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Russia: “An Echo of Moscow”

Lyndon Allin · 19:28

lingua → es · zht · zhs

Tverskaya, Feb. 23, 2005 - from this set

Shortly after the Duma elections last December, I saw this article and wanted to translate it. I didn't have time then, and in truth it's a fairly challenging text to translate, since it is all about mood and atmosphere. The furor around Putin's Luzhniki speech has faded, but Nizhny Novgorod, where part of the article is set, is still in the news as the location of Medvedev's one official day speaking as a candidate and (perhaps less significantly) as the region singled out by the New York Times in a controversial article about the Kremlin's (ab)use of “administrative resources,” so this seems like a suitable item to post as we await the inevitable result on March 2.

By way of background, this piece was supposed to appear in the Moscow weekly Bolshoi Gorod, but the head of the publishing house that prints BG decided not to print it as written, and BG's editor chose to publish it on his ZheZhe rather than edit it. The comments on the blog where it was posted suggest a range of assessments of that decision - mostly praise for the article, but also some averring that it was proper not to publish it, because it's not “journalism” and is more suitable for a ZheZhe post, or that it's an “empty” tale describing a political reality that has existed for years but is just now being noticed by the creative intelligentsia (it is indeed something one could see hints of a few years ago).

Comments elsewhere (and there were many, at the time) speculated about censorship or self-censorship and led in some cases to soul-searching online discussions among old friends divided by their opinions of Russia's path… but I should let the piece speak for itself.

An Echo of Moscow
by Roman Gruzov
c. December 3, 2007

The city before the elections

In late November it was cold in [Nizhny Novgorod], and the people handing out United Russia fliers on the streets were bundled up in scarves against the chill. Nizhny covered in snow feels oppressive to a person unused to the Russian provinces. The industrial areas which die out towards the evening and the touching wooden downtown, restored in some places and lop-sided and half-abandoned in others, seemed like some sort of different, unknown, incomprehensible and thus not entirely safe country. There were campaign banners on every corner, so the word “Putin” was always visible from several angles at once.

I stopped a car on the banks of the Oka and thought about those banners and about why they seemed different in Nizhny than at home. To be honest, I always paid attention only to the most odious images. For instance, on the corner of Liteiny and Nevsky, on the building where the editorial offices of Afisha used to be, there's a gigantic group photo that covers up the entire facade, with the caption “Putin's Petersburg.” The second lady from the left has such a ghoulish smirk that it looks like she's promoting the next of the “Dozor” vampire movies and not the Presidential line. Not far away, a poster on a pillar reads, “You are in Putin's plan,” and my gaze has been stopping on that pillar for a month, too, but only because it's odd - he's not in my plans, but I am in his. In Nizhny the quantity of these pictures is something qualitatively different, perhaps because based on the way the locals look, it's hard to understand what they have to do with these banners.

I was picked up by a green Moskvich with a driver of indeterminate age wearing yellow wraparound shades and a shabby sheepskin coat. The radio was bellowing frightfully, and I thought the speaker's voice sounded familiar. But as we drove alongside the still unfrozen river, I had a moment of doubt - the rhetoric of the person shouting from the ragged car speakers about jackals and foreign embassies was just too coarse. I thought, “Could it be Zhirik?”

The driver turned the volume up louder - louder than was proper, so much louder that it became unpleasant to be in the car. After a couple of minutes I was sure that it really was the President speaking - the radio was picking up the TV broadcast from Channel One. I felt uneasy - at any other time I would have asked the driver to turn it down, but I kept quiet. The voice coming from the radio was too insistent, the city too incomprehensible, and the driver's murky gaze from behind his yellow glasses too unpredictable. I had absolutely no desire to argue with him about politics - practically for the first time in the last seventeen years I decided that it would be better to hold my tongue. It was unpleasant, strange and somehow radically new, all at the same time - to be driven around a dark, cold city, listening to the stadium responding to the speechmaker, and to feel that you are living an a new, different time, a time when if you don't know your interlocutor's mindset it's better to stay silent. And we did stay silent - we drove along and listened as various not-so-picky people made speeches at the stadium. Then the driver drew his hand out of his tattered cuff and sharply turned off the radio. It got quiet. Then he said:

“Those assholes!”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, opened the window and spat angrily into the frosty evening.

