Preparations for the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in December are not running too smoothly, according to a Reuters report in Forbes magazine.
"Developed and developing nations
were wide apart on Saturday on
managing the Internet and closing
the digital divide between rich and
poor at the end of what was meant
as a final meeting before a world
summit."
The latest version of the draft declaration of principles for the summit is available on the web.
Monday, November 17, 2003
From Dan Gilmore, "Via Greg Aharonian's Internet Patent News Service comes the news that AT&T has received this patent for -- I kid you not -- a way to defeat anti-spam measures:
"A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to
detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.) An address on a list is assigned to one
of m sublists, where m is an integer that is greater than one. A set of m different
messages are created. A different message from the set of m different messages is
sent to the addresses on each sublist. In this way, spam countermeasures based
upon duplicate detection schemes are foiled."
Right. And the other thing being foiled is Internet users' desire to be free of the spam plague. AT&T
should be ashamed of itself."
"A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to
detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.) An address on a list is assigned to one
of m sublists, where m is an integer that is greater than one. A set of m different
messages are created. A different message from the set of m different messages is
sent to the addresses on each sublist. In this way, spam countermeasures based
upon duplicate detection schemes are foiled."
Right. And the other thing being foiled is Internet users' desire to be free of the spam plague. AT&T
should be ashamed of itself."
Friday, November 14, 2003
Thursday, November 13, 2003
The copyright wars are progressing as proponents of expansion introduce a new bill to the Senate in the US.
The "Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act" proposes jailing p2p file sharers for three years for having a single copyright infringing file on their computer. Also someone would get jailed for five years for using a camcorder in a cinema.
"In addition to the prison term, the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act would punish making such movies available on a public "computer network" as a federal felony with a fine of up to $250,000. It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place...
Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who teaches copyright law, said he is "deeply troubled" by the wording of the draft legislation, because it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation
of their rights actually happened.""
I predict a round of vigorous public debate between the usual protagonists in the US. I can't really see "ART" getting too far off the ground.
The "Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act" proposes jailing p2p file sharers for three years for having a single copyright infringing file on their computer. Also someone would get jailed for five years for using a camcorder in a cinema.
"In addition to the prison term, the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act would punish making such movies available on a public "computer network" as a federal felony with a fine of up to $250,000. It would not require that any copyright infringement actually take place...
Peter Jaszi, a professor at American University who teaches copyright law, said he is "deeply troubled" by the wording of the draft legislation, because it does not say any actual copyright infringement must take place--only that the file be available in a shared folder, Web site or FTP (File Transfer Protocol) site. "It says we don't care if anybody got any of these copies," Jaszi said. "We're going to conclude that at least 10 people did. It relieves the copyright owner of having to prove that any violation
of their rights actually happened.""
I predict a round of vigorous public debate between the usual protagonists in the US. I can't really see "ART" getting too far off the ground.
Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Some of the big media organisations are picking up the story on electronic voting problems in the US.
Patent office to re-examine Eolas patent. That could have an impact on the $520 million award against Microsoft.
On the other side of the government's IT fence, they have now launched a new UK Central Government Web Archive. Good for them.
Nick Cohen produced his usual diatribe against the government at the weekend. Just conveniently, this time it was on the subject of ID cards.
I heard the UK home secretary, David Blunkett, speaking about ID cards on BBC Radio 4 yesterday morning. He said biometric ID cards made identity theft "impossible." This is false.
Biometrics can be an authentication mechanism - something I have that demonstrates I am who I say am e.g. a fingerprint, iris scan or my dna. Biometrics won't be forgotten (which gives them an advantage over passwords) but they can be lost - that iris scan or fingerprint is no good if the eye or finger gets badly damaged in an accident.
Somebody should also tell Mr Blunkett, that although biometrics may be unique they are not secret. We leave fingerprints and bits of dead skin all over the place for example. What he also seems to forget is the database containing all the details of this biometric information need to be secure and accurate. If somebody steals your biometric e.g a fingerprint from a coffee mug or by copying or changing the database with the biometric details...
Just don't be kidded into thinking identity theft is "impossible" with biometric systems.
Biometrics can be an authentication mechanism - something I have that demonstrates I am who I say am e.g. a fingerprint, iris scan or my dna. Biometrics won't be forgotten (which gives them an advantage over passwords) but they can be lost - that iris scan or fingerprint is no good if the eye or finger gets badly damaged in an accident.
Somebody should also tell Mr Blunkett, that although biometrics may be unique they are not secret. We leave fingerprints and bits of dead skin all over the place for example. What he also seems to forget is the database containing all the details of this biometric information need to be secure and accurate. If somebody steals your biometric e.g a fingerprint from a coffee mug or by copying or changing the database with the biometric details...
Just don't be kidded into thinking identity theft is "impossible" with biometric systems.
Sunday, November 09, 2003
James Grimmelmann at Lawmeme tells us "McDonald's is upset about the appearance of "McJob" in the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary."
Some of my students have just been marveling at the Mike Batt dispute with the late John Cage's estate over copyright on silence. Cage once composed a piece comprised entirely of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Batt included a minute's silence in a CD and Cage's estate sued for copyright infringement. I understand that Batt's mother asked him if he knew which part of the silence they were claiming he infringed.
One of the comments on the McDonalds complaint is supportive of the fast food retailer because the dictionary is diluting their trademark.
Looked at by ordinary people these disputes look completely daft. But experts live in a different world to the rest of us when dealing with their narrow professional specialist area. There is an internal logic to the developments within the particular field e.g. in this case intellectual property. But is does not create a good impression for those looking on from outside the expert priesthood.
Copyright and intellectual property more generally are an amazing construct, enabling authors and creators to benefit from their creative endeavors. But the intellectual property specialists do little service to the promotion of the general understanding of their field by engaging in spats like those mentioned above.
And given the likely impact of the rules on intellectual property on the future of the information society, that does no one any favours. The intellectual property priesthood need more translators explaining their subject area in ways ordinary people can understand. That will facilitate informed public debate on developments in an area that is going to affect all of us whether we understand it or not.
Some of my students have just been marveling at the Mike Batt dispute with the late John Cage's estate over copyright on silence. Cage once composed a piece comprised entirely of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. Batt included a minute's silence in a CD and Cage's estate sued for copyright infringement. I understand that Batt's mother asked him if he knew which part of the silence they were claiming he infringed.
One of the comments on the McDonalds complaint is supportive of the fast food retailer because the dictionary is diluting their trademark.
Looked at by ordinary people these disputes look completely daft. But experts live in a different world to the rest of us when dealing with their narrow professional specialist area. There is an internal logic to the developments within the particular field e.g. in this case intellectual property. But is does not create a good impression for those looking on from outside the expert priesthood.
Copyright and intellectual property more generally are an amazing construct, enabling authors and creators to benefit from their creative endeavors. But the intellectual property specialists do little service to the promotion of the general understanding of their field by engaging in spats like those mentioned above.
And given the likely impact of the rules on intellectual property on the future of the information society, that does no one any favours. The intellectual property priesthood need more translators explaining their subject area in ways ordinary people can understand. That will facilitate informed public debate on developments in an area that is going to affect all of us whether we understand it or not.
Friday, November 07, 2003
Declan McCullagh's piece on the FCC's introduction of the broadcast flag, "Are PCs next in Hollywood piracy battle?", has been published by the New York Times.
"What FCC officials did not stress, but their regulations do, is that the product definitions are broad enough to cover not just TV
tuners but also PCs. "This necessarily includes PC and (information technology) products that are used for off-air DTV (digital
television) reception," the FCC's order says...
Will Rodger, director of public policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), said the rule is
troubling because it means the FCC is encroaching on a technological sector that has flourished in the absence of regulation."
As Ernest Miller said earlier in the week,
"Prof. Ed Felten makes a good point on Freedom to Tinker about the FCC's justifications for the Broadcast Flag - they are incoherent (The Broadcast Flag, and Threat Model Confusion). The justifications for the broadcast flag and the effect of the broadcast flag are tangentially related at best. In the words of the FCC, "the broadcast flag seeks only to prevent mass distribution over the Internet." Additionally, according to the FCC, "consumers’ ability to make digital copies will not be affected."
Whether or not you agree with the justifications is not the question. The issue is whether the means the FCC has chosen are suited to the justifications. As Felten points out, they are not. The action the FCC has taken will not significantly, if at all, "prevent mass distribution over the Internet." It will, however, impede the average consumer's ability to make copies for friends and family.
"What FCC officials did not stress, but their regulations do, is that the product definitions are broad enough to cover not just TV
tuners but also PCs. "This necessarily includes PC and (information technology) products that are used for off-air DTV (digital
television) reception," the FCC's order says...
Will Rodger, director of public policy at the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), said the rule is
troubling because it means the FCC is encroaching on a technological sector that has flourished in the absence of regulation."
As Ernest Miller said earlier in the week,
"Prof. Ed Felten makes a good point on Freedom to Tinker about the FCC's justifications for the Broadcast Flag - they are incoherent (The Broadcast Flag, and Threat Model Confusion). The justifications for the broadcast flag and the effect of the broadcast flag are tangentially related at best. In the words of the FCC, "the broadcast flag seeks only to prevent mass distribution over the Internet." Additionally, according to the FCC, "consumers’ ability to make digital copies will not be affected."
Whether or not you agree with the justifications is not the question. The issue is whether the means the FCC has chosen are suited to the justifications. As Felten points out, they are not. The action the FCC has taken will not significantly, if at all, "prevent mass distribution over the Internet." It will, however, impede the average consumer's ability to make copies for friends and family.
A New Zealand anti war activist has apparently been charged with mis-using the phone under the Telecommunications Act for sending an email to the US embassy protesting the war in Iraq.
"Mr Hubbard last night said he had been charged under the Telecommunications Act and had been told by police they would seize information from his computer under the Counter-Terrorism Act."
I doubt this story is as simple as this report makes it appear.
"Mr Hubbard last night said he had been charged under the Telecommunications Act and had been told by police they would seize information from his computer under the Counter-Terrorism Act."
I doubt this story is as simple as this report makes it appear.
For T182 students familiar with the Diebold electronic voting machine controversy, Ernest Miller engages in a timely discussion of bias in online sources, just as we've started looking at the issue in the course.
Someone is criticising Mary Hodder at bIPlog at the University of Berkeley, California, for her short note about the EFF and Stanford suing Diebold.
Miller, JD Lasica of the Online Journalism Review and Mary Hodder herself mount a robust defense of the posting.
Which of the following tactics do you think the complainant engages in -
appealing to emotion and prejudice;
extrapolating opposition argument to the absurd and then refuting the absurd;
using sarcasm, innuendo, denigration and other forms of humour to belittle opponents;
grouping all opponents under one label, a category easy to dismiss;
using jargon to confuse;
non sequitur - drawing an illogical conclusion from sound data.
(There are, of course many more but let's stick with these for the moment).
He does make a couple of interesting points:
1. Although the case was fast-tracked the judge refused to issue an injunction preventing Diebold from continuing to send out their cease and desist letters until the hearing.
2. A question - do rules of "fairness and accuracy" apply in the "blogosphere" - are blogs more or less reliable sources than traditional media?
Hodder, Lasica and Miller all have comments on the latter.
Someone is criticising Mary Hodder at bIPlog at the University of Berkeley, California, for her short note about the EFF and Stanford suing Diebold.
Miller, JD Lasica of the Online Journalism Review and Mary Hodder herself mount a robust defense of the posting.
Which of the following tactics do you think the complainant engages in -
appealing to emotion and prejudice;
extrapolating opposition argument to the absurd and then refuting the absurd;
using sarcasm, innuendo, denigration and other forms of humour to belittle opponents;
grouping all opponents under one label, a category easy to dismiss;
using jargon to confuse;
non sequitur - drawing an illogical conclusion from sound data.
(There are, of course many more but let's stick with these for the moment).
He does make a couple of interesting points:
1. Although the case was fast-tracked the judge refused to issue an injunction preventing Diebold from continuing to send out their cease and desist letters until the hearing.
