The process through which school textbooks come into being (at least in Texas and California), as described by Tamim Ansary, could be considered yet another reason to support open access models of producing educational material
"SOME YEARS AGO, I signed on as an editor at a major publisher of elementary and high school textbooks, filled with the idealistic belief that I'd be working with equally idealistic authors to create books that would excite teachers and fill young minds with Big Ideas.
Not so.
I got a hint of things to come when I overheard my boss lamenting, "The books are done and we still don't have an author! I must sign someone today!"
Every time a friend with kids in school tells me textbooks are too generic, I think back to that moment. "Who writes these things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No one." It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business.
Textbooks are a core part of the curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge. In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past. The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run "adoption" system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages.
Welcome to the Machine
The first product I helped create was a basal language arts program. The word basal refers to a comprehensive package that includes students' textbooks for a sequence of grades, plus associated teachers' manuals and endless workbooks, tests, answer keys, transparencies, and other "ancillaries." My company had dominated this market for years, but the brass felt that our flagship program was dated. They wanted something new, built from scratch.
Sounds like a mandate for innovation, right? It wasn't. We got all the language arts textbooks in use and went through them carefully, jotting down every topic, subtopic, skill, and subskill we could find at each grade level. We compiled these into a master list, eliminated the redundancies, and came up with the core content of our new textbook. Or, as I like to call it, the "chum." But wait. If every publisher was going through this same process (and they were), how was ours to stand out? Time to stir in a philosophy.
By philosophy, I mean a pedagogical idea. These conceptual enthusiasms surge through the education universe in waves. Textbook editors try to see the next one coming and shape their program to embody it.
The new ideas are born at universities and wash down to publishers through research papers and conferences. Textbook editors swarm to events like the five-day International Reading Association conference to pick up the buzz. They all run around wondering, What's the coming thing? Is it critical thinking? Metacognition? Constructivism? Project-based learning?
At those same conferences, senior editors look for up-andcoming academics and influential educational consultants to sign as "authors" of the textbooks that the worker bees are already putting together back at the shop."
Richard Feyman wrote many years ago about getting involved in the Califormia state education board Curriculum Commission committee, which was responsible for adopting school textbooks. He was appalled at what he discovered about the process. Unlike the other members of the committee Feynman decided to read all the proposed books himself. They took up 17 feet of shelf space.
"I was overwhelmed.
"It's all right, Mr. Feynman; we'll get someone to help you read them."
I couldn't figure out how you do that: you either read them or you don't read them. I had a special bookshelf put in my study downstairs (the books took up seventeen feet), and began reading all the books that were going to be discussed in the next meeting. We were going to start out with the elementary schoolbooks.
It was a pretty big job, and I worked all the time at it down in the basement. My wife says that during this period it was like living over a volcano. It would be quiet for a while, but then all of a sudden, "BLLLLLOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!" -- there would be a big explosion from the "volcano" below.
The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for "sets") which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous -- they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by "rigor." They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn't understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child...
Then I came to my first meeting. The other members had given some kind of ratings to some of the books, and they asked me what my ratings were. My rating was often different from theirs, and they would ask, "Why did you rate that book low?" I would say the trouble with that book was this and this on page so-and-so -- I had my notes.
They discovered that I was kind of a goldmine: I would tell them, in detail, what was good and bad in all the books; I had a reason for every rating.
I would ask them why they had rated this book so high, and they would say, "Let us hear what you thought about such and such a book." I would never find out why they rated anything the way they did. Instead, they kept asking me what I thought.
We came to a certain book, part of a set of three supplementary books published by the same company, and they asked me what I thought about it.
I said, "The book depository didn't send me that book, but the other two were nice."
Someone tried repeating the question: "What do you think about that book?"
"I said they didn't send me that one, so I don't have any judgment on it."
The man from the book depository was there, and he said, "Excuse me; I can explain that. I didn't send it to you because that book hadn't been completed yet. There's a rule that you have to have every entry in by a certain time, and the publisher was a few days late with it. So it was sent to us with just the covers, and it's blank in between. The company sent a note excusing themselves and hoping they could have their set of three books considered, even though the third one would be late."
It turned out that the blank book had a rating by some of the other members! They couldn't believe it was blank, because [the book] had a rating. In fact, the rating for the missing book was a little bit higher than for the two others. The fact that there was nothing in the book had nothing to do with the rating...
They were very embarrassed to discover they were giving ratings to that book, and it gave me a little bit more confidence. It turned out the other members of the committee had done a lot of work in giving out the books and collecting reports, and had gone to sessions in which the book publishers would explain the books before they read them; I was the only guy on that commission who read all the books and didn't get any information from the book publishers except what was in the books themselves, the things that would ultimately go to the schools.
This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China's nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China's nose is, and you average it. And that would be very "accurate" because you averaged so many people. But it's no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don't improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging."
That was in 1964. Ansary doesn't inspire much confidence about the situation being any better now. The degree to which the core function of a process, like choosing or producing decent textbooks, can get corrupted by the overwhelming force of things that have to be done in order to sustain particular systems, is a pretty universal failure mode. One for my systems thinking colleagues at the OU, I reckon.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
The Radio Industry's Quiet Theft of Spectrum
David Bollier is back on the subject of the Radio Industry's Quiet Theft of Spectrum, whcih, if I remember correctly he also covered in passing in Chapter 10 of his book Silent Theft.
"Watch closely and you will see the legerdemain by which the rhetoric of “free markets” and “deregulation” are used to justify another private appropriation of our common assets. This shell game has become so routine that mainstream journalists hardly bestir themselves to take notice, probably because they too have accepted the “Washington consensus” about “free markets,” and see nothing amiss. It doesn't help that most mainstream news organizations are themselves parts of media conglomerates and have little interest in shining a spotlight on their corporate parents.
I speak of the looming government giveaway of spectrum rights to radio broadcasters. This little-noticed FCC policy decision could take untold billions of dollars of equity value from the public’s portfolio – the airwaves – and give them directly to the radio industry. Why mess with all that investment and competition stuff when political lobbying to skew public policy can be so much more efficacious? Kudos to J.H. Snider, Research Director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation for his work in tracking and explaining this issue. He recently released an impressive report on the FCC’s imminent decision to give radio stations a free “multicasting dividend.”
Currently radio broadcasters have “unicast rights” in their spectrum – the right to send out a single signal of programming. But radio stations aspire to make a transition from analog to digital transmissions in order to take advantage of new technologies that enable them to cram dozens of signals onto the same amount of spectrum – a practice known as “multicasting.” This capability has made radio spectrum licenses worth a whole lot more, and stations want to claim this windfall for themselves."
"Watch closely and you will see the legerdemain by which the rhetoric of “free markets” and “deregulation” are used to justify another private appropriation of our common assets. This shell game has become so routine that mainstream journalists hardly bestir themselves to take notice, probably because they too have accepted the “Washington consensus” about “free markets,” and see nothing amiss. It doesn't help that most mainstream news organizations are themselves parts of media conglomerates and have little interest in shining a spotlight on their corporate parents.
I speak of the looming government giveaway of spectrum rights to radio broadcasters. This little-noticed FCC policy decision could take untold billions of dollars of equity value from the public’s portfolio – the airwaves – and give them directly to the radio industry. Why mess with all that investment and competition stuff when political lobbying to skew public policy can be so much more efficacious? Kudos to J.H. Snider, Research Director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation for his work in tracking and explaining this issue. He recently released an impressive report on the FCC’s imminent decision to give radio stations a free “multicasting dividend.”
Currently radio broadcasters have “unicast rights” in their spectrum – the right to send out a single signal of programming. But radio stations aspire to make a transition from analog to digital transmissions in order to take advantage of new technologies that enable them to cram dozens of signals onto the same amount of spectrum – a practice known as “multicasting.” This capability has made radio spectrum licenses worth a whole lot more, and stations want to claim this windfall for themselves."
At least you got a real person on the end of the phone...
From Marty Schwimmer at the Trademark blog:
"True Story Re My Phone Service
Me: This is the fourth day my firm hasn't had dial tone.
Customer Service: Yes sir, because of the urgency we've elevated it to Business Class Support.
Me: What does that mean?
Customer Service: The Business Class Support tech will handle your trouble ticket. Unfortunately, he's out today, however he'll get to it first thing tomorrow morning.
Me: Wait, because you've elevated it, you can't get to it today?
Customer Service: No sir.
Me: Can you lower its urgency, so you can get to it sooner?
Customer Service: Sir?
Me: Never mind."
"True Story Re My Phone Service
Me: This is the fourth day my firm hasn't had dial tone.
Customer Service: Yes sir, because of the urgency we've elevated it to Business Class Support.
Me: What does that mean?
Customer Service: The Business Class Support tech will handle your trouble ticket. Unfortunately, he's out today, however he'll get to it first thing tomorrow morning.
Me: Wait, because you've elevated it, you can't get to it today?
Customer Service: No sir.
Me: Can you lower its urgency, so you can get to it sooner?
Customer Service: Sir?
Me: Never mind."
Monday, April 03, 2006
Belgium deports foreign pensioners
Belgium has apparently got a system which requires foreigners to be deported once they reach the of 65, unless they can demonstrate they are independently wealthy. The European Court of Justice has now decided (in Case C-408/03) that this is contrary to EU law. Belgium can still kick the pensioner out if they think s/he will become a financial burden on the state but they have to take account of a partner's income as well as that of the person they'd like to get rid of, when considering any decision.
Saturday, April 01, 2006
Clarke to charge non volunteers more for ID card
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has announced that anyone who doesn't volunteer to buy an ID card with their new passport will be charged more for the card when it becomes compulsory. Mr Clarke has been strung by the criticism he's received over the scheme and I guess now he believes it's payback time.
Friday, March 31, 2006
As Emperor of Security, I hereby decree...
Scott Granneman of SecurityFocus has declared himself emperor of security and laid down some basic rules:
1. Training and licensing for all new computer users
2. Mandatory operating system multicultures
3. Governments must use open data formats
4. Fines for software companies shipping software that proves to be insecure
5. Organisations entrusted with personal data will be held accountable for compromising the security of that data
6. Mandatory disclosure of data loss and hacking
7. Mandatory anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software
8. DRM cannot be used to deny fair use, fair dealing or first sale
That would be a good start.
1. Training and licensing for all new computer users
2. Mandatory operating system multicultures
3. Governments must use open data formats
4. Fines for software companies shipping software that proves to be insecure
5. Organisations entrusted with personal data will be held accountable for compromising the security of that data
6. Mandatory disclosure of data loss and hacking
7. Mandatory anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall software
8. DRM cannot be used to deny fair use, fair dealing or first sale
That would be a good start.
Possible ID card sales pitch - 'tag all the foreigners'
John Lettice is on top form at the Register on ID cards again.
"The Identity Cards Act finally (but one still hopes, temporarily) made it onto the statute book yesterday, and the Passport Service and all of its ultra vires identity-related activities (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/23/idcard_passport_roots/) will magically transform itself into the Identity and Passport Service tomorrow. We still don't accept that this is entirely legal, but phase one of the Government's incredible, improbable and unworkable joined-up border-watch, security and immigration policing system has now been given the Parliamentary green light, and immigration is one of the areas where it should bite first.
So consider how it's supposed to work vis a vis immigration, and while doing so suspend disbelief...All that is needed is for the Government to claim that it's working; and claiming things are working when they are patently not is something of a special skill of this regime.
The theory behind the system runs approximately as follows. Overseas visa applicants have their biometrics read as part of the application and can therefore be positively identified on entry to the country. Because their biometrics are on record, the chances of intercepting and deporting overstayers increases, at least in theory. Biometrics are also taken from new asylum applicants, so again they're on record and can theoretically be nicked and returned. Non-UK EU citizens will in the future have to have an ID card if they're resident in the UK for longer than three months; this one won't be in place for a while yet as compulsion can only be applied to them when it is also applied to UK citizens (EU law talking here), but it's an important aspect of the 'ring of steel' in that it provides a means of differentiation between say, Underpaid Polish cockle-picking EU citizens (good) and underpaid Ukrainian cockle-picking non-EU citizens (bad)."
Highly recommemded. As is the series of reports by the Guardian's Felicity Lawrence mentioned by Lettice at the end of his piece.
"The Identity Cards Act finally (but one still hopes, temporarily) made it onto the statute book yesterday, and the Passport Service and all of its ultra vires identity-related activities (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/23/idcard_passport_roots/) will magically transform itself into the Identity and Passport Service tomorrow. We still don't accept that this is entirely legal, but phase one of the Government's incredible, improbable and unworkable joined-up border-watch, security and immigration policing system has now been given the Parliamentary green light, and immigration is one of the areas where it should bite first.
So consider how it's supposed to work vis a vis immigration, and while doing so suspend disbelief...All that is needed is for the Government to claim that it's working; and claiming things are working when they are patently not is something of a special skill of this regime.
The theory behind the system runs approximately as follows. Overseas visa applicants have their biometrics read as part of the application and can therefore be positively identified on entry to the country. Because their biometrics are on record, the chances of intercepting and deporting overstayers increases, at least in theory. Biometrics are also taken from new asylum applicants, so again they're on record and can theoretically be nicked and returned. Non-UK EU citizens will in the future have to have an ID card if they're resident in the UK for longer than three months; this one won't be in place for a while yet as compulsion can only be applied to them when it is also applied to UK citizens (EU law talking here), but it's an important aspect of the 'ring of steel' in that it provides a means of differentiation between say, Underpaid Polish cockle-picking EU citizens (good) and underpaid Ukrainian cockle-picking non-EU citizens (bad)."
Highly recommemded. As is the series of reports by the Guardian's Felicity Lawrence mentioned by Lettice at the end of his piece.
Googling the Genome
Glynn Moody reports that Google are the unlikely winners of a biopiracy award, in the category 'Biggest Threat to Genetic Privacy'.
The US government and other usual suspects are cited under various awards but one I had not heard about was the 'Biggest Tiny Claim On Nature.' The site says the nanotechnology (chemistry) company Nanosys Inc. have a US patent on ‘metal-oxide nanorods’ (United States Patent Nos. 5897945, 5,997,832 and 6036774, if you're really interested) covering over a third of the elements in the periodic table.
Though the US Patent Office list two of these patents (Nos. 5897945 and 6036774) under the names Lieber; Charles M. (Lexington, MA); Yang; Peidong (Somerville, MA) from Harvard University; and no. 5,997,832 under Lieber; Charles M. (Lexington, MA); Wong; Eric (Cambridge, MA). Professor Lieber is on Nanosys' Scientific Advisory Board but that doesn't mean he has assigned his patents to the company.
The US government and other usual suspects are cited under various awards but one I had not heard about was the 'Biggest Tiny Claim On Nature.' The site says the nanotechnology (chemistry) company Nanosys Inc. have a US patent on ‘metal-oxide nanorods’ (United States Patent Nos. 5897945, 5,997,832 and 6036774, if you're really interested) covering over a third of the elements in the periodic table.
