Crowdfunding is when people put together by internet money in order to jointly fund a project that would have otherwise likely unfinanziert.

As a result, it will result in a Stromberg-length movie comes out maybe. Or a photo book all its own that has photographed for the photographer Tim Mantoani famous photographers and their famous photographs with a very unusual camera. A great idea, a great result and well-designed to project volume of about 17,000 U.S. dollars, arranged via Kickstarter. sure to look!

We wish you a nice weekend
Stefan Heijnk

To put it bluntly, copyrights and intellectual property rights protection for good reasons. Artists, musicians or free journalists example, must be able to live from their work. The same goes for newspaper publishers. Anyone who violates these rights on their own intellectual creation, so must find a legal sanction. No one will want to question it.

The planned power protection law of the Federal Government, however, has included in the present coalition draft nothing to do with the protection of intellectual property: it is a law that pretty solid allows publishers continue to demand money for referrals to their own websites not only Google, but by many other translators also link. In the corresponding paper in the coalition committee of the CDU / CSU and FDP from 04 March 2012, means:

"The coalition agreement is agreed that publishers in the online environment should not be treated less favorably than other business brokers. Therefore, manufacturers of newspapers to get their own intellectual property right for the editorial and technical definition of journalistic contributions or small parts of it.

Professionals in the network such as search engines and news aggregators are the future for the distribution of press products (such as newspaper articles) pay a fee to Internet publishers. Thus the press publishers will participate in the profits of commercial Internet services, these - achieve use of publishing - with the previously unpaid. Also, the author should receive appropriate financial contribution towards the realization of the power protection law. Collection and distribution of royalties to be made through a collecting society. The term of protection shall be one year.

The private use of newspapers and the internet will not be subject to remuneration, normal users will not be so affected. In industry, the on-screen reading, storing and printing of newspapers remain free. "

A designed capacity of such property rights would be decided in the free flow of information on the Internet intervention.

This price is clearly too high: while the private use of newspapers would remain free. Nevertheless, ALL users will be affected by such reorganization indirectly of course. Imagine that once before: Who will still refer to future articles on newspaper websites or even want to quote from it, even when sentences or paragraphs ("small parts") may only be used for cash? Such a far-reaching law would be a massive intervention in the public information events would take many small multipliers and so restrict the diversity of opinion drastically.

Needless it is to boot: Who does not want to show up in Google News, just use the Disallow form. Whoever wants to prevent Google makes money with link references to your own pages, you can do this even today with a simple no-follow entry in the meta- prevent tags. And who wants mitkassieren at Google, have to negotiate a contract with Google. Without legislature. Without interfering with the free flow of information. And it's completely legal power protection law.

Related Links

Coalition committee for intellectual property right

Pros and Cons of intellectual property right

ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, performance rights for Publishers - the legal framework for the free self-and other-Inform the web should be taken in the future drastically closely in the European Union. Many of the new rules - they should actually be law - would be what the web is now commonplace, and criminalize massive influence in parts.

Even if safe is undisputed that copyright and rights must be safeguarded on the web: It can not be that the free flow of information is limited in future legal just because there are incorrigible, illegally paid, for example, as a download pirate movies music on the Web or up-or download them from there.

One of these projects is questionable ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (German: trade agreements to fight counterfeiting). At the beginning there were many EU countries mass protests against this agreement. The EU Commission has now submitted the draft agreement to the European Court of Justice for legal review.

Although several EU Member States have already temporarily stopped the ratification process and the discussion is no longer in the public spotlight: Final table of the Agreement is not. Originally it was to be adopted by June 2012 by the European Parliament, is now expected a decision until 2013 or 2014.

