CC Learn

I learn from James Boyle that the Creative Commons folks are launching a fantastic new initiative, CC Learn. I'm sure he won't mind me reproducing his email here:

"I have two favours to ask. Thanks to funding from the Hewlett and Macarthur Foundations, Creative Commons is launching a new division called CC Learn, which will be devoted to open educational material and repositories - kindergarten through lifelong learning. CC Learn's goal is to break down the barriers - whether legal, technical or cultural - between different collections of open educational content. Our goal is to make material more "interoperable," to speed up the virtuous cycle of use, experimentation and reuse, to spread the word about the value of open educational content, and to change the culture of repositories to one focused on "helping build a usable network of content worldwide" rather than "helping build the stuff on our site." Please help us spread the news! Second, we need an Executive Director with experience in education to run the new division. The person would be located in San Francisco, working with the astounding CC staff. Details are here. http://creativecommons.org/about/opportunities#ccl Please pass this information along to the networks you are a part of and encourage qualified people to apply. Save the world and advance learning through open content, in San Francisco, while surrounded by extremely cool people.. What more could one want?

This is a really exciting initiative. Imagine a global network of open and free educational content, with curricula customized to different states or countries, with experimentation across multiple sites and multiple platforms, so that someone else can find things to do with my content that I never thought of... Imagine bringing into the open educational content community hundreds of thousands of teachers, students and volunteers. Imagine pursuing ease of discovery and use of educational material with the same ingenuity and dedication that we invest in making e-commerce systems work well or in allowing teenagers to flirt with each other on social networking sites.. Many of the pieces are in place, and there are great people working on the issue already, but there is a lot to do. Please help us by passing this along. (And if you can help fund it or donate to support it, so much the better!) "

Actually, James would be the ideal candidate to lead this project. I wonder if Duke University would be prepared to grant him a lengthy sabbatical to that end? As he says: imagine a global network of open and free educational content, with experimentation across multiple sites and multiple platforms, so that someone else can find things to do with my content that I never thought of... Imagine bringing into the open educational content community hundreds of thousands of teachers, students and volunteers...

In addition, imagine the mass of people failed by conventional education who would get their first real shot at an education... imagine people with dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism or a whole range of 'learning difficulties', learning styles or untapped cognitive gifts having the facility, through multimedia technologies, to become engaged with educational content in ways that were never possible before... imagine small isolated village communities in the developing world with Ndiyo wireless networks and/or windup Negroponte laptops making connections with people in other parts of the world... imagine the capacity to put people in touch with people that is fundamentally what real education is all about... imagine what a child growing up in a urban western suburb could learn from a child in a nomadic African community... imagine the barriers to conventional education - the cost of books, infrastructure like transport, schools etc. - getting broken down or simply bypassed... imagine the potential for personalisation (whilst bearing in mind Cass Sunstein's republic.com concerns) especially attractive to the Jerry Bruner constructivist school of thought (which basically holds that each of constructs our own reality)... imagine the potential for constructing, creating, and supporting, activities around the content enriched by multiple cultural perspectives rather than constrained by the local, national or regional norms... imagine enabling people to develop the personal skills to mine this rich seam of networked content... imagine the potential that will be realised for all this through Web 2.0... user generated content via RSS feeds (e.g. create course activities, SAQs, resources around reliable RSS feeds thereby keeping content 'up to date')... imagine the phenomenal learning machine that is the human mind being released from the constraints of conventional education and continuing to grow and learn at the same rate as babies/toddlers right throughout childhood and adulthood (if we taught babies to walk and talk in the same way we teach kids at school, they'd probably never learn)... imagine the potential to get a critical mass of people playing with technological tools or types of content sufficient to see the emergence of collective utilities, ideas, features which we hadn't conceived of (the Martin Weller model)... imagine the potential to break free of the short term government driven 'we will fix education this year' interference in the conventional education system... imagine the capacity to break away from the 'expert delivered content' model of education with the teacher at the front of the class as the arbiter and holder of all knowledge, selectively released to the supposed empty vessels that are her pupils... imagine the capacity for people to actually learn at their own pace not at some arbitrary pace dictated by some arbitrary system... imagine the capacity for the teachers to learn from the kids...

Sorry I've got a bit carried away there but it is a theme I could bore for my native Ireland on ("Clearly!" responds the reader). I even have an educational wish list in the final chapter of my book and this kind of initiative, CC Learn, if it were to reach enough people with enough resources underpinning it, could get right to the heart of my wish list. I say in the book:

"There are enormous problems with basic access to educational materials
all over the world, even in affluent societies like the UK or the US. We
now have the technical capacity to make all recorded human knowledge
and culture available in an accessible form at an affordable cost. So why
don’t we do it?"

But it is not just about making it available. It is about making the capacity to build on it available by tapping into the infinite potential of people in touch with people to learn from what has gone before. I'll curb my enthusiasm at that point but the CC Learn director role definitely sounds like one for a James Boyle, a Jamie Love, a John Naughton or a Larry Lessig. Having said that, I have a number of other friends and colleagues who have a really deep understanding of this stuff and would do an outstanding job in such a role, such as Tony Nixon or Martin Weller. This is a project worth keeping an eye on - the potential here to make a real difference to the world is limitless.

Google and the rocks in the web's safe harbours

James Boyle via the FT: Google and the rocks in the web's safe harbours. He's exploring the Microsoft accusations against Google and suggests that when thinking about IP and new technologies we need a deeper level of analysis and public debate than 'stop thief' v 'that would make Google illegal'.

"When used in policy debate, the words "Microsoft" and "Google" operate to make people stupid. Half the population seems to assume Google's position will exemplify the public interest, while Microsoft is an evil empire bent on total control of our minds. (The satirical paper, The Onion, explores this hilariously in an article where a Google-planned genocide is said merely to raise "some potential privacy concerns".) This benign image may explain the muted criticism of Google's intellectual property missteps - the restrictive deals Google has struck with university libraries, for example, which prevent large-scale access by search engines or digital library projects even where public domain works are involved.

In many cases, Google's self-interest has aligned with the public interest. "That would make Google illegal," is the most effective argument against expansive property claims. What about YouTube? On a commonsense level, Viacom's arguments will persuade many. It is hard to portray Google as a helpless start-up. But if we end up narrowing defences to reach YouTube's deep pockets, we might make the next Google less likely to appear. Safe harbours will acquire rocks and shoals. Conclusion? In intellectual property, the cry "Stop! Thief!" is more complex than it seems. Ask Microsoft's lawyers."