Though the US Patent Office list two of these patents (Nos. 5897945 and 6036774) under the names Lieber; Charles M. (Lexington, MA); Yang; Peidong (Somerville, MA) from Harvard University; and no. 5,997,832 under Lieber; Charles M. (Lexington, MA); Wong; Eric (Cambridge, MA). Professor Lieber is on Nanosys' Scientific Advisory Board but that doesn't mean he has assigned his patents to the company.
Apple v Apple hinges on latent ambiguity
The Apple v Apple case in the UK hinges on the court's interpretation of a latent ambiguity in the original agreement between the two companies.
Apple Computer were allowed to use their logo for "...computer software of any kind on any medium..." and "data processing services, data transmission services..." and "ancillary services relating to... distribution."
The Beatles Apple label are allowed to exlusively cover "any current or future creative works whose principal content is music and/or musical performances; regardless of the means by which those works are recorded, or communicated, whether tangible or intangible"
So they both have a justifiable claim. It's just that a service like iTunes wasn't anticipated when the two sets of lawyers hammered out an agreement circa 1991. It will be interesting to see which way the judgement falls.
Apple Computer were allowed to use their logo for "...computer software of any kind on any medium..." and "data processing services, data transmission services..." and "ancillary services relating to... distribution."
The Beatles Apple label are allowed to exlusively cover "any current or future creative works whose principal content is music and/or musical performances; regardless of the means by which those works are recorded, or communicated, whether tangible or intangible"
So they both have a justifiable claim. It's just that a service like iTunes wasn't anticipated when the two sets of lawyers hammered out an agreement circa 1991. It will be interesting to see which way the judgement falls.
Amendment to CMA bit of Police and Justice Bill
Agreeing that the controversial clause 35 in the Police and Justice Bill has now been improved by amendments, Spy blog nevertheless disapproves of the process of tagging clauses like barnacles to yet another a crime bill, illustrating a complete misunderstanding of the need to update the Computer Misuse Act for the internet age.
"Kudos to Unity at Talk Politics and the Liberty Central website for bringing some small measure of sense to the attention of the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Lynne Feathersone, who tabled an Amendment during the Commons Committee stage consideration of the controversial Clause 35 of the Police and Justice Bill, which seeks to amend the obsolete, pre-internet Computer Misuse Act 1990.
This Amendment in turn prompted a very late Government Amendenent by Hazel Blears, the Home Office Minister, which has improved the "catch all" nature of the orginal wording, which threatened to criminilise almost every competent IT systems adminsitrator, penetration tester and security or network utilty software programmer in the UK, and, given the global reach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, the rest of the world as well...
Unfortunately, as we predicted earlier the other inadequate amendments to the Computer Misuse Act went through "on the nod" with no debate. There should be a whole Bill devoted to Computer and Telecomms security, not just these three amendments tagged on to the much larger Police and Justice Bill."
"Kudos to Unity at Talk Politics and the Liberty Central website for bringing some small measure of sense to the attention of the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Lynne Feathersone, who tabled an Amendment during the Commons Committee stage consideration of the controversial Clause 35 of the Police and Justice Bill, which seeks to amend the obsolete, pre-internet Computer Misuse Act 1990.
This Amendment in turn prompted a very late Government Amendenent by Hazel Blears, the Home Office Minister, which has improved the "catch all" nature of the orginal wording, which threatened to criminilise almost every competent IT systems adminsitrator, penetration tester and security or network utilty software programmer in the UK, and, given the global reach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, the rest of the world as well...
Unfortunately, as we predicted earlier the other inadequate amendments to the Computer Misuse Act went through "on the nod" with no debate. There should be a whole Bill devoted to Computer and Telecomms security, not just these three amendments tagged on to the much larger Police and Justice Bill."
US ask EU to be fair to Microsoft
The US government have been urging the EU to be fair to Microsoft.
"A memo written by unidentified government officials in Washington stated that Microsoft's complaints raise "substantial concerns" about the way Microsoft is being treated, according to a person close to the commission who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the memo. The memo was distributed this week through embassies in Europe and through the United States mission to the European Union in Brussels."
Can it really be nearly six years since Judge Jackson ordered the break up of Microsoft at the request of ...er...oh yeah...the US government? No one ever really believed the break up would take place but by comparison a 2 million Euro a day fine, until they comply with the EU ruling, seems like a relatively small sanction.
Update: Meanwhile Microsoft's competitors are whispering in EU ears that the tech giant should be clobbered.
"A memo written by unidentified government officials in Washington stated that Microsoft's complaints raise "substantial concerns" about the way Microsoft is being treated, according to a person close to the commission who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the memo. The memo was distributed this week through embassies in Europe and through the United States mission to the European Union in Brussels."
Can it really be nearly six years since Judge Jackson ordered the break up of Microsoft at the request of ...er...oh yeah...the US government? No one ever really believed the break up would take place but by comparison a 2 million Euro a day fine, until they comply with the EU ruling, seems like a relatively small sanction.
Update: Meanwhile Microsoft's competitors are whispering in EU ears that the tech giant should be clobbered.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
eBay v MercExchange before the Supreme Court
The eBay v MercExchange patent case was heard by the US Supreme Court this week.
MercExchange is an online retailer and patent holding company. People familiar with eBay will know that if you pull up a web page with an item you're interested in, it sometimes includes a "buy now" button which you can click on to say you're happy to pay the price on the seller's price label, instead of getting involved in an auction. Amongst other things MercExchange have a patent for the electronic 'buy now' business method.
Shurely you're joking Monsieur Corrigan?
Nope. Digitise the obvious and you can get a patent on it. It's a function of the shock and awe that's visited upon society and its legal profession in the face of the magic that is computing technology.
Then once the legal system gets its teeth into it, the farce takes on a life of its own. An arguably relatively internally-logical consistent farce, analysed in wonderful gut wrenching detail but still a farce of the order of the legal threats over copyright in silence. Jury awards $35 million damages. Judge reduces damages and refuses injunction since there'll be no harm done without it. Appeal Court says that's not a good test - i.e. that there'll be no harm done, even if business method patents like say one for a 'buy now' electronic button might be considered an idiotic idea - so there should be an injunction even if it could be harmful. So everyone rolls up to the incredibily busy, clever folks sitting on the Supreme Court and hence this week's hearing.
You'd think they had more important things to be doing with their time. The trouble is a lot of money stands behind both sides in the dispute, with the big tech firms backing eBay (surprise, surprise) and the big pharmaceuticals backing MercExchange (surprise, surprise again).
Update: Chief Justice Roberts was reportedly perplexed by the patents at the heart of the dispute. The MercExchange lawyer said he wasn't a software developer so couldn't explain the technicalities and "I have reason to believe neither is your honor." (Mmm I wouldn't have thought insulting the chief would be a particularly bright tactical manoeuvre?) Roberts accepted he wasn't a software expert but thought displaying pictures of goods to let people pick what they want didn't seem particularly innovative. Smart cookie. Don't get distracted by the flashy buttons and lights. This guy might turn out to have been a shrewd appointment.
Further update: The final irony (for now) is that the US Patent Office told eBay 2 days before the Supreme Court hearing that they had finalised their decision to declare one of the MercExhange patents invalid.
MercExchange is an online retailer and patent holding company. People familiar with eBay will know that if you pull up a web page with an item you're interested in, it sometimes includes a "buy now" button which you can click on to say you're happy to pay the price on the seller's price label, instead of getting involved in an auction. Amongst other things MercExchange have a patent for the electronic 'buy now' business method.
Shurely you're joking Monsieur Corrigan?
Nope. Digitise the obvious and you can get a patent on it. It's a function of the shock and awe that's visited upon society and its legal profession in the face of the magic that is computing technology.
Then once the legal system gets its teeth into it, the farce takes on a life of its own. An arguably relatively internally-logical consistent farce, analysed in wonderful gut wrenching detail but still a farce of the order of the legal threats over copyright in silence. Jury awards $35 million damages. Judge reduces damages and refuses injunction since there'll be no harm done without it. Appeal Court says that's not a good test - i.e. that there'll be no harm done, even if business method patents like say one for a 'buy now' electronic button might be considered an idiotic idea - so there should be an injunction even if it could be harmful. So everyone rolls up to the incredibily busy, clever folks sitting on the Supreme Court and hence this week's hearing.
You'd think they had more important things to be doing with their time. The trouble is a lot of money stands behind both sides in the dispute, with the big tech firms backing eBay (surprise, surprise) and the big pharmaceuticals backing MercExchange (surprise, surprise again).
Update: Chief Justice Roberts was reportedly perplexed by the patents at the heart of the dispute. The MercExchange lawyer said he wasn't a software developer so couldn't explain the technicalities and "I have reason to believe neither is your honor." (Mmm I wouldn't have thought insulting the chief would be a particularly bright tactical manoeuvre?) Roberts accepted he wasn't a software expert but thought displaying pictures of goods to let people pick what they want didn't seem particularly innovative. Smart cookie. Don't get distracted by the flashy buttons and lights. This guy might turn out to have been a shrewd appointment.
Further update: The final irony (for now) is that the US Patent Office told eBay 2 days before the Supreme Court hearing that they had finalised their decision to declare one of the MercExhange patents invalid.
Blair Brown and Blunkett don't show for final ID card vote
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Blunkett (who started the whole shambles in the wake of the September 11th attacks) didn't show up for the final vote in the commons on the ID card system. Mr Blair hasn't got a great record of showing up for parliamentary votes. They get in the way of his busy job of running the country. Never mind. It won't be long until the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill passes into law and then he won't have to bother with parliament at all.
It's rather a shame that House of Lords, which had been engaging in such a good rearguard action against the crazy scheme, should in the end 'compromise' on a technical rather than substantive question of compulsion. People applying for a passport can opt out of having the ID card but cannot opt out of having their details registered in the National Identity Register database. Since it is the database that is at the heart of many of the problems with the scheme, it essentially means that registration on the identity system is compulsory for UK citizens wanting a passport.
"The only advantage to not having an ID Card if you apply for a Passport, between now and 2010, is that the provisions in the Bill which relate to notification of change of name or address details or changes to other data on the Register, only apply to people to whom an ID card has been issued (voluntarily or by compulsion)."
I expect that will be quietly changed through secondary regulations or possibly even blatantly when the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill comes in.
It's rather a shame that House of Lords, which had been engaging in such a good rearguard action against the crazy scheme, should in the end 'compromise' on a technical rather than substantive question of compulsion. People applying for a passport can opt out of having the ID card but cannot opt out of having their details registered in the National Identity Register database. Since it is the database that is at the heart of many of the problems with the scheme, it essentially means that registration on the identity system is compulsory for UK citizens wanting a passport.
"The only advantage to not having an ID Card if you apply for a Passport, between now and 2010, is that the provisions in the Bill which relate to notification of change of name or address details or changes to other data on the Register, only apply to people to whom an ID card has been issued (voluntarily or by compulsion)."
I expect that will be quietly changed through secondary regulations or possibly even blatantly when the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill comes in.
The French DRM Law, and the Right to Interoperate
Felten on The French DRM Law, and the Right to Interoperate
"The key issue is whether third-party products can interoperate with iTunes...
...the DMCA anticircumvention provisions have given incumbent companies an effective right to veto the development of interoperable products, and have thereby blocked innovation. France, wisely, wants to avoid this problem...
But this is where the French proposal overreaches. Rather than simply protecting the ability of other companies to interoperate with iTunes, by keeping their path free of legal barriers, the proposal would require Apple to take affirmative steps to help rivals interoperate.
Imposing that obligation on Apple is not necessary, in my view. iTunes is not very complicated, so others should be able to figure out how to interoperate, for example by reverse engineering iTunes, as long as the law clearly allows them to do so. The disclosure obligation, though less onerous than critics say, won’t provide much extra benefit, so it’s not worth imposing its cost on Apple and others."
"The key issue is whether third-party products can interoperate with iTunes...
...the DMCA anticircumvention provisions have given incumbent companies an effective right to veto the development of interoperable products, and have thereby blocked innovation. France, wisely, wants to avoid this problem...
But this is where the French proposal overreaches. Rather than simply protecting the ability of other companies to interoperate with iTunes, by keeping their path free of legal barriers, the proposal would require Apple to take affirmative steps to help rivals interoperate.
Imposing that obligation on Apple is not necessary, in my view. iTunes is not very complicated, so others should be able to figure out how to interoperate, for example by reverse engineering iTunes, as long as the law clearly allows them to do so. The disclosure obligation, though less onerous than critics say, won’t provide much extra benefit, so it’s not worth imposing its cost on Apple and others."
Yahoo! Abomination. (YHOO)
Rebecca MacKinnon continues to criticise Yahoo! over their facilitation of human rights abuses in China.
"Based on my conversations with people in the Chinese dot-com world, I get the impression that initially, they weren't thinking through the full implications of their business plans. But given that they are now doing nothing to help the families of the dissidents who are in jail thanks to Yahoo!'s cooperation with the Chinese police, and they are doing nothing to prevent more such convictions with Yahoo!'s assistance in the future (or the assistance of it's Chinese partner Alibaba under the Yahoo! brand), one must conclude they also don't actually care very much. If Yahoo's disingenuousness annoys you as much as it annoys me, Amnesty International has a letter writing campaign with all the addresses you need to let Jerry Yang and his colleagues know what you think. They have several recommendations for action which I have updated and modified below.
If Yahoo! wants to convince their users worldwide that the company actually cares about user rights, and that Yahoo! deserves user trust, Yahoo! should:
Note: There is no mention here about disengagement with China. Jerry Yang, and other Yahoo! executives, please stop claiming that your critics are advocating disengagement. Most of us aren't. Stop treating the public and your (increasingly former) users like morons. It's really bad for business. You've certainly lost my trust."
Well said.
"Based on my conversations with people in the Chinese dot-com world, I get the impression that initially, they weren't thinking through the full implications of their business plans. But given that they are now doing nothing to help the families of the dissidents who are in jail thanks to Yahoo!'s cooperation with the Chinese police, and they are doing nothing to prevent more such convictions with Yahoo!'s assistance in the future (or the assistance of it's Chinese partner Alibaba under the Yahoo! brand), one must conclude they also don't actually care very much. If Yahoo's disingenuousness annoys you as much as it annoys me, Amnesty International has a letter writing campaign with all the addresses you need to let Jerry Yang and his colleagues know what you think. They have several recommendations for action which I have updated and modified below.
If Yahoo! wants to convince their users worldwide that the company actually cares about user rights, and that Yahoo! deserves user trust, Yahoo! should:
• Use its influence to secure the release of Shi Tao, Li Zhi, and any other people who simply exercised their universally recognized right to political dissent and whose arrest and sentencing was aided by Yahoo!
• Stop any actions that could undermine human rights in any country in which you operate
• Take immediate steps to ensure that all its units – the parent corporation and subsidiaries – uphold human rights responsibilities for companies, as outlined by the UN Norms for Business
• Develop an explicit human rights policy, ensuring that it complies with the UN Norms for Business.
Note: There is no mention here about disengagement with China. Jerry Yang, and other Yahoo! executives, please stop claiming that your critics are advocating disengagement. Most of us aren't. Stop treating the public and your (increasingly former) users like morons. It's really bad for business. You've certainly lost my trust."
Well said.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Armstrong ID card opt out amendment accepted
It seems that the government have this evening accepted Lord Armstrong's amendment to the ID card bill which would allow those applying for a passport to opt out of having an ID card.
