Patriot act to be made permanent

According to Declan the USA Patriot Act is about to be made permanent.

State TIA Martrix still in use

Florida, Ohio, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are still using the Matrix (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) despite the celebrations of privacy advocates when federal funding for the scheme ended earlier this year.

Execute Malware distributors ?

An economist at the University of Rochester, Steven Landsburg, has done a cost benefit analysis on the back of an envelope and reckons US society would get better value out of executing virus spreading vandals than murderers. He certainly knows how to self publicise - the NYT have picked up on the story.

Thanks to Richard Clayton at FIPR for the links.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Internet archive DMCA lawsuit

William Paltry has decided to break his own rules about not commenting on complaints or motions, as a result of a complaint "n the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Healthcare Advocates, Inc. v. Harding, Early, Follmer & Frailey, et al."

The basic story is that one side used the wonderful Internet Archive to get archived material of the other side's website. So far so good. The Internet Archive trawls the web collecting material from websites unless owners of those websites opt out e.g. by asking the Internet Archive folks directly or by putting an opt out piece of code on their webwite called robots.txt. Healthcare Advocates stuck the blocking code on their site on 8th July 2003. Apparently by sending repeated requests to the site, Harding et al's lawyers were still able to get the material archived from the site, turning up the information 112 times from 849 attempts. It's not clear if any of the pages they got post dated the implementation of the robot.txt file.

Healthcare Advocates are now therefore claiming that Harding et al have bypassed copy protection technologies, which is illegal under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. To quote Paltry,

"It is alleged that the robots.txt denial text string is a technological circumvention measure and that defendant law firm circumvented it. This claim, in my opinion, is factually and legally wrong. Factually, at least from the complaint, it does not appear that the law firm "circumvented" anything, if by circumvent we mean devised a mousetrap to bypass the denial text string. Instead, it seems as if defendant kept banging on the URL until, for whatever reason, the denial failed to be recognized. This is like going down a row of houses and trying doors to see if they are open. If they aren't you move on until you find one that is. If it is open you walk in, but you certainly haven't circumvented an access control mechanism."

He also fails to see how the robot.txt file can be considered to meeting the legal definition of a "technological measure that effectively controls access to a work"

I'm sure he's right that the case will be thrown out but this is just another indication of how far lawyers are prepared to go to exploit the letter of the law. After all the lawyers will be thinking, the file is controlling access to copyrighted material and the defendants apparently managed to get access to that material anyway, so they must have bypassed a technical access control mechanism in some way? So they've figured that it is worth arguing before a court as one of a string of complaints. Potentially good court room tactics but it depends on how the judge views it.

Harry Potter book out early in Canada

Canadian publishers of the Harry Potter books, Raincoast Books Ltd., have announced that a small number of the books have been sold ahead of the release date on Thursday. The company has got a court injunction banning the buyers from disclosing the details of the plot and ordering them to return the books. The case went to Supreme Court of British Columbia on Saturday July 9th.

BBC criticised over Beethovan downloads

The BBC have been criticised by classical music labels over their recent experiment offering free MP3 versions of Beethoven's symphonies for downloading. Apparently over a million people took advantage of the offer.

One music executive said: "I think there is a question of whether a publicly funded broadcaster should be doing this and there is the obvious issue that it is devaluing the perceived value of music. You are also leading the public to think that it is fine to download and own these files for nothing."

Another said: "We have to pay premium prices to record big orchestras and pay full union rates and we have to pass those costs on to the consumer. If the BBC is going to offer recordings for free, that is going to be a major problem."

Let's see now. I believe Beethovan died in 1827, which means even if his work was protected by copyright, that copyright would have expired by now. So nobody owns his music. It is in the public domain. So whilst there may indeed be a question about whether a public broadcaster should be providing access to wonderful music from the public domain, the answer is a fairly simple yes imho.

In response to the second music executive, I'm reminded of a quote from Robert Heinlein's Life-Line:

"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or a corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back, for their private benefit."

It's a tough time to be in the music business with the changes wrought by the evolution of digital technologies but we do have to maintain a sense of proportion. The classical labels provide a worthy service commissioning and selling recordings of classical music in the public domain, which would not otherwise be so widely available. Although the music is in the public domain it is reasonable that these companies should be able to make a profit for the service they provide.

The technology, however, now opens up the possibility of creating a comprehensive library of that music on the Internet. It would arguably be anti-competitive and unreasonable to block the creation of such a library to protect the profits of the current incumbents in the classical music market. There will still be a market for classical music. The technology does not threaten music production. It threatens existing music production companies, unless they adapt their businesses to the new environment. And in response to the oft quoted "you can't compete with free", anyone for bottled water? Or as Tim O'Reilly says, on the Internet, "free" is eventually replaced by a higher quality paid service.

EU judge removed from Microsoft case

A French judge has been removed from presiding over the Microsoft antitrust case after he supposedly "created an uproar" after writing an article for a French legal magazine criticising court clerks as "ayatollahs of free enterprise".

I doubt things were quite as simple as this article suggests.

Quoting Feynman once, twice, thrice.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

These are all quotes attributed to Richard Feynman and they all came to mind when thinking about data retention and ID card proposals.

London lives

One of the more thoughtful articles on the terrible bombings last week in London came from Mary Kaldor at OpenDemocracy.

"There is something perverse about globalisation. I live and work in the area of London targeted in the four explosions on Thursday 7 July. None of our phones worked for several hours and I couldn’t reach my family and close friends. Yet even before I quite realised what was happening, I was receiving emails from India, America, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and even Baghdad...

The latest tally of victims from the four bombings is more than 50 killed and 700 wounded. It is impossible to dignify this nihilistic crime by attributing political motives. It cannot be explained in terms of religion, ideology, or any rational motive, however perverted...

... the best reaction to this crime is to ignore it – to refuse to allow its perpetrators their moment of notoriety. Of course, it is important to strengthen protection of innocent people, and to track down the criminals and bring them before the courts. But the crime should not be allowed to derail everyday plans and projects."

If CCTV operators were licenced...

Spyblog speculates on whether the sifting through CCTV footage element of the investigation of the London bombings might have been helped if all CCTV operators had been licenced.

Copyright abuse

C.E. Petit has been rumminating on copyright abuse.

"Typically,1 copyright abuse falls into one of two categories:

The copyright holder who wants to squelch criticism and comment...

The copyright holder who wants to exploit a property for purposes other than copyright. One obvious example of this is Disney, with its repeated attempts to use copyright law and extend copyright law to protect that overgrown shirtless rat."

He's also been paraphrasing Winston Churchill:

"Intellectual property régimes are the worst means of encouraging progress in science and the useful arts… except for all the others."

Irish ISPs look to bottom line

Irish ISPs have agreed not to fight music industry efforts to get the details of suspected file sharers. It's just business. Fighting legal battles on behalf of the privacy of customers doesn't provide a short term positive contribution to sharerholders' returns. It's simpler, at least in the short term, to come to an accommodation with the music companies and work out some process whereby the details can be requested and handed over. If the volume of requests becomes large, however, the ISPs might find themselves reviewing the administrative cost involved. One to watch I would think.

Clarke wants 3 year data retention

Whilst apparently resisting calls to rush through more anti-terrorism legislation in the wake of last weeks London bombs, Charles Clarke intends to push the emergency meeting of EU security ministers this week to adopt data retention plans which would force ISPs and communications companies to retain traffic data for three years. The UK government had been twisting arms originally to enforce a 7 year data retention regime across Europe but had compromised recently assuming they would only be able to get one year retention proposals through.