This video explains (certainly biased, but clear on the matter), what ACTA is and how it would work if it is only valid right:

Related Links:

The ACTA text in the text (PDF)

Join now: online petition against ACTA

Join now: online petition at the German Bundestag against ACTA

Fresh Face of Reporters Without Borders (RSF): Today is the third time "World Day Against Internet Censorship" - and ROG has published fits to the current report on "Enemies of the Internet". This is documented, as in some states with massive online monitoring freedom of expression is suppressed. ROG is one of twelve states to the enemies of the internet, 14 more are "under observation":

- Bahrain
- Burma
- China
- Iran
- Cuba
- North Korea
- Saudi Arabia
- Syria
- Turkmenistan
- Uzbekistan
- Vietnam
- Belarus

Online content will be heavily filtered state in these countries, spied on critical bloggers and online journalists and pressurized. Numerically, the list of "Enemies of the Internet" in comparison to the previous year is largely unchanged, the censorship pressure in individual countries has risen again. Especially Iran and China, the Internet monitoring in the past year have intensified, according to Reporters Without Borders. In China, the regime of practice of massive pressure on private Internet companies in order to assist it in this censorship. Iran has announced its own "national Internet".

Both in Iran and in Vietnam many online activists have been arrested in the past year. Iran currently be sitting 20 in Vietnam 18 of them in prison. Iran also support the regime in Syria in control of the Internet, there were reports about the bloody crackdown on the opposition suppressed.

There are, Reporters Without Borders, "but also signs of hope: In Burma, the military, journalists and blogger freed and released blocked websites. Laws concerning the monitoring of the Internet, however, are still in force and the technical possibilities still exist to control. " ROG will observe whether Burmese government continues the ongoing reforms. This could mean that the country will soon no longer belongs to the "enemies of the Internet".

Countries under surveillance
Fourteen states in the current report provides ROG "under observation": this includes just like last year in Australia, Egypt, Eritrea, France, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Were added in this year, India and Kazakhstan. The popular tourist destination of Thailand run this country in grave danger of soon belong to the "enemies of the Internet", "should there continue to be heavily censored online content and net activists arrested for insulting the authorities".

Venezuela and Libya, however, not any longer on the list of "countries under surveillance" in Libya went with the fall of Muammar Gaddafi to end an era of censorship. A law of 2011 in Venezuela, which would result in a threat to Internet freedom may constitute've hardly had negative consequences in practice so far. Access to the Internet is largely free.

Even in countries that not mentioned the report that the Internet is often not completely free to use. ROG watch "in particular the situation in Azerbaijan, Morocco, Pakistan and Tajikistan very closely."

And in Germany?
Netzpolitik.org points out that not all is well in Germany already in order, "because here there is censorship, repeatedly proposed repressive laws, disturbing surveillance measures and their export." The introduction of blocking had been averted in Germany so far. In principle, it could also come with us to states such as France, where government Internet censorship and restrictions on access for users are already common. ROG leads France for two years as the only EU Member State on the list of "countries under observation."

Related Links

ROG: Report on the World Day Against Internet Censorship (PDF, English).

The views, collating and arranging Web-finds by curators helps internet users to quickly separate relevant information from irrelevant information. Maria Popova of Brainpickings.org therefore says: Even web curators are writers, just in her own way, the curating was an act of creative intellectual activity:

In an age of information overload, information discovery - the service of bringing to the public's attention That Which is interesting, meaningful, important, and otherwise worthy of our time and thought - is a form of creative and intellectual labor, and one of Increasing Importance and urgency. A form of authorship, if you want.

Unlike, say, for photos or for scientific publications there for curating the web but so far no simple source reference system, possibly the obligatory references "via" and "h / t" (for "has tip," says: appreciative Tap the Hat brim).

Popova has therefore teamed up with some fellow activists, the Curator's Code initiative started and two graphic characters developed for curating that will allow references to web resources in a simple way: a 90 degrees tilted to the left S indicates a direct reference, an arrow icon with curls shows an indirect (inspiring) to reference.

So that it actually works with putting these characters that are so far available in any font that is available on the project website a bookmarklet for your browser. The bookmarklet can be drawn into the browser link bar at the top and then copy appears useful addresses from a small window in the browser on the page eigenpublizierte each user. Reference characters included. As a result, this looks like the following example:

ᔥ Curator's Code
↬ Brainpickings.org