The Independent reports that Lotfi Rossi, an Algerian living in the UK who was accused of involvement in the flight training of the 9/11 attackers, has lost his case in the judicial review of the refusal of the UK Home Secretary to agree to compensation for a miscarriage of justice. Mr Rossi's case featured in Amnesty International's damning report in 2006 UNITED KINGDOM Human rights: a broken promise (see section 2.4).
"On 21 September 2001, Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian man then aged 27, was arrested in Slough, England, reportedly at gun-point at 3 am...on suspicion of involvement in "terrorist" activities... Lotfi Raissi was released after seven days’ questioning and immediately re-arrested on the basis of a warrant requesting his extradition to the USA. He was then detained for five months as a Category A (high security) prisoner in Belmarsh Prison, first in the High Security Unit (a prison within a prison) and then in the high-risk wing. The US authorities claimed that he was involved in the 11 September attacks in the USA as the flight instructor of some of the 11 September hijackers. At the time of his arrest, the US authorities claimed that they had sufficient evidence to show not only association with some of the 11 September pilots, but also evidence that he was actively involved in a conspiracy with members of the al-Qa’ida network. This evidence reportedly included correspondence, telecommunications and video footage. The extradition warrant, however, was not based on any such evidence; the US authorities brought instead so-called "holding charges" in connection with Lotfi Raissi’s failure to disclose, on an application for a US pilot’s licence, both a conviction for minor theft, for which he was fined ten years earlier, and a knee surgery to repair an old tennis injury. This minor offence, which provided the basis for the extradition warrant were, technically, extraditable offences, punishable by more than a year in prison.
Amnesty International was concerned that the US authorities’ reasons for seeking Lotfi Raissi’s extradition included the fact that his identity and professional occupation fitted a certain profile: an Algerian man and a Muslim, a pilot and a flight instructor in the USA...
In April 2002, the presiding judge brought the extradition proceedings against Lotfi Raissi to an end. The judge stated that there was no evidence whatsoever substantiating Lotfi Raissi’s involvement in "terrorism"...
The US authorities have failed to date to substantiate the serious allegations they made against Lotfi Raissi. Amnesty International considers that what happened to Lotfi Raissi is a powerful illustration that in the FBI’s wide sweep in its hunt for conspirators in the attacks in the USA or for members of the al-Qa’ida network, innocent people could get caught up, violating their rights and those of their relatives to liberty and livelihood.
In light of Lotfi Raissi’s case, the organization remains concerned, in particular, about procedures which can be used to target someone on the basis of identity profiling, and to then detain them for a prolonged period of time while evidence is sought to substantiate suspicions of their involvement in criminal acts. Amnesty International believes that Lotfi Raissi’s case also shows the dangers of how the extradition process could be used to label someone as a "suspected terrorist" and to detain someone for a prolonged period of time, in the absence of a prompt and thorough assessment of the evidence."
Mr Raissi has unsuccessfully sued the FBI and his case is also being reviewed by the UK Independent Police Complaints Commission. He lost the judicial review because Lord Justice Auld and Mr Justice Wilkie ruled that the compensation scheme applying to wrongful detention and accusation of a crime does not technically cover people held pending extradition.
Friday, February 23, 2007
eMusic CEO predicts DRM will die off
eMusic CEO, David Pakman, is predicting DRM will soon be a thing of the past. He says
"If we're still talking about DRM in five years, please take me out and shoot me."
I wish I had his confidence. He may find he has to invest in a bullet proof vest when the time comes.
"If we're still talking about DRM in five years, please take me out and shoot me."
I wish I had his confidence. He may find he has to invest in a bullet proof vest when the time comes.
Thursday, February 22, 2007
The Steep “Unlearning Curve”
Will Richardson has been thinking about the things educators need to unlearn.
"One of the most challenging pieces of figuring out how to move education forward in a systemic way is “unlearning curve” that we teachers and educators have to go through to even see the possibilities that lay before us. So much of our traditional thinking about personal learning and classroom practice is being challenged by our ability to publish and connect and collaborate primarily because of the opportunities afforded by the Read/Write Web."
I agree with that.
"For instance, in a world where literally any place can be a classroom, we have to unlearn the comforts of four walls that we’ve become accustomed to."
I understand what he's getting at here and can concur to the degree that we can and should exploit the release from the single mode of delivery the technology offers; but (there's always a 'but' with me when it comes to ed tech evangelism) the possible underlying assumption that the new will automatically be better doesn't stack up, in my opinion.
"When we can share our work with wide audiences, we need to unlearn the idea that student writing and projects are simply ways to assess what they know."
On this one I'm back in step with him again and he goes on to provide a list of 10 things we need to unlearn, most of which I mostly agree with (note again the hesitant qualifications of the academic, as I hedge my bets on whether Richardson's definitions might coincide with my own etc. etc.). Each of the 10, however, sits on top of a plethora of complications and the practical implications of each on its own could require a complete re-structuring of the existing education system in schools and colleges. That, unfortunately, is not something that is going to happen at least within the kind of timescale that would benefit my own children.
"One of the most challenging pieces of figuring out how to move education forward in a systemic way is “unlearning curve” that we teachers and educators have to go through to even see the possibilities that lay before us. So much of our traditional thinking about personal learning and classroom practice is being challenged by our ability to publish and connect and collaborate primarily because of the opportunities afforded by the Read/Write Web."
I agree with that.
"For instance, in a world where literally any place can be a classroom, we have to unlearn the comforts of four walls that we’ve become accustomed to."
I understand what he's getting at here and can concur to the degree that we can and should exploit the release from the single mode of delivery the technology offers; but (there's always a 'but' with me when it comes to ed tech evangelism) the possible underlying assumption that the new will automatically be better doesn't stack up, in my opinion.
"When we can share our work with wide audiences, we need to unlearn the idea that student writing and projects are simply ways to assess what they know."
On this one I'm back in step with him again and he goes on to provide a list of 10 things we need to unlearn, most of which I mostly agree with (note again the hesitant qualifications of the academic, as I hedge my bets on whether Richardson's definitions might coincide with my own etc. etc.). Each of the 10, however, sits on top of a plethora of complications and the practical implications of each on its own could require a complete re-structuring of the existing education system in schools and colleges. That, unfortunately, is not something that is going to happen at least within the kind of timescale that would benefit my own children.
Pharmaceutical patents bad for developing countries
David Levine says :
"The American Economic Review has published a careful study by Chaudhuri, Goldberg and Jia which is a case study of a particular pharmaceutical product in India, Quinolones (a key molecular ingredient of several antibiotics). They estimate...the loss to India is estimated to be 7-9 times the gain to the (rich) Western exporters. The reason for this is quite striking: CGJ consider in addition to the effect of increased price, patents will cause the products to become less available and accessible. It turns out that lack of availability induced by patents has very significant costs.
"The American Economic Review has published a careful study by Chaudhuri, Goldberg and Jia which is a case study of a particular pharmaceutical product in India, Quinolones (a key molecular ingredient of several antibiotics). They estimate...the loss to India is estimated to be 7-9 times the gain to the (rich) Western exporters. The reason for this is quite striking: CGJ consider in addition to the effect of increased price, patents will cause the products to become less available and accessible. It turns out that lack of availability induced by patents has very significant costs.
Whatever ones overall view of the patent system, it is hard to defend the portion of the system that taxes a poor country $7-9 so that a rich country may earn an additional $1.
The American Economic Review version of the paper is not available online, but there is a working paper version available here."
Internet voting comes to Estonia
Reuters is reporting that:
"The Baltic state of Estonia plans to become the world's first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet next month--with a little help from the forest king.
E-voting will be introduced for a parliamentary election on March 4, for the first time after it was used in more limited local elections in 2005. It is a fresh sign of Estonia's strong embrace of technology since it quit the Soviet Union in 1991.
The e-voting system was tested earlier this week, including the chance to choose the "king of the forest". Voters could pick an animal from 10 candidates, including moose, deer and boars."
"The Baltic state of Estonia plans to become the world's first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet next month--with a little help from the forest king.
E-voting will be introduced for a parliamentary election on March 4, for the first time after it was used in more limited local elections in 2005. It is a fresh sign of Estonia's strong embrace of technology since it quit the Soviet Union in 1991.
The e-voting system was tested earlier this week, including the chance to choose the "king of the forest". Voters could pick an animal from 10 candidates, including moose, deer and boars."
Michelin Man v speech
I learn from Ariel Katz (University of Toronto), via a fascinating discussion on the Cyberprofs list on the nature of intellectual property, of an interesting 1996 Canadian federal court case. Michelin successfully sued the Canadian Auto Workers Union for copyright infringement. The union had produced promotional leaflets for a recruitment drive, which featured a picture of the Michelin man (also called "Bibendum") stamping on a non union worker.
The court sided with the company since the union had copied the Michelin man and the copying did not qualify as parody or fair dealing since they had ridiculed the Michelin man. The union had also argued that if they were guilty of copyright infringement the Canadian copyright laws must be unconstitutional, since they undermined the union's freedom of expression. On this last point the court ruled that the Michelin man was the company's private property and just as the union had no right to trespass on someone's land to protest against them, they were “not permitted to appropriate the Plaintiff’s private property—the “Bibendum” copyright—as a vehicle for conveying their anti-Michelin message.”
A classic case of the conflict between intellectual property and free speech getting resolved in favour of the former. I suspect there would be a clear blue line between union sympathisers and employers on whether they felt the decision was right or wrong.
The court sided with the company since the union had copied the Michelin man and the copying did not qualify as parody or fair dealing since they had ridiculed the Michelin man. The union had also argued that if they were guilty of copyright infringement the Canadian copyright laws must be unconstitutional, since they undermined the union's freedom of expression. On this last point the court ruled that the Michelin man was the company's private property and just as the union had no right to trespass on someone's land to protest against them, they were “not permitted to appropriate the Plaintiff’s private property—the “Bibendum” copyright—as a vehicle for conveying their anti-Michelin message.”
A classic case of the conflict between intellectual property and free speech getting resolved in favour of the former. I suspect there would be a clear blue line between union sympathisers and employers on whether they felt the decision was right or wrong.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Say everything
New York magazine has an interesting article on young people's attitudes to privacy in the digital age.
"Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another...
Clay Shirky, a 42-year-old professor of new media at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, who has studied these phenomena since 1993, has a theory about that response. “Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.” People are always eager to believe that their behavior is a matter of morality, not chronology, Shirky argues...
...there is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
Right now the big question for anyone of my generation seems to be, endlessly, “Why would anyone do that?” This is not a meaningful question for a 16-year-old. The benefits are obvious: The public life is fun. It’s creative. It’s where their friends are. It’s theater, but it’s also community: In this linked, logged world, you have a place to think out loud and be listened to, to meet strangers and go deeper with friends. And, yes, there are all sorts of crappy side effects: the passive-aggressive drama (“you know who you are!”), the shaming outbursts, the chill a person can feel in cyberspace on a particularly bad day. There are lousy side effects of most social changes (see feminism, democracy, the creation of the interstate highway system). But the real question is, as with any revolution, which side are you on?"
"Kids today. They have no sense of shame. They have no sense of privacy. They are show-offs, fame whores, pornographic little loons who post their diaries, their phone numbers, their stupid poetry—for God’s sake, their dirty photos!—online. They have virtual friends instead of real ones. They talk in illiterate instant messages. They are interested only in attention—and yet they have zero attention span, flitting like hummingbirds from one virtual stage to another...
Clay Shirky, a 42-year-old professor of new media at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, who has studied these phenomena since 1993, has a theory about that response. “Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we’re mad about it now.” People are always eager to believe that their behavior is a matter of morality, not chronology, Shirky argues...
...there is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.
So it may be time to consider the possibility that young people who behave as if privacy doesn’t exist are actually the sane people, not the insane ones. For someone like me, who grew up sealing my diary with a literal lock, this may be tough to accept. But under current circumstances, a defiant belief in holding things close to your chest might not be high-minded. It might be an artifact—quaint and naïve, like a determined faith that virginity keeps ladies pure. Or at least that might be true for someone who has grown up “putting themselves out there” and found that the benefits of being transparent make the risks worth it.
Shirky describes this generational shift in terms of pidgin versus Creole. “Do you know that distinction? Pidgin is what gets spoken when people patch things together from different languages, so it serves well enough to communicate. But Creole is what the children speak, the children of pidgin speakers. They impose rules and structure, which makes the Creole language completely coherent and expressive, on par with any language. What we are witnessing is the Creolization of media.”
That’s a cool metaphor, I respond. “I actually don’t think it’s a metaphor,” he says. “I think there may actually be real neurological changes involved.” ...Right now the big question for anyone of my generation seems to be, endlessly, “Why would anyone do that?” This is not a meaningful question for a 16-year-old. The benefits are obvious: The public life is fun. It’s creative. It’s where their friends are. It’s theater, but it’s also community: In this linked, logged world, you have a place to think out loud and be listened to, to meet strangers and go deeper with friends. And, yes, there are all sorts of crappy side effects: the passive-aggressive drama (“you know who you are!”), the shaming outbursts, the chill a person can feel in cyberspace on a particularly bad day. There are lousy side effects of most social changes (see feminism, democracy, the creation of the interstate highway system). But the real question is, as with any revolution, which side are you on?"
Blair adds whole UK to police suspect list
John Lettice, one of the few journalists who has demonstrated an understanding of the serious implications for society of the UK government's identity card scheme, has been analysing the Prime Minister's latest pronouncements on the plan.
