The blogosphere has been buzzing with the news that the Performing Rights Society are suing Kwik-Fit because the mechanics have been playing their radios loudly at work thereby stepping into public performance territory. The judge, Lord Emslie, had this to say in refusing to dismiss the case out of hand:
"[8] In my opinion there is some force in the defenders' contentions regarding lack of specification in the pursuers' averments. By way of illustration, I think that the precise conduct alleged against the defenders themselves could have been more clearly and specifically averred; more could have been said about the degree of audibility of music played at different premises at different times; the same applies to the extent to which copyright works were involved; and explicit averments might have been included as to the defenders having done or authorised infringing acts, or as to their having permitted the use of personal radios in the workplace in the knowledge, or with reason to believe, that copyright infringement was likely to occur. However, looking broadly at the pursuers' averments as a whole, I am not persuaded that they are irrelevant in the sense that, if they were all fully proved, the case would nevertheless be bound to fail. Equally, it does not seem to me that the defenders are currently denied fair notice of the case against them to such a degree that dismissal, or partial exclusion from probation, could be regarded as a realistic option.
[9] As characterised in the course of the debate, the pursuers' allegations are of a widespread and consistent picture emerging over many years whereby routine copyright infringement in the workplace was, or inferentially must have been, known to and "authorised" or "permitted" by the defenders' local and central management. If that picture were to be satisfactorily established after proof, it is in my view at least possible that liability for copyright infringement would be brought home against the defenders under either or both of sections 16 and 26(3) of the Act. At this stage, certainly, such an outcome cannot be ruled out, especially in circumstances where the true scope and application of the law regarding the "playing" or "performance" of copyright works "in public" have not been explored in argument. On relevancy grounds, therefore, the pursuers are in my view entitled to the inquiry which they seek. Having reached that conclusion, however, I am not to be taken as accepting that, on proof of the averments in question, the pursuers would necessarily succeed in their claims against the defenders. In the course of the debate various hypothetical situations were figured in which charges of copyright infringement might arguably go beyond the contemplated scope of the legislation and/or offend against common sense. Whether, in the event, any such difficulties materialise in this case will depend on how the evidence turns out at the proof."
IPKat is looking forward to the trial, "noting he decision of the Danish Supreme Court in Marius Pedersen A/S v KODA [2007] ECDR 15 that an employer was not carrying on a public broadcast of copyright-protected work even if it supplied its employees with radios and players at the workplace."
Friday, October 12, 2007
Harry Potter and the Durga Puja
I'm always on the lookout for IP stories touching children's literature, with Harry Potter disputes being a particular favourite. Well the latest one it appears is that J.K.Rowling is suing the organisers of a Durga puja Hindu religious festival for using a Harry Potter theme in the temporary structure they built to celebrate their goddess.
"Taking umbrage at the organisers using her characters without her permission, Rowling had sued the organizers on October 8, asking for Rs 20 lakh for copyright violation...
"Taking umbrage at the organisers using her characters without her permission, Rowling had sued the organizers on October 8, asking for Rs 20 lakh for copyright violation...
The Puja committee members are at their wits’ end. The organisers claimed they had no clue that they had to seek permission from the author and her publishers. “We will attend the court and are ready to apologise for this mistake,” said Roy Chowdhury.
But the organisers also plan to request them to scale down the compensation.
The setting at FD Park was almost complete, with the blue tipped Hogwarts castle and the flaming red Hogwarts Express all set to chug off from platform 9-3/4.
The designers had planned to place lifesize models of the bespectacled Potter and his companions inside the pandal."
IPKat wonders at the validity of the suit.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Whole life logging
John Lettice - one of the smarter journalists covering the ID mess - has been dissecting the latest ID card system developments over at the Register.
"The UK Identity & Passport Service (IPS) has staged an identity landgrab on birth, marriage and death records. From April 2008 the General Register Office, which is responsible for recording these matters and is currently a directorate of the Office of National Statistics, is to become part of IPS, meaning that IPS will be logging you from the moment you're born until the moment you die.
The logic of the move is chilling. The UK ID card scheme itself only requires registration for an ID card from age 16, while the passport part of the deal only, obviously, needs to have data on people who have passports. But... IPS has entirely and obviously unfeasible plans to make money by promoting itself to the status of the UK's de facto identity services broker, with passport validation and identity verification services being early manifestations of how it proposes to make money out of this. But if IPS is to be able to grow its offerings from simply checking if a passport is genuine into a general ID verification service, then it makes sense to have everybody in the database, whether they like it or not."
"The UK Identity & Passport Service (IPS) has staged an identity landgrab on birth, marriage and death records. From April 2008 the General Register Office, which is responsible for recording these matters and is currently a directorate of the Office of National Statistics, is to become part of IPS, meaning that IPS will be logging you from the moment you're born until the moment you die.
The logic of the move is chilling. The UK ID card scheme itself only requires registration for an ID card from age 16, while the passport part of the deal only, obviously, needs to have data on people who have passports. But... IPS has entirely and obviously unfeasible plans to make money by promoting itself to the status of the UK's de facto identity services broker, with passport validation and identity verification services being early manifestations of how it proposes to make money out of this. But if IPS is to be able to grow its offerings from simply checking if a passport is genuine into a general ID verification service, then it makes sense to have everybody in the database, whether they like it or not."
EDRI-Gram Number 5.19
EDRI-Gram Number 5.19 has been issued.
As usual full of interesting materials.