Somebody really needs to explain to these ministers in simple terms what the proposals would mean in practical terms. Huge expense for the industry, which would presumably want some kind of compensation from the state. Plus a vast increase in communications data noise. To find the needle gems in the data haystack you need to employ enough smart people with appropriately refined searching and targetting techniques and tools. You don't build a bigger barn and fill it with infinitely more hay. It might look impressive but your already over-stretched intelligence folks are now searching a much bigger haystack for the same number of needles.

Canada sign hate protocol in cybercrime treaty

Canada have become the first non European country to sign up to the anti racism protocol in the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty.

Home Office paper on benefits of ID cards

The Home Office have released a 16 page paper on what they believe to be the benefits of the government's proposed ID card scheme. William Heath has read and inwardly digested it, with the prior request that "nobody dismiss this paper as "mad", "fabricated" or "incompetent" because that's no way to conduct a civilised discussion." He finds it impossible, however, to fulfil his own request in the wake of reading the paper:

"But the piece does not feel balanced - it feels like something...well (I said I wouldnt use the word, but) ...fabricated to support a previously held position. It doesn't explore the risks in a balanced way. It's phoney to claim for this ID scheme benefits which more sensible and effective e-government would deliver. This scheme is not the cornerstone for good e-government; that's something different which we shall also need!"

And William is a technophile, committed to finding a route towards e-government services i.e. he wants to see more technology in policing, intelligence, public services of every kind where the deployment of those technologies can improve the delivery of those services.

Political capital

The despicable game of making political capital out of the murder of innocents has begun in earnest. In fairness to Charles Clarke, here, at least he admits that ID cards wouldn't have prevented the atrocities yesterday. Empty headed media pundits, politicians, campaigners and PR merchants of all brands are scrambling for media exposure to enlighten us as to how their cause is so true, in the light of the bombings. They, as well as the terrorists, should be starved of the publicity.

Jefferson and rebellion

Thomas Jefferson once wrote: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." I wonder what he would have thought of the bombings in London or Madrid or Bali or ...

Mayor of London on the bombings

From the Mayor of London, Ken Livingston:

"In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail."

London bombings

There is a lot of reporting on the Net about the London bombings. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, has just confirmed this morning that the death toll sadly has now risen to more than 50 with over 700 casualties.

Senseless. Senseless. Senseless.

EU copyright and related rights

The EU Commission "has published an in-depth study on how copyright for musical works is licensed for use on the Internet. It concludes that the main obstacle to the growth of legitimate online content services in the EU is the difficulty securing attractive content for online exploitation. In particular, the present structures for cross-border collective management of music copyright – which were developed for the analogue environment – prevent music from fulfilling its unique potential as a driver for online content services."

Terrorist attacks in London

There have been bomb blasts in London. Many casualties. Some fatalities.

Our thoughts must go with the families of the dead and injured. Don't we have enough tragedy in the world without murderers engaging in this senseless carnage. Yes I do mean senseless. No cause can justify the murder of innocent people. I wish, no doubt in vain, that the media and the politicians had the sense to starve the perpetrators of the oxygen of publicity they so desperately crave.

Samuelson on Grokster

Pamela Samuelson, Berkeley's intellectual property guru, has given her views on the MGM v Grokster decision. In some ways the decision could be seen as a loss for the entertainment industries:

"MGM didn’t really want to win Grokster on an active inducement theory. It has been so wary of this theory that it didn’t actively pursue the theory in the lower courts. What MGM really wanted in Grokster was for the Supreme Court to overturn or radically reinterpret the Sony decision and eliminate the safe harbor for technologies capable of SNIUs. MGM thought that the Supreme Court would be so shocked by the exceptionally large volume of unauthorized up- and downloading of copyrighted sound recordings and movies with the aid of p2p technologies, and so outraged by Grokster’s advertising revenues—which rise as the volume of infringing uses goes up—that it would abandon the Sony safe harbor in favor of one of the much stricter rules MGM proposed to the Court. These stricter rules would have given MGM and other copyright industry groups much greater leverage in challenging disruptive technologies, such as p2p software. Viewed in this light, MGM actually lost the case for which it was fighting. The copyright industry’s legal toolkit to challenge developers of p2p file-sharing technologies is only marginally greater now than before the Supreme Court decided the case...

Moreover, had Grokster won before the Supreme Court, MGM and copyright industry groups would have gone immediately to Congress to insist on technology-hostile legislation akin to last year's INDUCE Act (see my Legally Speaking column of March 2005). There would have been a big fight between the technology industry and the entertainment industry over what the legislation should look like, but legislation would almost certainly have ensued. Frankly any law that would have come out of that sausage factory would have been a lot less technology-friendly than the Grokster decision the Supreme Court issued. Thus, the narrow vicotry MGM won before the Supreme Court has deprived it - for now - of its strongest argument for legislation to put p2p and other disruptive technology developers out of business. Insofar as MGM's goal in the Grokster case was to persuade the courts or the Congress to give it much stronger legal protection, it has not succeeded."

Computers now better at chess

Felton also thinks "It’s time to admit that computers play better chess than people."

Teaching judges about computers

Ed Felten thinks the time has come to send judges to computer science lessons.

"One of the tenets of the law and economics movement is that decisions about legal regulation of economic behavior should be grounded in a deep understanding of economics. Sound economics can predict the effect of proposed legal rules; but bad economics leads to bad law...

What is true of economics is equally true of computer science. Only by understanding computer science can we predict the impact of proposed regulations of technology. As we have seen so many times, bad computer science leads to bad law...

One criticism of law and economics is that it works well in a seminar room but may lead to dangerous overconfidence if applied to a hard case by an overworked, generalist judge. One solution is to teach judges more economics, and economic seminars for judges have proliferated. Perhaps the time has come to run seminars in computer science for judges."

Thomas Jefferson blawg

Here's an interesting idea. Thomas Jefferson gets transported into the year 2003 and writes a blog on what he finds. Here he reviews some legal blogs well the help of his modern room mate, Daniel. Given recent developments he naturally looks at the Scotusblog discussion about the Grokster decision.

"I wish to see new inventions encouraged, and new entertainment provided, and our Constitution provides for temporary patents to encourage that by benefiting the original author, as motive for producing them in the first place. However, the permanent patent of ideas - lifelong copyright of intellectual properties - is an abomination to the Constitution. That intellectual "property" should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Intellectual properties then cannot, in nature, be a subject of real property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from these creations, as an encouragement to men to pursue those ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. The intellectual property used in this manner could prevent the useful inventions of some from ever becoming popular, making select few rich, who do not produce the true utility that enriches our lives. People film movies to sell them, but then determine themselves from letting others witness the copies they sell, or copies of copies, without their permission... once given, the property is then taken away. If the courts could have their way, they would have control over the mind of man to prevent it from memorizing that which is not bought and paid for, and then we would truly put a patent on ideas, such so deeply forgone from the purpose of such amusement, & their proper role in our lives. If the free circulation of copies you created is not legal, then neither is the free circulation of original property, for such is often indistinguishable in purpose & aim, often likewise, in origin."

EU parliament reject sw patents again

The EU parliament has thrown out the software patent directive again, according to the Register. Slashdotters are all over the story but the anti campaigners shouldn't be getting too excited. The parliament will not have the last word on the issue and don't really have the power to stop it. That power lies with the Council of Ministers who are committed to pushing it through.

BPI sue collection agencies

The united front of the music labels and the songwriter and publisher collecting agencies in relation to their concern over online copyright infringement has been breached, in the UK at least.