Recommended.

CYA security

Bruce Schneier has a nice essay on cover your ass security in the latest Crypto-gram.

"Since 9/11, we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending
ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of
many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions
of *why* they are so ineffective. In short: much of our country's
counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from
the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from
criticism when another attack occurs.

Boston, January 31: As part of a guerilla marketing campaign, a series
of amateur-looking blinking signs depicting characters from Aqua Teen
Hunger Force, a show on the Cartoon Network, were placed on bridges,
near a medical center, underneath an interstate highway, and in other
crowded public places.

Police mistook these signs for bombs and shut down parts of the city...They overreacted because the signs were weird...

if a weird device with blinking lights and wires turned out to be a bomb
-- what every movie bomb looks like -- there would be inquiries and
demands for resignations. It took the police two weeks to notice the
Mooninite blinkies, but once they did, they overreacted because their
jobs were at stake.

This is "Cover Your Ass" security, and unfortunately it's very common...

We might be better off as a nation funding intelligence
gathering and Arabic translators, but it's a better re-election strategy
to fund something visible but ineffective, like a national ID card or a
wall between the U.S. and Mexico...

Sadly, though, there might not be a solution. All the money is in
fear-mongering, re-election strategies, and pork-barrel politics. And,
like so many things, security follows the money."

I'd recommend his piece on private police forces too.

French High Court cancels the creation of illegal migrants database

In an interesting decision, the highest administrative court in France has cancelled a ministerial order setting up a database aimed at facilitating the expulsion of illegal migrants. Via EDRI-gram:

"On 2 October 2006, four French NGOs filed this case against the Interior minister: CIMADE and GISTI (two associations defending the rights of migrants), LDH (the French Human Rights League), and French EDRI member IRIS. While the database creation itself is allowed by the French code on immigration and asylum (CESEDA), the NGOs argued that the ELOI file would contain excessive and inadequate personal data on the foreigners themselves, their children, the citizens with which they were staying, and their visitors in retention centres. Moreover, these data were supposed to be kept for an excessive duration."

The court essentially cancelled the order because the ministry of interior set up the database using the wrong procedures. The response of the ministry has been to issue a new order in accordance with what they now consider to be the correct procedures to legitimise the database. They have also stated that they don't accept the substantive arguments about excessive personal data collection or excessive length of retention. The NGOs have responded with a call for the government to respect immigrants rights though I suspect they'll have to start briefing their lawyers again if they want to have any real impact on the latest developments.

The NHS database opt out decoy

Anyone with an interest in patient privacy in the UK should take the time to read The NHS Database: Lord Warner’s opt out decoy by Dr Paul Thornton MPH, FRCGP. Dr Thornton dissects the complex mess that is the NHS programme for IT and some of the driving agendas in a clinical but accessible way (sadly, though, at 12 pages of A4 probably beyond the attention span of the average New Labour minister).

When former health minister Lord Warner gave a public assurance just before Christmas that people would be able to opt out of having their patient records recorded on the new insecure national database, it was right after he had accepted the recommendations of a ministerial taskforce which had stated exactly the opposite i.e. everyone is expected to have their health details recorded on the national database.

"All that is being offered by the ministerial working party is an “opt out” from the “summary care record”. This limited opt out is important because all information in the summary care record will otherwise be accessible to all NHS staff nationally5. Initially the summary care record will include only current medications, allergies to medication and adverse reactions. This is sufficient information to imply highly sensitive diagnoses. If you know the treatment you know the disease. It is intended that the summary care record will include even more data as time passes...

CfH intend that all clinical, psychological and social information will be recorded by professionals in a “Detailed Care Record”, a subset database of the entire scheme. The information will be stored on centralised computers that are remote from the unit treating the patient..

At the planning stages of the project, Connecting for Health reassured that patient information would be protected from widespread inappropriate sharing because software would be used to hide sensitive information that patients did not want revealed, even to other health professionals. The proposals were metaphorically dubbed “sealed envelopes”. These proposals were described even by CfH as necessary to meet the project’s legal obligations on privacy and confidentiality. After substantial delay and failure to produce working software in this regard, CfH documents have just been updated9. It is confirmed that all the inadequacies10 in the proposals persist.

· The software is not yet written or tested
· It will not be available until long after the database is up and running so that
detailed care records will be unprotected
· It will not protect information that is stored in scanned images of historical documents.
· The patient controls can be over ridden
· The sealed envelopes will be ignored in respect of information transferred to
the Secondary Uses Service

Through a further safe guard, “Role based access”, it is intended that staff will only be able to access information that is justified by their job purpose, as indicated when they log on using their chip and pin card... It is just not that simple. The proposal is untested. Already, a Warwickshire hospital A&E department has abandoned the use of chip and pin cards by individual users because they were unable to log on and off quickly enough.11 Warwickshire primary care trust is enabling administrative staff who work at the PCT to be issued with Chip and Pin cards that would misrepresent these staff as employees of the local General Practitioners, thereby allowing access to sensitive patient information"

He goes on to explain succinctly plans for secondary use (such as research) of personally identifiable patient information which will be accessible by NHS staff, universities, the civil service, the police, social services and the pharmaceutical industry. He believes that the independence of the Patient Information Advisory Group (PIAG), charged with advising the Secretary of State on lawful uses of patient information, is compromised because several members of the group are leading participants in the design of the national database. He even quotes minutes of a group meeting where uses of patient data that would be constrained by existing legislation were considered and the group concluded that “consideration should be given to how either the class regulations or primary legislation might be reframed to encompass such uses.”

The current Health Minister, Lord Hunt, is on record as saying:

“With the best of intentions, the NHS has had a tradition for paternalism where much of what is done in the name of science or research relies on the implied consent of patients, but that implied consent has been pushed too far. We saw that example at Alder Hey. There the issue was human organ retention. We see it in many places where confidential patient information is currently used. The most important lesson to be learnt from Alder Hey is that patients' trust will be lost if we fail to forge new relationships based on informed consent.”

The current state of and plans for the NHS programme for IT undermine that principle of patient consent, sometimes for the best of intentions e.g. to facilitate medical research. But medical research is not impeded if the patient data is anonymized. Through a combination of good intentions, political expediency, Machiavellian media manipulation, mulitple conflicting agendas and the sheer complex mess that constitutes the NHS we are going down a path that could do significant damage to patient care and personal privacy. Of course computers can augment the work of the NHS but for now the decision makers need to get right back to clarifying the purpose of national NHS IT programme and completely overhauling the imlpementation.

