Global Voices » Slovakia

Slovakia: Stop ACTA Protest

Tibor Blazko — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:07:22 +0000

An anti-ACTA rally took place in Bratislava on Feb. 4. On the protest's Facebook page [sk], nearly 7,500 people wrote they would attend, and over 3,800 wrote they'd “maybe” attend. The weather was cold and windy; the recent news from Poland, which has postponed the ratification of ACTA, was good; and it's unlikely that anything will be approved before the Slovak early elections in March. As a result, only 500 people or so showed up for the rally [sk; photos; video]. This week, a number of Slovak and Czech politicians announced they were in favor of postponing the ratification of the controversial treaty.

Slovakia: Protesting Corruption, Protesting “Gorilla”

Tibor Blazko — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 01:32:36 +0000

The Economist's Eastern Approaches blog writes about Slovakia's corruption scandal caused by the leaked info from the 2005-06 wiretapping operation codenamed “Gorilla” (more - here). On Friday, Jan. 27, an anti-corruption rally - “Protest Gorila” [sk; Facebook page]- took place in the capital Bratislava (photos are here, videos - here). The media reported “hundreds” to 4,000 of protesters at the rally, while blogger Ján Gašo counted [sk] at least 2,375 people on a photo taken at the time when people were still arriving at the rally.

Slovakia: Roma “Apartheid” - and New Housing?

Tibor Blazko — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 01:01:47 +0000

According to this report [en], a US-based Hindu group was shocked by the “maltreatment” of the Roma in Slovakia, calling “to end Roma apartheid.” At the same time, the Slovak government announced [en] a new wave of social housing construction for the Roma, expecting that “the number of illegal Roma settlements should drop by 25 percent within the next eight years.”

Slovakia: More News on Overly Expensive Website Design

Tibor Blazko — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:13:52 +0000

Aktualne.sk reports [sk] that, following the initial financial inspection by the Ministry of Culture, the Slovak National Gallery is now required to pay 140 euro back, from the 25,000 euro that it reportedly spent on its new website (more on this here and here). Meanwhile, according to the World Association of Slovaks Living Abroad, the organization's new web page (still under construction) will cost over 32,000 euro and will be paid for by the state-funded Office for Slovaks Living Abroad, whose head, according to reports [sk], has already hired his friend's company for over 55,000 euro.

Slovakia: Competition to Re-Design the National Gallery's Site

Tibor Blazko — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:47:48 +0000

In response to the 25,000-euro “minimalist” website design of the Slovak National Gallery, zajtra.sk started its own competition [sk] for the website's re-design, offering 100 euro to the winner. Authors are mostly students, and they often declare how many hours - and, sometimes, minutes - they spent on their re-design.

Slovakia: TV Show on Corruption Cancelled

Tibor Blazko — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 01:00:30 +0000

The Slovak public TV channel STV cancelled [sk] a scheduled live talk show on the alleged widespread corruption of 2005-2006 [en], which involved many of the country's past and present politicians. Head of RTVS (Radio and TV Slovakia) said [sk] that broadcasting such a program, produced by an external producer before the early elections in spring, “may pose a risk.” According to the blog [sk] of Miroslava Roháčová, only seven people took part in the protest in front of the TV station's building. After the most recent negotiations [sk], the show has been re-scheduled for this week.

Slovakia: 25,000 Euro for National Gallery's Website?

Veronica Khokhlova — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:07:48 +0000

Slovak netizens are discussing the overpriced new website of the Slovak National Gallery [sk, en]: SME.sk reports [sk] that the “minimally designed” [en] site cost Slovak taxpayers some 25,000 euro (allegedly, 20 times the price of the website of the Czech National Gallery in Prague [cz]); SME.sk blogger Martin Palšovič has already sent an inquiry to the Slovak audit/control office [sk] (links via Tibor Blazko).

