Privacy commissioners from all over the world meeting in Switzerland have issued a declaration calling for wider imlementation of basic privacy principles and a resolution on the use of biometrics in passports, ID cards and travel documents.
The latter tackles the mass move towards the deployment of biometrics by governments and commerce, which will have "a far-reaching impact on the global society and should therefore be subject to an open worldwide debate." The commissioners therefore call for
"1. effective safeguards to implemented at an early stage to limit the risks inherent in the nature of biometrics,
2. the strict disctinction between biometric data collected and stored for public purposes (e.g. border control) on the basis of legal obligations and for contractual purposes based on consent,
3. the technical restriction of the use of biometrics in passports and identity cards to verification purposes comparing the data in the document with the data provided by the holder when presenting the document."
This makes a lot of sense to me and, not surprisingly, coincides with principles outlined in the LSE report on the UK government's proposed national identity card.
Monday, September 19, 2005
Filesharer challenges music co methods
A woman accused of copyright infringement over peer to peer networks has been given leave by a judge to challenge the methods used by the music industry in threatening to sue thousands of individuals.
Friday, September 16, 2005
The Charter on Intellectual Property
I hear the The Charter on Intellectual Property is to be launched at the RSA on the 13th of October.
Quote of the day
Quote of the day:
"Yet the distressing truth is that the marketization of the academy is eroding its historic commitment to the public interest. It is undermining the fabulously productive gift culture of the university and precipitating a greater array of conflicts of interest and ethical misbehaviour. One cannot blame a wary public for wondering if universities are still reliable, trustworthy institutions or a new breed of corporate shrill." David Bollier, Silent Theft (Routledge 2002), p136.
"Yet the distressing truth is that the marketization of the academy is eroding its historic commitment to the public interest. It is undermining the fabulously productive gift culture of the university and precipitating a greater array of conflicts of interest and ethical misbehaviour. One cannot blame a wary public for wondering if universities are still reliable, trustworthy institutions or a new breed of corporate shrill." David Bollier, Silent Theft (Routledge 2002), p136.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Doctors sue ex patients for defamation
From the WSJ free feature yesterday, "As Angry Patients Vent Online, Doctors Sue to Silence Them".
Crypto-Gram 0509
Bruce Schneier's latest Crypto-gram is available, packed with his usual common sense about security, like Movie-Plot Threats
"Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism...
One problem is that our nation's leaders are giving us what we want. Party affiliation notwithstanding, appearing tough on terrorism is important. Voting for missile defense makes for better campaigning than increasing intelligence funding. Elected officials want to do something visible, even if it turns out to be ineffective.
The other problem is that many security decisions are made at too low a level. The decision to turn off cell phones in some tunnels was made by those in charge of the tunnels. Even if terrorists then bomb a different tunnel elsewhere in the country, that person did his job.
And anyone in charge of security knows that he'll be judged in hindsight. If the next terrorist attack targets a chemical plant, we'll demand to know why more wasn't done to protect chemical plants. If it targets schoolchildren, we'll demand to know why that threat was ignored. We won't accept "we didn't know the target" as an answer. Defending particular targets protects reputations and careers.
We need to defend against the broad threat of terrorism, not against specific movie plots. Security is most effective when it doesn't make arbitrary assumptions about the next terrorist act. We need to spend more money on intelligence and investigation: identifying the terrorists themselves, cutting off their funding, and stopping them regardless of what their plans are. We need to spend more money on emergency response: lessening the impact of a terrorist attack, regardless of what it is. And we need to face the geopolitical consequences of our foreign policy and how it helps or hinders terrorism.
These vague things are less visible, and don't make for good political grandstanding. But they will make us safer. Throwing money at this year's movie plot threat won't."
"Sometimes it seems like the people in charge of homeland security spend too much time watching action movies. They defend against specific movie plots instead of against the broad threats of terrorism...
One problem is that our nation's leaders are giving us what we want. Party affiliation notwithstanding, appearing tough on terrorism is important. Voting for missile defense makes for better campaigning than increasing intelligence funding. Elected officials want to do something visible, even if it turns out to be ineffective.
The other problem is that many security decisions are made at too low a level. The decision to turn off cell phones in some tunnels was made by those in charge of the tunnels. Even if terrorists then bomb a different tunnel elsewhere in the country, that person did his job.
And anyone in charge of security knows that he'll be judged in hindsight. If the next terrorist attack targets a chemical plant, we'll demand to know why more wasn't done to protect chemical plants. If it targets schoolchildren, we'll demand to know why that threat was ignored. We won't accept "we didn't know the target" as an answer. Defending particular targets protects reputations and careers.
We need to defend against the broad threat of terrorism, not against specific movie plots. Security is most effective when it doesn't make arbitrary assumptions about the next terrorist act. We need to spend more money on intelligence and investigation: identifying the terrorists themselves, cutting off their funding, and stopping them regardless of what their plans are. We need to spend more money on emergency response: lessening the impact of a terrorist attack, regardless of what it is. And we need to face the geopolitical consequences of our foreign policy and how it helps or hinders terrorism.
These vague things are less visible, and don't make for good political grandstanding. But they will make us safer. Throwing money at this year's movie plot threat won't."
If biometrics isn't perfect...
The Guardian reports on the government's charm initiative on the ID card scheme this morning.
Nothing particularly new except to reinforce the impression of experience Ian Watmore brings to the role of chief information officer. He has apparently convinced the government that authentication through biometrics should be the exception rather than the norm in the use of the card. Normal checking will apparently now be through chip and pin numbers. At a stoke that deals with one of the serious technical limitations of the original scheme - the need for a vast robust network of biometric readers. It also cuts the costs by a fair margin. The network of readers will still be required but not based on such ropey technology.
Of course it does undermine also the wild claims of David Blunkett, in particular, when he repeatly stated that the nature of biometric technology meant that it would be "impossible" for it to fail.
Nothing particularly new except to reinforce the impression of experience Ian Watmore brings to the role of chief information officer. He has apparently convinced the government that authentication through biometrics should be the exception rather than the norm in the use of the card. Normal checking will apparently now be through chip and pin numbers. At a stoke that deals with one of the serious technical limitations of the original scheme - the need for a vast robust network of biometric readers. It also cuts the costs by a fair margin. The network of readers will still be required but not based on such ropey technology.
Of course it does undermine also the wild claims of David Blunkett, in particular, when he repeatly stated that the nature of biometric technology meant that it would be "impossible" for it to fail.
Patry says Google Print is copyright infringement
William Patry has weighed into the debate about whether Google are infringing copyright with the Google Print project.
"Google has gotten a lot of publicity lately about its efforts to digitally scan entire libraries, copyright be damned. I had differences with book publishers in the past (from the late 1980s to 1994) when a few mediocre, mid-level in-house counsel scared of their own shadows temporarily got in a position to set policy and did so disasterously: on issues such as fair use of unpublished works and repeal of Section 412, I believed their views at the time were frivolous and hypocritical. Under the current AAP Presidency of former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, balance and dignity have been, fortunately, restored.
And on the Google issue, I share publishers' concerns. While I think the project is fantastic and would love for it to come to pass (it would greatly faciliate and democratize scholarship and thereby significantly increase learning), as to works under copyright, it can only be done with permission. Absent permission, I see no way for it to be considered fair use or covered by Section 108.
The chutzpadik manner in which Google has gone about this is breathtaking, and indeed what they have done so far is, in my opinion, already infringing, that is the copying of the books even without making them available. If I were a book publisher, I would file a declaratory judgment action and hope that Judge Rakoff, of MP3.com fame, got the assignment. Telling publishers they can opt-out is not the way the Copyright Act works and "Judge Dread" is just the guy to cut down them down to size."
"Google has gotten a lot of publicity lately about its efforts to digitally scan entire libraries, copyright be damned. I had differences with book publishers in the past (from the late 1980s to 1994) when a few mediocre, mid-level in-house counsel scared of their own shadows temporarily got in a position to set policy and did so disasterously: on issues such as fair use of unpublished works and repeal of Section 412, I believed their views at the time were frivolous and hypocritical. Under the current AAP Presidency of former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder, balance and dignity have been, fortunately, restored.
And on the Google issue, I share publishers' concerns. While I think the project is fantastic and would love for it to come to pass (it would greatly faciliate and democratize scholarship and thereby significantly increase learning), as to works under copyright, it can only be done with permission. Absent permission, I see no way for it to be considered fair use or covered by Section 108.
The chutzpadik manner in which Google has gone about this is breathtaking, and indeed what they have done so far is, in my opinion, already infringing, that is the copying of the books even without making them available. If I were a book publisher, I would file a declaratory judgment action and hope that Judge Rakoff, of MP3.com fame, got the assignment. Telling publishers they can opt-out is not the way the Copyright Act works and "Judge Dread" is just the guy to cut down them down to size."
Making a real difference to the future
Susan Crawford believes that "the clueful are completely out of touch."
She's talking about getting ordinary folk energised about the importance of Net neutrality. I wish her luck but fear, that in spite of its crucial importance, this remains a concept way too abstract and far removed from most people's day to day radars, that the task will prove hugely challenging. Now if they had the funds to recruit some of the big PR firms like Burson-Marsteller to the cause, then you never know.
People don't care about progressive wireless-based platforms. People riding on the subway just want to get home and aren't thinking about the collective conversation. The most transformative of transformations, the electronic excitement of our age, has not touched the hearts and minds of the voting public.
This is bad news for our collective online future. If no one cares about openness, about connectedness, about interaction, it can all be quietly taken away.
We have some choices to make. We could keep going to conferences (boy, are there a lot of conferences). We could keep recognizing the coolest of the cool A-list blogcasters, and we could really get into the people's video. We could moan about how Skype doesn't have open APIs.
Or -- we could start working on true grassroots appreciation of the open internet and all it makes possible. That's what I want to do. I decided a while ago that life was short and that I had to dedicate myself to something that I believed in. I'll be meeting with people in Boston, DC, and SF about OneWebDay in the coming weeks, and we're building a great team...
...we're not making progress on the Hill or at the FCC. It's time to make a big public deal out of access to the open internet.
She's talking about getting ordinary folk energised about the importance of Net neutrality. I wish her luck but fear, that in spite of its crucial importance, this remains a concept way too abstract and far removed from most people's day to day radars, that the task will prove hugely challenging. Now if they had the funds to recruit some of the big PR firms like Burson-Marsteller to the cause, then you never know.
On RCUK plan for open access research
Belinda Isaac, Head of Intellectual Property & Life Sciences at Morgan Cole Solicitors, has some concerns about the Research Councils UK (RCUK) plan to condition research funding on the basis that any resulting publications be openly archived.