For those interested in knowing a little more about the NHS IT plans I recommend, as does Dr Thornton, the BCS report on same released just before Christmas. Sadly it didn't get the attention it deserved at the time such was the success of Lord Warner's economical-with- the- truth PR sales pitch that the government had taken on board the concerns of critics and adjusted their plans accordingly.

Thanks to Glyn at ORG for the pointer to Dr Thornton's paper.

Update from today's Guardian: First test launched of NHS's controversial 'Spine' database

Thinking outside the disciplinary boundaries of IP

James Boyle has long encouraged his peers to think outside the usual boundaries of intellectual property scholarship and practice for progress towards solutions to IP problems thrown up by the World we know today. A nice example is in his paper on Enclosing the Genome.

"For a second analogy, consider the justice claims that have recently caused ‘access to essential medicines’ to become a fundamental part of drug patent policy both domestically and internationally. Again, these are a set of issues that fit poorly within conventional intellectual property scholarship; but the arguments are not mere exhortations to take drugs away from companies and hand them over the poor and the sick. The essential medicine questions are not simple, either economically or institutionally and – after some initial reticence – the academy now seems to be turning its eyes to the complicated points of treaty interpretation, regional institutional design, international price discrimination, and alternative patent regimes that this particular and real moment of human suffering forces us to think about. Can we really believe that our scholarly focus will be somehow weaker as a result of the forced encounter with claims of distributive justice and human rights? In fact, with any luck, the intensity of feeling about a particular controversy over
AIDS drugs may actually force us to acknowledge the single greatest weakness behind a patent driven drug development policy; a patent driven system for drug development will, if working correctly, deliver drugs on which there is a high social valuation – measured in this case by ability and willingness to pay. To put it another way, to have a patent-driven drug policy is to choose to deliver lots of drugs that deal with male-pattern baldness, but also with real and important diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, various cancers and heart disease. It is to choose not to have a system that delivers drugs for tropical diseases, or indeed for any disease which is suffered overwhelmingly by the national or global poor.
To say this is not to condemn drug patents; it is rather, to suggest precisely the two lines of inquiry I argued for in this article. First, if our goal is truly to help to eliminate human suffering, then we should spend more time thinking about alternative and supplementary ways of encouraging pharmaceutical innovation beyond the drug patent system. Second, when we talk about innovation and progress in the intellectual property system, we quickly and easily substitute some universal
imagined ideal of Progress for the actual specific version of “progress” towards which our current distribution of entitlements and rights will push us. Many policies that might seem justified by the promotion of large “P” progress, might seem more questionable if they were instead pushing us towards the specific vision of progress held latently within the pattern of demand established by our current distribution of rights and wealth. To quote Amartya Sen, “there are plenty of Pareto optimal
societies which would be perfectly horrible places to live.”34 Now if these lessons can be taught us in a concrete and unforgettable way by the debate over drug patents, is there any reason to believe that the larger debate over gene patents will offer us any less insight, or any less provocation? It could be, of course, that the end result would be exactly the same; perhaps all of us would find our conclusions unchanged, even if we were a little more critical about worshiping at the church of innovation, even if we clarified our definitions of that concept and of the notion of efficiency that underpins it, even if we broadened our scholarly focus to include the
kind of institutional and environmentalist inquiries I suggest here, and made our discussion of commodification a little more similar to that which occurs in conventional property scholarship.
Perhaps this change in methodology would leave our substantive positions unchanged, though I doubt it.. Perhaps its effects would only be found in other areas, such as the essential medicines question, or the question of the goals of basic science policy, or the question of the redesign of the institutional framework through which intellectual property policy is made. But even if all that were true, the gene patenting debate could still teach intellectual property scholars a set of lessons we sorely need. At least, that is, if we have the courage to enter it."

FSU report on voting machines in Sarasota County

Florida State University recently released a report on the ES&S iVotronic voting machines used in the 2006 elections in Sarasota County in Florida, the results of which are under review. The report concludes that the voting machines were very insecure but that the anomalies were not down to a concerted attack on the system. Ed Felton agrees with that conclusion:

"The reason is simple: only a brainless attacker would cause undervotes. An attack that switched votes from one candidate to another would be more effective and much harder to detect.

So if it wasn’t a security attack, what was the cause of the undervotes?

Experience teaches that systems that are insecure tend to be unreliable as well — they tend to go wrong on their own even if nobody is attacking them...

The study claims to have ruled out reliability problems as a cause of the undervotes, but their evidence on this point is weak, and I think the jury is still out on whether voting machine malfunctions could be a significant cause of the undervotes...

I want to make the case for the other theory: that a malfunction or bug in the voting machines caused votes to be not recorded. The case sits on four pillars: (1) The postulated behavior is consistent with a common type of computer bug. (2) Similar bugs have been found in voting machines before. (3) The state-commissioned study would have been unlikely to find such a bug. (4) Studies of voting data show patterns that point to the bug theory."

He does believe, though, in spite of all the problems that have emerged with evoting systems, that computers can make voting more secure.

"It’s tempting to eliminate computers entirely, returning to old-fashioned paper voting, but I think this is a mistake. Paper has an important role, as I’ll describe below, but paper systems are subject to well-known problems such as ballot-box stuffing and chain voting, as well as other user-interface and logistical challenges.

Security does require some role for paper. Each vote must be recorded in a manner that is directly verified by the voter. And the system must be software-independent, meaning that its accuracy cannot rely on the correct functioning of any software system. Today’s paperless e-voting systems satisfy neither requirement, and the only practical way to meet the requirements is to use paper.

The proper role for computers, then, is to backstop the paper system, to improve it. What we want is not a computerized voting system, but a computer-augmented one.

This mindset changes how we think about the role of computers. Instead of trying to make computers do everything, we will look instead for weaknesses and gaps in the paper system, and ask how computers can plug them. "

Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved

From the NYT: Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved

Wearing a Red Nose Could get you arrested

A warning fom bloggerheads:

THE FOLLOWING IS A SERIOUS WARNING:

This is the first Red Nose Day to take place since the introduction of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.

It is now illegal for you to wear a red nose or promote Red Nose Day in any way within the designated area surrounding Parliament if you do not first seek permission from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Simply wearing a red nose could result in a fine of £1,000.

Organising a Red Nose Day event that takes place within the designated area could result in a fine of £2,500 and/or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 51 weeks.

No, I am not pulling your leg.