"The National Identity Register will allow police to add the entire adult population of the UK to their suspect list, giving them the opportunity to check fingerprints left at scenes of crime against those collected from ID card and passport applicants, says Tony Blair. Nor are fingerprints in other EU countries necessarily safe - the introduction of biometric technology, he adds, will "improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.
Blair made the pledge to collar the lot of us, and some, as part of a rag-bag of warmed-over, half-baked, misleading, and just plain untrue claims issued in an email to the near-28,000 signatories of the Downing Street petition calling for the scrapping of the ID card scheme. The notion of the police having access to the NIR fingerprint data in order to tackle unsolved crime is not entirely new (the Home Office document Identity Cards Scheme - Benefits Overview tentatively suggested this could happen a couple of years back), but it's not something that has previously been pushed by senior ministers...
Logically, in Blair's Wonderworld of Criminal Justice, police showing up at scenes of crime will as a matter of course scan it (um, with what?) for prints, and then compare the images with the NIR in real time (er, how?) in order to discover... Yes, that this particular set of fuzzy images unearthed at Anwar's Doughnut Bar might have been left by any one of several thousand of the 60 million people on the NIR. The Boys in Blue are going to love this gear, which doesn't even exist yet (mobile fingerprint readers do, but these are for taking prints off real people).
We shouldn't leave this demented scheme without noting that the production of matches that will pass muster in a court of law will still require the presence of the traditional fingerprint squad at the scene of the crime. And if police do start to make routine automated checks at scenes of crime then we're going to need a lot more traditional squads to chase down the leads, so more specialists would be needed at this end of the process as well."
"The National Identity Register will allow police to add the entire adult population of the UK to their suspect list, giving them the opportunity to check fingerprints left at scenes of crime against those collected from ID card and passport applicants, says Tony Blair. Nor are fingerprints in other EU countries necessarily safe - the introduction of biometric technology, he adds, will "improve the flow of information between countries on the identity of offenders.
Blair made the pledge to collar the lot of us, and some, as part of a rag-bag of warmed-over, half-baked, misleading, and just plain untrue claims issued in an email to the near-28,000 signatories of the Downing Street petition calling for the scrapping of the ID card scheme. The notion of the police having access to the NIR fingerprint data in order to tackle unsolved crime is not entirely new (the Home Office document Identity Cards Scheme - Benefits Overview tentatively suggested this could happen a couple of years back), but it's not something that has previously been pushed by senior ministers...
Logically, in Blair's Wonderworld of Criminal Justice, police showing up at scenes of crime will as a matter of course scan it (um, with what?) for prints, and then compare the images with the NIR in real time (er, how?) in order to discover... Yes, that this particular set of fuzzy images unearthed at Anwar's Doughnut Bar might have been left by any one of several thousand of the 60 million people on the NIR. The Boys in Blue are going to love this gear, which doesn't even exist yet (mobile fingerprint readers do, but these are for taking prints off real people).
We shouldn't leave this demented scheme without noting that the production of matches that will pass muster in a court of law will still require the presence of the traditional fingerprint squad at the scene of the crime. And if police do start to make routine automated checks at scenes of crime then we're going to need a lot more traditional squads to chase down the leads, so more specialists would be needed at this end of the process as well."
Monday, February 19, 2007
27 000 sign petition v ID cards
By the deadline date of 15th February, 27,946 people signed the petition asking the Prime Minister to scrap the ID card legislation. The PM has responded to the petitioners:
"While I certainly accept that ID cards will not
prevent all terrorist outrages or crime, I believe they will make
an important contribution to making our borders more secure,
countering fraud, and tackling international crime and terrorism.
More importantly, this is also what our security services - who
have the task of protecting this country - believe."
Actually the security services believe no such thing. Senior members of the security services have stated on the public record that the ID scheme could make their jobs more difficult.
"Terrorists routinely use multiple identities - up to 50 at a time... ID cards... will make this much more difficult."
Nope. The government scheme is so full of security holes the scale of fraud that potential system attackers could engage in would be scary.
"Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing
problem of identity fraud."
No. There is a very high probability the UK government's approach to ID cards will make the problem of identity fraud worse.
"I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police
bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice...Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity
of offenders...
The National Identity Register will also help improve protection
for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on
those seeking to work, for example, with children...
...role to play in preventing illegal immigration and illegal working...
Firms across the world are already using fingerprint or iris recognition for their staff...
The introduction in 2006 of British e-passports incorporating facial image biometrics has meant that British passport holders can continue to visit the United States without a visa...
These then are the ways I believe ID cards can help cut crime and
terrorism...
the majority of people favour compulsory ID cards...
...help improve access to services...
In many cases, these estimates deliberately exaggerate the cost of ID cards
by adding in the cost of biometric passports. This is both unfair
and inaccurate."
It's the usual spin, obfuscation and tired old claims, repeated over and over in the hope that people will believe him if he says it often enough, packaged in sufficiently attractive language.
"While I certainly accept that ID cards will not
prevent all terrorist outrages or crime, I believe they will make
an important contribution to making our borders more secure,
countering fraud, and tackling international crime and terrorism.
More importantly, this is also what our security services - who
have the task of protecting this country - believe."
Actually the security services believe no such thing. Senior members of the security services have stated on the public record that the ID scheme could make their jobs more difficult.
"Terrorists routinely use multiple identities - up to 50 at a time... ID cards... will make this much more difficult."
Nope. The government scheme is so full of security holes the scale of fraud that potential system attackers could engage in would be scary.
"Secure identities will also help us counter the fast-growing
problem of identity fraud."
No. There is a very high probability the UK government's approach to ID cards will make the problem of identity fraud worse.
"I also believe that the National Identity Register will help police
bring those guilty of serious crimes to justice...Another benefit from biometric technology will be to improve the flow of information between countries on the identity
of offenders...
The National Identity Register will also help improve protection
for the vulnerable, enabling more effective and quicker checks on
those seeking to work, for example, with children...
...role to play in preventing illegal immigration and illegal working...
Firms across the world are already using fingerprint or iris recognition for their staff...
The introduction in 2006 of British e-passports incorporating facial image biometrics has meant that British passport holders can continue to visit the United States without a visa...
These then are the ways I believe ID cards can help cut crime and
terrorism...
the majority of people favour compulsory ID cards...
...help improve access to services...
In many cases, these estimates deliberately exaggerate the cost of ID cards
by adding in the cost of biometric passports. This is both unfair
and inaccurate."
It's the usual spin, obfuscation and tired old claims, repeated over and over in the hope that people will believe him if he says it often enough, packaged in sufficiently attractive language.
Translation of Macrovision’s Response to Jobs on DRM
John Grubber has done an hilarious translation of Fred Amoroso's (Macrovision CEO) response to Steve Jobs' open thoughts on DRM.
Quick review: Jobs has finally apparently decided we would all be better off without any drm. Amoroso, not surpisingly since his business is building drm, disagrees.
"While your thoughts are seemingly directed solely to the music industry, the fact is that DRM also has a broad impact across many different forms of content and across many media devices. Therefore, the discussion should not be limited to just music.
We recognize that if getting rid of DRM works for the music industry, it’s going to open the eyes of executives in other fields, and it could unravel Macrovision’s entire business.
DRM increases not decreases consumer value
Up is down. Black is white.
I believe that most piracy occurs because the technology available today has not yet been widely deployed to make DRM-protected legitimate content as easily accessible and convenient as unprotected illegitimate content is to consumers.
I have, to date, succeeded in convincing the entertainment industry that DRM can stop piracy...
Well maintained and reasonably implemented DRM will increase the electronic distribution of content, not decrease it.
I am high as a kite."
It's a hoot and well worth reading in full. Thanks to Phillipe Aigrain for the pointer.
Quick review: Jobs has finally apparently decided we would all be better off without any drm. Amoroso, not surpisingly since his business is building drm, disagrees.
"While your thoughts are seemingly directed solely to the music industry, the fact is that DRM also has a broad impact across many different forms of content and across many media devices. Therefore, the discussion should not be limited to just music.
We recognize that if getting rid of DRM works for the music industry, it’s going to open the eyes of executives in other fields, and it could unravel Macrovision’s entire business.
DRM increases not decreases consumer value
Up is down. Black is white.
I believe that most piracy occurs because the technology available today has not yet been widely deployed to make DRM-protected legitimate content as easily accessible and convenient as unprotected illegitimate content is to consumers.
I have, to date, succeeded in convincing the entertainment industry that DRM can stop piracy...
Well maintained and reasonably implemented DRM will increase the electronic distribution of content, not decrease it.
I am high as a kite."
It's a hoot and well worth reading in full. Thanks to Phillipe Aigrain for the pointer.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Russian Head Teacher piracy case thrown out
A Russian court has thrown out the criminal case against a headteacher accused of using pirated Microsoft software in his school. I'm pleased to see the court was smarter than the prosecuters.
Update: The Register has a few more details.
Update: The Register has a few more details.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Eli Lilly Loses Effort to Censor Zyprexa Documents Off the Internet
From the EFF: Eli Lilly Loses Effort to Censor Zyprexa Documents Off the Internet
IIPA Section 301 hit list
Michael Geist has some commentary of the essential reading variety for IP geeks on the International Intellectual Property Alliance's latest "section 301" report. This report has, for many years now, served as the basis for the US Trade Representative's report targeting countries which allegedly undermine US intellectual property rights and the latter can and has led to US trade sanctions against some of the nations highlighted.
Michael says:
"Canada figures prominently on this list and indeed this year it is
expected that the U.S. will escalate the pressure by placing us on
the Priority Watch List...The IIPA submission on Canada includes a litany of
complaints, including the failure to implement the WIPO Internet
Treaties, the need for ISPs to play a greater role in dealing with
copyright infringement, the need for a camcorder law, and the need
for greater enforcement activity. The IIPA report is particularly
critical of Bill C-60, arguing that Canada should "jettison" the
approach in favour of something, well, like the U.S. has
implemented. In fact, it incorrectly argues that full compliance
with the WIPO Internet treaties requires legislation that matches the
DMCA (full TPM protection, ban on devices that can be used to
circumvent, limited exceptions). It also wants the scope of the
private copying limited and clear liability for P2P services
established. "
The IIPA hitlist includes 60 countries including places like Japan, Italy, Brazil, Sweden and Spain.
Update: CPTech's Manon Ress has some interesting thoughts on the IIPA's recommendations.
Michael says:
"Canada figures prominently on this list and indeed this year it is
expected that the U.S. will escalate the pressure by placing us on
the Priority Watch List...The IIPA submission on Canada includes a litany of
complaints, including the failure to implement the WIPO Internet
Treaties, the need for ISPs to play a greater role in dealing with
copyright infringement, the need for a camcorder law, and the need
for greater enforcement activity. The IIPA report is particularly
critical of Bill C-60, arguing that Canada should "jettison" the
approach in favour of something, well, like the U.S. has
implemented. In fact, it incorrectly argues that full compliance
with the WIPO Internet treaties requires legislation that matches the
DMCA (full TPM protection, ban on devices that can be used to
circumvent, limited exceptions). It also wants the scope of the
private copying limited and clear liability for P2P services
established. "
The IIPA hitlist includes 60 countries including places like Japan, Italy, Brazil, Sweden and Spain.
Update: CPTech's Manon Ress has some interesting thoughts on the IIPA's recommendations.
Russian Head Teacher piracy case
Findlaw has a few more details on the case of the Russian head teacher facing jail for installing computers in his school containing allegedly pirated Microsoft software.
"
"
The case appears to have more to do with the lopsided approach taken by prosecutors - eager to please the leadership in Moscow - in response to international pressure on Russia to clamp down on piracy.
"You know the president is always asked these questions at summits - evidently because of this, work has been stepped up," Alexander Troyanov, the district prosecutor pursuing the case, told The Associated Press.
But Putin himself has questioned the rationale behind the case. When it was raised by a reporter at his annual, nationally televised news conference this month, the president dismissed it with a colorful term that translates as "utter nonsense." As in fighting drugs, the manufacturers and producers should be targeted rather than the end user, he said.
Troyanov argued that the law makes no distinction - meaning Ponosov is fair game."
Microsoft have apparently offered to put in a good word for him if he apologises to them and and acknowledge his guilt. That's big of them. The good guys insdie Microsoft - and there are many - must be tearing their hair out over this one.CCTV in school toilets
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Novartis open source diabetes research
Having recently pointed out some unwelcome legal activity from Novartis in the form of a challenge to India's patent laws, yesterday there was some better news reported about the pharmaceutical giant's research.
"Some of the world's biggest drug companies are finding that their genetic research is worth more to them if they give it away.
Novartis (nyse: NVS - news - people ), the Basel, Switzerland, drug giant, has helped uncover which of the 20,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project are likely to be associated with diabetes. But rather than hoard this information, as drug firms have traditionally done, it is making it available for free on the World Wide Web.
"It will take the entire world to interpret these data," says Novartis research head Mark Fishman. "We figure we will benefit more by having a lot of companies look at these data than by holding it secret."
Researchers at Novartis partnered with Switzerland's Lund University and the Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad Institute, a joint venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard that is funded by billionaire Eli Broad. This international team compared the genomes of 1,500 people who had diabetes with 1,500 who were disease-free. All the patients were from Sweden. To do this quickly, the scientists used gene chips from biotech Affymetrix (nasdaq: AFFX - news - people ) that allowed them to track 500,000 places in the genetic code where past experience has shown that there are likely to be differences.
The result: a library of genetic differences that are likely to increase a patient's risk of diabetes. Researchers don't know what most of these errant genes do, or exactly why diabetics are more likely to have these genes. That is exactly the puzzle a world's worth of scientists are needed to unravel. But Fishman says 12 genetic differences turned up by the work are promising enough to pursue further."