"EDRI Statement and Call for Action on new CoE Rec. failing to uphold FoE
WIPO General Assembly adopted the PCDA proposals
French ISPs agree to spy on Internet users to stop online piracy
The days of the Austrian DPA are numbered
Italian Minister of Justice wants to close sarcastic blog
UK fails to properly implement the EU data protection directive
German DP Commissioner against Google-Doubleclick deal
UK: Decrypt data or go to prison!
European Parliament resolution on a European digital library
ENDitorial: Montreal Privacy Week: Terra Incognita or Deja Vu?
Agenda"
As usual full of interesting materials.
"EDRI Statement and Call for Action on new CoE Rec. failing to uphold FoE
WIPO General Assembly adopted the PCDA proposals
French ISPs agree to spy on Internet users to stop online piracy
The days of the Austrian DPA are numbered
Italian Minister of Justice wants to close sarcastic blog
UK fails to properly implement the EU data protection directive
German DP Commissioner against Google-Doubleclick deal
UK: Decrypt data or go to prison!
European Parliament resolution on a European digital library
ENDitorial: Montreal Privacy Week: Terra Incognita or Deja Vu?
Agenda"
US judge block Gunatanamo transfer due to risk of torture
According to the AP via Findlaw a US federal judge has issued an injunction blocking the transfer of a Gunatanamo Bay detainee to Tunisa because of the risk he might be tortured there.
"The order by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler was unprecedented as a direct intervention in the case of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, where some 330 men accused of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban are held, according to a human rights group and the detainee's lawyers.
"This is the first time since Congress tried to strip court jurisdiction over detainees that a court stepped in and said to the administration, 'Hey wait. You can't do what you say you want to do,'" said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch...
Cynthia Smith, a Department of Defense spokeswoman, said the United States tries to ensure that repatriated detainees are not abused.
"Detainees are not repatriated to countries where it is more likely than not that they will be tortured," she told AP in an e-mail. "We take steps to ensure that mistreatment of detainees doesn't happen and upon hearing allegations of mistreatment, we investigate before initiating future transfers to that state."
But Human Rights Watch said last month that Tunisian authorities broke a pledge not to mistreat two former Guantanamo detainees who were sent home nearly four months ago. The group cited lawyers for Abdullah bin Omar and Lotfi Lagha as saying the two men were held in solitary confinement and mistreated - despite assurances by the Tunisian government to the United States that the two would not be harmed."
It's good to see a federal judge applying the rule of law in the face of the Bush administration's sophistry and unconscionable stance on torture. Brian Tamanaha and David Lubin have some further thoughts on the US and torture over at Balkanization - essential reading for anyone considering the issue seriously . Yet again we are reminded that for evil to triumph it only requires that good people do nothing. Lubin says:
"Now we know about the existence of two hitherto-unknown Office of Legal Counsel memos on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CID for short) – what Jack has called Torture Memos 2.0 and 3.0. Reportedly, number 2.0 approves specific harsh techniques used by the CIA, while 3.0 finds that no technique used by the government is CID. (If it was, the Detainee Treatment Act would prohibit it.)
My subject here is Torture Memo 3.0, and my question is whether we should be surprised. The answer is no, because the Justice Department already told us that no interrogation tactic can possibly be cruel, inhuman, and degrading. In some sense, the only surprise is that Congress now acts surprised. Why the outrage now? DoJ told them its position more than two years ago, in a letter to three Democratic Senators...
...in an important sense, we have known for two years that, in the government’s view, nothing it does to obtain terrorist information counts as cruel, inhuman, or degrading. Even if Torture Memo 3.0 uses a different argument than Moschella’s, it can’t reach a more radical conclusion. So where is the surprise?
Perhaps it’s here: we might have thought that the OLC had cleaned up its act after the Bybee Memo embarrassment. Obviously it didn’t. Apparently, after Jack Goldsmith’s departure, it returned to its previous posture of blessing anything the Administration wants blessed, just the opposite of the candid and independent advice that ethical lawyers are supposed to deliver to their clients. That, as much as the government’s position on CID, is the real disgrace. The OLC issues opinions that are, by custom if not law, binding on the executive branch, so this is not simply legal advice – it’s the equivalent of a secret D.C. Court of Appeals decision.
So now the senators are shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in the establishment. Maybe it’s time to start looking at the establishment itself. Is there anything that can be done to restore respectability to the Office of Legal Counsel?"
Tamanaha:
"the Bush Administration is insisting publicly, loudly, indignantly, that the U.S. does not engage in “torture.” Were it only true.
What we have engaged in, as has been reported by many sources (see anti-torture memos at this site), is “alternative procedures,” which include water boarding, exposure to very cold temperature, and forced standing for hours on end. Robert Conquest, a venerable sovietologist and favorite historian of conservatives, who Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called these (USSR) tactics "torture," stating that "Torture is...a worse crime against humanity than killing.” If these sorts of actions were “torture” when the Soviet Union engaged in them, they are “torture” when we do them.
Deny, Deny, Deny. Hide behind a silly legalistic argument about the meaning of “torture.” But it doesn’t change what we did. [I optimistically use the past tense].
The victims of atrocities must not be erased."
"The order by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler was unprecedented as a direct intervention in the case of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, where some 330 men accused of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban are held, according to a human rights group and the detainee's lawyers.
"This is the first time since Congress tried to strip court jurisdiction over detainees that a court stepped in and said to the administration, 'Hey wait. You can't do what you say you want to do,'" said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch...
Cynthia Smith, a Department of Defense spokeswoman, said the United States tries to ensure that repatriated detainees are not abused.
"Detainees are not repatriated to countries where it is more likely than not that they will be tortured," she told AP in an e-mail. "We take steps to ensure that mistreatment of detainees doesn't happen and upon hearing allegations of mistreatment, we investigate before initiating future transfers to that state."