German Downloaders face 2 years in jail
From the Register, German downloaders face two years' prison
"The German justice minister has defended changes to German law which will increase sentences for consumers caught downloading copyrighted material to two years. Anyone caught downloading songs or films for commercial purposes could get up to five years in prison.
The changes come into force on 1 January 2007."
"The German justice minister has defended changes to German law which will increase sentences for consumers caught downloading copyrighted material to two years. Anyone caught downloading songs or films for commercial purposes could get up to five years in prison.
The changes come into force on 1 January 2007."
Harry and the Potters
I wonder how long it will be before Warner Bros lawyers start hassling these guys.
Dr Putin's PhD
Some researchers have accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of plagiarising his PhD thesis.
Children's index trials and no consent
Spy Blog has pointed out that the series of pilot schemes to test the proposed child information sharing index will be carried out without the informed consent of the data subjects i.e. the people whose details are being processed.
"Reading the Draft Information Sharing Index (England) Regulations 2006, the only "safeguard" appears to be a 3 year Data Retention period.
The Draft Statutory Instrument even re-emphasises that this enabling power can be used to disclose this information, to whoever the Government wants to, and such disclosures
i.e. it deliberately overrides the Common Law duty of confidentiality
If the data is not being collected to "support measures or decisions with respect to that person", then why is it being collected centrally in the first place ?
If the "damage or distress" is less than "substantial", then, according to this Draft Statutory Instrument, is it going to be permitted ?
In whose opinion is the "damage or distress" going to be judged as being "substantial" ...
...data is to be collected on every child and their parents, not just those children who are somehow "at risk" or with special educational or health needs...
The dubiously enobled Lord Adonis (he went straight from being a Special Political Advisor to becoming a Lord and then a Minister) gave some unconvincing details about this scheme in the debate in House of Lords on 20th March 2006: Information Sharing Index (England) Regulations 2006
Note that Lord Adonis does not address the Data Protection Principle of informed consent.
These "data matching" trials are, according to an Explanatory Memorandum
and
So the parents and children who are going to be used as guinea pigs for this "data matching" trial are not even going to be told whether or not that their personal data has been handed over to the contractor, without their informed consent !"
It is at least worth asking the question as to why these proposals for a database to track every child and those officially connected with them have not received anything like the media attention associated with the ID card scheme. Especially since the government are making many of the same mistakes in relation to the design and deployment of this large information system as they are with the ID card scheme. I suspect it is largely because of the fear of ending up on the receiving end of empty but dangerous rhetoric of the "We're trying to protect children and you actually want to stop us doing that" variety.
If the vast majority of people in this country are decent, then the vast majority of children are not in a situation where they are at risk in the sense of needing child support services (though those who do pose a risk to children still need to be kept away from them). Supporting children at risk is therefore not a problem that lends itself to data mining of the type planned. As Bruce Schneier says of these kinds of issues "it's a needle in a haystack problem and throwing more hay on the pile doesn't make that problem any easier."
Improving communications between the various public services, like the police, schools, health and social services, that come into contact with children at risk is a very sensible goal. This grand plan for another big information system solution has lost sight of that basic idea.
"Reading the Draft Information Sharing Index (England) Regulations 2006, the only "safeguard" appears to be a 3 year Data Retention period.
The Draft Statutory Instrument even re-emphasises that this enabling power can be used to disclose this information, to whoever the Government wants to, and such disclosures
may be made notwithstanding any rule of common law which prohibits or restricts the disclosure of information.
i.e. it deliberately overrides the Common Law duty of confidentiality
(3) Information disclosed under these Regulations, or information provided by a Secretary of State under section 12(9) of the Act, in respect of any person to whom arrangements specified in section 12(1) of the Act relate, may not be processed—
(a) to support measures or decisions with respect to that person; or
If the data is not being collected to "support measures or decisions with respect to that person", then why is it being collected centrally in the first place ?
(b) in such a way that substantial damage or substantial distress is, or is likely to be, caused to that person.
If the "damage or distress" is less than "substantial", then, according to this Draft Statutory Instrument, is it going to be permitted ?
In whose opinion is the "damage or distress" going to be judged as being "substantial" ...
...data is to be collected on every child and their parents, not just those children who are somehow "at risk" or with special educational or health needs...
The dubiously enobled Lord Adonis (he went straight from being a Special Political Advisor to becoming a Lord and then a Minister) gave some unconvincing details about this scheme in the debate in House of Lords on 20th March 2006: Information Sharing Index (England) Regulations 2006
"The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, asked me whether the index satisfies the requirements of the Data Protection Act. We believe that it does. The full regulations and statutory guidance will clearly set out that all information on the index will be handled in a manner that is consistent with the Data Protection Act, and they will address issues of accuracy, retention, security and confidentiality."
[...]
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I asked the Minister what access a parent will have to the index to check personal data.
Lord Adonis: My Lords, I am afraid that I do not have the answer to that question to hand, but I will let the noble Baroness know as soon as I can after the debate.
Note that Lord Adonis does not address the Data Protection Principle of informed consent.
These "data matching" trials are, according to an Explanatory Memorandum
"Department of Health, Department for Education and Skills, Department for Work and Pensions and nine local authorities in England."
and
"we have not considered it appropriate to conduct a public consultation."
So the parents and children who are going to be used as guinea pigs for this "data matching" trial are not even going to be told whether or not that their personal data has been handed over to the contractor, without their informed consent !"
It is at least worth asking the question as to why these proposals for a database to track every child and those officially connected with them have not received anything like the media attention associated with the ID card scheme. Especially since the government are making many of the same mistakes in relation to the design and deployment of this large information system as they are with the ID card scheme. I suspect it is largely because of the fear of ending up on the receiving end of empty but dangerous rhetoric of the "We're trying to protect children and you actually want to stop us doing that" variety.
If the vast majority of people in this country are decent, then the vast majority of children are not in a situation where they are at risk in the sense of needing child support services (though those who do pose a risk to children still need to be kept away from them). Supporting children at risk is therefore not a problem that lends itself to data mining of the type planned. As Bruce Schneier says of these kinds of issues "it's a needle in a haystack problem and throwing more hay on the pile doesn't make that problem any easier."
Improving communications between the various public services, like the police, schools, health and social services, that come into contact with children at risk is a very sensible goal. This grand plan for another big information system solution has lost sight of that basic idea.
Arsenal 2 Juventus 0
What a wonderful performance that was from Arsenal last night. The best I've seen in the Champions league since their 5-1 drubbing of Inter Milan in 2003 (when Edu and Parlour were playing in the middle). Fabregas and Henry will deservedly get the plaudits but every single member of the team played a vital part. Pires really impressed me in what was an unusual role for him, chasing and harrying, not something that you would have said before hand that he's have been too well suited to.
I was a little concerned in the first half because I felt that there was a lot of energy being wasted and that they wouldn't be able to keep up the pace throughout. Though they'll be abused in the press for a poor quality performance, at that stage Juventus were still looking confident. Fabregas' goal on 40 minutes put a vital dent in Juve's swagger. Arsenal stepped up the pace even further in the second half, maintained that level right through to the end and completely overran the Italian league leaders.
Well done again to Arsene Wenger and the team. Hopefully they'll complete the job just as confidently in Turin next week. Fabio Capello will know he's fortunate to be travelling home with a mere two goal deficit, though I suspect he will assign an old style Italian man-marker to Cesc Fabregas in an attempt to curb his creative instincts in the return leg.
I was a little concerned in the first half because I felt that there was a lot of energy being wasted and that they wouldn't be able to keep up the pace throughout. Though they'll be abused in the press for a poor quality performance, at that stage Juventus were still looking confident. Fabregas' goal on 40 minutes put a vital dent in Juve's swagger. Arsenal stepped up the pace even further in the second half, maintained that level right through to the end and completely overran the Italian league leaders.
Well done again to Arsene Wenger and the team. Hopefully they'll complete the job just as confidently in Turin next week. Fabio Capello will know he's fortunate to be travelling home with a mere two goal deficit, though I suspect he will assign an old style Italian man-marker to Cesc Fabregas in an attempt to curb his creative instincts in the return leg.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Lang on proposed French DRM law
Bernard Lang, a prominent French computer scientist, has been in touch with Ed Felten about the much-discussed legislative developments in France.
"One interesting fact is that this article 7 did not have most of these clauses when first voted during the debate. Then, on the last day (night ?) of the debate, after the last article, they reopened the debate on article 7 and voted the current version at 3h00 am. This was not a complete surprise, since it was known that several majority MPs were negotiating with the government.
Article 7 of the law (I am losing some technical legal subtleties in the translation, for lack of knowledge of legal vocabulary) actually creates a new article in the French Intellectual Property Code...
This text does not say that TPM must be open standards, but they they should be essentially like open standards, as long as they are not covered by patents … and we are not supposed to have software patents at this time, in Europe...
I have been supporting for some time the view that DMCA-like legislation was actually attempting to create a new intellectual property right, a “DRM right”, that gives exclusive rights to the initial users of a DRM format to develop software interacting with it. Of course, no one, to my knowledge, would actually acknowledge the fact. [This is similar to what Peter Jaszi and others have called “paracopyright” in the U.S. — Ed]
Interestingly, one purpose of this new IP right is to prey on cultural creation and creators by controlling the distribution channels, while pretending to offer what seems to be mostly an illusion of protection.
The limitations of the French law just restrict technical measures to be what they are supposed to be: a protective device (for whatever it is worth), without giving any control to people other than the (rightful ?) rightowners of the work.
Without interoperability as required in the French law, DRMs (or TPMs if you prefer) behave pretty much like patents on formats and distribution models, without even requiring innovation, nor official application and examination, and without a time limit or compulsory licensing...
I remember that, while some partners and I were being auditioned by government officials, their faces expressed surprise that we worried that artists should be able to publish their work, possibly protect their work, freely and without having to submit to the technology leveraged market control of a few large companies. My feeling was that no one else had expressed that concern before."
Highly recommended and includes Lang's translation of the controversial clause 7 requiring drm to be interoperable.
"One interesting fact is that this article 7 did not have most of these clauses when first voted during the debate. Then, on the last day (night ?) of the debate, after the last article, they reopened the debate on article 7 and voted the current version at 3h00 am. This was not a complete surprise, since it was known that several majority MPs were negotiating with the government.
Article 7 of the law (I am losing some technical legal subtleties in the translation, for lack of knowledge of legal vocabulary) actually creates a new article in the French Intellectual Property Code...
This text does not say that TPM must be open standards, but they they should be essentially like open standards, as long as they are not covered by patents … and we are not supposed to have software patents at this time, in Europe...
I have been supporting for some time the view that DMCA-like legislation was actually attempting to create a new intellectual property right, a “DRM right”, that gives exclusive rights to the initial users of a DRM format to develop software interacting with it. Of course, no one, to my knowledge, would actually acknowledge the fact. [This is similar to what Peter Jaszi and others have called “paracopyright” in the U.S. — Ed]
Interestingly, one purpose of this new IP right is to prey on cultural creation and creators by controlling the distribution channels, while pretending to offer what seems to be mostly an illusion of protection.
The limitations of the French law just restrict technical measures to be what they are supposed to be: a protective device (for whatever it is worth), without giving any control to people other than the (rightful ?) rightowners of the work.
Without interoperability as required in the French law, DRMs (or TPMs if you prefer) behave pretty much like patents on formats and distribution models, without even requiring innovation, nor official application and examination, and without a time limit or compulsory licensing...
I remember that, while some partners and I were being auditioned by government officials, their faces expressed surprise that we worried that artists should be able to publish their work, possibly protect their work, freely and without having to submit to the technology leveraged market control of a few large companies. My feeling was that no one else had expressed that concern before."
Highly recommended and includes Lang's translation of the controversial clause 7 requiring drm to be interoperable.
I'll fight the little Hitlers in coffee bars
David Aaronovitch is pledging to fight the little Hitlers in coffee bars.
"LAST WEEK my friend Walter had a citizen’s arrest effected upon him in a North London street by a coffee bar manager. Walter is a writer, middle-aged and of transparent honesty, and most certainly had not done what he was accused of — viz, half-inching a salmon sandwich from his local branch of this particular chain, and making a slow dash for freedom. The police were called, no sandwich was found, the coffee bar manager departed, without apology, to sulk among his sugar sachets.
Walter is American and I had to explain to him why this had happened. It was a cold day and he was wearing a balaclava. To pub managers, coffee bar managers and other persons in debateable authority, headgear now suggests one thing only: a determination to thwart their CCTV systems. "
"LAST WEEK my friend Walter had a citizen’s arrest effected upon him in a North London street by a coffee bar manager. Walter is a writer, middle-aged and of transparent honesty, and most certainly had not done what he was accused of — viz, half-inching a salmon sandwich from his local branch of this particular chain, and making a slow dash for freedom. The police were called, no sandwich was found, the coffee bar manager departed, without apology, to sulk among his sugar sachets.
Walter is American and I had to explain to him why this had happened. It was a cold day and he was wearing a balaclava. To pub managers, coffee bar managers and other persons in debateable authority, headgear now suggests one thing only: a determination to thwart their CCTV systems. "
Subjectright (S), a reciprocal to Copyright (C)
Steve Mann has proposed a reciprocal to copyright.
"While Copyright is intended to protect the deliberate creation and transmission of information, Subjectright is intended to protect the primarily involuntary disclosure of information (e.g. physical facsimile, spoken word, molted detritus, etc.), as well as the often involuntary receipt of information (e.g. marketing and advertising, music, video, etc.) as mental engrams...
In view of the often involuntary nature of this exchange with regard to the recipient (eg. subject), it has been argued that Subjectright deserves stronger protection than Copyright. See, for example, First Monday, volume 5, number 7 (July 2000), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_7/mann/index.html...
Legal development is sometimes said to be significantly more dilatory than technological development (notwithstanding our desire to state that “The trouble with law is that so many new laws are created so quickly that technology is having a hard time catching up.”). As society evolves, the original intent of old laws is often lost and they begin to be misapplied as a result. In some cases, after a significant amount of subtle, social evolution, the results can be egregious. It is therefore not very surprising that many Intellectual Property laws are now in conflict with the reasonable freedoms of scientific, scholarly, or academic pursuit."
He and co-authors James Fung and Kyle Amon go on to outline the Felten DMCA and 2600 DeCSS cases and compare intellectual property to privacy. Basically he believes IP is out of control but that creating an equivalent property right in our own personal information and solitude could be a route towards protecting personal privacy in a digital age.
They conclude:
"The effects of copyright, left, and center, tend to focus on protecting the interests of creators, producers, and distributors of information. We presented a reciprocal concept, namely that of Subjectright, that considers the rights of those who are exposed to informatic content, whether by choice, by accident, or against their will.
We believe that especially when people are subject to informatic content against their will, that they have every right to “rip, mix, burn” or do what they like with it. Moreover, we also believe that any discussion of copyright is inherently unbalanced if it does not also consider subjectright."
It's a bit difficult to get your head around at first but looking at something like this from a completely different perspective is often a good way to shed a light on the issues.