2. A question - do rules of "fairness and accuracy" apply in the "blogosphere" - are blogs more or less reliable sources than traditional media?
Hodder, Lasica and Miller all have comments on the latter.
It seems that some Penn State University students are about as impressed as Derek Slater when it comes to the deal with Napster.
The World Intellectual Property Organization have agreed to develop a draft treaty on webcasting by April 2004, based on a proposal put forward by the US.
"Jamie Love, who works for the Ralph Nader-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology, says the treaty is worrisome because it creates an additional legal protection for works in the public domain that are Webcast...
Seth Greenstein, a partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery who represents the Digital Media Association, said the treaty is necessary to protect the rights of Webcasters in WIPO nations that do not have copyright laws as extensive as those in the United States...
He acknowledged Love's concern about the sweep of the treaty, but said such restrictions were necessary to protect the economic investment of Webcasters."
"Jamie Love, who works for the Ralph Nader-affiliated Consumer Project on Technology, says the treaty is worrisome because it creates an additional legal protection for works in the public domain that are Webcast...
Seth Greenstein, a partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery who represents the Digital Media Association, said the treaty is necessary to protect the rights of Webcasters in WIPO nations that do not have copyright laws as extensive as those in the United States...
He acknowledged Love's concern about the sweep of the treaty, but said such restrictions were necessary to protect the economic investment of Webcasters."
According to the Legal Media Group, Microsoft are looking to do an IBM with their intellectual property assests and have hired the former IBM IP guru, Marshall Phelps to do it for them. IBM derive a large income from licensing their vast portfolio of patents. Microsoft have about 3000 patents in total but IBM file more patent applications than that in an average year. With Phelps at the helm, Microsoft now have over 5000 patent applications sitting to be reviewed in the US Patent Office. Phelps has this to say about software patents,
"I think there's a fundamental lack of understanding [in Europe] that there isn't a real difference between software and hardware. I also think there are large political forces driving this issue... Some on either side approach these issues with an almost religious fervour... Also, I can give you all kinds of software implementations that used to be in hardware. Apart from the plug in the wall, anything you used to do in hardware you can do in software. Just think about the media player that exits when you boot up your software on your machine. It looks just like any other media player - it's got fast forward and stop and pause and all that stuff. That's software. Is there a hardware version of that? Sure, any DVD player you want to go and buy. Or if you look at some laptops, there's a little button in the middle which is basically the mouse. You think that moves, but it doesn't. It's really a strain gauge that calculates where you want the cursor to go by how hard you push it and in what direction. How does it do that? Well, there's an algorithm for an x-axis and an algorithm for the y-axis - that's software. Is there a hardware implementation for that? Sure, every mouse that's practically ever been built is a hardware implementation of that.
I think people react to software as if it's an animal from another planet, and I don't think that, at the end of the day, the distinction [between software and hardware] is a very useful one."
It's an attractive argument. Why shouldn't a new invention, which involves and inventive step and has practical technical effect and is useful be patentable, even if it is purely software? A reasonable suggestion cutting through the usual religious fervour. As long as the law can be precisely couched in such a way as to avoid patenting something which involves no invention, no inventive step and is a pure software implementation of an obvious idea?
"I think there's a fundamental lack of understanding [in Europe] that there isn't a real difference between software and hardware. I also think there are large political forces driving this issue... Some on either side approach these issues with an almost religious fervour... Also, I can give you all kinds of software implementations that used to be in hardware. Apart from the plug in the wall, anything you used to do in hardware you can do in software. Just think about the media player that exits when you boot up your software on your machine. It looks just like any other media player - it's got fast forward and stop and pause and all that stuff. That's software. Is there a hardware version of that? Sure, any DVD player you want to go and buy. Or if you look at some laptops, there's a little button in the middle which is basically the mouse. You think that moves, but it doesn't. It's really a strain gauge that calculates where you want the cursor to go by how hard you push it and in what direction. How does it do that? Well, there's an algorithm for an x-axis and an algorithm for the y-axis - that's software. Is there a hardware implementation for that? Sure, every mouse that's practically ever been built is a hardware implementation of that.
I think people react to software as if it's an animal from another planet, and I don't think that, at the end of the day, the distinction [between software and hardware] is a very useful one."
It's an attractive argument. Why shouldn't a new invention, which involves and inventive step and has practical technical effect and is useful be patentable, even if it is purely software? A reasonable suggestion cutting through the usual religious fervour. As long as the law can be precisely couched in such a way as to avoid patenting something which involves no invention, no inventive step and is a pure software implementation of an obvious idea?
Thursday, November 06, 2003
Derek Slater is getting irritated at what he calls "crummy reporting" on the P2P front. The latest piece he is annoyed about claims that Penn State University have done a deal with the new Napster service,owned by Roxio, to provide "free" music to students.
"Yes, Roxio and the RIAA are providing this service all out of the goodness of their hearts. And Penn State will not be charging their students directly or indirectly for the service. As I've said before, this is one heck of a spin machine."
"Yes, Roxio and the RIAA are providing this service all out of the goodness of their hearts. And Penn State will not be charging their students directly or indirectly for the service. As I've said before, this is one heck of a spin machine."
Apparently Cryptome's John Young has had a visit from the FBI. Somebody had reported Cryptome as a source of information that might be harmful to the US.
I sympathise with the FBI special agents, who in the post September 11th world probably had little choice but to follow up the complaint. But they're really on a hiding to nothing visiting civil liberties campaigners, who will, understandibly publicise the visit. So the agents are getting distracted by wild goose chases when they would undoubtedly themselves prefer to be getting on with effective appropriately targetted law enforcement. Limited law enforcement capacity gets stretched thinner and thinner and the real bad guys laugh all the way home from their undetected crimes, comfortable in the belief that the chances of getting caught are on an ever diminishing curve.
The Washington Post is reporting that there have been problems with new electronic voting machines at the election at Fairfax County in Virginia this week. 9 machines were removed from the voting station during the day for repair. Apparently this is against the law so the Republicans are suing. Never mind. They only spent $3.5 million on the machines.
It seems that the intellectual property enforcement directive rapporteur, Janelly Fourtou, is prepared to compromise slightly, now that even Arlene McCarthy (rapporteur of the software patents directive) thinks that article 20 covering criminal sanctions is way over the top. You can see the text of the amendments she's prepared to accept at the europarl website. Fourtou, however, remains keener than ever to ensure the directive gets implemented before the next euro elections in the summer of 2004. She seems to see the sacrifice of article 20 as a quid pro quo to get the implementation procedures on the fasttrack route.
I sympathise with the FBI special agents, who in the post September 11th world probably had little choice but to follow up the complaint. But they're really on a hiding to nothing visiting civil liberties campaigners, who will, understandibly publicise the visit. So the agents are getting distracted by wild goose chases when they would undoubtedly themselves prefer to be getting on with effective appropriately targetted law enforcement. Limited law enforcement capacity gets stretched thinner and thinner and the real bad guys laugh all the way home from their undetected crimes, comfortable in the belief that the chances of getting caught are on an ever diminishing curve.
The Washington Post is reporting that there have been problems with new electronic voting machines at the election at Fairfax County in Virginia this week. 9 machines were removed from the voting station during the day for repair. Apparently this is against the law so the Republicans are suing. Never mind. They only spent $3.5 million on the machines.
It seems that the intellectual property enforcement directive rapporteur, Janelly Fourtou, is prepared to compromise slightly, now that even Arlene McCarthy (rapporteur of the software patents directive) thinks that article 20 covering criminal sanctions is way over the top. You can see the text of the amendments she's prepared to accept at the europarl website. Fourtou, however, remains keener than ever to ensure the directive gets implemented before the next euro elections in the summer of 2004. She seems to see the sacrifice of article 20 as a quid pro quo to get the implementation procedures on the fasttrack route.
Wednesday, November 05, 2003
The EFF and The Stanford Center for Internet and Society are suing Diebold for abuse of copyright over their recent cease and desist letters to people linking to online copies of their internal memos.
For T182 students looking in for the first time, Diebold are one of the three largest suppliers of electronic voting machines in the US. There has been some controversy recently about whether these machines do the job as well as they should. I have written about it periodically here but if you're interested in looking at the issue in more detail (when you have finished T182) some people who know a lot about the issues are David Dill at Stanford, Rebecca Mecuri at Bryn Mawr, Aviel D. Rubin at Johns Hopkins University and Bev Harris, author of the soon to be published book Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century.
For T182 students looking in for the first time, Diebold are one of the three largest suppliers of electronic voting machines in the US. There has been some controversy recently about whether these machines do the job as well as they should. I have written about it periodically here but if you're interested in looking at the issue in more detail (when you have finished T182) some people who know a lot about the issues are David Dill at Stanford, Rebecca Mecuri at Bryn Mawr, Aviel D. Rubin at Johns Hopkins University and Bev Harris, author of the soon to be published book Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century.
Wal-Mart and the US Department of Defense are driving forward the wide spread implementation of RFID tags. That won't be news to regular readers.
Here's a report on a patent ruling that could throw a spanner in the works of trying to get legitimate music downloading operations in place.
"If a jury decides that SightSound has a right to enforce the patents, it could affect almost any business that sells downloadable music or video online, including the major record labels and music studios. This is increasingly important, as a number of download services emerge to offer people a legal way obtain video and music content online. "
"If a jury decides that SightSound has a right to enforce the patents, it could affect almost any business that sells downloadable music or video online, including the major record labels and music studios. This is increasingly important, as a number of download services emerge to offer people a legal way obtain video and music content online. "
Monday, November 03, 2003
It seems the IPC cease and desist letter to the Guardian's director of digital publishing, Simon Waldman, over photos of Hitler in a 1938 Homes and Garden magazine was invalid. They did not own the copyright on the photos that Waldman posted on his weblog.
IPC "conceded that "after
extensive research ... there is no way of ascertaining where
copyright ownership lies after 65 years. Therefore, it is not in our
gift to either agree or withdraw use of these images and words."
For me, this prompted a mix of victory and fury. Yes, I could put
the scans back up on my site, but it was clear that they simply
hadn't made any detailed checks on copyright when I first
contacted them, and had hoped it would all go away with a
single stern email. Fortunately for me, in this internet age, such
clumsy tactics don't work. Their attempt to squash the problem
had simply amplified it."
IPC "conceded that "after
extensive research ... there is no way of ascertaining where
copyright ownership lies after 65 years. Therefore, it is not in our
gift to either agree or withdraw use of these images and words."
For me, this prompted a mix of victory and fury. Yes, I could put
the scans back up on my site, but it was clear that they simply
hadn't made any detailed checks on copyright when I first
contacted them, and had hoped it would all go away with a
single stern email. Fortunately for me, in this internet age, such
clumsy tactics don't work. Their attempt to squash the problem
had simply amplified it."
Wired is reporting that the Aussies are doing it right with e-voting. "They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny."
In the wake of their courtroom success in claiming infringement of their streaming patent by the porn industry, Acacia have now decided to go after higher education institutions.
"Acacia has sent Virginia and other colleges a letter making an audacious claim: that the company owns long-forgotten patents covering the use of sound and video on the Web and is entitled to 2 percent of the revenue from courses that use such technology. The patents, which expire in
2011, cover the concept behind storing and transmitting sound and video, not the technical details."
This doesn't surprise me but I'm none the less angry.
"Acacia has sent Virginia and other colleges a letter making an audacious claim: that the company owns long-forgotten patents covering the use of sound and video on the Web and is entitled to 2 percent of the revenue from courses that use such technology. The patents, which expire in
2011, cover the concept behind storing and transmitting sound and video, not the technical details."
This doesn't surprise me but I'm none the less angry.
Here's a fun test of your political leanings. Apparently I lie somewhere between Nelson Mandela, the Dali Lama, Mahatma Gandhi and Jean Chretien as a slightly left leaning liberal. My friends will be amused and it could have been worse, I suppose. As long as nobody takes it too seriously...