But Human Rights Watch said last month that Tunisian authorities broke a pledge not to mistreat two former Guantanamo detainees who were sent home nearly four months ago. The group cited lawyers for Abdullah bin Omar and Lotfi Lagha as saying the two men were held in solitary confinement and mistreated - despite assurances by the Tunisian government to the United States that the two would not be harmed."
It's good to see a federal judge applying the rule of law in the face of the Bush administration's sophistry and unconscionable stance on torture. Brian Tamanaha and David Lubin have some further thoughts on the US and torture over at Balkanization - essential reading for anyone considering the issue seriously . Yet again we are reminded that for evil to triumph it only requires that good people do nothing. Lubin says:
"Now we know about the existence of two hitherto-unknown Office of Legal Counsel memos on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CID for short) – what Jack has called Torture Memos 2.0 and 3.0. Reportedly, number 2.0 approves specific harsh techniques used by the CIA, while 3.0 finds that no technique used by the government is CID. (If it was, the Detainee Treatment Act would prohibit it.)
My subject here is Torture Memo 3.0, and my question is whether we should be surprised. The answer is no, because the Justice Department already told us that no interrogation tactic can possibly be cruel, inhuman, and degrading. In some sense, the only surprise is that Congress now acts surprised. Why the outrage now? DoJ told them its position more than two years ago, in a letter to three Democratic Senators...
...in an important sense, we have known for two years that, in the government’s view, nothing it does to obtain terrorist information counts as cruel, inhuman, or degrading. Even if Torture Memo 3.0 uses a different argument than Moschella’s, it can’t reach a more radical conclusion. So where is the surprise?
Perhaps it’s here: we might have thought that the OLC had cleaned up its act after the Bybee Memo embarrassment. Obviously it didn’t. Apparently, after Jack Goldsmith’s departure, it returned to its previous posture of blessing anything the Administration wants blessed, just the opposite of the candid and independent advice that ethical lawyers are supposed to deliver to their clients. That, as much as the government’s position on CID, is the real disgrace. The OLC issues opinions that are, by custom if not law, binding on the executive branch, so this is not simply legal advice – it’s the equivalent of a secret D.C. Court of Appeals decision.
So now the senators are shocked, shocked that gambling is going on in the establishment. Maybe it’s time to start looking at the establishment itself. Is there anything that can be done to restore respectability to the Office of Legal Counsel?"
Tamanaha:
"the Bush Administration is insisting publicly, loudly, indignantly, that the U.S. does not engage in “torture.” Were it only true.
What we have engaged in, as has been reported by many sources (see anti-torture memos at this site), is “alternative procedures,” which include water boarding, exposure to very cold temperature, and forced standing for hours on end. Robert Conquest, a venerable sovietologist and favorite historian of conservatives, who Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, called these (USSR) tactics "torture," stating that "Torture is...a worse crime against humanity than killing.” If these sorts of actions were “torture” when the Soviet Union engaged in them, they are “torture” when we do them.
Deny, Deny, Deny. Hide behind a silly legalistic argument about the meaning of “torture.” But it doesn’t change what we did. [I optimistically use the past tense].
The victims of atrocities must not be erased."
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Gates Foundation to support novel health research
Whatever you think of Bill Gates and Microsoft, he certainly puts a lot of effort into good causes through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Their latest initiative is an attempt to get out from under the constraints of the usual funding process for medical research, something university researchers across all the disciplines divides (not just in medicine and pharmaceuticals) will universally welcome.
"Creative, unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. Two hundred years ago, the first vaccines were developed because revolutionary thinkers dared to try an entirely new approach to preventing disease. The power of innovation is also at work in countless other fields, from space travel to the Internet.
They are, in addition, planning to fast-track the research grant applications and approvals process. The test will be to see how it all works in practice but I wish them and the experts whose work they facilitate every success. Even the Wall Street Journal approves.
"Creative, unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. Two hundred years ago, the first vaccines were developed because revolutionary thinkers dared to try an entirely new approach to preventing disease. The power of innovation is also at work in countless other fields, from space travel to the Internet.
In spite of the important role that innovation plays in advancing scientific ideas, the global health research community has tended to play it safe, driven mostly by consensus, with funders avoiding high-risk proposals that test altogether novel concepts. This has resulted in incremental progress that, while valuable, is unlikely to deliver major leaps forward.
In response to the need to cultivate imaginative ideas in health research, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announces a new grants initiative, Grand Challenges Explorations. The initiative aims to encourage scientists worldwide to explore innovative ideas that could lead to breakthroughs in some of the greatest health challenges facing poor countries. Grand Challenges Explorations will foster early stage innovation in global health research and will expand the pipeline of ideas that potentially could merit further evaluation.
Expanding the Grand Challenges in Global Health
Grand Challenges Explorations is an expansion of the foundation’s commitment to the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, which was launched in 2003 to accelerate the discovery of new technologies to improve global health. To date, the foundation has provided $450 million to support more than 40 projects on topics such as making childhood vaccines easier to use in poor countries and creating new ways to control insects that spread disease.
“The scientific community has shown tremendous interest in the Grand Challenges initiative, and the projects funded so far are beginning to show important progress,” said Dr. Harold Varmus, president and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and chair of the scientific board that oversees the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. “The new Explorations initiative will help to further increase innovation in global health research.”"
They are, in addition, planning to fast-track the research grant applications and approvals process. The test will be to see how it all works in practice but I wish them and the experts whose work they facilitate every success. Even the Wall Street Journal approves.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Ballmer, FOSS and software patents
According to Groklaw, Microsoft chief, Steve Ballmer, is keen for the free and open source software community to embrace software patents.
