Getting Back on the Horse!

It’s been a bunch of time since I was out there shooting music, but I’ve accepted a bunch of gigs and feature artist portrait shoots for the coming months, including some really interesting stuff that I’m really looking forwards to.  Some new up and coming bands and some well established artists.  So watch this space, I’ll have some new images up soon.

On a separate note, the Concert Photography Community over at Ning, is growing much faaster than expected and I’ve been quite surprised by the amount of new members every month.  If you’ve not checked it out yet, go ahead and take a look.

Gordon Brown Donor System Overhaul

Firstly an apology to all the photographers that read my weblog, I don’t often get involved in a political rant, but this is one of those times I feel obliged to do so. If you’re not interested please tune out now.

The crux of this rant is an announcement by Gordon Brown (UK PM) that he wants to overhaul the UK Organ Donor System, to one that is of “presumed consent” as opposed to the currently used opt-in system. But firstly I’d like to clarify a couple points about this weblog entry. Firstly it has little to do with organ donation and much more to do with the government poking its nose in where its not warranted, this is a basic human rights issue. I beleive that organ donation is a fine thing and saves many, many lives every single year, it’s one of the greatest medical marvels of our time, and I hope that everyone that needs a donor organ this year has a chance of getting one. My problem is that this is not the way to do it; Here’s why.

The government by mandating presumed consent unless the patient has opted-out of the scheme raises the following serious concerns.

• Firstly and perhaps most importantly, it assumes that the government has a right to your body, and what happens to it, perhaps even more so than your surviving relatives. At least with a donor card it was clear that your wishes were being carried out, but with presumed consent, we can only guarantee that the governments wishes are being carried out
• The opt-out system, whatever it may be has the potential for scenario’s like this “Oops, we couldn’t find his/her opt-out card at the time, so we implemented the presumed consent. Oops, the computers were down at the time so we weren’t able to access the records in time, and the organs only had a small harvest window, etc, etc.
• The doctor/nurse moral aspect. If you are in a critical condition, with let’s say a head injury and perfectly functioning organs, at what point does the medical staff’s moral value for the greater good outweigh their prognosis for your potential survivability. I know we’d all like to think that all doctors and nurses have an unwaivering moral code, and ethical standards way above most other people, but in the end, they’re just people like you and me, are you prepared to bet your life on each individuals moral and ethical code?
• Following from the previous point how about the reverse situation, someone being kept alive in a potentially vegetative or painful state, in order to give the hospital time to find potential tissue matches before harvesting the organs, again, this is down to one or more individuals moral and ethical code.

These are just a few of the points that I can think of in the short term of writing this post. Again, I think organ donation is a great thing, but once the government mandate ownership of my body during death or near-death, where does it end, this is the nanny state gone mad, and I for one do not support the proposed measures, however I doubt very much whether I’ll be given an option to do anything about it. I’ll write to my MP about this and see if that does any good! This is very much a knee-jerk post on my part, and maybe they’ll suggest something far more workable than I’m envisaging above, but there is still the fatal flaw that it’s easy to overlook an opt-out agreement if it suits the circumstances.

Tory MP’s Opt For Some More of The Same

Liam Fox has been voted out of the contest for Conservative Party Leader, looks like the conservatives are going to be at the next General Election attempting to be all things to all people, and losing a little more of the individual identity. Why can’t they see that being a party suffering from severe “Metooism” isn’t the way to gain votes or win elections. Perhaps it’s time for me to contribute to the Brain Drain!! Sadly Dr. Liam Fox was about the only one in the running that actually had a clue, as can be seen from the excerpts from his speech below:

…… Britain needs to change to survive. We need to produce a new prosperity agenda that creates wealth not just redistributes it. We need to return to basic economic truths. Let me give you one. There is no such thing as government money- only taxpayers money. Let me give you another. You cannot go on squeezing wealth creators to finance an ever hungrier government machine.

We need less regulation, better education and lower taxes. We need to reward risk and creativity. We need to build a Britain that is dynamic, innovative, entrepreneurial, that invents and reinvents………

…….. When I suggested recently that all schools in Britain should fly the Union flag as a symbol of what unites us I was told it was racist. By what possible stretch of the meaning of the word could even the most crazed member of the politically correct brigade regard flying your own flag outside your own schools as racist.

Unlucky Liam.

Business Ethics and Open Source Software

I just read a story on a website with Joerg Schwarz about ethics in open source software. There are in my opinion, problems with the points put forward by Mr Schwarz is that he is mixing his concepts, which creates a contradiction in his argument. Firstly Mr Schwarz fervently advocates a true open market, with true free trade with comments like

Locke teaches that everybody deserves compensation for the fruit of labor, adequate to the value created by the labor. That applies to a farmer and a software developer alike. Compensation is not necessarily monetary.

and

The economical response to this would be that the market determines the price with supply and demand.