Never the best of friends the labels and the collecting agencies at least both agreed on the damage they saw been done to their interests by online sharing of copyrighted works. Now the BPI are charging that the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS) and the Performing Right Society (PRS)are being unreasonable with their royalty demands for music sold legally via the Net. On the surface, you'd say they have a case. Royalties on CDs are 6.5%. The fee proposed for downloads is 12%. Standard negotiating procedure in my book - start high and when the other side complains agree to come down a bit. I expect this will eventually get settled out of court.

UK man convicted of mod chipping

A UK man has been convicted of bypassing the copy control mechanisms on Microsoft's Xbox. This is the first criminal conviction in the UK under a law implemented in October 2003 in accordance with the UK's obligation under the EU copyright directive of 2001.

Pirates of the Commons

Nice essay in the Hindu by Sudhakar Thaths Chandrasekharan yesterday. Thanks to Peter Suber for the link.

"CONTROLLING access to literary works to prevent copies from being made is a practice that goes back millennia. The Royal Library of Alexandria was so notoriously difficult to get into that Ptolemy III had to bribe his way in with 15 talents of silver.

Innovations do not bloom in an intellectual vacuum where access to knowledge is controlled. Jared Diamond, in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed says that societies that restricted mobile exchange of ideas sowed the seeds of their own demise...

During Europe's Dark Ages many treasures of classical antiquity almost disappeared in book burnings by religious zealots. They were only saved from oblivion by a few pious Irish monks committed to copy and share works of learning."

The latter paragraph strikes a particular resonance at the moment, as the first chapter of my forthcoming book deals with a dispute between two monks in Ireland in the 6th century over the copying of a book, which led to the deaths of 3000 men. The remarkable thing is that the arguments over copying have lasted through the centuries and re-appear in modern day copyright cases. The only thing that has changed is the context.

Hollywood set for legal downloads

From todays NYT: Forget the Bootleg, Just Download the Movie Legally

"After years of avoiding it, Hollywood studios are preparing to let people download and buy electronic copies of movies over the Internet, much as record labels now sell songs for 99 cents through Apple Computer's iTunes music store and other online services."

The Eonomist and copyright

An article in The Economist, briefly covering the Grokster decision, rounds off with this surpising conclusion:

"A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms—14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents."

Torture and accountability

Elizabeth Holtzman, a former Congresswonan has a thoughtful essay on Torture and Accountability in The Nation.

"It is never easy to hold powerful officials accountable for their misdeeds, but it is still important to try to do so. Even if no higher-ups turn out to be responsible under civil or criminal laws for the terrible abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the mere fact of a thorough and serious inquiry could go a long way toward preventing similar abuses in the future.

If Watergate is any example, accountability at the highest level requires a number of factors: public exposure of the misdeeds; public awareness that the misdeeds violate the law; independent and fearless public officials, prosecutors and judges; and of course a crusading press...

In the final analysis, there is no sure way to compel the government to investigate itself or to hold high-level government officials accountable under applicable criminal statutes. But if the public does not seek to have it happen, it will not happen. Those in the public who care deeply about the rule of law and government accountability must keep this issue alive. Failure to investigate wrongdoing in high places and tolerating misconduct or criminality can have only the most corroding impact on our democracy and the rule of law that sustains us."

"Acountability" is a word that trips off the lips of many in political life most often in relation to holding somebody else accountable. Holtzman is right in saying we get the leaders and the level of accountability of those leaders that we deserve, however, if we don't take enough interest in the political process.

Supreme Court Justice O'Connor retires

From the LA Times: "Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and its decisive voice on such critical issues as abortion, affirmative action and religion, announced Friday that she was retiring."

The 2nd law

A couple of researchers in Shanghai claim to have disproved the 2nd law of thermodynamics. For the scientifically unitiated, the 2nd law is science's version of "there is no such thing as a free lunch", and basically says you can't get useful energy out of a fuel without creating some waste. Xinyong Fu and Zitao Fu no longer believe this to be true.

Quickly - somebody tell Mr Blair and Mr Bush that their climate change problems are now officially solved and they can at least rescue something from this fiasco that will be the G8 submit in Edinburgh this week. In curing the world's energy crisis they will minimise the transient media exposure of our collective failure to make poverty history.

On second thoughts, having scanned the paper, it might be as well not to have our esteemed leaders counting too many energy chickens just yet. This one will be heading for urban legend status in the none too distant future I should think.

Landgrab for life and matter

David Bollier re-iterates his concerns about the patent landgrab going on in the area of biotechnology at his On the Commons blog.

"This trend is not receiving much notice, but the “ownership society” is quietly making some very deep inroads indeed. A fierce land grab is now underway to own and control some of the most basic building blocks of life and matter. These include man-made genomes of artificial species, purified versions of elements of the Periodic Table, nano-scale formulations of medicinal herbs, genetically created hybrids of living and non-living matter, and much else. ("Nano" refers to atomic- and molecular-level biological and material technologies; one nanometer equals one billionth of a meter.)...

The more basic question, of course, is whether the commons of nature and life should be converted into commodities for the marketplace in the first place. Why should high-tech entrepreneurs be allowed to own proprietary knockoffs of nature on which we all have a legitimate moral claim, as human beings. And what about non-human life and its claims on the elements of nature? The very act of ownership implies that patented materials can be severed without consequence from their niche in the web of nature. The history of markets demonstrates, moreover, that a proprietary surrogate of nature may well disrupt and destabilize natural processes in unpredictable ways – which is why extreme care and public scrutiny are needed...

The implicit moral issue in all of these developments, it seems to me, is whether market norms will govern the debate – or whether a deeper, more humanistic and ecological perspective will prevail. Right now, the property-rights, free-market boosters have the field to themselves, and the commons is hardly in sight. This is very troubling."

Government attempted to suppress LSE report

If this Sunday Times report is to be believed, then there has been some really nasty politicking going on behind the scenes over the LSE research into the UK government's ID card proposals. The Direct of the LSE, Howard Davies, is quoted as saying

“They are stepping over a line that hasn’t been crossed before. On the one hand they say it (the ID card) is not an attack on civil liberties, but then, if anyone questions any aspect of it, they abuse you and accuse you.

I have read the report myself and I’m completely satisfied it is a rigorous piece of work. Ministers may disagree with it or they may not, but the idea that it is deliberately biased or fabricated seems to me to be fatuous. I am genuinely shocked, surprised and disappointed at the response.”

And a brief glance at Davies' CV will show he's hardly one to be easily shocked. He's a former head of the Audit Commission, the Financial Services Authority, the CBI and deputy Governor of the Bank of England.

Whilst the council of the LSE have, like Davies, fully backed the research, governors have expressed concern that research funding may now be in danger and one governor has said “The behaviour is beyond the pale and is more suited to a communist dictatorship than a democracy.”

Nobody has nothing to hide

Muriel Gray did a lovely job in Saturday's Guradian of debunking of the idiotic soundbite that people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear. She starts with two stories of innocent people who had escaped abusive families and found new lives under new identities.

"The reason for recalling these cases is that in the continuing debate over the government's baffling adherence to its insidious identity card scheme, its defence boils down to one cliche: if you're innocent you have nothing to hide. This is not simply an outrageously stupid statement, but also plain wrong...

the enigmatic stranger is a keystone of the British notion of freedom. The romantic ideal that anyone can be who they wish to be is so stitched into our mythology and literature... that its loss would be a tragedy.

The "innocent have nothing to hide" cliche implies that it is only the guilty who wish to deceive, to be deeply secretive, when in fact the innocent also have plenty of valid reasons to wish to do so...

