Freifunk is again applying as a project for the Google Summer of Code 2010. For students it is a good way to get deeper involved into Free and Open Source Software and freifunk specifically. During the summer students have the chance to code on freifunk and get paid by Google.

Some other projects also offer freifunk related work. Check out the GSoC site after March 18 when the info on participating projects is released.

We are already gathering project ideas, as a way to start for applicants here. If you are interested to join freifunk at the summer of code and would like to discuss project ideas, please join us on IRC at #freenode on irc://irc.freenode.org and on the mailing list: http://freifunk.net/mailman/listinfo/wlanware

If you have already an idea about a project you would like to do, please also leave your idea here as well: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

Background info on Google Summer of Code

The most common question we get from students is “How do I prepare for Google Summer of Code?” The simple answer is not to wait for the program to get involved in open source. Start checking out projects now: take a look at documentation, check out their source code and idle in some IRC channels to see what interests you. The projects who have been past participants in Google Summer of Code are a great place to start; use the categorized list of mentoring organizations (e.g. projects listed by programming languages) from 2009 to help you get started.

About Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 3,400 students and more than more than 3,000 mentors & co-mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

* Frequently asked questions: http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2010/faqs

* Freifunk Project Ideas: http://wiki.freifunk.net/Ideas

ByM. Beatrice Fazi

Tackling the conundrum of the future's relationship to the present through the prism of digital culture, this year's Transmediale festival strayed into some chaotic philosophical territory. In her review, M. Beatrice Fazi dismisses conceptions of the future as linear effect of the present, instead embracing models of ‘atemporality' and untimeliness

 

 

read more

A brand new version of the Open Clip Art Library just came out! 26175 (and growing) scalable vector graphics, all available under a public domain license: they may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods [...] 0

identi.ca/osp make his best to track our recent activity via our differents IP addresses, where Brussels seems synthetise by 4 positions, here with the background lazy to display, osp frogs above water. A few minutes later, a new osp -Ivan- connection from Schaerbeek, North of Brussels, strangely shrink the scale by positionning a bright new frog [...] 0

5 years of Free, Libre and Open Source design experiments. Now available in chronological order: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/works 0

Last sunday we drawed a book. 675 417 km2 pour Luce contour lines of France scale 1:385142 interval : 30 m strokes : 0.05 pt 16 binded sections cover : green cardboard 300 g + clothed back single copy Sur base des élévations au pas de 250m proposées au téléchargement par l’I.G.N. France. Calcul des courbes de niveaux et sortie Postscript opérés par GRASS [...] 0

We asked your opinion: Should the logo we proposed for the Libre Graphics Meeting drip or not? 50 readers voted, and yes was selected in total 51 times and no 34 times (more than one answer possible). Apart from that, strong opinions were voiced on- and offline. Interestingly, these often were against the drip. [...] 0

Ricardo Lafuente and Ana Carvalho imported/exported a Print Party to Porto. With live Fortune Cookies … how brave! (Recipe for cookies + messages) 2

Remember that we entered a subsidy dossier in October 2009? The Design and Architecture committee of the Flemish ministry for culture has decided to grant our application and support LGM 2010. Besides the fact that any financial support is more than welcome in hard times like these, it is above all an encouraging expression of support for [...] 0

I have mentioned this here and there. Now I will make a blog entry about it: it’s time to make a public appeal against (anonymous) peer review practice of academic journal articles, PhD proposals, funding applications and so on. I get these requests every now and then and will now make my response public.

If you like you can copy-paste it, alter the letter, put it in a wiki somewhere so that others do not have to explain it time and again. In this way the counter arguments against can also grow and become stronger.

I am still in doubt if I should make the email public of the journal that wrote the request. In a way it doesn’t matter because this case is about a principle. Let’s free the world of sleazy backroom politics that no longer fit in the age of collaborative open networks.

We have to also undermine the very principle of ranking. What we need is more public debate, dissent and controversy. People who dare to say no, in public. We might need a support system for those who are fed up with the worn-out rituals. I have noticed that there is some civil courage necessary to make such steps.

I am not arguing here for more transparency. I think there are better, more decent ways to raise quality. For me there is a direct relationship between the dreadfully boring content of most academic journals (that no one reads anyway) and the secretive and nasty so-called ‘peer review’ process.

This is my reply:

Dear %JOURNAL_EDITOR%,

I am sorry but I do not participate in this dead ritual of anonymous ‘peer review’. This dishonest procedure brings out the worst in people. By now we all know that it does not improve quality but merely (re)produces mediocre standards and language. IMHO this format is out of sync with the open access aspects of today’s publishing tools and the debate-focused tools such as blogs, lists and forums, in particular when an article like this aims to contribute to the emerging research on online video. Criticism in the Internet context is a lively entity, not to be dealt with in such a grumpy backroom manner.

Yours,

Geert Lovink

While yesterday was beautiful, inspiring and invigorating in many ways, it seemed like it ended very problematically. I’m just going to copy here some of the discussion I’ve been having with people online about it…

Right now I think that our demands for Monday need to be 1. meet bsu demands 2. meet mach 4th strike demands 3. close the lit bldg. We have 2 act in solidarity to win!