Second life and property law students

Elizabeth Townsend Gard has begun an interesting experiment with her latest cohort of property law students, investigating the relationship between tangible and virtual property by exploring property and how it is treated in the online digital world Second Life.

"Each week a group of 7-9 students investigate, experience, and comment upon Second Life. The final product is a screencast. These screencasts will be posted at number of places -- at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School (where I am a non-resident fellow), here at my academic copyright blog, and then I have set up a special blog for the Fizzy project at http://fizzysecondlife.blogspot.com/."

She has two objectives in mind for her students:

"I want students to experience Second Life, which includes the tasks of avatar maintenance (changing Fizzy's appearance), experiencing different places and events, keeping up with the news, both inside Second Life as out, and most importantly for our course, exploring a property component.

The property question changes each week. The first, week, for example, students looked at the basic legal structure of Second Life and not surprisingly found it was a contract-based system, and not a "property" based regime. Virtual property is contract based. No one was surprised at this; it was just a place to begin. The second week students looked at finders and gifts; the third group is looking at "first in time." These last two examples are common topics for a First Year property course. The goal of this experiment is to get 1L students to apply their very basic knowledge in a different setting. Do they see elements of modern "real life" property being replicated in "virtual property?"

It's a variation on the Cyberone idea about argument/debate in cyberspace tried by Charles and Rebecca Nesson at Harvard.

Microsoft on Google Book

Larry Lessig, unsurprisingly, has an opinion on Microsoft's criticism of Google's lack of respect for copyright.

"Google’s “Book Search service” aims to provide access to three kinds of published works: (1) works in the public domain, (2) works in copyright and in print, and (3) works in copyright but no longer in print. As some of you may recall from the presentation I made a while ago, about 16% of books are in category (1); 9% of books are in category (2), and 75% of books are in category (3).

With respect to categories (1) and (2), Google is “respect[ing] copyright” just as “we at Microsoft are doing it.” With respect to category (1), that “respect” means no permission needed. With respect to (2), that means deals with the publishers whose works are made available — deals which give enhanced access over the default “snippet access.”

So that leaves category (3) — the 75% of works presumptively under copyright, but no longer in print. How do you “respect” copyright with respect to those works?

Well, Microsoft “respects” these copyright holders by not providing any access to their works. Google “respects” these copyright holders by providing “snippet access” — just enough to see a sentence or two around the words you’re searching for, and then links to actually get the book (either at a library, or from a book seller).

This may just be my own vanity, but I suspect that more copyright holders of books no longer in print would like Google’s kind of respect over Microsoft’s. But in any case, it is not true to say that Google could have provided “its Book Search service” in the way that “we at Microsoft are doing it.” If asking first is always required, then because of the insanely inefficient system of property that we call copyright — inefficient again because the government has designed it so that there’s no simple way to know who owns what, the very essence of a property system — 75% of books could not be within a digital view of our past. "

Policy, security and computers

Ed Felten has been explaining how he got entangled in policymaking.

"When I started out in research, I had no idea public policy would become a focus of my work. The switch wasn’t so much a conscious decision as a gradual realization that events and curiosity had led me into a new area. This kind of thing happens all the time in research: we stumble around until we reach an interesting result and then, with the benefit of hindsight, we construct a just-so story explaining why that result was natural and inevitable. If the result is really good, then the just-so story is right, in a sense — it justifies the result and it explains how we would have gotten there if only we hadn’t been so clueless at the start.

My just-so story has me figuring out three things. (1) Policy is deep and interesting. (2) Policy affects me directly. (3) Policy and computer security are deeply connected...

The third realization, that policy and computer security are joined at the hip, can’t be tied to any one experience but dawned on me slowly. I used to tell people at cocktail parties, after I had said I work on computer security and they had asked what in the world that meant, that computer security is “the study of who can do what to whom online.” This would trigger either an interesting conversation or an abrupt change of topic. What I didn’t know until somebody pointed it out was that Lenin had postulated “who can do what to whom” (and the shorthand “who-whom”) as the key question to ask in politics. And Lenin, though a terrible role model, did know a thing or two about political power struggles."

Ed's categorisation has parallel's with the central ethos of the Technology Faculty at the Open University where my colleagues Dick Morris and John Naughton were the chief culprits in shaping the platform of ideas and opportunities that underpin my perspectives on technology and leading to my just-so story that (1) Technology is deep and interesting. (2) Technology affects me directly. (3) Technology and society are deeply connected...

$250,000 Open Architecture Prize announced

Via Yahoo!: $250,000 Open Architecture Prize announced

"Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NYSE:AMD - News) and Cameron Sinclair, winner of last year's TED Prize and founder of Architecture for Humanity, today announced the first ever Open Architecture Prize at the annual TED Conference. The $250,000 Open Architecture Prize is the largest prize in the field of architecture and is designed to be a multi-year program that will draw competition from design teams around the world.
Each year, a winning design will be selected from a field of low-cost, sustainable design projects and built in a selected community. The first project for the Open Architecture Prize will be an "e-community center," a centralized building equipped with internet connectivity solutions designed to enable an entire community to access the transformative power of the Internet."

Digitial Security and Privacy

There is a new book on digital security and privacy the text of which is freely available on the Web.

DOJ conclude FBI abused PATRIOT Act powers

An audit by the US Justice Department has concluded that the FBI has improperly and illegally used powers granted under the PATRIOT Act to gather information on US citizens. Various politicians are jumping on the FBI criticism bandwagon but they really can't be surprised that when they pass draconian laws, stoke up irrational fear and put unreasonable pressure on agents at the coalface that the laws get stretched the way they apparently have been in these cases.

Open letter to Steve Jobs on DRM

The Defective by Design folks have drafted an open letter to Steve Jobs on DRM and are looking for signatories. Sample:

"To many observers your blog pledge looks like a way to reduce pressure on Apple from these regulators, and head off calls from the industry to license FairPLay to other distributors.

It has been three weeks now since you published your pledge to drop DRM, and there have been many responses from commentators who have outlined actions you could take to back up your words. The fact that you have not taken any action leads us to ask the question: How genuine is your pledge?"

Jobs doesn't take kindly to this kind of criticism, so sady I can't see him reading much past that part of the letter.

Dissecting Microsoft Slams At Google As Copyright Infringer

Danny Sullivan has dissected Microsoft's attack on Google as a monster copyright leech.