The innocent have much to hide. It's called a private life."

Read the whole article. It's excellent.

Director of LSE castigates UK government

The Director of the London School of Economics has written to the Times over the government's ill-informed condemnation of the LSE report on the proposed ID system.

"It is unfortunate that, on an issue where the civil liberties concerns are so serious, the Government should have chosen to adopt a bullying approach to critics whose prime motivation was to devise a scheme which might work, at an acceptable cost."

It's good to see a senior education executive standing up for high quality independent academic research and the integrity of the academics that have carried it out. Well done Howard Davies and the LSE’s Governing Council who have also given the people involved their full support.

Blair panic on ID cards

The Telegraph is reporting, with just a hint of glee this morning, that Tony Blair is panicking over the loss of support for ID cards.

"Tony Blair's hopes of bringing in a national system of identity cards were looking increasingly imperilled last night amid signs of collapsing public support and panic within the Government.

A YouGov poll for The Daily Telegraph shows that backing for ID cards has plummeted from 78 per cent less than two years ago to 45 per cent...

Amid further signs of Labour disarray, it emerged yesterday that the Prime Minister had delivered a furious rebuke to Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, for "going soft" on the fight against crime."

Meanwhile the number of signatures on the pledge continues to grow. 7673 at 9.09am this morning.

Boyle on geeks and EU software patents

James Boyle has yet another terrific article in the FT, this time on the need for empirical evidence in the thorny debate over the EU software (or "computer implemented inventions") patent directive.

"It does not help the debate that well-intentioned people simply disagree about what the proposed directive actually means; an indication of the dangers involved in law-making about property whose boundaries are marked, not by fences or walls, but by vaporous ideas and concepts. A property right crafted with one goal in mind can spread, amoeba-like, to cover situations its drafters never intended. That was the certainly the experience in the US."

What you've got here is a difference of values. Because there is no widely accepted empirical evidence (and indeed very little empirical evidence at all on the effects of intellectual property in a digital age), there is no objective process whereby somebody who believes in the positive benefits of software patents can convince somebody opposed to them of their point of view. So what plays out in the public debate on the subject is a shouting match over what each side believes might be the positive or negative effects of implementing a software patent directive in Europe.

James thinks the EU should be looking to the US for evidence:

"For example, Professor James Bessen and Robert Hunt of the Federal Reserve Bank found that the increase in the level of software patenting in the US was associated with a significant decline in investment in research and development by software companies. As more and more patents were granted, companies spent less on R&D. Correlation does not prove causation, as the authors appropriately caution. Nevertheless their conclusions are clear about the assumption that granting stronger property rights in software will stimulate innovation. Â?Our evidence suggests this assumption may be incorrect in the case of software patents. If, instead, the legal changes create patent thickets, the result might well be less innovation.Â?"

We can't really know what the effect of software patents would be in the next few years until we implement them and find some objective way of observing, measuring, analysing and evaluating what happens. But here's the rub - we can't really find out what the effect of not having software patents might be unless we avoid implementing them and find some objective way of observing, measuring, analysing and evaluating what happens. Just to complicate matters, the European Patent Office have been merrily granting patents on "computer implemented inventions" for many years now, as have national patent offices such as that in the UK, despite a statutory prohibition on the granting of such patents.

Me? I tend to lean, as regular readers will know, towards the avoidance of pure software patents, partly because, as James says, the Besson report shows a correlation (even if it's not a definite causation link) between software patents and reductions in software R&D spending; but partly also because I don't think it is sensible economic policy to grant 20 year monopolies in a market where the products have a life of a few years at the outside.

Back to the cards

Now I've decided to give Grokster a rest it's back to another ongoing hobby horse, ID cards. Does the ID system hold risks for honest citizens? William Heath and Brian Gladman ask.

William has also had a suggestion as to how the government might have arrived at their cost estimates for the ID card scheme. It's inspired, if not inspiring.

Sin and sinners

Interesting takes on the Grokster decision by Chris Guzelian and Andrew Orlowskiat the Register. Ok now I should give Grokster a rest for the few days at least.

Home taping saves missing BBC heritage

Donna points to the news that some illicit home taping of old BBC programmes has heped to retain those programmes when they would otherwise have been lost to the annals of history. The BBC had deleted the programmes because they needed to re-use the expensive tapes. As Donna says:

"One of the unexpected side-benefits of copyright's (traditionally) "leaky boat" -- you've got a bit of help when you need a bail-out."

The importance of RSS

Jenny Levine, aka the shifted librarian, on Why RSS and Folksonomies Are Becoming So Big is well worth a read.

"And if Hale is right about all of this, it makes you wonder if this isn’t just one more place librarians and our expertise aren’t going to be found, even though we should be. And don’t we already have goldmines of data that could be found in these services if we just started tagging them (in addition to the structured searching we already provide)?"

The engineer and the manager

A new version of an old joke. This time it is the Republican in the baloon rather than the manager and the democrat on the ground rather than the engineer. I wonder does that make me more sympathetic towards the democrats?

Teenagers face criminal charges

A group of teenagers is facing criminal charges for bypassing a password on school issued laptop computers. Without knowing the whole story, it's difficult to comment but the school adminsitrator doesn't come out of the story too well in the report. Thanks to EFF minilinks for the link.

They also have a link to an interesting story about the copyright clearance process a documentary film maker had to go through to clear the rights to use background music.

Information Commissioner's ID card concerns

The Information Commissioner has published a damning list of concerns about the UK government's plans for an ID card system. He concludes:

"The measures in the bill go well beyond establishing a secure, reliable and trustworthy ID card. The measures in relation to the National Identity Register and data trail of identity checks on individuals risk an unnecessary and disproportionate intrusion into individuals' privacy. They are not easily reconciled with fundamental data protection safeguards such as fair processing and deleting unnecessary personal information. An effective ID card can be established avoiding these unwarranted consequences for individuals as research has shown. The primary aim of government with this legislation should be to establish a scheme which allows people to reliably identify themselves rather than one which enhances its ability to identify and record what its citizens do in their lives. The Commissioner hopes that during the passage of the bill parliamentarians will not just focus on the desirability of ID cards but look into the acceptability of government recording so many unnecessary details of their own and their constituents lives."

The pledge is now up to 7020 signatures.

Medical database worse than ID cards

"Government plans to put the medical records of 50 million patients in England on a national electronic database pose even more of a threat to civil liberties than the ID card scheme, doctors' leaders warned yesterday." says John Carvel of the Guardian.

UK Research Councils back open access

There was some good news for open access supporters in the UK, in the Guardian yesterday.

The UK Research Councils have decided that people getting research grants will need to make the fruits of that research freely available on the Net. This is a big deal the UK. The government had rejected recommendations from the House of Commons' Science and Technology committee on open access, after publishers expressed concerns about the economic impact of such a move. But it looks like the Research Councils have decided to ignore the government line.

I doubt we've heard the end of this, as neither the government nor the publishing industry will be prepared to let this go lightly.

6500 sign anti-ID card pledge

As of 11.26am on Wednesday, 29th June, a remarkable 6521 people have signed NO2ID campaigner Phil Booth's pledge, "I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10000 other people will also make this same pledge."

I had my doubts whether he would get anywhere near his target of 10000 signatures when he made the pledge a few weeks ago because I didn't think enough people were sufficiently interested. It looks as though he might just do it though.

Scotusblog forum on Grokster

There's a very thoughtful discussion about the Grokster decision going on, as you would expect given the contributors, in the Scotus blog forum.