In Moscow the next day I learned that many of my friends had been through something similar during the past few days, and that for almost all of them the feeling of a qualitative shift was surprisingly connected with something trivial - not with the Luzhniki rally, but with some silly story. One friend's kid got sick from paint fumes, because they were painting the school starting first thing in the morning, rushing to beautify it in time for the elections. Another got into a fight with drunken teenagers on the street, and at the police station noticed they had “I'm for Putin” scarves around their necks. And in response I told everyone how to my own surprise I had been afraid to ask the driver to turn down the radio.

When I returned to St. Petersburg a day later, there were heavy trucks with barred windows parked by the train station. There were more police on Nevsky than there were pedestrians, and the farther I went the more men in uniform surrounded me. Closer to Palace Square, when the police turned into riot troops, I realized that it was because of the dissenters. There was no march whatsoever - a dozen or so pensioners stood by watching the hundreds of soldiers who had secured the square. Then they came up to me, looked at my press card, and put me in a police bus.

“You have a laptop in your bag,” said a calm, mustachioed officer, “and today only journalists accredited by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate [ГУВД] are allowed to be here. Let's take a ride to the precinct, and we'll take a look at what you've got in your computer.”

In the new era this was normal, and I climbed into the dark freight box of the truck without a fight. Inside were about six dejected Tajiks, a gray-haired old man with a hearing aid and teary eyes, and a radical who looked like a sad demon with horns of hairsprayed dreads. They drove us around the city for a long time, and tears flowed down the old man's cheeks from the wind blowing through the cracks in the truck. It was unpleasant to see, so we looked out through the cracks - at the police, roaming about on Nevsky among billboards showing “Putin's Petersburg,” and at the people avoiding the billboards and the policemen. Everyone was silent, but this time I knew for sure what everyone else was thinking. And after three more hours or so they photographed us and let us go - all but the radical, who didn't want to hold a number up to his chest for the camera. My number was 809.

“Assholes,” said the Tajiks, stepping out into the fresh air.
“Assholes,” I agreed.
The old man said nothing.

That was the winter; let's hope the spring will be different. Some observers seem hopeful.

By the way, the imprecation that is repeated in the middle and at the end of the article is “суки” in the original (literally, “bitches”), so I took a bit of license with it - though not much license, actually. According to my trusty Русско-английский словарь ненормативной лексики (М: Астрель, 2002):

Сука ж. […] 3. груб.-прост. Употр. как бранное слово Cf. bastard, shit, asshole (used as a term of abuse).

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Brazil: Whose, and what kind of party, was Campus Party 2008?

Daniel Duende · 18:10

lingua → pt · es

Campus Party[pt], a huge yearly meeting of the Internet-kin taking place in Spain[es] for more than 10 years now, finally had its first Brazilian edition in the week of February 10th, in São Paulo. More than three thousand bloggers, gamers, modders, free-software and free-culture activists, robot-loving, digital-camera-totting, soda-guzzling and/or healthy/junkie food devouring people and other diverse kinds of geeks, as well as some people and journalists curious to see them, flocked to the Biennial Pavilion at Ibirapuera Park, connected their laptops/desktops (if they brought one) to the impressive 5 gigabit connection offered by a big local telecom and got together to do whatever they liked to do.

Geeks - almost - in line waiting to come inside Campus Party

Campuseros waiting - almost - in line outside the pavilion for their time to come inside and look for their places in the camping and the worktables (photo by Pattoli)

The camping

Campusero in his tent, posing with his laptop. Those who did not bring their own computers to the event had a very hard time getting access to the impressive 5.5gigabit connection brought by Telefonica. (photo by campuspartybr)

the modders and their strange machines

But the modders and the gamers never had any problem bringing their incredible machines (photo by patricianardelli)

That was Campus Party Brasil 2008, or at least that was a way to describe it. But Sergio Amadeu[pt], one of the event's Brazilian coordinators, free-software hardcore activist and a social scientist, who happens to be a blogger too, had a different way to describe it[pt]:

“O que é o Campus Party? Podemos dizer é um encontro presencial das comunidades que habitam a Internet. É um espaço incomum onde comunidades, que dificilmente estariam juntas, reuniram-se nesta semana para trocar idéias, fazer novos amigos e conhecer os avanços das tecnologias. O mais interessante é que neste Campus Party Brasil, conseguimos reunir entretenimento com aprendizagem em uma programação com mais de trezentos conteúdos. Trata-se de um momento típico da cibercultura, pós-industrial. As pessoas estão se divertindo enquanto ensinam, aprendem e compartilham conhecimento.”

