Cruel and Unusual Geography

Here’s a couple of gotchas that took a minute or two to sort out when I did my first ever Wordpress install last night. Essentially file permissions weren’t quite what I expected.

• When unzipped in the web server root, all subdirectories had their permission bits set to 0700. It took me a while to notice this and realise it was the cause of my installation failing. A quick

find . -type d|xargs chmod +rx

sorted that out.

• Wordpress didn’t have permission to create the .htaccess file it needed to do URL rewriting (click on the heading of this post to see it in action). Problem quickly solved with

touch .htaccess
chmod 666 .htaccess

(Yes, I probably should have done something a little more restrictive with the .htaccess file.)

It’s marvellous having a hosting provider who provides shell access.

So, even people with little interest in digital media or copyright issues are becoming aware of the fuss over Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act.

The mainstream media began taking notice when concern spread beyond the technical community in New Zealand — ISPs and professional organisations such as the New Zealand Computer Society had roundly criticised the legislation as unfair and unworkable. British comedian Stephen Fry blacked out his Twitter account in sympathy with the many others in New Zealand who have blacked out their Twitter and Facebook avatars (pictures) in protest at the Act. This was picked up by a number of commentators.

Yesterday a petition of over 10000 signatures was presented to parliament by a protest group of between 120 and 300 people, depending who you believe. There is coverage of the protest in overseas media and on New Zealand television.

What’s it all about?

In brief, the amended law requires your ISP (which could also be your employer or the local public library) to disconnect you from the internet if they receive three complaints about you breaching copyright laws. That’s three allegations — no proof is required.

There’s more detail at the Creative Freedom blackout site.