Which is a very refreshing viewpoint in these very altruistic times, however, he then goes on to muddy the waters with the altruistic dogma about ethics within the transaction between free software developer and the corporation / business.

A free and open market dictates that a trade or contract between two parties, is arrived at by mutual negotiation, where the trade is to the mutual benefit to both parties. To put this another way, the software is the result of the fruits of the developers labour, the developer in order to enable the mutually beneficial trade, adds a software licence which dictates the terms and conditions that the developer is prepared to trade by. The consumer of the software (in this case the business) by using the software agrees to abide by the terms of the software agreement. Thereby, a trade has taken place, in accordance with the software developers wishes and by mutual agreement between the parties. If either party breaks the terms of the contract (licence agreement) they liable under the terms of that mutual agreement.

It is fundamentally incorrect to apply the rules of free trade in a free exchange to the mutual agreement of both parties bound by a contract (software licence), then muddy the waters by claiming that, although the former is correct there are implied rules of ethics that the developer forgot to include in the licence agreement that, although unwritten, must be observed, interpreted and then adhered to.

If you have a situation, like Mr Schwarz outlined

“… Another example is Apple’s operating systems, which contain code released under BSD. BSD does not require derivatives to be distributed under BSD, but the spirit of sharing would require Apple to release the graphical user interface.”

then clearly the developer needs to write a clause in the “the contract” to take this “spirit of sharing” into account. What is less fair than the example outlined by Mr Schwarz, is any company (Microsoft or Open Source Developers) releasing the software under a licence (which is chosen by their own volition) then crying foul because, “we wanted some people to use it for free, but we didn’t mean it to be used by these people“.

Unfortunately the world is full of double edged swords, The constitution is a first class example which allows the same freedom of speech to flag burners, anti-American Muslim clerics and the average American Joe, with equal legitimacy. Just because we don’t like what they have to say, doesn’t mean we get to change the rules to suit our needs as we go.

If the Open Source developers want a different deal, sit down and write an appropriate licence with all of your terms and conditions laid out clearly for everyone to see. If you want the software to only be used by non-profits, charities and other non-profit organizations and individuals you need to write that into your licence, and release your software under the licence.

Implied meanings, and unspoken rules are the realm of the mystic, not the realm of logic, if you want it to be understood, then you have to communicate it, or face disappointment. No contract or licence is worth the paper it’s written on when based on the fluffy, unstable premise of “Do What I Mean, Not What I Say”

G8 March on Edinburgh and Live 8

OK. so I’ve been reading all about the Live8, Bob Geldolf stuff for a few weeks now, and trying to understand final goal of increasing aid to these countries. I understand nearly all of the points raised. Dropping debt, well, that’s money already spent, if the government chooses to drop debt that’s their deal. Fair trade laws, well that’s a seperate sublect, but I can see what the end goal is there.

Now the thing which I don’t understand is the Live8 organisers want the governments to increase their aid to the poverty stricken countries. This confuses me, because the government has no money per se, it only has taxes taken from its tax payers, if they were to increase aid based on funds drawn from its countries tax payers, surely the government will have to increase taxes? Now my point here is that whilst I’m not the most charity oriented person in the world, neither am I the least charitable, I do give, and have given to charity on a regular basis as, and when I choose. I suspect I’d be less than happy if I though the government was taxing my income for the purposes of charity. Remember a government has no money of its own.

The problem lies in the fact that Live8 seems to assume that people in general are not as charitable as Sir Bob, and the other organisations would like them to be, the Tsunami disaster in Asia has already proven, that in times of need people will stand up and be counted, and give money where it’s needed. Sure the Tsunami disaster needed more money (and still does for all of the people who give to disaster funds while it’s trendy, then forget about them once they’re out of the headlines) but I think that taxing everyone in a country to help them is wrong, forced charity is wrong because it is a contradiction in terms. If we don’t pay our taxes we get arrested and sent to prison, increasing my taxes to give to charity is a contradiction, it’s either tax or it’s charity, it cannot be both.

Charity: noun – an activity or gift that benefits the public at large.

I agree with the idea, YES! Let’s make poverty history, but let’s do so by choice, not at the point of a gun, and not by force.

Quick Analysis of Supreme Court Opinion on MGM vs Grokster

There’s been a lot of talk about the Grokster case, but yesterday, an opinon was reached by the US Supreme Court on the matter, which essentially over opposes the the earlier decision made in March, made in Groksters favour. There are many doom and gloom mongers out there predicting that the end is nigh, but the opinion if the court justices could have (in my opinion been far harsher).