“What is the Campus Party? We can say it's a real-world meeting of the internet-bound communities. It's an unusual place where communities that would hardly meet face to face could get together to share ideas, make new friends and acknowledge new technological advancements. The most interesting is that in this Campus Party Brasil we managed to join entertainment and learning in a grid of activities with more than three hundred different contents. It's a typical cyberculture moment, post-industrial. People are having fun as they teach, learn and share knowledge.”

Besides, Ariel Foina, who happens to be a social scientist studying the Internet and a blogger, too, had even another “interface” with the event[pt]:

“[…]tudo parece uma salada de multiculturalismo, um simulacro de diversidade legitimosa. Na abertura tivemos um “robo” que fala português com sotaque, um músico que depois transvirou-se em ministro, uma mesa que tem sons e cores, e uma bateria de escola de samba como plumas-pra-espanhol-ver na cabeça. Deixando de ser antropologo e voltando a ser sociologo… Cheguei à conclusão que o evento todo é uma grande navegação-em-carne-e-osso na internet. Se alguém tinha alguma duvida de que a rede era feita por pessoas, agora não tem mais. E assim como na Internet, o fenômeno mais marcante do evento é o ruido no canal de comunicação. Qualquer canal… se parar pra conversar com alguem, se parar pra ouvir uma palestra, vai haver barulhos e ruídos e etc ao fundo, todo o tempo e o tempo todo.”

“[…] everything looks like a big multicultural mixture, a simulacrum of legitimistic diversity. In the opening ceremony we had a robot that speaks Portuguese with a funny accent, a musician that later transmogrified in a state minister, a table with sounds and colors and the drummers core of a 'samba-school' with feathers and adornments to catch Spanish hearts in their heads. Leaving behind the anthropologist in me and going back to the sociologist… I've come to the conclusion that the whole event is a huge real-life-websurfing. If someone doubted the web was made of people, this doubt can stand no more. As in the Internet, the most impressive phenomena in the event is the noise at the communication channel. Every channel… if you stop to talk with someone, if you stand to listen to a talk, there will be rumble and noise and such things in the background, all the time.”

But Ariel ends his post with a complaint (or maybe a call to action):

“me resta perguntar: depois de censurarem o YouTube no backbone, ilegalizarem o P2P, censurarem a venda do CS.. ninguem vai propor NENHUMA AÇÃO POLÍTICA?”

“all that is left to me is asking: after they blocked YouTube in the [event's] backbone, forbade the P2P, censored the sales of Counter-Strike.. will no one propose ANY KIND OF POLITICAL ACTION [here]?”

Michael Lent, too, blogs about the “noise” at Campus Party and in the internet, and makes some remarks about the excess talk brought by the absolute freedom to speak[pt]:

“Saí de lá com vontade de fazer um post contando as minhas impressões a respeito do debate e do Campus Party em geral. Hoje de manhã cheguei a escrever um texto longo, mas apaguei pois achei que teria pouco a acrescentar face ao tanto de conteúdo que já está sendo produzido por aí. Olhei o BlueBus, passei no Flickr, no Radinho. Em todos lugares, lá estavam, impressões e mais impressões em todos os formatos e sobre o evento. Pensei, ‘pra que mais uma?'”

“I left [the Campus Party] willing to write a post telling all my impressions about the debates and Campus Party as a whole. I even wrote a big text this morning, but deleted it as I've found out I would have little to say in face of all the content that was being produced everywhere [about it]. I took a look at BlueBus, glanced at Flickr, the Radinho. Everywhere, there were so many impressions and posts in all formats about the event. I've said to myself, ‘why doing more of it?'”