"While Copyright is intended to protect the deliberate creation and transmission of information, Subjectright is intended to protect the primarily involuntary disclosure of information (e.g. physical facsimile, spoken word, molted detritus, etc.), as well as the often involuntary receipt of information (e.g. marketing and advertising, music, video, etc.) as mental engrams...
In view of the often involuntary nature of this exchange with regard to the recipient (eg. subject), it has been argued that Subjectright deserves stronger protection than Copyright. See, for example, First Monday, volume 5, number 7 (July 2000), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue5_7/mann/index.html...
Legal development is sometimes said to be significantly more dilatory than technological development (notwithstanding our desire to state that “The trouble with law is that so many new laws are created so quickly that technology is having a hard time catching up.”). As society evolves, the original intent of old laws is often lost and they begin to be misapplied as a result. In some cases, after a significant amount of subtle, social evolution, the results can be egregious. It is therefore not very surprising that many Intellectual Property laws are now in conflict with the reasonable freedoms of scientific, scholarly, or academic pursuit."
He and co-authors James Fung and Kyle Amon go on to outline the Felten DMCA and 2600 DeCSS cases and compare intellectual property to privacy. Basically he believes IP is out of control but that creating an equivalent property right in our own personal information and solitude could be a route towards protecting personal privacy in a digital age.
They conclude:
"The effects of copyright, left, and center, tend to focus on protecting the interests of creators, producers, and distributors of information. We presented a reciprocal concept, namely that of Subjectright, that considers the rights of those who are exposed to informatic content, whether by choice, by accident, or against their will.
We believe that especially when people are subject to informatic content against their will, that they have every right to “rip, mix, burn” or do what they like with it. Moreover, we also believe that any discussion of copyright is inherently unbalanced if it does not also consider subjectright."
It's a bit difficult to get your head around at first but looking at something like this from a completely different perspective is often a good way to shed a light on the issues.
Proof that few read EULAs
From TechDirt: Proof That (Almost) No One Reads End User License Agreements
"Apparently in an attempt to prove that no one reads end user license agreements (EULAs), anti-spyware firm PC Pitstop buried a note in its own EULA, saying they would give $1,000 to the first person who emailed them at a certain address. It only took four months and over 3,000 downloads before someone noticed it and sent an email (and got the $1,000)."
"Apparently in an attempt to prove that no one reads end user license agreements (EULAs), anti-spyware firm PC Pitstop buried a note in its own EULA, saying they would give $1,000 to the first person who emailed them at a certain address. It only took four months and over 3,000 downloads before someone noticed it and sent an email (and got the $1,000)."
Love on US Korea FTA and access to knowledge
James Love has been talking to the US trade representative about the US/Korea free trade agreement and intellectual property.
"As noted in the 2006 Economic Report of the President, intellectual property rights can play an important role in creating incentives and rewards for investments in inventive and creative works. However, intellectual property rights can also be implemented in ways that are overreaching, anticompetitive, and protectionist, harming both economic growth and the interests of consumers.
Increasingly, economists, political scientists, business leaders and consumers are recognizing that intellectual property rights are forms of government regulation that have both costs and benefits, and which are also subject to regulatory capture by special interests.
Knowledge is the fuel of the modern economy, and trillions of dollars are spent on education and the creation and dissemination of information. We want businesses, consumers and other stakeholders to be informed, and take advantage of the best technologies and to manage knowledge resources wisely.
The freedom to use and share knowledge can be seen as the normal case (the general rule), and intellectual property rights as a limited exception (the exception to the rule). As noted in the February 2006 Economic Report of the President, it is difficult to find the right balance between intellectual property rights on the one hand and the freedom to use and share knowledge on the other hand.
Some level of intellectual property right protection is clearly necessary to create the incentives and rewards we need to support and reward creative and inventive individuals and communities. But we also very much need systems for creating and disseminating information resources that are not owned or controlled by anyone. The knowledge economy is a complex ecosystem. To support the discovery and development of new medicines, we rely upon a plethora of patent and sui generis methods of intellectual property protection to create incentives to invest in new medicines, but we also spend approximately $30 billion per year through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on government funded research, much of which freely enters the global knowledge commons. The US government vigorously promotes the patent system globally, but it also provides more global public goods for medical research than any other country. The Human Genome Project, the HapMap Project, Medline, and other public goods are as important to the drug discovery system as are patents and high prices on new medicines.
There are trade related aspects of both issues in this knowledge ecosystem. The US government has supported the TRIPS and other multilateral and bilateral trade agreements that seek to address the issue of ensuring that every country provides minimum levels of protection for patents, copyrights and other types of intellectual property protection. These agreements deal with global "free riding" for investments that rely upon patents, copyrights or other types of intellectual property protection. But they do not address free riding issues relating to global public goods, such as costly project like the Human Genome Project or Medline. Nor do these agreements deal with another problem -- the possible anti-competitive and protectionist nature of intellectual property systems that are overly restrictive in terms of access to knowledge.
US trade policy lacks balance. It places all of its emphasis on one issue -- the possibility of free riding on investments that are protected by patents, copyrights or other types of intellectual property. It does nothing to address the free riding on public goods, and it is also doing nothing to address cases where inappropriate levels or badly managed intellectual property rights are an unwarranted encroachment on the public domain. There is simply no policy justification for this lack of balance. The reasons for a lack of balance are undoubtedly due to the vast lobbying resources of intellectual property right-owners, who can command the attention and attract the favors of political leaders and civil servants who supervise trade policy. It is also due to a lack of understanding of the importance of freedom and access to knowledge to the processes of innovation and economic growth.
Assumptions about the optimal balance between intellectual property rights and the public domain were shattered when the Internet emerged as the new platform for the sharing and distribution of knowledge resources. Everything about the Internet was a surprise. The core technologies for the Internet were either placed in the public domain, or freely licensed to everyone. Enormous attention was given to the benefits of open standards for certain key network and software technologies. The explosion of publishing on the Internet vastly increased the amount of information that was available without charge to anyone. New models for the development of "free software" were key to overcoming anti-competitive tendencies of some companies, and attractive as a superior model for designing, maintaining and enhancing certain services provided by software.
Scientists working on medical or agricultural research, and publishers of scholarly journals were deeply influenced by the amazing benefits of these new information technologies, as were venture capitalists and firms both big and small. New business models and new forms of collaboration among different communities of creative and inventive persons emerged overnight to explore and test these new possibilities. Some of this was strictly non-commercial, and some was very commercial. The "free" technologies of the Internet created enormous new private wealth, and vastly enriched the lives of the public at the same time. It is a dynamic and complex ecosystem that undoubtedly has done much to promote trade, investment, innovation, development and growth in other sectors of the economy.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric and policy objectives of US trade policy seemed firmly rooted in the past -- and in some cases, hostile to these new paradigms. The Korean FTA is an opportunity to consider new thinking about trade policy. One possibility is to consider a new chapter in the FTA on Access to Knowledge (A2K). The United States is the largest source of public domain knowledge resources in the world, and the world benefits from a number of important limitations and exceptions in US copyright laws. But we also benefit from public goods provided by our trading partners, and the limitations and exceptions in foreign patent and copyright laws that guarantee greater access to their knowledge resources."
"As noted in the 2006 Economic Report of the President, intellectual property rights can play an important role in creating incentives and rewards for investments in inventive and creative works. However, intellectual property rights can also be implemented in ways that are overreaching, anticompetitive, and protectionist, harming both economic growth and the interests of consumers.
Increasingly, economists, political scientists, business leaders and consumers are recognizing that intellectual property rights are forms of government regulation that have both costs and benefits, and which are also subject to regulatory capture by special interests.
Knowledge is the fuel of the modern economy, and trillions of dollars are spent on education and the creation and dissemination of information. We want businesses, consumers and other stakeholders to be informed, and take advantage of the best technologies and to manage knowledge resources wisely.
The freedom to use and share knowledge can be seen as the normal case (the general rule), and intellectual property rights as a limited exception (the exception to the rule). As noted in the February 2006 Economic Report of the President, it is difficult to find the right balance between intellectual property rights on the one hand and the freedom to use and share knowledge on the other hand.
Some level of intellectual property right protection is clearly necessary to create the incentives and rewards we need to support and reward creative and inventive individuals and communities. But we also very much need systems for creating and disseminating information resources that are not owned or controlled by anyone. The knowledge economy is a complex ecosystem. To support the discovery and development of new medicines, we rely upon a plethora of patent and sui generis methods of intellectual property protection to create incentives to invest in new medicines, but we also spend approximately $30 billion per year through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on government funded research, much of which freely enters the global knowledge commons. The US government vigorously promotes the patent system globally, but it also provides more global public goods for medical research than any other country. The Human Genome Project, the HapMap Project, Medline, and other public goods are as important to the drug discovery system as are patents and high prices on new medicines.
There are trade related aspects of both issues in this knowledge ecosystem. The US government has supported the TRIPS and other multilateral and bilateral trade agreements that seek to address the issue of ensuring that every country provides minimum levels of protection for patents, copyrights and other types of intellectual property protection. These agreements deal with global "free riding" for investments that rely upon patents, copyrights or other types of intellectual property protection. But they do not address free riding issues relating to global public goods, such as costly project like the Human Genome Project or Medline. Nor do these agreements deal with another problem -- the possible anti-competitive and protectionist nature of intellectual property systems that are overly restrictive in terms of access to knowledge.
US trade policy lacks balance. It places all of its emphasis on one issue -- the possibility of free riding on investments that are protected by patents, copyrights or other types of intellectual property. It does nothing to address the free riding on public goods, and it is also doing nothing to address cases where inappropriate levels or badly managed intellectual property rights are an unwarranted encroachment on the public domain. There is simply no policy justification for this lack of balance. The reasons for a lack of balance are undoubtedly due to the vast lobbying resources of intellectual property right-owners, who can command the attention and attract the favors of political leaders and civil servants who supervise trade policy. It is also due to a lack of understanding of the importance of freedom and access to knowledge to the processes of innovation and economic growth.
Assumptions about the optimal balance between intellectual property rights and the public domain were shattered when the Internet emerged as the new platform for the sharing and distribution of knowledge resources. Everything about the Internet was a surprise. The core technologies for the Internet were either placed in the public domain, or freely licensed to everyone. Enormous attention was given to the benefits of open standards for certain key network and software technologies. The explosion of publishing on the Internet vastly increased the amount of information that was available without charge to anyone. New models for the development of "free software" were key to overcoming anti-competitive tendencies of some companies, and attractive as a superior model for designing, maintaining and enhancing certain services provided by software.
Scientists working on medical or agricultural research, and publishers of scholarly journals were deeply influenced by the amazing benefits of these new information technologies, as were venture capitalists and firms both big and small. New business models and new forms of collaboration among different communities of creative and inventive persons emerged overnight to explore and test these new possibilities. Some of this was strictly non-commercial, and some was very commercial. The "free" technologies of the Internet created enormous new private wealth, and vastly enriched the lives of the public at the same time. It is a dynamic and complex ecosystem that undoubtedly has done much to promote trade, investment, innovation, development and growth in other sectors of the economy.
Meanwhile, the rhetoric and policy objectives of US trade policy seemed firmly rooted in the past -- and in some cases, hostile to these new paradigms. The Korean FTA is an opportunity to consider new thinking about trade policy. One possibility is to consider a new chapter in the FTA on Access to Knowledge (A2K). The United States is the largest source of public domain knowledge resources in the world, and the world benefits from a number of important limitations and exceptions in US copyright laws. But we also benefit from public goods provided by our trading partners, and the limitations and exceptions in foreign patent and copyright laws that guarantee greater access to their knowledge resources."
Trial information-sharing index for children
Education Minister Lord Adonis has announced a series of pilot schemes to test the proposed child information sharing index. He said the results of the trials would inform the design of the huge information system on children proposed under the Children Act. I hope he doesn't mean inform as in the way the ID card trials informed developments on the ID card system. Only ID card anoraks will probably remember how the government set up an ID card trial (a good idea), delayed the start for months due to technical problems, promised they would ensure the full trial would still take place, terminated it early, discovered the technology was ridiculously unreliable, and announced the whole thing was a roaring success, since a majority of the people taking part said they didn't mind the registration process too much.
Monday, March 27, 2006
A victim of his own administration
William Heath is concerned at his inefficiency in filling out official forms and where it will lead him in the UK government's brave new world.
"I realise that the fact that I loathe form-filling and administrative intrusion generally is not the government's fault, but my own failing, because I'm so damn forgetful and frankly inefficient. It does mean that any malevolent authority would have no trouble at all fining me, locking me up or generally forcing me into line on the basis I'm not conformant to the behaviour they require. Thus they win."
"I realise that the fact that I loathe form-filling and administrative intrusion generally is not the government's fault, but my own failing, because I'm so damn forgetful and frankly inefficient. It does mean that any malevolent authority would have no trouble at all fining me, locking me up or generally forcing me into line on the basis I'm not conformant to the behaviour they require. Thus they win."
Innovation and its dicontents
Adam Jaffe and Josh Lerner had a nice article in the WSJ last week(unfortunately behind a paywall) on the US patent system. It basically follows the theme of their book, Innovation and Its Discontents, published a couple of years ago by Princeton University Press.
"The problems of the U.S. patent system are under discussion today with an urgency not seen in decades. The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in /eBay v. MercExchange LLC/, which promises to be its most far-reaching examination of patent law in many years. Today the court will also consider /LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories/ -- the contested matter is whether a patent can be issued for the correlation between a disease and a naturally occurring substance in the human body. That is: Can you actually patent the laws of nature? And shockingly, Research in Motion has been forced to pay $612 million to prevent all of our BlackBerry handhelds from going dark, even though the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has indicated that it is likely to find all of the patents behind this ransom demand invalid. Congressional subcommittees, with good reason, have recently held hearings asking fundamental questions about developments like these in the patent system...
The combination of making patents easier to get and simultaneously more potent when enforced has led to an explosion in patent litigation. Holders of dubious patents -- be they established firms or "trolls" whose only business is patent enforcement -- routinely threaten firms that sell valuable products with shutdown based on alleged patent infringement. Even if the target firm believes that it does not infringe, or that the patents at the basis of the claim are invalid, the cost and risk of proving this in court may be too high. Innovators may choose simply to drop the allegedly offending product, or to settle and pay ransom rather than fight."
"The problems of the U.S. patent system are under discussion today with an urgency not seen in decades. The Supreme Court will soon hear oral arguments in /eBay v. MercExchange LLC/, which promises to be its most far-reaching examination of patent law in many years. Today the court will also consider /LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories/ -- the contested matter is whether a patent can be issued for the correlation between a disease and a naturally occurring substance in the human body. That is: Can you actually patent the laws of nature? And shockingly, Research in Motion has been forced to pay $612 million to prevent all of our BlackBerry handhelds from going dark, even though the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has indicated that it is likely to find all of the patents behind this ransom demand invalid. Congressional subcommittees, with good reason, have recently held hearings asking fundamental questions about developments like these in the patent system...
The combination of making patents easier to get and simultaneously more potent when enforced has led to an explosion in patent litigation. Holders of dubious patents -- be they established firms or "trolls" whose only business is patent enforcement -- routinely threaten firms that sell valuable products with shutdown based on alleged patent infringement. Even if the target firm believes that it does not infringe, or that the patents at the basis of the claim are invalid, the cost and risk of proving this in court may be too high. Innovators may choose simply to drop the allegedly offending product, or to settle and pay ransom rather than fight."