"Some of the world's biggest drug companies are finding that their genetic research is worth more to them if they give it away.
Novartis (nyse: NVS - news - people ), the Basel, Switzerland, drug giant, has helped uncover which of the 20,000 genes identified by the Human Genome Project are likely to be associated with diabetes. But rather than hoard this information, as drug firms have traditionally done, it is making it available for free on the World Wide Web.
"It will take the entire world to interpret these data," says Novartis research head Mark Fishman. "We figure we will benefit more by having a lot of companies look at these data than by holding it secret."
Researchers at Novartis partnered with Switzerland's Lund University and the Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad Institute, a joint venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard that is funded by billionaire Eli Broad. This international team compared the genomes of 1,500 people who had diabetes with 1,500 who were disease-free. All the patients were from Sweden. To do this quickly, the scientists used gene chips from biotech Affymetrix (nasdaq: AFFX - news - people ) that allowed them to track 500,000 places in the genetic code where past experience has shown that there are likely to be differences.
The result: a library of genetic differences that are likely to increase a patient's risk of diabetes. Researchers don't know what most of these errant genes do, or exactly why diabetics are more likely to have these genes. That is exactly the puzzle a world's worth of scientists are needed to unravel. But Fishman says 12 genetic differences turned up by the work are promising enough to pursue further."
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Boom scare neon lights: the case for the prosecution unhinged
Scott Moss, a law professor at Marquette University Law School, dissects the bomb scare case against the two men arrested for putting up neon light signs promoting a cartoon.
"The criminal law the prosecutors cite declares it a felony to "place any hoax device ... with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person." It defines "hoax device" as one "that would cause a person reasonably to believe … [it] is an infernal machine[,] ... [a] device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion...."
In other words, the prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants -- two guys hired by marketers for a cartoon show -- actually intended to create a bomb scare by putting up those light boards. The prosecutors also have to prove that reasonable people would've thought the light boards were bombs...
Here's one thing the two men are guilty of doing: They ticked off a lot of important public officials who now are deeply embarrassed that they virtually shut down a major city after mistaking lit-up cartoons for the Second Coming of Osama. Those officials' upset is understandable, but fortunately, in this day and age, embarrassing even the most well-intentioned mayor doesn't justify felony charges -- at least not in America...
My bet is that we will see a quick guilty plea to some exceedingly minor charge -- perhaps the underwhelming charge of "disorderly conduct," which the Attorney General already has thrown in along with the felony bomb scare charges. Procuring a plea to a minor offense is a common tactic of bad-egg prosecutors who bring legally dubious but politically necessary felony charges.
That sort of prosecutorial overreaching is exactly what happened to wrongly prosecuted Chinese-American physicist Wen Ho Lee.
In 1999, Lee was arrested and locked in pretrial solitary confinement for almost a year on serious national security charges -- leaking nuclear secrets to China. When the charges proved baseless, the government, rather than just admit error and free Lee, instead negotiated a plea of "guilty" on a trivial charge of not following proper procedures for handling sensitive information.
Wen Ho Lee and the Boston Two are victims of one of the darkest possibilities in our criminal justice system: prosecution as political persecution, when politicians and police need a scapegoat for their own failures."
"The criminal law the prosecutors cite declares it a felony to "place any hoax device ... with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort to any person." It defines "hoax device" as one "that would cause a person reasonably to believe … [it] is an infernal machine[,] ... [a] device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion...."
In other words, the prosecutors have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants -- two guys hired by marketers for a cartoon show -- actually intended to create a bomb scare by putting up those light boards. The prosecutors also have to prove that reasonable people would've thought the light boards were bombs...
Here's one thing the two men are guilty of doing: They ticked off a lot of important public officials who now are deeply embarrassed that they virtually shut down a major city after mistaking lit-up cartoons for the Second Coming of Osama. Those officials' upset is understandable, but fortunately, in this day and age, embarrassing even the most well-intentioned mayor doesn't justify felony charges -- at least not in America...
My bet is that we will see a quick guilty plea to some exceedingly minor charge -- perhaps the underwhelming charge of "disorderly conduct," which the Attorney General already has thrown in along with the felony bomb scare charges. Procuring a plea to a minor offense is a common tactic of bad-egg prosecutors who bring legally dubious but politically necessary felony charges.
That sort of prosecutorial overreaching is exactly what happened to wrongly prosecuted Chinese-American physicist Wen Ho Lee.
In 1999, Lee was arrested and locked in pretrial solitary confinement for almost a year on serious national security charges -- leaking nuclear secrets to China. When the charges proved baseless, the government, rather than just admit error and free Lee, instead negotiated a plea of "guilty" on a trivial charge of not following proper procedures for handling sensitive information.
Wen Ho Lee and the Boston Two are victims of one of the darkest possibilities in our criminal justice system: prosecution as political persecution, when politicians and police need a scapegoat for their own failures."
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
CIEL Reprot on IP and sustainable development
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has released a new report Intellectual Property Bilateral Agreements and Sustainable Development:THE CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTATION
Abstract:
"This paper examines the development of strategies for developing country officials, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders with respect to the implementation of intellectual property provisions in bilateral and regional free trade agreements. In particular, the paper aims to raise awareness of the continuing pressure for higher intellectual property protection during the implementation and annual review of bilateral trade agreements, as well as to outline the opportunities created by the diverse options for implementation to “claw back” policy space."
CIEL’s Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development Project works with non-governmental organizations and developing country governments to include sustainable development concerns in current multilateral and bilateral rules on intellectual property.
Abstract:
"This paper examines the development of strategies for developing country officials, civil society organizations, and other stakeholders with respect to the implementation of intellectual property provisions in bilateral and regional free trade agreements. In particular, the paper aims to raise awareness of the continuing pressure for higher intellectual property protection during the implementation and annual review of bilateral trade agreements, as well as to outline the opportunities created by the diverse options for implementation to “claw back” policy space."
CIEL’s Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development Project works with non-governmental organizations and developing country governments to include sustainable development concerns in current multilateral and bilateral rules on intellectual property.
Jobs disses DRM and the music cos
Steve Jobs has called for an end to DRM on legitimate music download sales. Good for him. Cory is pleased:
"This is a big day -- a huge day. If Steve Jobs comes through with his promise to offer DRM-free music from artists who will allow it, we're at the beginning of the end of the DRM wars. I look forward to the day when the iTunes Music Store catalog shows a little warning icon next to those few holdout tracks sold with DRM, a skull-and-crossbones to tell you that you're about to buy some poisonous bits.
Especially if Steve follows this up by offering iTunes videos -- especially the Pixar movies, which he directly controls as the single largest shareholder in Disney -- without DRM!"
Update: All the usual suspects report widely on this, John Markoff in the NYT being one.
"This is a big day -- a huge day. If Steve Jobs comes through with his promise to offer DRM-free music from artists who will allow it, we're at the beginning of the end of the DRM wars. I look forward to the day when the iTunes Music Store catalog shows a little warning icon next to those few holdout tracks sold with DRM, a skull-and-crossbones to tell you that you're about to buy some poisonous bits.
Especially if Steve follows this up by offering iTunes videos -- especially the Pixar movies, which he directly controls as the single largest shareholder in Disney -- without DRM!"
Update: All the usual suspects report widely on this, John Markoff in the NYT being one.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Princeton join Google book search
From SiliconValley.com:
"Princeton joins Google's book-scanning project
About 1 million books in Princeton University's collection will be made available online through Google Inc.'s book-scanning project, the school announced Monday.
The university library will work with the Google's Book Search Library Project over the next six years to digitize books that are a part of the public domain and no longer under copyright, according to a school news release."
"Princeton joins Google's book-scanning project
About 1 million books in Princeton University's collection will be made available online through Google Inc.'s book-scanning project, the school announced Monday.
The university library will work with the Google's Book Search Library Project over the next six years to digitize books that are a part of the public domain and no longer under copyright, according to a school news release."
Gorbachev to to Gates: Show mercy for pirate
From News.com:
"Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday asked Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to intercede on behalf of a Russian teacher accused of using pirated software in his classroom.
“Mr. Ponosov’s case is a criminal case and as such was initiated and investigated by the public prosecutor’s office in Russia,” said Microsoft, whose European operations are based in Paris. “We are sure that the Russian courts will make a fair decision.”
Update: John Pallatto - Sentenced to the Intellectual Property Gulag
"Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday asked Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to intercede on behalf of a Russian teacher accused of using pirated software in his classroom.
In an open letter, Nobel Peace Prize winner Gorbachev said the teacher, Alexander Ponosov, who is from a remote village in the Urals, should be shown mercy because he did not know he was committing a crime.
"A teacher, who has dedicated his life to the education of children and who receives a modest salary that does not bear comparison with the salaries of even regular staff in your company, is threatened with detention in Siberian prison camps," read the letter, posted on the Web site for Gorbachev's charitable foundation."
Microsoft declined to intervene according to the NYT:“Mr. Ponosov’s case is a criminal case and as such was initiated and investigated by the public prosecutor’s office in Russia,” said Microsoft, whose European operations are based in Paris. “We are sure that the Russian courts will make a fair decision.”
Update: John Pallatto - Sentenced to the Intellectual Property Gulag
Conservatives formally promise to scrap ID cards
The Conservative Party website had this yesterday;
"David Davis has written to Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, giving formal notice that an incoming Conservative administration would scrap the Government's costly ID card project.
And the Shadow Home Secretary has warned of the financial dangers of the Government signing contracts to set up the ID card scheme when it faces cancellation if the Conservatives are returned to power at the next election.
In his letter, Mr Davis asked what provision, if any, has been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government - and public funds - against the costs that would be incurred as a result of early cancellation of the scheme; with a similar letter fired off to likely major contractors, warning them of the Party's intentions. "
They're also reportedly promising to oppose the government's plans to extend the detention without trial period beyond the current maximum of 28 days.
"David Davis has written to Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, giving formal notice that an incoming Conservative administration would scrap the Government's costly ID card project.
And the Shadow Home Secretary has warned of the financial dangers of the Government signing contracts to set up the ID card scheme when it faces cancellation if the Conservatives are returned to power at the next election.
In his letter, Mr Davis asked what provision, if any, has been made in the relevant contractual arrangements to protect the Government - and public funds - against the costs that would be incurred as a result of early cancellation of the scheme; with a similar letter fired off to likely major contractors, warning them of the Party's intentions. "
They're also reportedly promising to oppose the government's plans to extend the detention without trial period beyond the current maximum of 28 days.
German court outlaw unauthorised remote police searches of computers
From the NYT:
"A German court on Monday ruled that police cannot remotely search criminal suspects' computer hard drives over the Internet without their knowledge.
The decision of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe bars police from using the online ''Trojan horse'' method, which involves using a computer program to search through remote hard drives over an Internet connection, unless parliament passes a law explicitly allowing it."
"A German court on Monday ruled that police cannot remotely search criminal suspects' computer hard drives over the Internet without their knowledge.
The decision of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe bars police from using the online ''Trojan horse'' method, which involves using a computer program to search through remote hard drives over an Internet connection, unless parliament passes a law explicitly allowing it."
Neon lights cartoon promotion cost $2million compensation
Well, the neon light cartoon promotion scare has cost Turner Broadcasting and the marketing firm involved $2 million in compensation payments. A simple cost benefit calculation will probably have determined the decision, given that a couple of million dollars is peanuts to these companies but the sheer irrationality of the whole episode makes you wish someone would have the gumption to stand up and say it. Sadly that would involve taking on costly legal action, as well as a slight risk of losing at the end of the day.
Judge orders release of former White House aide's secret testimony
From AP via Findlaw:
"WASHINGTON-Audio recordings of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's secret grand jury testimony will be released publicly after they are presented at his trial, the judge at Libby's trial ruled Monday.
In a victory for the news media, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said he has concerns about releasing the recordings while the case is under way, but he has little choice under the law as applied in the federal court system in Washington, D.C."
"WASHINGTON-Audio recordings of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's secret grand jury testimony will be released publicly after they are presented at his trial, the judge at Libby's trial ruled Monday.
In a victory for the news media, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said he has concerns about releasing the recordings while the case is under way, but he has little choice under the law as applied in the federal court system in Washington, D.C."
Apple settle with Apple
The latest round in the ongoing trademark dispute between Apple Computer and the Beatles'Apple Corps Ltd has been settled.
"The new settlement replaces the companies' 1991 agreement, and gives Apple Inc. ownership of all the trademarks related to "Apple." In addition, Apple Inc. will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.
This settlement ends the ongoing trademark lawsuit between the companies, with each paying its own legal costs, and Apple Inc. will continue using its name and logos on iTunes."
"The new settlement replaces the companies' 1991 agreement, and gives Apple Inc. ownership of all the trademarks related to "Apple." In addition, Apple Inc. will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use.
This settlement ends the ongoing trademark lawsuit between the companies, with each paying its own legal costs, and Apple Inc. will continue using its name and logos on iTunes."
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Friday, February 02, 2007
Blackboard offer peace treaty to open source community
Blackboard, it seems, have recognised the damage to their image they have done by patenting elearning.
"Facing sharp criticism from academic computing experts, Blackboard Inc. announced Thursday what it calls a legally binding promise that it won't pursue patent lawsuits against users of open-source online classroom technology.
An open-source group said it welcomed the move but noted a key caveat: It covers a number of named open-source projects, but technically leaves open the possibility future open-source initiatives that bundle proprietary software could be vulnerable...