Michael Froomkin is really concerned about the state of civil liberties in the US.
"A secret trial. A SECRET TRIAL. In the US. IN THE USA. Ok. Ok. I refuse to panic until the Supreme Court approves this. That means I have a few weeks at least.
If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said that secret trials were impossible in the USA...
The idea that the government would attempt to hold entire secret star chamber-like trials, closed to the public, trials whose very existence was a secret, is repugnant to this nations’s traditions and fundamental values. And if history teaches us anything about abuses of power, it is that secret trials are dangerous...
The government’s — successful! — attempt to inaugurate a regime of secret trials and secret detentions is a really lousy signal about the state of panic among our ruling class — and about the brittle state of our liberties. What really boggles the mind is that two courts have allowed this to happen — now only the Supreme Court stands between us and a country with secret trials into which suspects (recall - they’re innocent until proven guilty!) just vanish into the system.
Before you say ‘terrorism is different’ or ‘we’re at war now’, note that the government says they want to use this tactic in drug cases too. Worry. Really worry about this one. We’re one step closer to the day when this might not be a joke.
And in fact, the subject of this secret trial isn’t some super-ninja terrorist from beyond the deep. He’s an Algerian waiter. And he is obviously not that dangerous, since he’s been out on a $10,000 bond since March 2002."
What's got Prof Froomkin so worked up is this report in the Christian Science Monitor on the "Secret 9/11 case."
(Thanks to Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer to this).
"A secret trial. A SECRET TRIAL. In the US. IN THE USA. Ok. Ok. I refuse to panic until the Supreme Court approves this. That means I have a few weeks at least.
If you had asked me two years ago, I would have said that secret trials were impossible in the USA...
The idea that the government would attempt to hold entire secret star chamber-like trials, closed to the public, trials whose very existence was a secret, is repugnant to this nations’s traditions and fundamental values. And if history teaches us anything about abuses of power, it is that secret trials are dangerous...
The government’s — successful! — attempt to inaugurate a regime of secret trials and secret detentions is a really lousy signal about the state of panic among our ruling class — and about the brittle state of our liberties. What really boggles the mind is that two courts have allowed this to happen — now only the Supreme Court stands between us and a country with secret trials into which suspects (recall - they’re innocent until proven guilty!) just vanish into the system.
Before you say ‘terrorism is different’ or ‘we’re at war now’, note that the government says they want to use this tactic in drug cases too. Worry. Really worry about this one. We’re one step closer to the day when this might not be a joke.
And in fact, the subject of this secret trial isn’t some super-ninja terrorist from beyond the deep. He’s an Algerian waiter. And he is obviously not that dangerous, since he’s been out on a $10,000 bond since March 2002."
What's got Prof Froomkin so worked up is this report in the Christian Science Monitor on the "Secret 9/11 case."
(Thanks to Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy for the pointer to this).
Mark Cooper, Director of Research of the Consumer Federation of America and affiliated to the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford, has published a new book, Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age. The book can be purchased in the conventional way or it can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. A weighty tome and at 313 pages there won't be too many people reading it off the screen.
The LA Times says the new MIT music file swapping service has run into a few licensing problems. Loudeye Corp. the company supplying the service with songs didn't have the right to do so for the kind of service MIT were setting up. MIT blame the company. The company blame MIT. MIT have removed Vivendi Universal's songs and are negoitating separately with the music giant.
Siva Vaidhyanathan reports that Fox News threatened to sue Fox Entertainment because of a Simpsons parody. You can just see Rupert Murdoch gently pointing out to his underlings that he is not too keen on the idea of suing himself.
Here's an amusing barbed commentary from Ed Foster on the Diebold memos. He starts with his amended version of the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press ... except as needed to allow trademark and copyright holders complete power to control discussions about their brands."
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press ... except as needed to allow trademark and copyright holders complete power to control discussions about their brands."
In response to the UK Office for National Statistics consultation exercise on "Modernising Civil Registration" FIPR has called on the government to ensure that a new electronic database of life events -- births, marriages, deaths etc. -- supports rather than reduces privacy and liberty. All very sensible as you would expect from FIPR.
Declan McCullagh tells us that the US Copyright Office have offered qualified support to Static Control in their ongoing DMCA dispute with Lexmark. Lexmark have successfully sued and got an injunction against Static Control to prevent them supplying cheaper refill cartridges for Lexmark printers. The cheaper refills apparently bypassed copy control technology built into the Lexmark versions. A good example of an OEM cornering the market in spares by building in digital fences and throwing their weight around on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA - and not what the law was intended to be used for. The law already says you can bypass copy control/access measures "for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability." That is a less well known provision of the DMCA.
It remains to be seen how this opinion from the copyright office will affect the case. There are other substantive issues such as Static Control's alleged direct copyright infringement of Lexmark programs that may still swing the case Lexmark's way at the appeal.
It remains to be seen how this opinion from the copyright office will affect the case. There are other substantive issues such as Static Control's alleged direct copyright infringement of Lexmark programs that may still swing the case Lexmark's way at the appeal.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
PS Don't miss this Wired article on Brewster Kahle, Amazon's new search engine and "The fondest dream of the information age ... to create an archive of all knowledge."
I'm in a rush today but just wanted to draw your attention to this, which at first glance looks like a possible step in the right direction to getting a resolution to the file sharing issue.
A couple of MIT students have come up with a new system which taps into the MIT campus licensed cable TV network. The files are analogue not digital, which means the sound quality resides somewhere between a radio broadcast and a CD.
It means that the students get access to a big library of music and the copyright holders get paid a license fee. Sounds a better for the RIAA than a bunch of expensive lawsuits and PR disasters about suing 12 year olds and grannies.
A couple of MIT students have come up with a new system which taps into the MIT campus licensed cable TV network. The files are analogue not digital, which means the sound quality resides somewhere between a radio broadcast and a CD.
It means that the students get access to a big library of music and the copyright holders get paid a license fee. Sounds a better for the RIAA than a bunch of expensive lawsuits and PR disasters about suing 12 year olds and grannies.
Monday, October 27, 2003
James Grimmelmann, like Edward Felten yesterday, asks "Where will the madness end?"
"Here's a link to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site with the memos. Whoops, that's the Diebold home page. "
Beautiful.
"Here's a link to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site with the memos. Whoops, that's the Diebold home page. "
Beautiful.
I've been thinking about using a different video for activity 1 of T182 Law the Internet and Society based on Larry Lessig's book, The Future of Ideas. Whilst digging out Lessig's Inaugural Meredith and Kip Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property, in March 23, 2001, at Duke University, I came across a terrific session with James Boyle:
Private Censorship and Perfect Choice: The Future of the Internet? Second Annual Duke Magazine Forum, featuring Duke Law Professor James Boyle in conversation with UNC Law Professor Adrienne Davis.
Articulate, entertaining and informative as ever, Jamie also gets put on the spot in relation to his perspective of the Napster case and explains the issues in the case in a way you just don't get in the usual polemics (both for and against). Although there were sound legal arguments in favour of Napster, the music industry also had a case and hence he did not sign up to the amicus brief supporting Napster. One example in Napster's favour was that intellectual property had never really concerned itself with private acts because it was really a form of industrial regulation. Also the Sony Betamax argument - Napster hadn't done anything itself any more than Sony with their video recorders, in relation to infringing copyright. Nevertheless, neither did he sign up to the specific overreaching arguments made by the music industry in the case because they would have effectively entailed making the open architecture of the Internet illegal. But in the end he came to the decision of not directly supporting Napster through asking the question: is this technology really going to encourage innovation in the long term or is this not-sanctioned use threatening innovation in the long term. Although the music industry's argument was questionable they did have a point. His friends said they should be allowed to engage in the kind of tactics that the music industry used. Jamie thinks that there is a serious issue in terms of making supported properly researched sensible and scholarly arguments in favour of real balance in the area of intellectual property. (As well as acting as activists supporting balance). We have to get away from the polemic dichotomy and emotive soundbites on both sides, if we are really going to make any progress towards that goal.
Couldn't agree more. Jamie still finds the Napster case hard and although Larry Lessig has eloquently made the argument about Naspter as a celestial jukebox, the public debate never really got a handle on precisely the kinds of difficulties with the case Jamie articulates. It's a real pity we live in such a soundbite culture where if you have can't get an idea across in three seconds you automatically lose the argument. It undermines the real world possibility of getting to a satisfactory resolution of difficult problems, like balance in intellectual property in a digital age.
The Naspter discussion happens about 47 minutes into the recording, just in case you're thinking of fast forwarding to that bit. Jamie, unlike his namesake of the Kellner (Turner Broadcasting) variety, doesn't believe that fast forwarding is theft.
Private Censorship and Perfect Choice: The Future of the Internet? Second Annual Duke Magazine Forum, featuring Duke Law Professor James Boyle in conversation with UNC Law Professor Adrienne Davis.
Articulate, entertaining and informative as ever, Jamie also gets put on the spot in relation to his perspective of the Napster case and explains the issues in the case in a way you just don't get in the usual polemics (both for and against). Although there were sound legal arguments in favour of Napster, the music industry also had a case and hence he did not sign up to the amicus brief supporting Napster. One example in Napster's favour was that intellectual property had never really concerned itself with private acts because it was really a form of industrial regulation. Also the Sony Betamax argument - Napster hadn't done anything itself any more than Sony with their video recorders, in relation to infringing copyright. Nevertheless, neither did he sign up to the specific overreaching arguments made by the music industry in the case because they would have effectively entailed making the open architecture of the Internet illegal. But in the end he came to the decision of not directly supporting Napster through asking the question: is this technology really going to encourage innovation in the long term or is this not-sanctioned use threatening innovation in the long term. Although the music industry's argument was questionable they did have a point. His friends said they should be allowed to engage in the kind of tactics that the music industry used. Jamie thinks that there is a serious issue in terms of making supported properly researched sensible and scholarly arguments in favour of real balance in the area of intellectual property. (As well as acting as activists supporting balance). We have to get away from the polemic dichotomy and emotive soundbites on both sides, if we are really going to make any progress towards that goal.
Couldn't agree more. Jamie still finds the Napster case hard and although Larry Lessig has eloquently made the argument about Naspter as a celestial jukebox, the public debate never really got a handle on precisely the kinds of difficulties with the case Jamie articulates. It's a real pity we live in such a soundbite culture where if you have can't get an idea across in three seconds you automatically lose the argument. It undermines the real world possibility of getting to a satisfactory resolution of difficult problems, like balance in intellectual property in a digital age.
The Naspter discussion happens about 47 minutes into the recording, just in case you're thinking of fast forwarding to that bit. Jamie, unlike his namesake of the Kellner (Turner Broadcasting) variety, doesn't believe that fast forwarding is theft.
Insightful paper by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, edited by J.D Lassica, senior editor Online Journalism Review, on the future of participatory journalism, currently best represented by blogs. Dan Gilmore writes the Foreword and includes his much repeated meme that his "audience, never shy to let me know when I get something wrong, made me realize something: My readers know more than I do. This has become almost a mantra in my work." If you want understand blogs and what participatory journalism could be all about, you could do a lot worse than spend some time on this paper.
My colleague, John Naughton, is amongst the people alerting us to the notion that is might not be a great idea to buy into Microsoft's Office 2003 sales pitch.
Michael Robertson is possibly going a bit far in suggesting the software is a virus but I agree with John, that "You would have to be exceedingly stupid to fall for it."
Unfortunately, however, most organisations have a kind of built in blindness to stupidity when it comes to this kind of thing. And the force of Microsoft's publicity will likely be more than strong enough to overcome voices of reason, thereby causing millions within and without organisations to turn from people into sheeple, and sign up in droves.
Like I said yesterday, potentially we can influence more with our purchasing power than our votes but we don't seem to see it that way. There seems to be wide spread apathy to the reality of voter or consumer power. And if you don't use it you'll lose it.
The Guardian on Saturday did a longish piece on the increasing scale of identity theft in the UK. This really is a growing problem and people would do well to be aware of it. 74 766 cases reported in the UK last year. And that's just the reported cases.