CEE: A Roundup on the Roma Issues

Veronica Khokhlova — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:51:27 +0000

An anti-discrimination Roma flash mob/dance duel in Bucharest (video - here), and a report by Bulgarian Roma students on media coverage of Roma-related issues - at TOL's Roma Transitions blog. Education for the Roma children in the UK, the Czech Republic and Slovakia - at the Economist's Eastern Approaches blog. (Update: TOL's East of Center also has a post on “the Czech Republic’s segregated education policy” for the Roma students.)

Slovakia: The “Work vs Money” Dilemma

Tibor Blazko — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:47:12 +0000

SME newspaper published an article [sk] about a recent experiment in the city of Krompachy in East Slovakia. Unemployed people were being asked to get involved in a public flood protection project. In this region with a high level of unemployment, only four young men agreed. All others refused, claiming that they'd be poorer if they took this job.

The city calculated monthly budgets for local families with seven members - one where the husband accepted employment in the public sector, and the other where the husband was unemployed. They found that, because of losing some unemployment benefits and due to higher transportation expenditures, the employed man had 140 euros less than the unemployed one.

“And why do I have to work? To wake up every morning to go to work? They will take away the money [benefits] for child food, for housing and it is not a small amount. I prefer to not work and this way I will even save a few bucks,” Gejza, a father of four children, is quoted in the newspaper.

What is left unsaid in the original newspaper article is that many Slovaks would assume that someone unemployed, father of many children, with a Hungarian given name and living in East Slovakia is likely a member of the Roma ethnic group.

Spokeswoman of the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Family said for the newspaper that “the Ministry knows about the badly tuned system of allowances for those in material need. Because of this, [the Ministry] has already made an effort to introduce changes, so that the recipient of state benefits had to deserve them. Unfortunately, the proposal encountered opposition and did not make it to the negotiation stage. Anyway, we continue to look for an adequate system change.”

Below are some comments from the article's discussion.

Element:

Even if it's 140 euro more for a working person, it will not help too much. Because for a man who has never been working in his life such a difference will not make him work.

Mrmr:

An extremely […] misleading article. It's not the social benefits that are high, but the wages - incomes - are low. If they said that payment for flood protection work would be 1,000 euros per month, then the numbers and comparisons would look different…

Smeckar:

Parental allowances should not be paid as a standard, but just like a deductible item from the wage. Those who do not work will get no allowances … otherwise you can't make people work…

buster234:

Why would they go to work when we are working for them! And when there is a lack of money, they will have our social contributions increased!

addis pareba:

Badly tuned is not the system of allowances and social benefits. Badly tuned is the system of work remuneration.

Tress:

Who is writing that social allowances are too high? They are not. Do you want to tell me that about 450 euros for a family with six members is [too] much? It is not. It is necessary to increase wages and not to lower small benefits!

djmaros (in reply):

Someone is standing in your way? Just ask your boss to add you 500 euros per month. Will he?

treke:

For a parasite it is [too] much. For a person who cares about himself alone and is intentionally overeating and overdrinking the results of someone else's work, it is 100% more than necessary.

racional:

They encountered opposition? Who are those opponents to lowering of the benefits for useless mouths?

mudla (in reply):

The opponents see it realistically. Where does that minister want to employ that unemployed to create merit? How many unemployed do we have for one free job position?

zeta reticuli (in reply):

Where to employ them? Public works. […] All the streets are shining […]. At least they will not steal and make children.

econoir.sk:

Don't be naive. It's 400,000 of voters.

zeta reticuli:

The solution is … when an unemployed person starts to work, he should not lose the whole allowance, it will just be lowered … This way it can't happen that a working person has less than a non-working one, however low his wages are.

prdola:

“Ministry: change is necessary”
White people will work more and for less money.

Lionluck1971:

I have just one question: how many officials our state needed to calculate what one unqualified Roma has been able to calculate?