Government property: your identity
Henry Porter has been waxing lyrical about ID cards again.
"As things stand, Labour made a manifesto commitment to introduce the cards on a voluntary basis. Charles Clark went back on that promise...
Lord Armstrong's case is that this deception allows the Lords to ignore the Salisbury convention, which normally dictates that the Lords do not oppose the government on the second reading of a measure that was in its manifesto. In other words, the measures as presented last year at the election have changed radically because of this compulsion...
Blair may decide to invoke the Parliament Act, the machinery that allows the House of Commons to overrule the Lords when the two houses reach an impasse on a bill. My bet is that he will do so, even though deception is involved, because the longer the ID card bill is delayed, the more people become familiar with its hidden purpose.
People are beginning to see that ID cards are not being introduced so that they can identify themselves but rather so that the government can identify them and keep track of every important transaction in their lives. It is understood that even if you have nothing to hide, you may still have something to fear from a government that lies about its intentions, to say nothing of the governments that may follow in its authoritarian slipstream."
"As things stand, Labour made a manifesto commitment to introduce the cards on a voluntary basis. Charles Clark went back on that promise...
Lord Armstrong's case is that this deception allows the Lords to ignore the Salisbury convention, which normally dictates that the Lords do not oppose the government on the second reading of a measure that was in its manifesto. In other words, the measures as presented last year at the election have changed radically because of this compulsion...
Blair may decide to invoke the Parliament Act, the machinery that allows the House of Commons to overrule the Lords when the two houses reach an impasse on a bill. My bet is that he will do so, even though deception is involved, because the longer the ID card bill is delayed, the more people become familiar with its hidden purpose.
People are beginning to see that ID cards are not being introduced so that they can identify themselves but rather so that the government can identify them and keep track of every important transaction in their lives. It is understood that even if you have nothing to hide, you may still have something to fear from a government that lies about its intentions, to say nothing of the governments that may follow in its authoritarian slipstream."
Morpheus (Streamcast) sue Skype founders
From Techdirt:
"It's fairly well known that Skype's founders won't come to the US for fear of lawsuits arising out of their part in building Kazaa... but it looks like they may now have another lawsuit on their hands as well. Andy Abramson gets credit for the big scoop of the weekend, discovering that Morpheus maker Streamcast has now sued Skype and its founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis under RICO laws, which are more commonly used against organized crime groups. It's not all that common for RICO violations to be charged between companies, but it does happen (recently a few times against the recording industry, for example). Abramson has all the details, which Om Malik summarizes as being all about the money -- basically saying that Streamcast is pissed off that Zennstrom didn't sell them the Kazaa technology, before spinning it off to Sharman Networks. Streamcast says that the their own deal included a "right of first refusal" should Zennstrom sell the technology to anyone else. Streamcast also claims that the basic Kazaa technology is part of Skype."
"It's fairly well known that Skype's founders won't come to the US for fear of lawsuits arising out of their part in building Kazaa... but it looks like they may now have another lawsuit on their hands as well. Andy Abramson gets credit for the big scoop of the weekend, discovering that Morpheus maker Streamcast has now sued Skype and its founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis under RICO laws, which are more commonly used against organized crime groups. It's not all that common for RICO violations to be charged between companies, but it does happen (recently a few times against the recording industry, for example). Abramson has all the details, which Om Malik summarizes as being all about the money -- basically saying that Streamcast is pissed off that Zennstrom didn't sell them the Kazaa technology, before spinning it off to Sharman Networks. Streamcast says that the their own deal included a "right of first refusal" should Zennstrom sell the technology to anyone else. Streamcast also claims that the basic Kazaa technology is part of Skype."
DRM is killing music
Julian Bond has ripped off an old British Phonographic Industry (BPI) anti-piracy image to make a point about drm
High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries
The members of the High Level Expert Group to advise the EU Commission on digital libraries have been named. It includes
Prof Bertil Andersson - Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation
Mr Nikesh Arora - Vice President of European Operations, Google UK Ltd.
Dr Arne JürgenBach - President of the Federation of European Publishers
Mr Emmanuel Hoog - President of the International Federation of Television Archives
and
Ms Lynne Brindley - Director of the British Library
as well as Brewster Kahle and notable others. Interesting to see Arora in there, as the French lobbied for this in the first place as a kind of EU anti-Google book project.
Prof Bertil Andersson - Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation
Mr Nikesh Arora - Vice President of European Operations, Google UK Ltd.
Dr Arne JürgenBach - President of the Federation of European Publishers
Mr Emmanuel Hoog - President of the International Federation of Television Archives
and
Ms Lynne Brindley - Director of the British Library
as well as Brewster Kahle and notable others. Interesting to see Arora in there, as the French lobbied for this in the first place as a kind of EU anti-Google book project.
Are we safer in the dark?
OpentheGovernment.org have produced a terrific animated film on what they perceive to be the US government's overuse of secrecy as an excuse for withholding information:
Are we safer in the dark?
The power of animation.
Are we safer in the dark?
The power of animation.
Kazaa contempt judgement
Kim Weatherall has an interesting update on the contempt of court judgement against Kazaa in Australia. The music industry complained that Kazaa were in contempt of a court order to effectively cut down on illegal file sharing. The ruling agree there should be a full hearing on the question. But as Weatherall says:
"But let me tell you, this hearing could be really, really interesting. Let's assume, for the moment, that the facts outlined above, as reported in the media, are accurate. I have no idea of the full extent of facts, of course. But let's assume that this is what happened:
* Judge makes order saying - 'you must not authorise infringement'. He then says 'you will not be authorising infringement if you put in Filtering Type A or Filtering Type B. Note that both these Acts are aimed at preventing new users from infringing - but are also aimed at preventing existing users from infringing (or at least, reducing infringement by existing users).
* Respondent (Sharman) doesn't do Filtering Type A, or B. Instead it does Act C - blocking downloads. That helps to prevent new users from infringing but of course does nothing about existing users (it may eventually drive them away because they won't get upgrades to software of course, but that's a long term kind of effect).
Now clearly, in this scenario, Sharman/Kazaa are engaging in one, big game of legal chicken. They've taken a risk that what they've done, less onerous and difficult as it is, will not be contempt. But whether it is contempt is not answered by the Full Federal Court's judgment. They had to make a decision in the absence of full facts about the alleged contempt.
There seems little doubt that the respondent is entitled to do something other than the filtering envisaged in Order 5, to try to comply with Order 4. But what is not clear is this:
1. Does Sharman cease to authorise infringement of copyright by blocking downloads of the software to Australia?
2. Does the answer to question (1) depend on how effective the blocking is in preventing future infringements?
3. How would you prove contempt in such a case? Could the contempt hearing have to involve a whole lot of evidence about how effective the blocking is?
4. Can any of this really be proved beyond reasonable doubt, as required in a charge of contempt?
And note: the answers to these questions - particularly question 1 - are very much dependent on what counts as authorisation. And of course guess what - that is the very matter that is on appeal."
Worth watching closely.
"But let me tell you, this hearing could be really, really interesting. Let's assume, for the moment, that the facts outlined above, as reported in the media, are accurate. I have no idea of the full extent of facts, of course. But let's assume that this is what happened:
* Judge makes order saying - 'you must not authorise infringement'. He then says 'you will not be authorising infringement if you put in Filtering Type A or Filtering Type B. Note that both these Acts are aimed at preventing new users from infringing - but are also aimed at preventing existing users from infringing (or at least, reducing infringement by existing users).
* Respondent (Sharman) doesn't do Filtering Type A, or B. Instead it does Act C - blocking downloads. That helps to prevent new users from infringing but of course does nothing about existing users (it may eventually drive them away because they won't get upgrades to software of course, but that's a long term kind of effect).
Now clearly, in this scenario, Sharman/Kazaa are engaging in one, big game of legal chicken. They've taken a risk that what they've done, less onerous and difficult as it is, will not be contempt. But whether it is contempt is not answered by the Full Federal Court's judgment. They had to make a decision in the absence of full facts about the alleged contempt.
There seems little doubt that the respondent is entitled to do something other than the filtering envisaged in Order 5, to try to comply with Order 4. But what is not clear is this:
1. Does Sharman cease to authorise infringement of copyright by blocking downloads of the software to Australia?
2. Does the answer to question (1) depend on how effective the blocking is in preventing future infringements?
3. How would you prove contempt in such a case? Could the contempt hearing have to involve a whole lot of evidence about how effective the blocking is?
4. Can any of this really be proved beyond reasonable doubt, as required in a charge of contempt?
And note: the answers to these questions - particularly question 1 - are very much dependent on what counts as authorisation. And of course guess what - that is the very matter that is on appeal."
Worth watching closely.
Partial loss for RIAA in P2P piracy case
From P2PNet:
"The Big Four Organized Music record label cartel's RIAA is licking its wounds after losing a bid for unfettered access to the hard drive of an Oregon mother it's victimizing in a p2p file sharing case...
Andersen, 43, says she's never downloaded or distributed music in her life...
The RIAA had always ignored her but then, out of the blue, suddenly wanted a court order to allow it to ferret freely through her hard drive.
Andersen and her lawyers, Lybeck Murphy from Mercer Island, Washington, refused to give carte blanche access, and judge Donald Ashmanskas has told Andersen to go ahead and hire her own independent private forensic expert to look for specific files, also ordering the RIAA to foot the bill for the examination."
"The Big Four Organized Music record label cartel's RIAA is licking its wounds after losing a bid for unfettered access to the hard drive of an Oregon mother it's victimizing in a p2p file sharing case...
Andersen, 43, says she's never downloaded or distributed music in her life...
The RIAA had always ignored her but then, out of the blue, suddenly wanted a court order to allow it to ferret freely through her hard drive.
Andersen and her lawyers, Lybeck Murphy from Mercer Island, Washington, refused to give carte blanche access, and judge Donald Ashmanskas has told Andersen to go ahead and hire her own independent private forensic expert to look for specific files, also ordering the RIAA to foot the bill for the examination."
Set our super heroes free
An op ed in the LA Times has critised Marvel and its rival DC comics for enforcing their trademark in the term "super hero".
any company wishing to market a comic book, graphic novel or related item with any variation of "super hero" in the name or title must get permission from Marvel and DC. Dan Taylor, the Costa Mesa-based creator of the "Super Hero Happy Hour" comic, learned about this absurdity two years ago when he was contacted by lawyers for Marvel and DC, prompting him to rename his series to the more pedestrian "Hero Happy Hour."
Brain Gym's bad science
Ben Goldacre has been foaming at the mouth about "brain gym" again.
"Nothing prepared me for the outpouring of jaw-dropping stupidity that vomited forth from teachers when I wrote about Brain Gym last week. To recap: Brain Gym is an incredibly popular technique, in at least hundreds of British state schools, promoted all over government websites, and with a scientific explanatory framework that is barkingly out to lunch.
They teach that there is no water in processed food. They teach that rubbing your ribcage will stimulate the carotid arteries beneath and increase blood to the brain and “activate the brain for an increased flow of electromagnetic energy”. But let’s not leave it with a recap. They promote strange physical origami exercises called “hook-ups” where you press your fingers against each other in odd patterns, because these “connect the electrical circuits in the body, containing and thus focusing both attention and disorganised energy”, as they say in the Brain Gym teaching manual..."
Entertaining.
"Nothing prepared me for the outpouring of jaw-dropping stupidity that vomited forth from teachers when I wrote about Brain Gym last week. To recap: Brain Gym is an incredibly popular technique, in at least hundreds of British state schools, promoted all over government websites, and with a scientific explanatory framework that is barkingly out to lunch.
They teach that there is no water in processed food. They teach that rubbing your ribcage will stimulate the carotid arteries beneath and increase blood to the brain and “activate the brain for an increased flow of electromagnetic energy”. But let’s not leave it with a recap. They promote strange physical origami exercises called “hook-ups” where you press your fingers against each other in odd patterns, because these “connect the electrical circuits in the body, containing and thus focusing both attention and disorganised energy”, as they say in the Brain Gym teaching manual..."
Entertaining.
Apple's core problem with the new French drm law
Newsnight producer, Adam Livingstone, has a lovely accessible piece on why Apple are getting so worked up about the bill mandating drm interoperability that was passed by the French parliament last week.
"The problem for Apple now though is that there are lots of clever people in eastern lands churning out those 20 pound DVD players who have realised they can do the same trick with MP3 players that work just like iPods, only theirs would be a lot cheaper than 219 pounds plus VAT.
Worse still, mobile phones are now packing more processing power than the US space programme and their manufacturers want a piece of the MP3 action too.
So how do Apple keep their competitive advantage? Their best answer is something called Digital Rights Management. They sell music online, but it isn't sold in that universal MP3 format so beloved of pirates.
iTunes music is only playable under an Apple license, and then only by the person who pays for it. In other words iTunes is 80 per cent of the legal download market but only hardware blessed by Apple can play it. So unless you want to burn it back to the old technology that is the CD, that almost always means an iPod.
But iPods don't play the digitally protected formats used by other legal download services, so if you have an iPod and you're law abiding then you're locked into iTunes. It's a virtuous circle for them, but a vicious one for their competitors."
Which is why drm will ultimately fail. Let's see. Should I spend £219 on an iPod that will allow me to buy music from, er, Apple and no one else; or should I spend £20 on another digital music player that does the same as (or probably more than) the iPod, which will allow me to buy digital music from anyone who sells it?
I know - you can rip your CDs to the iPod and there are various other ways of getting music for it etc but contrary to what Livingstone says in response to comments, the situation with copying music like this is resolved, in the UK at least. Copying for personal use has long been accepted as 'fair use' in the US, in spite of the RIAA's briefings to the contrary, but UK copyright law does not permit the making of copies for personal use. Such copying is not considered "fair dealing" in the UK. Regarding the CD rippers having the consent of the copyright holder, if a use is fair use, then consent is not required. Fair use and fair dealing unfortunately are really complex concepts in practice, like IP law generally, so it is rarely easy to declare definitely that a particular use of a copyrighted work will be protected by fair use/dealing.
Update: From the Register, Denmark joins France in Apple-kicking
"The problem for Apple now though is that there are lots of clever people in eastern lands churning out those 20 pound DVD players who have realised they can do the same trick with MP3 players that work just like iPods, only theirs would be a lot cheaper than 219 pounds plus VAT.
Worse still, mobile phones are now packing more processing power than the US space programme and their manufacturers want a piece of the MP3 action too.
So how do Apple keep their competitive advantage? Their best answer is something called Digital Rights Management. They sell music online, but it isn't sold in that universal MP3 format so beloved of pirates.
iTunes music is only playable under an Apple license, and then only by the person who pays for it. In other words iTunes is 80 per cent of the legal download market but only hardware blessed by Apple can play it. So unless you want to burn it back to the old technology that is the CD, that almost always means an iPod.
But iPods don't play the digitally protected formats used by other legal download services, so if you have an iPod and you're law abiding then you're locked into iTunes. It's a virtuous circle for them, but a vicious one for their competitors."