She believes it will involve significant archiving costs accruing to the host universities, that there will be an absence of peer reviewing if traditional academic journal publishers get bypassed (consequently suffering loss of revenues), that researchers will miss out on possible patent and copyright protections, and that the burden on researchers to keep up with all relevant openly published material will be excessive.
Her suggestions in the light of all that?
"Before publication, researchers should check with their legal advisers (or technology transfer centres) to ensure that patent protection is in place before publication.
Second, research institutions should ensure that policies and procedures are devised to check the quality of research before it is published... Research institutions should also take steps to protect the copyright or design rights in the research papers they publish...
Journal publishers that currently charge fees for publication need to think carefully about possible alternative sources of income in the face of Open Access...publishers need to adapt their roles so as to remain involved in research publication.
The UK and USA are leading the push for open access to research findings and trying to stop this tide is likely to prove fruitless. Open Access is a reality; its success however requires a thorough understanding of the costs involved for all concerned."
Peter Suber feels there is a degree of misunderstanding in Ms Isaac's analysis:
"A few quick replies. (1) The RCUK open-access policy is not likely to result in journal cancellations --hence in library savings-- even though other OA initiatives may well do so. (2) Running an OA repository is not expensive and brings direct benefits to the hosting institution by increasing its research profile and impact. Not supporting OA repositories would be even more expensive, by undermining the considerable national investment in publicly-funded research. (3) The work of depositing articles in OA repositories is distributed among the authors, who on average will only need 6-10 minutes to deposit an article. Authors who understand the benefits will do it from self-interest, to enlarge their audience and impact, and spend far less time on it than they spend e.g. bringing their work to the attention of department chairs, deans, and colleagues elsewhere. (4) Isaac seems to think that the deposited articles will bypass peer review, which is incorrect. The policy will only apply to articles that have been approved by the peer-review process at independent journals. (5) Isaac seems to think that the policy will force grantees to disclose patentable discoveries before they might be ready to do so, which is incorrect. The policy only applies to work that authors voluntarily publish in journals or present at conferences. (6) There is no copyright problem here. The deposited articles are under copyright. Authors remain free to transfer copyright to journals. In fact, the current draft of the policy even makes an exception to the OA mandate when journals insist on "copyright arrangements" incompatible with early or open access. (7) The policy will not disrupt the commercial value of articles, if only because scholarly journal articles have no commercial value in the relevant sense."
Suber is not impressed either at a Washington Times critique of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) open archive of articles based on research it sponsors.
She believes it will involve significant archiving costs accruing to the host universities, that there will be an absence of peer reviewing if traditional academic journal publishers get bypassed (consequently suffering loss of revenues), that researchers will miss out on possible patent and copyright protections, and that the burden on researchers to keep up with all relevant openly published material will be excessive.
Her suggestions in the light of all that?
"Before publication, researchers should check with their legal advisers (or technology transfer centres) to ensure that patent protection is in place before publication.
Second, research institutions should ensure that policies and procedures are devised to check the quality of research before it is published... Research institutions should also take steps to protect the copyright or design rights in the research papers they publish...
Journal publishers that currently charge fees for publication need to think carefully about possible alternative sources of income in the face of Open Access...publishers need to adapt their roles so as to remain involved in research publication.
The UK and USA are leading the push for open access to research findings and trying to stop this tide is likely to prove fruitless. Open Access is a reality; its success however requires a thorough understanding of the costs involved for all concerned."
Peter Suber feels there is a degree of misunderstanding in Ms Isaac's analysis:
"A few quick replies. (1) The RCUK open-access policy is not likely to result in journal cancellations --hence in library savings-- even though other OA initiatives may well do so. (2) Running an OA repository is not expensive and brings direct benefits to the hosting institution by increasing its research profile and impact. Not supporting OA repositories would be even more expensive, by undermining the considerable national investment in publicly-funded research. (3) The work of depositing articles in OA repositories is distributed among the authors, who on average will only need 6-10 minutes to deposit an article. Authors who understand the benefits will do it from self-interest, to enlarge their audience and impact, and spend far less time on it than they spend e.g. bringing their work to the attention of department chairs, deans, and colleagues elsewhere. (4) Isaac seems to think that the deposited articles will bypass peer review, which is incorrect. The policy will only apply to articles that have been approved by the peer-review process at independent journals. (5) Isaac seems to think that the policy will force grantees to disclose patentable discoveries before they might be ready to do so, which is incorrect. The policy only applies to work that authors voluntarily publish in journals or present at conferences. (6) There is no copyright problem here. The deposited articles are under copyright. Authors remain free to transfer copyright to journals. In fact, the current draft of the policy even makes an exception to the OA mandate when journals insist on "copyright arrangements" incompatible with early or open access. (7) The policy will not disrupt the commercial value of articles, if only because scholarly journal articles have no commercial value in the relevant sense."
Suber is not impressed either at a Washington Times critique of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) open archive of articles based on research it sponsors.
UK Universities face sustainability audits
From ResearchResearch:
"Universities that cannot show their research and other work is sustainable in the long-term will face intervention from the higher education funding councils under a new system of scrutiny introduced by the government over the summer."
"Universities that cannot show their research and other work is sustainable in the long-term will face intervention from the higher education funding councils under a new system of scrutiny introduced by the government over the summer."
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Secrecy in science: who found 2003EL61 first?
Ed Felten has some helpful insights in the dispute between US and Spanish astronomers as to who discovered a solar system object called 2003EL61. He thinks the dispute
" describes an interesting dynamic that seems to occur in all scientific fields — I have seen it plenty of times in computer science — where researchers withhold results from their colleagues for a while, to ensure that they get a headstart on the followup research. That’s basically what happens when an astronomer delays announcing the discovery of an object, in order to do followup analyses of the object for publication.
The argument against this secrecy is pretty simple: announcing the first result would let more people do followup work, making the followup work both quicker and more complete on average. Scientific discovery would benefit.
The argument for this kind of secrecy is more subtle. The amount of credit one gets for a scientific result doesn’t always correlate with the difficulty of getting the result. If a result is difficult to get but doesn’t create much credit to the discoverer, then there is an insufficient incentive to look for that result. The incentive is boosted if the discoverer gets an advantage in doing followup work, for example by keeping the original result secret for a while. So secrecy may increase the incentive to do certain kinds of research.
Note that there isn’t much incentive to keep low-effort / high-credit research secret, because there are probably plenty of competing scientists who are racing to do such work and announce it first. The incentive to keep secrets is biggest for high-effort / low-credit research which enables low-effort / high-credit followup work. And this is exactly the case where incentives most need to be boosted."
I really like his final paragraph:
"What’s most notable about the scientific system is that it works pretty well, at least within the subject matter of science, and it does so without much involvement by laws or lawyers."
" describes an interesting dynamic that seems to occur in all scientific fields — I have seen it plenty of times in computer science — where researchers withhold results from their colleagues for a while, to ensure that they get a headstart on the followup research. That’s basically what happens when an astronomer delays announcing the discovery of an object, in order to do followup analyses of the object for publication.
The argument against this secrecy is pretty simple: announcing the first result would let more people do followup work, making the followup work both quicker and more complete on average. Scientific discovery would benefit.
The argument for this kind of secrecy is more subtle. The amount of credit one gets for a scientific result doesn’t always correlate with the difficulty of getting the result. If a result is difficult to get but doesn’t create much credit to the discoverer, then there is an insufficient incentive to look for that result. The incentive is boosted if the discoverer gets an advantage in doing followup work, for example by keeping the original result secret for a while. So secrecy may increase the incentive to do certain kinds of research.
Note that there isn’t much incentive to keep low-effort / high-credit research secret, because there are probably plenty of competing scientists who are racing to do such work and announce it first. The incentive to keep secrets is biggest for high-effort / low-credit research which enables low-effort / high-credit followup work. And this is exactly the case where incentives most need to be boosted."
I really like his final paragraph:
"What’s most notable about the scientific system is that it works pretty well, at least within the subject matter of science, and it does so without much involvement by laws or lawyers."
NTY pay barrier
From this coming Monday the New York Times are limiting access to "influential columnists in Op-Ed, Business, New York/Region and Sports" to paying subscribers. Ed Felten says he won't be reading the columnists any more, or citing them.
Asking permission kills...
Jennifer Granick reckons asking permission kills new tools.
"It's an accident of technology that data published on the internet must be contained on computer servers. By giving owners too many rights to control whether and when the public accesses those servers, we will lose the very openness that makes the internet particularly cool. We'll also lose the rights that we already have in the real world, to comparison shop, to search, to collect information or even to help hurricane victims find each other."
"It's an accident of technology that data published on the internet must be contained on computer servers. By giving owners too many rights to control whether and when the public accesses those servers, we will lose the very openness that makes the internet particularly cool. We'll also lose the rights that we already have in the real world, to comparison shop, to search, to collect information or even to help hurricane victims find each other."
Rose proves girls bloom as scientists
Karlin Lillington in the Irish Times on inspiring children, particularly girls, to pursue science:
"Finding a way to inspire girls to go into science, engineering and computing isn't rocket science - but it may be theoretical physics.
That's going by the debut engagement for Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin of Mayo, better known to most people as the new Rose of Tralee, but more familiar to some as the one who took first-class honours in theoretical physics at UCD and spent the summer working on a student programme at CERN, the famed particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.
Ní Shúilleabháin joined several other Irish women scientists to give presentations about their work at the BA Festival of Science on Wednesday at Trinity College, under the auspices of the national organisation Women in Technology and Science (Wits).
All the presentations were a delight, ranging from Prof Catherine Godson on her love of biomedical research; engineer Anne Graham's tales of working for the city of Dublin; Dr Mary Bourke of the Planetary Science Institute's descriptions of how understanding flood plains in Australia helps her explore the Mars landscape, and maths whiz and former Young Scientist Sarah Flannery on the maths games she played with her father and her love of mathematics.
What a fantastic team this group would be to tour schools. They had me ready to return to university to do maths, physics and engineering, and left me feeling disappointed that I hadn't pursued these studies more diligently in school. In other words, they made science exciting, interesting, and fun."
"Finding a way to inspire girls to go into science, engineering and computing isn't rocket science - but it may be theoretical physics.
That's going by the debut engagement for Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin of Mayo, better known to most people as the new Rose of Tralee, but more familiar to some as the one who took first-class honours in theoretical physics at UCD and spent the summer working on a student programme at CERN, the famed particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.
Ní Shúilleabháin joined several other Irish women scientists to give presentations about their work at the BA Festival of Science on Wednesday at Trinity College, under the auspices of the national organisation Women in Technology and Science (Wits).