Lessig rescues Golan from the ashes of Eldred
I neglected to report that Larry Lessig won his first case earlier in the Autumn (5 September to be precise).
"The 10th Circuit decided our appeal in Golan v. Gonzales today. In a unanimous vote, the Court held that the "traditional contours of copyright protection" described in Eldred as the trigger for First Amendment review extend beyond the two "traditional First Amendment safeguards" mentioned by the Court in that case. It thus remanded the case to the District Court to evaluate section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) under the First Amendment, which removed material from the public domain.
This is a very big victory. The government had argued in this case, and in related cases, that the only First Amendment review of a copyright act possible was if Congress changed either fair use or erased the idea/expression dichotomy. We, by contrast, have argued consistently that in addition to those two, Eldred requires First Amendment review when Congress changes the "traditional contours of copyright protection." In Golan, the issue is a statute that removes work from the public domain. In a related case now on cert to the Supreme Court, Kahle v. Gonzales, the issue is Congress's change from an opt-in system of copyright to an opt-out system of copyright. That too, we have argued, is a change in a "traditional contour of copyright protection." Under the 10th Circuit's rule, it should merit 1st Amendment review as well...
The opinion by Judge Henry is well worth the read. The argument was one the best I have seen. All three judges knew the case cold. It is a measure of how good courts can be that they took such care to review this case."
The decision is indeed worth reading and basically says the Eldred decision stands - tough - but there are serious questions relating to freedom of expression that need to be taken into consideration when works are removed from the public domain by changes to copyright laws.
"Plaintiffs in this case range from orchestra conductors, educators,
performers, and publishers to film archivists and motion picture distributors. They
challenge two acts of Congress, the Copyright Term Extension Act (“CTEA”),
Pub. L. No. 105-298, §§ 102(b) and (d), 112 Stat. 2827-28 (1998) (amending 17
U.S.C. §§ 302, 304), and § 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”),
Pub. L. No. 103-465, 108 Stat. 4809, 4976-80 (1994), codified at 17 U.S.C. §§
104A, 109.
Also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the CTEA
increased the duration of existing and future copyrights from life-plus-50-years to
life-plus-70-years. Section 514 of the URAA implements Article 18 of the Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic works. Ushered into being
in 1886 at the behest of Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, an
organization founded by Victor Hugo and dedicated to obtaining protection for
literary and artistic works, the Berne Convention requires member countries to
afford the same copyright protection to foreign authors as they provide their own
authors. In this case, congressional compliance with the Berne Convention meant copyrighting some foreign works in the public domain. 2
Plaintiffs argue the CTEA extends existing copyrights in violation of the
“limited Times” provision of the Constitution’s Copyright Clause. With regard to
the URAA, plaintiffs contend § 514 shrinks the public domain and thereby violates
the limitations on congressional power inherent in the Copyright Clause. In
addition, plaintiffs argue that § 514’s removal of works from the public domain
interferes with their First Amendment right to free expression.
The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ CTEA claim and granted summary
judgment for the government on plaintiffs’ URAA challenges. We exercise
jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm the district court’s dismissal
of the CTEA claim as foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Eldred v.
Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). We also agree with the district court that § 514 of
the URAA has not exceeded the limitations inherent in the Copyright Clause.
Nevertheless, we hold that plaintiffs have shown sufficient free expression
interests in works removed from the public domain to require First Amendment scrutiny of § 514. On this limited basis, we remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion."
Mr Golan, for those not familiar with the case, performs and teaches works
by foreign composers like Shostakovich and Stravinsky. He contended that the removal of some of these works from the public domain, due to changes in US copyright laws, led to higher costs to him for performance fees, royalties, sheet music rentals etc. The theory being that when these costs are too high they interfere with his first amendment rights to freedom of expression. The US courts tend to like to avoid the free speech v copyright conflict so it is something of a surprise that this decision accepts there is a problem.
"The 10th Circuit decided our appeal in Golan v. Gonzales today. In a unanimous vote, the Court held that the "traditional contours of copyright protection" described in Eldred as the trigger for First Amendment review extend beyond the two "traditional First Amendment safeguards" mentioned by the Court in that case. It thus remanded the case to the District Court to evaluate section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”) under the First Amendment, which removed material from the public domain.
This is a very big victory. The government had argued in this case, and in related cases, that the only First Amendment review of a copyright act possible was if Congress changed either fair use or erased the idea/expression dichotomy. We, by contrast, have argued consistently that in addition to those two, Eldred requires First Amendment review when Congress changes the "traditional contours of copyright protection." In Golan, the issue is a statute that removes work from the public domain. In a related case now on cert to the Supreme Court, Kahle v. Gonzales, the issue is Congress's change from an opt-in system of copyright to an opt-out system of copyright. That too, we have argued, is a change in a "traditional contour of copyright protection." Under the 10th Circuit's rule, it should merit 1st Amendment review as well...
The opinion by Judge Henry is well worth the read. The argument was one the best I have seen. All three judges knew the case cold. It is a measure of how good courts can be that they took such care to review this case."
The decision is indeed worth reading and basically says the Eldred decision stands - tough - but there are serious questions relating to freedom of expression that need to be taken into consideration when works are removed from the public domain by changes to copyright laws.
"Plaintiffs in this case range from orchestra conductors, educators,
performers, and publishers to film archivists and motion picture distributors. They
challenge two acts of Congress, the Copyright Term Extension Act (“CTEA”),
Pub. L. No. 105-298, §§ 102(b) and (d), 112 Stat. 2827-28 (1998) (amending 17
U.S.C. §§ 302, 304), and § 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”),
Pub. L. No. 103-465, 108 Stat. 4809, 4976-80 (1994), codified at 17 U.S.C. §§
104A, 109.