This is a fantastic example of the web facilitating rapid, in depth, public analysis of important matters of public policy, in a way that would not have been previously possible.

Copyright guru, William Patry, for example is able to share his deep disappointment with the Grokster decision, saying the court effectively avoided the substantive issue that it was asked to rule on i.e. whether the P2P companies met the Sony subtantial non infringing use test.

"Grokster raises to me serious issues about the ability of the Court to deal with hard copyright technnology issues. I had predicted after Grokster there were not 5 votes for either side and that proved true. But I didn't expect a phony 9-0 unanimous opinion, phony in the sense of tossing something out as if the Court had really done something. In my view they didn't. I'm happy they slapped down the Ninth Circuit's misreading of Sony. And I agree that the staple article of commerce doctrine shouldn't by itself insulate someone who actively induces infringement (although query whether the betamax would itself meet that test), but I find disturbing the real result of the case a 3-3 decision with three on the sidelines. The Court is only deciding 75 cases a year. It is shameful to me that 5 votes couldn't be found and that the Court instead took the easy way out"

Grokster commentary

I'm sure there's an absolute blizzard of reaction to the Grokster decision but I haven't had the time to read any of it this afternoon. I did manage to skate through Justice Souter's opinion, which makes very interesting reading.

Right up front on page one, paragraph is the summary

"We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties."

A clear win for MGM and the studios and a clear loss for the P2P companies. No doubt there is significant gnashing of teeth about this amongst the anti-copyright expansion lobby, suggesting it undermines or kills the Sony v Universal "substantial non infringing use" test but it is not as bad for them as it might at first appear.

First of all, the court was ruling on whether the Court of Appeal for the 9th circuit were right to give a summary judgement against MGM, saying they couldn't sue the P2P companies for damages. ON that they decided the 9th circuit was wrong to stop MGM from getting a substantive hearing. So the case now goes back down the chain to look at MGM claims for damages in detail.

Secondly, the Supreme Court focussed heavily on the intentions of the Grokster and Streamcast in relation to the "staggering" scope of copyright infringement on their networks. They concluded that there was a lot of evidence to demonstrate that these two particular P2P companies not only distributed technologies "capable of substantial non infringing uses" (which I thought would have been ok under the Sony test but there is a disagreement amongst concurring justices on this 3v3 with 3 not commenting on the issue), but that they also acted to heavily promote copyright infringing activity amongst the users of their software. The CTO of Streamcast, for example, is on record with the statement "[t]he goal is to get in trouble with the law and get sued. It's the best way to get in the new[s]."

And this becomes the key to the Court crafting a new inducement rule, based on a similar rule in patent law, which will probably become known as the rule in MGM v Grokster. On page 19 of the decision, Justice Souter says the patent law inducement rule (emphasis mine):

"is a sensible one for copyright. We adopt it here, holding that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression of other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting act of infringement by third parties...
mere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough her to subject a distributor to liability. Nor would ordinary acts incident to product distribution, such as offering customers technical support or product updates, support liability in themselves. The inducement rule, instead, premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, and thus does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful purpose."

There are a lot talking points in the decision but that's the key one. It adds up to a really bad decision for Grokster and Streamcast (moreso for the latter because Grokster at least sent emails to users warning them about infringing content) but not necessarily bad for other P2P companies.

The court clearly want to avoid scaring potential technology innovators and more or less strike that balance (of course they have no control over how the decision will be presented which wil be crucial). There are a number of points in the decision where they may well undermine that intent, though.

At page 12 (top para) Justice Souter says the argument for indirect liability is powerful because there are too many individual infringers for the music companies to pursue. That will be picked over justifiably, especially since the RIAA have issued lawsuits against over 10000 individuals already.

At page 13 he says they are resolving the case on the new inducement theory not vicarious liability theory as hoped by MGM. Again this is important but I can't go into the detailed questions here. I had a problem with his depiction of Sony on page 14 as a totally innocent distributor of VCRs and that the famous 1984 case provided no evidence that Sony aimed to infringe copyright or that they took active steps to encourage infringement. (Isn't that exactly what this ad did?). This attempt to distinguish the case in this way does hold water if crafted carefully enough but at this point he was trying too hard to make Sony look innocent so he he could make Grokster et al look guilty. The argument distinguishing the Sony case on page 16 is slightly tigher, where he concludes the court of appeal for the 9th circuit interpreted Sony too widely in offering the protection of the "substantial non infringing uses" defense to Grokster and Streamcast. (Even though I still have my doubts).

HE refuses at page 17 to declare the proportion of infringing use that would lead to a technology being completely outlawed, as MGM wished.

In relation to this case, starting on page 21, he says there are 3 features demonstrating evidence of intent to induce copyright infringement on the part of Grokster and Streamcast.
1. "Each company showed itself to be satisfying a known demand for infringement"
2. Neither company tried to develop filters or other mechanisms to stop copyright infringement on their networks. (Note that seems a fairly clearcut commercial decision to me, so perhaps unfair. He does pose this as part of an overall pattern of behaviour - though this won't stop future lawyers trying to make it into a defintive rule.)
3. The companies business models depended on advertising revenues, so they had a commercial incentive to get as many users as possible. (Again it seems to me that this is a business decision and the Supreme Court's decision here leaves scope for misinterpretation.)

He sums up by saying the case is significantly different to the 1984 Sony v Universal decision (I certainly agree with that) and closes by referring it back to the District Court for a substantive hearing of MGM'c damages complaint.

I'm a little surprised at the outcome, as I didn't think it would be quite so clear cut. And now I'll have to re-write the part of my Open University internet law course that covers Grokster.

Look to the usual suspects for more in depth commentary. I have to agree with the commentators that say the keys to future P2P cases is what evidence specifically will be enough to prove "inducement" and how the disagreeing justices will resolve their differences on who can claim the Sony "substantial non-infringing uses" safe harbour.

The Grokster decision in full

Here's the Grokster decision written by Justice Souter. Justice Ginsburg's concurring take on the case. And Justice Breyer's concurrence.

Grokster lose

Breaking news:

SCOTUSblog reports that "The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that developers of software violate federal copyright law when they provide computer users with the means to share music and movie files downloaded from the internet."

I don't have any details yet but that sounds pretty clear, much more so than expected.

Update: An early news report on the decision is on Yahoo. "We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by the clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties," wrote Justice David H. Souter in a unanimous decision.

Ndiyo and tuxlab

It seems John's Ndiyo has a forerunner in South Africa, tuxlab.

"WHAT IS A tuXlab?
A partnership between the Shuttleworth Foundation and South African schools to provide learners access to information, knowledge and education. This is carried out through the establishment of Open Source computer centres in the schools. Open Source (non-proprietary) Software is installed on these computers as an economical and sustainable way to bring the power of computing to the learners.

WHERE CAN I FIND tuXlabs?
tuXlabs can be found in schools all over the Western Cape, Eastern Cape & Limpopo. Click here to see a list of existing tuXlabs.

WHAT HAVE WE DONE SO FAR?

• The tuXlab project has installed:
• 110 tuXlabs in the Western Cape since August 2003
• 25 labs in the Eastern Cape since February 2005
• 19 labs in the Limpopo since March 2005
• We have a committed team and a dedicated band of volunteers who assist in tuXlab installations.
• We have given over 100 000 learners the power of Open Source Computing."

What a terrific project.

Guardian on the LSE ID report

The Guardian have weighed in on the LSE report.

And I'm reminded of the ACLU's flash animation on the future of ordering a pizza, once IDs are a wired networked.