Slovakia: Medical Doctors' Protest

Tibor Blazko — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:32:13 +0000

One of the most important Slovak events in 2011 was the protest of over 2,000 medical doctors employed by state hospitals; 1,200 of them (from the total of 6,500) temporarily cancelled their job contracts later. It was not the first such protest. Medical doctors had already been protesting in 2006, demanding a 25% wage raise and cancellation of the transformation of hospitals to (state-owned) stock companies.

In 2009, too, doctors were not satisfied with their wages. But the head of their trade union declared that in the time of crisis they wanted to be with the rest of the society. At the time of the emerging euro crisis of 2011 this solidarity was no longer there. That's why some people labeled their protest as political, even also the former Prime Minister asked them to not desert their patients.

Demanding 1.5-3 times of the country's average wage and adhering to labor laws to eliminate overtime work, doctors again requested to stop transforming hospitals: in their understanding, the transformation was a preparation for an imminent privatization. They were also afraid that it could harm professional training of medical students and young doctors.

The government offered them a smaller wage raise (300 euro per month on the average, which is comparable to the local minimal wage) and refused to stop the hospital reform, naming it a crucial step towards higher efficiency.

Katarína Ragáčová wrote an text [sk] about how she had lost her child during the 2006 protest, because of the inactivity of the hospital staff, noting that hers was the third child lost during that day.

According to some sources, over 20 percent of the country's doctors hold a second job in the private sector, which weakens the overtime claim of their protest. Also, 25 percent of the Slovak households have had experience with medical corruption, which means that the doctors' actual income is often bigger than their official income. Asking for even more may appear immoral if you compare the doctors' official monthly average salary of 1500 euro with the 770 euro a month that Slovakia's teachers are paid.

So it was not so surprising that the majority of the population interpreted the protesters' demands as private interest and did not support the doctors' protest.

At the beginning of December, the most radical group of some 1,200 doctors actually did quit their jobs. A state of emergency was declared in the affected hospitals, which temporarily made it possible to call the doctors back to work, against their will.

The trade unions recommended these doctors to visit their own doctors and declare inability to work because of tiredness and stress. The head of the union compared the help of 25 Czech army doctors to the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact forces in 1968.

After a few days, the government and the trade union came to an agreement, which, among other things, allowed the doctors who had quit - and who immediately became healthy again - to return to their jobs.

The head of the union said that the lower negotiated wage growth (1.25-2.3 times the average wage) was proof that their requests were not just about the money. The PM claimed, however, that nearly all of the negotiations were about the wages.

The Association of Slovak Hospitals expressed its opinion that higher wages would bring collapse to the country's smaller hospitals. They believe it might happen a few weeks after the March 10 early parliamentary elections.

Below are some views [sk] translated from the discussion under the article on the outcome of the negotiations:

vlasok:

Congratulations to those doctors who held out until the end, despite the massive anti-campaign in the media, the incompetent minister and his strikebreakers

GeoRW:

It is especially necessary to say thank you to those unknown doctors who stayed with the patients. Probably the society will never know their names, but these are the noble heroes, not those who, despite the government's concessions, were willing to let patients die and achieved nothing but frustration and aversion to the medical profession in the society.

morgul2:

and now it's time for the teachers [to protest]

Yoishi Snipo:

And healthcare [quality] will further go down … and doctors will receive salaries that most of them do not deserve and patients will continue to die in hospitals, because doctors … did not receive [bribes] from them

praxon:

Doctors did not quit their jobs because their families are starving, but because they want more.

Kvantový mechanik:

I want some government to finally restore order in healthcare. It's clear that doctors will really squeal. The better measures for the patient, the more squealing by the Slovak physicians.

maico123:

The best would be to publish [the names of] the doctors who did not accept the previous government's compromise 300€ and who in the state of emergency declared [their] illness! I do not want such filth to treat people, because they do not care about patients but just about the money.

gomezbandido:

The government has been defeated and the taxpayers are losing with it … It is just a question of time until doctors do it again - they already know that the government and the public are weak.

nikonus:

Everything bad is good for something. I believe that most people will change their view on doctors and will stop perceiving them as some sort of a special caste. Pity that this will also affect the doctors who deserve the highest respect.

noreplay:

they will miraculously recover - it's enough to put 200 or 500 euro banknotes on their foreheads and all illnesses would be gone!

ufffffo:

I congratulate citizens of Slovakia. Doctors have saved their hospitals. Many citizens already understand this, many will understand later.