"In a survey last year, Experian, a
credit reference agency, found that 53 out of 71 local authorities
reported bin raiding was taking place in their areas, and getting
noticeably worse.
In a further analysis of 400 domestic bins, the agency found that
72% contained a full name and address, 40% contained a credit
card number and expiry date linked to an individual, and 20%
held a bank account number and sort code alongside a name.
Rifling through rubbish pays off. As does trawling through the
internet. To find more details of you, a fraudster could check out
the electoral roll, the national phone book and the directors'
database, as well as a few other data sources such as the land
registry (which holds your mortgage details)."
Nick Cohen in his latest polemic against the government says "Basic civil liberties are in dire jeopardy when anti-terrorist laws are used for day-to-day policing."
"For the past few weeks, the High Court in London has been considering the possibility that not even the threat of mass murder can make the British state grow up. Before it is an account of what happened to demonstrators who gathered in September outside Europe's biggest arms fair in London's Docklands. Cluster bombs, conventional bombs, each and every type of bomb, were on sale to buyers from pretty much every dictatorship on the planet. The demonstrators' number included Quakers and nuns...
Dozens of protesters were arrested and searched under Straw's anti-terrorism legislation none the less. Pennie Quinton wasn't even demonstrating. She was an accredited journalist who was making a film of the demo...
Her case was taken up by the civil rights group, Liberty, which asked the High Court to decide whether the police were using what were meant to be emergency powers against potential psychopaths as 'another tool in the kit of day-to-day policing'. Liberty's lawyers discovered that it has become routine for the police to declare the whole of London a special zone for anti-terrorist operations.
No one knew what the Met was up to because orders akin to the announcement of martial law were declared and confirmed in secret. From 13 August for 28 days and from 11 September for 28 days, the police had unconstrained power to treat everyone in London as a terrorist, and stop, search and hold them without cause or reasonable suspicion. "
Cohen is not Tony Blair's favorite journalist.
The New York Times is suggesting that Brazil is now a hotspot for cyber criminals. The journalist seems to be basing that assertion on a conversation with a computer savvy 22-year old Brazilian, the publisher of a hacker magazine in Brazil and a consultancy firm in London.
Michael Robertson is possibly going a bit far in suggesting the software is a virus but I agree with John, that "You would have to be exceedingly stupid to fall for it."
Unfortunately, however, most organisations have a kind of built in blindness to stupidity when it comes to this kind of thing. And the force of Microsoft's publicity will likely be more than strong enough to overcome voices of reason, thereby causing millions within and without organisations to turn from people into sheeple, and sign up in droves.
Like I said yesterday, potentially we can influence more with our purchasing power than our votes but we don't seem to see it that way. There seems to be wide spread apathy to the reality of voter or consumer power. And if you don't use it you'll lose it.
The Guardian on Saturday did a longish piece on the increasing scale of identity theft in the UK. This really is a growing problem and people would do well to be aware of it. 74 766 cases reported in the UK last year. And that's just the reported cases.
"In a survey last year, Experian, a
credit reference agency, found that 53 out of 71 local authorities
reported bin raiding was taking place in their areas, and getting
noticeably worse.
In a further analysis of 400 domestic bins, the agency found that
72% contained a full name and address, 40% contained a credit
card number and expiry date linked to an individual, and 20%
held a bank account number and sort code alongside a name.
Rifling through rubbish pays off. As does trawling through the
internet. To find more details of you, a fraudster could check out
the electoral roll, the national phone book and the directors'
database, as well as a few other data sources such as the land
registry (which holds your mortgage details)."
Nick Cohen in his latest polemic against the government says "Basic civil liberties are in dire jeopardy when anti-terrorist laws are used for day-to-day policing."
"For the past few weeks, the High Court in London has been considering the possibility that not even the threat of mass murder can make the British state grow up. Before it is an account of what happened to demonstrators who gathered in September outside Europe's biggest arms fair in London's Docklands. Cluster bombs, conventional bombs, each and every type of bomb, were on sale to buyers from pretty much every dictatorship on the planet. The demonstrators' number included Quakers and nuns...
Dozens of protesters were arrested and searched under Straw's anti-terrorism legislation none the less. Pennie Quinton wasn't even demonstrating. She was an accredited journalist who was making a film of the demo...
Her case was taken up by the civil rights group, Liberty, which asked the High Court to decide whether the police were using what were meant to be emergency powers against potential psychopaths as 'another tool in the kit of day-to-day policing'. Liberty's lawyers discovered that it has become routine for the police to declare the whole of London a special zone for anti-terrorist operations.
No one knew what the Met was up to because orders akin to the announcement of martial law were declared and confirmed in secret. From 13 August for 28 days and from 11 September for 28 days, the police had unconstrained power to treat everyone in London as a terrorist, and stop, search and hold them without cause or reasonable suspicion. "
Cohen is not Tony Blair's favorite journalist.
The New York Times is suggesting that Brazil is now a hotspot for cyber criminals. The journalist seems to be basing that assertion on a conversation with a computer savvy 22-year old Brazilian, the publisher of a hacker magazine in Brazil and a consultancy firm in London.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Techlawadviser, Kevin Heller, thinks in the wake of the MPAA campaign in schools maybe someone "should create a legitimate lesson plan and offer it to volunteers to teach middle school and high school kids about copyright law instead of allowing them to be inundated with corporate propaganda."
Donna thinks it is a good idea and is looking for volunteers.
Donna thinks it is a good idea and is looking for volunteers.
A couple of Spiked reports right on the button with respect to the mid week BBC programme, The Secret Policeman, exposing a handful of racist police officers. As Josie Appleton says, the
"report showed the impact of
diversity policies: most people had learnt the approved terms to use
in public, whatever their private views. But enforcing this kind of
personal etiquette won't help to reduce real racism, and indeed may
increase resentment of ethnic minorities."
John Dean served as President Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for about three years. He has written two books about the experience and the Watergate scandal, Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). He's none too impressed at the performance of the current White House resident, George Bush and has regularly criticised him in the mainstream press. His latest critique draws on details recently published in a book by the editor of the Nation, David Corn, called The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the politics of Deception. It has to be said that Corn is not exactly a fan of the president either. Dean seems to believe that Bush merits his own special prosecutor in the Kenneth Starr mould to investigate a range of areas from Iraq's WMDs to his relationship with Enron chairman Ken Lay, and including stem cell research, alleged criminal expose of a CIA operative, management of pre and post September 11th, and his tax plans amongs others. Bush, Blair and spin certainly haven't done a whole lot for the credibility of politicians but then I wonder if nowadays we can have more influence with the pound (or dollar or euro) we spend rather than the vote we cast? Sorry state of affairs.
The Miscrosoft settlement judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly,
"urged government lawyers Friday to investigate why only nine companies so far have paid Microsoft to license its technology for their own software products, agreements central to the success of a landmark settlement negotiated with the Bush administration." Microsoft could be looking at many more court dates ahead.
The case of Bret McDanel is another example of why computer security folk need to be very careful how they tred. McDanel served 16 months in prison technically for transgressing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. His crime was that he spotted serious security flaws in his company's software. He reported these to the management but they ignored them. After quitting the company he then decided to email their customers to point out the flaws. His former employers didn't take too kindly to this and got the authorities involved. McDanel was prosecuted convicted and jailed. After the event, and with the support of the tenacious Jennifer Granick at Stanford the prosecutors have now agreed that McDanel was wrongfully convicted and are supporting his appeal to get the conviction overturned. This doesn't happen very often so credit must go to the officials involved.
Major League baseball are planning to sue websites describing games for intellectual property infringement.
"Bob Bowman, who oversees Major League Baseball Advanced Media, says it's time to assert property rights: "One way to exhibit a live baseball game is TV. Then there's radio. The third is offering real-time data online. To us, there's no difference.""
That could have come straight out of the mouth of Jamie Kellner of Turner Broadcasting who believes taping tv programmes and fast forwarding the ads is theft.
In the wake of Swarthmore college authorities harsh treatment of the students civil disobendience campaign against Diebold, students from other univerities such as MIT are signing up.
Looks like the ubiquitous Jack Valenti may be finally thinking of retiring after 37 years as head of the MPAA.
"report showed the impact of
diversity policies: most people had learnt the approved terms to use
in public, whatever their private views. But enforcing this kind of
personal etiquette won't help to reduce real racism, and indeed may
increase resentment of ethnic minorities."
John Dean served as President Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for about three years. He has written two books about the experience and the Watergate scandal, Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). He's none too impressed at the performance of the current White House resident, George Bush and has regularly criticised him in the mainstream press. His latest critique draws on details recently published in a book by the editor of the Nation, David Corn, called The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the politics of Deception. It has to be said that Corn is not exactly a fan of the president either. Dean seems to believe that Bush merits his own special prosecutor in the Kenneth Starr mould to investigate a range of areas from Iraq's WMDs to his relationship with Enron chairman Ken Lay, and including stem cell research, alleged criminal expose of a CIA operative, management of pre and post September 11th, and his tax plans amongs others. Bush, Blair and spin certainly haven't done a whole lot for the credibility of politicians but then I wonder if nowadays we can have more influence with the pound (or dollar or euro) we spend rather than the vote we cast? Sorry state of affairs.
The Miscrosoft settlement judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly,
"urged government lawyers Friday to investigate why only nine companies so far have paid Microsoft to license its technology for their own software products, agreements central to the success of a landmark settlement negotiated with the Bush administration." Microsoft could be looking at many more court dates ahead.
The case of Bret McDanel is another example of why computer security folk need to be very careful how they tred. McDanel served 16 months in prison technically for transgressing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. His crime was that he spotted serious security flaws in his company's software. He reported these to the management but they ignored them. After quitting the company he then decided to email their customers to point out the flaws. His former employers didn't take too kindly to this and got the authorities involved. McDanel was prosecuted convicted and jailed. After the event, and with the support of the tenacious Jennifer Granick at Stanford the prosecutors have now agreed that McDanel was wrongfully convicted and are supporting his appeal to get the conviction overturned. This doesn't happen very often so credit must go to the officials involved.
Major League baseball are planning to sue websites describing games for intellectual property infringement.
"Bob Bowman, who oversees Major League Baseball Advanced Media, says it's time to assert property rights: "One way to exhibit a live baseball game is TV. Then there's radio. The third is offering real-time data online. To us, there's no difference.""
That could have come straight out of the mouth of Jamie Kellner of Turner Broadcasting who believes taping tv programmes and fast forwarding the ads is theft.
In the wake of Swarthmore college authorities harsh treatment of the students civil disobendience campaign against Diebold, students from other univerities such as MIT are signing up.
Looks like the ubiquitous Jack Valenti may be finally thinking of retiring after 37 years as head of the MPAA.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Young Aaron Swartz is annoyed about Diebold using copyright law to cut off the publication of their embarrassing internal memos.
Meanwhile the Swarthmore students who have set up a campaign of civil disobedience against Diebold are beingopposed by their college authorities. Next step the ACLU or similar group launching a legal suit to fight for the students' constitutional rights anyone? Especially after the university decided to start terminating the internet accounts of any student linking to any site that links to a political protest site that links to the Diebold memos.
Bruce Schneier does a typically incisive piece on the data mining I was talking about yesterday
"There's a common belief - generally mistaken - that if we only had enough data we could pick terrorists out of crowds...
Security is always a trade-off: How much security am I getting, and what am I giving up to get it? These "data-mining" programs are not very effective. Identifiable future terrorists are rare, and innocents are common. No matter what patterns you're looking for, far more innocents will match the patterns than terrorists because innocents vastly outnumber terrorists. So many that you might as well not bother. And that assumes that you even can predict terrorist patterns. Sure, it's easy to create a pattern after the fact; if something identical to the 9/11 plot ever happens again, you can be sure we're ready. But tomorrow's attacks? That's much harder."