All the presentations were a delight, ranging from Prof Catherine Godson on her love of biomedical research; engineer Anne Graham's tales of working for the city of Dublin; Dr Mary Bourke of the Planetary Science Institute's descriptions of how understanding flood plains in Australia helps her explore the Mars landscape, and maths whiz and former Young Scientist Sarah Flannery on the maths games she played with her father and her love of mathematics.
What a fantastic team this group would be to tour schools. They had me ready to return to university to do maths, physics and engineering, and left me feeling disappointed that I hadn't pursued these studies more diligently in school. In other words, they made science exciting, interesting, and fun."
Downloading in Finland
An Aussie studying in Finland has been contemplating permissions for downloading music in her homeland and her current abode.
But what does Finnish music sound like? What's a cooking demonstration if you can't taste the food at the end. You can check out some samples on the Finland Music Information Centre website. But I can't really do much more. In Finland I could help you out. In Finland, or indeed anywhere in Europe, anyone can download, copy and burn for personal use. Indeed, I could probably help you out in the US – a short sample, no profit motive, is probably fair use.
But not in Australia. In Australia, it's against the law to download, to copy, to burn, to create podcasts of copyright works without the copyright owner's permission. Even for private use. And it's against the law for me to encourage you, to provide any facilities or software like a file sharing network and tell you how to do it, knowing you will do it.
Sure, there is an exception for criticism or review. But it rarely applies to the whole of the work when the work is commercially available, and people usually want to check out the whole of the work. And there is a more fundamental problem – where is the reviewer supposed to get the song in the first place – will iTunes give it to you for free if you say you are a reviewer? Will your reviewing words magically break the DRM?
UK government back of envelope ID costs
The Register has been speculating on the UK government's back of an envelope calculations regarding the cost of their proposed ID card scheme, based on the government's response to the critical LSE report.
Access to ID card database to be limited
The FT says "Business and the public sector are to be given graded access to the national identity card database, depending on the need." They've been interviewing Katherine Courtney, ID card programme director at the Home Office.
Katherine Courtney, ID card programme director at the Home Office, said yesterday: "We don't want a situation where people want for some frivolous reason to check everyone's biometrics every time they show up.
"One of the safeguards we are building into the scheme to avoid the situation where people keep escalating the amount of verification they feel they need is to have a verification scheme that requires the user to justify to us the level of verification they want to use."
In addition, she said, people would be able to ask for a record of when their identity had been checked and by whom as a further safeguard against "people attempting frivolously to use the system when there is not a business justification for that".
Police get creative to catch murderer
Richard Smith points to a story (via Politech) from 2003 where a judge has said Seattle police did not violate a murder suspect's privacy rights when they tricked him into sending his dna to them. The suspect responded to a false letter saying he was eligible for some money and left his dna on the envelope when he licked it. The news report says the judge agreed the police broke the law by pretending to be lawyers. It would be interesting to get a look at the judgement to see precisely what she said.
(Richard Smith was also the person who identified the four UK officials who had worked on the now infamous, mostly-plagiarised Downing Sreet dossier that Colin Powell cited at the United Nations in his efforts to get support for the war on Iraq.)
(Richard Smith was also the person who identified the four UK officials who had worked on the now infamous, mostly-plagiarised Downing Sreet dossier that Colin Powell cited at the United Nations in his efforts to get support for the war on Iraq.)
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
When open standards really matter
Pamela Jones has been thinking about open standards in the aftermath of the hurricane.
She is possibly being a bit hard on Microsoft but she absolutely has a point about open standards.
If you have any doubts about the direction Massachusetts is following in requiring open standards for all government documents, consider what happened when Hurricane Katrina knocked out almost all communications except the Internet...
There are discussions between the government and companies about how to be better prepared next time and particularly how to set up the Internet to be a primary communications system for emergencies. Note what Microsoft is proposing:Many industry executives are already talking about how to insure a less ad hoc response to the next disaster. For instance, Microsoft’s Markezich says the industry needs to develop common standards using the XML language (which enables software applications to interoperate), so information can be shared across sites in an emergency.While it may not bother Microsoft to have everyone required to buy and use their products in a disaster or to be able to communicate in an emergency, it bothers me a great deal, because I don't use their products. I don't trust their products to work reliably, for one thing. I heard on the news that the FEMA servers kept crashing. And I don't wish to be forced to use any one company's products, period. I'd be one of the dead bodies they find two weeks later, I'm afraid, because I won't be able to communicate, to let people know to come and rescue me.
Jonathan Schwartz, president of Sun Microsystems, agrees with Markezich, but adds one serious caveat: “We ought to agree on a set of standards through which the government and private agencies can provide emergency services, but in no case should a company name be attached to those services.” Schwartz was alarmed this week when FEMA announced that online applications for Federal Disaster Assistance would only be accepted from victims who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser. “I’d hate to see a day when one company would have to be paid before relief could come to a community,” he says...
Microsoft's answer to that is that I should just use their products. Monopolies always want everyone to have to have to use their products. Why wouldn't they want that? It's their bread and butter...
It is the role of government to protect the lives and property of citizens, to look after us. Didn't you feel that deeply when watching Katrina's aftermath? If governments don't play that role, then it's just every man for himself, and while the human spirit is more reliably kind than corporations or governments, as we've witnessed, the truth is that some things are too big for individuals to handle on their own. So we can be so grateful to those who built the Internet for us, that they chose not to make a bundle for themselves by patenting every bit of it and them balkanizing it into proprietary fiefdoms, but gave thought to creating a fail-safe communications system, something you can rely on no matter what. And it worked. Of course, it was the government that did that. I shudder to think what Microsoft would have done, if it had invented the Internet. Every bit of it would be patented, and we'd all be paying through the nose and would be restricted to whatever Microsoft chose to let us do.
She is possibly being a bit hard on Microsoft but she absolutely has a point about open standards.
Pfizer help Katrina victims
The largest drug company in the world, Pfizer, are temporarily offering free prescriptions to those affected by hurricane Katrina. Good for them.
Ofcom rule no TV ads for Make Poverty History
From Brand Republic:
Make Poverty History, the organisation backed by Bob Geldof that campaigns to end third-world debt, will no longer be allowed to run ads on UK television after being declared a political organisation by media regulator Ofcom.
Microsoft offer Eric Raymond a job
This is quite funny. John says someone at Microsoft has offered Eric Raymond a job.
Creative commons license problem?
There's an interesting essay on Kuro5hin suggesting there may be a problem in practice with creative commons non commercial licences.
One particular licensing option, however, is a growing problem for the free content community. It is the allow non-commercial use only (-NC) option. The "non-commercial use only" variants of the Creative Commons licenses are non-free, and in some ways worse than traditional copyright law -- because it can be harder to move away from them once people have made the choice.
Doctors criticise NHS £6 billion IT programme
Most NHS staff don't know anything about the massive £6.2 billion NHS IT project currently being implemented across the country, according to a recent survey.
Monday, September 12, 2005
James Boyle on expanding the public domain
James Boyle has been talking to the Association of Research Libraries about expanding the public domain.
If you have any interest in the technology and law debate in the intellectual property arena, read the whole transcript. It's worth it.
Preserving the balance between intellectual property and the public domain is not an attack on intellectual property; rather, it’s about preserving a living ecosystem between intellectual property and the public domain...
We also need a richer understanding of the notions of the “public domain” as opposed to the “commons"...
Now the point is, that’s not the public domain. It focuses on many of the things that the library community cares about—access issues, sometimes price issues, sequential innovation issues—but it is built on the back of intellectual property rights.
In fact, there are currently developments in the scientific community, which some you may be aware of, where there is going to be a hard tactical choice along this front. For example, we’re right at the beginning of “synthetic biology”—creating entirely new molecules, entirely new biological entities, using, effectively, DNA as a programming code the way someone might use C++. Most of the sequences are probably not copyrightable. But some of the scientists who passionately want this stuff to be openly available wish that they were. Why? Because they want to attach a General Public License-like condition that says, if you want to use my building block, my enabling technology, then you have to add your innovation to the commons. They’re saying, this must be “property,” so it can be free...
as you know, intellectual property rights have expanded dramatically in recent years...
What arguments have been used to justify this expansion? One is what I call the “Internet threat” argument, which assumes that, as copying becomes cheaper, intellectual property protection must increase...
Now, this is not a dumb argument, but it is wrong. It’s not dumb in that there is a real problem. The Internet does lower the cost of copying, so it will magnify the amount of illicit copying. But it will also magnify the amount of licit copying. And it expands the size of the market, makes it easier for you to distribute things, lowers your advertising costs. On balance, are intellectual property holders betteror worse off? Well, even economists don’t think that you can decide that in the abstract. They say you actually need evidence, right?
Here’s another remarkable thing about intellectual property policy over the last 10 or 15 years: it is almost evidence-free. People criticize the FDA about Vioxx. But if we were doing FDA drug approvals the way we approved intellectual property expansions, this is how the process would go. The drug company would say, “This is my friend. He took the pill and he feels better.” Or sometimes even, “This is my friend, he needs to take a pill and he thinks it will make him better.” And then they would offer a model about as complicated as a picture of the person with a mouth and the pill in their stomach and say, “See?” That’s about as data-intensive as things have been...
My points are: lowering copying costs brings benefits, as well as costs. And we need evidence before we make policy.
If you have any interest in the technology and law debate in the intellectual property arena, read the whole transcript. It's worth it.
German court refuses to outlaw drm
A German court has rejected a consumer complaint against drm in CDs and DVDs. A French court took a different position when asked to rule in a parallel case earlier in the year.
RIAA push Congress for drm for digital radio
The RIAA and others have urged the US congress to implement copy protection for digital radio, according to Mike Godwin.
Trusted computing
Benjamin Stephan and Lutz Vogel have produced a video on trusted computing. It's a little generic unless you already understand what the debate is all about but anyone concerned about trusted computing proposals will probably be pleased with it.
PACE President warning to UK
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE)issued this press release on Friday last (quoted in full because of what I believe to be its fundamental importance):
He puts his finger on what should be our instinctive response to the oft trotted out rhetoric of politicians on the "war on terror." Yes Mr Clarke and his counterparts have a difficult job overseeing security in the face of people prepared to engage in destructive acts to undermine their respective societies. But how can a blueprint for protecting human rights, drafted as René van der Linden says "in the immedate aftermath of the bloodiest, most destructive war the world has ever seen", be "outdated" just because it provides checks and balances on the actions of people in power, who, no doubt with the best of motives, want to be seen to be "doing something" in response to the perceived "new" terrorist threat. Reacting, as western governments have been, disproportionately to the real and perceived threat of terrorism, in haste, by dismantling fundamental protections for civil rights in the name of protecting those civil rights, will see us "repenting at leisure" the long term consequences.