Slovakia: The Most Expensive Apple Computers

Tibor Blazko — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 08:33:02 +0000

University of Economics in Bratislava (EUBA) has recently signed a contract to acquire electronics and software for its Faculty of National Economy for a total price of over 1.8 million euro. Many of the items are overpriced (see the contract here [sk, .pdf]).

For example, one MacBook would cost the university over 9,000 euro, despite the fact that it was not the latest model (and, to be accurate, the price of “9,000 euro for a MacBook” also covers a 24-inch Apple LCD display, an external keyboard and a mouse - normally, all together, it would cost 3,000 euro or so - plus an extended service contract).

According to media reports [sk], the university feels no problem with such a contract, explaining that the prices are the result of a public competition, and it was enough to offer the lowest prices to win it. And, anyway, Apple computers make up “just 4.03% of the total expenses.”

The supplier that won the contract, Gratex International, declared [sk] that no profit was being made from some items, so they decided to make it from others.

Here are some comments [sk] from the discussion that follows the SME newspaper article linked to above.

Doctor X:

Parents! Entrust them with your children for 5 years. Application accepted until February.

Servius fortis:

That [school] lost the moral right to teach economics? Just the opposite! It has confirmed again that no better school exists for Slovak politicians!

petrik 12:

The nation's economists are learning how to deal with state [property]

Mima1406:

The best thing is that we students are freezing during lectures.

Hranol červený - najnebezpečnejší živočích:

Our professors do not know how to switch a data projector on … what do they need MacBooks for? The best thing is that we have to wear jackets during classes because it is cold there…

pressburgerzwilsonova1:

they behave like those in this classic joke: two Slovak nouveau riches meet in Paris and one asks: how much did you pay for that jacket? - 250 euro. - You are stupid, they have it for 450 next door!

medofil:

Software for creating PDF documents for 8,748 euros.

Gimli:

I have software for creating PDF documents for 0 euros - Open Office. It is no special wonder but I think for a school it should be enough.

tom_sk:

University of Economics in Bratislava owns the most expensive MacBook in the world. They have to lose their accreditation immediately! It is in direct conflict with what they are teaching.

tlstoch:

It is a hoax. It is simply impossible to believe this. It must be a hoax.

sedmokraska321:

Is this how they understand “higher investment in education”?

Corvus corax:

Isn't [Slovakia's Minister of Finance] Ivan Mikloš their graduate, too?

seth82 (in reply):

If it was only he… But also the present minister of education Eugen Jurzyca

Servius fortis:

Will some politician or NGO file a lawsuit? Or will we just jabber?

lexik:

It seems I was wrong. For many years, I thought that economists were stupid and unable to act. Probably they are not, they are just graduates of our EUBA and have knowledge from their study rooted deeply in their minds.

mozilko:

You probably do not know how such competitions are designed. Already in conditions are such criteria …. that immediately disqualify 99% of the Slovak companies.

Hujanita:

I've always said that MacBooks are too cheap… People are ready to pay much more… This university is a shining example ;-)

Slovakia: Visualising Business Registry Data with Vorsr.sk

Jakub Górnicki — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 10:42:28 +0000

Vorsr.sk [sk] is a tool for visual exploration of Slovakia's business registry. It treats the information as one big social network, grabbing the newest data live from the current registry database and delivering up-to-date connections of searched for individuals. The business registry contains information about all Slovak people who own a business, own part of one or are board members.