"Rubin talked a lot about Microsoft's publisher program, the way it gets copyrighted content into its system:

The second source is our Publisher program, under which we receive books still under copyright from publishers with their express permission, either in digital form directly from the publisher, or scanned from hard copy. Participating publishers have access to an online site – or dashboard – that enables them to manage their publications on Live Search Books. They can choose the amount of text that a reader may preview, create click-to-buy links next to their books, edit metadata, and so on. Several major publishers have signed on to the Publisher Program.

Google has a long-standing similar program, and that's downplayed. Agreements with "several" publishers for "certain" copyrighted books as Rubin describes is a far cry from hundreds (I think perhaps thousands) of publishers that voluntarily have contributed thousands of books to the Google program. But I think a picture is worth a thousands words:

That's the Google both at the Frankfurt Book Fair that I attended last September. I believe the fair is the largest gathering of book publishers in the world. There was massive building after massive building filled with publishers.

Notice the picket signs? Notice the angry publishers storming the Google booth? Publishers are upset with Google, yes. But some of those same publishers ironically are also partners in the program. And plenty are partners in the program without being angry at Google. Google is actively involved in the publishing community and has far more contributions than Rubin's speech suggests...

Conclusion

Overall, I have to say it's disappointing seeing Microsoft come out on an attack stance rather than be positive about what it is doing. Google deserves slams, and I wish they'd change to an opt-in policy for copyrighted books. But for me, with perspective, Microsoft comes across as someone trying to play catch-up and willing to be negative to do it. I don't like that in political campaigns, and I guess I don't like it any more in the search wars. But most important, it's a dangerous game to play. The more Microsoft paints itself as some type of pure protector of copyright, the harder it will fall as people find examples where it fails to meet expectations."

The piece is nicely forensic and worth a read.

Martin's new book

I've invested in a copy of Martin's new book, Virtual Learning Environments: Using, Choosing and Developing Your VLE, and it's just arrived today. I smiled when I read the dedication:

"To John Naughton, from whom I learnt the only career advice worth following - do interesting things."

By coincidence the Lithuanian translation of John's book has just been released.

Children of 11 to be finger printed

From the Sunday Times: Children of 11 to be finger printed

"CHILDREN aged 11 to 16 are to have their fingerprints taken and stored on a secret database, internal Whitehall documents reveal.

The leaked Home Office plans show that the mass fingerprinting will start in 2010, with a batch of 295,000 youngsters who apply for passports.

The Home Office expects 545,000 children aged 11 and over to have their prints taken in 2011, with the figure settling at an annual 495,000 from 2014. Their fingerprints will be held on a database also used by the Immigration and Nationality Directorate to store the fingerprints of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers.

The plans are outlined in a series of “restricted” documents circulating among officials in the Identity and Passport Service. They form part of the programme for the introduction of new biometric passports and ID cards. "

Maybe it is time for civil rights campaigners to tap into the 'think of the children' rhetoric?

Open letter to Dutch Minister on evoting

In the light of the revlations thrown up by their successful freedom of information requests, "We do not trust voting computers" has written an open letter to the new Dutch minister responsible for evoting. An English translation of the text of the letter follows:

"As you probably know our foundation is worried about the state of the electoral process. At thismoment we would like draw your attention to a matter which underlines the seriousness of the matter at hand and which we feel demands immediate action on your part. We recently received some unnerving documents from the Electoral Council as a result of a Freedom of Information request we filed there. From these documents it becomes clear that your predecessor Mr. Nicolaï at the time of the last elections was being extorted by the largest seller of voting computers and election software. Attached you will find a copy of the press release as it can be found on thewebsite of our foundation. This website also has copies of all supporting documents mentioned in the press release.

Unfortunately we are faced with a situation in which independent verification with regard to voting computers is often interpreted to mean that the manufacturers inspect themselves. In this light we wonder how to explain to the Dutch voters that before the last elections the minister issued a press release stating “no doubts over trustworthiness of voting machine” while at the same time he was being extorted by the company selling the software without which elections cannot be held. (Among other things the owner of the company wanted the government to buy his company in trade for his continued cooperation during the upcoming provincial elections)

Although the government has itself to blame for the vulnerable and dependent position in which it finds itself today, we feel this is not an excuse to let these threats pass by. For as far as you haven’t acted already, the “We do not trust voting computers” foundation calls upon you to take all legal and other measures needed to restore faith in the electoral process and to show that our
government cannot be extorted. "

This story has a long way to run in Holland but it really should be told everywhere that currently uses or is considering using evoting systems.

Evoting company allegedly threatens Dutch government

If this story is true or even just partly true, it merits widespread exposure. It clearly indicates the kind of serious problems a state can expose itself to when an electoral process is electronically facilitated and the electronic voting systems are supplied by a single or small number of dominant suppliers.

"After invoking the Dutch Freedom of Information Act, the "We do not trust voting computers" foundation has received a number of unnerving documents from the Dutch Electoral Council. These documents describe the wheeling and dealing of Jan Groenendaal, whose company is responsible for all the software sold by the Nedap/Groenendaal consortium that sells the voting computers used in over 90% of Dutch municipalities. Groenendaal's company writes the software that tabulates the election results on both the local and the national level. The Dutch government depends on Groenendaal's company to the extent that it currently cannot hold elections without his help. The Electoral Council also concludes this in worried letters (Dutch) to the responsible minister that are part of the correspondence now made public.

The letters also show that Groenendaal was more or less blackmailing the Dutch government at the time of the previous parliamentary elections. On November 10th, he sends an e-mail (english translation) warning the ministry that his company will cease all activity if Rop Gonggrijp of the "We do not trust voting computers" foundation becomes a member of the independent commission that is investigating the future of the electoral process. This commission was instituted after earlier exposés by the foundation Gonggrijp founded. Despite this intervention, Groenendaal probably senses that the commission's report (due in October 2007) is likely to negatively impact the value of his company. Therefore, Groenendaal makes a very straightforward business proposal in the same e-mail, : "The ministry buys the shares of our company at a reasonable price, [...] and we will still cooperate during the next election (the Dutch 2007 provincial elections to be held March 7th)."

The story is backed up with copies of actual documents apparently obtained under Dutch freedom of information regulations which, if the English translations supplied are accurate, make profoundly disturbing reading. Sample of an email (English translation) from Jan Groenendaal to Harke Heida in the Dutch government:

"Thank you for responding despite these busy times. Like no other we
know the stress surrounding an election. That's why we are were shocked
by the unnecessary and undesirable increase of pressure here.
However, the tenor of your answer is exactly what I didn't want to
hear. On hearing the word 'committee', leave alone 'broad committee',
my hair stands on end. For the cause of the current 'commotion' can
be attributed largely to that other commission (from Ireland) which
needed two years and 365 pages to cloud its incompetence...