Blackboard denied it would sue academic users but will now make that commitment more formal, with a worldwide agreement that the company's chief legal officer, Matthew Small, said could be used in court against the company if it ever pursued such an action."
Oh dear. The solution to the lawyerly problems is more lawyers. From the BlackBoard site:
"In summary, the Blackboard Patent Pledge is a promise by the company to never assert its issued or pending course management system software patents against open source software or home-grown course management systems. The Blackboard Pledge is legally binding, irrevocable and worldwide in scope.
"As a member of the e-Learning community, we are committed to the open exchange of ideas, collaboration and innovation," said Michael Chasen, president and chief executive officer of Blackboard. "This pledge is part of that commitment and our continued efforts to work collaboratively with the e- Learning community to foster greater openness and interoperability."
Specifically, the Pledge commits Blackboard not to assert U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138 and many other pending patent applications against the development, use or distribution of open source software or home-grown course management systems anywhere in the world, to the extent that such systems are not bundled with proprietary software...
The Blackboard Patent Pledge along with many Frequently Asked Questions can be found at http://www.blackboard.com/patent."
The BlackBoard patent pledge is here.
"Facing sharp criticism from academic computing experts, Blackboard Inc. announced Thursday what it calls a legally binding promise that it won't pursue patent lawsuits against users of open-source online classroom technology.
An open-source group said it welcomed the move but noted a key caveat: It covers a number of named open-source projects, but technically leaves open the possibility future open-source initiatives that bundle proprietary software could be vulnerable...
Blackboard denied it would sue academic users but will now make that commitment more formal, with a worldwide agreement that the company's chief legal officer, Matthew Small, said could be used in court against the company if it ever pursued such an action."
Oh dear. The solution to the lawyerly problems is more lawyers. From the BlackBoard site:
"In summary, the Blackboard Patent Pledge is a promise by the company to never assert its issued or pending course management system software patents against open source software or home-grown course management systems. The Blackboard Pledge is legally binding, irrevocable and worldwide in scope.
"As a member of the e-Learning community, we are committed to the open exchange of ideas, collaboration and innovation," said Michael Chasen, president and chief executive officer of Blackboard. "This pledge is part of that commitment and our continued efforts to work collaboratively with the e- Learning community to foster greater openness and interoperability."
Specifically, the Pledge commits Blackboard not to assert U.S. Patent No. 6,988,138 and many other pending patent applications against the development, use or distribution of open source software or home-grown course management systems anywhere in the world, to the extent that such systems are not bundled with proprietary software...
The Blackboard Patent Pledge along with many Frequently Asked Questions can be found at http://www.blackboard.com/patent."
The BlackBoard patent pledge is here.
Artists face jail after cartoon stunt sparks US terror alert
The Independent reports further evidence of the irrational paranoia in the US about potential terror attacks in Artists face jail after cartoon stunt sparks US terror alert
" Two artists from Boston found themselves in court yesterday facing the possibility of a prison sentence after signs they had placed around the city to advertise a late-night animated show triggered a traffic-snarling terror scare.
Boston police closed major commuter arteries, underground stations and even a section of the Charles River on Wednesday after receiving phone calls from concerned citizens who had spotted the devices and apparently mistaken them for bombs. The scare crippled parts of downtown Boston.
The Cartoon Network, owned by Turner Broadcasting, later acknowledged that it had contracted with a publicity company, Interference Inc, to distribute the foot-tall, magnetic signs around Boston and nine other cities, including New York and Chicago."
Meanwhile the real terrorists are rolling around on their floors laughing at the fear and panic in downtown America, stoked up by politicians, the media and a wide-eyed populace that is collectively responsible for facilitating this timid mindset, merely because it does nothing effective to counter it. And two blokes are now facing a jail sentence for putting up neon lights promoting a cartoon for goodness sake! The lunatics are well and truly in control of the assylum.
Meanwhile on this side of the assylum, Home Secretary John Reid has been attempting to use the recent terror raids as an excuse to push through longer detention-without- charge limits. The West Midlands police involved in detained the terrorist suspect are less than pleased that Reid waded in. A police insider said:
"There was no need for the Home Secretary to wade in and get his name on the job. He was clearly trying to make political capital out of it. This was not appreciated."
For evil to triumph it requires only that good people do nothing...
Update from Declan:
"So I read the Massachusetts attorney general's press release about the
Aqua Teen Hunger Force lights:
http://www.ago.state.ma.us/sp.cfm?pageid=986&id=1803
And was interested in what law the "only hair questions" guys are
charged with violating. I've placed the statute here:
http://politechbot.com/docs/massachusetts.infernal.hoax.device.020107.txt
The law is actually one prohibiting "infernal machines." No, I am not
making this up. Yes, only in Massachusetts."
" Two artists from Boston found themselves in court yesterday facing the possibility of a prison sentence after signs they had placed around the city to advertise a late-night animated show triggered a traffic-snarling terror scare.
Boston police closed major commuter arteries, underground stations and even a section of the Charles River on Wednesday after receiving phone calls from concerned citizens who had spotted the devices and apparently mistaken them for bombs. The scare crippled parts of downtown Boston.
The Cartoon Network, owned by Turner Broadcasting, later acknowledged that it had contracted with a publicity company, Interference Inc, to distribute the foot-tall, magnetic signs around Boston and nine other cities, including New York and Chicago."
Meanwhile the real terrorists are rolling around on their floors laughing at the fear and panic in downtown America, stoked up by politicians, the media and a wide-eyed populace that is collectively responsible for facilitating this timid mindset, merely because it does nothing effective to counter it. And two blokes are now facing a jail sentence for putting up neon lights promoting a cartoon for goodness sake! The lunatics are well and truly in control of the assylum.
Meanwhile on this side of the assylum, Home Secretary John Reid has been attempting to use the recent terror raids as an excuse to push through longer detention-without- charge limits. The West Midlands police involved in detained the terrorist suspect are less than pleased that Reid waded in. A police insider said:
"There was no need for the Home Secretary to wade in and get his name on the job. He was clearly trying to make political capital out of it. This was not appreciated."
For evil to triumph it requires only that good people do nothing...
Update from Declan:
"So I read the Massachusetts attorney general's press release about the
Aqua Teen Hunger Force lights:
http://www.ago.state.ma.us/sp.cfm?pageid=986&id=1803
And was interested in what law the "only hair questions" guys are
charged with violating. I've placed the statute here:
http://politechbot.com/docs/massachusetts.infernal.hoax.device.020107.txt
The law is actually one prohibiting "infernal machines." No, I am not
making this up. Yes, only in Massachusetts."
Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis
Working Group 1 of the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are releasing the IPCC's 4th report today in Paris. A summary for policymakers (SPM) is already available (pdf 2.2M) as is a chapter outline of the full report.
Bush oil imports policy fails basic economics test
I missed this a couple of weeks back, Bush oil imports policy fails basic economics test
"George Bush’s policy on reducing US oil imports would flunk an elementary economics test, experts at the University of Sussex Energy Group said today. The aim of reducing US oil usage by 20% over the next 10 years, as outlined in Bush’s State of the Union address, while a laudable and long-overdue goal, is highly unlikely to make much impression on oil imports. Here’s how: Oil is a commodity traded on price, and abundant Middle East oil means that it is cheap. In addition, the US will be unable to erect trade barriers due to world trade rules...
Sussex Energy Group experts made the following observations on Bush’s address:
• Reliance on Ethanol: fuel from ethanol may help to increase indigenous production of fuel for vehicles but this comes at a price: the intensively grown grain used to produce ethanol itself takes considerable amounts of energy to produce...
• Technology fantasies: Technology can undoubtedly help address environmental challenges, but Bush’s reliance on technology to solve his energy and environmental problems leaves untouched the question of consumer behaviour. This is the elephant in the room that no US politician seems willing to discuss yet lies at the core of the US citizen’s place at the top of the league table for energy use, emissions and consumption of other resources."
Thanks to Chris Blackmore for the pointer.
"George Bush’s policy on reducing US oil imports would flunk an elementary economics test, experts at the University of Sussex Energy Group said today. The aim of reducing US oil usage by 20% over the next 10 years, as outlined in Bush’s State of the Union address, while a laudable and long-overdue goal, is highly unlikely to make much impression on oil imports. Here’s how: Oil is a commodity traded on price, and abundant Middle East oil means that it is cheap. In addition, the US will be unable to erect trade barriers due to world trade rules...
Sussex Energy Group experts made the following observations on Bush’s address:
• Reliance on Ethanol: fuel from ethanol may help to increase indigenous production of fuel for vehicles but this comes at a price: the intensively grown grain used to produce ethanol itself takes considerable amounts of energy to produce...
• Technology fantasies: Technology can undoubtedly help address environmental challenges, but Bush’s reliance on technology to solve his energy and environmental problems leaves untouched the question of consumer behaviour. This is the elephant in the room that no US politician seems willing to discuss yet lies at the core of the US citizen’s place at the top of the league table for energy use, emissions and consumption of other resources."
Thanks to Chris Blackmore for the pointer.
ICO advises schools to ask permission to take fingerprints
The Information Commissioner's Office is now advising schools with fingerprint systems to ask the child's and parents' permission before taking fingerprints.
"A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said: "Because of the sensitivity of the issue, we are recommending that schools follow best practice and ask permission of parent and pupil before they take a fingerprint."
However, he said: "There's nothing in the act that makes that clear," and could not explain what would happen to schools that failed to follow this advice. Neither could he say at what age a child could assume legal responsibility for its own behaviour, without seeking parental advice...
This was the basis on which the ICO worked till now. Last September when the ICO guidance on school fingerprinting was said to be just weeks away from publication, David Smith, now deputy commissioner, said that schools could fingerprint children without parental consent under the Data Protection Act. As long as kids were deemed to be old enough to make their own minds up, the school could ask them and keep parents out of the loop."
"A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said: "Because of the sensitivity of the issue, we are recommending that schools follow best practice and ask permission of parent and pupil before they take a fingerprint."
However, he said: "There's nothing in the act that makes that clear," and could not explain what would happen to schools that failed to follow this advice. Neither could he say at what age a child could assume legal responsibility for its own behaviour, without seeking parental advice...
This was the basis on which the ICO worked till now. Last September when the ICO guidance on school fingerprinting was said to be just weeks away from publication, David Smith, now deputy commissioner, said that schools could fingerprint children without parental consent under the Data Protection Act. As long as kids were deemed to be old enough to make their own minds up, the school could ask them and keep parents out of the loop."
Truth, lies and the law, US style
There is a high profile trial going on in the US at the moment which won't have registered with too many people on this side of the pond. Sooter Libby, former chief of staff of Vice Presient Cheney, is charged with lying to federal prosecutors investigating the Bush administration's leak of the identity of CIA operative, Valerie Plame. Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, had publicly criticised the administration for claiming that Iraq had been seeking weapons grade Uranium in Niger. In the light of the Libby trial, Edward Lazurus has been thinking about how the law in the US treats the telling of truth and lies.
"At the Top of the Hierarchy: The Lies (and Truths) For Which We Jail the Tellers
At the top of the punishment pyramid are those lies we consider so reprehensible that we will send people to jail for telling them.
Among current news stories, the Libby trial is the most obvious example. Society places a very high value on telling the truth to government investigators, or to grand juries investigating crimes. The same is true of sworn statements in court; if false, they constitute the crime of perjury. In such circumstances, deliberately misrepresenting the truth is a felony.
By the same token, however, you can also go to jail for telling the truth - at least if you aren't forthcoming about how you came by the truth.
Consider the BALCO steroids scandal, in which a federal grand jury has been considering whether to indict a variety of professional athletes, including baseball star Barry Bonds, in connection with their alleged use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Not long ago, a couple of enterprising reporters wrote a very well-received book about the scandal, based in part on secret grand jury testimony that had been leaked to them.
It isn't a crime to receive or to publish such grand jury testimony (though it is a crime to leak it). Moreover, no one has suggested that the two journalists somehow misreported or distorted what was said in the grand jury. And it's pretty hard to argue that the journalists' work was not of substantial public interest. But - like journalists across the country who come into possession of information relevant to whether someone else has committed a crime -- they've been threatened over and over again with jail for refusing to reveal their sources. "
Ironically in the steroids case the journalists look like the only ones in the entire affair in danger of being jailed and yet they were the ones who exposed the wrongdoing.
"At the Top of the Hierarchy: The Lies (and Truths) For Which We Jail the Tellers
At the top of the punishment pyramid are those lies we consider so reprehensible that we will send people to jail for telling them.
Among current news stories, the Libby trial is the most obvious example. Society places a very high value on telling the truth to government investigators, or to grand juries investigating crimes. The same is true of sworn statements in court; if false, they constitute the crime of perjury. In such circumstances, deliberately misrepresenting the truth is a felony.
By the same token, however, you can also go to jail for telling the truth - at least if you aren't forthcoming about how you came by the truth.
Consider the BALCO steroids scandal, in which a federal grand jury has been considering whether to indict a variety of professional athletes, including baseball star Barry Bonds, in connection with their alleged use of illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Not long ago, a couple of enterprising reporters wrote a very well-received book about the scandal, based in part on secret grand jury testimony that had been leaked to them.
It isn't a crime to receive or to publish such grand jury testimony (though it is a crime to leak it). Moreover, no one has suggested that the two journalists somehow misreported or distorted what was said in the grand jury. And it's pretty hard to argue that the journalists' work was not of substantial public interest. But - like journalists across the country who come into possession of information relevant to whether someone else has committed a crime -- they've been threatened over and over again with jail for refusing to reveal their sources. "
Ironically in the steroids case the journalists look like the only ones in the entire affair in danger of being jailed and yet they were the ones who exposed the wrongdoing.