Following is an interview with Slovakian Michal Habala, who together with a colleague came up with the idea for Vorsr.sk in August 2008, using JUNG, an open-source Java project by a couple of students from the University of California.

Sample data visualisation from Vorsr.sk

Global Voices (GV): How much time did it take to launch Vorsr.sk before it went live? What were people's first reactions?

Michal Habala (MH): At the beginning we thought that it would be ready in a few weeks/months but when we saw the data quality in the business registry we decided to go deeper and implement data cleansing algorithms and other functionality. This and the fact that it is not a commercial project (it was always balanced between all our free time activities) meant that the beta version for public testing was released 18 months after we started. But I think it was worth it; the reactions are always very good, as we can present some results, which you would never be able to see in any other relevant project or tool.

GV: How did the idea change from day one? What are your users saying and how are you adapting to their needs?

MH: This tool is in never-ending development driven basically by our users. Every time we get an impulse from our users to add some functionality, we begin to analyze this request and try to make it happen.

GV: What are your plans for the near and distant future?

MH: The tool is evolving in time and now we are introducing a Czech version (beta version here) and probably in two months we are looking to introduce a Czechoslovak version (from both countries). This could be the first European project which provides information from joint business registries to the public (and it’s completely free).

GV: What is/was your main obstacle while developing and running the project?

MH: Probably poor data quality in the business registry. We tried to make this tool without downloading the data to our databases, so in Slovak it runs as an online wrapper of the business registry. This approach has its positives (like no problem with request limits and always up to date data) but recently we discovered that this approach has some limitations, which we want to overcome. This is mainly the data loading time and stability of the business registry, which is continuously getting worse. Even though we like the concept of using government services as data sources for our tool, we have to face the fact that these services have a long way to go before they can be used in such way.

GV: Was there anyone angry at you after you launched this project?

MH: I think that people still don’t get it what they can do with this tool. Most of our users just look at their own business and do not go deeper. Partly it’s our fault because we don’t pay much attention to the promotion of results yet. But we are going to change that and embed some introductory (tutorial) videos and results-showing videos in our home page. Then I can imagine that some business people would be annoyed that we used their case to present our tool. But in general I think there’s nothing to be worried about, it’s all public data already accessible through the public business registry.

GV: What will be new in the beta version?

MH: The beta version is completely new inside. There was some major object and internal structure redesign, which will improve stability, the speed of the applet and will allow us to easily integrate other countries and add other sources of information. Also some GUI [Graphical User Interface] redesign and new graph analyzing algorithms. So it will be quite new in the end, but we are talking about a wait of probably one year.

GV: I find this tool currently hard to use - there is lots of Java, it's quite slow in my browser. Don’t you lose some of your audience because of these issues?

MH: I know that Java is source consuming and therefore the whole tool is slower in browsers with large amounts of data loaded, but this tool was never meant to be used this way. It was designed to be a small applet for visualizing small graphs online loaded from the business registry. When we saw that big business cases are really big and you have to load very large graphs to see the context, we decided to make a real tool from it. The first step to overcome the speed issue was enabling the install of it as a desktop application, which runs faster. Another step is to release a new version with optimized algorithms (i.e. the beta version mentioned earlier). But at the end, it will never be a click-and-see component for everyone, it’s a tool and when a user wants to use it he/she has to accept its demands.

GV: What are the promotional plans? Do media and journalists use it?

MH: We don’t have information as to whether any media use it. I think that there are some media people among our users but that’s all. I have to say that we underestimated the value of promotion. We are mainly programmers but we have to face the fact that every project needs a promotion plan.

GV: Is there any business person who wants to sponsor you?

MH: This goes hand in hand with the question before I think. No promotion means no sponsor. On the other hand we are getting promo support from the Fair-play Alliance in Slovak Republic and now also from people of the Kohovolit.eu portal in the Czech Republic for which we are very thankful.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to do this interview.