In fact, there are so many points of view about what Campus Party 2008 was, with 300 journalists and more than twice that number of bloggers around the event, that it was impossible to track even all the tendencies in the blogosphere about it, not to mention all the significant posts. So, all we can do is keep navigating the Brazilian silicon seas and do some conversation and image/video sightseeing on the aftermath of the event. Tiago Dória, another famous Brazilian blogger, begins his great (and rather optimistic) post[pt] about the event highlighting that Campus Party was above all a meeting of people that only knew each other virtually before that:

“A imprensa menos especializada está chamando a Campus Party de “o maior encontro de entretenimento eletrônico do país” ou “carnaval dos nerds”. Balela! Para quem esteve os 6 dias lá, acredito que tenha sido o maior encontro no Brasil da geração que está crescendo junto com a internet, acostumada com ferramentas colaborativas, a geração “faça você mesmo”, ou “geração 2.0″, se preferir. Aquele cara que ficou famoso com um blog, a cantora que foi descoberta graças ao seu perfil na MySpace, a menina que conquistou um programa na TV devido ao seu fotolog, o pessoal que cria diversas versões para um jogo por conta própria, o cara que hackeou o Orkut, todos estavam lá presentes, em carne e osso.”

“The un-specialized press is dubbing the Campus Party ‘the biggest electronic entertainment meeting in the country' or ‘the nerd carnival'. Bullshit! For those who were there for the whole 6 days, i believe [the event] was the greatest Brazilian meeting of the generation that is growing up with the internet, used to collaborative tools, the ‘do it yourself' generation, or ‘2.0 generation', if you so prefer. That guy who became famous for his blog, the singer that was discovered through her MySpace profile, the girl who got her own TV show due to her fotolog, the people who create many versions of the same game on their own, the guy who hacked Orkut, they were all there, in flesh and bone.”

aboutt boys and robots

Creativity, inventiveness and exchange of ideas, experiences and, why not, idle geeky chat were in fact the bread and butter of Campus Party (photo by vivoandando)

On the other hand, and in a sourer note, Gravataí Merengue from Imprensa Marrom was chastising free-software hardcore activists (and, apparently, Sergio Amadeu) for their participation in a mainstream event sponsored by Telefonica, the Spanish telecom that owns the monopoly to the São Paulo state landlines and almost owns the state's Internet market, in his post “Campus Party: an awful party for the digital inclusion“[pt]:

“Sim, péssima. Horrível. Catastrófica, eu diria - e sem exagero. Porque simplesmente não poderia ser pior. Foi ótima para o “modding”, excelente para os “gamers”, seguramente um evento e tanto para “bloggers” e, por que não?, houve sim bons debates sobre Inclusão Digital e Software Livre. Mas então por que foi péssima? Simples (e vexatório para os arautos pseudo-antimonopolistas do “SL”): a festa foi patrocinada pela Telefonica, empresa que detém o monopólio (sim, MONOPÓLIO!) da telefonia fixa no Estado de São Paulo. E não se trata de “mais uma, dentre tantos patrocinadores”, mas sim A PRINCIPAL PATROCINADORA. Infelizmente, não consegui saber quanto cada empresa forneceu de dinheiro e outros benefícios. Uma pena. Seria interessante saber quanto um “messias anti-monopolista” cobra para deixar de lado suas convicções. Ainda não descobri. Mas, sinceramente, acredito que não deva ser muita coisa. Em primeiro lugar, porque esses messias são em geral arrogantes e acham que não há problema em receber dinheiro oriundo de uma empresa monopolista. Além disso, eles simplesmente não são caros porque não são caros, ué. Preço de ocasião!”

“Yes, awful. Terrible. Catastrophic, I'd say - with no exaggerations. Simply because it couldn't be worse. [Campus Party] was great for the modding, excellent for the gamers, surely a great event for the blogger and, why not?, there were great debates about Digital Inclusion and Free Software taking place there. Why was it awful then? Simple (and shameful to the anti-monopolist paragons of the free software): the party was sponsored by Telefonica, the company that holds the monopoly (yes, the MONOPOLY) of the São Paulo state landlines. And it's not “one more between many sponsors”, but THE MAIN SPONSOR [of the event]. Sadly, i couldn't ascertain how much the company provided in money and other benefits. Sad thing. It would be great to know how much it costs to make an ‘anti-monopoly messiah' forget all his convictions. I still don't know [how much money it was]. But, sincerely, I believe it wasn't that much. First of all, because these messiahs are in general very arrogant and believe there is no problem in receiving money from a monopolist company. More than that, they simply aren't that expensive because… they aren't expensive, dammit. Discount prices!”