All is not well on the IPR front at Cambridge University. Dr M.R. Clark of the Department of Pathology has "detailed practical experience of how the University policy was operated for many years by the Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office (WILO) and also more recent experience of the Research Services Division (RSD) and the Technology Transfer Office (TTO). What I can say immediately is that there has been a profound philosophical change in the way that the TTO operates
when compared to the WILO, particularly with regard to the involvement of University academics in the discussions over commercial exploitation of their IPR."
Via such routes does the abuse of intellectual property interfere with education.
A report commissioned by the Danish government concluded in early October that open source software was critical for any serious attempt at "e-government".
"RightsWatch is the name of a research project aimed at developing consensus and
promoting awareness of self-regulatory notice and takedown (NTD) procedures for
Europe, as a tool to achieve prompt removal of copyright-infringing material from the
Internet."
They've just produced a white paper that summarises their work. "The RightsWatch partners would welcome your views on the project's findings. "
Reporters without Borders have just published their Second world press freedom ranking. Finland, Iceland, Netherlands and Norway top the rankings. Ireland is 17th, the UK 27th.
"The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders. "
The EU gets good ratings apart from Italy (54th) and Spain (equal 42th).
Meanwhile the Swarthmore students who have set up a campaign of civil disobedience against Diebold are beingopposed by their college authorities. Next step the ACLU or similar group launching a legal suit to fight for the students' constitutional rights anyone? Especially after the university decided to start terminating the internet accounts of any student linking to any site that links to a political protest site that links to the Diebold memos.
Bruce Schneier does a typically incisive piece on the data mining I was talking about yesterday
"There's a common belief - generally mistaken - that if we only had enough data we could pick terrorists out of crowds...
Security is always a trade-off: How much security am I getting, and what am I giving up to get it? These "data-mining" programs are not very effective. Identifiable future terrorists are rare, and innocents are common. No matter what patterns you're looking for, far more innocents will match the patterns than terrorists because innocents vastly outnumber terrorists. So many that you might as well not bother. And that assumes that you even can predict terrorist patterns. Sure, it's easy to create a pattern after the fact; if something identical to the 9/11 plot ever happens again, you can be sure we're ready. But tomorrow's attacks? That's much harder."
All is not well on the IPR front at Cambridge University. Dr M.R. Clark of the Department of Pathology has "detailed practical experience of how the University policy was operated for many years by the Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office (WILO) and also more recent experience of the Research Services Division (RSD) and the Technology Transfer Office (TTO). What I can say immediately is that there has been a profound philosophical change in the way that the TTO operates
when compared to the WILO, particularly with regard to the involvement of University academics in the discussions over commercial exploitation of their IPR."
Via such routes does the abuse of intellectual property interfere with education.
A report commissioned by the Danish government concluded in early October that open source software was critical for any serious attempt at "e-government".
"RightsWatch is the name of a research project aimed at developing consensus and
promoting awareness of self-regulatory notice and takedown (NTD) procedures for
Europe, as a tool to achieve prompt removal of copyright-infringing material from the
Internet."
They've just produced a white paper that summarises their work. "The RightsWatch partners would welcome your views on the project's findings. "
Reporters without Borders have just published their Second world press freedom ranking. Finland, Iceland, Netherlands and Norway top the rankings. Ireland is 17th, the UK 27th.
"The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders. "
The EU gets good ratings apart from Italy (54th) and Spain (equal 42th).
According to Silicon.com MIT are winding down their RFID research and closing their Auto ID Center that did the research. Expect RFID tags to get widely deployed by the retail value chain in the none too distant future.
Gator have been suing to stop their name being associated with the term "spyware." In "See you later, anti-Gators?" at News.com, Paul Festa reports:
'In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message.
"There is this feeling out there that they won the lawsuit, and people are starting to get scared," said one employee of a spyware-removal company, who asked not to be named. "We haven't been sued, but we've heard that other companies are being sued for saying this and that, so we've changed our language" on the company Web site... '
...Companies like Gator are the Goliath that average computer users are up against in the war for online privacy," Ed English, CEO of InterMute, said last month.'
Personally I detest pop up ads, whatever you call them. I'm no fan of the surreptitious collection of personal data either.
The Australian ISP that has been sued by the music industry is denying that it acted as a host for copyright infringing files.
'In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message.
"There is this feeling out there that they won the lawsuit, and people are starting to get scared," said one employee of a spyware-removal company, who asked not to be named. "We haven't been sued, but we've heard that other companies are being sued for saying this and that, so we've changed our language" on the company Web site... '
...Companies like Gator are the Goliath that average computer users are up against in the war for online privacy," Ed English, CEO of InterMute, said last month.'
Personally I detest pop up ads, whatever you call them. I'm no fan of the surreptitious collection of personal data either.
The Australian ISP that has been sued by the music industry is denying that it acted as a host for copyright infringing files.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
The Max Planck Society this week issued "The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities." Extract:
"The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet
as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously,
these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of
scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open
Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open
Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the
Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and
human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers,
research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need
to consider.
Goals
Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the
information is not made widely and readily available to society. New
possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form
but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet
have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source
of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the
scientific community.
In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of
knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and
transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and
compatible."
Very noble.
"The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet
as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously,
these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of
scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open
Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open
Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the
Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and
human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers,
research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need
to consider.
Goals
Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the
information is not made widely and readily available to society. New
possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form
but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet
have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source
of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the
scientific community.
In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of
knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and
transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and
compatible."
Very noble.
How do we use data mining to catch the bad guys whilst at the same time not catching or undermining the civil liberties of the good guys? According to Wired, "A panel of lawmakers, think tankers, data miners and civil libertarians" on Tuesday "couldn't even begin to make up their minds."
I'm not surprised. As I've said before, it appears intuitively obvious that he best available technologies should be put at the disposal of the good guys in order to stop/catch the bad guys. The real world is not quite so simple, however, and the checks and balances as well as the information overload and resource issues associated with this are anything but intuitively obvious. Not to mention the fact that the good guys and bad guys cannot be easily identifed by their respective white and black clothing.
I'm not surprised. As I've said before, it appears intuitively obvious that he best available technologies should be put at the disposal of the good guys in order to stop/catch the bad guys. The real world is not quite so simple, however, and the checks and balances as well as the information overload and resource issues associated with this are anything but intuitively obvious. Not to mention the fact that the good guys and bad guys cannot be easily identifed by their respective white and black clothing.
The MPAA has launched its classroom campaign to educate children about "digital citizenship." (No I'm not kidding). The associated propaganda sheet... er, sorry... I mean booklet... is called "What's the Diff? A Guide to Digital Citizenship." All the usual soundbites are in there. According to Donna Wenthworth, Wendy Seltzer of the EFF and Berkman Center at Harvard has done her own interpretation of some of the soundbites:
* To legally own it, legally buy it.
Sorry, kids--no more birthday presents!
* If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it.
The library will now be closing its doors.
* Copying a movie or CD for a friend is illegal.
Mommy taped ABC's "movie of the week" for Sally's
mommy. Now Mommy is going to jail.
* If you wouldn't take a movie or CD from the
shelves of a store without paying for it, then why do
it online?
It only looks like the song is still online on the "shelf."
* To legally own it, legally buy it.
Sorry, kids--no more birthday presents!
* If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it.
The library will now be closing its doors.
* Copying a movie or CD for a friend is illegal.
Mommy taped ABC's "movie of the week" for Sally's
mommy. Now Mommy is going to jail.
* If you wouldn't take a movie or CD from the
shelves of a store without paying for it, then why do
it online?
It only looks like the song is still online on the "shelf."
Via the EDRi-gram newsletter: The European Parliament's Judicial Affairs Committee (JURI)
should have discussed its Report on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights on Monday.
But 199 amendments have been proposed already and the translators were so overwhlemed they didn't get it translated into the EU's eleven official languages on time. English, Greek and Danish versions of the 159 page document were available just hours before the meeting. So no substantive business was done.
French MEP Janelly Fourtou (who is married to the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, Jean-René Fourtou) wants this directive to become law before the EU elections next summer.
"Mrs. Fourtou has been under attack from a large number of her Parliament colleagues, even from within her own Conservative Group. She is criticised for introducing a set of amendments criminalising even small-scale file sharers - and for her defence of an article in the draft directive that constitutes a violation of the EU's rules of procedure.
Article 20 of the draft directive deals with criminal law provisions for infringements of intellectual property rights. Some of the sanctions foreseen pre-empt a possible decision by a Court of Justice on whether such an infringement has taken place at all, and therefore constitutes so-called substantive law. In the EU's complicated lawmaking process, which foresees different procedures for different fields of competence, creating substantive criminal law is still an intergovernmental competence and can not take place under the co-decision procedure.
4 of the amendments aim at deleting Article 20, but Mrs. Fourtou and Commission officials alike are not willing to even discuss this. The initial discussion of the Report will now, as it seems, take place either on Tuesday, November 4th - the date initially foreseen for the vote in the Committee - or on November 6. The vote in the Committee would then take place either on November 26 or the following day, which would mean the vote in Plenary would have to take place in the week following December 15.
EU Commission: Proposal for a Directive on measures and procedures to
ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights [COM (2003) 46]
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2003/com2003_0046en01.pdf
Janelly Fourtou's Draft Report on this Directive
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/498789en.pdf
199 Amendments to the Fourtou Report
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/509224en.pdf
Law Professors criticise IPR Enforcement Directive
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/cornish.pdf
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, consultant on EU privacy issues)"
should have discussed its Report on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights on Monday.
But 199 amendments have been proposed already and the translators were so overwhlemed they didn't get it translated into the EU's eleven official languages on time. English, Greek and Danish versions of the 159 page document were available just hours before the meeting. So no substantive business was done.
French MEP Janelly Fourtou (who is married to the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, Jean-René Fourtou) wants this directive to become law before the EU elections next summer.
"Mrs. Fourtou has been under attack from a large number of her Parliament colleagues, even from within her own Conservative Group. She is criticised for introducing a set of amendments criminalising even small-scale file sharers - and for her defence of an article in the draft directive that constitutes a violation of the EU's rules of procedure.
Article 20 of the draft directive deals with criminal law provisions for infringements of intellectual property rights. Some of the sanctions foreseen pre-empt a possible decision by a Court of Justice on whether such an infringement has taken place at all, and therefore constitutes so-called substantive law. In the EU's complicated lawmaking process, which foresees different procedures for different fields of competence, creating substantive criminal law is still an intergovernmental competence and can not take place under the co-decision procedure.
4 of the amendments aim at deleting Article 20, but Mrs. Fourtou and Commission officials alike are not willing to even discuss this. The initial discussion of the Report will now, as it seems, take place either on Tuesday, November 4th - the date initially foreseen for the vote in the Committee - or on November 6. The vote in the Committee would then take place either on November 26 or the following day, which would mean the vote in Plenary would have to take place in the week following December 15.
EU Commission: Proposal for a Directive on measures and procedures to
ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights [COM (2003) 46]
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2003/com2003_0046en01.pdf
Janelly Fourtou's Draft Report on this Directive
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/498789en.pdf
199 Amendments to the Fourtou Report
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/509224en.pdf
Law Professors criticise IPR Enforcement Directive
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/cornish.pdf
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, consultant on EU privacy issues)"
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
The music industry have taken their first direct action against an ISP for copyright infringement in Australia.
The CDT have released a report on their concerns about the broadcast flag and how to make it work. Ernie Miller has already taken them to task over it. Donna, as usual, has lots of interesting links on the subject. One of which is to Cory Doctorow, who is really annoyed at a sloppy piece in Wired News on the subject.
A group of students have launched a campaign against Diebold over their attempts to silence the websites providing links to the companies embarrassing internal memos. This one is going to run and run. Ernest Miller likens the students' approach to a game of whack the mole.
A small Texas company, Bluecurrent, has apparently got a US patent on installing software over the internet. Do I see another Microsoft v Eolas on the horizon?