It's not a secret that the moment hacker G. would be admitted to such a
committee, we will instantly suspend all our activities and invoke the
media.

Otherwise, we've asked our Legal Adviser to examine the possibilities
to start criminal proceedings against this criminal, based on a
so-called section X procedure, for situations where the government has
been failing in fulfilling its law enforcement duty.

After all, his activities are disrupting society and thereby comparable
to acts of terrorism. Detention pending trial and a preliminary
investigation hearing would have been completely justified here...

If the department believes, as now obviously appears from the
disproportional concern, that we do not come up to the mark, then the
solution is clear;


* The department takes over the shares of our company at a
reasonable price,

* Ceases operations immediately

* Has its hands completely free for every future development that
can be thought off,

* Amortising the takeover expenses within a few elections by
means of charging the municipalities, which see temporarily
continuation of the service for a gentle price, unless off
course the ministry comes up with something better overnight.

* We will then still cooperate for the next elections (PS 2007)."

Contrary to Mr Gronenendaal's claims about the "incompetence" of the Irish Commission on Electronic voting, the work and reports of that body are models of clarity, rationality and common sense in outlining the challenges associated with electronic voting systems. His desire for Rop Gonggrijp to be treated as a terrorist for exposing the serious security problems with the Dutch evoting systems would be comical if it was not so scary. His threat to "suspend all our activities" should Mr Gonggrip become a member of the proposed Dutch commission to look into the voting system problems surely needs to be subject to a legality litmus test, as presumably does the proposal that the Dutch government buy out his company. In a subsequent letter (English translation) to the Dutch Minister of Governmental Innovation on 22 November 2006 Mr Groenendaal says:

"For different reasons than expected (retirement) the survival of our agency is at stake abruptly, and with that the preparation of the coming elections is in danger too. Correspondence on this matter with Mr Heide from your department did not produce any results. He refers to the independent committee that you have promised The House. I'm afraid we cannot nor want to wait for that.

My concrete proposal:

· The ministry takes over our agency, naturally at a suitable fee, and receives the
ownership of the software.
· Maintenance of the application is commissioned to a non-commercial supramunicipial
institution.
· We will make ourselves available, if desired, for supporting the transition.
I have to press for a quick response."

It seems on 11 December he sent another email in which he apparently says "I have ordered my employees to halt all activity until we have received an answer that is acceptable to us"

These events present a fundamental challenge to the workings of the Dutch democratic process, so surely the interest in this story has got to spread beyond the usual community of evoting geeks like yours truly? We can only hope.

EDRI-gram latest

The latest EDRI-gram is even more packed with useful digital rights stories than usual, all of which are recommended reading. Ian Brown's contribution on the International Intellectual Property Alliance's latest Section 301 report, that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, is particularly worth a perusal.

"This "Special 301" procedure can lead to significant trade sanctions against countries that are judged to be uncooperative in the US drive for ever stronger intellectual property rights. It has been used over the last two decades to bully developing nations into signing quite inappropriate IP agreements such as the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS and "TRIPS plus" Free Trade Agreements with the US...

To their credit, ten EU nations are included in IIPA's hit list, which makes some extraordinary demands. Greece is told that immigrant street vendors involved in copyright infringement should be deported and that tax authorities should audit software licences for all firms. Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania are scolded for concentrating police, prosecutor and judicial attention on their societies' most pressing problems rather than on cases of copyright infringement, while Latvia is warned that it must fully staff its new IPR enforcement police division. Lithuania and Poland are also instructed to increase Customs operations against the import of infringing goods. Italy, Greece, Poland and Sweden are criticised for privacy laws that prevent ISPs disclosing the identity of their customers to right holders based upon an Internet Protocol address. Sweden is admonished for "society's high acceptance of filesharing" and its "notoriety as a piracy safe haven" - and yet right holders are "deeply concerned" about discussion of a compulsory licence to provide artists with compensation for filesharing. Poland's universities and lecturers are instructed to "cultivate a climate of respect for copyright" amongst their students, and Hungary told to "closely monitor" its high-speed academic network for copyright infringement. Spain's prosecutors, judges and law students apparently need some re-education in the value of intellectual property rights, while the Spanish government is ordered to reverse the "stunning" decision of the General Public Prosecutor that his staff have more pressing concerns than the criminal prosecution of peer-to-peer downloaders."

EFF Lawsuit Seeks Release of Secret Court Orders on Electronic Surveillance

From beSpacific, EFF Lawsuit Seeks Release of Secret Court Orders on Electronic Surveillance

MP3 patent dispute closer to home

It seems Microsoft are not the only organisation to lose out in MP3 patent litigation recently. In a complex case SanDisk Corporation v Koninklijke Philips Electronics and others [2007] EWHC 332 (Ch), an England and Wales Chancery Division, Mr Justice Pumfrey ruled against SanDisk which had been importing MP3 players to the EU without paying a license fee to Sisvel. Apparently, according to IPKat, most MP3 makers are licensees of these patents, which Sisvel claim are essential for anyone who wants to make or sell an MP3 player in the EU.

The decision merits careful reading and consideration but it's not one for the fainthearted. It involves, patent law, EU competition law, seisure of goods at borders regulations, jurisdictional issues and a host of other subtlties. IPKat in summary says Sandisk sued

"in March 2006 for declarations relating to essentiality and non-infringement. Philips and friends counterclaimed for infringement (the trial date is fixed for February 2008).

In retaliation, Sisvel sought and obtained Border Detention Orders under Regulation 1383/2003, the result being that all MP3 players except those originating with a manufacturer or destined for a consignee whose name appears upon a list will be detained at its point of entry to the EU for ten days, during which Sisvel can sue for patent infringement in order to prevent the goods detained being released and entering free circulation in the EU. These orders have resulted in pending proceedings for infringement against SanDisk in Germany and the Netherlands (non-border-related infringement proceedings are also outstanding in Germany and Italy). There were also some very embarrassing high-profile seizures of allegedly infringing SanDisk MP3s at trade fairs.

SanDisk maintained that that Sisvel and the owners of the patents it administers had a dominant position which, it argued, was being abused by Sisvel's policy of harassment. This abuse being a wrong under Article 81 and 82 of the EC Treaty, interim injunctive relief against its enforcement activities was sought. Sisvel argued that there was no jurisdiction to grant interim relief in this sort of situation."