Thanks to Caspar Bowden for the link.
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), René van der Linden, today expressed his concern at recent statements by the UK Home Secretary, Charles Clarke.
Mr Clarke, speaking of the possibility of the European Court of Human Rights finding UK anti-terrorism legislation to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, had appeared to suggest that such a judgment could lead to a reconsideration of whether or not the UK should remain party to the Convention, since it would contradict the 'consensus' on how rights should be defended.
“The European Convention on Human Rights is the heart and foundation of the Council of Europe's human rights protection system,” said Mr van der Linden. “Its effectiveness depends upon its Court, the first international judicial mechanism for human rights protection in the world and a crowning achievement of civilised values. I find it very alarming that a politician may be making statements that could have the effect of undermining the judicial independence of that Court, by stating in advance that an undesired judgment might have negative political consequences.”
Mr van der Linden also replied to those who felt that the Convention was no longer relevant to the current circumstances of the fight against terrorism. “The Convention was drafted in the immedate aftermath of the bloodiest, most destructive war the world has ever seen. It is not a luxury for times of peace, but a necessity to prevent tyranny and conflict."
He puts his finger on what should be our instinctive response to the oft trotted out rhetoric of politicians on the "war on terror." Yes Mr Clarke and his counterparts have a difficult job overseeing security in the face of people prepared to engage in destructive acts to undermine their respective societies. But how can a blueprint for protecting human rights, drafted as René van der Linden says "in the immedate aftermath of the bloodiest, most destructive war the world has ever seen", be "outdated" just because it provides checks and balances on the actions of people in power, who, no doubt with the best of motives, want to be seen to be "doing something" in response to the perceived "new" terrorist threat. Reacting, as western governments have been, disproportionately to the real and perceived threat of terrorism, in haste, by dismantling fundamental protections for civil rights in the name of protecting those civil rights, will see us "repenting at leisure" the long term consequences.
Thanks to Caspar Bowden for the link.
Sky, water and soil commons in trust
Here's an interesting idea from Peter Barnes.
Left wingers complain the market is flawed and government the answer. Right wingers complain government is flawed and everything can be sorted out by the market. They're both wrong. Peter Barnes says:
Left wingers complain the market is flawed and government the answer. Right wingers complain government is flawed and everything can be sorted out by the market. They're both wrong. Peter Barnes says:
They’re both right that market and state are flawed, and both wrong that either market or state can save us. But if that’s the case, what are we to do? Is there, perhaps, a third set of institutions that can help?
I began pondering this dilemma about ten years ago, when I joined the board of Redefining Progress, a San Francisco think tank that aspires to break out of the boxes of liberal and conservative orthodoxy. My initial area of focus was climate change caused by human emissions of heat-trapping gases. Some analysts saw this as a ‘tragedy of the commons.’ I saw it as a tragedy first of the market, which has no way of curbing its own excesses, and second of government, which fails to protect the atmosphere because polluting corporations are powerful and future generations don’t vote. This way of viewing the problem led to a hypothesis: if the commons is a victim of market and government failure, rather than a cause, the remedy might be to strengthen the commons rather than to blame it (and then enclose it).
But how might that be done? According to prevailing wisdom, commons are inherently difficult to manage because no one has an ownership role. If Waste Management Inc. owned the atmosphere, it would charge dumpers a tipping fee, just as it does with its terrestrial landfills; the amount of the fee would reflect both the demand for dumping and the remaining supply of storage space. But since no one (at the moment) has title to the atmosphere, dumping proceeds without cost or limit.
‘Who owns the sky?’ became a kind of Zen koan for me — a seemingly innocent query that, upon reflection, opens many unexpected doors. I wondered what would happen if title to the atmosphere were held by a trust whose beneficiaries were all citizens equally. Such a trust would do exactly what Waste Management Inc., if it owned the sky, would do: charge dumpers for filling its dwindling storage space. Pollution would cost more and there’d be steadily less of it. All this would happen without government intervention (other than assigning property rights to the trust). And there’d be a wonderful bonus: every American would get a dividend check! This model became known as the ‘sky trust’ and has made some political headway.
In time, I realized this model could be extended to multiple, if not all, forms of pollution, and to much else as well. Waste sinks like air, water and soil are shared inheritances that have limited absorption capacities. They (along with other depletable gifts of nature) can and should be placed in trust for future generations — not just figuratively, but literally. The trusts would have two fiduciary responsibilities: first, to preserve their assets for future generations, and second, to use revenue (e.g., from dumping fees) for the benefit of living citizens more or less equally.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Roadmap for open ICT systems
The Berkman Center at Harvard, with the help of senior government figures and business leaders from all over the world has produced a roadmap for open ICT systems...
"...a user-friendly guide for policymakers and technologists offerings tools for understanding, creating, and sustaining open information and communication technologies ecosystems.
Who is the Roadmap Intended For?
Policymakers, managers, technology architects and other stakeholders from industry and civil society seeking a user-friendly tool for understanding what open ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) ecosystems are, why they are embraced and how to evolve them."
"...a user-friendly guide for policymakers and technologists offerings tools for understanding, creating, and sustaining open information and communication technologies ecosystems.
Who is the Roadmap Intended For?
Policymakers, managers, technology architects and other stakeholders from industry and civil society seeking a user-friendly tool for understanding what open ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) ecosystems are, why they are embraced and how to evolve them."
Fred Von Lohmann interview
P2P.net have a nice interview with Fred Von Lohmann of the EFF. Extract:
p2pnet: Do you think someone who downloads a music or movie file is in effect negating a sale somewhere, some time?
von Lohmann: When tens of millions of Americans are downloading music, one of them will support virtually any proposition. Doubtless, some file-sharers are downloading as a substitute for purchasing. For others, the downloading is driving more purchases. Many policy-makers and economists think that the important question is which response is predominant. I think that's looking at the wrong thing. After all, if downloaders were given the opportunity to pay a reasonable, up-front, flat fee in exchange for the freedom to download whatever they like, that would create an altogether new way to monetize downloading...
p2pnet: Is it reasonable to mention both 'pirates' and file sharers in the same breath - or, put another way, are they components of the same problem, as the entertainment and software industries suggest?
von Lohmann: I think the use of the term "pirate" is inaccurate and unfortunate. "Piracy" has traditionally been used to refer to infringers who are selling counterfeit copies for personal gain. Lumping typical downloaders into the same group as for-profit pirates is a mistake - they are not the same people, are not driven by the same motives, and are a great deal more diverse in age, income, and circumstance.
Pirates are never your customers. Downloaders, on the other hand, are the core of music fandom - they are, like it or not, the core demographic that the music and movie industries will need to please in the future.
Guantánamo Bay hunger strikers in 5th week
"More than 200 detainees in Guantánamo Bay are in their fifth week of a hunger strike, the Guardian has been told."
Zero piracy economically sub optimal
Chris Anderson at the Long Tail has some interesting thoughts on DRM. He concludes:
IMHO, the "good-enough approach to content protection that is easy, convenient and non-annoying to most people" is no drm. Plug and play is the standard for "easy, convenient and non-annoying" in my book (e version or otherwise) and drm comes nowhere near.
So the moral for video content holders and others considering DRM: be careful what you ask for, because you just might get it. "Uncrackable" DRM could make the P2P problem worse, by driving more users underground and depressing prices. Don't imagine that if you release content in a relatively weak DRM wrapper (like today's DVDs) and copies get out that the whole market will collapse. Instead, you may find that piracy stays constant at relatively low levels, leaving the rest of the market happier and more profitable.
The lesson is to find a good-enough approach to content protection that is easy, convenient and non-annoying to most people, and then accept that there will be some leakage. Most consumers see the value in paying for something of guaranteed quality and legality, as long as you don't treat them like potential criminals. And the minority of others, who are willing to take the risks and go to the trouble of finding the pirated versions? Well, they probably weren't your best market anyway.
IMHO, the "good-enough approach to content protection that is easy, convenient and non-annoying to most people" is no drm. Plug and play is the standard for "easy, convenient and non-annoying" in my book (e version or otherwise) and drm comes nowhere near.
Bush drops minimum wage for Katrina rebuilding
President Bush has "issued an executive order Thursday allowing federal contractors rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to pay below the prevailing wage."
I can only echo the sentiments of congressman George Miller of California,
"President Bush should immediately realize the colossal mistake he has made in signing this order and rescind it and ensure that America puts its people back to work in the wake of Katrina at wages that will get them and their families back on their feet"
I can only echo the sentiments of congressman George Miller of California,
"President Bush should immediately realize the colossal mistake he has made in signing this order and rescind it and ensure that America puts its people back to work in the wake of Katrina at wages that will get them and their families back on their feet"
HMV Microsoft downloads play for sure maybe
In the bad old days you'd buy a tape or CD, take it out of its box, stick it in the music player and press play. What a complicated way to "get access to" music you've bought.
With the brand spanking new world of music piped to your home computer via legitimate Internet digital music sales, things are so much easier, as Andrew Orlowski's description of the new HMV/Microsoft service demonstrates... er... maybe not.
In our blind rush to trust in computers to do absolutely anything better, we're amazingly tolerant of how poorly computing technologies are actually deployed in practice. When I switch on my office desktop in the mornings it takes 3 to 5 minutes to boot up. My home PC takes longer. They can sometimes take almost as long to switch off, (having clicked on the start button). If the TV or music system took as long as that I'd think there was something wrong with them. But hey, computers are so useful and so good at what they do that we're happy for them to be no good at what we actually use them for.
With the brand spanking new world of music piped to your home computer via legitimate Internet digital music sales, things are so much easier, as Andrew Orlowski's description of the new HMV/Microsoft service demonstrates... er... maybe not.
Have HMV and Microsoft banished the compatibility issues that have dogged the market to date? And have they laid the fears of digital activists about locked music to rest?
Microsoft was alert to these concerns when it branded its music technology "Plays For Sure™". So judge for yourself from this explanation, produced by HMV itself.
Will HMV music Play For Sure on an iPod?
It surely won't, we're assured:
"Due to some software and file incompatibility, Apple iPods cannot be used with the HMV Digital service."
And what's the assurance that music you can play music you've downloaded if you choose the HMV Unlimited option, but your subscription lapses?
100 per cent that it won't be playable at all:
"Please note that anything downloaded via HMV Unlimited is a 'conditional' download, and is effectively rented. It will only be accessible whilst your subscription is active."
But doesn't everyone use MP3? Am I sure I can convert the files to MP3?
You surely can't:
"There is no facility in the player to these files using an MP3 encoder."