Which is why drm will ultimately fail. Let's see. Should I spend £219 on an iPod that will allow me to buy music from, er, Apple and no one else; or should I spend £20 on another digital music player that does the same as (or probably more than) the iPod, which will allow me to buy digital music from anyone who sells it?
I know - you can rip your CDs to the iPod and there are various other ways of getting music for it etc but contrary to what Livingstone says in response to comments, the situation with copying music like this is resolved, in the UK at least. Copying for personal use has long been accepted as 'fair use' in the US, in spite of the RIAA's briefings to the contrary, but UK copyright law does not permit the making of copies for personal use. Such copying is not considered "fair dealing" in the UK. Regarding the CD rippers having the consent of the copyright holder, if a use is fair use, then consent is not required. Fair use and fair dealing unfortunately are really complex concepts in practice, like IP law generally, so it is rarely easy to declare definitely that a particular use of a copyrighted work will be protected by fair use/dealing.
Update: From the Register, Denmark joins France in Apple-kicking
Friday, March 24, 2006
Lord Armstrong's ID card opt out
Lord Armstrong has apparently proposed an amendment to the ID cards bill which would allow people to apply to opt out of having a card when applying for a passport.
Berners Lee would like access to OS data
From the Guardian:
"The inventor of the world wide web has called for more open access to Ordnance Survey (OS) mapping data - and may get his wish later this year. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told an Oxford University audience last week getting "basic, raw data from Ordnance Survey" online would help build the "semantic web", which he defines as a web of data using standard formats so that relevant data can be found and processed by computers."
"The inventor of the world wide web has called for more open access to Ordnance Survey (OS) mapping data - and may get his wish later this year. Sir Tim Berners-Lee told an Oxford University audience last week getting "basic, raw data from Ordnance Survey" online would help build the "semantic web", which he defines as a web of data using standard formats so that relevant data can be found and processed by computers."
Libraries are not just about books
It's a pity that the Independent is now behind a paywall. Terence Blacker has an excellent article in it today about the value of libraries.
He's pleased about a 'Love Libraries' intitiative, backed by the great and the good in government and commerce and tagged with all the usual marketing speak, to redesign and promote three libraries in Newquay, Gravesend and Richmond. On the day it was announced though he was visiting a library in Northern Ireland, where he met a group of children who regularly go there after school.
"Here is the way it works in libraries like the one I visited. Situated near a council housing estate, it is a regular refuge after school for children, aged from seven or eight upwards, whose parents are out or unavailable. It is warm and light; it has computers and books.
With the help of conscientious and heroically patient librarians, the children receive encouragement and interest that they get neither at home nor at school and, largely though their own free will and enthusiasm, often develop and interest in books and the world of possibility and escape that they contain.
In a better world there would be no need for librarians to provide this kind of safety-net, but the fact is that, in many places they do. There is a danger that, as we learn to love libraries, these rather more needy and demanding consumers, who elsewhere tend to get ignored, forgotten and excluded, may be regarded by the marketing mentors as rather too problematic to fit in with their visionary transformations."
Spot on, though I do have one small quibble with his use of the term "consumers" (a word I dislike intensely but, like many others, overuse) to describe children. In doing so he is surrendering ground, allowing the marketing consultants' language to structure the terms of any debate.
He's pleased about a 'Love Libraries' intitiative, backed by the great and the good in government and commerce and tagged with all the usual marketing speak, to redesign and promote three libraries in Newquay, Gravesend and Richmond. On the day it was announced though he was visiting a library in Northern Ireland, where he met a group of children who regularly go there after school.
"Here is the way it works in libraries like the one I visited. Situated near a council housing estate, it is a regular refuge after school for children, aged from seven or eight upwards, whose parents are out or unavailable. It is warm and light; it has computers and books.
With the help of conscientious and heroically patient librarians, the children receive encouragement and interest that they get neither at home nor at school and, largely though their own free will and enthusiasm, often develop and interest in books and the world of possibility and escape that they contain.
In a better world there would be no need for librarians to provide this kind of safety-net, but the fact is that, in many places they do. There is a danger that, as we learn to love libraries, these rather more needy and demanding consumers, who elsewhere tend to get ignored, forgotten and excluded, may be regarded by the marketing mentors as rather too problematic to fit in with their visionary transformations."
Spot on, though I do have one small quibble with his use of the term "consumers" (a word I dislike intensely but, like many others, overuse) to describe children. In doing so he is surrendering ground, allowing the marketing consultants' language to structure the terms of any debate.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
French urge EU to force iTunes interoperability
From the Independent:
"France is pushing the European Union to break the dominance of Apple's iPod by forcing the company to allow songs downloaded from iTunes to be used on rival players.
The diplomatic push comes as the French parliament voted yesterday in favour of new laws that require Apple to reveal details of its anti-copying technology. Lawmakers are worried that the relationship between iTunes and the iPod is anti-competitive"
"France is pushing the European Union to break the dominance of Apple's iPod by forcing the company to allow songs downloaded from iTunes to be used on rival players.
The diplomatic push comes as the French parliament voted yesterday in favour of new laws that require Apple to reveal details of its anti-copying technology. Lawmakers are worried that the relationship between iTunes and the iPod is anti-competitive"
Isenberg: The Internet Experiment is not Finished
David Isenberg has been thinking about Jonathan Zittrain's ideas on the future of the Net. (Click on the article to zoom in).
"Zittrain proposes to preserve the Internet
in all its wildness, danger and opportunity by creating
another, parallel Internet that would be controlled,
secure, tame and predictable. The wild "red" Internet
and the tame "green" Internet would coexist within the
same end-user computer, where a software switch would
toggle between the two. He says that the computer user
could switch back and forth, "to ensure that valuable or
sensitive data was created and stored in the 'green'
mode, leaving 'red' mode for experimentation and play."
Zittrain sees problems with this, but thinks they're
workable. He says that Internet service providers might
charge more for a red connection, presuming that red
will be subject to more volume and abuse. He observes
that we will need a way of certifying green
applications, perhaps an "Underwriters Lab" for
software. And he sees a danger that the green machine,
"might be so restrictively conceived that most users
would find it unpalatable."
I see even more problems. Some of the Internet's value
lies beyond its generativity. There's huge value in the
ability to try out new ideas quickly and cheaply on
target markets, with real customers using real
applications. Suppose an innovator had an idea that
might appeal to typical green customers but could only
try the idea out on red users. Or, suppose the
gatekeepers of green charged too much to test new, red
ideas. The market test baby might go down the drain
unnoticed in the red bathwater...
There's another path between the Scylla of an Internet
where innovation is illegal and the Charybdis of an
Internet where innovation and problems are red-walled
against everyday use. This is the creation of green
applications on an otherwise red Internet. It's
happening today. My email client silently shuffles spam
into a junk mailbox and warns me about incoming viruses.
My iTunes music player has light digital rights
management that puts some controls on copying. My
browser suppresses pop-up ads and lets me manage cookies
if I want to endure that hassle to shield my privacy.
These programs – and others – will get better, smarter
and easier to use securely over time, thanks to the
generativity of the Internet exactly as it exists today."
Recommended. There are problems with both schemes but once the network-halting, computer-destroying digital Pearl Harbor event finally hits the Net, Jonathan's might be the only, at least temporarily, "politically acceptable" response. In either case the route to continuing to facilitate the innovation generativity of the Net and the protection of the Network and its ends from malware has got to be via tapping into the intelligence at the ends of the network. Though in terms of critical decision making on network design we should beware of popularity contests and always remember the base rate fallacy.
"Zittrain proposes to preserve the Internet
in all its wildness, danger and opportunity by creating
another, parallel Internet that would be controlled,
secure, tame and predictable. The wild "red" Internet
and the tame "green" Internet would coexist within the
same end-user computer, where a software switch would
toggle between the two. He says that the computer user
could switch back and forth, "to ensure that valuable or
sensitive data was created and stored in the 'green'
mode, leaving 'red' mode for experimentation and play."
Zittrain sees problems with this, but thinks they're
workable. He says that Internet service providers might
charge more for a red connection, presuming that red
will be subject to more volume and abuse. He observes
that we will need a way of certifying green
applications, perhaps an "Underwriters Lab" for
software. And he sees a danger that the green machine,
"might be so restrictively conceived that most users
would find it unpalatable."
I see even more problems. Some of the Internet's value
lies beyond its generativity. There's huge value in the
ability to try out new ideas quickly and cheaply on
target markets, with real customers using real
applications. Suppose an innovator had an idea that
might appeal to typical green customers but could only
try the idea out on red users. Or, suppose the
gatekeepers of green charged too much to test new, red
ideas. The market test baby might go down the drain
unnoticed in the red bathwater...
There's another path between the Scylla of an Internet
where innovation is illegal and the Charybdis of an
Internet where innovation and problems are red-walled
against everyday use. This is the creation of green
applications on an otherwise red Internet. It's
happening today. My email client silently shuffles spam
into a junk mailbox and warns me about incoming viruses.
My iTunes music player has light digital rights
management that puts some controls on copying. My
browser suppresses pop-up ads and lets me manage cookies
if I want to endure that hassle to shield my privacy.
These programs – and others – will get better, smarter
and easier to use securely over time, thanks to the
generativity of the Internet exactly as it exists today."
Recommended. There are problems with both schemes but once the network-halting, computer-destroying digital Pearl Harbor event finally hits the Net, Jonathan's might be the only, at least temporarily, "politically acceptable" response. In either case the route to continuing to facilitate the innovation generativity of the Net and the protection of the Network and its ends from malware has got to be via tapping into the intelligence at the ends of the network. Though in terms of critical decision making on network design we should beware of popularity contests and always remember the base rate fallacy.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Libraries and The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1935
Research, Libraries, and Fair Use: The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1935
Abstract:
"The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1935 was a voluntary agreement that set guidelines for the limits of acceptable reproduction of copyrighted materials on behalf of scholars. Developed in response to the challenge posed by the easy and inexpensive photographic reproduction of research materials, the Agreement allowed library, archives, museum, or similar institutions to make single photographic copies of a part of a copyrighted work in lieu of loaning the physical item.
The copies were not supposed to substitute for the purchase of the original work, and they were intended solely to facilitate research. Liability for misuse was to rest with the individual requesting the copy, and not with the institution making the reproduction. The Gentlemen's Agreement has long been recognized as one of the most important landmarks in the history of the fair use privilege.
In addition, the model of consensual voluntary guidelines agreed to by copyright owners and users, first used with the Gentlemen's Agreement, has become an important technique in clarifying the limits of fair use. Yet little attention has been paid to its genesis or intended audience.
Most commentators view the agreement as primarily a product of long and thoughtful negotiation with librarians, and hence a reflection of their interests. A closer examination of the history of the creation of the Gentlemen's Agreement, however, reveals both the limitations of the common assumptions about the Gentlemen's Agreement and also the limitations of mutually-agreed upon guidelines.
The individuals involved with the negotiations from both the scholarly and publishing side were far from representative of their respective areas, and had no authority to negotiate on behalf of their respective spheres. The Agreement itself was largely a product of one afternoon's meeting, with limited discussion and review afterwards.
Furthermore, the Gentlemen's Agreement was intended to serve the needs of research scholars, not librarians. Through an accident of history, however, it was a librarian who conducted the primary negotiations with publishers. As a result, library interests, and not the interests of the research community, came to dominate. Furthermore, the librarian who led the negotiations was different from most of his colleagues in both his professional dependence on the good will of New York publishers and the limited scope of his own library's involvement with library reproduction.
As a result, broader issues, such as the educational use of copyrighted material or the extent of acceptable copying under fair use, were consciously excluded from the discussions. Most of all, the Agreement began the process of subjecting to legal scrutiny private behaviors that up to that point had existed outside of the copyright system. Private actions that had needed no defense in the past came to be viewed as potential infringements of copyright that needed the permission of the copyright owner. Copyright, which up to this time had been a system for controlling publication and widespread commercial distribution of material, began to be seen as a system for controlling private reproduction and use of copyrighted material.
Codifying an agreed-upon set of sanctioned behaviors was not without its dangers. In particular, behaviors that were not part of the initial discussions and hence were not officially sanctioned by the Agreement suddenly seemed suspect rather than simply unresolved. The Gentlemen's Agreement thus began to be seen by some as a defacto cap on the extent of acceptable reproduction by librarians and researchers. In the 1976 Copyright Act, the limited vision of acceptable behavior by librarians acting on behalf of researchers became codified in law in Section 108. In very real ways, researchers, librarians, archivists, and museum specialists still live with the consequences of the process that led to the development of the Gentlemen's Agreement."
Fascinating. The full paper runs to 46 pages (317 kb pdf). Thanks to Mary Minow at the LibraryLaw Blog for the link.
Abstract:
"The Gentlemen's Agreement of 1935 was a voluntary agreement that set guidelines for the limits of acceptable reproduction of copyrighted materials on behalf of scholars. Developed in response to the challenge posed by the easy and inexpensive photographic reproduction of research materials, the Agreement allowed library, archives, museum, or similar institutions to make single photographic copies of a part of a copyrighted work in lieu of loaning the physical item.
The copies were not supposed to substitute for the purchase of the original work, and they were intended solely to facilitate research. Liability for misuse was to rest with the individual requesting the copy, and not with the institution making the reproduction. The Gentlemen's Agreement has long been recognized as one of the most important landmarks in the history of the fair use privilege.
In addition, the model of consensual voluntary guidelines agreed to by copyright owners and users, first used with the Gentlemen's Agreement, has become an important technique in clarifying the limits of fair use. Yet little attention has been paid to its genesis or intended audience.
Most commentators view the agreement as primarily a product of long and thoughtful negotiation with librarians, and hence a reflection of their interests. A closer examination of the history of the creation of the Gentlemen's Agreement, however, reveals both the limitations of the common assumptions about the Gentlemen's Agreement and also the limitations of mutually-agreed upon guidelines.
The individuals involved with the negotiations from both the scholarly and publishing side were far from representative of their respective areas, and had no authority to negotiate on behalf of their respective spheres. The Agreement itself was largely a product of one afternoon's meeting, with limited discussion and review afterwards.
Furthermore, the Gentlemen's Agreement was intended to serve the needs of research scholars, not librarians. Through an accident of history, however, it was a librarian who conducted the primary negotiations with publishers. As a result, library interests, and not the interests of the research community, came to dominate. Furthermore, the librarian who led the negotiations was different from most of his colleagues in both his professional dependence on the good will of New York publishers and the limited scope of his own library's involvement with library reproduction.
As a result, broader issues, such as the educational use of copyrighted material or the extent of acceptable copying under fair use, were consciously excluded from the discussions. Most of all, the Agreement began the process of subjecting to legal scrutiny private behaviors that up to that point had existed outside of the copyright system. Private actions that had needed no defense in the past came to be viewed as potential infringements of copyright that needed the permission of the copyright owner. Copyright, which up to this time had been a system for controlling publication and widespread commercial distribution of material, began to be seen as a system for controlling private reproduction and use of copyrighted material.