Also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, the CTEA
increased the duration of existing and future copyrights from life-plus-50-years to
life-plus-70-years. Section 514 of the URAA implements Article 18 of the Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic works. Ushered into being
in 1886 at the behest of Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale, an
organization founded by Victor Hugo and dedicated to obtaining protection for
literary and artistic works, the Berne Convention requires member countries to
afford the same copyright protection to foreign authors as they provide their own
authors. In this case, congressional compliance with the Berne Convention meant copyrighting some foreign works in the public domain. 2
Plaintiffs argue the CTEA extends existing copyrights in violation of the
“limited Times” provision of the Constitution’s Copyright Clause. With regard to
the URAA, plaintiffs contend § 514 shrinks the public domain and thereby violates
the limitations on congressional power inherent in the Copyright Clause. In
addition, plaintiffs argue that § 514’s removal of works from the public domain
interferes with their First Amendment right to free expression.
The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ CTEA claim and granted summary
judgment for the government on plaintiffs’ URAA challenges. We exercise
jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and affirm the district court’s dismissal
of the CTEA claim as foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Eldred v.
Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003). We also agree with the district court that § 514 of
the URAA has not exceeded the limitations inherent in the Copyright Clause.
Nevertheless, we hold that plaintiffs have shown sufficient free expression
interests in works removed from the public domain to require First Amendment scrutiny of § 514. On this limited basis, we remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion."
Mr Golan, for those not familiar with the case, performs and teaches works
by foreign composers like Shostakovich and Stravinsky. He contended that the removal of some of these works from the public domain, due to changes in US copyright laws, led to higher costs to him for performance fees, royalties, sheet music rentals etc. The theory being that when these costs are too high they interfere with his first amendment rights to freedom of expression. The US courts tend to like to avoid the free speech v copyright conflict so it is something of a surprise that this decision accepts there is a problem.
Who will mourn the passing of copyright?
Ian, now that Radiohead have decided to release their latest album on the web for whatever price their fans are willing to pay, wonders who will mourn the passing of copyright. He's certainly generated a flurry of discussion on the ORG list, which sadly I haven't had the time to keep up with recently.
"I am more convinced by the views of Nobel-winning economists such as Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase who wrote in 2002:
"One might argue that the windfall to authors of existing copyrights has a positive consequence, by providing them with more resources for additional creative projects. However, this argument ignores the profit maximization decision of a producer, which takes into account the producer's cost of capital for a given investment. In general, a profit-maximizing producer should fund the set of projects that have an expected return equal to or greater than their cost of capital. If a producer lacks the cash on hand to fund a profitable project, the producer can secure additional funding from financial institutions or investors. If the producer has resources remaining, after funding all the projects whose expected returns are higher than the cost of capital, this remainder should be invested elsewhere, not in sub-par projects that happen to be available to the firm. If a producer pursues the same set of projects in any event, then its incentives will not be improved from the mere fact of a windfall from consumers."
[...] it's exhausting having to argue such basic economic points as the benefits of competition at a meeting of supposedly free-market political activists."
"I am more convinced by the views of Nobel-winning economists such as Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase who wrote in 2002:
"One might argue that the windfall to authors of existing copyrights has a positive consequence, by providing them with more resources for additional creative projects. However, this argument ignores the profit maximization decision of a producer, which takes into account the producer's cost of capital for a given investment. In general, a profit-maximizing producer should fund the set of projects that have an expected return equal to or greater than their cost of capital. If a producer lacks the cash on hand to fund a profitable project, the producer can secure additional funding from financial institutions or investors. If the producer has resources remaining, after funding all the projects whose expected returns are higher than the cost of capital, this remainder should be invested elsewhere, not in sub-par projects that happen to be available to the firm. If a producer pursues the same set of projects in any event, then its incentives will not be improved from the mere fact of a windfall from consumers."
[...] it's exhausting having to argue such basic economic points as the benefits of competition at a meeting of supposedly free-market political activists."
Self sustaining bureaucracy
William Heath likes Anthony Jay's new theory of bureaucracy.
Jay is a little harsh in describing the process as a staff welfare system. What happens in large bureaucracies is that it becomes risky at a personal level to act in the interest of the customer or the organisation, in a way that is not prescribed by organisational procedures. Staff who get burnt once too often, for looking after customers by breaking procedures, eventually conform. It is more a risk aversion or safety seeking process than a staff welfare system. So people acting rationally in their own self interest do not always lead to the emergence of benefits for the system as a whole, contrary to popular belief.
"Once you have a large bureaucracy, say several hundred people who have little or no contact with customers patients, passengers, pupils, or parents or whatever, it becomes a staff welfare system.In commenting Patrick Dunleavy doesn't wish to be solipsistic (someone who believes they themselves are the only object of real knowledge) but reckons his own theory on bureau-shaping "covers much of the same ground, but better." Whilst Ian notes James Buchanan's nobel prize for public choice theory.
All the impetus for the staff is to improve their welfare and reduce their worry. It becomes all about overseas trips, important lunches, important car parking spaces at the expense of customers, larger offices, more assistants, reduction of opportunities to be blamed, bonuses and special payments.
The main job of management has to be to counter this tendency. The motivation of management in the competitive world is that if they fail they lose their job and the company fails. But in government monopoly bureaucracy this spur is removed. The purpose for which the bureaucracy was founded ceases to become an objective. Instead, it beomes a constraint."