How sure are we that the music will play on our new PC? Why, as it happens, that's as easy as ... a support call to Bangalore:
"Please contact the Customer Service department. Just use the 'Contact Us' button and we will deactivate your computer [our emphasis].
Deactivate? That sounds drastic. But heck, you've probably already thrown it out of the window already - and this way it will take up less space.
In our blind rush to trust in computers to do absolutely anything better, we're amazingly tolerant of how poorly computing technologies are actually deployed in practice. When I switch on my office desktop in the mornings it takes 3 to 5 minutes to boot up. My home PC takes longer. They can sometimes take almost as long to switch off, (having clicked on the start button). If the TV or music system took as long as that I'd think there was something wrong with them. But hey, computers are so useful and so good at what they do that we're happy for them to be no good at what we actually use them for.
EDRI-gram Number 3.18, 8 September 2005
EDRI-gram Number 3.18, 8 September 2005 is now available. Most notable is the report on UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke's passionate recent challenge to the validity of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Talking about the need "to balance important rights for individuals against the collective right for security", Clarke said: "The view of my Government is that this balance is not right for the circumstances which we now face – circumstances very different from those faced by the founding fathers of the European Convention on Human Rights - and that it needs to be closely examined in that context."
Clarke was specifically referring to the difficulty under the Convention of deporting people suspected of being involved with terrorism, but obviously thought it was acceptable to attack the general principle of protecting citizens against their governments by granting them inalienable minimum rights and freedoms.
A large majority of liberals, social democrats and greens in the European Parliament responded in outrage. The influential Liberal leader Graham Watson told Reuters: "Human rights are indivisible. Freedom and security are not alternatives, they go hand-in-hand ... Much as the public may dislike it, suspected terrorists have rights." Watson also quoted criticism by human rights lawyer Cherie Booth -- wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair -- of the country’s hardline anti-terror measures. "To ... invoke a form of summary justice would in the words of the lawyer Cherie Booth cheapen our right to call ourselves a civilised society," he said.
Franco Frattini, the European Commissioner for Justice addressed the Parliament in a much calmer way on the same topic. "We should never be tired to repeat that when working on security we have to keep a balance between law enforcement activities and the protection of other fundamental rights." Earlier, the spokesperson of Frattini told the Berliner Zeitung the Commission would finally launch its proposal for a directive on data retention on 21 September. But Frattini created more ambivalence about the timeline in his speech: "And we have to balance prosecution activities and privacy. We will consider this both in the proposal on data retention and in the presentation of the first comprehensive proposal on data protection in the third pillar scheduled for October."
Telcos don't like Clarke's data retention plans
European Telecommunications Network Operators's Association have complained about the UK government's plans for EU wide data retention, according to this morning's Guardian. They believe the data storage would breach EU privacy law and "would prove expensive and intrusive, with far-reaching implications for every citizen."
Update: Ian Brown at FIPR, has pointed me at this morning's Scotsman, which says Clarke loses battle over European terror plans
Update: Ian Brown at FIPR, has pointed me at this morning's Scotsman, which says Clarke loses battle over European terror plans
Thursday, September 08, 2005
RIAA request retry at oral argument
The RIAA are asking to have another go at their original oral argument in the case against a mother fighting their lawsuit on p2p copyright infringement.
Cerf joins Google
John Battelle says Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that it hired Vinton (Vint) Cerf, the longtime technologist who is widely known as a "founding father" of the Internet, as Chief Internet Evangelist.
Felten on Kazaa in Oz
Ed Felten has explained why the p2p filtering ordered by the Australian judge in the Kazaa case will prove to be problematic in practice.
Designing such a filter is much harder than it sounds, because there are so many artist names and song names. These two namespaces are so crowded that a great many common names given to non-infringing recordings are likely to contain forbidden patterns.
The judge’s order uses the example of the band Powderfinger. Presumably the modified version of Kazaa would ban searches with “Powderfinger” as part of the artist name. This is all well and good when the artist name is so distinctive. But what if the artist name is a character string that occurs frequently in names, such as “beck”, “smiths”, or “x”? (All are names of artists with copyrighted recordings.) Surely there will be false positives.
It’s even worse for song names. You would have to ban simple words and phrases, like “Birthday”, “Crazy”, “Morning”, “Sailing”, and “Los Angeles”, to name just a few. (All are titles of copyrighted recordings.)
The judge’s order asks the parties to agree on the details of how a filter will work. If they can’t agree on the details, the judge will decide. Given the enormous number of artist and song names, and the crowded namespace, there are a great many details to decide, balancing over- and under-inclusiveness. It’s hard to see how the parties can agree on all of the details, or how the judge can impose a detailed design. The only hope is to appoint some kind of independent arbiter to make these decisions.
Ultimately, I think the tradeoff between over- and under-inclusiveness will prove too difficult — the filters will either fail to block many infringing files, or will block many non-infringing files, or both.
This is the same kind of filtering that Judge Patel ordered Napster to use, after she found Napster liable for indirect infringement. It didn’t work for Napster. Users just changed the spelling of artist and song names, adopting standard misspellings (e.g., “Metallica” changed to “Metalica” or “MetalIGNOREica” or the Pig Latin “Itallicamay”), or encoding the titles somehow. Napster updated its filters to compansate, but was always one step behind. And Napster’s job was easier, because the filtering was done on Napster’s own computers. Kazaa will have to try to download updates to users’ computers every time it changes its filters.
NO2ID campaigners arrested
According to the BBC, 6 people associated with the NO2ID campaign have been arrested this morning. The six were on their way to protest outside a summit of European ministers on Tyneside. The BBC says:
A spokesman for NO2ID said:
A spokeswoman for the police said:
Update: Spy Blog is not impressed.
The NO2ID group said they were arrested on Thursday morning on the grounds they may cause a breach of the peace.
The campaigners, who were going to wear orange boiler suits and bar codes on their foreheads, had created a massive ID card to highlight what they see as an increasing restriction on civil liberties.
A spokesman for NO2ID said:
"It is shocking that we could not have a peaceful protest in a peaceful country but this is what these ministers want."
A spokeswoman for the police said:
"Four men and two women have all been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal damage and are currently in custody."
Update: Spy Blog is not impressed.
Authoraid
From Jamais Cascio,
"Although a good case can be made for the idea that science has an important role to play in the process of global development and the abolition of poverty, scientific journals quite often focus upon subjects and research of greater interest to the developed world than to the developing regions. To an extent, this is not at all surprising: the bulk of the research happens in the West and in Japan, and scientists do tend to work on issues that are important and interesting to them. Yet there are large numbers of working scientists in the developing world, too; how can their voices be better heard?
That's the goal of AuthorAid (PDF), a proposal from the editors of the Journal of Public Health Policy (JPHP), with the backing of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research and the Council of Science Editors' (CSE) Task Force on Science Journals, Poverty, and Human Development."
The originators of the idea have written about it at SciDevNet.
"A global 'publishing gap' condemns efforts at reducing poverty to suffer from the shortsightedness of the rich. This is because the health and science researchers closest to poverty and poor health in the developing world are the least likely to publish their work and ideas in the academic journals that influence policymakers.
Various proposals to address this problem have been made. We would like to suggest an additional strategy, which would link developing-world authors with promising work to voluntary editor/scientist mentors anywhere in the world, on a manuscript-by-manuscript basis.
The mentors could then help the authors prepare submissions that science and policy journals will accept and publish."
Smart.
"Although a good case can be made for the idea that science has an important role to play in the process of global development and the abolition of poverty, scientific journals quite often focus upon subjects and research of greater interest to the developed world than to the developing regions. To an extent, this is not at all surprising: the bulk of the research happens in the West and in Japan, and scientists do tend to work on issues that are important and interesting to them. Yet there are large numbers of working scientists in the developing world, too; how can their voices be better heard?
That's the goal of AuthorAid (PDF), a proposal from the editors of the Journal of Public Health Policy (JPHP), with the backing of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research and the Council of Science Editors' (CSE) Task Force on Science Journals, Poverty, and Human Development."
The originators of the idea have written about it at SciDevNet.
"A global 'publishing gap' condemns efforts at reducing poverty to suffer from the shortsightedness of the rich. This is because the health and science researchers closest to poverty and poor health in the developing world are the least likely to publish their work and ideas in the academic journals that influence policymakers.
Various proposals to address this problem have been made. We would like to suggest an additional strategy, which would link developing-world authors with promising work to voluntary editor/scientist mentors anywhere in the world, on a manuscript-by-manuscript basis.
The mentors could then help the authors prepare submissions that science and policy journals will accept and publish."
Smart.
Newscasters finally start snarling
Jack Shafer at Slate at the end of last week: The Rebellion of the Talking Heads
Newscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling.
Newscasters, sick of official lies and stonewalling, finally start snarling.
BREIN free software
A Dutch antipiracy group are planning to release "free" software to enable parents to detect P2P file sharing programmes on their computers.
I doubt that anyone lacking the skills to check whether there computer has Kazaa or the like (usually involving looking for the desktop icon, or clicking start-programs) will have the skills to download this software. But even if they did, wouldn't it be better if the parent spoke to the child?
I doubt that anyone lacking the skills to check whether there computer has Kazaa or the like (usually involving looking for the desktop icon, or clicking start-programs) will have the skills to download this software. But even if they did, wouldn't it be better if the parent spoke to the child?
Hellkom v Tellkom
From IPKat: "South African telephone company Telkom has settled its dispute with Greg Stirton, the owner of the hellkom.co.za domain name."
Spy Blog and ID card disinformation
Spy Blog is irritated about a new government leaflet on identity fraud suggesting ID cards will solve the problem. They won't.
6 year old rescues babies in New Orleans
From the LA Times:
In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.
They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.
Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans.
Potter at iTunes
JK Rowling has finally agreed to allow the Harry Potter books to be sold as downloadable audio files from iTunes.
What Greenspan Can't See
A thoughtful and thought provoking essay by Jonathon Rowe On the Commons about the limitations of measuring even just economic value purely through monetary flows.
The era of blaming government could be over. Not only that, the era of portraying environmental concerns as the self-indulgence of tree-hugger elites is over too. If Katrina proved nothing else, it is that this thing called the “environment” isn’t a matter of sentimentality and aesthetics. It is about life support, and economics in the most elemental sense – that is, the mustering of available resources to meet urgent human need.
Alan Greenspan and his fellow divines have been hunched over their calculators trying to work out the consequences of Katrina to what they call “the economy.” Their computations are warped from the git-go, and not a little sick. They fixate on the part of life that is transacted through money. Thus anything that increases the slosh of dollar bills – or of some other currency -- is by definition “good for the economy.”