Until now, as far as I know, no “messiah” said anything about Gravatai's post. But maybe Gravatai's point wasn't about free software or messiahs, or even about Telefonica or monopoly, but about lack of communication and transparency. How much did the company pay for the event, and why? Can hardcore anti-monopoly activists be safely at such events, and even be paid for it, and still sleep lightly at night? How does the activism and the old economy fit together (or not) in these times? No one has answered Gravatai's questions up to now, and among his empty provocations these questions stand as a very important point in the whole new-media/new-economy conversation.

Going back into the conversation about Campus Party, and to close this already-too-long article, let's quote some points blogged by ideiadigital in his post about the event:

“Inicialmente eu me inscrevi na área de criatividade, mas o primeiro dia, e parte do segundo, foram suficientes para eu perceber que ali não haveria o networking que eu procurava e nem mesmo as novidades interessantes que me levaram de BH a SP. […] O pessoal da organização pisou na bola com a criatividade, quem quer saber de Secondlife? MaryMoon?? Queremos falar de cores, de tipografia, de intervenções artísticas, queremos algo que nos faça re-pensar nossa posição no mundo e o que fazemos profissionalmente. […] quando as palestras se mostraram fracas, e o espaço a elas péssimo, sem divisórias e microfones que gritavam cada vez mais alto, atrapalhando todo mundo, o pessoal se tocou que o ponto forte de eventos como esse é o networking, a possibilidade de conhecer, conversar e trocar cartão de visita [this is so old, a gente troca é url!] com outras pessoas, e porque não fechar negócios, decobrir sócios, parceiros de trabalho, etc…? […] Houveram muitos erros de organização, descontamos porque foi o primeiro Campus-party fora da Espanha, em 2009 tenho certeza de que será melhor. Acredito que um evento como esse não é feito para palestras, mas sim para networking. Todas as propostas de conferência foram batidas por desconferências, com raras excessões. Num mundo de pontas como a internet, uma só ponta falando para um monte de gente não cola, o que queremos, e o que funciona, são várias pontas trocando informação, trocando conhecimento, e isso só ocorre nas desconferências da vida!”

“Initially I was signed into the creativity area, but the first day, and part of the second one, were enough for me to realize that the networking and the novelty I was looking for, and that made me come all the way from my state to Sao Paulo, wouldn't be found there. […] The organization crew screwed it up on ‘creativity' area. Who wants to know about SecondLife? and Marimoon?? We want to talk about colors, typography, artistic interventions, we want to do something that makes us re-think our place in the world and what we do as professionals. […] when the official talks proved to be weak, and the environment for them worse still, with no acoustic divides and microphones shouting louder and louder, confusing everyone, then we realized that the strong point in events like this is networking, the chance to know, talk and exchange business cards (this is so old, we exchange URL!) with other people, and, why not, make business, discover new business partners, etc…? […]There were many mistakes in the organization [of the event], but we can accept that because that was the first Campus Party outside Spain. I'm sure the 2009 edition will be better. I believe an event like this is not made of conferences, but of networking. All the conference proposals were beaten by the dis-conferences, with rare exceptions. In a world of peers like the Internet, one peer speaking alone to all the others wouldn't do. What we do want, and what works, are the various peers exchanging information, sharing knowledge, and that only happens at dis-conferences!”

political action against the Azeredo law

Public act against the ‘Azeredo bill‘ and the outlawing of the sales of the game Counter-Strike, at Campus Party (photo by campuspartybr)

There was a lot of talk on the “clash between the traditional media and the bloggers” at Campus Party too, but many bloggers (myself included) agree with Inagaki when he says:

“Quando soube de todas as queremelas e embates entre jornalistas versus blogueiros na Campus Party, que reverberaram em posts escritos por nomes como Henrique Martin, Michel Lent, Lalai, Ana Brambilla, Francisco Madureira, Gabriel Tonobohn, Edney Souza, Will Publi, Daniel Duende, Renata Honorato, Jonny Ken e Mr. Manson, meu primeiro pensamento foi: qual a razão de ser de tantos tiroteios trocados pra lá e pra cá por pessoas que compartilham a mesmíssima atividade de disseminar informações e trabalhar com comunicação?