Here’s a thread between me (azdel) and some friends on Facebook:

Azdel Slade

I feel totally betrayed, there was no collective process, no decision made, just mob fear, the cops couldn’t get us out, but the activists did, the plan is to come back Mon morn, I hope ppl come…
Yesterday at 9:19pm

Marcela Fuentes
What would you have liked to see happening, what kind of process or result?
Yesterday at 10:43pm ·

Azdel Slade
at the end, someone just came in and made an announcement and everybody left, there was no collective discussion of “what do we all want to do? who wants to stay? who wants to leave? how can we make this space our own space and a model of the kind of world/school/education we’re creating?” there was just an announcement “they think you should go now and come back monday” and a unity clap preventing discussion, and then everyone walked out. i want someone to have acknowledged the people who were trying to say “wait, lets discuss this, i want to hold this space and not give it up”, someone to have asked me what i wanted to do and acted in solidarity instead of just bailing asap…
Yesterday at 10:54pm ·

Autumn Hays
We talked at noon about what to do, and we decided we needed to keep our forces strong for March 4th.
5 hours ago ·

Azdel Slade
Who did? Where? I totally disagree with that decision, but no one asked me or any of my friends our opinions or informed us of that decision that was made.
3 hours ago ·

Autumn Hays
I think it’s important to understand that we are in this together. Sorry you didn’t feel the same way and that this hurt you. I don’t think they were trying to ignore you.
“We” was just a large group of the protest including many of the leaders of different groups in the middle of the crowd inside the office. They seemed to have a lot of reasons and be open to talk from anyone, sorry you didn’t get to talk. But lets be strong and be ready for next time.
Love you!
3 hours ago ·

Azdel Slade
Its not just me either, there were a lot of people in the room who were confused and tried to raise questions and concerns, but the small group of organizers near the door made the decision on their own without taking the time to actually ask all the people who had decided to stay and get arrested what they wanted to do. I saw multiple people try to say “who’s they?”, “wait? can we all make a decision together” and they all got overrun by the “unity clap” (ironically) and ignored. I think you may have lost the support of a lot of your most dedicated supporters in that moment. There has to be a collective process in the future if any serious action, beyond a daytime picnic in the chancellor’s office funded by donations, is going to happen.
3 hours ago ·

Autumn Hays
agreed. I understand. It’s not mine. I don’t own it. I was just there. I didn’t even say how I felt about it or was in on the process. But I didn’t have anything to say, unlike you.
I’m not happy your voice didn’t get heard. But it was confusing and tense times.
It’s good you had something to say.
and like I said, I don’t think anyone meant to cut you out. and i do agree that all must be involved. The only reason i’m saying something is i honestly believe though this is an important issue, and it should be addressed, I hope you don’t lose your faith over it.
all I mean is it’s not a time to fall apart..
Not that your voice/ideas should be hushed.
They is complicated as i think this was all just crowd behavior and hard to understand. But I don’t think anyone was trying to cut you off and I am sad you have been.
but please don’t lose your faith in this. This is not a time to divide.
55 minutes ago ·

Autumn Hays
and do remember we were all confused and tired. I think that was all it was.
and I heard them walking around the whole time we were there asking people, I am so sad you and others got skipped.
just know I don’t think it was personal or an attempt to control your ideas.
44 minutes ago ·

Azdel Slade
hey, well thanks, thats good to know. but i’m not just talking about myself, it seemed like lots of people i was talking to were seriously preparing to stay the night, to get arrested, calling their friends/family to walk the dog, people were talking to lawyers so they’d be ready, etc, so there were a lot of people who were not consulted. there just needs to be more effort to have an open, transparent process where everyone is involved and doesn’t feel, like i heard multiple people saying, that they’re being given orders. and yeah, it was definitely stress, we just need to learn to hold our space and take care of each other, all of us!
6 minutes ago ·

Autumn Hays
agreed.

And here are some earlier tweets during the situation…

everyone left, the administration produced timetable and a plan, we’re going to analyze it and come back
Yesterday at 9:16pm

people are discussing not resisting arrest to minimize police violence
Yesterday at 5:17pm

police have said that anyone here past 5 will be arrested, ppl r not moving, plz come support!

ucla cuancellors complex is now occupied in solidarity w ucsd
Yesterday at 2:49pm

we need as many ppl as possible here by 5pm when the cops come to evict us, to be witnesses and to help us control the doors!
Yesterday at 2:12pm

rally @ 2:30 outside the occupation @ chancellprs office
Yesterday at 2:10pm

we need a megaphone in here
Yesterday at 12:58pm

the occupiers demand that ucsd be shut down because of the racial state of emergency
Yesterday at 12:18pm

Email interview with Geert Lovink by Daphne Dragona & Ilias Marmaras (Athens), February 26, 2010.

Conducted for Konteiner, a Greek monthly independent magazine on politics, culture and arts, which is distributed independently and also comes as a supplement of Eleftherotypia, a major and well-known Greek newspaper.

DD & IM: Twenty years of networked culture: Networked in the digital sense as you have specified since interhuman dynamics started to link and develop within software systems and we learned to live and share within digital environments.  You have been one of the people that followed this development from the beginning as a researcher, writer and a professor. How do you feel that networks and their users have changed throughout this period?

GL: Networks between people may have existed throughout history but today’s networks are technological. Digital global communications have accelerated, extended and intensified the presence of networks in everyday life. We carry them on our skins. There is a politics of speed here, in the spirit of Paul Virilio: real-time media have all but destroyed our sense of time and space. We all too easy familiarize ourselves with the new condition. What’s more difficult is how manage the intimate aspects. The performative aspect is really seductive. We are trapped in the perfect Foucauldian treadmill in the sense of Power producing babbling subjects. The transparency of it all is hard to understand—even for insiders. There is no privacy in these networked environments, and this makes us vulnerable to corporate interests and state control. What strikes me over the years is how fast we adapt, and how slow we comprehend. The graphic interface layers have become user friendly, yet makes it even more difficult to understand the underlying network architectures.