Where this thinking leads was apparent in a recent article on Forbes.com entitled (I’m not kidding) “Katrina’s Silver Lining.” Here’s the key passage.
“When a hurricane comes, count on large-cap investors to snap up stocks of not only home improvement companies, but also discount retailers (everyone's running for flashlights and other supplies and will be replacing losses from flood damage), home builders (all those houses need to be rebuilt) and oil companies (damage to refineries down in the Gulf sparks supply worries and kicks up prices)...
The worse things are the better they are, so long as someone is making money from the distress. In this way of thinking, obesity, stress, car crashes and divorce also are great for “the economy” because they occasion the expenditure of a great deal of money. Toxics in the air and water are a double gain: once when the corporation makes money by producing them, and then when people have to spend additional amounts on cancer treatments and the like. (By the way, what does it say about Vice President Cheney that Haliburton, his former company, ends up cashing on both the disasters of the Bush years – Katrina and 9/11. Just a coincidence I guess.)
As I said it’s a little sick. And myopic too. Greenspan et al are staring at an economic failure of epic proportions, and they can’t even see it because it’s beyond the focal plane of money. I’m talking about the economy of nature, the natural life support system that is no less important than the monetized economy and – as Katrina has shown – often is much more important.
Katrina was a man-made disaster even more than a natural one. It was not the hurricane alone that caused the devastation in New Orleans. It was the hurricane plus the absence of the wetlands that should have buffered the city from the storm. Every 2.7 miles of wetlands reduces a storm surge by about one foot. Louisiana has been losing wetlands equal to the size of Manhattan every year. You don’t need a slide rule to see where that calculus leads.
It’s not malls and vacation homes that are destroying these wetlands, as in other parts of the country. In Louisiana it’s largely oil. Offshore drilling has required the dredging of large canals, which enable salt water to flow into the marshes and cause land to sink. The other culprit is the extensive system of levees built to protect New Orleans from the Mississippi floods. These floods used to carry sediment into the marshlands which nourished and replenished them.
No floods means no replenishment. What used to be a buffer zone is now just open water, and a clear shot for the hurricane that experts have been warning of for years...
This includes the stupidity in the way the nation measures “growth” -- ie the GDP. How can they say the economy is “growing”, if it is cannibalizing the commons economy upon which our very lives depend? When the oil industry destroys wetlands, shouldn’t that be a subtraction from growth rather than an addition? When it takes billions of dollars to dig out from a man-made disaster – a growth-made disaster – then should those expenditures count towards growth at all?
John Battelle Book Published
John Battelle's book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture is apparently now available from Amazon (though not the UK store yet).
Be careful about blogging when job hunting
Ivan Tribble advises bloggers to be careful about what they write, especially if they are looking for a job. He has previously written a piece about this for the Chronicle of Higher Education where he "gave a sharp warning to bloggers on the academic job market" based on his own recruiting experience. The column generated a big response from bloggers. He's been thinking about the responses.
"Among the more outraged responses to my column, the biggest issue seemed to be freedom of speech. There appears to be some confusion about what the Constitution guarantees. "Hello officer, the stolen goods are in my trunk," is one example of free speech that can get you incarcerated. Telling a bank officer you plan to skip town with the cash will certainly cut your chances of getting a loan.
Likewise, there's plenty of constitutionally protected speech that has no place in an interview. Try telling an interviewer, "Kinda heavy, aren't you?" Or "Man, these undergrads are so hot!" It's not hard to conjure up examples.
If "be careful what you say," is good general advice for the job seeker, why is it so controversial to add the word "online"? Maintaining the privacy of comments broadcast to the entire computerized world seems disingenuous. Public speech, while certainly free, is still public...
Getting hired, then, is much like hitting the lottery. How does a candidate get the winning combination? The best advice I've heard says, by being who you really are. Some people will be alienated by who you really are, while others will find you appealing.
A job seeker must consider: Does that online projection (some would say construction) of yourself present you as you wish to be seen...
As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don't "get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.
If that's bad news, I'm sorry. But would it really be better if no one bothered to mention it? Shooting the messenger may make some feel better, but heeding the warning might help them get jobs."
"Among the more outraged responses to my column, the biggest issue seemed to be freedom of speech. There appears to be some confusion about what the Constitution guarantees. "Hello officer, the stolen goods are in my trunk," is one example of free speech that can get you incarcerated. Telling a bank officer you plan to skip town with the cash will certainly cut your chances of getting a loan.
Likewise, there's plenty of constitutionally protected speech that has no place in an interview. Try telling an interviewer, "Kinda heavy, aren't you?" Or "Man, these undergrads are so hot!" It's not hard to conjure up examples.
If "be careful what you say," is good general advice for the job seeker, why is it so controversial to add the word "online"? Maintaining the privacy of comments broadcast to the entire computerized world seems disingenuous. Public speech, while certainly free, is still public...
Getting hired, then, is much like hitting the lottery. How does a candidate get the winning combination? The best advice I've heard says, by being who you really are. Some people will be alienated by who you really are, while others will find you appealing.
A job seeker must consider: Does that online projection (some would say construction) of yourself present you as you wish to be seen...
As my original column made clear (and many amid the outcry reiterated) when it comes to blogging, I just don't "get it." That's right, I don't. Many in the tenured generation don't, and they'll be sitting on hiring committees for years to come.
If that's bad news, I'm sorry. But would it really be better if no one bothered to mention it? Shooting the messenger may make some feel better, but heeding the warning might help them get jobs."
Monsanto bitter about Bitter Greens Journal
Journalist, farmer and blogger, Tom Philpott, has upset Monsanto to the extent that their trademark lawyer ("Barb Bunning-Stevens
Assistant General Counsel - Trademarks") has sent him a cease and desist notice.
After thinking about it for a few days he responded:
Thanks to Overlawyered for the pointer to the story.
Assistant General Counsel - Trademarks") has sent him a cease and desist notice.
After thinking about it for a few days he responded:
Dear Ms. Bunning-Stevens,
Although it's comical for a corporation with upwards of $5 billion in annual revenue to harass an obscure blogger who helps run a 2.5-acre farm, the tone of your letter is earnest; so I will reply earnestly.
Your arguments seem specious to me, and I therefore I must refuse to cease using "Roundup, ready" as the title for an occasional feature on my Web log.
You write that "[t]his use of the term could cause your readers to think that your journal is in some way sponsored by Monsanto or that Monsanto supports the positions set out in your journal." Yet my journal clearly presents itself as a "running critique of industrial agriculture," and from its first post on has made no secret of its distaste for Monsanto and its particular style of industrial agriculture.
I doubt you will be able to dig up a single reader who, after perusing a "Roundup, ready" post, will think to himself, "Now this fellow must be on the Monsanto dole!"
To further clarify my position on Monsanto, and to underline my institutional, financial, and ideological independence from it, I'm considering placing a new feature along the left-hand side of my blog. Titled "Bitter Greens on Monsanto," it would be a compilation of clickable headlines to the 15 or so posts that have mentioned your company. Would that go some way toward distancing our two entities?
Nor am I persuaded by the claim that my use of a comma in "Roundup, ready" somehow "weakens [Monsanto's] trademark rights." If I were in the business of genetically altering seeds so that they could withstand copious applications of herbicides, and I were marketing my product under the brand "Roundup, ready," cheekily trying to leverage Monsanto's marketing might and hoping the comma would protect me from copyright troubles, I would certainly tremble in fear on being contacted by a Monsanto attorney. And I would immediately cease and desist that dubious practice.
However, I am selling nothing. I am a polemicist employing (in the case of "Roundup, ready") satire to advance the cause of locally based, organic agriculture. If I'm able with my writing to stop a farmer from buying your product, then it will be due to the force of my arguments, not to any confusion regarding your trademark.
With all due respect, it seems to me that rather than protect your trademark from any serious threat, what you're really trying to do is intimidate a political opponent into ceasing what is surely Constitutionally protected speech. And so, as I stated above, I must decline your request. And I will redouble my efforts to study and write about the practices of your company.
Respectfully,
Tom Philpott
Thanks to Overlawyered for the pointer to the story.
Ernie the attorney out of New Orleans
I hadn't appreciated that Ernie the Attorney (Ernest Svenson), whose blog I occasionally refer to here, lived in New Orleans.
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
A story from a survivor in New Orleans
This story from one of the survivors of hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans is an horrific indictment of the actions of some officials in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Google Print and copyright
Jonathan Band has produced a useful paper on "The Google Print Library Project: A Copyright Analysis"
It explains the project (there is a fair bit of confusion around about exactly what Google are doing) and looks at the copyright and fair use issues.
It explains the project (there is a fair bit of confusion around about exactly what Google are doing) and looks at the copyright and fair use issues.
Lexmark and analog DRM
The Free Culture blog has an eminently readable rant about Lexmark winning their recent case.
The case was about whether Lexmark could offer a “prebate” on some of its ink cartridges with the stipulation that ink cartridges bought under this prebate (that is, a discounted price) would carry a contractual obligation on the part of the customer to mail back the empty cartridges to Lexmark — and not reuse them by using an ink-syringe kit to refill them or sending them to a company that refills cartridges for you (such companies being the ones represented by ACRA, a trade association for such things).
There’s no actual contract, of course. The reason companies don’t make you do this random crap most of the time is because, before, it would require railroading you into signing something, which most customers won’t do.
But now apparently by generalizing from the way shrinkwrap licenses or “Click to Accept” EULAs on software work, hardware is falling under similar rules. The Court has ruled that if a box reads “Single Use Only”, then buying the product and opening the box constitutes a contract of sale that says you will only use the product once and not find some third-party way to reuse it...
I mean, come on — we’re not talking about electronically stored data here anymore, not about information, not about complex technology. We’re talking about your right to buy a container filled with fluid, use up the fluid and fill it up again with fluid. What’s next, Evian refusing to allow you to fill their containers with non-Evian water? When you can’t own something as mundane as an ink cartridge — when a simple physical object that fulfills a simple physical function is licensed rather than being sold the old-fashioned way, when companies absolutely refuse to allow us to have the right of resale and reuse and creative retooling that we’re used to with actual physical objects that we actually physically buy and take home to our houses to use –
Well, damn. This fight’s just gotten a lot bigger than cyberspace. This is now a meatspace fight. This fight is now about the right to own anything.
Hybrid cars the true cause of congestion!
From David Bollier,
Apparently John Tierney, the NYT columnist Bollier is criticising, said:
Evidence-free ranting. There's a 6 month waiting list to buy a Toyota Prius in the US and relative ownership volume of hybrid cars is miniscule...