More evoting problems in Florida in 2006
Ed Felten says:
"The big e-voting story from November’s election was in Sarasota, Florida, where a congressional race was decided by about 400 votes, with 18,412 undervotes. That’s 18,412 voters who cast votes in other races but not, according to the official results, in that congressional race. Among voters who used the ES&S iVotronic machines — that is, non-absentee voters in Sarasota County — the undervote rate was about 14%. Something went very wrong...
Several explanations have been proposed, but only two are at all plausible: ballot design and machine malfunction. The ballot design theory says that the ballot offered to voters on the iVotronic’s screen was misdesigned in a way that caused many voters to miss that race. Looking at screenshots of the ballot, one can see how voters might miss the congressional race at the top of the second page...
It’s one thing to say that ballot design could have caused some undervotes, but it’s another thing entirely to say it was the sole cause of so elevated an undervote rate...
The malfunction theory postulates a problem or malfunction with the voting machines that caused votes not to be recorded. There are many types of problems that could have caused lost votes...
If we had a voter-verified paper trail, we could immediately tell which theory is correct, by comparing the paper and electronic records. If the voter-verified paper records show the same high undervote race, then the ballot design theory is right. If the paper and electronic records show significantly different undervote rates, then something is wrong with the machines. But of course the advocates of paperless voting argued that paper trails were unnecessary — while also arguing that touchscreen systems reduce undervotes."
Felten will be offering some more thoughts on the problem over the next week or so.
"The big e-voting story from November’s election was in Sarasota, Florida, where a congressional race was decided by about 400 votes, with 18,412 undervotes. That’s 18,412 voters who cast votes in other races but not, according to the official results, in that congressional race. Among voters who used the ES&S iVotronic machines — that is, non-absentee voters in Sarasota County — the undervote rate was about 14%. Something went very wrong...
Several explanations have been proposed, but only two are at all plausible: ballot design and machine malfunction. The ballot design theory says that the ballot offered to voters on the iVotronic’s screen was misdesigned in a way that caused many voters to miss that race. Looking at screenshots of the ballot, one can see how voters might miss the congressional race at the top of the second page...
It’s one thing to say that ballot design could have caused some undervotes, but it’s another thing entirely to say it was the sole cause of so elevated an undervote rate...
The malfunction theory postulates a problem or malfunction with the voting machines that caused votes not to be recorded. There are many types of problems that could have caused lost votes...
If we had a voter-verified paper trail, we could immediately tell which theory is correct, by comparing the paper and electronic records. If the voter-verified paper records show the same high undervote race, then the ballot design theory is right. If the paper and electronic records show significantly different undervote rates, then something is wrong with the machines. But of course the advocates of paperless voting argued that paper trails were unnecessary — while also arguing that touchscreen systems reduce undervotes."
Felten will be offering some more thoughts on the problem over the next week or so.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Mixers raided
From the NYT: Cracking Down on Mixtape CDs
"Not long before Christmas, Jeff Baker, the chief of police of Morrow, Ga., a small town just south of Atlanta, and one of his officers were walking through a local shopping mall when they happened to pass a kiosk hawking rap music CDs. One in particular caught their attention...
...it did not carry the name or address of the owner of the music copyrights, as Georgia law requires. Rather than arrest the kiosk vendor immediately, Chief Baker said, “We’d rather go after the source of the material. And at that point we had no idea what the source was.”
Any rap music aficionado would; the creator of the album is DJ Drama, whose real name is Tyree Simmons, arguably the nation’s most prominent producer of mixtapes, the name given to popular but largely unlicensed CDs stocked with yet-to-be released rap hits and free-style rhymes.
And many more people now know: last week, local authorities, working with the recording industry’s trade association, stunned fans and music executives alike by raiding DJ Drama’s studio in Atlanta and arresting him and a fellow D.J., Don Cannon, on racketeering charges."
Recommended reading.
"Not long before Christmas, Jeff Baker, the chief of police of Morrow, Ga., a small town just south of Atlanta, and one of his officers were walking through a local shopping mall when they happened to pass a kiosk hawking rap music CDs. One in particular caught their attention...
...it did not carry the name or address of the owner of the music copyrights, as Georgia law requires. Rather than arrest the kiosk vendor immediately, Chief Baker said, “We’d rather go after the source of the material. And at that point we had no idea what the source was.”
Any rap music aficionado would; the creator of the album is DJ Drama, whose real name is Tyree Simmons, arguably the nation’s most prominent producer of mixtapes, the name given to popular but largely unlicensed CDs stocked with yet-to-be released rap hits and free-style rhymes.
And many more people now know: last week, local authorities, working with the recording industry’s trade association, stunned fans and music executives alike by raiding DJ Drama’s studio in Atlanta and arresting him and a fellow D.J., Don Cannon, on racketeering charges."
Recommended reading.
Microsoft Vista Security Hole
From the BBC:
"Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders."
"Microsoft has admitted that speech recognition features in Vista could be hijacked so that a PC tells itself to delete files or folders."
Lobbyists for HAVA and evoting
The Black Box Voting folks have been looking into who specifically did all the lobbying to get the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed (which basically mandates electronic voting) and seem to be a little surprised at what they have found.
"While many election reform activists are under the impression that touch-screen (DRE) voting machines were some sort of Republican plot to take over America, the truth is that lobbying for the DRE-seeking "Help America Vote Act" came primarily from the foundation of the Democratic Party itself.
Activists throughout America have expressed surprise at the Democratic Party's unwillingness to pull DREs off the shelf. One reason is simply this: To do so would damage the credibility of those who lobbied for HAVA. And those who lobbied for HAVA just happen to be the biggest funders and activist workhorses for the Democratic Party itself...
WHO INVESTED THEIR CREDIBILITY (AND MEMBERSHIP FUNDS) TO LOBBY FOR HAVA?
1. Public interest groups - mostly progressive
2. Labor unions
3. Minority rights groups
4. Disability rights groups
5. Industry
Of these, the first four tend to favor Democrats but the fifth group -- industry, the group charged with writing the computer code that counts America's votes -- is made of of vendors that are more often close to the Republican Party.
Democrats lobbied HAVA in but to a large extent, Republican-affiliated vendors executed the mechanics of the plan. Some would call this comical; others, tragic."
These stories rarely involve a simple conspiracy on the part of an easily identifiable set of bad guys though the situation could be argued to contain its fair share of those. More often than not it is a complex mess of people, organisations, issues, situations and agendas leading to a series of decisions with, as the electronic voting scenario in the US aptly demonstrates, a less than optimum outcome.
"While many election reform activists are under the impression that touch-screen (DRE) voting machines were some sort of Republican plot to take over America, the truth is that lobbying for the DRE-seeking "Help America Vote Act" came primarily from the foundation of the Democratic Party itself.
Activists throughout America have expressed surprise at the Democratic Party's unwillingness to pull DREs off the shelf. One reason is simply this: To do so would damage the credibility of those who lobbied for HAVA. And those who lobbied for HAVA just happen to be the biggest funders and activist workhorses for the Democratic Party itself...
WHO INVESTED THEIR CREDIBILITY (AND MEMBERSHIP FUNDS) TO LOBBY FOR HAVA?
1. Public interest groups - mostly progressive
2. Labor unions
3. Minority rights groups
4. Disability rights groups
5. Industry
Of these, the first four tend to favor Democrats but the fifth group -- industry, the group charged with writing the computer code that counts America's votes -- is made of of vendors that are more often close to the Republican Party.
Democrats lobbied HAVA in but to a large extent, Republican-affiliated vendors executed the mechanics of the plan. Some would call this comical; others, tragic."
These stories rarely involve a simple conspiracy on the part of an easily identifiable set of bad guys though the situation could be argued to contain its fair share of those. More often than not it is a complex mess of people, organisations, issues, situations and agendas leading to a series of decisions with, as the electronic voting scenario in the US aptly demonstrates, a less than optimum outcome.
Billion dollar pills
From the Economist: Billion dollar pills, an article wondering if the pharmaceutical industry's business model, esesntially focussing on blockbuster drugs and exploiting them to the nth degree, is suffering.
Sony settle with FTC over rootkit charges
Sony have settled with the FTC on charges related to the damage done by the drm rootkit on some of their music CDs. They have apparently agreed to pay customers up to $150 for damage to their PCs.
"According to the Federal Trade Commission, which announced the settlement, Sony BMG's anti-piracy software limited the devices on which music could be played to those made by Sony Corp., Microsoft Corp. or other Windows-compatible devices.
The software also restricted the number of copies of the music that could be made to three, the agency said, and ``exposed consumers to significant security risks and was unreasonably difficult to uninstall.''
``Installations of secret software that create security risks are intrusive and unlawful,'' FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said...
The settlement requires the company to allow consumers to exchange through the end of June the affected CDs purchased before Dec. 31, 2006, and reimburse them up to $150 to repair damage done when they tried to remove the software. It also requires Sony BMG to clearly disclose limitations on consumers' use of music CDs and prohibits it from installing software without consumer consent.
For two years, Sony BMG also must provide an uninstall tool and patches to repair the security vulnerabilities on consumers' computers and must advertise them on its Web site. The company also is required to publish notices describing the exchange and repair reimbursement programs on its Web site."
"According to the Federal Trade Commission, which announced the settlement, Sony BMG's anti-piracy software limited the devices on which music could be played to those made by Sony Corp., Microsoft Corp. or other Windows-compatible devices.
The software also restricted the number of copies of the music that could be made to three, the agency said, and ``exposed consumers to significant security risks and was unreasonably difficult to uninstall.''
``Installations of secret software that create security risks are intrusive and unlawful,'' FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras said...
The settlement requires the company to allow consumers to exchange through the end of June the affected CDs purchased before Dec. 31, 2006, and reimburse them up to $150 to repair damage done when they tried to remove the software. It also requires Sony BMG to clearly disclose limitations on consumers' use of music CDs and prohibits it from installing software without consumer consent.
For two years, Sony BMG also must provide an uninstall tool and patches to repair the security vulnerabilities on consumers' computers and must advertise them on its Web site. The company also is required to publish notices describing the exchange and repair reimbursement programs on its Web site."
Britain blocks Italy's bid to ban death penalty
Hidden away on page 19 of yesterday's Independent: Britain blocks Italy's bid to ban death penalty. Last week the Italian government tried to get EU foreign ministers to support an initiative for a global ban on capital punishment. The UK scuppered the plan because they though it might have embarrassed the US. Disgraceful.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Former NYT reporter to testify in CIA leak case
From Findlaw:
"Journalists will take center stage Tuesday at the CIA leak trial as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald begins calling reporters as witnesses.
Fitzgerald said Judith Miller was to take the stand Tuesday, the first time the former New York Times reporter has testified publicly against the man she went to jail to protect as a source.
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is accused of perjury and obstruction for lying about conversations he had with journalists about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Prosecutors want to show that Libby lied to investigators about his conversations with journalists regarding Plame, who believes she was outed as retribution for her husband's criticism of the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq."
"Journalists will take center stage Tuesday at the CIA leak trial as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald begins calling reporters as witnesses.
Fitzgerald said Judith Miller was to take the stand Tuesday, the first time the former New York Times reporter has testified publicly against the man she went to jail to protect as a source.
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is accused of perjury and obstruction for lying about conversations he had with journalists about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame.
Prosecutors want to show that Libby lied to investigators about his conversations with journalists regarding Plame, who believes she was outed as retribution for her husband's criticism of the Bush administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq."
Monday, January 29, 2007
Information Commissioner says patients may opt out of NHS spine
Via the Register:
"The Information Commissioner has been told that patients will have the opportunity to refuse to have their details uploaded onto the new NHS medical records system. The news comes just weeks after the Department of Health refused patients that right. "
"The Information Commissioner has been told that patients will have the opportunity to refuse to have their details uploaded onto the new NHS medical records system. The news comes just weeks after the Department of Health refused patients that right. "
Patent Office Orders Re-Examination of Blackboard Patent
Pamela Jones and the Software Freedom Center (which made the formal request) report that BlackBoard's patent on elearning systems is being re-examined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
"In response to a formal request filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today ordered re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc.
"In response to a formal request filed by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today ordered re-examination of the e-learning patent owned by Blackboard Inc.
SFLC, provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software, had filed the request in November on behalf of Sakai, Moodle, and ATutor, three open source educational software projects. The Patent Office found that prior art cited in SFLC's request raises "a substantial new question of patentability" regarding all 44 claims of Blackboard's patent."
That's good news in my book and ther eis a good chance the US will now quash the indefensible patent on prior art grounds but remember it is not just in the US that BlackBoard have succeeded in securing this patent. Australia, New Zealand and Singapore have granted the patent and it is pending in the EU and various other parts of the world.Novartis v India on drug patents
From OneWorld:
"India, which amended its patent laws for TRIPS-compliance in 2005, introduced a clause to ensure that pharmaceuticals did not block the entry of low-cost generic drugs. A year ago this clause blocked Novartis’ patent application for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec. Now, in a major case that will have a profound effect on the affordability of essential medicines in India, Novartis is challenging this unique Indian provision
A division bench of the Madras High Court is set to hear a case that could potentially have a profound effect on the affordability of essential medicines in India and throughout the developing world. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG is challenging the constitutional validity of a key provision in India’s Patents Act; a provision designed to ensure that frivolous 20-year patent monopolies are not granted at the cost of public health. If Novartis succeeds in this unprecedented challenge, India’s status as the primary supplier of low-cost essential medicines to the developing world will be jeopardised. More fundamentally, if it succeeds, it will mark the first time in history that a multinational corporation succeeds in legally abrogating a country’s sovereign right to implement its obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) in a manner consistent with the protection of public health.