DD & IM: Has the networked society made us more socially and politically aware, especially speaking about the younger generation of users? Or would you say that there is a need for a critical internet discourse more than ever now?

GL: A critical awareness would not just imply that we refrain using the internet. It could also mean that we develop a taste and an ethics. Maybe these Web 2.0 platforms such as Facebook and Twitter do not bring us anything, but there are so many other platforms and applications to explore. What has to stop is the marketing hype. We should be able to distinguish between services that are useful and useless. Are we signing up just because others did it as well? The longer the internet is around the better we should decide what to use it for. Non-participation in certain cases doesn’t mean we’re left out, or a Luddite.

DD & IM: To what extend does the “network society” affect reality? Do networks really break hierarchies? Can they change institutions for example? Can society’s rigid forms change and become more rhizomatic in the networked years to come?

GL: In our daily lives we can no longer distinguish between real and virtual. In that sense everything has become bloody real. In terms of institutions and society it’s another issue. They are remarkably resilient. This is the gap so many of us experience: our lives are on the run, but society is not keeping the pace. This contradiction will only become more apparent. We can clearly see it in the rapidly declining legitimacy of television, radio and printed news media. We not only consume less ‘old’ media, we also no longer believe in their authority. Our tools are real-time but journalism has a hard time dealing with this new condition. In that sense we do not yet live in a network society. Cyberprophets and most scientists have a hard time dealing with these conflicts and uneven developments. They do not like to admit new media not only take apart but also create new forms of power.

DD & IM: How about bloggers? Would you see blogging playing an important role in the future? You know in Greece after blogging reached its peak, phenomena of control and centralization from the political parties and the mainstream media appeared. However, in other parts of the world e.g. Iran, Egypt, blogging seems to be very essential for the information circulation and social/political organization. What role does locality play for the future of blogs?

GL: Blogs are the contemporary publishing platform for the Web. It standardizes the do-it-yourself media experience. Blogging is not a belief system, and does not by definition create ‘news’. What it does well is embedding stories within a wider context of the Web through linking and tagging. In a study Anne Helmond showed how blogging has been increasingly integrated in search engines. Blogs are good for a particular type of writing: short entries with a personal style, linking and commenting on information elsewhere on the Web. Blogs are the default standard, also in Iran and Egypt. There is nothing special about it, except that it is easy to use. In terms of local culture one could say that is popular in some, and despised in other countries. Germans are wary of blogging. They love the collective experience of the forum software. The French love it and embrace the dramatic personal style. As a fashion blogs are on the way out, but web publishing for individuals will not disappear that fast.

DD & IM: In your texts you refer to Negri’s and Hardt’s notion of networks. For them networks derive from both a democratic and an oligopolistic mechanism. But how are users to understand where one mechanism ends and another begins when both elements appear within the same structure?

GL: We are very good at navigating paradoxes and contradictions. Networks are both inward looking and bridges to other worlds. Through the ‘weak ties’ we reach out to other social contexts while being sucked into all too human dramas of the tribes we subscribed to. The issue with technical networks is that we can remarkably quickly sign off and disappear. This is not all that easy in our traditional social lives. Whether networks are democratic, I doubt… Maybe autonomous activist groups are the exception here. They love to argue until, hours later, the survivors in the debate reach a consensus. The network maps might look decentralized and complex but the power distribution is a tragedy. Active participation is often very low (around 1%), with a hand full of people in charge. In that sense the democratization has yet to start. This is not at all depressing. It’s not the fault of human nature. It rather tells us something how early we are in the process of becoming a network society.

DD & IM: According to Hobbes the absolute sovereignty and control can be gained only through fear, fear that can assure social order. Mechanisms of control are still accomplished mostly through fear today. What is the fear of today’s multitude? It is the fear of disconnecting, not participating, being excluded from the networks, from the others, the “pseudo-others” are you say? How can third parties exploit such an element?

GL: Let’s first of all get it straight with the tendency of ’slow communication’, ‘defriending’ and going offline. These are all respectable strategies for the few that can afford non-participation. More and more depend on (mobile) networks to stay in touch with family and clients. This is vital for the urbanized migrants to survive. Whether or not multitudes really exist or not, remains to be seen. I read it more like a proposal. It a social sculpture, the perfect concept. Multitudes exist during the Event, and only for very brief moments in time, very different from the Party or even social movements. The big debate here is how social movements these days come into being. It’s not that hard to stage a one-day strike, design a tactical media intervention or occupy a building. What we’ve seen to lost is the ability to more create sustainable structures that cut across scenes, classes and ethnicities. The crucial missing element here is Time. Disruption is not enough. Some try to bring people together through social networking tools but I am skeptical about that. Technical tools are perfect once the ‘cascading’ effect is on its way, but how do we get there?

DD & IM:  “Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right” said Ani di Franco. How can a network hold itself right or how a singularity from the multitude of a network should hold itself (her subjectivity) right? What forms of resistance can play a role today? How about art, tactical media or hacking? Are they still significant?