Finally for this evening, yet another member of Congress demonstrates she just does not get the importance of the end to end architecture of the net in freeing up innovation. Congresswoman Diana DeGette accuses a group of companies she calls "the Microsoft crew" of "seeking to dumb-down the heart of the network in order to strengthen" their own power. Now I'm under no illusions that the Microsofts of this world are primarily interested in their own bottom line, but the Congresswoman's belief that you can facilitate freedom by building control into the "heart of the network" is naive at best. I wonder which of the "broadband providers ... teaming with other companies to offer consumers joint products and services" stem from her own district of Colorado?
The CDT have released a report on their concerns about the broadcast flag and how to make it work. Ernie Miller has already taken them to task over it. Donna, as usual, has lots of interesting links on the subject. One of which is to Cory Doctorow, who is really annoyed at a sloppy piece in Wired News on the subject.
A group of students have launched a campaign against Diebold over their attempts to silence the websites providing links to the companies embarrassing internal memos. This one is going to run and run. Ernest Miller likens the students' approach to a game of whack the mole.
A small Texas company, Bluecurrent, has apparently got a US patent on installing software over the internet. Do I see another Microsoft v Eolas on the horizon?
Finally for this evening, yet another member of Congress demonstrates she just does not get the importance of the end to end architecture of the net in freeing up innovation. Congresswoman Diana DeGette accuses a group of companies she calls "the Microsoft crew" of "seeking to dumb-down the heart of the network in order to strengthen" their own power. Now I'm under no illusions that the Microsofts of this world are primarily interested in their own bottom line, but the Congresswoman's belief that you can facilitate freedom by building control into the "heart of the network" is naive at best. I wonder which of the "broadband providers ... teaming with other companies to offer consumers joint products and services" stem from her own district of Colorado?
I mentioned Ross Anderson's and Bill Cornish's objections to the EU intellectual property enforcement directive on Monday. I neglected to mention that the UK Patent Office have launched a public consultation exercise on the proposal.
A federal judge has told Disney that they can go ahead and release 'George of the Jungle 2' on DVD. Caterpillar Inc. had been claiming trademark infringement because the bad guys "drive bright-yellow Caterpillars in a big battle, and Caterpillar argued its reputation would be tarnished by association." The judge found the argument "unpersuasive". You just couldn't make some of these stories up.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) have hit the panic button on the likelihood of the Council of Ministers overturning the European Parliament's stance on software patents and adopting a draft text from November last year. The ministers' meeting scheduled for 10th November is to be "negotiated" at a meeting of senior patent officials from across Europe tomorrow, Thursday 23rd October.
FFII want anyone with concerns about the issue to write to their MP immediately.
I can only echo Tim O'Reilly that it defies belief that just because something, which is otherwise obvious, can be done on a computer, that it can be considered new or to involve an inventive step. Yet that is what the proposals from last November would facilitate. Again this is slightly academic because the European Patent Office have been granting these kind of patents since about the mid 1990s. FFII, however, are keen to have any formal EU wide legislation on this firmly put a spoke in that particular works.
They've been very successful lobbying the EU parliament in that regard. They may find it harder to outmanoeuvre the patent officials and the Council of Ministers.
FFII want anyone with concerns about the issue to write to their MP immediately.
I can only echo Tim O'Reilly that it defies belief that just because something, which is otherwise obvious, can be done on a computer, that it can be considered new or to involve an inventive step. Yet that is what the proposals from last November would facilitate. Again this is slightly academic because the European Patent Office have been granting these kind of patents since about the mid 1990s. FFII, however, are keen to have any formal EU wide legislation on this firmly put a spoke in that particular works.
They've been very successful lobbying the EU parliament in that regard. They may find it harder to outmanoeuvre the patent officials and the Council of Ministers.
In the New York Times "Students Find $100 Textbooks Cost $50, Purchased Overseas"
The EU are getting in on the ID card game now, with ministers agreeing on a scheme to introduce "an EU-wide health identity card able to store a range of biometric and personal data on a microchip by 2008."
Wired had a slightly shorter story on electronic voting on Monday than the one I posted earlier. The voting machine companies want to spend money on a PR campaign to convince people their machines are sound, though they are apparently also considering introducing some version of the paper audit trails their critics have been asking for. David Dill said: "The voting machine industry doesn't have a PR problem. It has a technology problem. It is impossible to determine whether their machines, in their current form, can be trusted with our elections."
NewFactor are reporting that Massachusetts has directed the state's chief technology officer to choose open-source and open-standards technologies whenever possible. That's likely to have a bigger impact on Microsoft than all the battles the state has fought on the antitrust front. Massachusetts is the lone state still fighting the Microsoft antitrust settlement, so that is likely to have influenced their decision.
As a colleague recently commented, this story has been hijacked by the open source and the closed source camps.
The original idea was the state should encourage open formats not just open source code. Open formats would mean user access to source code, whether the software was proprietary or not. I guess this is slightly academic because arguably the only really open format software is open source at the moment.
Speaking of Microsoft a report at the weekend suggested that the music buying feature in Windows XP might well violate the company's antitrust settlement of 2001. The company has also launched a PR campaign aimed at Australian MPs, "in the wake of Democrat Bills in the South Australian and federal parliament, that would require governments to give preference to open-source software over proprietary applications."
The EU are getting in on the ID card game now, with ministers agreeing on a scheme to introduce "an EU-wide health identity card able to store a range of biometric and personal data on a microchip by 2008."
Wired had a slightly shorter story on electronic voting on Monday than the one I posted earlier. The voting machine companies want to spend money on a PR campaign to convince people their machines are sound, though they are apparently also considering introducing some version of the paper audit trails their critics have been asking for. David Dill said: "The voting machine industry doesn't have a PR problem. It has a technology problem. It is impossible to determine whether their machines, in their current form, can be trusted with our elections."
NewFactor are reporting that Massachusetts has directed the state's chief technology officer to choose open-source and open-standards technologies whenever possible. That's likely to have a bigger impact on Microsoft than all the battles the state has fought on the antitrust front. Massachusetts is the lone state still fighting the Microsoft antitrust settlement, so that is likely to have influenced their decision.
As a colleague recently commented, this story has been hijacked by the open source and the closed source camps.
The original idea was the state should encourage open formats not just open source code. Open formats would mean user access to source code, whether the software was proprietary or not. I guess this is slightly academic because arguably the only really open format software is open source at the moment.
Speaking of Microsoft a report at the weekend suggested that the music buying feature in Windows XP might well violate the company's antitrust settlement of 2001. The company has also launched a PR campaign aimed at Australian MPs, "in the wake of Democrat Bills in the South Australian and federal parliament, that would require governments to give preference to open-source software over proprietary applications."
In the New York Times "Students Find $100 Textbooks Cost $50, Purchased Overseas"
The EU are getting in on the ID card game now, with ministers agreeing on a scheme to introduce "an EU-wide health identity card able to store a range of biometric and personal data on a microchip by 2008."
Wired had a slightly shorter story on electronic voting on Monday than the one I posted earlier. The voting machine companies want to spend money on a PR campaign to convince people their machines are sound, though they are apparently also considering introducing some version of the paper audit trails their critics have been asking for. David Dill said: "The voting machine industry doesn't have a PR problem. It has a technology problem. It is impossible to determine whether their machines, in their current form, can be trusted with our elections."
The EU are getting in on the ID card game now, with ministers agreeing on a scheme to introduce "an EU-wide health identity card able to store a range of biometric and personal data on a microchip by 2008."
Wired had a slightly shorter story on electronic voting on Monday than the one I posted earlier. The voting machine companies want to spend money on a PR campaign to convince people their machines are sound, though they are apparently also considering introducing some version of the paper audit trails their critics have been asking for. David Dill said: "The voting machine industry doesn't have a PR problem. It has a technology problem. It is impossible to determine whether their machines, in their current form, can be trusted with our elections."
If you've been following the electronic voting machine problems in the US, then William Rivers Pitt's interview with Barbara Simmons, David Dill and Rebecca Mecuri is as terrific insight into the issues.
" DD: You know, being an engineer involves making choices about the appropriate use
of technology. It is not using the highest tech solution to every problem, whether it's
appropriate or not. It's focused on solving the problem by the best means that are
available. The best engineers will use the best means that are available even if they
don't involve any significant technology at all. I think it's the responsibility of everybody
in technology to weigh in with their opinions about the appropriate use of technology
and the inappropriate use of technology. And I think it's particularly important for
academics and educators to do that. I think part of our job in universities is to try to
advise the rest of society, and the policy makers, of what the right things to do are.
And to share our expertise and that's really what we're trying to do.
My greatest worry is really an erosion of confidence in the elections. When people
can no longer trust the elections I think that that will undermine the legitimacy of
everybody in government and I wouldn't like to see that happen.
BS: The confidence is very important. I also fear that if there is the capability of
undermining elections sooner or later. Somebody will exploit this technology to steal an
election. And to me, our democracy and our right to vote and our right to choose the
people who run this country is fundamental and if I feel we've lost that then what makes
this country special is gone.
RM: My feeling is that it is a bamboozling of the American public. We're trading away
a lot of the checks and balances that we have always had in elections. We're trading
this off for high-tech, for faster returns, and it's not true, what we're being told is not
the full truth about what is actually going on and I think that we're giving away much
more than we're getting. We're giving the opportunity to have an entire election stolen,
just because of bad code, not even stolen, just screwed up, fouled up.
DD: We're driving too fast along the side of a mountain road with no guardrail. And
maybe you won't go over the side or maybe you will. Do you want to risk it? If you do it
long enough you'll eventually go off the mountain. "
" DD: You know, being an engineer involves making choices about the appropriate use
of technology. It is not using the highest tech solution to every problem, whether it's
appropriate or not. It's focused on solving the problem by the best means that are
available. The best engineers will use the best means that are available even if they
don't involve any significant technology at all. I think it's the responsibility of everybody
in technology to weigh in with their opinions about the appropriate use of technology
and the inappropriate use of technology. And I think it's particularly important for
academics and educators to do that. I think part of our job in universities is to try to
advise the rest of society, and the policy makers, of what the right things to do are.
And to share our expertise and that's really what we're trying to do.
My greatest worry is really an erosion of confidence in the elections. When people
can no longer trust the elections I think that that will undermine the legitimacy of
everybody in government and I wouldn't like to see that happen.
BS: The confidence is very important. I also fear that if there is the capability of
undermining elections sooner or later. Somebody will exploit this technology to steal an
election. And to me, our democracy and our right to vote and our right to choose the
people who run this country is fundamental and if I feel we've lost that then what makes
this country special is gone.
RM: My feeling is that it is a bamboozling of the American public. We're trading away
a lot of the checks and balances that we have always had in elections. We're trading
this off for high-tech, for faster returns, and it's not true, what we're being told is not
the full truth about what is actually going on and I think that we're giving away much
more than we're getting. We're giving the opportunity to have an entire election stolen,
just because of bad code, not even stolen, just screwed up, fouled up.
DD: We're driving too fast along the side of a mountain road with no guardrail. And
maybe you won't go over the side or maybe you will. Do you want to risk it? If you do it
long enough you'll eventually go off the mountain. "
Monday, October 20, 2003
Frank Field is highlighting a McGill University (Canadian) development studies student's objection to having US company TurnItIn.com vetting all his assignments for plagiarism. Might be interesting to keep tabs on that one.
Derek Slater has pointed me to Pam Samuelson's review of Jessica Litman's book, Digital Copyright. Both the review and the book are well worth a read. Actually, virtually anything by these two formidable scholars of intellectual property is worth a read, if you really want to get to grips with the lie of the IP landscape.
The Digital Imprimatur: How Big Brother and Big Media Can Put the Internet Genie Back in the Bottle by John Walker, who created AutoCAD. He's come round to agreeing with Larry Lessig on the future of the Net, having previously been an optimist on the subject.
Also recommended is Walker's Unicard essay on privacy from 1994.
Also recommended is Walker's Unicard essay on privacy from 1994.
There have been a number of interesting articles published recently on the subject of protecting children from inappropriate content on the Internet. Angela M. Xenakis argues in the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology that the answer is in technology and not regulation.