Detailed background of this case can be found at the pages of the Electronic Frontier Foundation

A few of my thoughts on the matter follows:

The Original Decision can be found here

The summary from page 20 onwards uses the following statements:

Three features of this evidence of intent are particularly notable……

1. Each company showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement…….
2. This evidence of unlawful objective is given added significance by MGM’s showing that neither company attempted to develop filtering tools or other mechanisms to diminish the infringing activity using their software.
3. There is a further complement to the direct evidence of unlawful objective. It is useful to recall that StreamCast and Grokster make money by selling advertising space, by directing ads to the screens of computers employing their software.

The court then goes on to say…

This evidence alone would not justify an inference of unlawful intent, but viewed in the context of the entire record its import is clear. The unlawful objective is unmistakable.

In my laymans opinion, the original decision was overturned *just*, and only just, additionally, without the “promotion” aspect of encouraging the sharing of copyrighted content, I sincerely expect that the case would’ve gone Groksters way.

“Speak in Haste, Repent at Leisure”

Another Party?

It’s so close to the election in the UK now, I couldn’t resist another political pre-election post. So when I got home this evening I was met with a URL for a new UK political party called The Veritas Party. After a quick read of thier main points and as I read through the main manifesto, they appear to have some very valid points, and don’t appear afraid to offend the looney lefty liberals, damn, it sounds like they’re worth voting for already!!

With Labour as far right as conservative on most issues and the Conservatives leaning further left than ever; the Liberal Democrats still don’t have a clue where they stand on most issues (other than whatever the most popular view is at the time); The Veritas Party seems quite willing to open subjects for debate that the general public side steps for fear of upsetting the vocal left-wing.

I for one will be happy to watch how the party presents itself over the coming weeks, and will watch with interest to see if they adjust their policy to meet public pressure, from a country which is increasingly willing to subjugate the individuals opinion and sense of self to the collectivist vaguery of the bleeding hearts in the UK.

UK General Election Called by Blair

Finally today Mr Blair has called a general election for May 5th 2005. This is great news, and time to vote in a government that helps those who earn income tax rather than the current government that is only interested in those who spend the income tax. It’s time!

NHS wins £4.5m from drug company

Second post in a day, very unusual for me…… Another story on the BBC News Website says that the NHS (that’s the UK’s free health service) has successfully sued a private drug manufacturing company for price fixing. Now I know, I don’t claim to understand how the socialist thought process works but, here’s how I understand the story, and I’m sure people will put me right ifI get the facts wrong (I’ll probably also get corrected if the facts are right).

There is a private drug company, who makes a type of drug and sells this drug as a private comapny for the benefit of its share holders. Now, previously, according to this article, when a patent expires on a medcine, the drug traditionally gets cheaper, however in this instance the drug company chose not to lower its prices. Now in my mind, since this is a company owned wholly by the shareholders, I would have thought that this is a decision to be made by the owners of the company, since as the owners of the company would imply that anything that the company chooses to produce, remains the property of that company to dispose of in anyway that the shareholders see fit to do so.

Well, apparently not, this private compnay that chooses to privately produce this drug, has been successfully sued by the UK Government for £4.5 Million Pounds (approx. $8 Million US) because they didn’t drop their prices and were therefore taking part in anti-competitive behaviour.

I’m sorry.. run that one by me again…. So the government has been able to successfully sue a private company because it didn’t like the prices of the products it sold ….. does that mean I can sue my local grocery store because I don’t like the prices it sells its baked beans for? People will argue that it’s different for drugs and pharmaceutical products, but I fail to see how the principles differ. Surely if the patent expires this means that anyone is able to produce the drug in question without penalty, this makes the anti-competitive aspect make even less sense, since there is surely an even wider potential supply base of the drug….

Someone please explain to me how this is not goverment control of private industry…. sounds like the beginnnings of another type of government often found in Eastern Europe?

Instant fines for serving drunks

A story on BBC News website today details plans on how the UK government proposes to get tough on under-age drinking and establishments serving those who are already “too drunk”. This is another example of the great marketing machine at work, everyone who lives in or around a town center, or works near a town center in the evenings will have already seen examples of the scenes that Mr Blair intends to tackle. The thing that everyone fails to grasp about the new “tough on crime” policies is that the Police are so incredibly under staffed and under resourced that there is absolutely no chance of it having any kind of useful impact on the problem.

In actual fact when the new fines are investigated further, the more likely outcome is that when a licensed establishment becomes known for serving underage drinkers, it is more likely that a the offending premises will get an £80 fine on the spot, which will enable the police to forget about any further investigation into the issue, since the matter has “been dealt with”.

Every few weeks the government issues new ways to get tough on crime, pilots the schemes in a few areas, publishes a new set of figures, and proudly announces the new measures to be a resounding success.

Anyone not living in surburbia and the countryside that gets to see these problems first hand will already know that things have become significantly worse and no better over the last few years, the police are under resourced and totally unmotivated. The new measures like all of those previously announced need to be taken with a pinch of salt, or to be fairer, I’ll believe it when I see it make a difference, until then we’ll consider it more hot air from parliament.