GL: Networks are test beds for non-commitment. They are vague terrains, social clouds if you like that rarely can be used to go from A to B. Try to instrumentalise them and they’ll fall apart, resist, ridicule your aims, and so on. However, if you want to collaborate on well-defined tasks, they can be useful. Still, there is and will be a lot of noise on the line. The revolution is something else altogether and will quickly overcome the current state of blurriness. We’re stuck in the neo-liberal desert and a bit of (art) activism here and there won’t help. This is the era of sublime stagnation in which the real decay remains invisible. The rot is deep inside. The response to the 2008 financial crisis is telling. People know it can’t go on like this, but still carry on. Networks prolong this state of indecision. To propose some Trotsky-style cells seems unpopular but probably the way to go. The vitalist optimism of Hardt & Negri is useful here. I agree: there must be Common outside of the Market and the State. Exodus, Yes We Can! Yet, it seems almost impossible to remain unnoticed, and invisible. The debate has to stop here. Let’s switch to the offline mode. See you there!

HASTAC, part of the Macarthur Foundation, is hosting a discussion about Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces. I’m so honored to be a part of it! Please join us! Just sign up for an account and post a response!

From the opening comments:

These activists, scholars, and artists have generously agreed to join our conversation over the next few weeks.

Zach Blas, New Media Artist, Duke University
Micha Cardenas, New Media Artist, University of California San Diego
Shu Lea Cheang, Conceptualist, Filmmaker, and New Media Artist, USA/France
Abagail De Kosnik, University of California, Berkeley
Joshua Gamson, University of San Francisco,
Jessi Gan, University of Michigan
J.Jack Halberstam, University of Southern California
Katie King, University of Maryland
Lisa Nakamura, University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign
Monica Ong, New Media Artist, Rhode Island School of Design
Juana Maria Rodrgiuez, University of California, Berkeley
Carol Stabile, University of Oregon

Additional forthcoming interviews with:

* Elaine H. Kim, University of California, Berkeley and Filmmaker
* Sonny Nordmarken, University of Massachusetts
* T.Kebo Drew, Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project

…and others!

http://www.hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/queer-feminist-new-media-spaces

The Theora codec is derived from the proprietary VP3 codec, released into the public domain by On2 Technologies. Google has now bought the On2 company. The Free Software Foundation has published an open letter to Google: “With its purchase of the On2 video compression technology company having been completed on Wednesday February 16, 2010, Google now has [...] 0

After installing Ubuntu 9.04 from scratch, I have had some bad flashbacks to the zillion times this problem occurred before in previous sytem installations. Capturing in Kino / dvgrab does not work because the /dev/raw1394 module is not loaded and I, as a user, have no write permissions. I found the following post helpful. It explains how [...] 0

Since some weeks i see all the words tagged and I think in bigrams, trigrams, frequency distributions.

I’ve been playing with the nltk (natural language toolkit) and the really useful Jon Bosak xml annotated corpus these days, to give a try to the open knowledge foundation Open Shakespeare project, and this are some of the graphs I’ve been able to parse after analyzing the speech of the main characters of the play (characters that say more than 100 lines of code:

exclamations and interrogations

Here we can see that Macduff is screaming a lot, and that when everybody talks is never to question, but to assert… Poor Macbeth and Lady Macduff question everything, while Lady Macbeth just as much as asserting.

Regarding amount of words in the play, by far Macbeth is the one that talks more:

amount of words spoken by main characters

But what about lexical variety? In this next graph, we can see the variety of the words:

Macbeth - lexical variety

Here we can see the lexical variety of characters speech.

The brown-ish words are said just once per character. The light greens are word that will repeat on their speech, and the dark greens are repetitions of the light green words. I still need to take more measures to see if this is actually the way everybody speaks: by repeating a lot of small words with just some new words once in a while. (There are more words that appear just once, than the words you will repeat through most of your speech! Think about it!)

I am so glad to have met Robin Upton at this year’s FOSDEM conference in Brussels. Robin initiated Altruists International a few years back and is doing elaborate non-formal research in the field of gift economies.

While at FOSDEM (where the only other talk I attended was about strophe.js, an XMPP library designed for the real-time web I was playing with recently) and visiting a chocolate factory outlet a bit outside Brussels, Robin, Dante and I mainly discussed his ongoing project Friend2Friend — a possible technical back-end to a fully independent and distributed gift economy. The software is still a prototype, but I believe it is important pioneering work that encourages new ways of thinking about our data, how it is processed and stored.

Robin is a kind and loving altruist and an inspiring thinker with a strong mathematics background. Believe it or not, his black framed glasses are actually fixed with sticky tape, hehe. Please do invite him to talk about his ideas! He will roam about Europe a bit longer and return to East Asia at some point.

Thanks to Petter, Dante and Kasper for connecting us.

Hugo Grotius – Freedom of the Seas Ch V Excerpt. 1609

 

 

Mare Liberum or The Free Sea is a foundational work of jurisprudence written by the Dutch jurist and philosopher in 1609 in response to the claims, made by Portugal’s Mare Clausum policy, that they had dominion over the East Indies maritime trade routes.

 

In this dissertation, Grotius argues that the sea is international territory. His argumentation constitutes the first non-religious basis for the formation of legal understanding in  Europe.

 

In the preceding chapters, Grotius has argued from numerous perspectives why Spain and Portugal may not claim sovereignty over the seas, nor the East Indies, nor trade with the East Indies. He disavows claims made on the basis of discovery; title of war; occupation; or  Papal Donation.

 

In this section is most clearly Grotius’ consideration and elaboration of how the sea figures in existing, and classical, understandings of the ‘public’, the ‘national’, and the ‘common’.