Slovakia: Checking Politicians' Facts With Demagog.sk

Jakub Górnicki — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:26:48 +0000

Demagog.sk is a Slovakian web project that aims to analyze politicians' claims based on facts and ensure they are correct and used in the right context.

Inspiration for the initiative came from a Slovak press watch blog (spw.blog.sme.sk) [sk] on which there were occasional posts about the country's Sunday debates and the factually inaccurate numbers/arguments that people had used in them. Projects such as PolitiFact and FactCheck in the United States fulfil the same function, where people analyse political claims and rate them as true/untrue/misleading/ etc.

Here, I spoke with Matej Hruska, the student founder of Demagog.sk.

Demagog.sk

Global Voices (GV): How much time did it take to launch the project before it went live? What were people's first reactions?

Matej Hruska (MH): We had a three months period of testing of what we would be capable of in terms of how much time is needed to analyse one television debate etc. We used the WordPress platform for the site, so to set it up was not very time consuming. First reactions were (and still are, when someone new comes to the site) that it is great to have someone who watches those political ramblings every Sunday. We launched the site couple of months before the elections so the attention was kind of logical.

GV: Has the idea changed since the start? What are your users saying and how are you adapting to their needs?

(MH): The idea is still the same, we use the same methodology, but we have upgraded the website and now we use a CMS made specifically for our needs (with statistics for every politician, etc).

Usually our users dont say much, or at least they don't say anything to us. The basic feedback we get is when someone is not satisfied with our analysis or conclusion.

GV: What are your plans for near and further future?

(MH): The plan is to cover debates on public radio as well, and to monitor politicians' claims continually during the week, e.g. at major press conferences, events etc. Another goal is to spread the concept to other countries.

GV: What is/was your main obstacle while developing and running your project?

(MH): As with any similar project, the main obstacle is lack of time and money. In the beginning we ran the whole thing as a voluntary project in our free time; since September [2011] we have been getting some funding and other volunteers from a Slovak NGO, SGI. But we still have to find a way how to make the whole thing sustainable.

GV: How do you attract more people to interact?

(MH): The basic idea is that we want people to dispute our conclusion (sort of “crowdsourcing” the fact checking) - we do not think we are absolutely right in every case. However, people often react in an angry way, which rules out any rational discussion. Given that our main field is to fact check statements, we dont have any other special feature which would give people more space to get engaged.

GV: Have politicians ever contacted you to “straighten something out”? Or do you contact them?

(MH): Sometimes we try to contact them - in cases when they are talking about some report or governmental analysis which is not (yet) online - but they usually do not react.

In a few cases, some of them have contacted us, by commenting under the articles or by email, to add something to their claims, or to prove their opponent had been wrong. We analyse such additional information and if it makes some sense, we add them to the original conclusion, with the byline that they are from such and such person.

GV: How do you collect materials? Do you work as a media monitoring service or do you cooperate with one?

(MH): We have transcripts of debates from Newton Media (a media analysis firm); any other material we look up on Google. That is our main source and tool.

GV: How do you promote your analysis? Do you paste links to some comments below articles on mainstream media?

(MH): We have several opportunities to publish our findings (in fact, too many at the current time, and we don't have time to use them all) in the national media or online. The thing is that we are the first one who are doing something like this here [in Slovakia], so we have been able to attract some media attention.

We also do a kind of “realtime fact check”- we analyse some of the claims during the debates on Sunday using the coveritlive platform. Two slovak news server use the embed code of the coveritlive on their websites.

Thanks for taking the time to answer above questions. Good luck.

Slovakia: New Draft Law Threatens Internet Freedom

Tibor Blazko — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:53:19 +0000

The Slovak Ministry of Finance has published a draft law [sk] that would allow blocking web servers that provide online gambling without a Slovak license. Internet providers would have to block web sites from a list updated twice a month - not by the court, but by the Tax Office.

Against this idea are, among others, the non-governmental Society for Open Information Technologies (SOIT) [sk] and the Slovak IT Association [sk]. SOIT warns that this way Facebook should also be blocked completely, because it allows users to play online roulette and poker.