If there’s one thing that drives free marketeers nuts, it is the idea that people just may have the capacity and desire to make moral judgments for themselves, and to apply them for the collective betterment of society. Libertarians argue instead that the Invisible Hand is the only moral capacity we’ll ever really need. This issue arises because now that John Tierney has stepped into the libertarian slot at the Times (quotas, anyone?), the obligatory columns celebrating the free market have become predictable rants against fuzzy-headed do-gooders. Say what you will about William Safire (Tierney’s illustrious predecessor), he was a columnist of political sophistication and writerly flair.
Libertarianism has apparently come to such a sad turn that it now needs to recycle the strawman arguments of yesteryear in order to affirm the moral infallibility of The Market. Last week’s column (August 30) was a classic. Tierney explained the real culprit for congested highways and air pollution is not the SUV, sprawl or the highway lobby, but…. environmental elitists who drive hybrid cars! The headline captures the cultural resentment disguised as policy analysis: “The Road to Hell is Clogged with Righteous Hybrids.”
Apparently John Tierney, the NYT columnist Bollier is criticising, said:
As traffic slows down [due to the swell of righteous hybrid owners in lanes reserved for carpooling], there’ll be more idling cars burning more gas and emitting more pollution, but politicians will be reluctant to offend hybrid owners by revoking their privilege.
Evidence-free ranting. There's a 6 month waiting list to buy a Toyota Prius in the US and relative ownership volume of hybrid cars is miniscule...
Hogwarts Security
Bruce Schneier has been thinking about security at Harry Potter's school, Hogwarts. (To Potter fans: There are plot spoilers in the comments, though, so don't read if you haven't read the most recent book)
Clarke confronts judges on terror law
Clarke confronts judges on terror law, says Alan Travis at The Guardian.
"The home secretary, Charles Clarke, has given a fresh warning to judges not to frustrate his decision to deport terror suspects by insisting the courts respect human rights deals struck with countries such as Jordan."
"The home secretary, Charles Clarke, has given a fresh warning to judges not to frustrate his decision to deport terror suspects by insisting the courts respect human rights deals struck with countries such as Jordan."
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Quote of the day
Quote of the day:
"The larger any organization, the higher the probability that its top management lives in a totally imaginary world." (Source unknown).
"The larger any organization, the higher the probability that its top management lives in a totally imaginary world." (Source unknown).
Ideal Government Europe
William Heath's Ideal Government is going pan European - see Ideal Government: Europe.
Groklaw on Balmer's threat to kill Google
Pamela Jones has been ruminating on Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer's alleged threats to kill Google and bury the company's CEO, Eric Schmidt.
I await with eager anticipation the cries of moral outrage from Rob Enderle and Laura Didio and Darl McBride and everyone else who has accused the FOSS community of verbal extremism.
That may be quite a wait, so let me be the first to call on the proprietary software community to condemn in no uncertain terms such violent speech coming from their community. Death threats are never acceptable, don't you agree?
Such threats coming from the CEO of the largest software company in the world are far more serious than they would be coming from some teenage Slashdotter, because Ballmer surely has the means to follow through, does he not, should he actually mean it?
If you were Mr. Schmidt, how safe would you be feeling today? It was a metaphor, you say. Likely it was, but are you positive? And let's say you answer yes, it was a metaphor. Is it all right for a convicted monopolist to threaten to "kill" a competing company?
Concept wars
William Heath has been thinking about a paper by a David Bewley-Taylor. US Concept Wars, civil liberties and technologies of fortification characterises the "widespread introduction" of "invasive technology" in the wake of 9/11 not as a break from the open society many believe the US to be, but rather "the next organic phase of an ongoing process of fortifying the United States." The US, he says, "has long been characterized by exclusion." The paper also charaterises technology as a tool of exclusion.
Hmmm. Social exclusion is certainly not exclusive to the US and technology is most certainly enabling when designed, deployed and regulated appropriately.
Hmmm. Social exclusion is certainly not exclusive to the US and technology is most certainly enabling when designed, deployed and regulated appropriately.
Chief Justice Rehnquist dies
US Supreme Court Justice, William H. Renhquist, died on Saturday last. Howard Bashman has links to all the tributes. President Bush has now decided to appoint John Roberts as Chief Justice, having nominated him earlier in the summer to replace the retiring Justice Sanda Day O'Connor.
Jurispedia
Jurispedia is a great idea and hopefully is will take off, though it is a bit light on content at the moment.
SAR 11
I'm in environmental decision making thinking mode today, reading a wonderful (near final) draft of colleagues Chris Blackmore's and Andrea Berardi's first book in our new masters course due on stream next year; and I came across this fascinating snippet on a group of bacteria I had never heard of, "Pelagibacter ubique", also called SAR 11. Apparently it has the most efficiently coded genome on earth and is crucial to the operation of the carbon cycle.
Kazaa lose in Australia
An Australian court has finally ruled in the long running case brought by the record industry against Sharman Networks, owners of the Kazaa file sharing software. From the BBC:
Kim Weatherall, who has done the most comprehensive analysis of the decision that I've seen so far, reckons the judge has been "brave" in insisting that Sharman attempt to implement some kind of filtering process to cut copyright infringement. "Brave" because this will mean in practice a constant series of hearings where Sharman and the record companies complain about how each party is not doing enough (just like the Napster case in the US). She's probably right.
The judge dismissed as "overstated" accusations that Kazaa's owners were infringing copyright themselves.
"The more realistic claim is that the respondents authorised users to infringe the applicants' copyright in their sound recordings," he said.
Kazaa's owners were ordered to modify the software within two months to include filters designed to stop the sharing of copyright material.
A fresh round of hearings will now be held to determine the level of damages, which could run into the millions of dollars.
Kim Weatherall, who has done the most comprehensive analysis of the decision that I've seen so far, reckons the judge has been "brave" in insisting that Sharman attempt to implement some kind of filtering process to cut copyright infringement. "Brave" because this will mean in practice a constant series of hearings where Sharman and the record companies complain about how each party is not doing enough (just like the Napster case in the US). She's probably right.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Google extend book search operations
Google have extended their book searching operations, according to this report from internetnews.
EU Net regulation IMIS reponse
A paper with the rather dry title, "Response to the European Commission Issues paper on the Rules applicable to Audiovisual Content Services from the Institute for the Management of Information Systems (IMIS)" takes a rather unconventional, though enlightening approach to critiquing an EU Commission proposal.
The hypothetical review from the perspective of a future historian is very effective and is introduced with a relatively standard, if extremely damning, criticism of the proposal, thus:
The essay that follows, The Day the Internet Stopped, is well worth reading in full (it only runs to about 2 pages). I'm not necessarily subscribing to the political vision outlined here but it is very very cleverly done. Congratulations to the IMIS for taking the approach given the serious risk that it might be ignored or marginalised in the consultation for doing so. And well done to the author for convincing the IMIS to run with it.
The hypothetical review from the perspective of a future historian is very effective and is introduced with a relatively standard, if extremely damning, criticism of the proposal, thus:
Over the past two decades IMIS members have seen the European information
industries first stagnate and then begin to atrophy. This process has been
expedited by a series of ill-judged regulatory initiatives, including under
the banner of "harmonisation". In consequence over half the IMIS membership
now lives and works outside Europe, many in those nations to which UK and
EU-based information systems and service jobs, including content creation
and electronic publishing have been relocated over recent years.
The surreal thought processes behind this issues paper exemplify a mindset
that looks set to expedite that process by helping drive away what is left
of our content creation and publication industries, while failing to protect
children or consumers from abuse.
The absence of any analysis by the Commission of the economic consequences
of past EU policies with regard to the regulation of information society and
e-commerce products and services, let alone of those likely to follow from
this initiative, led one of our members to consider how a future historian
might view the likely consequences of this initiative. We believe that his
short paper will be more effective in helping open up constructive debate
than would a conventional response
The essay that follows, The Day the Internet Stopped, is well worth reading in full (it only runs to about 2 pages). I'm not necessarily subscribing to the political vision outlined here but it is very very cleverly done. Congratulations to the IMIS for taking the approach given the serious risk that it might be ignored or marginalised in the consultation for doing so. And well done to the author for convincing the IMIS to run with it.
HMV get into online music sales
HMV have been slow getting to market but are launching a service today in partnership with Microsoft offering a catalogue of 1.3 million songs.
Publishers oppose UK Open Access
From last Tuesday's Guardian,
"Publishers and learned societies are fighting a last ditch action to stop the research findings of thousands of British academics being made freely available online."
"Publishers and learned societies are fighting a last ditch action to stop the research findings of thousands of British academics being made freely available online."
Evoting security specified in California
The California State Senate has passed a law specifying minimum security requirement for electronic voting machines, including a ban on linking the machines to the Internet. This may well be a sensible interim measure, depending on the specific security problems at issue in California but although I have serious concerns about previous and planned design, regulation and deployment of electonic voting machines all round the world, I'm not sure a ban on connecting them to the Net will be sustainable or sensible in the longer term.
Schoolkid tinkerers offered deals
The 13 schoolchildren in Pennsylvania who bypassed the filters on school issued laptops have apparently been offered deals which avoid them getting criminal records.
Switching jobs a problem?
Microsoft's argument in their legal case against former executive Kai-Fu Lee and Google has taken an interesting turn.
"The high-profile dispute largely hinges on a noncompete agreement Lee signed with Microsoft. But in court filings, the software giant has also mentioned the theory of "inevitable disclosure," which holds that in some circumstances people can't avoid sharing or relying on trade secrets from their former employer when moving to a competitor."
I wonder how far that can be pushed?
"The high-profile dispute largely hinges on a noncompete agreement Lee signed with Microsoft. But in court filings, the software giant has also mentioned the theory of "inevitable disclosure," which holds that in some circumstances people can't avoid sharing or relying on trade secrets from their former employer when moving to a competitor."
I wonder how far that can be pushed?
They knew what to expect in New Orleans
From Wired,
Update: John's been thinking about FEMA, the US federal agency in charge of emergency management and its absorption into the Department for Homeland Security. "It’s clear that FEMA had always ranked the flooding of New Orleans as one of the three biggest disasters that could befall the US. In the old days, the head of FEMA had a seat at the Cabinet table and might even have had the ear of the President. But now, advice and information from FEMA has to be filtered through another layer of bureaucracy — the Homeland Security Secretary, who is probably obsessed with terrorism."
Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models, so emergency management specialists wonder why authorities were so unprepared.
"The scenario of a major hurricane hitting New Orleans was well anticipated, predicted and drilled around," said Clare Rubin, an emergency management consultant who also teaches at the Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management at George Washington University...
Underlying the situation has been the general reluctance of government at any level to invest in infrastructure or emergency management, said David McEntire, who teaches emergency management at the University of North Texas.
