A little background: prior to the US-Australian Free Trade Agreement from 2005, copyright in Australia expired 50 years after the authors death. After the FTA was signed in 2005, copyright now expires 70 years after the authors death. That’s how it is in Europe, too.

George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm”, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, and four other novels, died January 21st, 1950. So in Australia, his works where in the public domain since 2001. And that didn’t change with the FTA from 2005. While George Orwell’s novels are not in the public domain and are still under copyright in Europe, the opposite is true for Australia. That’s why Australian web sites like Project Gutenberg Australia can legally offer George Orwell’s works for download. George Orwell’s works are also in the public domain in Russia and Canada. In Europe, his works will be in the public domain in 2021, and even later in the US.

Who does expect a kid to know that? If I buy a book, I can legally lend it to as many people as I like. That I can lend it to only one person at a time is a technical limitation of the thing called “book”. Files containing text, music, or film don’t have that technical limitation. Copying and giving it to as many people simultaneously is possible and intuitive. That’s why kids do it all the time. That copyright violations by copying files are described as “stealing” is also counter-intuitive. After you copy a file, it’s not taken away from the original owner, but you’ve made one thing more. If a kid finds something useful on the Internet it will probably use it in intuitive ways: copy it, share it – and thereby potentially breaking the law.

Ok, you can educate the kid in order to minimize copyright violations, but – as shown with “Animal Farm” – you cannot eliminate them completely without making your kid a copyright lawyer. Other options are removing access to the Internet or supervising your kid all the time.

Accessing the Internet via a trustworthy VPN (virtual private network) service provider is another option. My VPN service provider is Ipredator. How to set it up on Windows and OSX is shown on their web site. Instructions for Ubuntu Linux can be found here. I’ll now show you how to set it up under Android 1.6:

Go to “Settings > Wireless controls > VPN settings” and add a new VPN with “Add VPN > Add PPTP VPN”.

Enter the following information:

VPN name: Ipredator
Set VPN server: vpn.ipredator.se
PPT encryption is enabled

Now, you’re ready to connect to the VPN. Tap on “Ipredator” to connect.

Fill in the required account information (user name and password). Hit “Connect”.

You’re now connected to your VPN service provider – see the key in the status bar marked red (I added the marks with Gimp)?

Safely surf the Internet.

While surfing the web, you can get information on the VPN connection.

To Disconnect from your VPN service provider, go to “Settings > Wireless controls > VPN settings” again.

Tap on the VPN named “Ipredator” to disconnect.

If you switch from 3G network to WLAN, you’ll be disconnected from Ipredator. Just reconnect.

I know that PPTP is vulnerable to some sorts of attacks, but using VPN with Ipredator (or other VPN service providers) that way is more of a political statement: we need to change copyright law! All non-commercial copying and sharing of files needs to be legal. Otherwise it’s done anyway and as safely as possible. Trying to prevent people from doing it is like trying to prevent people from Iran or China to access certain parts of the Internet: it will not work.

In the tech-oriented area of the internet, Google Chrome caused more heavy waves than any comparable event before. Reports and discussions surfaced everywhere. According to one source, Google Chrome already had a market share of over 1% after only a few hours – probably caused by curiosity like mine.

Here are some topics – some with a link – I find interesting:

• First impressions
• Why Google releases a browser of its own
• What Chrome can do the others cannot
• Chrome’s effect not only on the browser market
• Security issues of the beta
• Chrome is calling home
• How to prevent Chrome from transmitting data to Google (in German)
• How fast is Chrome really
• Are all of Chrome’s components open source
• Where’re the Mac and Linux versions
• Is the beta of Google Chrome suited for Joe Average
• Lots of opinions on Chrome
• Google, a $100,000 misunderstanding (in German)

Installation and setup

Of course, I was curious too and have tried to download the software. I was able to download ChromeSetup.exe thru a proxy that required authentication, but the subsequent download of the software proper failed due to the fact, that ChromeSetup wasn’t able to handle a proxy that required authentication. It worked with a proxy that didn’t require authentication though. Strange enough, after installation Chrome is able to handle a proxy with authentication.

What I really don’t like is that Chrome is transmitting a unique Id back to Google, so that’s easy to track where the user has been on the internet. To prevent this, change two entries in the file Local State of the Google Chrome installation. Although I can understand Google’s motivation for this, a complete user profile is not something I want Google to have, as I don’t have any control over it.

Bug fixes and more from Google

Google has already addressed some concerns about the EULA and a security problem within a very short period of time, so I hope they will be equally fast fixing new problems as they occur. What they really should address before the first official release is the ability of the user to control in an easy way, what data he wants Google to receive about his surfing habits. If in doubt, don’t send anything. They should not only explain what data is stored on their servers, but give the users a choice.

On the same page, I don’t like how they handle the installation of GoogleUpdate.exe as a service, even though it’s mentioned in section 12 of the Google Terms of Service. It’s not mentioned during the installation of Chrome, that it doesn’t go away after I’ve uninstalled Chrome. It simply stays there and is started every time I log into my computer. Manually editing the Windows registry seems to be required if you want to get rid of the GoogleUpdate service. GoogleUpdate is installed and used by a lot of other Google software too.

It’s fast

After a couple of days using Chrome I’ve to say that I’m impressed by its speed. This doesn’t come from the benchmarks saying that it’s mostly faster than the competition, but from my experiences working with it. It’s not only starting up faster than Firefox 3.0.1, but feels a lot snappier too. Browsing the internet with Chrome is definitely fun.

It’s beta software and not finished yet

The current version of Chrome is an early beta version, so don’t expect that it will not have problems. It’s something you should use only if you’re aware of the risks involved in using beta software. It might have security problems and bugs that can lead to lost data. It shouldn’t be used in production environments.

It’s also missing a lot of features I’m used to expect from other browser like Mozilla Firefox. All the nice little ad-ons are still missing. Especially Adblock Plus is missed here, because only without it I’ve realized how ugly the internet really is. And have you tried to read a RSS feed? It doesn’t work yet.

Conclusion

Google Chrome looks like one piece of software I might love to use one day. Most features present today are impressive already. It will then be added to the list of software from Google I’m using on a regular basis today. I’m using Google software for:

• developing AJAX applications in Java with Google Web Toolkit
• wiring dependencies with the dependency injection framework Google Guice
• extending the Java Collections Framework with Google Collections

These software products I use that come from Google are great, and I like to use them. Chrome is a little bit different as it comes with a price, that not everybody is willing to pay: you give Google the ability to create a user profile of you and you can’t control what they are doing with it. If Chrome has the ability to turn this off, then it might be for me.

Although the EPO is issuing patents on software, they cannot be enforced, because the European Patent Convention excludes software from being patentable. I hope it stays that way. But companies like Microsoft are lobbying extensively in order to change that. If that happens, those patents would not be used to fuel innovation, but to bring down competitors. Software patents are used primarily for that purpose in the US. That’s exactly the opposite of what was intended.

I actually like some of Microsoft’s products, and I still use Windows as a desktop OS. But personal ethics make it harder every day to use products from a company that behaves like Microsoft.

Someone might ask: why does it make such a big difference to have most of Java under the GPL? To find the answer, you have to understand what the GPL is, what it gives you, and what you can do with it. What its intent is. What Richard Stallman wanted.