IPKat and the judge lament the fact that although Sisvel have European Patent Office granted patents, they are obliged to pursue any enforcement actions on a state by state basis. Yet far from being the open un-IP-encumbered standard it was widely perceived to be, MP3 is proving in recent weeks to be another money making landscape for the lawyerly classes. Neither the Microsoft v Alcatel-Lucent nor the Sandisk cases had really registered on the radar of even the tech press yet both have important implications for the future of the knowledge economy.

Committee on Standards in Public Life Call for halt to UK evoting

The the review of the Electoral Commission by the Committee on Standards in Public life has led to a call (Word doc) for a halt to the evoting pilots planned for the UK local elections in May. Jason Kitcat says:

"Yesterday, Sir Alistair Graham, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, called for the 2007 electoral pilots in the UK to be halted, in a speech to the Association of Electoral Administrators conference. Sir Alistair’s committee has recently published a report on the Electoral Commission calling for major reform of both the commission and our electoral system, particularly with regard to fraud.

Sir Alistair is proving to be a strong, independent new voice in the debate concerning our electoral system. His speech today made every point we would like to make and then some. Even though electoral fraud undermines voter confidence, is the DCA’s and the Electoral Commission’s focus on increasing participation causing them to turn a blind eye to fraud? Given existing problems with fraud and unsatisfactory systems for combating fraud, is it appropriate to rush ahead with pilot schemes?

Sir Alistair also argued that the government had been entirely misleading in their use of statistics from Northern Ireland, which has a much stricter electoral regime than the rest of the UK. Sir Alistair argued that in the long term new measures in Northern Ireland had not been damaging to participation as the DCA had argued, and that we should be replicating those measures across the rest of the UK.

The debate continued on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One where Sir Alistair argued that the DCA’s priorities were wrong, saying that “we should be concentrating on safeguarding the integrity of the current voting system rather than experimenting in remote systems which are bound to carry a high risk”.

In an absurd argument, David Monks, Chief Executive and returning officer for Huntingdonshire, stated that if we don’t pilot new voting technologies the fraudsters will have won by preventing changes which benefit society and meet our new modern lifestyles.

Finally, DCA minister Bridget Prentice MP replied to Sir Alistair by saying that he was “just plain wrong”. She didn’t accept any of his arguments whatsoever. She also ignored the implications of this week’s visit by a Council of Europe delegation assessing whether the UK’s electoral system needs to be monitored for fraud, along with many former Soviet republics.

We briefly met the Council of Europe delegation on Monday, giving them copies of the ORG e-voting briefing pack. They seemed to be deeply concerned by the level of worry about fraud in the UK. Indeed, my analysis of 2006 opinion research for the Electoral Commission shows that the public clearly want secret and secure votes ahead of anything else like convenience. Furthermore, political issues were shown to be the main barriers to turnout and not ease of voting.

As Sir Alistair puts it, “deep-seated voter disengagement will not be solved by tinkering with the mechanics of the electoral system”."

Amazon lose latest round with EPO on 1-click patent

From IPKat:

"Amazon.com have suffered another setback in their struggle with the European Patent Office to get a European patent granted for their 'one-click' internet shopping invention (some history and commentary on the subject here and here).

Right: One click and they're yours

The original US application was granted as US5960411 back in September 1999, but Amazon have failed as yet to get anything similar granted at the EPO...

One of the EPO's arguments against the application was that it was an "abuse of process" under Article 125 EPC. This did not, however, get very far in the proceedings, since the EPO did not follow the argument through with any enthusiasm, and merely stated that is was a "general principle that abuse of proceedings are not to be accepted", referring to the Spanish civil code, without coming to any conclusion.

As expected, Amazon lost anyway on more conventional grounds, the examining division deciding that they couldn't see any features in the various alternative requests submitted that provided a technical solution to a technical problem, the standard EPO test for assessing inventive step."

On finding the bones of Jesus

Mark Steel is on form this morning commenting on the claim that the bones of Jesus have been discovered in Jerusalem.

"But just as it's futile to search for proof of the Bible's authority, it's also pointless trying to disprove it. Because people believe in heavenly Gods for earthly reasons. So if the material world demands they work on the sabbath they will, and they'll re-interpret their scripture accordingly. The Borgias, the Spanish Inquisition, the Mafia, Bush and Blair have happily interpreted one of the commandments as '"Thou shalt only kill if you really think the bastard deserves it."

Equally, religious followers can adapt their faith to justify and inspire the most heroic acts. Muhammad Ali, Bob Marley, Johnny Cash, and almost every rebel movement in history, have explained their motives in religious terms, and have been less cynical than a director claiming to have found the bones of Jesus.

Or maybe the DNA tests will prove this really was him. In which case Blair will be the first to congratulate him, saying, "This shows how we would all benefit if messiahs were compelled to have DNA records taken and kept by the local praetorian guard on a national database." "

TIA phoenix rises from the ashes

It seems the Total Information Awareness surveillance system lives again, having been canned by Congress in 2003, allegedly due to privacy concerns but primarily due to its cost and lack of effectiveness. The new version is to be called Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE). When they've burnt through a few million more US taxpayers dollars they'll find out that this one doesn't work either. When will they get the message that statisitically the false positives and false negatives make it impossible for these systems to be of any practical use apart from being wielded as security theatre.

Thanks to HJ Affleck at FIPR for the link.

OU tutors charity

Some Open University colleagues have generously decided to donate their increase in salary to charity. Accordingly they have created a "giving page" to contribute to ActionAid.

And since I've mentioned charity, could I draw your attention too to the help feed the hungry button a little further down the page.

Open Access Reshaping Rules of Research

Michael Geist says open access is reshaping the rules of research

"Last month five leading European research institutions launched a petition that called on the European Commission to establish a new policy to require that all government-funded research be made available to the public shortly after publication. That requirement - called an open access principle - would leverage widespread Internet connectivity with low-cost electronic publication to create a freely available virtual scientific library available to the entire globe.

Despite scant media attention, word of the petition spread quickly throughout the scientific and research communities. Within weeks, it garnered more than 20,000 signatures, including several Nobel prize winners and over 750 education, research, and cultural organizations from around the world.

In response, the European Commission committed over $100 million toward facilitating greater open access through support for open access journals and for the building of the infrastructure needed to house institutional repositories that can store the millions of academic articles written each year...

Researchers are increasingly choosing to publish in freely available, open access journals posted on the Internet, rather than in conventional, subscription-based publications. The Directory of Open Access Journals, a Swedish project that links to open access journals in all disciplines, currently lists more than 2,500 open access journals worldwide featuring over 127,000 articles...