Codifying an agreed-upon set of sanctioned behaviors was not without its dangers. In particular, behaviors that were not part of the initial discussions and hence were not officially sanctioned by the Agreement suddenly seemed suspect rather than simply unresolved. The Gentlemen's Agreement thus began to be seen by some as a defacto cap on the extent of acceptable reproduction by librarians and researchers. In the 1976 Copyright Act, the limited vision of acceptable behavior by librarians acting on behalf of researchers became codified in law in Section 108. In very real ways, researchers, librarians, archivists, and museum specialists still live with the consequences of the process that led to the development of the Gentlemen's Agreement."
Fascinating. The full paper runs to 46 pages (317 kb pdf). Thanks to Mary Minow at the LibraryLaw Blog for the link.
UKIP activist gets £10k for cahtroom defamation
A UKIP activist has received an award of £10000 in damages after suing a woman for defamation over comments in an internet chatroom
Absolute power
I wrote to a colleague about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill this morning and then I saw this in the Guardian, Tuesday March 21:
"The Cabinet at its meeting this afternoon decided on the text of the [...] Bill [...] If this bill is passed, the [...] Government will be endowed with absolute dictatorial powers. The Act will enable the Cabinet to legislate and to make laws even if these "mark a deviation from the Constitution", [...]"
I didn't mention the report was from Tuesday March 21, 1933 and the deliberate gaps were included to hide the fact that I was referring to the then German government. I know. I know. I've succumbed to Godwin's law but the parallels were rather striking, even though I accept the UK government are sincere in their belief that the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is purely supposed to be a mechanism for cutting through red tape and will not be used for "controversial" matters. Lib Dem MP, David Haworth, was right to remind us recently, though, of James Madison's advice in The Federalist Papers: when handing out political power remember that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”
Update: Marina Hyde would probably accuse me of being overly generous towards the goverment. She seems to think they're not even very good at deceiving us any more. "It is not all very well to have had one's dreams trodden so unsoftly upon by the Blair administration. None the less, it has happened. But if we are to be routinely misled, could it not at least be with some modicum of skill, some pretence to rigour, something that resembles anything other than a two fingers to sentient beings over the age of seven?"
"The Cabinet at its meeting this afternoon decided on the text of the [...] Bill [...] If this bill is passed, the [...] Government will be endowed with absolute dictatorial powers. The Act will enable the Cabinet to legislate and to make laws even if these "mark a deviation from the Constitution", [...]"
I didn't mention the report was from Tuesday March 21, 1933 and the deliberate gaps were included to hide the fact that I was referring to the then German government. I know. I know. I've succumbed to Godwin's law but the parallels were rather striking, even though I accept the UK government are sincere in their belief that the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is purely supposed to be a mechanism for cutting through red tape and will not be used for "controversial" matters. Lib Dem MP, David Haworth, was right to remind us recently, though, of James Madison's advice in The Federalist Papers: when handing out political power remember that “enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”
Update: Marina Hyde would probably accuse me of being overly generous towards the goverment. She seems to think they're not even very good at deceiving us any more. "It is not all very well to have had one's dreams trodden so unsoftly upon by the Blair administration. None the less, it has happened. But if we are to be routinely misled, could it not at least be with some modicum of skill, some pretence to rigour, something that resembles anything other than a two fingers to sentient beings over the age of seven?"
Damning Cato report on the DMCA
This damning 28 page report on the DMCA from Timothy B. Lee of the Cato Institute is a surprisingly quick and entertaining read. There's nothing new here but he tells all the important stories from the Rio to Lexmark, stopping off at Sony, Sklyarov, Felten and others along the way. He takes aim at various IP expansionists and Congressional ignorance and has this to say about the now retired Jack Valenti in his conclusion:
"Contrary to Valenti’s predictions, the VCR turned out to be a great boon to the movie industry... If this was Hollywood’s Boston Strangler, every woman home alone should hope for a visit. Well worth a ten minutes of your time."
Well worth a ten minutes of your time.
Update: Cory is pleased the Cato Institute has finally got off the fence on drm.
"Contrary to Valenti’s predictions, the VCR turned out to be a great boon to the movie industry... If this was Hollywood’s Boston Strangler, every woman home alone should hope for a visit. Well worth a ten minutes of your time."
Well worth a ten minutes of your time.
Update: Cory is pleased the Cato Institute has finally got off the fence on drm.
The slow start of cultural environmentalism
Mike Madison doesn't think the metaphor of "cultural environmentalism" works.
"10 years after the inauguration of “cultural environmentalism,” I don’t think that the metaphor works. I read the blogged summaries of the presentations. I read the colloquies with the commentators. I’ve even read earlier versions of some of the papers. And I can’t help but come away with the sense that this project — the reinjection of social and cultural theory and non-utilitarian economic arguments into progressive readings of intellectual property law and policy — is just now starting to get off the ground. After 10 years. Moreover, it’s starting to get off the ground in a way that seems largely to leave the “environmentalism” metaphor behind...
Why doesn’t the environmental metaphor have more traction in information policy debates? I think that the reason goes back to Jamie Boyle’s introductory explanation of the initial importance of the metaphor: The “cultural environment” was a rhetorical device, a way to link seemingly disparate debates and to make invisible issues more salient. What the cultural environment didn’t and wasn’t intended to do, at least not on a broad scale, and at least not now, is connect with our everyday and ordinary experience of culture. “Cultural environmentalism” resonates for us because we recall environmentalism as a political movement. “Cultural environmentalism” is a call to arms. Au barricades! But my own mixed metaphors suggest why this hasn’t happened on a broad scale. “Culture” doesn’t resonate for us as “our environment.” Socially constructed it may be, but “the” environment is place and space. Culture, in a very basic and colloquial sense, is stuff. So, as some of the commentary points out, we need more metaphors and narratives and empirics about stuff. If the environmentalist metaphor is ever going to get stronger and take hold, it needs to be connected to stuff."
He's right about needing more metaphors, narratives and empirics but our information ecology, in a digital society, extends beyond culture to encompass our personal, social, organisational, legal, economic and physical environmental contexts; and the environmental metaphor is absolutely appropriate. It's vague and widely misunderstood which is why we need more stories about it. It does however pitch an idea at a level of abstraction which enables people to see connections between issues that might not otherwise be obvious. As James Boyle says, it is the articulation of a shared interest that beings that interest into being. The duck hunter and the bird watcher might not like each other but they have a shared interest in the protection of the ecology of the wetlands. Likewise a parent might be wary of the ID card protestor but they have a shared interest in transparent access to the process through which decisions will be made to deploy a pay per view digital educational system or an ID card system.
I'd probably agree with him that culture is stuff (much to the disgust of certain colleagues!) but our digital lives are getting played out in a digital place and space that is having a very real impact on our physical place and space. Perhaps it is 'digital environmentalism' that we are looking for? I don't really like the term but we can work on our language without throwing out the environment metaphor, which has too much powerful potential to jetison just because we haven't yet found a decent way to tell the story.
"10 years after the inauguration of “cultural environmentalism,” I don’t think that the metaphor works. I read the blogged summaries of the presentations. I read the colloquies with the commentators. I’ve even read earlier versions of some of the papers. And I can’t help but come away with the sense that this project — the reinjection of social and cultural theory and non-utilitarian economic arguments into progressive readings of intellectual property law and policy — is just now starting to get off the ground. After 10 years. Moreover, it’s starting to get off the ground in a way that seems largely to leave the “environmentalism” metaphor behind...
Why doesn’t the environmental metaphor have more traction in information policy debates? I think that the reason goes back to Jamie Boyle’s introductory explanation of the initial importance of the metaphor: The “cultural environment” was a rhetorical device, a way to link seemingly disparate debates and to make invisible issues more salient. What the cultural environment didn’t and wasn’t intended to do, at least not on a broad scale, and at least not now, is connect with our everyday and ordinary experience of culture. “Cultural environmentalism” resonates for us because we recall environmentalism as a political movement. “Cultural environmentalism” is a call to arms. Au barricades! But my own mixed metaphors suggest why this hasn’t happened on a broad scale. “Culture” doesn’t resonate for us as “our environment.” Socially constructed it may be, but “the” environment is place and space. Culture, in a very basic and colloquial sense, is stuff. So, as some of the commentary points out, we need more metaphors and narratives and empirics about stuff. If the environmentalist metaphor is ever going to get stronger and take hold, it needs to be connected to stuff."
He's right about needing more metaphors, narratives and empirics but our information ecology, in a digital society, extends beyond culture to encompass our personal, social, organisational, legal, economic and physical environmental contexts; and the environmental metaphor is absolutely appropriate. It's vague and widely misunderstood which is why we need more stories about it. It does however pitch an idea at a level of abstraction which enables people to see connections between issues that might not otherwise be obvious. As James Boyle says, it is the articulation of a shared interest that beings that interest into being. The duck hunter and the bird watcher might not like each other but they have a shared interest in the protection of the ecology of the wetlands. Likewise a parent might be wary of the ID card protestor but they have a shared interest in transparent access to the process through which decisions will be made to deploy a pay per view digital educational system or an ID card system.
I'd probably agree with him that culture is stuff (much to the disgust of certain colleagues!) but our digital lives are getting played out in a digital place and space that is having a very real impact on our physical place and space. Perhaps it is 'digital environmentalism' that we are looking for? I don't really like the term but we can work on our language without throwing out the environment metaphor, which has too much powerful potential to jetison just because we haven't yet found a decent way to tell the story.
New French will require Apple to open iTunes
Well the French parliament has given the go ahead to a law which will require Apple's iTunes to be interoperable with competitors' services. It now goes forward for confirmation by the French Senate.
You might recall Apple is facing an antitrust investigation over iTunes in the United States and the company's rather hysterical reaction when RealNetworks figured out a way to sell songs online to iPod owners.
“We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] and other laws.”
So they considered suing RealNetworks for circumventing the iPod drm to facilitate interoperability. Instead, in the end they tweaked the iTunes drm so it wouldn't work with the RealNetworks music again and there have been various rounds in this tit for tat ever since.
Now the French parliament are trying to say that all drm should be interoperable. It remains to be seen what impact this will have. I still think drm will die off in the longer term but not before it has done some significant damage and it will never truly become properly extinct. A possible alternative is the evolution of a universal drm standard but what would be the point of that other than as a focus for strangling future innovation? Ooops. Nearly forgot myself. That is the whole point.
Update: Apple are rolling out the hysterical rhetoric again, saying the French decision "will result in state-sponsored piracy."
You might recall Apple is facing an antitrust investigation over iTunes in the United States and the company's rather hysterical reaction when RealNetworks figured out a way to sell songs online to iPod owners.
“We are stunned that RealNetworks has adopted the tactics and ethics of a hacker to break into the iPod, and we are investigating the implications of their actions under the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] and other laws.”
So they considered suing RealNetworks for circumventing the iPod drm to facilitate interoperability. Instead, in the end they tweaked the iTunes drm so it wouldn't work with the RealNetworks music again and there have been various rounds in this tit for tat ever since.
Now the French parliament are trying to say that all drm should be interoperable. It remains to be seen what impact this will have. I still think drm will die off in the longer term but not before it has done some significant damage and it will never truly become properly extinct. A possible alternative is the evolution of a universal drm standard but what would be the point of that other than as a focus for strangling future innovation? Ooops. Nearly forgot myself. That is the whole point.
Update: Apple are rolling out the hysterical rhetoric again, saying the French decision "will result in state-sponsored piracy."
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
EUCD Review
Professor Bernt Hugenholtz is to lead the planned review of the EU Copyright and Related Rights Directive of 2001, with a wider remit than originally intended. Hugenholtz is Professor of Intellectual Property Law and Director of the Institute for Information Law of the University of Amsterdam (IViR). He also chairs the Intellectual Property Task Force of the Legal Advisory Board of the European Commission.
According to Michelle Childs,
" Originally it was to be a review only of implementation, but now it will be an evaluation review of the Directive i.e an evaluation of whether or not has it achieved its policy objectives. This is an important change. The most recent evaluation report from DG Internal Market, on the Database Directive, was the first evaluation of an IP right based on evidence rather than rhetoric. It found that granting increased rights to database owners had not achieved its policy aims of increasing EU competitiveness against the US, in fact the reverse...
Initial signs are encouraging, as the terms of the tender for the initial evaluation are broad: the study must include a review of the contribution of copyright to knowledge economy, the role of consumers, the way Member States have transposed exceptions and limitations in the Directive into national legislation ( an increasingly controversial issue as the current disputes in France over their implementation of the Copyright Directive show .) It will also look at technical protecion measures (TPMs) and generally any difficulties that arise for right holders, commercial users, consumers ,scientific and academic users and libraries."
According to Michelle Childs,
" Originally it was to be a review only of implementation, but now it will be an evaluation review of the Directive i.e an evaluation of whether or not has it achieved its policy objectives. This is an important change. The most recent evaluation report from DG Internal Market, on the Database Directive, was the first evaluation of an IP right based on evidence rather than rhetoric. It found that granting increased rights to database owners had not achieved its policy aims of increasing EU competitiveness against the US, in fact the reverse...
Initial signs are encouraging, as the terms of the tender for the initial evaluation are broad: the study must include a review of the contribution of copyright to knowledge economy, the role of consumers, the way Member States have transposed exceptions and limitations in the Directive into national legislation ( an increasingly controversial issue as the current disputes in France over their implementation of the Copyright Directive show .) It will also look at technical protecion measures (TPMs) and generally any difficulties that arise for right holders, commercial users, consumers ,scientific and academic users and libraries."
Wibbi central government were accountable like local government
William Heath, angry at his increased council tax bill wonders wouldn't it be better if
"Whitehall were as thorough and accountable as local councils. I have a stupid idea to create a local government panel to scrutinise government departments, or give local government visiting rights at the NAO just to balance things up a bit. Can government not be simpler and leaner? Less expensive, and less oppressively tedious? Or is that underestimating the complexity of what government inevitably has to do?"
"Whitehall were as thorough and accountable as local councils. I have a stupid idea to create a local government panel to scrutinise government departments, or give local government visiting rights at the NAO just to balance things up a bit. Can government not be simpler and leaner? Less expensive, and less oppressively tedious? Or is that underestimating the complexity of what government inevitably has to do?"
Former MI6 agent says ID cards a present to terrorists
From the Scotsman:
"A NATIONAL identity card scheme will be a "present" to terrorists, criminal gangs and foreign spies, one of Britain's most respected former intelligence agents has told ministers.
The warning from Daphne Park, who served for 30 years as a senior controller for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, came as the parliamentary power struggle over the identity cards bill dragged on...
Baroness Park, who was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher, passed a withering verdict on the proposed cards, ridiculing ministers' suggestions that the system will make people safer. In fact, she said, the complete opposite is true.
"The very creation of such an enormous national identity register will be a present to terrorists; it will be a splendid thing for them to disrupt and blow up," she said.
"It will also provide valuable information to organised crime and to the intelligence services of unfriendly countries. It will be accessible to all of these," she said...
Although she has repeatedly refused invitations to publish her memoirs, many of Baroness Park's exploits as a spy are in the public domain - she is something of a living legend in the British intelligence community.
Among her Cold War postings were extensive service in Moscow, running agents inside the Soviet regime. During the Vietnam war, she was a covert operative in Hanoi.