The legal provision at issue – Section 3(d) of the Patents Act – is a provision unique to Indian law, and stipulates that modifications of already-known medicines cannot be patented unless such modifications make the drugs significantly more effective. This provision was designed to prevent an all-too-common practice in the pharmaceutical industry known as ‘evergreening’, whereby patent owners patent trivial modifications of already existing drugs to artificially extend their monopolies beyond the 20-year period granted it on the original patent. Pharmaceutical companies have been engaging in such practices in other countries, effectively blocking the entry of low-cost generics for years...
Armed with this provision, the Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA) in September 2005 filed an opposition against Novartis’ patent application for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec, claiming that this application only concerned a modification of an already-known drug that did not improve its efficacy. Subsequently, in a landmark decision, the Patent Office in Chennai declared in January 2006 that Novartis’ patent application for Gleevec was insufficient to meet the requirements of Section 3(d), and denied Novartis a patent...
In March 2006, the Indian Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS and the Manipur Network of Positive People filed an opposition against GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK’s) patent application for Combivir, an important fixed-dose combination of two of the most widely used antiretroviral medicines in the developing world. The substance of GSK’s patent application proved to be exceedingly silly, and is demonstrative of exactly the type of frivolous patenting that Section 3(d) was enacted to prevent. Essentially, GSK sought a 20-year monopoly for combining two already known drugs – lamivudine and zidovudine, neither of which are patentable in India – with something called a ‘glidant’, of which the preferred variety is silicon dioxide, better known to most people as sand. To be fair, it was not just sand that is the subject of GSK’s ‘invention’. It also included corn starch, talc, calcium carbonate (better known as chalk) and a host of other simple, commonplace substances that drug makers routinely add when making a drug in pill form. Remarkably enough, as with Novartis and Gleevec, GSK had already obtained a patent for this in the United States, the United Kingdom, and several other countries.
In the face of the strong opposition filed by the activist groups, and the sheer frivolity of its patent application, GSK announced in March 2006 that it would be withdrawing its patent application for Combivir, thereby allowing several Indian generic manufacturers to continue making their versions of this essential drug combination without fear of liability."
"India, which amended its patent laws for TRIPS-compliance in 2005, introduced a clause to ensure that pharmaceuticals did not block the entry of low-cost generic drugs. A year ago this clause blocked Novartis’ patent application for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec. Now, in a major case that will have a profound effect on the affordability of essential medicines in India, Novartis is challenging this unique Indian provision
A division bench of the Madras High Court is set to hear a case that could potentially have a profound effect on the affordability of essential medicines in India and throughout the developing world. Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG is challenging the constitutional validity of a key provision in India’s Patents Act; a provision designed to ensure that frivolous 20-year patent monopolies are not granted at the cost of public health. If Novartis succeeds in this unprecedented challenge, India’s status as the primary supplier of low-cost essential medicines to the developing world will be jeopardised. More fundamentally, if it succeeds, it will mark the first time in history that a multinational corporation succeeds in legally abrogating a country’s sovereign right to implement its obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) in a manner consistent with the protection of public health.
The legal provision at issue – Section 3(d) of the Patents Act – is a provision unique to Indian law, and stipulates that modifications of already-known medicines cannot be patented unless such modifications make the drugs significantly more effective. This provision was designed to prevent an all-too-common practice in the pharmaceutical industry known as ‘evergreening’, whereby patent owners patent trivial modifications of already existing drugs to artificially extend their monopolies beyond the 20-year period granted it on the original patent. Pharmaceutical companies have been engaging in such practices in other countries, effectively blocking the entry of low-cost generics for years...
Armed with this provision, the Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA) in September 2005 filed an opposition against Novartis’ patent application for its anti-cancer drug Gleevec, claiming that this application only concerned a modification of an already-known drug that did not improve its efficacy. Subsequently, in a landmark decision, the Patent Office in Chennai declared in January 2006 that Novartis’ patent application for Gleevec was insufficient to meet the requirements of Section 3(d), and denied Novartis a patent...
In March 2006, the Indian Network for People Living with HIV/AIDS and the Manipur Network of Positive People filed an opposition against GlaxoSmithKline’s (GSK’s) patent application for Combivir, an important fixed-dose combination of two of the most widely used antiretroviral medicines in the developing world. The substance of GSK’s patent application proved to be exceedingly silly, and is demonstrative of exactly the type of frivolous patenting that Section 3(d) was enacted to prevent. Essentially, GSK sought a 20-year monopoly for combining two already known drugs – lamivudine and zidovudine, neither of which are patentable in India – with something called a ‘glidant’, of which the preferred variety is silicon dioxide, better known to most people as sand. To be fair, it was not just sand that is the subject of GSK’s ‘invention’. It also included corn starch, talc, calcium carbonate (better known as chalk) and a host of other simple, commonplace substances that drug makers routinely add when making a drug in pill form. Remarkably enough, as with Novartis and Gleevec, GSK had already obtained a patent for this in the United States, the United Kingdom, and several other countries.
In the face of the strong opposition filed by the activist groups, and the sheer frivolity of its patent application, GSK announced in March 2006 that it would be withdrawing its patent application for Combivir, thereby allowing several Indian generic manufacturers to continue making their versions of this essential drug combination without fear of liability."
India v Pakistan on Basmati Rice
The FT reports that the latest dispute between India and Pakistan is over intellectual property rights in Basmati rice.
Diebold Shows How to Make Your Own Voting Machine Key
From Alex Haldermann via Freedom to Tinker: Diebold Shows How to Make Your Own Voting Machine Key.
"By now it should be clear that Diebold’s AccuVote-TS electronic voting machines have lousy security. Our study last fall showed that malicious software running on the machines can invisibly alter votes, and that this software can be installed in under a minute by inserting a new memory card into the side of the machine. The last line of defense against such attacks is a cheap lock covering the memory card door. Our video shows that the lock can be picked in seconds, and, infamously, it can also be opened with a key that is widely sold for use in hotel minibars and jukeboxes...
Ross sent me his three homemade keys, and, amazingly, two of them can open the locks on the Diebold machine we used in our study!"
"By now it should be clear that Diebold’s AccuVote-TS electronic voting machines have lousy security. Our study last fall showed that malicious software running on the machines can invisibly alter votes, and that this software can be installed in under a minute by inserting a new memory card into the side of the machine. The last line of defense against such attacks is a cheap lock covering the memory card door. Our video shows that the lock can be picked in seconds, and, infamously, it can also be opened with a key that is widely sold for use in hotel minibars and jukeboxes...
According to published reports, nearly all the machines deployed around the country use the exact same key. Up to this point we’ve been careful not to say precisely which key or show the particular pattern of the cuts. The shape of a key is like a password — it only provides security if you keep it secret from the bad guys. We’ve tried to keep the shape secret so as not to make an attacker’s job even marginally easier, and you would expect a security-conscious vendor to do the same.
Not Diebold. Ross Kinard of SploitCast wrote to me last month to point out that Diebold offers the key for sale on their web site. Of course, they won’t sell it to just anybody — only Diebold account holders can order it online. However, as Ross observed, Diebold’s online store shows a detailed photograph of the key...
Could an attacker create a working key from the photograph? Ross decided to find out...Ross sent me his three homemade keys, and, amazingly, two of them can open the locks on the Diebold machine we used in our study!"
Google v Stoller
Rebecca Tushnet says Google have sued Leo Stoller the guy that claimed to have a trademark on the word "stealth." That will earn them a few brownie points in the cyber rights community.
"Here's something that will make Google very few new enemies, and perhaps some new friends: As reported by the TTABlog, Google has sued Leo Stoller, the well-known trademark "entrepreneur," for false advertising, RICO violations (the predicate acts being state-law extortion and wire and mail fraud), and unfair competition. The complaint, 222 pages including the exhibits, is here.
I've said a couple of times in this space that there's no provision in trademark law penalizing false claims of trademark ownership, or even false claims to own a federal registration, in contrast to the rule for patents. Google has brought its claims under the Lanham Act's general prohibition of false advertising; not only does it dispute Stoller's claims to own a federal registration to the mark "Google," but its allegations also encompass Stoller's claims to own common-law rights in the mark, representations that he could license the mark, representations that he'd prevailed in numerous court cases, and representations that "99% of [his] opponents opt to settle.""
Stoller also claimed to own the phrase "freedom of expression" which irritated Kimbrew McLeod, who had actually managed to get a trademark on the phrase some years previously in an exercise in demonstrating the otherworldlyness of the US system of intellectual property.
"Here's something that will make Google very few new enemies, and perhaps some new friends: As reported by the TTABlog, Google has sued Leo Stoller, the well-known trademark "entrepreneur," for false advertising, RICO violations (the predicate acts being state-law extortion and wire and mail fraud), and unfair competition. The complaint, 222 pages including the exhibits, is here.
I've said a couple of times in this space that there's no provision in trademark law penalizing false claims of trademark ownership, or even false claims to own a federal registration, in contrast to the rule for patents. Google has brought its claims under the Lanham Act's general prohibition of false advertising; not only does it dispute Stoller's claims to own a federal registration to the mark "Google," but its allegations also encompass Stoller's claims to own common-law rights in the mark, representations that he could license the mark, representations that he'd prevailed in numerous court cases, and representations that "99% of [his] opponents opt to settle.""
Stoller also claimed to own the phrase "freedom of expression" which irritated Kimbrew McLeod, who had actually managed to get a trademark on the phrase some years previously in an exercise in demonstrating the otherworldlyness of the US system of intellectual property.
Vista Red Flags
Michael Geist says the small print in Microsoft Vista's licence raises red flags.
"for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print." Those communities have raised red flags about Vista's legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations that have been incorporated into the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry.
The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user.
Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge...
Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software. Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated "high" or "severe,"even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted."
"for the past few months the legal and technical communities have dug into Vista's "fine print." Those communities have raised red flags about Vista's legal terms and conditions as well as the technical limitations that have been incorporated into the software at the insistence of the motion picture industry.
The net effect of these concerns may constitute the real Vista revolution as they point to an unprecedented loss of consumer control over their own personal computers. In the name of shielding consumers from computer viruses and protecting copyright owners from potential infringement, Vista seemingly wrestles control of the "user experience" from the user.
Vista's legal fine print includes extensive provisions granting Microsoft the right to regularly check the legitimacy of the software and holds the prospect of deleting certain programs without the user's knowledge...
Vista also incorporates Windows Defender, an anti-virus program that actively scans computers for "spyware, adware, and other potentially unwanted software." The agreement does not define any of these terms, leaving it to Microsoft to determine what constitutes unwanted software. Once operational, the agreement warns that Windows Defender will, by default, automatically remove software rated "high" or "severe,"even though that may result in other software ceasing to work or mistakenly result in the removal of software that is not unwanted."
Intelligent caring teens
There is a wonderful letter in today's Independent from an inner city school teacher, Brian Collier (scroll down to Blair's distortions and 'respect zones'). He questions Tony Blair's demonisation of today's teenagers.
"I am a year older than the PM, and I remember the "Wilful Damage" posters on the wall of my primary school in Bury, Lancashire. I remember my parents lamenting the lack of manners of young people in the Fifties and Sixties. I remember gangs of "teddy boys" with razor blades and bicycle chains fighting in the centre of town on Friday night. I remember football hooliganism on a scale that would fuel our worst nightmares now...
Young people today are more caring, more questioning, more intelligent and less racist than they've ever been. I should know, I teach A-levels to an extremely diverse groups of teenagers in an inner-city further education college."
It's good to see someone who works with and understands young people speaking out on their behalf.
"I am a year older than the PM, and I remember the "Wilful Damage" posters on the wall of my primary school in Bury, Lancashire. I remember my parents lamenting the lack of manners of young people in the Fifties and Sixties. I remember gangs of "teddy boys" with razor blades and bicycle chains fighting in the centre of town on Friday night. I remember football hooliganism on a scale that would fuel our worst nightmares now...
Young people today are more caring, more questioning, more intelligent and less racist than they've ever been. I should know, I teach A-levels to an extremely diverse groups of teenagers in an inner-city further education college."
It's good to see someone who works with and understands young people speaking out on their behalf.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Head of the Youth Justice Board Edged out for being off message
From ARCH:
"The head of the Youth Justice Board, Rod Morgan, has resigned after the Home Office decided to advertise his job rather than simply renew his contract. He isn’t going quietly. In a Newsnight interview to be shown tonight, he says of the 26% increase in children entering the criminal justice system that:
"The head of the Youth Justice Board, Rod Morgan, has resigned after the Home Office decided to advertise his job rather than simply renew his contract. He isn’t going quietly. In a Newsnight interview to be shown tonight, he says of the 26% increase in children entering the criminal justice system that:
government targets for bringing offences to justice were having “perverse consequences” by swelling prisoner numbers unnecessarily.
Minor offences that used to be dealt with informally or out of court were now being pushed into an overstretched criminal justice system, and work to improve regimes in young offender institutions was being “undermined”
Predictably, the Home Office has a two-fingered response:
“We refute the claim that young people are being demonised and criminalised. Considerable emphasis has been placed on providing activities for young people.”
As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the Home Office is already pretty cheesed about the YJB report on ASBOs, so their decision to re-advertise Rod Morgan’s job in an attempt to find someone holding the right song-sheet was always on the cards.
It was less than 6 months ago that Rob Allen came to the end of his contract with the YJB, and sounded off about:
elements which are deeply disappointing: the increasing criminalisation of young people involved in minor delinquency, and the stubbornly high use of custodial remands and sentences.