 

Two conclusions may be drawn from what has thus far been said. The first is, that that which cannot be occupied, or which never has been occupied, cannot be the property of any one, because all property has arisen from occupation. The second is, that all that which has been so constituted by nature that although serving some one person it still suffices for the common use of all other persons, is today and ought in perpetuity to remain in the same condition as when it was first created by nature. This is what Cicero meant when he wrote:

 

This then is the most comprehensive bond that unites together men as men and all to all; and under it the common right to all things that nature has produced for the common use of man is to be maintained.

 

All things which can be used without loss to any one else come under this category. Hence, says Cicero, comes the well known prohibition: ’Deny no one the water that flows by’. For running water considered as such and not as a stream, is classed by the jurists among the things common to all mankind; as is done also by Ovid: ‘Why do you deny me water? Its use is free to all. Nature has made neither sun nor air nor waves private property; they are public gifts’.

 

He says that these things are not by nature private possession, but that, as Ulpian claims, they are by nature things open to the use of all, both because in the first place they were produced by nature, and have never yet come under the sovereignty of any one, as Neratius says; and in the second place because, as Cicero says, they seem to have been created by nature for common use. But the poet uses ’public’, in its usual meaning, not of those things which belong to any one people, but to human society as a whole; that is to say, things which are called ’public’ are, according to the Laws of the law of nations, the common property of all, and the private property of none.

 

The air belongs to this class of things for two reasons. First, it is not susceptible of occupation; and second its common use is destined for all men. For the same reasons the sea is common to all, because it is so limitless that it cannot become a possession of any one, and because it is adapted for the use of all, whether we consider it from the point of view of navigation or of fisheries. Now, the same right which applies to the sea applies also to the things which the sea has carried away from other uses and made its own, such for example as the sands of the sea, of which the portion adjoining the land is called the coast or shore. Cicero therefore argues correctly: ’What is so common as the sea for those who are being tossed upon it, the shore for those who have been cast thereon’. Vergil also says that the air, the sea, and the shore are open to all men.

 

These things therefore are what the Romans call ’common’ to all men by natural law, or as we have said, ’public’ according to the law of nations; and indeed they call their use sometimes common, sometimes public. Nevertheless, although those things are with reason said to be res nullius, so far as private ownership is concerned, still they differ very much from those things which, though also res nullius, have not been marked out for common use, such for example as wild animals, fish, and birds. For if any one seizes those things and assumes possession of them, they can become objects of private ownership, but the things in the former category by the consensus of opinion of all mankind are forever exempt from such private ownership on account of their susceptibility to universal use; and as they belong to all they cannot be taken away from all by any one person any more than what is mine can be taken away from me by you. And Cicero says that one of the first gifts of Justice is the use of common property for common benefit. The Scholastics would define one of these categories as common in an affirmative, the other in a privative sense. This distinction is not only familiar to jurists, but it also expresses the popular belief. In Athenaeus for instance the host is made to say that the sea is the common property of all, but that fish are the private property of him who catches them.

 

And in Plautus’ Rudens when the slave says: ’The sea is certainly common to all persons’, the fisherman agrees; but when the slave adds: ’Then what is found in the common sea is common property’, he rightly objects, saying: ’But what my net and hooks have taken, is absolutely my own’.

 

Therefore the sea can in no way become the private property of any one, because nature not only allows but enjoins its common use. Neither can the shore become the private property of any one. The following qualification,however, must be made. If any part of these things is by nature susceptible of occupation, it may become the property of the one who occupies it only so far as such occupation does not affect its common use. This qualification is deservedly recognized. For in such a case both conditions vanish through

which it might eventuate, as we have said, that all of it would pass into private ownership.

Since therefore, to cite Pomponius, building is one kind of occupation, it is permissible to build upon the shore, if this can be done without inconvenience to other people; that is to say (I here follow Scaevola) if such building can be done without hindrance to public or common use of the shore. And whoever shall have constructed a building under the aforesaid circumstances will become the owner of the ground upon which said building is; because this ground is neither the property of any one else, nor is it necessary to common use. It becomes therefore the property of the occupier, but his ownership lasts no longer than his occupation lasts, inasmuch as the sea seems by nature to resist ownership. For just as a wild animal, if it shall have escaped and thus recovered its natural liberty, is no longer the property of its captor, so also the sea may recover its possession of the shore.

 

We have now shown that whatever by occupation can become private property can also become public property, that is, the private property of a whole nation. And so Celsus considered the shore included within the limits of the Roman Empire to be the property of the Roman people.

 

There is not therefore the least reason for surprise that the Roman people through their emperors or praetors was able to grant to its subjects the right of occupying the shore. This public occupation, however, no less than private occupation, was subject to the restriction that it should not infringe on international rights. Therefore the Roman people could not forbid any one from having access to the seashore; and from spreading his fishing nets there to dry, and from doing other things which all men long ago decided were always

permissible.

 

The nature of the sea, however, differs from that of the shore, because the sea, except for a very restricted space, can neither easily be built upon, nor inclosed; if the contrary were true yet this could hardly happen without hindrance to the general use. Nevertheless, if any small portion of the sea can be thus occupied, the occupation is recognized. The famous hyperbole of Horace must be quoted here: ”The fishes note the narrowing of the waters by piers of rock laid in their depths.”

 

[here Grotius specifies how things built on the sea bed, but not the sea bed itself, may be private property, as long as the channel remains safe for navigation and fishing; regarding fishing, he discusses different positions on the proprietary nature of, variously, a privately constructed inlet, an inland lake, and a lake on private property; all of which have ambivalent positions.]