[…]

Eu sinceramente já não tenho o menor saco para entrar em polêmicas que não têm razão de ser. Creio piamente que a tendência, em um futuro a curto prazo, está na convergência de mídias. Do mesmo modo que veículos tradicionais como o New York Times e a revista Newsweek contrataram blogueiros como Markos Moulitsas e Brian Stelter, tenho a convicção de que o mesmo ocorrerá por aqui, da mesma maneira que jornalistas consagrados como Ricardo Noblat e Luis Nassif seguiram a via inversa e revitalizaram suas carreiras criando blogs de ótima qualidade. Há espaço para todos, e eu só posso imputar ao gosto que as multidões nutrem por polêmicas inócuas todos esses embates maniqueístas digladiando duas atividades como o jornalismo e a blogagem que, muito longe de serem antagônicas, complementam-se uma à outra (vide os ótimos blogs do IDG Now e do RadarCultura na Campus Party).”

“When I acknowledged all the conflicts and clashes between journalists and bloggers at Campus Party, that reverberated on posts written by bloggers like Henrique Martin, Michel Lent, Lalai, Ana Brambilla, Francisco Madureira, Gabriel Tonobohn, Edney Souza, Will Publi, Daniel Duende, Renata Honorato, Jonny Ken e Mr. Manson, my first thought was: what's the reason of so much fire coming to and fro between people that share the very same activity of disseminating information and working with communication? […] Sincerely I don't have the patience anymore to take part in discussions that have no reason to exist. I deeply believe that the trend, in a very short-term future, is the convergence of the medias. In the same way that traditional media big players like NY Times and the Newsweek magazine hired bloggers like Markos Moulitsas and Brian Stelter, i am sure the same will happen here, in the same way that respected journalists like Ricardo Noblat and Luis Nassif followed the reverse way and added new life to their careers by creating high quality blogs. There is a place for everyone, and i can only credit on the taste of the crowds for meaningless polemics all these maniqueist clashes between two activities like journalism and blogging that, far from being antagonistic, complement on each other (like in the great blogs from IDG Now and RadarCultura on Campus Party).”

jurassic party

A blogger wearing a dinosaur costume playing with a journalist inside the ‘traditional media aquarium'. Can you feel the tension? Can you see the clash? I don't. (photo by Fernando Cavalcanti)

That was Campus Party Brasil 2008, and it was a lot more, and maybe sometimes a little less, than all that is being spoken and written about it. Some liked it, some despised it. Above all, Campus Party Brasil was very different from its European counterpart, and was an experience. An experience on how to do a Campus Party, and how not to do it, and about what can be done at such an event. Most of all, Campus Party Brasil was worth for the conversations that happened there, and in the aftermath, and what it says about us and the Brazilian blogosphere and internet. Beautiful, Vain, Ugly or Uncomfortable, it was a reflection of our digital and real faces. We should reflect on that.

People say that an image says more than a thousand words. Great pictures of Campus Party Brasil can be found at Flickr if you search for campuspartybr or campus party 2008.

1 comment · »»

China: No more free lunch, even at here?

Bob Chen · 07:38

lingua → es

Easy, convenient; enormous collection of resources, and a platform upon which users share what they love directly with one another — the P2P (peer-to-peer) technology brew the power to upgrade the internet to the next generation, the conventional portal website, the collective dormitory, to the more luxury and individual apartment, and surely has it found its place in China’s growing online industry.

Xunlei (meaning thunderbolt) Co Ltd, a Shenzhen based networking company, has played a leading role of the P2P industry since 2006. Accordingly, over 100 million Chinese internet users have been used to turning on their computers along with this tiny software, a few MB large, to drag down sea of online resources to the hardware, and in an exceeding speed. However, due to the limited constraint, if not an aid, the pirate videos and music take the majority of the exchanged content, which is exactly the reason on 15, Feb that Motion Pictures Association, on behalf of its six member companies such as Paramount and Sony, filed civil complaints in Shanghai against Xunlei over copyright infringement.

It immediately arrested the attention of millions of Chinese internet users, who more or less have enjoyed the free musics, videos, and downloading. As a recent official report indicates, more than half Chinese users surf online for entertainment. That’s why blogger Kang Guoping explained people’s concern over the incident as this:

We are all worrying that once the foreigners win the lawsuit, they would be interested in going deeper, one after another, so that much of our entertainment would be gone.