Christopher Scott Maravilla in the West Virginia Journal of Law & Technology also suggests the answer might be in zoning and filtering technologies. But, for example, that these should be mandated by government regulation requiring virtual red light district domain names to be used for pornography.
Edgar Burch looks at censoring hate speech also in the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology. He argues that hate speech on the Net presents real dangers in the wake of the tragedy of 11th September 2001. He concludes:
"The First Amendment and the peripheral rights that it embodies severely restrict the government’s ability to regulate hate speech... calls for implementation of legislation (regulation of Internet-based hate speech) or private procedures
(use of filtering systems) to protect youth who lack the sophistication to truly carry out the marketplace of ideas concept...
If the September 11th attacks on America have not conveyed any other message, they have reminded
people that some rights we have come to value may have to be limited to maintain safety and order in this nation."
I disagree on many fronts but probably most importantly in relation to his notion that young people are incapable of negotiating the marketplace of ideas. Give young people freedom and responsibility and they will amaze you.
Dawn S. Conrad in the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology says that "joint efforts by the government, consumers, parents, law
enforcement, the technology industry, and the adult Internet industry will be required."
Robert Chalmers argues for education not censorship in the Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law.
Finally (for now) the BBC are highlighting an LSE report on Children on the Internet
"While the industry, government, schools and parents should continue to
highlight risks, there are also some exciting opportunities being missed for
engaging with young people online. "
Christopher Scott Maravilla in the West Virginia Journal of Law & Technology also suggests the answer might be in zoning and filtering technologies. But, for example, that these should be mandated by government regulation requiring virtual red light district domain names to be used for pornography.
Edgar Burch looks at censoring hate speech also in the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology. He argues that hate speech on the Net presents real dangers in the wake of the tragedy of 11th September 2001. He concludes:
"The First Amendment and the peripheral rights that it embodies severely restrict the government’s ability to regulate hate speech... calls for implementation of legislation (regulation of Internet-based hate speech) or private procedures
(use of filtering systems) to protect youth who lack the sophistication to truly carry out the marketplace of ideas concept...
If the September 11th attacks on America have not conveyed any other message, they have reminded
people that some rights we have come to value may have to be limited to maintain safety and order in this nation."
I disagree on many fronts but probably most importantly in relation to his notion that young people are incapable of negotiating the marketplace of ideas. Give young people freedom and responsibility and they will amaze you.
Dawn S. Conrad in the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology says that "joint efforts by the government, consumers, parents, law
enforcement, the technology industry, and the adult Internet industry will be required."
Robert Chalmers argues for education not censorship in the Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law.
Finally (for now) the BBC are highlighting an LSE report on Children on the Internet
"While the industry, government, schools and parents should continue to
highlight risks, there are also some exciting opportunities being missed for
engaging with young people online. "
The New York Times is reporting on the EU's plans for an intellectual property enforcement directive. And if you thought the EUCD and the DMCA were bad, you should see this.
"Lawyers who have studied a draft of the proposed law say that not only could a teenager who downloaded a music file be sent
to jail under it; so too could managers of the Internet service provider that the teenager happened to use, whether they knew
what the teenager was doing or not."
I had not previously appreciated that the lady in charge of shepherding the directive through, Janelly Fourtou, a French member of the European Parliament, is married to the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, Jean-René Fourtou. She doesn't believe she faces a conflict of interest.
FIPR and Ross Anderson in particular have been warning us about this for months.
And world renowned intellectual property specialists such as Bill Cornish, Josef Drexel, Rito Hilty, Annette Kur and others have just published a article seriously criticising the proposals.
"Lawyers who have studied a draft of the proposed law say that not only could a teenager who downloaded a music file be sent
to jail under it; so too could managers of the Internet service provider that the teenager happened to use, whether they knew
what the teenager was doing or not."
I had not previously appreciated that the lady in charge of shepherding the directive through, Janelly Fourtou, a French member of the European Parliament, is married to the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, Jean-René Fourtou. She doesn't believe she faces a conflict of interest.
FIPR and Ross Anderson in particular have been warning us about this for months.
And world renowned intellectual property specialists such as Bill Cornish, Josef Drexel, Rito Hilty, Annette Kur and others have just published a article seriously criticising the proposals.
Courtesy of Donna, who in her turn got it from Lawrence Solum, I learn of an excellent paper by Professor Joseph Liu at Boston College, The DMCA and the Regulation of Scientific Research. From the abstract:
"This Article analyzes the impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) on academic encryption research. In this Article, I argue that for
both legal and practical reasons academic encryption researchers should be
able to conduct and publish certain types of research without significant
fear of liability under the DMCA. However, the DMCA will have a
non-trivial impact on the conditions under which such research takes place,
and this impact can be expected to have several undesirable effects. More
broadly, this impact highlights the problematic way in which the DMCA
regulates scientific research in furtherance of intellectual property rights.
The Article concludes with a number of suggestions for mitigating some of
these negative effects. "
From the paper:
"Specifically, the DMCA: imposes additional hurdles,
which researchers must overcome before engaging in
and publishing their research; limits the universe of
individuals with whom researchers can freely
communicate about their research; requires disclosure of
the intention to engage in research to third-parties;
affects the content of academic research papers; and
limits avenues for publication of the research. "
"This Article analyzes the impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) on academic encryption research. In this Article, I argue that for
both legal and practical reasons academic encryption researchers should be
able to conduct and publish certain types of research without significant
fear of liability under the DMCA. However, the DMCA will have a
non-trivial impact on the conditions under which such research takes place,
and this impact can be expected to have several undesirable effects. More
broadly, this impact highlights the problematic way in which the DMCA
regulates scientific research in furtherance of intellectual property rights.
The Article concludes with a number of suggestions for mitigating some of
these negative effects. "
From the paper:
"Specifically, the DMCA: imposes additional hurdles,
which researchers must overcome before engaging in
and publishing their research; limits the universe of
individuals with whom researchers can freely
communicate about their research; requires disclosure of
the intention to engage in research to third-parties;
affects the content of academic research papers; and
limits avenues for publication of the research. "
There has been a flurry of blogging about the FCC's apparent willingness to adopt the broadcast flag. Donna has many of the interesting links. Nice to see Senator McCain getting back into Larry Lessig's good books with his letter to FCC Chairman, Michael Powell, on the issue. He's concerned about the impact on consumers.
Brad Templeton's new pledge of allegiance is amusing:
"I pledge Allegiance to the Flag
of the prohibition of copying
and to the monopoly for which it stands
One protocol, under Valenti*, innovation-free,
without liberty or fair use for all.
*Unlike God, there is no dispute over whether Valenti's
name can appear in the pledge."
Brad Templeton's new pledge of allegiance is amusing:
"I pledge Allegiance to the Flag
of the prohibition of copying
and to the monopoly for which it stands
One protocol, under Valenti*, innovation-free,
without liberty or fair use for all.
*Unlike God, there is no dispute over whether Valenti's
name can appear in the pledge."
Ernie Miller is taking an idea from Mary Hodder at the Berkeley intellectual property weblog and running with it. The idea?
"The Piracy Meter: if I pirated movies, this is how I'd rate them, as to what's worth clogging my dsl connection
for 24-36 hours to get one."
Prof Miller's expansion:
"he details of the meter aren't quite clear, but might I suggest the following rankings (from worst to best)?:
CAM - Who cares if the movie was recorded in a cinema with a consumer-quality camcorder and/or where the audience can
be seen or heard? The movie is simply not worth the effort of getting a quality copy. Download only when desparate.
Telesync - Better than CAM, still recorded in a cinema, but usually with professional-level equipment and a separate audio
source (so the audience cannot be heard). Getting better, but download only if you're not going to be using your broadband for
a day or so, like during a weekend trip.
Screener - Generally recorded from promotional videotapes or DVDs which have been sent to film critics, marketing firms,
Academy voters, etc. This ranking has been discontinued until further notice upon request of the MPAA.
LD/DVD Rip - Accomplished simply by copying a LaserDisc or DVD. Picture and audio quality are generally very good.
Good movie and definitely worth renting on DVD, but who wants to make the trip to the local Blockbuster? Go ahead and
download, unless you're too busy grabbing MP3s.
Telecine - A high quality copy taken directly from the film reel. Popular with professional pirating operations. Great movie - go
ahead and download even if it makes surfing unbearably slow and then burn to DVD-R."
"The Piracy Meter: if I pirated movies, this is how I'd rate them, as to what's worth clogging my dsl connection
for 24-36 hours to get one."
Prof Miller's expansion:
"he details of the meter aren't quite clear, but might I suggest the following rankings (from worst to best)?:
CAM - Who cares if the movie was recorded in a cinema with a consumer-quality camcorder and/or where the audience can
be seen or heard? The movie is simply not worth the effort of getting a quality copy. Download only when desparate.
Telesync - Better than CAM, still recorded in a cinema, but usually with professional-level equipment and a separate audio
source (so the audience cannot be heard). Getting better, but download only if you're not going to be using your broadband for
a day or so, like during a weekend trip.
Screener - Generally recorded from promotional videotapes or DVDs which have been sent to film critics, marketing firms,
Academy voters, etc. This ranking has been discontinued until further notice upon request of the MPAA.
LD/DVD Rip - Accomplished simply by copying a LaserDisc or DVD. Picture and audio quality are generally very good.
Good movie and definitely worth renting on DVD, but who wants to make the trip to the local Blockbuster? Go ahead and
download, unless you're too busy grabbing MP3s.
Telecine - A high quality copy taken directly from the film reel. Popular with professional pirating operations. Great movie - go
ahead and download even if it makes surfing unbearably slow and then burn to DVD-R."
The RIAA have sent warning letters to 204 more individuals suggesting they might like to settle out of court before they get sued.
I had vaguely registered but in the thick of other things not thought to blog the story about Diebold sending out dozens of cease and desist letters to ISPs, until the EFF alerted me to it again over the weekend. They are embarrassed about the internal memos which suggested they knew about the problems with their voing machines but were not concerned about them. So they are claiming copyright on the memos and copyright infringement against the Independent Media Center (IndyMedia) website which has published links to the memos. As far as the EFF know, every ISP apart from the non profit Online Policy Group (OPG) have taken down the 'offending' page.
"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by Congress in 1998 provides a "safe harbor" as an incentive for ISPs
to take down user-posted content when they receive cease-and-desist letters such as the ones sent by Diebold. By removing
the content, or forcing the user to do so, for a minimum of 10 days, an ISP can take itself out of the middle of any copyright
claim. As a result, few ISPs have tested whether they would face any liability for such user activity in the first place."
I've said before I'm a great believer in the cock up rather than the conspiracy theory of history and it seems that is what is going on here as well. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any funny business has been going on in the way of rigging elections. It is just that the Diebold machines are insecure and sometimes faulty. Rather than trying to close the stable door now the horse has bolted, they should be acting to secure their systems. Computer scientists, such as David Dill at Stanford, don't believe that it is too difficult a task - there is no rocket science involved, just plenty of legwork. Trying to hide the problems gives the impression of cover up, which in turn suggests they have some seriously dark skeletons in the cupboard. Conspiracy theorists get hold of that and they've got the makings of an exciting crime thriller. Somebody is probably already writing it.
"The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) passed by Congress in 1998 provides a "safe harbor" as an incentive for ISPs
to take down user-posted content when they receive cease-and-desist letters such as the ones sent by Diebold. By removing
the content, or forcing the user to do so, for a minimum of 10 days, an ISP can take itself out of the middle of any copyright
claim. As a result, few ISPs have tested whether they would face any liability for such user activity in the first place."
I've said before I'm a great believer in the cock up rather than the conspiracy theory of history and it seems that is what is going on here as well. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that any funny business has been going on in the way of rigging elections. It is just that the Diebold machines are insecure and sometimes faulty. Rather than trying to close the stable door now the horse has bolted, they should be acting to secure their systems. Computer scientists, such as David Dill at Stanford, don't believe that it is too difficult a task - there is no rocket science involved, just plenty of legwork. Trying to hide the problems gives the impression of cover up, which in turn suggests they have some seriously dark skeletons in the cupboard. Conspiracy theorists get hold of that and they've got the makings of an exciting crime thriller. Somebody is probably already writing it.
