FIFA Legal Threats With Hilarious Clarifying Ad

from the this-is-not-an-ad-about-the-world-cup dept

In response to our post about FIFA threatening Kulula airlines in South Africa over its advertisment jokingly declaring itself the “unofficial national carrier of the ‘you-know-what’,” JJ sends over the news that Kulula has put together a new ad that looks similar to the old ad, but which changes the text to the even more ambiguous: “Not Next Year, Not Last Year, But Somewhere in Between” to avoid saying the dreaded “2010.” The artwork in the ad is similar to the original, but clarifies that each thing that you might interpret as being about the World Cup is actually about something else. For example, the vuvuzelas (horns) are “definitely, definitely golf tees” and the guy who looks like he might be playing football is actually just a “man putting his right foot in, his right foot out and shaking it all about.” Small versions are below, but be sure to click through for the larger versions:

Original ad

Latest ad

Filed Under: south africa, trademark, world cup
Companies: fifa, kulula

Clothing Firm Pirated Itself… And It Worked Great

from the competing-in-the-market dept

As fashion designers in the US are, once again, pushing for a misguided new “fashion copyright,” it’s worth remembering that studies have repeatedly shown that knock off fashions are what help make the fashion industry so successful. They serve a few different purposes. They make the authentic versions appear more valuable (who would knockoff an unpopular fashion?). They help differentiate the market by letting the clothes diffuse to the lower end that would never buy the designer level clothes, and they push designers to keep innovating each year, because they want to keep coming out with something new to stay ahead of the counterfeiters.

Now, it appears that at least one clothing designer decided to use these facts to its own advantage. ReallyEvilCanine writes in to let us know how a South African t-shirt designer made its own counterfeit line of t-shirts and used that to boost the perception of the original line, while also being able to differentiate and sell into different markets:

The brand, Love Jozi, created the “knockoffs” using the name Luv Jozi, and plenty of people picked up on it, at times lamenting how the Love Jozi people must be upset, but noting that “all the biggest brands” get copied. The Love Jozi people let the whole experiment run for about two years before revealing it. However, in the process, they showed that rather than worrying about counterfeits and fakes, there’s something to be said for cornering the market on such things yourself. As REC noted in the submission, even when counterfeiters don’t “play fair,” you can still sell looooooots of t-shirts.

Filed Under: clothing, counterfeit, love jovi, luv jovi, south africa
Companies: love jovi

South Africa Considers Potentially Requiring Patents On Publicly Funded Research

from the say-what-now? dept

I missed this story from a few weeks ago, but one of our readers, going by the name of bikey, alerts us to a proposal in South Africa, that would potentially require patents on certain publicly funded research. While this seems totally backwards for any number of reasons (and many of us believe that publicly funded research should be available to the public since they paid for it), apparently some are concerned that “foreign multinationals” might “misappropriate” the research. So, even if a university and the researcher choose not to protect the research results with IP, if a government body determines that the results could have commercial viability, it would have the ability to control the rights. Amusingly, those supporting this proposal claim it will help “facilitate tech transfer.” Actually, it does the opposite, because it puts limits and a tollbooth in the way — but why let that get in the way.

The article notes (phew) that there’s significant opposition to the proposal — especially from researchers who are greatly troubled by the fact that researchers may have no say in whether or not their research is “protected,” and how it may do serious harm to “open” research initiatives and idea sharing — which, by the way, have been shown to increase the pace of innovation. The article also does a good job highlighting how the focus on patenting university research in the US has done more harm than good, by decreasing openness, slowing down the pace of innovation and causing universities to spend tons of money on “tech transfer offices” that get too focused on trying to lock up every idea a professor has. All in all, this proposal sounds dreadful. Who would support it? Well, at the end of the article, they indicate Microsoft is a big fan. Anyway, since the article is from a few weeks ago, it would be great to know if there’s been any update on this. Anyone have any info on whether this proposal is going anywhere?

Filed Under: patents, research, south africa

Board Game Maker Sues Google, Claiming Trademark Infringement

from the publicity-stunt dept

Yehuda Berlinger points out that a board game company in South Africa that has a Cricket-themed board game called “Googly” is suing Google over trademark, claiming that Google’s registration of the google.co.za domain name violates its trademark. Of course, as the site writing about the story notes, no moron in a hurry would ever confuse the two (though, I’m unaware of whether or not South Africa accepts the moron in a hurry test for trademarks). My guess is that this is really just a publicity stunt by the board game maker, (correctly) realizing that this little lawsuit would get them some press.

Filed Under: board games, googly, moron in a hurry, south africa, trademark
Companies: google