LSE ID Card Report

The LSE report on the government's ID card scheme, The Identity Project: an assessment of the UK Identity Cards Bill and its implications, has been published today and has already been rubbished by a government minister on the radio this morning, attempting to get his retaliation in first. Executive summary of the report here,(which runs to just 10 pages compared to the full report at 318).

The preface to the LSE report is written by Richard Thomas, the government's own Information Comissioner. In it he re-iterates his concern at the government's proposals and his belief that the scheme is "disproportionate to the stated objectives behind the introduction of ID cards." He goes on to say that "Eradicating unnecessary personal information and ensuring that individuals, rather than government, have appropriate control over how their personal information is handled, will go a long way towards achieving the essential pre-requisite of establishing a system that inpires public confidence: one where individuals can be identified when they really need to be rather than one which has the intrusive side effect of the government identifying and recording information about how individuals go about their daily lives."

Thomas has been a reasoned critic of the government's proposals from the moment he had examined them in depth but they have totally ignored his concerns. That he has to come out publicly endorsing an independent academic study which is critical of the government's proposals is quite extraordinary. Congratulations to him for having the courage to do so.

The report itself notes six areas of serious concern with the current proposals as well as offering an alternative more workable scheme. From the LSE's own website, the concerns in brief are:

Will the technology work? No scheme on this scale has been undertaken anywhere in the world. Smaller and less ambitious schemes have encountered substantial technological and operational problems that are likely to be amplified in a large-scale national system. The use of biometrics creates particular concerns, because this technology has never been used at such a scale.

Is it legal? In its current form, the Identity Cards Bill appears to be unsafe in law. A number of elements potentially compromise Article 8 (privacy) and Article 14 (discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The government may also be in breach of law by requiring fingerprints as a pre-requisite for receipt of a passport. The report finds no clear case why the ID card requirements should be bound to internationally recognized requirements on passport documents.

Security The National Data Register will create a very large data pool in one place that could be an enhanced risk in case of unauthorized accesses, hacking or malfunctions.

Citizens' acceptance An identity system that is well-accepted by citizens is likely to be far more successful in use than one that is controversial or raises privacy concerns. For example, it will be critical for realizing public value that citizens want to carry their ID cards with them and to use them in a wide range of settings.

Will ID cards benefit businesses? Compliance with the terms of the ID cards Bill will mean even small firms are likely to have to pay £250 for smartcard readers and other requirements will add to the administrative burdens firms face.

The Executive summary at least should be compulsory reading in secondary school civics (do they still call it "civics" in schools now?) classes all over the country. Likewise concerned citizens of every brand.

Turning surveillance technologies inside out

Howard Rheingold suggests keeping an eye on Marc Smith at Microsoft, " who is thinking about ways to use tomorrow's panoptic snooping technologies -- cameras, microphones, even sensors of your bodily processes -- as a new kind of authoring." Smith reckons that since government and industry will be moniotoring our behaviour in intimate detail, why shouldn't we keep our own records, if only to challenge the official ones. That's pretty much David Brin's thesis. Smith sees his human body black box (equivalent to the airliner black box) as being primarily a positive life enhancer rather than a mere defence mechanism, however.

Cost drive for cheap ID cards?

The Sunday Times seems to think the UK government are sufficiently worried about the cost of their ID cards scheme that they may be considering a cut price alternative.

The Sunday Independent meanwhile suggest the government are going to sell people's personal details from the ID card database in order to raise extra money. The government had denied this by the time I tuned into teletext yesterday evening, though they have agreed that banks, for example, will be able to check the ID card database for a fee. Hmmm.

5000+ sign no2id pledge

More than 5000 people have now signed the NO2ID pledge against ID cards. Not bad in 2 weeks.

Grokster hours and counting

With hours to go before the US Supreme Court announce their decision in the Grokster case, the experts have been speculating on the outcome. Not that this is anything new of course. The speculation began on the day of the hearing. Ernest Miller has a convincing argument on why this and the post decision mass online analysis and debate are a good thing. In a nutshell - open debate about important issues by smart people improves the overall knowedge pool for society and that's good.

Meanwhile, copyright news on this side of the pond is that the French have decided to act on their worries about Google's project to digitise major academic libraries and produce a French equivalent. Good for them.

Business Week discovers the commons

David Bollier says Business Week have discovered the commons.

Abelson and Wilbanks on info sharing

Peter Suber a few days ago had an entry in his prolific Open Access blog that I missed, about a talk Hal Abelson recently gave at MIT. Abstract:

"Hal Abelson wants to deliver a one-two punch against the privatization of academic discourse. His weapons of choice? New global initiatives based on MIT’s own OpenCourseWare (OCW) and DSpace. Abelson owns to a “real anxiety that people are quick to talk about academic exchange under the rubrics of property and ownership,” along the lines of the motion picture, recording and publishing industries. He sees a profound threat -- that of eventual monopoly control -- to scholarly publishing. Out of self-protection, Abelson says, universities must pursue initiatives to ensure free and open academic publishing. Two coordinated initiatives would “strengthen the information commons,” the body of knowledge on which thinkers continually build and which “forms the progress of science.” One, modeled on OCW, would provide “global access to raw material from which the world’s great learning institutions create educational experiences for their students.” The other, like MIT Libraries’ DSpace, would produce an interoperable and virtual collection of research from the world’s top institutions. Abelson exhorts universities to pursue their true mission of generating, disseminating and preserving knowledge, and defend against the encroachments of the commercial publishing industry, with its near stranglehold on journals and increasingly on ideas themselves."

A video of the talk is available.

Biometric reader costs

Spy blog has been comparing Home Office estimates for the costs of Iris Scan Biometric readers for E-Borders with those for the ID card system:

"The estimated cost of installing Iris Scan Biometric Passport Readers in the 47 main airports and ports, is an average of £21,000...

This totally contradicts the wishful thinking guesstimate for the cost of an ID Card biometric reader in the Identity Cards Bill 2005 updated Regulatory Impact Assessment, published on 27th May 29005:

"(ii) a card/biometric reader with on-line access to the verification service. Organisations will be expected to fund the costs of card readers. The current working assumption is that the cost of card readers would fall within a range of £250-£750..."

Smart work.

Italian lawyers love open source

Italian lawyers in Foggia have become open source evangelists.

UK births marriages and deaths database emigrating

According to the Guardian, the UK government are subcontracting the administration of the database of all the deaths marriages and births since 1837. That shouldn't be a surprise and it has been quite common practice for the government to privatise functions previously carried out by public service employees.

What I don't quite understand is how they managed to agree to move the database overseas to a company in India, when it is illegal to allow this information outside England and Wales. More likely to be a cock up rather than a conspiracy but it doesn't inspire a whole lot of confidence over the future of the coming ID card database, does it?

Regulating through code

James Grimmelmann builds on Larry Lessig's 'code is law' thesis in a recent Yale Law journal paper. He agrees with Lessig that software regulates behaviour but it does so in subtly different and important ways to physical architecture.

Software is rule based
Software need not be transparent
Software applies the rules whether people engaged in the activity want it to or not i.e. there's no equivalent to blanketly ignoring the idiotic company procedure
Software has bugs and can go wrong (and can get hacked)

He goes on to argue that these characteristics make software (or code) suitable for regulating electronic marketplaces like eBay but unsuitable for regulating access to copyrighted material (ie eBay good, drm no good). The [very clever - one of those 'I wish I'd thought of that' sequences] goes like this:

Both eBay and drm rely on rules. So much for item one. Then we start getting divergence. On eBay and online markets generally the transparency problem with software is mitigated because the parties involved have clear access to the terms of the deal. DRM's lack of transparency causes problems, however. For example, one eboook version of the US Constitution prevents the owner from printing it out. And so the analysis continues.