According to SOIT consumer protection, crime prevention or reduction of tax burden are not sufficient arguments for establishing of Internet censorship: “We believe that the promotion of purely economic interests at the expense of personal freedoms of citizens is particularly dangerous and unconstitutional.”

Their online petition [sk] has been signed by thousands of citizens. Later, the Ministry of Finance asked [sk] the European Commission for their opinion.

Below are some comments from a discussion at SME.sk.

mrf:

this should be … immediately taken to the Constitutional Court … because if it starts, […] we will end up with just the [web] pages of the Ministry of Finance :-(

Blur(rr)e(d) vision:

This whole idea is sick. What if I earn money and go to Las Vegas and spend it all there? Will the Minister prevent me from doing this?

yep, me again:

when we start blocking some selected entrepreneurs and companies … that are based in the EU, then we say that we want to be in the free-trade club only if it is useful to us … and that is already not free trade.

Marty:

Just as I can order goods from a German e-shop, or let a licensed German architect design my house, I can freely bet through a British online casino.

Peter Šoltés:

If the Minister was serious in that he wants to increase the intake into the state budget, he would first eliminate Tipos [a 100% state-owned company] monopoly on online poker and online casino.

kohutisko:

And next they will block Amazon, because a local company has higher prices, and we will search using Zoznam.sk only because Google will be blocked too. Not to mention the fact that Wikipedia will be blocked in all language versions because of our cobweb-filled libraries!

Vilsa:

we will start with gambling and end up like in China … because the state will not release its claws when it can extend its scope and power.

risiak:

And speaking of morality, does he think that the same services, just provided by Slovak companies, will be moral?

refuge:

What's interesting is that they never propose to proceed in the opposite direction - somewhere else they have better conditions, so let's change the conditions in our country.

corr:

A typical political solution - hardly feasible, its effectiveness is problematic and it probably also violates international treaties … So it seems the problem will stay unsolved … but it will trigger other, more serious problems. This approach - “we do not know how to tax it, so we will disable it” - is incredible and shows that the author of this solution has a problem with elementary understanding of how the world behaves in the 21st century.

salam00n:

I would like to hear/read the Minister's opinion on how a person threatens public morality when he is playing PC online gambling game at home?

Pomaranc77:

disable something on the Internet? lol :-)))

MaRmAR:

Mr. Minister, please concern yourself with the real problems and needs of Slovakia and its people. Leave such nonsense to others who understand that blocking or censoring the internet is virtually impossible (if you do not want to be a second China) and incorrect, if not unconstitutional.

nieze:

We all are stupid, incapable of thinking for ourselves, making decisions and acting independently. Therefore, we need clever, omnipotent, the most beautiful, the best, infallible politicians who will tell us that when we put our hand into the fire it will burn, because we stupid idiots can't figure it out by ourselves.

pavuk29:

What nonsense. Do they want to draw boundaries on the net?

Thumbnail image of Slovakian flag by Flickr user HatM (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Slovakia: Big Money in the Tube

Tibor Blazko — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 11:14:18 +0000

A few weeks ago, the ‘Slovak Performing and Mechanical Rights society‘ (SOZA) - the country's music copyright organization - started billing web servers, typically those for young music fans, which were embedding YouTube and Vimeo videos on their pages.

The organization was demanding [sk] 33.20 euro per month, or in cases where there was no license agreement with SOZA, a fine of 99.60 euro. However, blogger and lawyer Martin Husovec claims [sk] that there is no law allowing SOZA to impose a fine on anyone.

Testing the limits

YouTube by Flickr user codenamecueball (CC BY 2.0).

When people behind each individual server found out that they were not alone, they united in their response; however, it was not easy for them to explain to SOZA that there was nearly no difference between links to videos from other servers and embedded videos from the same source.