"No one cares about disasters until they happen. That is a political fact of life," he said.
"Emergency management is woefully underfunded in this nation. That covers not only first responders but also warning, evacuation, damage assessment, volunteer management, donation management and recovery and mitigation issues."
Update: John's been thinking about FEMA, the US federal agency in charge of emergency management and its absorption into the Department for Homeland Security. "It’s clear that FEMA had always ranked the flooding of New Orleans as one of the three biggest disasters that could befall the US. In the old days, the head of FEMA had a seat at the Cabinet table and might even have had the ear of the President. But now, advice and information from FEMA has to be filtered through another layer of bureaucracy — the Homeland Security Secretary, who is probably obsessed with terrorism."
Sunday, September 04, 2005
RSS Feed for B2fxxx at last
I've finally got round to adding an RSS feed to this blog, courtesy of Feedburner.
Customer is always wrong with DRM
Derek Slater has produced a guide to the DRM restrictions in the most popular legitimate online music services.
"There is an increasing variety of options for purchasing music online, but also a growing thicket of confusing usage restrictions. You may be getting much less than the services promise.
Many digital music services employ digital rights management (DRM) — also known as "copy protection" — that prevents you from doing things like using the portable player of your choice or creating remixes. Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you're not making any illegal uses.
In other words, in this brave new world of "authorized music services," law-abiding music fans often get less for their money than they did in the old world of CDs (or at least, the world before record companies started crippling CDs with DRM, too)."
"There is an increasing variety of options for purchasing music online, but also a growing thicket of confusing usage restrictions. You may be getting much less than the services promise.
Many digital music services employ digital rights management (DRM) — also known as "copy protection" — that prevents you from doing things like using the portable player of your choice or creating remixes. Forget about breaking the DRM to make traditional uses like CD burning and so forth. Breaking the DRM or distributing the tools to break DRM may expose you to liability under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) even if you're not making any illegal uses.
In other words, in this brave new world of "authorized music services," law-abiding music fans often get less for their money than they did in the old world of CDs (or at least, the world before record companies started crippling CDs with DRM, too)."
The wonderful swizz of the cards
Starring Tony Blair as Dorothy and others you may well recognise in supporting roles, from the folk who brought you the very model of a modern labour minister... (Thanks to Ian Brown at FIPR for the link)
Meanwhile, according to Donna, on the IP front Lexmark have succeeded in doing with contract and patent law what they failed to do with the DMCA, excluding customers from using cheap generic replacement printer cartridges.
Meanwhile, according to Donna, on the IP front Lexmark have succeeded in doing with contract and patent law what they failed to do with the DMCA, excluding customers from using cheap generic replacement printer cartridges.
Monday, August 22, 2005
DMCA v The darknet
There's a fascinating discussion between a who's who of commentators on developments in technology and law, on the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the DMCA in tackling unauthorised copying via the Net, over at Picker Moblog.
Playlouder sign Sony BMG P2P deal
ISP Playlouder have signed a deal with Sony BMG to allow their subscribers to swap the label's music. Because the swapping will be done over the Playlouder network they can track which files get swapped and endure the label gets paid its cut. It's probably only a matter of time before we see other similar deals with the other major labels, and other ISPs getting in on the act. No details of the small print on the deal yet but it will be interesting to see these.
John Borland has a profile of another label backed P2P service, Mashbox due to get launched separately.
Thanks to Ian Brown of FIPR and Michael Geist for the links.
John Borland has a profile of another label backed P2P service, Mashbox due to get launched separately.
Thanks to Ian Brown of FIPR and Michael Geist for the links.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Google print debate
I'm working on a paper on the economics of copyright for the World Economics journal with my colleague Mark Rogers at Oxford University's Harris Manchester College. When I mentioned the copyright complications associated with Google's decision to suspend the scanning of books for their Google Print project until November, Mark asked me to write a short piece to be included in the paper. Here's a rough first draft.
I'd be grateful for any feedback, especially on my interpretation of how the mechanics of copyright law applies here. Although I'm fascinated by the Google Print project and I think it is an excellent initiative, I'm a technologist, not a lawyer.
The complex issues surrounding the huge Google Print project go some way towards illustrating the point as well as throwing a light on how complicated the concept of "?fair use"? can be. Google has a mission to "organise the world'?s information" in such a way as to make it accessible via Google's Internet search engine. As part of this they have embarked on a project hoping to digitise all the books that have ever been published and to make the contents of these books searchable, in a way that would bring a book to the attention of the information searcher which they might never otherwise come across e.g. a long since out-of print title. In some ways it is a bit like the Amazon "?search inside"? feature. Google are not going to make the entire contents of the books accessible to searchers, just sufficient to enable people to figure out whether accessing (through borrowing or purchasing) that book would be useful to their endeavours. The benefits to searchers are fairly obvious. The ability to track down an old treasure of a book that may no longer be commercially available or comprehensively catalogued in a library would be of tremendous use. The benefits to publishers are also clear. Books in back catalogues suddenly become visible and commercially viable again, particularly given the availability of print production technology that allows profitable production and sales of low volumes of particular titles.
However, in scanning and digitising all these books, unless the copyright has expired, Google is engaging, prima facie, in massive copyright infringement. Google are getting the books directly from the publishers and from a number of major libraries such as Oxford University's? Bodleian Library. They have been copying millions of library books in their entirety without the publishers'? permission in some cases since the beginning of the year. Google have decided to temporarily suspend the copying of books until November to give publishers an opportunity to contact them to opt out of having their books scanned and this has led to a renewed debate in the media about the merits and otherwise of the Google project.
Under the "fair use"? doctrine is it ok for Google to copy these books without permission in order to use them for a "?transformative"? purpose i.e. to make them electronically searchable? It is not competing commercially with publishers and arguably could be enhancing the market for their books but perhaps a publisher might like to create its own comprehensive contents searchable index, drawing searchers to their own websites? What happens if Google gets into the publishing business further down the line? They could potentially bias search results towards their own material.
Reasonable people and copyright scholars, interpreting the language of the copyright statutes and the precedent setting cases, can disagree about whether the Google copying is either "transformative"? or "fair use."? Some cases in the US might point towards the Google activity being permissible e.g. Kelly v. Arriba Soft Corp./Ditto.com (decision in 2003 in a dispute over making digital thumbnail copies of images available via a Web search engine). Others e.g. the MP3.com case (in 2000, a dispute over copying thousands of CDs to make them available via the Internet to people who could prove they had a legitimately acquired copy) suggest not and Google might be held liable for copyright infringement.
In the EU, unless the activity is specified as permissible, arguably it is prohibited. Under articles 2 and 5 of Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, the Google project does not appear in the list of exceptions (art.5) of permitted activity, so is presumably not allowed.
So we will not find out whether the Google Print project is permissible in law until it gets challenged through the courts, if that ever happens.
I'd be grateful for any feedback, especially on my interpretation of how the mechanics of copyright law applies here. Although I'm fascinated by the Google Print project and I think it is an excellent initiative, I'm a technologist, not a lawyer.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
UK government consultancy costs
Apparently the UK government pay "IT consultants from top global firms charge on average £1,400 per day for work on UK government contract assignments"
Finance consultants get £2000 a day. At the bottom of the pile, bog standard ICT support consultants get £750 a day.
"However, as the analysis points out, the variation in average rates could also come from the amount of senior resources needed for each project. Categories demanding more senior input would attract higher rates.
For a partner or director in a global IT consultancy, the average rate is £2,258 per day, the official figures show. Their equivalent in a 'second tier' IT consulting firm would cost £1,766. A similar comparison for the average day rate of a principal consultant is £1,532 and £1,149."
I'd be happy to fill in for those senior resources for, say, £2000 a day. That's an 11.4% saving. You can't say better than that.
Finance consultants get £2000 a day. At the bottom of the pile, bog standard ICT support consultants get £750 a day.
"However, as the analysis points out, the variation in average rates could also come from the amount of senior resources needed for each project. Categories demanding more senior input would attract higher rates.
For a partner or director in a global IT consultancy, the average rate is £2,258 per day, the official figures show. Their equivalent in a 'second tier' IT consulting firm would cost £1,766. A similar comparison for the average day rate of a principal consultant is £1,532 and £1,149."
I'd be happy to fill in for those senior resources for, say, £2000 a day. That's an 11.4% saving. You can't say better than that.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Secure Flight reverting to CAPPSII
Bruce Schneier, who is on the working group evaluating the security and privacy implications of the US Secure Flight passenger screening program, is very critical of the expanding scope of the program is his latest Cryptogram.
He also has a perspective on the London's Metropolitan Police shoot-to-kill policy when dealing with suspected suicide terrorists.
"The London police are now sorry they accidentally killed an innocent they suspected of being a suicide bomber, but I can certainly understand the mistake. In the end, the best solution is to train police officers and then leave the decision to them. But honestly, policies that are more likely to result in living incarcerated suspects who can be interrogated are better than policies that are more likely to result in corpses, especially when most suspects will be found innocent."
Lot's more besides, Cryptogram is always a good read.
He also has a perspective on the London's Metropolitan Police shoot-to-kill policy when dealing with suspected suicide terrorists.
"The London police are now sorry they accidentally killed an innocent they suspected of being a suicide bomber, but I can certainly understand the mistake. In the end, the best solution is to train police officers and then leave the decision to them. But honestly, policies that are more likely to result in living incarcerated suspects who can be interrogated are better than policies that are more likely to result in corpses, especially when most suspects will be found innocent."
Lot's more besides, Cryptogram is always a good read.
Open Source convergence with open access
John Willinsky at the University of British Columbia has an interesting article in First Monday, on open source software, open access to research and scholarship, and open science.
This is no time to take the commonwealth of learning for granted. I like that.
Are universities currently re–entering the world on the side of a greater openness among intellectual properties or are they getting in on a greater share of knowledge–based property rights? Up to this point, the universities have fostered open science, and advanced open source software, even if both originated off campus in large measure. With the more recent of these open initiatives — open access — it falls almost entirely to the universities and their faculty to take the lead. Universities "re–entering the world" with the intent to "serve the world" would do well to support faculty participation in open access archives and journals. Open access to research and scholarship would foster a global exchange of public goods. It would extend and sustain an open, alternative economy for intellectual properties. It would strengthen the links between open source software — which is vital to providing open access to research — and the university’s long–standing tradition of open science. Given the encroachments, not to mention the temptations, of the knowledge business, this is no time to take the commonwealth of learning for granted. It falls to the members of that commonwealth to recognize and support the current convergence of open initiatives that represent dedicated efforts to ensure the future of that learning.
This is no time to take the commonwealth of learning for granted. I like that.
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