Jay is a little harsh in describing the process as a staff welfare system. What happens in large bureaucracies is that it becomes risky at a personal level to act in the interest of the customer or the organisation, in a way that is not prescribed by organisational procedures. Staff who get burnt once too often, for looking after customers by breaking procedures, eventually conform. It is more a risk aversion or safety seeking process than a staff welfare system. So people acting rationally in their own self interest do not always lead to the emergence of benefits for the system as a whole, contrary to popular belief.
Have patent will sue
Technology Innovation and Intellectual Property (James Bessen) reported recently that the probability that a patent is the subject of a lawsuit within four years of being granted increased hugely between 1984 and 2000.
"This trend implies an increasing “litigiousness” on the part of patent holders and it suggests that patent holders are incurring greater litigation costs per patent. But it also means that prospective innovators have to wend their way through a minefield with many more patents and many more of those patents are likely to “explode” into lawsuits."I wonder what the curve looks like since 2000? Bessen also points to an interesting paper by F. M. Scherer on “The Political Economy of Patent Policy Reform in the United States,”
"Mike Scherer tells the story of the interplay between political interests, policy and economics research over the last two decades, including the Bayh-Dole Act, the Hatch-Waxman Act, the creation of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit and the role of US in TRIPs negotiations."It is a story that has been variously and brilliantly told by Peter Drahos, Pamela Samuelson and Jessica Litman but Scherer's paper is also worth a look. Abstract:
"This paper explores a paradox: the extensive tilt toward strengthened patent
laws in the United States and the world economy during the 1980s and 1990s, even
as economic research was revealing that patents played a relatively unimportant
incentive role in most large companies research and development investment
decisions. It proceeds by tracing the political and evidence-based history of several
major initiatives: the Bayh-Dole and Stevenson-Wydler Acts of 1980, the creation of
the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in 1982, the Hatch-Waxman Act of 1984,
changes in antitrust presumptions, and the inclusion of TRIPS provisions in the new
international trade rules emerging in 1993 from the Uruguay Round. An excursion
follows into the relatively sudden ascent of the term “intellectual property” as a
form of propaganda. Suggestions for further policy reforms are offered."
Usmanov lawyers issue Indymedia with takedown notice
Indymedia UK has heard from Alisar Usmanov's lawyers on the thorny subject of online defamation.
"The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.
The author of the posting, Craig Murray, is a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and claims to have inside knowledge of the businessman’s allegedly illegal dealings. Murray was sacked by the UK government for exposing the Uzbek government’s use of torture to attain ‘intelligence’ information, and for exposing and criticising UK-US support for a vicious dictator in pursuit of resources."
"The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.
The author of the posting, Craig Murray, is a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and claims to have inside knowledge of the businessman’s allegedly illegal dealings. Murray was sacked by the UK government for exposing the Uzbek government’s use of torture to attain ‘intelligence’ information, and for exposing and criticising UK-US support for a vicious dictator in pursuit of resources."
Friday, October 05, 2007
Fingerprints required to buy a car
Have you ever been asked for your fingerprints when buying a car?
"Imagine you’ve gone through a multiple week process to purchase an automobile.
You know the drill. Research every feature, pick your color, then, it’s negotiations for purchase price and for trade-in. Everything is done and agreed-apon, and excited, you are ready to hand over the check and collect your new car.
But wait!
You are handed a slip of paper and told to mark your right thumbprint in a box. The paper says clearly that it’s a request, for your protection, and to prevent your identity theft.
When you politely decline, the dealership refuses to sell you the car.
This is precisely what happened to me today when I tried to purchase a new X3 at the South Bay BMW dealer in Torrance, California...
Taken completely by surprise by all this, my husband and I asked many questions about this process. We were told that the data would remain on file at the dealership for seven years. That this policy is in place to protect us. That there are many bad, bad people in the world, who commit fraud, and that by recording everybody’s fingerprints, they would be deterred from committing fraud."
"Imagine you’ve gone through a multiple week process to purchase an automobile.
You know the drill. Research every feature, pick your color, then, it’s negotiations for purchase price and for trade-in. Everything is done and agreed-apon, and excited, you are ready to hand over the check and collect your new car.
But wait!
You are handed a slip of paper and told to mark your right thumbprint in a box. The paper says clearly that it’s a request, for your protection, and to prevent your identity theft.
When you politely decline, the dealership refuses to sell you the car.
This is precisely what happened to me today when I tried to purchase a new X3 at the South Bay BMW dealer in Torrance, California...
Taken completely by surprise by all this, my husband and I asked many questions about this process. We were told that the data would remain on file at the dealership for seven years. That this policy is in place to protect us. That there are many bad, bad people in the world, who commit fraud, and that by recording everybody’s fingerprints, they would be deterred from committing fraud."
Jury orders $200k payout in P2P trial
The woman who decided to face the RIAA in court over accusations of copyright infringement via peer to peer networks has lost her case. She has been ordered by a jury to pay $222000 for infringing the copyright in 24 songs. For the mathematicians amongst you that's roughly $9250 per song.
"The recording industry hopes $222,000 will be enough to dissuade music lovers from downloading songs from the Internet without paying for them. That's the amount a federal jury ordered a Minnesota woman to pay for sharing copyrighted music online.
"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies that sued the woman, said Thursday after the three-day civil trial in this city on the shore of Lake Superior."
On top of the damages she'll also be liable for the RIAA lawyers fees. The record companies are delighted and might even argue she got off lightly as potential statutory damages in the US range from $750 to $30000 per song,as far as I can recall. But there really ought to be a serious question of proportionality here. The jury clearly bought the entertainment industry rhetoric about sending a message but upwards of $0.5 million, one lawyers fees are included, for a couple of dozen songs? It's nuts.