Guilty or Not, is it important?

At the very beginning, the controversy weirdly went beyond the lawsuit itself, partly due to the sensitive terms U.S (MPA, U.S based) and China (Xunlei, China based), and the aftereffect of thetrade conflict between the two powers.

The essay “Xunlei sued becasue of being too powerful” commented:

The same as the fidget brought to America by China’s leaping economy, the growing internet industry here again upset Uncle Sam. Being the leader of P2P industry in China, Xunlei is the most vulnerable target under the attack from America. The series of trade conflicts these years has extended to the internet.

The writer yelled at the end of his article: “Being the Chinese netizens with conscience, we support Xunlei to win the case with both feet. We have to guard our national interest!”

Another widely circulated essay by Liu Xingliang, a famous IT blogger, moreover unreservedly called the legal action “A 2nd Burning of the Imperial Palace.”

Tool Theory and the Story of Baidu

A more credible argument based its point on that Xunlei is but a platform provider, without the ability to discern and prohibit the rampant piracy going upon the platform. Zhou Xinning argued in his blog:

I stand against piracy. But it’s notable why Xunlei was sued just being a downloading tool? If a thief steals with a pincher, then who are you going to prosecute? The pincher-maker or the thief? The pincher is nothing but a tool. It is the linked third-party websites that provide piracy, while Xunlei itself has done nothing to violate the copyrights, but to supply information service. The software company has helped internet users to quickly download what they desire for, and a tool can hardly recognize, predict and control the legitimacy of those videos.

In the announcement of MPA, it also admits that Xunlei “facilitates”, rather than makes the “pirate films hosted on various systems spread across the internet”.

The amazing downloading speed brought by Xunlei indeed makes people addictive. Once you are to download certain resources, either sofware, video or music, Xunlei would automatically find you various source-points available（5 to 60), then simultaneously driving down the desired stuff to you.

Moreover, once you have downloaded the desired stuff, you, will also be added to be a new node of the source-points, which therefore grow exponentially. During the course, Xunlei “seems” to have just indexed the material.

And it is the “Tool Theory”, exactly, that helped Baidu, the leading search engine in China beat on court the 7 international record labels, Universal, Sony BMG, and Warner included, which sued it for aiding piracy in 2007. And two of the companies have even turned around after the sentence, seeking cooperation with Baidu. It’s not likely to be wise to fight against the rooted habits of Chinese users who have taken the music downloading (free!) as their No.1 usage of the internet, according to an investigation. That's also why experts interpreted that the movie companies sued Xunlei this time just for a chip for future cooperation deal.

Lunch should cost
“How awesome is nationalism！” In 18 Feb, reviewing some comments above, the blogger Liu Huafang at last exclaimed in his article “Prize Xunlei for being sued?“.

Should Xunlei be regarded as legal because it’s a domestic enterprise? So terrible is nationalism, that it can confuse right and wrong. Is it so hard to just make it the way it is? Should a man, who saw his wife out of red-light district, tell that she was doing good to GDP?

And Zhan Keli commented:

If Xunlei just performed like a P2P provider, I believe no one would sue it. But on its homepage and the desktop of the software, you can clearly discover alluring information such as “Here you can find Moive A, here Movie B!” And they might say, “Fine, there is nothing to do with me if you download pirate stuff, since I only tell about their information. But as we cooperate with Google, we can send you a free searching button, and once you click it, you’ll get what you desire for.

He struck back the “thief and pincher analogy”:

Of course, I would catch the thief rather than the pincher-maker. But what if the maker sends a note that teaches you how to steal along with the pincher? Should he be caught?

To testify, I entered the Xunlei homepage, and immediately found movies, music and sitcoms indexed in apple-pie order, headlines, descriptions and user comments attached. You can search out desired movies, from the very old to quite lately, National Treasure 2 and 1st Blood 4 for example, and download them, or, you can watch them online, but have to first install Xunlei Kankan, a specific software.

A more in-depth analyse was given by Justso. He slashed Xunlei on both its business mode and technological core. He first derided the saying that MPA members sued Xunlei for future cooperation.

99% material running on Xunlei’s platform is pirate. Cooperate to help distribute legal copies? Once the pirates were swept out, 99% clients of Xunlei would vanish.