Friday, October 17, 2003
The RIAA have apparently sent out a new pile of letters threatening lawsuits. AT the same time the EFF have released a cartoon on the subject. Amusing.
DanGilmore is concerned that the broadcast flag mandate is about to come to fruition. He makes a strong case. And, as Ernest Miller says, "Any rule that mandates DRM is giving too much control to the entertainment industry."
DanGilmore is concerned that the broadcast flag mandate is about to come to fruition. He makes a strong case. And, as Ernest Miller says, "Any rule that mandates DRM is giving too much control to the entertainment industry."
I see Governor Howard Dean, who is running for president in the US has put together a "dream team" to advise him on information policy. Good for him. Mind you I could see him getting on the wrong side of the media moguls, the entertainment industry, the publishing industry and the telecommunications industry if he decides to actually take the advice of these folks, who include Hal Abelson, Larry Lessig, Laura Breeden, Bob Lucky, Dewayne Hendricks, Joi Ito, David Reed, Richard Rowe, David Weinberger. That could be fun!
Given the serious committment of the members of the group to end to end architecture and open networks, the relentless commercial drive to lock up the choke points of our communication infrastructures may well start to to hit some speed bumps! But then, I don't suppose there is a particularly high probably that the governor will get elected?
Given the serious committment of the members of the group to end to end architecture and open networks, the relentless commercial drive to lock up the choke points of our communication infrastructures may well start to to hit some speed bumps! But then, I don't suppose there is a particularly high probably that the governor will get elected?
Thursday, October 16, 2003
Salon have another worrying article by Farhad Manjoo on the current problems with electronic voting.
" Over the past several years, as computer
scientists began expressing concerns about the security of touch-
screen electronic voting machines, elections officials across the
nation have reassured the public with a simple answer: Testing...
But Jeremiah Akin, a 28-year-old computer programmer who
recently observed one of these tests in Riverside County, Calif.,
says that what he saw did nothing to mitigate his concerns about
electronic voting -- indeed, the whole thing made him more worried
than ever."
" Over the past several years, as computer
scientists began expressing concerns about the security of touch-
screen electronic voting machines, elections officials across the
nation have reassured the public with a simple answer: Testing...
But Jeremiah Akin, a 28-year-old computer programmer who
recently observed one of these tests in Riverside County, Calif.,
says that what he saw did nothing to mitigate his concerns about
electronic voting -- indeed, the whole thing made him more worried
than ever."
Ernest Miller from Yale has a new blog called 'The Importance of'. From the biography,
"Ernest Miller - Just some guy who likes to think about the intersection of law and technology.
If you're curious about "The Importance Of" - please see any bibliography of Oscar Wilde."
Now Ernest Miller is more than 'just some guy' who likes to think about law and technology. He's one of the smartest people in the field. So this is another blog that gets added to my list of links.
And from Ernest, I learn that one of the cases that got me really interested in cyberlaw, the Dan Bernstein v DOJ cryptography export case, has finally come to an end. It has been dismissed by the judge due to a DOJ promise not to pursue cryptography researchers. Ernest says:
"The case has gone through many permutations and
procedural twists. It has certainly resulted in changes to government regulations such that encryption software is much less
tightly controlled than it once was. More importantly, the case has been one of the main sources for several once novel legal
arguments, particularly those establishing that computer code is speech protected by the First Amendment."
SunnComm's CEO Peter Jacobs has been complaining about his lot and his complaints have been dissected over at Greplaw and by Derek. I understand why Mr Jacobs is angry - I probably would be too if I was CEO of a company that had $10 million wiped off its share price overnight. But it is usually a good idea, when you find yourself in a hole, to stop digging.
"Ernest Miller - Just some guy who likes to think about the intersection of law and technology.
If you're curious about "The Importance Of" - please see any bibliography of Oscar Wilde."
Now Ernest Miller is more than 'just some guy' who likes to think about law and technology. He's one of the smartest people in the field. So this is another blog that gets added to my list of links.
And from Ernest, I learn that one of the cases that got me really interested in cyberlaw, the Dan Bernstein v DOJ cryptography export case, has finally come to an end. It has been dismissed by the judge due to a DOJ promise not to pursue cryptography researchers. Ernest says:
"The case has gone through many permutations and
procedural twists. It has certainly resulted in changes to government regulations such that encryption software is much less
tightly controlled than it once was. More importantly, the case has been one of the main sources for several once novel legal
arguments, particularly those establishing that computer code is speech protected by the First Amendment."
SunnComm's CEO Peter Jacobs has been complaining about his lot and his complaints have been dissected over at Greplaw and by Derek. I understand why Mr Jacobs is angry - I probably would be too if I was CEO of a company that had $10 million wiped off its share price overnight. But it is usually a good idea, when you find yourself in a hole, to stop digging.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Terrific article by Megan Gray - Confessions of a Copyright Enforcer - which throws a sharp light on the DMCA subpoena process.
Rager Parloff offered his usual sympathetic thoughts to the concerns of the entertainment industry over file sharing recently in Fortune Magazine. The article does a nice job of explaining the relationships between FasTrack, Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, Gnutella, Sharman Networks and Streamcast. Morpheus, for example, decided to move to Gnutella after a dispute with Kazaa got them locked out of the FasTrack network.
Amy Harmon at The New York Times has done a nice piece on the pricing of music downloads, What Price Music? She quotes Doug Morris, chairman of Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company:
"This is much bigger than the CD. The CD and the LP and the cassette were all packaged goods. This is about
being able to find all the world's music in one store — a Professor Longhair record, a Benny Goodman record. Where are you
going to find that in a record store now?"
Looks like at least one of the labels is finally getting its act together. It's impossible to say what the long term effect on the music business will be but Morris thinks there will be an increase in overall sales. Nice to see some optimism from such a source.
The NYT also did a nice profile a few days ago of the guys that created Kazaa and their latest adventures with VoIP service Skype. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis see VoIP having a seismic affect on traditional telephone companies. The article suggests MCI in the US are planning a complete switch to VoIP by 2005. Interesting.
Back to the music business and specifically the RIAA's targetting of file sharers, the EFF seem to have found someone else who has been falsely accused:
"The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier
Foundation on Monday asked lawyers for three
record labels to drop their suit against 35-year-old
Web site designer Ross Plank, asserting that he is the
second target of 261 high-profile suits who is the
victim of mistaken identity. "
"This is much bigger than the CD. The CD and the LP and the cassette were all packaged goods. This is about
being able to find all the world's music in one store — a Professor Longhair record, a Benny Goodman record. Where are you
going to find that in a record store now?"
Looks like at least one of the labels is finally getting its act together. It's impossible to say what the long term effect on the music business will be but Morris thinks there will be an increase in overall sales. Nice to see some optimism from such a source.
The NYT also did a nice profile a few days ago of the guys that created Kazaa and their latest adventures with VoIP service Skype. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis see VoIP having a seismic affect on traditional telephone companies. The article suggests MCI in the US are planning a complete switch to VoIP by 2005. Interesting.
Back to the music business and specifically the RIAA's targetting of file sharers, the EFF seem to have found someone else who has been falsely accused:
"The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier
Foundation on Monday asked lawyers for three
record labels to drop their suit against 35-year-old
Web site designer Ross Plank, asserting that he is the
second target of 261 high-profile suits who is the
victim of mistaken identity. "
Sunday, October 12, 2003
An FCC Commissioner who gets it, according to Larry Lessig. This paper from Michael Copps is spot on and not the kind of insight you come to expect from officialdom. Good for you Mr Copps.
Friday, October 10, 2003
It seems that SunnComm have decided not to sue Alex Haderman after all.
"SunnComm president and CEO Peter Jacobs said he changed his mind.
Jacobs said in an interview late last night that a successful lawsuit would do
little to reverse the damage done by the paper Halderman published Monday
about his research, and any suit would likely hurt the research community by
making computer scientists think twice about researching copy-protection
technology.
"I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on
research," Jacobs said."
"SunnComm president and CEO Peter Jacobs said he changed his mind.
Jacobs said in an interview late last night that a successful lawsuit would do
little to reverse the damage done by the paper Halderman published Monday
about his research, and any suit would likely hurt the research community by
making computer scientists think twice about researching copy-protection
technology.
"I don't want to be the guy that creates any kind of chilling effect on
research," Jacobs said."
AT LUNCHTIME TODAY, I moderated a panel discussion on digital downloading and music,
featuring a bunch of musicians, songwriters, and industry people from Nashville. Here's the
scary bit: one of the industry guys said that their big legislative priority is to try to create a
regime where you have to register with a unique, verifiable ID to access the Internet.
No doubt the next step would be to take away that ID as punishment for "misconduct" on the
Internet. Shades of Vernor Vinge's True Names.
posted at 04:12 PM by Glenn Reynolds
featuring a bunch of musicians, songwriters, and industry people from Nashville. Here's the
scary bit: one of the industry guys said that their big legislative priority is to try to create a
regime where you have to register with a unique, verifiable ID to access the Internet.
No doubt the next step would be to take away that ID as punishment for "misconduct" on the
Internet. Shades of Vernor Vinge's True Names.
posted at 04:12 PM by Glenn Reynolds
Alex Halderman, a Princeton student, who discovered that holding down the shift key while loading a CD into a computer, allows you to beat the latest copy protection technology, is about to get sued by the company that produced the technology. I'm with Ernest Miller on this one. I can't see them going ahead with it. It's a pretty lousy PR exercise - a student points out your security is not very good and you react how? By improving the security? No, of course not! You must sue the student, or preferably have the authorities go after him with criminal charges. We're not in the real world, we're in DMCA-land. We'll have our very own version, EUCD-land, in the UK by the end of the month.
Thursday, October 09, 2003
Eolas have filed for an injunction to stop Microsoft distributing their IE browser, in the wake of their recent $520 million patent infringement victory against the software giant.
The UK has passed legislation to implement the EU Copyright directive. The actual legislation is largely unchanged from the original draft regulations that were subject to such a long period of consultation. There now appears to be an exception for researchers. Section 296ZA2 states:
"This section does not apply where a person, for the purposes
of research into cryptography, does anything which circumvents effective
technological measures unless in so doing, or in issuing information
derived from that research, he affects prejudicially the rights of the
copyright owner."
It remains to be seen what "affects prejudicially the rights of the copyright owner" actually means in practice. The DMCA also has an exception for security researchers. Ben Edelman at Harvard wants to get access to a lists of websites blocked by certain commercially available filter software programmes, in order to test their effectiveness.
As a researcher, the DMCA provides an exception which allows him to bypass the digital locks which keep those lists secret. At the same time, however, it makes it illegal for him to build the tool that would enable him to bypass those digital locks. I wonder if Section 296ZA(2) will have a similar effect?
Silicon.com are reporting on a way of beating the latest CD copy protection technology. I wonder how such a report is affected by the implemention of the copyright directive now?
"This section does not apply where a person, for the purposes
of research into cryptography, does anything which circumvents effective
technological measures unless in so doing, or in issuing information
derived from that research, he affects prejudicially the rights of the
copyright owner."
It remains to be seen what "affects prejudicially the rights of the copyright owner" actually means in practice. The DMCA also has an exception for security researchers. Ben Edelman at Harvard wants to get access to a lists of websites blocked by certain commercially available filter software programmes, in order to test their effectiveness.
As a researcher, the DMCA provides an exception which allows him to bypass the digital locks which keep those lists secret. At the same time, however, it makes it illegal for him to build the tool that would enable him to bypass those digital locks. I wonder if Section 296ZA(2) will have a similar effect?
Silicon.com are reporting on a way of beating the latest CD copy protection technology. I wonder how such a report is affected by the implemention of the copyright directive now?
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