Excellent paper. Well worth a read for netlaw enthusiasts.

Subscribing to digital music?

If you're thinking of subscribing to a digital music download service like iTunes, this INDICARE article has the basics.

Emails and Pope JP

The Vatican are encouraging good catholics to send emails of support as part of the process of beatifying the late Pope John Paul II. Old JP would have been pleased, as it was he who brought the Net to the Vatican in 1996.

DRM supporter breaks DMCA

To copyright aficionados this will seem funny. Ernest Miller points to the tale of a drm proponent who, when fed up with Microsoft's drm, which was preventing him getting access to material he'd bought, downloaded a utility program to bypass the drm. Ooops, he broke the law, under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Miller's reaction?

"It appears as if Gartenberg BROKE THE LAW! If we were to ask Jack Valenti, I'm sure he would say that Gartenberg is a THIEF!

The company that made and distributes the software Gartenberg used appear to be a BUNCH OF DISGUSTING HACKER PIRATES!

Or, perhaps, this is a good case study for governments on HOW NOT TO IMPLEMENT ANTI-CIRCUMVENTION laws."

iPods as a cocoons

Michael Froomkin has a fascinating post a couple of weeks ago on Ian Kerr's thoughts on the degree to which communications technologies can isolate as well as connect people.

Duke Law Journals Lead with Open Access to Scholarship

"Duke Law Journals Lead with Open Access to Scholarship

Duke Law School's seven student-edited journals were prominently featured in the June 6 th unveiling of the Open Access Law Program, an initiative of Creative Commons and its Science Commons Publishing Project. The announcement of the Open Access Law Program was notable not only for the encouragement and support the Program will provide for increasing free access to scholarly literature in law, but for its acknowledgment of Duke Law School's longstanding commitment to making legal scholarship freely available on the World Wide Web to international and interdisciplinary audiences, as well as to legal scholars."

Blair plays the fear card

Thanks to Spyblog for the pointer to Andrew Gilligan's article in the Evening Standard "Revealed: how Blair is playing the fear card"

Aussie teen prosecuted for linking

The Register has a longish story on the plight of an Australian teenager who is being prosecuted for linking to a site that may have been involved in copyright infringement, something he started doing when he was 12 and updated until he was 15. Apparently his home was raided by federal police when he was 16 and he is now 18 and the case is going ahead. Alex Malik says:

"This case is significant for a number of reasons:

It is the first time that a minor has been prosecuted in Australia by the Federal Government for linking to a website alleged to be involved in copyright infringement

It is the first time that a minor in Australia has been prosecuted by the Federal Government under the “aiding and abetting” provisions of the Copyright Act

It is the first time that a minor has been subject to any kind of enforcement proceedings in Australia, in relation to internet based copyright infringement. This reminds me of the infamous US case against Brianna LaHara (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/10/riaa_keeps_12yearold_quiet/), who was only 12 when she was sued by the RIAA in the US for copyright infringement."

He also says that time shifting ie recording TV programs on a VCR for later viewing is not technically permitted under Australian copyright law. That's something I was not previously aware of.

Intel executive broke the law

J.D. Lasica has a story in his recently released book, Darknet, about a vice president at Intel who broke the law without realising it. Donald S. Whiteside "violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) without realizing it — by making a home movie of his son playing Pop Warner football and incorporating snippets of a Hollywood movie."

Whiteside says of his transgression:

“This is precisely the kind of exciting consumer creativity that should be enabled. I don’t claim to have all the answers. Should I have to go clear rights to use ten seconds from Rudy in my son’s video, or does it fall under fair use? Should I have to pay pennies for every second of a snippet? I don’t know. But I do know that we have to figure out a way for consumers to do something creative without breaking the law.

To me, this episode was a great way to frame the question: Should copyright law permit this or not? Should the DMCA criminalize this sort of thing? Or should the creative community, high-tech community, and lawmakers get together to try to stimulate this kind of innovative behavior?”

Good questions.

Mum stunned by BPI demand for £2500

The Independent has a report on one mother's reaction to a demand from the British Phonographic Industry that she hand over £2500 because her daughter, unbeknownst to her, had been downloading songs over the Net. She has two weeks to cough up, at which time an unpaid demand rises to £4000.

A BPI spokesman says about a third of the similar demands they have put out have been paid by parents on behalf of their children and most of the demands have been settled.

Miller in record cos and us as criminals

Ernest Miller reckons Record Companies Intend to Make Criminals of Us All.

"People want to share music with their friends and family and they see nothing wrong in doing this. In trying to characterize such sharing as criminal activity the recording industry will only be undermining support for copyright as a whole"

P2P piracy UK going down

The FT report copyright infringement on p2p networks could be on the way down in the UK now that legal downloads are more widely available.

Stallman on EU software patents

Richard Stallman gets some space in today's Guardian to urge citizens of the EU to phone MEPs and tell them to vote against software patents. C.E. Petit is not impressed with the argument.

Kahle on bits and books

MSNBC have a nice story Turning books into bits about a journalism class at Harvard not coming up with any source material for an assignment because they used the Net not the library. Brewster Kahle's response was a shake of the head and “When we were growing up, we had great libraries. But for kids today, the Internet is their library. We are giving them an instantly accessible resource that is much worse than what we grew up with.”

Daily Law Notes

Note to self: Thanks to Cornell's InSITE for The Daily Law Notes recommendation. Very useful.

Only 21 people object to ID cards says minister

According to Spyblog,the Minister of State for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality, Tony McNulty says only 21 people have written to the Home Office complaining about the plans for ID cards.

I suspect some of NO2ID's nearly 4000 pledge signatories may take note and act accordingly.

Right back in the early days of then Home Secretary's "entitlement card" proposals, there were efforts to present the "evidence" in a positive light and this is not going to change anytime soon. The government's original consultation on the then entitlement cards drew roughly 7000 responses of which well over 5000 were against the proposal. At the time, Mr Blunkett presented the results of the consultation as showing 2 to 1 in favour of the scheme.

How can 5000 out of 7000 against become 2 to 1 in favour? Simple sleight of hand - count the 5000 who communicated their opposition electronically as 1. Yes, that's right 5000 opponents can be written off as 1 because they used a particular form of communication and could therefore be dismissed as a single special interest group. Magically the opposition disappears from soundbite debates in the media and it appears as though most people support the scheme. Follow up with focus groups and appropriately worded surveys soliciting appropriate answers and the public support can then magically be improved to 80% in favour.

LSE V Clarke

William Heath labels the spat between the LSE and Charles Clarke as an official ding dong.

"However much Home Secretaries care to insult the dozens of distinguished academics behind the LSE work and the thousands of opponents of this unfortunate scheme who have tried in every manner from email to online music hall to engage with their errant paid servants on this matter, no-one in their right mind calls Howard Davies (formerly head of the FSA, Audit Commission etc) mad or an intellectual pygmy.

The Home Office needs to come clean about its costings and open up to debate with its critical friends about the aims and the correct architecture for this. We're all in this together, as we keep saying. The big momma identity backplane is going to happen, and we're going to get it right."

Copyright term extension UK

David Rowan at the Times is not keen on Culture Minister, James Purnell's plans to extend the term of copyright in the UK.