Ed Felten has some thoughtful comments as ever.
"The industry had especially strong evidence that Thomas was the person who downloaded the songs in question. Thomas’s defense was that somebody else must have downloaded the songs. But the industry showed that the perpetrator used the same distinctive username that Thomas admitted to using on other services, and that the perpetrator downloaded songs by Thomas’s favorite performers. Based on press stories about the trial, the jury probably had an easy time concluding that Thomas downloaded the songs. (Remember that civil cases don’t require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, only that it was more likely than not that Thomas downloaded the songs illegally.)...
The most striking fact about the Thomas case is that the jury awarded damages of $9250 per song to faraway corporations.. That’s more than nine hundred times what the songs would have cost at retail, and the total of $222,000 is an astronomical amount to a person in Jammie Thomas’s circumstances. There is no way that Jammie Thomas caused $222,000 of harm to the record industry, so the jury’s purpose in awarding the damages has to be seen as punishment rather than compensation.
My guess is that the jury was turned off by Thomas’s implausible defense and her apparent refusal to take responsibility for her actions. Litigants disrespect the jury at their peril... Observers who hoped for jury nullification — that a jury would conclude that the law was unjust and would therefore refuse to find even an obvious violator liable — must be sorely disappointed. It sure looks like juries will find violators liable, and more significantly, that they can be convinced to sympathize with the industry against obvious violators."
"The recording industry hopes $222,000 will be enough to dissuade music lovers from downloading songs from the Internet without paying for them. That's the amount a federal jury ordered a Minnesota woman to pay for sharing copyrighted music online.
"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies that sued the woman, said Thursday after the three-day civil trial in this city on the shore of Lake Superior."
On top of the damages she'll also be liable for the RIAA lawyers fees. The record companies are delighted and might even argue she got off lightly as potential statutory damages in the US range from $750 to $30000 per song,as far as I can recall. But there really ought to be a serious question of proportionality here. The jury clearly bought the entertainment industry rhetoric about sending a message but upwards of $0.5 million, one lawyers fees are included, for a couple of dozen songs? It's nuts.
Ed Felten has some thoughtful comments as ever.
"The industry had especially strong evidence that Thomas was the person who downloaded the songs in question. Thomas’s defense was that somebody else must have downloaded the songs. But the industry showed that the perpetrator used the same distinctive username that Thomas admitted to using on other services, and that the perpetrator downloaded songs by Thomas’s favorite performers. Based on press stories about the trial, the jury probably had an easy time concluding that Thomas downloaded the songs. (Remember that civil cases don’t require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, only that it was more likely than not that Thomas downloaded the songs illegally.)...
The most striking fact about the Thomas case is that the jury awarded damages of $9250 per song to faraway corporations.. That’s more than nine hundred times what the songs would have cost at retail, and the total of $222,000 is an astronomical amount to a person in Jammie Thomas’s circumstances. There is no way that Jammie Thomas caused $222,000 of harm to the record industry, so the jury’s purpose in awarding the damages has to be seen as punishment rather than compensation.
My guess is that the jury was turned off by Thomas’s implausible defense and her apparent refusal to take responsibility for her actions. Litigants disrespect the jury at their peril... Observers who hoped for jury nullification — that a jury would conclude that the law was unjust and would therefore refuse to find even an obvious violator liable — must be sorely disappointed. It sure looks like juries will find violators liable, and more significantly, that they can be convinced to sympathize with the industry against obvious violators."
Making Global Self-Regulation Effective in Developing Countries
Dana L. Brown and Ngaire Woods of Oxford University have just published a collection of essays on Making Global Self-Regulation Effective in Developing Countries
"As companies 'go global' they increasingly use factories and facilities spread across the world. But who regulates their activities in far flung corners of the world economy? In many sectors such as textiles and apparel, chemicals, and forestry, the answer is that companies regulate their own behaviour through codes and standards which they agree among themselves...
The chapters in this volume evaluate the effectiveness of self-regulation compared to other forms of global regulation. Across sectors and states, corporate self-regulation works best when those who are regulated have a voice in deciding the content of codes and standards and when some mechanism of compliance exists at the level of the state. Unfortunately, opportunities for voice and state capacity for regulation are often lacking in developing countries. Given this, the book suggests some minimal forms of government action and participation by global actors that can make global corporate self-regulation more effective in bettering conditions in the developing world."
It's an incredibly important area and hopefully the book will be picked up by influencial policymakers.
"As companies 'go global' they increasingly use factories and facilities spread across the world. But who regulates their activities in far flung corners of the world economy? In many sectors such as textiles and apparel, chemicals, and forestry, the answer is that companies regulate their own behaviour through codes and standards which they agree among themselves...
The chapters in this volume evaluate the effectiveness of self-regulation compared to other forms of global regulation. Across sectors and states, corporate self-regulation works best when those who are regulated have a voice in deciding the content of codes and standards and when some mechanism of compliance exists at the level of the state. Unfortunately, opportunities for voice and state capacity for regulation are often lacking in developing countries. Given this, the book suggests some minimal forms of government action and participation by global actors that can make global corporate self-regulation more effective in bettering conditions in the developing world."