In Baidu vs. record labels, the judgement favored Baidu because of the law standard adopted. But Justso said, even under such a standard, the Xunlei one year ago must have to be illegal.

Xunlei adopted its special P2P protocol of transmission, a patent it developed, and thus all XUnlei downloading should be conducted by Xunlei software. It doesn't have openness at all, and cannot apply the reason Baidu has used to debate, as the latter uses http protocol.

Then, Justso revealed Xunlei’s recent project to avoid copyright-related litigations. Obviously, he stated, Xunlei tried to copy Baidu’s success. It built a new search engine called Gougou.

Before the Gougou was constructed, Xunlei is an indefinite provider of pirates, but along with the occurrence of Gougou, the web page from which you download turn into the search results of Gougou, and the protocol of all the resources has also changed into http and ftp, both the public protocols. The links are directed to unknown downloading stations, which have apparently nothing to do with Xunlei.

And Xunlei, in addition, provides blog service. The users can set up blogs first to issue the resources.

As Justso pointed out, after searching out results on Gougou, I can find http links directed to a great many little, distributed websites. And beside the link, a Copyright Protection Statement is attached, which allow the copyright owners to demand Xunlei to remove the illegal stuff. But it also allowed the resource providers to “anti-demand”, to recover the removed material, if they allege to have the right. And Xunlei clearly declare it would take no responsibility if any side tells lie.

As bloggers said, Xunlei forces the copyright owners to face numerous download stations, itself staying aside. The difficulty of right-claim actions would be huge.

Justso elaborated on Xunlei’s plan:

Xunlei imitates Baidu to distribute the files and URLs to thousands of little websites, but meanwhile expects to control these websites, forcing them to collaborate, and at the next step forces the copyright owners to give up litigations and to work together.

By this method, Xunlei convenes the power and traffic of P2P ,Bt, and piracy.

The future

Why is Xunlei prospering? Justso explained:

“Since the establishment of Xunlei, not many download stations have not been shut down for several times and turned into underground. Download tools and sharing softwares have gone through this too. E-donkey, wareZ, and MovieZ have also been shut down or sued in Europe and U.S. But for every time Xunlei escaped this, and as the only survivor, it developed another large group of users.

He concluded, many foreign investors favor Xunlei particularly for its ability on both technology and the local government's protection.

That’s why observers said Xunlei was sued in Shanghai rather than Shenzhen, for that the place matters.

Who will win the game ultimately? The rooted, native magnate or the international labels?

Born with the original sin of spreading piracy, would P2P finally find its way out? As the fire has burned to right outside the door, China seems to be no longer their paradise. No one can tell who will win, particularly that at the eve of Olympics, the country is facing a choice of fame and its industry.

as Zhao Keli said:

Chinese enterprises have to be not only powerful, but to be able to win the respect of users and opponents as well.

Could that be reached?

(Blog quotes all translated from Chinese and bloggers quoted all native Chinese. The rest part original)

6 comments · »»

Total lunar eclipse inspires vloggers

Juliana Rincón Parra · 00:15

lingua → mk · sq

Videos from different countries show the total lunar eclipse, just in case you missed it or wish to relive the moment.The only total lunar eclipse we'll see in 2008 and the last one until Dec 21st 2010 took place this past February 20th.

A lunar eclipse is an event that happens when the full moon passes through the Earth´s shadow, and a total lunar eclipse means that it passes through the darkest part of the shadow, known as the umbra. According to the NASA, the 3 hour and 26 minute eclipse was “visible from South America and most of North America (on Feb. 20) as well as Western Europe, Africa, and western Asia (on Feb. 21).”

A tour in YouTube shows us many different takes on the eclipse:

From Belize, user bassimpact uploaded the following video with music by flutist Pablo Collado [es] :

From Argentina, user KrrAinagotable posted this video with subtitles, explaining the process and images from his window, as well as adding some footage taken from the TV in different areas of Argentina.

From Capetown in South Africa Finn Gregory has a time lapse video showing the eclipse as seen from there.

From Mexico, user holatabasco posted a video where street noise accompanies the pinprick image of a slowly disappearing moon.

And to roundup, user pookeo1 uploaded this last video with images from different places in the world including the US, Canada, Czech Republic, Brazil and Germany.