For those researchers committed to traditional publication, open access principles mandate that they self-archive their work by depositing an electronic copy in freely available institutional repositories shortly after publication. This approach grants the public full access to the work, while retaining the current peer-reviewed conventional publication model.

While today this self-archiving approach is typically optional, a growing number of funding agencies moving toward a mandatory requirement. These include the National Institutes of Health in the U.S., the Wellcome Trust in the United Kingdom, and the Australian Research Council."

Shoot the pianist

There's an interesting story breaking in the classical music world.

"Starting in 1989, Joyce Hatto began recording CDs for a small record label run by her husband. She began with Liszt, went back to cover Bach and all of the Mozart sonatas and continued with a complete Beethoven sonata set. Then on to Schubert and Schumann, Chopin and more Liszt. She played Messiaen. Her Prokofiev sonatas (all nine) were tossed off with incredible virtuosity. In total she recorded more than 120 CDs — including many of the most difficult piano pieces ever written, played with breathtaking speed and accuracy.

Intriguingly, she gave to the music a developed although oddly malleable personality. She could do Schubert in one style, and then Prokofiev almost as though she was a new person playing a different piano — an astonishing, chameleon-like artistic ability...

Earlier this month, a reader of the British music magazine Gramophone told one of its critics, Jeremy Distler, that something odd happened when he slid Ms. Hatto’s CD of Liszt’s “Transcendental Études” into his computer. His iTunes library, linked to a catalogue of about four million CDs, immediately identified it as a recording by the Hungarian pianist Laszlo Simon. Mr. Distler then listened to both recordings, and found them identical.

Since then, analysis by professional sound engineers and piano enthusiasts across the globe has pushed toward the same conclusion: the entire Joyce Hatto oeuvre recorded after 1989 appears to be stolen from the CDs of other pianists. It is a scandal unparalleled in the annals of classical music."

Andrys Basten has a collection of useful links to detail and background. Jessica Duchen also has a nice overview of the story in the Extra section of today's Indpendent, Notes on a Scandal.

The brutal reality of our asylum policy

From Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent, The brutal reality of our asylum policy

"the plight of asylum-seekers and migrants forcibly deported every day to confirm that John Reid is a man of steel.

Reid has declared war on some of the most oppressed of the world. His department operates policies and practices of institutionalised savagery, rebranded as efficiency. On Tuesday, Tough John will tell us his office is deporting more people than the numbers of "bogus" asylum applicants coming in. To get to target, they pick low-hanging fruit - babies, tots, mums, who will go quietly weeping...

In January, New Labour politicians marked Holocaust Memorial day promising yet again "never again", while sending off black people to be incarcerated or obliterated.

Is there an adequate world in English to describe such fraudulence...

Who speaks for disbelieved and despised asylum-seekers? Nobody in politics, a handful of religious leaders and journalists, and some ordinary Britons of conscience, too few. The national mood is toxic, and even nice liberals now choose to believe that the majority who flee here are scum or cunning terrorists. These newest recruits to Close Britannia have never met a single asylum-seeker in person, which is why their generic condemnation is so guilt-free...

Our Government has in effect torn up the Geneva Convention. It embodied the repudiation of barbarously efficient Nazis who believed some were born less human than others. That barbarism is back again. Can we stop the flight of shame tonight and save ourselves? Lord Macaulay once described Britain as "the sacred last refuge of mankind". That is the heritage we must reclaim from the bully boys of New Labour."

Colin Firth has also written to the Independent outlining the case of a man the UK is about to deport to the Congo, a nurse imprisoned and tortured for refusing to administer morphine overdoses, who managed to escape and make his way to the UK in 2002. This nurse, along with 22 other adults and 19 children are being flown back to their homeland today, a place where 4 million people have been murdered since 1998.

The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism

I've just come across The Ecstasy of Influence: A plagiarism by Jonathan Lethem. It's quite clever - the whole thing is basically a collage of plagiarised bits from other people's writings and makes the point about over reaching intellectual property regulations very nicely. I believe it is based on talk he gave at a conference held at NYU in 2006, Comedies of Fair U$e.

Microsoft's costly MP3 patent loss

Microsoft's big loss in the MP3 patent dispute is reported in all the usual places. The NYT take: MP3 Patents in Upheaval After Verdict

"Microsoft was ordered by a federal jury yesterday to pay $1.52 billion in a patent dispute over the MP3 format, the technology at the heart of the digital music boom. If upheld on appeal, it would be the largest patent judgment on record.

The ruling, in Federal District Court in San Diego, was a victory for Alcatel-Lucent, the big networking equipment company. Its forebears include Bell Laboratories, which was involved in the development of MP3 almost two decades ago.

At issue is the way the Windows Media Player software from Microsoft plays audio files using MP3, the most common method of distributing music on the Internet. If the ruling stands, Apple and hundreds of other companies that make products that play MP3 files, including portable players, computers and software, could also face demands to pay royalties to Alcatel."

Torture and '24' - because it hurts us less than the real thing?

From the Register Torture and '24' - because it hurts us less than the real thing?

Privacy in Public places

Nicholas Bohm, via the ORG list, recommends an excellent article "Privacy in Public Places" by N.A. Moreham in the Cambridge Law Journal for November 2006 - [2006] CLJ 606.

"ONE of the most difficult questions facing English courts as they
develop the common law right to privacy recognised by the House
of Lords in Campbell v. MGN Ltd.1 is whether and, if so, when a
person might have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public
place. Should an individual have a cause of action if she is
photographed as she leaves her mother’s funeral or as he receives
medical attention after an accident? Or should there be an absolute
rule which says that there is no privacy in a public space? Recent
decisions in England and the European Court of Human Rights
(ECtHR) suggest that it is no longer an answer (if it ever was)
simply to say that the disclosure concerned something which took
place in public. A more difficult question therefore remains: if the
existence of a privacy interest does not depend on the nature of the
space in which claimants find themselves, how do we determine
whether a person does have a legitimate privacy interest...

This article looks at how the courts should answer this question
when the claimant is in a public place (i.e., places such as parks,
beaches, restaurants, bars and sports facilities to which members of
the public have access, either freely or on payment of a fee)...
The article rests on the premise that by
carefully examining dicta in existing case law and by identifying
underlying principles, one can begin to identify a coherent framework
for the protection of privacy in public places in English law."

Algerian accused of 9/11 pilot training loses compensation claim

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.