‘And there are some developments of which we really should be ashamed, in particular aspects of the way we lock up children, the demonisation of young people involved in anti-social behaviour and the coarsening of the political and public debate about how to deal with young people in trouble.’
Meanwhile, YJB board member Howard Williamson grits his teeth and hangs on but for how long, who knows? He has already deplored the
Pardon the apoplexy, but what depths have we plumbed when a government prefers appeasing tabloids by getting macho with children rather than listening to its own"increasingly authoritarian and interventionist state
Friday, January 26, 2007
ID card for immigrants to make employers border police
John Lettice takes no satisfaction from having one of his many predictions about ID cards coming to pass.
"
"
Immigration minister Liam Byrne has taken the wraps off the long-predicted (in these parts, at least) plan to hit immigrants in the first wave of ID cards, and to force employers to police the system. David Blunkett first trailed this scheme in November 2004, (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/03/business_immigrant_checks/) while an IPPR report last year (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/31/ippr_irregular_migration/) recommended hitting immigrants with ID cards by 2008.
Notice the organisation Blunkett was speaking to? There's a coincidence. Liam "Charlie" Byrne (the Home Office's very own round-headed kid), trailing the proposed Borders Bill on Radio 4's Today programme, essentially followed the script of Blunkett's 2004 IPPR speech. There have for some years now been legal provisions for heavy penalties for companies hiring illegal immigrants, and it is the employer's responsibility to ensure that employees have the right to work in the UK. These provisions have however been virtually unenforceable, because of the number of different documents which can be used to 'prove' right to work, and the relative ease with which these can be forged. Byrne this morning told us that there were currently over 60 documents which could be used, and that biometric ID cards for immigrants would provide employers with "a fail-safe, easy method to check whether someone is here legally."
EU 'e-health'
Via Glyn on the ORG list, ZDNet reports:
"The European Commission is about to call for proposals on how patients' medical details would be shared between its member states, with the UK almost certain to be included in the scheme.
Within the next few days, an initiative called the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) will be adopted as part of Framework 7, a massive drive by the EU to fund research and development, with e-health being a major beneficiary.
One requirement of the CIP will be to establish interoperability between member states' healthcare IT systems, such as the NHS' so-called "Spine", which is the new UK database of patient care records.
This aim was outlined in a document published in September last year, entitled Connected Health: Quality and Safety for European Citizens. In this document, the Commission's ICT for Health unit called for interoperability between nations' healthcare systems, arguing that "health, social care and other providers must no longer work in isolation, but need to collaborate as a team, if necessary beyond their national and linguistic borders".
I'm glad to see Ross Anderson is in fighting spirit over the idea. When ZDnet asked him for his thoughts he said:
"If you're somebody with information that should be known, at present you will carry either a bracelet or a card in your wallet to say so. It is foolish to move to a computer for the simple reason that, if you have the information either on an online database or sitting on a smartcard, then the computer could be down. Human-readable information which you can carry is the most appropriate technology... I sincerely hope it's another round of something that's never going to happen. If it comes to the point that every one of the five million people working in healthcare in Europe, plus the CIA and hackers, can access the information, then I'll stop using the health service"
"The European Commission is about to call for proposals on how patients' medical details would be shared between its member states, with the UK almost certain to be included in the scheme.
Within the next few days, an initiative called the Competitiveness and Innovation Framework Programme (CIP) will be adopted as part of Framework 7, a massive drive by the EU to fund research and development, with e-health being a major beneficiary.
One requirement of the CIP will be to establish interoperability between member states' healthcare IT systems, such as the NHS' so-called "Spine", which is the new UK database of patient care records.
This aim was outlined in a document published in September last year, entitled Connected Health: Quality and Safety for European Citizens. In this document, the Commission's ICT for Health unit called for interoperability between nations' healthcare systems, arguing that "health, social care and other providers must no longer work in isolation, but need to collaborate as a team, if necessary beyond their national and linguistic borders".
I'm glad to see Ross Anderson is in fighting spirit over the idea. When ZDnet asked him for his thoughts he said:
"If you're somebody with information that should be known, at present you will carry either a bracelet or a card in your wallet to say so. It is foolish to move to a computer for the simple reason that, if you have the information either on an online database or sitting on a smartcard, then the computer could be down. Human-readable information which you can carry is the most appropriate technology... I sincerely hope it's another round of something that's never going to happen. If it comes to the point that every one of the five million people working in healthcare in Europe, plus the CIA and hackers, can access the information, then I'll stop using the health service"
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Norwegian Ombudsman: iTunes illegal
This story has been doing the rounds for the past week or so, so it is interesting the FT should pick it up now.
"Apple was dealt a blow in Europe on Wednesday when Norway’s powerful consumer ombudsman ruled that its iTunes online music store was illegal because it did not allow downloaded songs to be played on rival technology companies’ devices.
"Apple was dealt a blow in Europe on Wednesday when Norway’s powerful consumer ombudsman ruled that its iTunes online music store was illegal because it did not allow downloaded songs to be played on rival technology companies’ devices.
The decision is the first time any jurisdiction has concluded iTunes breaks its consumer protection laws and could prompt other European countries to review the situation."
Text is free, we make our money on volume(s)
James Boyle is on the money yet again in the FT.
" The internet makes copying cheap. Businesses that see their livelihood
as dependent on the restriction of copying – concentrated in the
recording, film, publishing and software industries – are understandably
upset. Their goal is to have the same ability to control their content
as they had in an analog world but to keep all the benefits of
pervasiveness, cost saving, and viral marketing that a global digital
network brings. To that end, they have moved aggressively to change laws
worldwide, to introduce stiffer penalties, expand rights, mandate
technological locks, forbid reverse engineering, and increase
enforcement. It is not so much a case of wanting to have their cake and
eat it, as to have their cake and make your cake illegal.
Yet there are hints in each of these industries of a different business
model, one that aims to encourage, rather than to forbid copying. At the
moment, the hints are only that – a scattering of anecdotes suggesting
alternative ways of supporting creativity. It is not clear if they will
thrive or even survive, still less whether they can “scale” to a broader
audience. Still, if the alternative plan is to make the internet illegal
or sue grandmothers for downloading, it might be worth taking a look at
them."
James has recently published a new book called The Shakespeare Chronicles, a novel he has apparently been working on sporadically for 20 years. He's also, naturally given his stance on intellectual property, making it available freely via the Net.
" The internet makes copying cheap. Businesses that see their livelihood
as dependent on the restriction of copying – concentrated in the
recording, film, publishing and software industries – are understandably
upset. Their goal is to have the same ability to control their content
as they had in an analog world but to keep all the benefits of
pervasiveness, cost saving, and viral marketing that a global digital
network brings. To that end, they have moved aggressively to change laws
worldwide, to introduce stiffer penalties, expand rights, mandate
technological locks, forbid reverse engineering, and increase
enforcement. It is not so much a case of wanting to have their cake and
eat it, as to have their cake and make your cake illegal.
Yet there are hints in each of these industries of a different business
model, one that aims to encourage, rather than to forbid copying. At the
moment, the hints are only that – a scattering of anecdotes suggesting
alternative ways of supporting creativity. It is not clear if they will
thrive or even survive, still less whether they can “scale” to a broader
audience. Still, if the alternative plan is to make the internet illegal
or sue grandmothers for downloading, it might be worth taking a look at
them."
James has recently published a new book called The Shakespeare Chronicles, a novel he has apparently been working on sporadically for 20 years. He's also, naturally given his stance on intellectual property, making it available freely via the Net.
AAP hire PR 'pit bull' to discredit open access
With pressure of other things I've been failing badly to keep up with Peter Suber's fantastic Open Access News. I'm glad I looked this morning, though, since Peter has pointed to a report in Nature suggesting the American Association of Publishers have decided to hire a prominent public relations firm to spread untruths about the idea of open access.
"The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted... also recommended joining forces with groups that may be ideologically opposed to government-mandated projects such as PubMed Central, including organizations that have angered scientists. One suggestion was the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Washington DC, which has used oil-industry money to promote sceptical views on climate change."
Peter himself has a remarkably measured response:
"
"The consultant advised them to focus on simple messages, such as "Public access equals government censorship". He hinted... also recommended joining forces with groups that may be ideologically opposed to government-mandated projects such as PubMed Central, including organizations that have angered scientists. One suggestion was the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Washington DC, which has used oil-industry money to promote sceptical views on climate change."
Peter himself has a remarkably measured response:
"
- I've read this several times and still find it incredible. Why would the AAP pay $300-500k for advice on how to misrepresent the issue? The next time you see an AAP press release on OA, ask yourself this question.
- Does the AAP even need the advice? It has been falsely identifying government archiving with government censorship, and falsely identifying threats to publisher revenue with threats to peer review, at least since the debate over the NIH policy in 2004. For a more recent example, see its May 2006 public statement opposing FRPAA. (Also see my rebuttal.)
- I hope that publisher-members of the AAP will disavow these tactics and that journalists and policy-makers will understand the difference between intellectual debate and media massage.
- Kudos to Nature for uncovering and reporting this story."
CIA Facebook recruits
Wired News reports that the CIA have been recruiting via Facebook.com.
"Since December 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency has been using Facebook.com, the popular social networking site, to recruit potential employees into its National Clandestine Service. It marks the first time the CIA has ventured into social networking to hire new personnel.
"Since December 2006, the Central Intelligence Agency has been using Facebook.com, the popular social networking site, to recruit potential employees into its National Clandestine Service. It marks the first time the CIA has ventured into social networking to hire new personnel.
The CIA's Facebook page (login required) provides an overview of what the NCS is looking for in a recruit, along with a 30-second promotional YouTube video aimed at potential college-aged applicants. U.S. citizens with a GPA above 3.0 can apply."
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Limiting the risks of government data sharing
There are some smart people in the civil service, like Owen Barder, the Director for Global Development Effectiveness at DfID, the UK Department for International Development, the department charged with fighting global poverty, who makes some succinct points about government data sharing on his blog:
"The UK Government is going to consult more widely on its proposals for data sharing within government.
"The UK Government is going to consult more widely on its proposals for data sharing within government.
A national identity register that allows data sharing across government could be the technological underpinning of a huge improvement in the provision of government services. (It is important that the technology will not transform the services: it is a platform on which government processes can change).
Those of us who understand the technology and care about our civil liberties should not adopt a luddite stance of opposition: we should send a clear, consistent and simple message about the safeguards we need so that we get the benefits of joined up services without the risks to our freedoms.
I propose the following five, readily understandable safeguards. The government should commit itself to each of these, or offer an extremely good reason why not:
- government data should be stored in decentralized databases that can communicate with each other on a need to know basis, not in shared data warehouses;
- citizens should have access to all data held about them by government
- citizens should be able to see a complete log of every access to their personal data by all public servants
- an independent information security ombudsman should police the systems
- there should be no identity cards and no collection of biometric data"
Survey: 25% support torture
The Guardian reports on the British Social Attitudes survey (3,000 inrterviews by the National Centre for Social Research). Apparently a third of those questioned think banning peaceful protests and 25% think torture is a price worth paying to fight terrorism.
William Heath reckons that means "a quarter of us are evil and a third deeply misguided." I think too many people have been watching the US drama 24, where the hero Jack Bauer at some point in his busy days always ends up torturing somebody to get the crucial information save the world.
"About 80% said electronic tagging of terrorist suspects was "a price worth paying" to combat terrorism. The same proportion backed home curfews, travel restrictions and detention without charge for more than a week. Less than a quarter of the population said torturing terror suspects would be "a price worth paying" and only 35% would accept a ban on peaceful protests and demonstrations. But the nation is almost equally divided on whether people charged with terrorism-related crime should be denied a jury trial - with 50% finding that acceptable and 45% unacceptable.
Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the London School of Economics and joint author of the report's civil rights chapter, said: "The very mention of something being a counter-terrorism measure makes people more willing to contemplate the giving up of their freedoms. It is as though society is in the process of forgetting why past generations thought these freedoms to be so very important." "
Conor's right and I'm reminded of Martin Niemoeller's poem...
First they came for the communists but I wasn't a communist so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the social democrats but I wasn't a social democrat so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the trade unionists but I wasn't a trade unionist so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the Jews but I wasn't a Jew so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the Catholics but I was a protestant so I didn't do anything
Then they came for me and there was no one left to defend me.
William Heath reckons that means "a quarter of us are evil and a third deeply misguided." I think too many people have been watching the US drama 24, where the hero Jack Bauer at some point in his busy days always ends up torturing somebody to get the crucial information save the world.
"About 80% said electronic tagging of terrorist suspects was "a price worth paying" to combat terrorism. The same proportion backed home curfews, travel restrictions and detention without charge for more than a week. Less than a quarter of the population said torturing terror suspects would be "a price worth paying" and only 35% would accept a ban on peaceful protests and demonstrations. But the nation is almost equally divided on whether people charged with terrorism-related crime should be denied a jury trial - with 50% finding that acceptable and 45% unacceptable.
Conor Gearty, professor of human rights law at the London School of Economics and joint author of the report's civil rights chapter, said: "The very mention of something being a counter-terrorism measure makes people more willing to contemplate the giving up of their freedoms. It is as though society is in the process of forgetting why past generations thought these freedoms to be so very important." "
Conor's right and I'm reminded of Martin Niemoeller's poem...
First they came for the communists but I wasn't a communist so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the social democrats but I wasn't a social democrat so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the trade unionists but I wasn't a trade unionist so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the Jews but I wasn't a Jew so I didn't do anything
Then they came for the Catholics but I was a protestant so I didn't do anything
Then they came for me and there was no one left to defend me.