"Following a music industry campaign to extend the copyright term for sound recordings from 50 to 95 years, he has been rapping in rhythm with the EMI and BMG massive: in a risky, talent-driven business like pop, the suits, apparently, need guarantees of long-term financial returns. As he told the Institute for Public Policy Research yesterday, the record labels need copyright reforms “that will allow them to make returns on their creativity and to invest in innovation”. What he failed to explain was the damage that such a short-term corporate grab would do to the public good...

A 20-year patent limit forces other industries to innovate, so why should the innately risk-averse record labels need any more than a 50-year monopoly? If Mr Purnell truly wants to foster creativity, he ought to broaden his musical tastes."

LSE respond to Clarke's abuse

The LSE have responded to the Home Secretary's criticism of their report on ID cards, a report which he has admitted he has not read. I hope they don't mind if I reprint it here in full:

Response to the Home Secretary's comments on the LSE's identity cards study

Today (Thursday 16 June) on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme, the Home Secretary Charles Clarke responded to recent media coverage of the LSE's assessment that the proposed Identity Card scheme will cost in the order of £300 per card. The Home Secretary said that this 'is a complete nonsense figure' and promised that the cost of the card would be much less.

The cost estimates in question were drawn from a leaked section of the LSE's Identity Project, a six-month project into national identity systems, with a specific focus on the UK Identity Card Bill. This project involves a steering group of 14 professors, and a research group of nearly 100 academics, experts, and industry representatives from around the world. The project is hosted by the Department of Information Systems at LSE. An interim report was released for review in March 2005, and is available here

The final report is due to be published next week - more details will be confirmed soon.

The draft section on costs from the LSE report did not suggest a unit cost for the ID card. Rather it predicted that the proposed identity and passport system would cost £12 - £18 billion over ten years. Some commentators have deduced a figure of £300 per card by taking the highest point of the estimate and dividing it by the UK population.

At no point has the LSE's report suggested such a figure. The project's team does, however, stand by its estimate that the scheme will cost between £12 and £18 billion. This figure takes into account public sector integration - a factor which had not been assessed by the government.

LSE staff involved in the project have attempted repeatedly throughout the six-month duration of this project to engage the Home Office, with no success until yesterday (15 June) when a Home Office official contacted the LSE research team to express an interest in principle to explore co-operation.

The project team is fully prepared to work with the Home Office on any subsequent research work on identity cards and offers up the interim report and some suggestions for an alternative model to be considered as this debate continues. These are available on the web at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/pressAndInformationOffice/
newsAndEvents/archives/2005/ID_Card_update.htm

We believe the process adopted by the project has been fully transparent at all stages. Director Howard Davies said: "The researchers involved have offered to discuss this work with the Home Office several times. Charles Clarke may not like the conclusions, but he has no basis to question the integrity of the LSE or those conducting the research."

16 June 2005

Met Commissioner questions ID cards

The Telegraph reports comment from the Metropolitan Police commissioner, Ian Blair, that ID card biometric technology must be "near perfect" if it is to be of any use to his officers. He doesn't want police officers randomly demanding to see people's papers on the street but supports the cards in principle. An unreliable ID card system will certainly cause an already over-strectched police force significant difficulties in wasted resources, chasing shadows and errors, so he's right to be concerned about the technology.

The police are amongst the key public services at the sharp end of this system and the amount of effort they will waste in processing false positives (eg innocent people with faulty or missing cards) and the grief they'll get for letting the false negatives (guilty parties with kosher cards) through their fingers is going to make their already tough jobs that much more so.

£300 ID cards

The Times are emphasising the potential cost of an ID card noted in the LSE report on ID cards and nearly 3000 have signed NO2ID Phil Booth's pledge.

Ofcom baby troubles

According to OfcomWatch, the regulator is facing a "potential legal action from a niche TV channel for allegedly failing to protect its brand-name or intellectual property rights."

The CEO of the company bringing the case said "I want Ofcom to have a policy that it will not license confusingly similar channel names and an undertaking that it will consider the intellectual property rights of similar names"

Hmmm.

Microsoft censor sensitive words

Rebecca MacKinnon has a passionate response to Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble's defence of Microsoft's filtering of politically sensitive words on MSN China.

"I lived in China for nine years straight as a journalist, and if you add up other times I've lived there it comes to nearly 12. I don't know what students and professors Scoble met with, and what context he met them in. But to state that Chinese students and professors have an "anti-free-speech stance" is the biggest pile of horseshit about China I've come across in quite some time. And believe me, there are a great many such piles out there these days."

US companies have been helping to build the great firewall of China for some years. It's good business for them. Pious public relations about defending American free speech values is just that - pious empty PR.

THE ID card song

Gilbert and Sullivan would have liked this, the ID card song or "The very model of a modern Labour minister".

Sample lyrics:

"The world today is filled with villains stealing one's identity
And terrorists intent on acts of violent extremity
Our citizens are prisoners, our criminals at liberty
Our nation at the mercy of felonious proclivity
Our very own Home Secretary will rebuild our society
A model of sagaciousness and picture of propriety
It's patent that protection of the future of humanity
Relies on Mr Clarke to put an end to this insanity!"

Thanks to Ian Brown for the link.

Over 2000 sign anti ID card pledge

Over 2000 people have signed NO2ID campaigner Phil Booth's Pedgebank pledge "I will refuse to register for an ID card and will donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge." Impressive in such a short space of time.

Getting smart about disasters

Here is a brilliant idea. Public Health Practitioner, Dr Lucas Gonzalez, in the Canary Islands has decided to use Wikipedia as a clearinghouse for pandemic flu preparedness. Thanks to Jamais Cascio for the link.

Doc on unmediated speech

Doc Searls on unmediated speech and the power of the Net.

Google and Elsevier

Peter Suber is happy that Elsevier and Google are competing to offer superior indexing of open access repository content.

Tories attack on ID cards

The conservatives have decided to beat the government with the IT stick, claiming that their record on implementing IT projects is abysmal, running to an overspend of £2 billion in the last tow years alone.

"The Tories published the figures to support its latest attack on the Government's plans for a national identity card scheme, pointing to the project's recently upwardly-revised costs.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis declared, in the Conservative's own words, "war" on the Home Office's controversial IT project, confirming that the Party will oppose the Identity Cards Bill at its Second Reading in Parliament later this month...

Another case featured by the Conservatives is the 'Libra' IT modernisation of the magistrates courts - seen by many as the archetypal government IT disaster - which was initiated back in 1996 but by 2002 had more than doubled in costs."

Becta school challenge

Becta are inviting ICT vendors to propose projects for using technologies in innovative ways in schools. I'm not a big fan of Becta but it might be interesting to monitor this.

German lorry charging

William Heath thinks "Alistair Darling should take a long drive down the autobahn, preferably in a lorry" if he would like a demononstration on how not to do road charging.

OECD reject P2P and sales causal link

The OECD Working Party on the Information Economy have recently de-classified a report, presented in December last year, suggesting it would be very difficult to prove the music industry's claims that music sharing (or "unauthorised downloading of copyrighted content") on the Internet has caused a drop in music sales.

The full 132 pages are not for the faint-hearted but the summary between pages 8 and 14 makes interesting reading. This paints a relatively rosy picture for the future of digital music services, though points out there are significant challenges ahead for governments and industry in instigating balanced and appropriate changes in legal frameworks and in adapting and developing new business models.

The report's authors are Dr Sacha Wunsch-Vincent and Dr Graham Vickery of the OECD’s “Expert Panel on Digital Broadband Content.”

NO2ID pledge

The NO2ID campaign national coordinator, Phil Booth, has made a pledge to "refuse to register for an ID card and donate £10 to a legal defence fund but only if 10,000 other people will also make this same pledge."

Sounds reasonable.