 

Therefore the sea is one of those things which is not an article of merchandise, and which cannot become private property. Hence it follows, to speak strictly, that no part of the sea can be considered as the territory of any people whatsoever. Placentinus seems to have recognized this when he said: ’The sea is a thing so clearly common to all, that it cannot be the property of any one save God alone’. Johannes Faber also asserts that the sea has been left sui juris, and remains in the primitive condition where all things were common. If it were otherwise there would be no difference between the things which are ’common to all’, and those which are strictly termed ’public’; no difference, that is, between the sea and a river. A nation can take possession of a river, as it is inclosed within their boundaries, with the sea, they cannot do so.

 

Now, public territory arises out of the occupation of nations, just as private property arises out of the occupation of individuals. This is recognized by Celsus, who has drawn a sharp distinction between the shores of the sea, which the Roman people could occupy in such a way that its common use was not harmed, and the sea itself, which retained its primitive nature. In fact no law intimates a contrary view. Such laws as are cited by writers who are of the contrary opinion apply either to islands, which evidently could be occupied, or to harbors, which are not ’common’, but ’public’, that is, ’national’. Now those who say that a certain sea belonged to the Roman people explain their statement to mean that the right of the Romans did not extend beyond protection and jurisdiction; this right they distinguish from ownership. Perchance they do not pay sufficient attention to the fact that although the Roman People were able to maintain fleets for the protection of navigation and to punish pirates captured on the sea, it was not done by private right, but by the common right which other free peoples also enjoy on the sea. We recognize, however, that certain peoples have agreed that pirates captured in this or in that part of the sea should come under the jurisdiction of this state or of that, and further that certain convenient limits of distinct jurisdiction have been apportioned on the sea. Now, this agreement does bind those who are parties to it, but it has no binding force on other nations, nor does it make the delimited area of the sea the private property of any one. It merely constitutes a personal right between contracting parties.

 

This distinction so conformable to natural reason is also confirmed by a reply once made by Ulpian. Upon being asked whether the owner of two maritime estates could on selling either of them impose on it such a servitude as the prohibition of fishing in a particular part of the sea, he replied that the thing in question, evidently the sea, could not be subjected to a servitude, because it was by nature open to all persons; but that since a contract made in good faith demands that the condition of a sale be respected, the present possessors and those who succeed to their rights were bound to observe that condition. It is true that the jurist is speaking of private estates and of private law, but in speaking here of the territory of peoples and of public law the same reasoning applies, because from the point of view of the whole human race peoples are treated as individuals. Similarly, revenues levied on maritime fisheries are held to belong to the Crown, but they do not bind the sea itself or the fisheries, but only the persons engaged in fishing. Wherefore subjects, for whom a state or a ruler is by common consent competent to make laws, will perhaps be compelled to bear such charges, but so far as other persons are concerned the right of fishing ought everywhere to be exempt from tolls, lest a servitude be imposed upon the sea, which is not

susceptible to a servitude.

 

The case of the sea is not the same as that of a river, for as a river is the property of a nation, the right to fish in it can be passed or leased by the nation or by the ruler, in such a way (and the like is true with the ancients) that the lessee enjoys the operation of the injunction de loco publico fruendo by virtue of the clause ’He who has the right to lease has leased the exclusive right of enjoyment’. Such a condition cannot arise in respect to the sea. Finally those who count fishing among the properties of the Crown have not examined carefully enough the very passage which they cite to prove their contention, as Isemia_ and Alvotus† have noticed.

 

It has therefore been demonstrated that neither a nation nor an individual can establish any right of private ownership over the sea itself (I except inlets of the sea), inasmuch as its occupation is not permissible either by nature or on grounds of public utility. The discussion of this matter has been taken up for this reason, namely, that it may be seen that the Portuguese have not established private ownership over the sea by which people go to the East Indies. For the two reasons that stand in the way of ownership are in this case infinitely more powerful than in all others. That which in other cases seems difficult, is here absolutely impossible; and what in other cases we recognize as unjust is here most barbarous and inhuman. The question at issue then is not one that concerns an INNER SEA, one which is surrounded on all sides by the land and at some places does not even exceed a river in breadth, although it is well known that the Roman jurists cited such an inner sea in their famous opinions condemning private avarice. No! the question at issue is the OUTER SEA, the OCEAN, that expanse of water which antiquity describes as the immense, the infinite, bounded only by the heavens, parent of all things; the ocean which the ancients believed was perpetually supplied with water not only by fountains, rivers, and seas, but by the clouds, and by the very stars of heaven themselves; the ocean which, although surrounding this earth, the home of the human race, with the ebb and flow of its tides, can be neither seized nor inclosed; nay, which rather possesses the earth than is by it possessed.

 

Further, the question at issue does n not concern a gulf or a strait in this ocean, nor even all the expanse of sea which is visible from the shore. [But consider this!!] The Portuguese claim as their own the whole expanse of the sea which separates two parts of the world so far distant the one from the other, that in all the preceding centuries neither one has so much as heard of the other. Indeed, if we take into account the share of the Spaniards, whose claim is the same as that of the Portuguese, only a little less than the whole ocean is found to be subject to two nations, while all the rest of the peoples in the world are restricted to the narrow bounds of the northern seas. Nature was greatly deceived if when she spread the sea around all peoples she believed that it would also be adequate for the use of them all. If in a thing so vast as the sea a man were to reserve to himself from general use nothing more than mere sovereignty, still he would be considered a seeker after unreasonable power.