HughesDirect drm mini saga concluded
It looks like my drm mini saga has come to a satisfactory conclusion. I've had an email today saying HughesDirect have refunded the money I paid out for the faulty DVD player, returned via City-Link on Monday. Well done and thank you to the folks at HughesDirect for being so helpful and professional in dealing with the problem.
Police struggle with 'cybercrime'
The Independent is reporting this morning that a new report from the Metropolitan Police says the police are struggling to cope with the rise of cybercrime (which they also call e-crime). Firstly let me get my usual irritation about e-things out of the way. There is no such thing as 'e-crime'. It is just that criminals now have access to these not-so-newfangled-anymore tools called computers. The police, however, have nothing like the resources or personnel with the experience or skills required to tackle the numbers of crimes that now incorporate a computing element.
That constitutes a failure of police management and of government. If police management were not so blindly focussed on artificial simplistic targets, then maybe, as the Met report concludes, "The ability of law enforcement to investigate all types of e-crime locally and globally" would "be 'mainstreamed' as an integral part of every investigation, whether it be specialist, or murder, robbery, extortion demands, identity theft or fraud." Maybe too, when the local vandals engage in another round of boredom, drugs or alcohol induced criminal damage, we could get a real police officer to investigate and catch the perpetrators, rather than having to phone a supposedly local number, which diverts to a call centre where the operator doesn't even know the location of your town and is only empowered to provide you with a crime number and no more. (Interestingly enough when the then Mayor's wall was damaged some time ago the police were round doing door to door inquiries asking if we had seen anything).
If the government weren't so intent on headline-reflex legislating and pouring billions of pounds into ill thought out information systems to 'solve' everything from NHS waiting lists to immigration and terrorism, then maybe a fraction of those wasted resources could be diverted to support the difficult jobs that the police and intelligence services have to do, with, of course, the appropriate checks and balances. The real work of policing and intelligence, though, is difficult and complex, often tedious, time consuming and dangerous. Sadly for the people involved in such jobs this process has the rather serious political drawback of not being constantly, spectacularly and superficially newsworthy. So whilst the politicians chase headlines and police management chase targets, those who have to do the real work just do their best.
That constitutes a failure of police management and of government. If police management were not so blindly focussed on artificial simplistic targets, then maybe, as the Met report concludes, "The ability of law enforcement to investigate all types of e-crime locally and globally" would "be 'mainstreamed' as an integral part of every investigation, whether it be specialist, or murder, robbery, extortion demands, identity theft or fraud." Maybe too, when the local vandals engage in another round of boredom, drugs or alcohol induced criminal damage, we could get a real police officer to investigate and catch the perpetrators, rather than having to phone a supposedly local number, which diverts to a call centre where the operator doesn't even know the location of your town and is only empowered to provide you with a crime number and no more. (Interestingly enough when the then Mayor's wall was damaged some time ago the police were round doing door to door inquiries asking if we had seen anything).
If the government weren't so intent on headline-reflex legislating and pouring billions of pounds into ill thought out information systems to 'solve' everything from NHS waiting lists to immigration and terrorism, then maybe a fraction of those wasted resources could be diverted to support the difficult jobs that the police and intelligence services have to do, with, of course, the appropriate checks and balances. The real work of policing and intelligence, though, is difficult and complex, often tedious, time consuming and dangerous. Sadly for the people involved in such jobs this process has the rather serious political drawback of not being constantly, spectacularly and superficially newsworthy. So whilst the politicians chase headlines and police management chase targets, those who have to do the real work just do their best.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Kahle v Gonzales: Court upholds copyright in orphan works
Via Michael Geist:
"A U.S. appeals court has rejected a bid by Internet activists to roll back federal laws that extended copyright protection over orphan works, or books and other media that are no longer in print. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision to dismiss Kahle v. Gonzales, which argued that legal changes made in the 1990s had vastly extended copyright protections at the expense of free speech rights."
The decision is available at http://www.ninthcircuitopinions.com/2007/01/22/kahle-v-gonzales
Larry Lessig argued the case before the court in November and there are further details on the case at the Stanford website.
"In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)— are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an “effectively perpetual” term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution’s Limited Times and Promote...Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works — works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available — violate the constitution."
Well the court rejected the argument. I guess there will be plenty of commentary from the usual suspects in due course.
"A U.S. appeals court has rejected a bid by Internet activists to roll back federal laws that extended copyright protection over orphan works, or books and other media that are no longer in print. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court decision to dismiss Kahle v. Gonzales, which argued that legal changes made in the 1990s had vastly extended copyright protections at the expense of free speech rights."
The decision is available at http://www.ninthcircuitopinions.com/2007/01/22/kahle-v-gonzales
Larry Lessig argued the case before the court in November and there are further details on the case at the Stanford website.
"In this case, two archives ask the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to hold that statutes that extended copyright terms unconditionally — the Copyright Renewal Act and the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA)— are unconstitutional under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and that the Copyright Renewal Act and CTEA together create an “effectively perpetual” term with respect to works first published after January 1, 1964 and before January 1, 1978, in violation of the Constitution’s Limited Times and Promote...Progress Clauses. The Complaint asks the Court for a declaratory judgment that copyright restrictions on orphaned works — works whose copyright has not expired but which are no longer available — violate the constitution."
Well the court rejected the argument. I guess there will be plenty of commentary from the usual suspects in due course.
Speaking of ignoring evidence...
Not only have government been ignoring evidence pointing out the nature of the problems with their NHS IT systems but it seems they have been actively trying to hide at least some of these problems according to John Young:
"The UK government's Department of Health has removed the following three embarrassing documents from its website. Two of them describe the 'sealed envelope' mechanism proposed to protect the privacy of medical records in their proposed national medical records database, while the third is a consultancy report saying that sensitive information would be better held in local systems."
nhs-sealed-pr.doc (Connecting for Health's own Risk Analysis: Confidentiality problems will cause risk to Health)
nhs-sealedenvs2.doc (Sealed Envelopes - Guiding Principles Document)
nhs-sealedenvs1.doc (Sealed Envelopes briefing paper)
Thanks to HJ Affleck at FIPR for the pointer.
"The UK government's Department of Health has removed the following three embarrassing documents from its website. Two of them describe the 'sealed envelope' mechanism proposed to protect the privacy of medical records in their proposed national medical records database, while the third is a consultancy report saying that sensitive information would be better held in local systems."
nhs-sealed-pr.doc (Connecting for Health's own Risk Analysis: Confidentiality problems will cause risk to Health)
nhs-sealedenvs2.doc (Sealed Envelopes - Guiding Principles Document)
nhs-sealedenvs1.doc (Sealed Envelopes briefing paper)
Thanks to HJ Affleck at FIPR for the pointer.
Disproportionate and special interest lawmaking
With government spokespeople complaining all over the place about the police investigating cash for honours, it seems fairly clear that when they were introducing over 3000 new crimes during the past ten years, these crimes weren't meant to apply to themselves, the good guys. Don't the police realise that these laws were supposed to help them tackle the bad guys and if some innocent people get caught up in the process then that was the price of public safety, as long as none of the elite are amongst those caught in the net, of course.
In any case, the 'trust me because I'm a good guy who sincerely believes he is doing the right thing' approach to government is completely unsustainable when it involves unquestioning faith in a ruling elite engaged in perennially and systematically ignoring mass quantities of evidence contrary to their worldview. Clifford's essay, 'The Ethics of Belief' comes back to mind here.
I don't know whether the New Labour insiders who have been arrested in the cash for honours investigation or whether the New Labour friends about be prosecuted in the BAe-Saudi arms affair, before the government terminated the case, have engaged in criminal behaviour. I do believe that a government that sails to power on the promise of being "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime", introduces new sweeping criminal justice legislation on average every two months for ten years and then implies that they themselves are outside of the reach of such laws, blast a huge hole in their own ship way below the credibility line. The rather unfortunate fall out for those like Lord Levy who have been subject to investigation is that if they are not subsequently prosecuted due to lack of evidence or incontrovertable evidence of innocence, it will be too easy to believe that some other member of the elite protected them - the no smoke without fire syndrome - and Levy and others might not get a chance to clear their names.
An approach to criminal justice legislation which involves a constant legislating reflex response to the latest headlines, based on a belief about what the police or security services want and only what they want, is also unsustainable. It is indicative of governing through laws written by and for powerful special interest groups, both within and outwith government. (The police and security services should have all the resources and tools they need to do the difficult job they have to do but with the appropriate checks and balances in place to ensure we don't creep down the road of a police state. (You only have to look at today's headlines about the complicity of the RUC in loyalist murders to see how it can so easily get out of control). Even the head of MI6 said last week that the government had gone too far in implying the BAe-Saudi case had been shut down at his request.)
Larry Lessig makes pretty much the same point in the closing chapter of the second edition of Code, in the context of copyright legislation:
"In the last ten years Congress has passed exactly one bill to deal with the problem of spam - the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. OVer the same period, Congress has passed 24 laws affecting copyright...
This pattern is not an accident. In a political world that is dominated as ours is, lawmaking happens when special interests benefit. It doesn't happen when special interests oppose. And in these two instances, the lack of regulation and the plethora of regulation is explained by this point precisely. There have been 24 bills about copyright because rock stars lobby for them. There has been one bill about spam because the direct mailers (and many large companies) testified against them."
In any case, the 'trust me because I'm a good guy who sincerely believes he is doing the right thing' approach to government is completely unsustainable when it involves unquestioning faith in a ruling elite engaged in perennially and systematically ignoring mass quantities of evidence contrary to their worldview. Clifford's essay, 'The Ethics of Belief' comes back to mind here.
I don't know whether the New Labour insiders who have been arrested in the cash for honours investigation or whether the New Labour friends about be prosecuted in the BAe-Saudi arms affair, before the government terminated the case, have engaged in criminal behaviour. I do believe that a government that sails to power on the promise of being "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime", introduces new sweeping criminal justice legislation on average every two months for ten years and then implies that they themselves are outside of the reach of such laws, blast a huge hole in their own ship way below the credibility line. The rather unfortunate fall out for those like Lord Levy who have been subject to investigation is that if they are not subsequently prosecuted due to lack of evidence or incontrovertable evidence of innocence, it will be too easy to believe that some other member of the elite protected them - the no smoke without fire syndrome - and Levy and others might not get a chance to clear their names.
An approach to criminal justice legislation which involves a constant legislating reflex response to the latest headlines, based on a belief about what the police or security services want and only what they want, is also unsustainable. It is indicative of governing through laws written by and for powerful special interest groups, both within and outwith government. (The police and security services should have all the resources and tools they need to do the difficult job they have to do but with the appropriate checks and balances in place to ensure we don't creep down the road of a police state. (You only have to look at today's headlines about the complicity of the RUC in loyalist murders to see how it can so easily get out of control). Even the head of MI6 said last week that the government had gone too far in implying the BAe-Saudi case had been shut down at his request.)
Larry Lessig makes pretty much the same point in the closing chapter of the second edition of Code, in the context of copyright legislation:
"In the last ten years Congress has passed exactly one bill to deal with the problem of spam - the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. OVer the same period, Congress has passed 24 laws affecting copyright...
This pattern is not an accident. In a political world that is dominated as ours is, lawmaking happens when special interests benefit. It doesn't happen when special interests oppose. And in these two instances, the lack of regulation and the plethora of regulation is explained by this point precisely. There have been 24 bills about copyright because rock stars lobby for them. There has been one bill about spam because the direct mailers (and many large companies) testified against them."
Monday, January 22, 2007
Identity Crisis
Kim Cameron has been reading Jim Harper's book Identity Crisis.
"Jim Harper really understands identification. And he is better than anyone at explaining what identification systems won’t do for us - or our institutions. He carefully explains why many of the proposed uses of identification are irrational - delivering results that are quite unrelated to what they are purported to do. In my view, getting this message out is just as important as explaining what identity will do...
I have only one criticism of the book. I would like to see us separate the notion of identity, on the one hand, and individual identification (or identifiers) on the other. We need return to the original meaning of identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
"Jim Harper really understands identification. And he is better than anyone at explaining what identification systems won’t do for us - or our institutions. He carefully explains why many of the proposed uses of identification are irrational - delivering results that are quite unrelated to what they are purported to do. In my view, getting this message out is just as important as explaining what identity will do...
I have only one criticism of the book. I would like to see us separate the notion of identity, on the one hand, and individual identification (or identifiers) on the other. We need return to the original meaning of identity: the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
As a simple example, suppose I’m a service provider building a chat room for children, and want to limit participation to children who are between 12 and 15. Let me contrast two ways of doing this.
In the first, all the children are given an identifier. To get into the room, they present their identifier and prove they are the person to whom that identifier was given. Then the chatroom system does a lookup in some public system linking identifier and age to make the access control decision.
In the second, the children are given a “digital claim” that they are of some age, and a way to prove they are the person to whom that ”claim” was given. The chatroom system just queries the claim to see if it meets its criteria. There is no reference to any public or even private identifier.
My point is that the first mechanism involves use of an identifier. The second still involves identity - in the sense of being what a person is - but the identification, so rightly put into question by Jim’s book, has been put into the trashcan where it belongs.
The use of an identifier in our first example breaks the second Law of Identity (Data Minimization - release no more data than necessary). It breaks the third Law too (Fewest Parties - since it discloses use of information to a central database unnecessary to the transaction). Finally, it breaks the Fourth Law (using an omnidirectional identifier when none is required)."
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