She is also known to have been in Congo during the turbulent 1960s, at one point smuggling a defecting official out of the country in the boot of her car."
"A NATIONAL identity card scheme will be a "present" to terrorists, criminal gangs and foreign spies, one of Britain's most respected former intelligence agents has told ministers.
The warning from Daphne Park, who served for 30 years as a senior controller for MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, came as the parliamentary power struggle over the identity cards bill dragged on...
Baroness Park, who was made a peer by Margaret Thatcher, passed a withering verdict on the proposed cards, ridiculing ministers' suggestions that the system will make people safer. In fact, she said, the complete opposite is true.
"The very creation of such an enormous national identity register will be a present to terrorists; it will be a splendid thing for them to disrupt and blow up," she said.
"It will also provide valuable information to organised crime and to the intelligence services of unfriendly countries. It will be accessible to all of these," she said...
Although she has repeatedly refused invitations to publish her memoirs, many of Baroness Park's exploits as a spy are in the public domain - she is something of a living legend in the British intelligence community.
Among her Cold War postings were extensive service in Moscow, running agents inside the Soviet regime. During the Vietnam war, she was a covert operative in Hanoi.
She is also known to have been in Congo during the turbulent 1960s, at one point smuggling a defecting official out of the country in the boot of her car."
Paying repeatedly for data
From the Guardian's Free Our Data campaign
"Paying twice for data? Through your council, you might be paying EIGHT times
This morning an interesting email dropped into the Guardian’s inbox. It’s quoted here in full with the permission of the author (see end).
>>
I look after all the maps for the council where I work and yes, even government departments and councils etc have to pay for Ordnance Survey data.
Local government has interesting scenarios where the taxpayer will pay three times or more for Ordnance Survey Data. One of the most interesting scenarios is Planning Applications.
* 1st payment to OS: if a member of the public wants to submit a Planning Application they can buy a site plan map, usually from the council (cost of about £25 for an 4 x A4 sheets) or other OS licenced data reseller.
# 2nd Payment to OS: the Planning Authority (local council) also have to buy their map base from Ordnance Survey every year. Part of what is called the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) [and a whole other debate hangs around the MSA - CA].
# 3rd Payment to OS: the member of the public also pays for Ordnance Survey data as part of their normal taxes.
There is also a 4th Payment (which is the biggest scandal) that goes to Ordnance Survey and the Post Office, to use our council-created and council-maintained Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) or local address database. Even though all the councils create and maintain their own address gazetteer, we have to pay the OS and Post Office for the privilege of using that address data.
The OS says that it owns the copyright of the position of the address, and the Post Office says it own the copyright of the address (because it adds the postcode). Councils therefore have to pay a per-click cost to OS and Post Office to use the council-created addresses on our own website address lookup facilities.
The irony about all this is that the local council creates the address in the first place (Street Naming and Numbering sections) and gives (for FREE) this information (including site plan) to the Post Office and Ordnance Survey - so they are in essence charging the local council for its own information. Therefore the public have to pay the Council to create the address (Street Naming and Numbering dept) and then pay again to the OS and the Post Office for the right [for the council] to use it..."
"Paying twice for data? Through your council, you might be paying EIGHT times
This morning an interesting email dropped into the Guardian’s inbox. It’s quoted here in full with the permission of the author (see end).
>>
I look after all the maps for the council where I work and yes, even government departments and councils etc have to pay for Ordnance Survey data.
Local government has interesting scenarios where the taxpayer will pay three times or more for Ordnance Survey Data. One of the most interesting scenarios is Planning Applications.
* 1st payment to OS: if a member of the public wants to submit a Planning Application they can buy a site plan map, usually from the council (cost of about £25 for an 4 x A4 sheets) or other OS licenced data reseller.
# 2nd Payment to OS: the Planning Authority (local council) also have to buy their map base from Ordnance Survey every year. Part of what is called the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA) [and a whole other debate hangs around the MSA - CA].
# 3rd Payment to OS: the member of the public also pays for Ordnance Survey data as part of their normal taxes.
There is also a 4th Payment (which is the biggest scandal) that goes to Ordnance Survey and the Post Office, to use our council-created and council-maintained Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG) or local address database. Even though all the councils create and maintain their own address gazetteer, we have to pay the OS and Post Office for the privilege of using that address data.
The OS says that it owns the copyright of the position of the address, and the Post Office says it own the copyright of the address (because it adds the postcode). Councils therefore have to pay a per-click cost to OS and Post Office to use the council-created addresses on our own website address lookup facilities.
The irony about all this is that the local council creates the address in the first place (Street Naming and Numbering sections) and gives (for FREE) this information (including site plan) to the Post Office and Ordnance Survey - so they are in essence charging the local council for its own information. Therefore the public have to pay the Council to create the address (Street Naming and Numbering dept) and then pay again to the OS and the Post Office for the right [for the council] to use it..."
France will let MSFT play iTunes
Cory has more on the French implementation of the 2001 copyright directive.
"The French Parliament is considering a law that would force music-lockware companies like Apple and Microsoft to license their anti-copying software to other companies, so that customers who bought crippled music could play it on other vendors' players.
This is a good step, but for me, it leaves the big question hanging: will Apple and Microsoft have to license their players to free and open source software authors? The problem is that anti-copying software always comes with a licensing condition that requires implementors to design their players so that users can't modify them. It's like requiring everyone who licenses your internal combustion engine design to weld the hood shut...
Now, given that all anti-copying software requires that users can't modify it -- because you could change the "don't copy this" routine to a "allow this to be copied" routine -- and given that FOSS requires user-modifiability, how will the French Parliament resolve it?
An analogy: Apple iTunes is like a blacksmith who puts a toll-box at the head of a major road. Unless your horse is shod with his shoes, you may not pass. The French Parliament might require Apple to let horses wearing Microsoft shoes to use its road, and that's great -- if you're on horseback.
But if you're in a car, you're screwed. FOSS is an entirely different industrial production system that Apple and Microsoft crippleware can't accommodate -- will the French Parliament outlaw it because of that? Do the blacksmiths get full employment for life, even if it strangles the automobile in its cradle? "
"The French Parliament is considering a law that would force music-lockware companies like Apple and Microsoft to license their anti-copying software to other companies, so that customers who bought crippled music could play it on other vendors' players.
This is a good step, but for me, it leaves the big question hanging: will Apple and Microsoft have to license their players to free and open source software authors? The problem is that anti-copying software always comes with a licensing condition that requires implementors to design their players so that users can't modify them. It's like requiring everyone who licenses your internal combustion engine design to weld the hood shut...
Now, given that all anti-copying software requires that users can't modify it -- because you could change the "don't copy this" routine to a "allow this to be copied" routine -- and given that FOSS requires user-modifiability, how will the French Parliament resolve it?
An analogy: Apple iTunes is like a blacksmith who puts a toll-box at the head of a major road. Unless your horse is shod with his shoes, you may not pass. The French Parliament might require Apple to let horses wearing Microsoft shoes to use its road, and that's great -- if you're on horseback.
But if you're in a car, you're screwed. FOSS is an entirely different industrial production system that Apple and Microsoft crippleware can't accommodate -- will the French Parliament outlaw it because of that? Do the blacksmiths get full employment for life, even if it strangles the automobile in its cradle? "
Bruce Lehman says TRIPS was a mistake
Bruce Lehman who was President Clinton's IP chief and one of the prime movers behind the international agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS, now says TRIPS was a mistake, according to Ian Brown.
"Lehman now believes TRIPS has been a failure for the United States, because the WTO agreement in which it is included opened US markets to overseas manufactured goods and destroyed the US manufacturing industry. He feels that the US has kept its part of the TRIPS bargain, but that with 90% piracy in China, higher-end developing nations have not. In retrospect, he feels the US should instead have introduced labour and environmental standards into the WTO agreement so that jobs would not be lost in the US manufacturing sector to countries with few environmental standards and weak unions..."
Er does he mean the US chose the wrong tools to bias international trade in favour of the US?
"Mr Lehman also feels that were there to be a penicillin-resistant anthrax outbreak in the US, a compulsory licence would be issued for Cipro like a shot were Bayer unable to meet demand. Shame that the EU has waived its right to use such compulsory licences even in public health emergencies."
He's probably right that the US government would step in with such a compulsory licence. I suspect EU governments would attempt to do likewise and then express amazement when they found themselves tied up in legal red tape of their own making.
"Lehman now believes TRIPS has been a failure for the United States, because the WTO agreement in which it is included opened US markets to overseas manufactured goods and destroyed the US manufacturing industry. He feels that the US has kept its part of the TRIPS bargain, but that with 90% piracy in China, higher-end developing nations have not. In retrospect, he feels the US should instead have introduced labour and environmental standards into the WTO agreement so that jobs would not be lost in the US manufacturing sector to countries with few environmental standards and weak unions..."
Er does he mean the US chose the wrong tools to bias international trade in favour of the US?
"Mr Lehman also feels that were there to be a penicillin-resistant anthrax outbreak in the US, a compulsory licence would be issued for Cipro like a shot were Bayer unable to meet demand. Shame that the EU has waived its right to use such compulsory licences even in public health emergencies."
He's probably right that the US government would step in with such a compulsory licence. I suspect EU governments would attempt to do likewise and then express amazement when they found themselves tied up in legal red tape of their own making.
Monday, March 20, 2006
DRM and the second law
We have another reason to be concerned about drm and the link between the second law of thermodynamics and digital information. DRM drastically shortens battery life and hence contributes to increasing overall energy consumption.
"Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them. Take, for instance, the critically acclaimed Creative Zen Vision:M, with a rated battery life of up to 14 hours for audio and 4 hours for video. CNET tested it at nearly 16 hours, with MP3s--impressive indeed. Upon playing back only WMA subscription tracks, the Vision:M scored at just more than 12 hours. That's a loss of almost 4 hours, and you haven't even turned the backlight on yet."
"Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them. Take, for instance, the critically acclaimed Creative Zen Vision:M, with a rated battery life of up to 14 hours for audio and 4 hours for video. CNET tested it at nearly 16 hours, with MP3s--impressive indeed. Upon playing back only WMA subscription tracks, the Vision:M scored at just more than 12 hours. That's a loss of almost 4 hours, and you haven't even turned the backlight on yet."
The weary policeman
PC Copperfield brings an engaging brand of weary resigned humour to the latest Met crime fighting initiative.
"There’s a new initiative from Inspector Clive French in which dog owners will be urged to be vigilant and report “useful information on low level crimes”. Encouraging members of the public to telephone the police is, in my experience, a recipe for disaster: the people that you might want to call (reasonable folks whose minds are not addled by drink or drugs) have long since realised that making such a call would be at best a waste of time and at worst an inadvertent admission of a criminal offence. This leaves the bored and the mentally ill, who never seem to stop calling us.
Mrs C. read the article and asked, “Well why aren’t the police on the streets reporting useful information on low level crimes ?” Which just goes to show that policing should be left to the professionals and not enthusiastic amateurs like Mrs. C. The police? On the streets? Mad woman."
"There’s a new initiative from Inspector Clive French in which dog owners will be urged to be vigilant and report “useful information on low level crimes”. Encouraging members of the public to telephone the police is, in my experience, a recipe for disaster: the people that you might want to call (reasonable folks whose minds are not addled by drink or drugs) have long since realised that making such a call would be at best a waste of time and at worst an inadvertent admission of a criminal offence. This leaves the bored and the mentally ill, who never seem to stop calling us.
Mrs C. read the article and asked, “Well why aren’t the police on the streets reporting useful information on low level crimes ?” Which just goes to show that policing should be left to the professionals and not enthusiastic amateurs like Mrs. C. The police? On the streets? Mad woman."
OpenMed a finalist in Stockholm Challenge 2006 award.
From the Hindustan Times, "OpenMED, an open access Internet archive for research works on medical and allied sciences that is hosted by an Indian government body, has been nominated as a finalist for the prestigious Stockholm Challenge 2006 award.
Backed by the National Informatics Centre, OpenMED allows authors and researchers to self-archive their scientific and technical documents. The Stockholm Challenge is a prominent global networking programme for information and communication technology (ICT) entrepreneurs and its award is given away in the Swedish capital in the summer"
Backed by the National Informatics Centre, OpenMED allows authors and researchers to self-archive their scientific and technical documents. The Stockholm Challenge is a prominent global networking programme for information and communication technology (ICT) entrepreneurs and its award is given away in the Swedish capital in the summer"
Aussie libraries reluctant to join Google book scheme
Australian libraries are reportedly proving reluctant to sign up to the Google Book scheme until the various outstanding legal disputes with publishers and authors are settled.
Crichton on Patents
Michael Crichton is getting concerned about some of the excesses of the US patent system.
"• The Earth revolves around the Sun.
• The speed of light is a constant.
• Apples fall to earth because of gravity.
• Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes.
• Elevated uric acid is linked to gout.
• Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease.
• Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.
ACTUALLY, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient's test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.
All this may sound absurd, but it is the heart of a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday."
"• The Earth revolves around the Sun.
• The speed of light is a constant.
• Apples fall to earth because of gravity.
• Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes.
• Elevated uric acid is linked to gout.
• Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease.
• Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.
ACTUALLY, I can't make that last statement. A corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any doctor who reads a patient's test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.
All this may sound absurd, but it is the heart of a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday."
CRIA study says P2P good for the music business
A Canadian Recording Industry Association study has determined that P2P file swapping is good for the music business, according to Michael Geist.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
The sinister ID card scheme
Henry Porter has been hoping again that more people will realise that the "ID project is even more sinister than we first thought"
Practically every week in these columns, I urge you to pay attention to the government's theft of our liberties. I would feel a bore and an obsessive if I hadn't pored over the ID card bill last week and read Hansard's account of the exchanges in both houses. One of the most chilling passages in the bill is section 13 which deals with the 'invalidity and surrender' of ID cards, which, in effect, describes the withdrawal of a person's identity by the state. For, without this card, it will be almost impossible to function, to exist as a citizen in the UK. Despite the cost to you, this card will not be your property.
People keep asking me what they can do about the lurch into Labour's velvet tyranny and I keep replying that the only way for us is to re-engage with the politics of our country...
Outside parliament, what needs to happen is the formation of the broadest possible front against these changes, a movement which deploys the most principled democratic minds in the country to argue with the lazy and stupid view that if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from Labour's attack on liberty. I believe that will happen."
I admire his optimism.
Practically every week in these columns, I urge you to pay attention to the government's theft of our liberties. I would feel a bore and an obsessive if I hadn't pored over the ID card bill last week and read Hansard's account of the exchanges in both houses. One of the most chilling passages in the bill is section 13 which deals with the 'invalidity and surrender' of ID cards, which, in effect, describes the withdrawal of a person's identity by the state. For, without this card, it will be almost impossible to function, to exist as a citizen in the UK. Despite the cost to you, this card will not be your property.
People keep asking me what they can do about the lurch into Labour's velvet tyranny and I keep replying that the only way for us is to re-engage with the politics of our country...
Outside parliament, what needs to happen is the formation of the broadest possible front against these changes, a movement which deploys the most principled democratic minds in the country to argue with the lazy and stupid view that if you've got nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear from Labour's attack on liberty. I believe that will happen."
I admire his optimism.
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