 

If a man were to enjoin other people from fishing, he would not escape the reproach of monstrous greed. But the man who even prevents navigation, a thing which means no loss to himself, what are we to say of him? If any person should prevent any other person from taking fire from his fire or a light from his torch, I should accuse him of violating the law of human society, because that is the essence of its very nature, as Ennius has said: ”No less shines his, when he his friend’s hath lit.”

 

Why then, when it can be done without any prejudice to his own interests, will not one person share with another things which are useful to the recipient, and no loss to the giver? These are services which the ancient philosophers thought ought to be rendered not only to foreigners but even to the ungrateful. But the same act which when private possessions are in question is jealousy can be nothing but cruelty when a common possession is in question. For it is most outrageous for you to appropriate a thing, which both by ordinance of nature and by common consent is as much mine as yours, so exclusively that you will not grant me a right of use in it which leaves it no less yours than it was before.

 

This article has been reblogged from http://www.openmusicarchive.org/projects/index.php?title=Ambulante_Reader

 Reverse Engineering: The making of Struggle In Jerash

Transcript edited from a series of conversations between film critic and historian Adnan Madanat and artists Eileen Simpson & Ben White in Amman Jordan, May 2008
(Translation by Abdullah Khasawneh)

Eileen Simpson & Ben White: We first heard about Struggle In Jerash (1957 dir. Wassif Sheik Yassin) in an article you wrote responding to claims that the recent film Captain Abu Raed (2007, dir. Amin Matalqa) is the first Jordanian feature. Can you tell us a more about when Struggle In Jerash was made?

Adnan Madanat: Struggle In Jerash was created in the year 1957. Before this there were no Jordanian films whatsoever because, since the twenties, the country was under British authorities. To take footage was banned; if a Jordanian was caught taking footage he would be arrested and thrown in jail. Lots of foreign reporters would film in Jordan but it was difficult for Jordanians to make their own films. So it is important that the first movie came after independence.

ES & BW: We understand there was no film industry in Jordan at the time and that a self-organised group was behind the production.

AM: There were five people behind the film, a group of craftsmen who originally came from Palestine. Their expertise included fixing projectors and cinema tools in theatres back in Palestine before the establishment of Israel state in 1948. They were probably influenced by Egyptian cinema and the idea of creating a film occurred to them. So they collaborated in establishing a company and they each put in a small amount of money – around 5 Jordanian Dinars. 5 JD at the time was a considerable sum but not really enough to properly establish a film production company.

ES & BW: Can you talk about the cultural context that the group was coming from?

AM: In the Palestinian cities the group were from Haifa, Jaffa, and Jerusalem. Before 1948, the social life and cultural life was rich, for example, there were good schools there. At the time Jordanians who finished their high school education would go to Jerusalem – anywhere in the West Bank to study. Also Palestine had the greatest Egyptian singers visiting and performing, and theatrical groups would also tour there. So it was a country with culture, not “a land without a people”. There was a people.

ES & BW: You mention in your article that film materials and equipment were not available in Jordan at the time so the group had to be resourceful and even make their own equipment.

AM: They had a 35mm camera and they didn’t have anything else. When they considered buying equipment, they found out that the prices were way beyond anything they could afford. One of them, Mustafa Najjar, a car mechanic, travelled to Beirut and visited a studio there, where he examined the film equipment. He looked at the machines – in particular the equipment for developing and editing films. He came back to Amman and started, along with his colleagues, using their expertise, to manufacture this equipment. They had a small apartment north of Amman, which they considered headquarters, where they installed their equipment and setup the company.

They started working on the film as soon as one of them had the plot, which was written by a well known journalist at the time who had no expertise in writing for screen but was influenced by Egyptian cinema. The group acted not only as cameramen, directors, producers, and writers – they were also the main actors in the film.

ES & BW: And the technical side of things? Again, you mention that the group had to be inventive with technical processes – especially with synchronising sound.

AM: Nowadays, people that watched the movie at the time and remember it, speak about it with sarcasm; they talk about how the sound and the images did not match and how it wasn’t synchronised correctly. In particular they talk about the fight scenes – how you would hear a hit first and after that you would see the actual hit take place. But this problem with synchronisation was only in parts of the movie. Synch sound of course needed equipment and machines, which they didn’t have access to.

The movie was shot and the film was developed with some problems with sourcing film stock. Then they started the difficult process of mixing the sound with the image. They had to transfer the sound from magnetic to optical and they didn’t have the necessary equipment. They thought about the projector and how it displays the images but realised they could adapt it somehow to actually play the sound and transfer it to optical. So this is a major achievement in this film – the technical achievement.

To synchronise the sound with the images, they used two projectors – one displaying the image and one playing the sound, and they connected them both to one switch so that when they turned it on they would both work at the same time. After minute three, the sound and the images started mismatching. So they started cutting the movie, three minutes at a time and that helped them get the best result.

ES & BW: You said that members of the crew were also the main actors in the film and it’s interesting to think of them using their expertise in car mechanics and applying their knowledge a different sphere of production. There are two women in the film. Were they also part of the production team?

AM: There were five men in the production team – car mechanics, projection technicians etc., and as I said, they also starred on the other side of the camera. At the time Jordan was a conservative country and getting actors was a problem. For example when Jordanian theatre started in the 60s they had a very hard time casting actresses – they found some but it was very difficult. So just imagine how difficult it was ten years earlier with some nudity and kissing scenes. But they did find actresses and the movie was filmed.