Testing the limits, SOZA was asked whether it was allowed simply to post URLs to various musical pieces. According to blogger Michael “Smith” Dragan of Midra Blog, SOZA's media department chief replied [sk]: “What is a URL?” Blogger Juraj Grečnár also brought attention to SOZA's innovative term “hyperactive text link” (that is hypertext link) [sk], which gained instant fame.

Not only web authors were active. Ordinary people also started bombarding the SOZA website by embedding videos and contacting their hotline asking for clarifications [sk] of, sometimes made-up, license problems.

Even a Facebook page was created for the virtual Slovak protection racket association (SOVA) [sk] as a forum to share news, ideas and jokes. Thus, made-up online conversations ensued:

SOVA:

Last weekend our inspectors made raids on popular picnic places, where drunk youngsters were singing songs in public. Overall 54 cases were reported, including 22 folk songs where we received just half fee because of unknown author.

Luboš Hulmiukolen:

Hello, I have one more question. I have a headache and it was caused by a song by a famous Slovak interpreter. Is there any chance of compensation for me?

SOVA (in reply):

SOVA does not compensate listeners for listening to music. SOVA just compensates authors because they are played and listened!

SOVA:

Our inspector was witness to a funeral, where the bereaved commemorated the deceased by a moment of silence. That's why he did not wait but promptly issued them an advance invoice for an unreported public production of part of the 4′33″ composition by John Cage!

Peter Maggy Kotúč:

I'm still thinking about one melody, but I'm just not sure which one it is… Is it best that I pay every existing artist…?

Tiko Dobrota:

I'm going for a weekend with friends at a weekend house. How and how much do I have to pay to be allowed to play the guitar by the fireplace?

Slavoš Leoswald:

Sounds also include ultrasounds and other inaudible wave lengths. Beware! It's not a joke. Sometimes it is enough to breathe deeply and you will have to pay 2,000 Euro.

SOVA:

Today our inspector found a case where a nursemaid in kindergarten taught children to imitate animal sounds without paying copyright fee for their use!

Ear Drum Kru:

Hello!
It seems to us you are the best, so our band would like to register with you. We have only about 3,674 Euro in savings but we hope that it will be enough to begin with. And we want to ask, whether we … ehm … could play our songs at concerts for a small charge. Is it possible? How much would it be?

Štefan Mišík:

Greetings.
Recently, I have not felt well and that's why I want to ask … how to pre-pay for an “after life” package…

Robert Madaj:

Hello, I want to transfer all my income to SOVA to make administration of my fees easier. Would it be possible for you to send me the rest in the form of lunch vouchers?

Richard Porubský:

Today I was just walking and listening to my mp3, when I realized that I was singing along to it. People could hear it. So I became afraid and threw my mp3 in the river. Am I at risk of something because of it?

FAQ:

Hello, I work as a saxophonist at NASA, and have a question:
Until now we have not paid for using two mediums in the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecrafts, containing among others also a recording of a popular Slovak interpreter's concert. It's already 34 years ago, and the spacecrafts are actually at the boundary of the Solar system … Are there any retroactive measures which are specifically adapted to this supertemporal music in connection with time travel?

Pipi Lidi:

Hello, by reading questions and replies of this quasi-discussion I was quite loudly tapping my forehead. Do I need to pay something to you?

“Massive reaction”

After some time, according to Midra Blog, SOZA, surprised by the “aggressiveness” of the public's “massive reaction”, stepped back declaring that in case of hypertext link and embedded code … a SOZA license is not necessary” [sk], followed by an excuse.

Nevertheless, their website's FAQ page [sk] still contains rules defining when it is necessary to have a contract with an author (meaning represented by SOZA) about linkages to media files stored on a different server.

In a recent SME interview [sk], SOZA's director described that even now there are “various legal opinions”, they will not give it up but will lobby for changing the law. “Definitely, we will not agree with that, if any content shared on websites would be provided for free.” “YouTube, or more precisely Google, are unbelievably rich companies. There is big money in it.”