ES & BW: And how did the public react to the film?

AM: The country took a great interest in the creation of this first movie. In the beginning, the movie was shown to the censorship council and it was forbidden. It was banned by order of the prime minister because of scenes that were found to be revealing or unconservative – like a girl, an actress in a bathing suit and some kissing scenes. The five behind the movie were terrified because they had invested all their money in the film and of course it was their dream. But luckily they had a friend who had a job projecting films at the royal palace for the young Princes. So he told the Princes about the film – and projected it for them in the royal court. According to Mustafa Najjar, Prince Hassan – at the time twelve years old – watched the movie and considered it a national achievement. He technically overruled the Prime Minister’s decision!

ES & BW: During our research period in Amman, we have found it quite difficult to find archive film and audio material from this period produced in Jordan. Some of the people we have shown the film to have been surprised that this footage exists. Do you know of other film material shot at this time?

AM: In 1966 there was a Department for Cinema and they used to film the beginnings of things; the initiations and establishments of everything, such as, King Hussain’s opening of Aqaba Port. They had footage of the 1967 war; they filmed the refugees flowing into the country from Palestine; and they created several movies: Bells of Return, Flower of Cities – movies about the Palestinian cause. If there were any other documents that record Jordanian history, they would probably be found in England. Now there are some documents in the Jordanian Television archives. Of course, they bought these from London.

ES & BW: It seems then that this film is a really important and unique glimpse of aspects of Jordanian life at the time, filmed by Jordanians, featuring: scenes of Amman streets, the airport, 1950s fashions and lifestyle, Philadelphia Hotel, the ruins of Jerash, crossing the River Jordan, as well as documentary footage of the West Bank and Jerusalem. But you also talked about the political message the filmmakers wanted to get across. Can you tell us a bit more about the politics of the film?

AM: Much of the film takes a documentary form and emphasizes the historical importance of Palestinian towns in the West Bank. Whereas the dramatic events of the movie all take place in the East Bank: in Amman, at the Dead Sea and in Jerash. But let’s not forget that the filming of the movie took place after the Israeli occupation of Palestine in 1948. If now, 60 years later, the emotions about the occupation are still so alive, then how would you imagine it would be only nine years after the events of ’48? So there was no predetermined political motive in the film. They just tried to awaken feelings about Palestinian cities - nationalist emotions for a lost country.

ES & BW: Although notorious as the country’s first feature, the film is not in general circulation. Did the group achieve what they set out to achieve through making the film?

AM: The film was played in the most important movie theatre house in Amman at the time, which was in Jabel Webdeh. There was good attendance but they discovered that the money they were getting for tickets did not cover at all the money they had paid for the production.

They needed financial support to even think about making another movie. But no one gave them that financial support. They very quickly were frustrated and they had to make a living. They all split up. Mustafa Najjar opened a garage and they closed the office in Amman. The mistake they made was that when they closed the office, none of them thought of saving the equipment – so it was all thrown away. The only thing Mustafa Najjar kept was the 35mm print and he saved the trailer, and he forgot the whole experience.

ES & BW: You saved this film from completed disappearance. You mentioned to us that when you were researching the history of Jordanian cinema back in the 80s, you found out that Mustafa Najjar still had the only surviving copy of the 35mm film.

AM: Yes, it took a very long time to find the movie. The film itself was in a very bad condition. It was dry and broken in parts because it wasn’t stored properly. So I took it to professionals at Jordanian Television who tried to fix the film and, through telecine, they were able to make a VHS copy of the movie.

At the time I copied the movie several times. I gave one to Mustafa Najjar. He was very happy. For days and days he kept on calling his relatives and had them over to watch the movie, especially as he was also an actor in the film.

ES & BW: What happened to the original film?

AM: I handed the 35mm film back to Mustafa Najjar because he suddenly realised he had a valuable thing and he wanted it back. But later on when I needed the reels again to make a better copy, I contacted him – by then he was an old man – and found out that tragically he had lost it . . . He forgot where he put the film!

ES & BW: So the only surviving copy of the film is the VHS telecine you made in the 80s?

AM: Yes. A few years ago there was an honorary ceremony for the pioneers of Jordanian cinema. They tried to contact Mustafa Najjar, however, they discovered that he had died two years earlier. His son came in his stead and he told me that they’d searched and searched for the film after his father’s death but they couldn’t find it. It’s likely that the film was lost years earlier when his workshop had been sold after his retirement. Sadly, the original print – we don’t know where it is. It’s probably impossible to find now.

Nantucket, Chapter XIV of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) is reblogged from: http://melville.thefreelibrary.com/Moby-Dick-I-LXVII/1-14#terraqueous

NANTUCKET

Nothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a fine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket. Nantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of the world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely than the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it –a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than you would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some gamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they don’t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have to send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that pieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true cross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses, to get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an oasis, three blades in a day’s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand shoes, something like Laplander snowshoes; that they are so shut up, belted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island of by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these extravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois. Look now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was settled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle swooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant Indian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child borne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the same direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage they discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory casket, –the poor little Indian’s skeleton. What wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should take to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs in the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more experienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last, launching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world; put an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at Behring’s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared everlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the flood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea Mastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that his very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and malicious assaults! And thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from their ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like so many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America add Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English overswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun; two thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer’s. For the sea is his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a right of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges; armed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though following the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships, other fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw their living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone resides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to it in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation. There is his home; there lies his business, which a noah’s flood would not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China. He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.