It's an incredibly important area and hopefully the book will be picked up by influencial policymakers.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Don't use trademark in your criticism
If I'm reading this right ie. The Freecycle Network v Oey, someone got sued for trademark infringement for criticising someone trying to trademark the word "freecycle" and due to the fact that they used the word "freecycle" in their criticism. There was even a preliminary injunction preventing the critic from using the word freecycle but seems common sense eventually prevailed:
"Tim Oey (“Oey”) appeals a preliminary injunction preventing
him “from making any comments that could be construed
as to disparage upon [The Freecycle Network]’s possible
trademark and logo” and requiring that he “remove all postings
from the [I]nternet and any other public forums that he
has previously made that disparage [The Freecycle Network]’
s possible trademark and logo.”1 The Freecycle Network,
Inc. v. Oey, No. CV 06-173, Order at 5 (May 11, 2006)
(emphasis added). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.
§ 1291 and, for the following reasons, vacate the injunction
and remand."
"Tim Oey (“Oey”) appeals a preliminary injunction preventing
him “from making any comments that could be construed
as to disparage upon [The Freecycle Network]’s possible
trademark and logo” and requiring that he “remove all postings
from the [I]nternet and any other public forums that he
has previously made that disparage [The Freecycle Network]’
s possible trademark and logo.”1 The Freecycle Network,
Inc. v. Oey, No. CV 06-173, Order at 5 (May 11, 2006)
(emphasis added). We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.
§ 1291 and, for the following reasons, vacate the injunction
and remand."
Dark Data
Thomas Goetz at Wired on Freeing the Dark Data of Failed Scientific Experiments
"In 1981, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard study that showed an unexpected link between drinking coffee and pancreatic cancer. As it happened, researchers were anticipating a connection between alcohol or tobacco and cancer. But according to the survey of several hundred patients, booze and cigarettes didn't seem to increase your risk. Then came a surprise: An incidental survey question suggested that coffee did increase the chances of pancreatic cancer. So that's what got published.
Those positive results, alas, were entirely anomalous; 20 years of follow-up research showed the coffee-cancer connection to be bunk. Nonetheless, it's a textbook example of so-called publication bias, where science gets skewed because only positive correlations see the light of day. After all, the surprising findings are what makes the news (and careers).
So what happens to all the research that doesn't yield a dramatic outcome — or, worse, the opposite of what researchers had hoped? It ends up stuffed in some lab drawer. The result is a vast body of squandered knowledge that represents a waste of resources and a drag on scientific progress. This information — call it dark data — must be set free...
Freeing up dark data could represent one of the biggest boons to research in decades, fueling advances in genetics, neuroscience, and biotech.
So why doesn't it happen? In part, it's a logistics problem: Advocating the release of dark data is one thing, but it's quite another to actually collect it, juggling different formats and standards. And, of course, there's the issue of storage. These days, an astronomical study of quasars or an ambitious bioinformatics project can generate several terabytes of data. Few have the capacity to store that, let alone analyze it...
Technology is actually the simple part. The tougher problem lies in the culture of science. More and more, research is funded by commercial entities, which deem any results proprietary. And even among fair-minded academics, the pressures of time, tender, and tenure can make openness an afterthought. If their research is successful, many academics guard their data like Gollum, wringing all the publication opportunities they can out of it over years. If the research doesn't pan out, there's a strong incentive to move on, ASAP, and a disincentive to linger in eddies that may not advance one's job prospects...
Getting science comfortable with exposing its dark data is really just the beginning. Once you start looking for it, dark data is everywhere: It's locked away in out-of-print books and orphaned art, the stuff that Creative Commons and Google Book Search have been bringing to light. Speaking of which: Hey, Google! Know all those research projects your employees do that the company will never green-light? How about letting the rest of the world take a crack at them?"
"In 1981, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard study that showed an unexpected link between drinking coffee and pancreatic cancer. As it happened, researchers were anticipating a connection between alcohol or tobacco and cancer. But according to the survey of several hundred patients, booze and cigarettes didn't seem to increase your risk. Then came a surprise: An incidental survey question suggested that coffee did increase the chances of pancreatic cancer. So that's what got published.
Those positive results, alas, were entirely anomalous; 20 years of follow-up research showed the coffee-cancer connection to be bunk. Nonetheless, it's a textbook example of so-called publication bias, where science gets skewed because only positive correlations see the light of day. After all, the surprising findings are what makes the news (and careers).
So what happens to all the research that doesn't yield a dramatic outcome — or, worse, the opposite of what researchers had hoped? It ends up stuffed in some lab drawer. The result is a vast body of squandered knowledge that represents a waste of resources and a drag on scientific progress. This information — call it dark data — must be set free...
Freeing up dark data could represent one of the biggest boons to research in decades, fueling advances in genetics, neuroscience, and biotech.
So why doesn't it happen? In part, it's a logistics problem: Advocating the release of dark data is one thing, but it's quite another to actually collect it, juggling different formats and standards. And, of course, there's the issue of storage. These days, an astronomical study of quasars or an ambitious bioinformatics project can generate several terabytes of data. Few have the capacity to store that, let alone analyze it...
Technology is actually the simple part. The tougher problem lies in the culture of science. More and more, research is funded by commercial entities, which deem any results proprietary. And even among fair-minded academics, the pressures of time, tender, and tenure can make openness an afterthought. If their research is successful, many academics guard their data like Gollum, wringing all the publication opportunities they can out of it over years. If the research doesn't pan out, there's a strong incentive to move on, ASAP, and a disincentive to linger in eddies that may not advance one's job prospects...
Getting science comfortable with exposing its dark data is really just the beginning. Once you start looking for it, dark data is everywhere: It's locked away in out-of-print books and orphaned art, the stuff that Creative Commons and Google Book Search have been bringing to light. Speaking of which: Hey, Google! Know all those research projects your employees do that the company will never green-light? How about letting the rest of the world take a crack at them?"
Murray v Usmanov Round 2?
Craig Murray whose website was taken offline after accusations of defamation and legal threats against his web hosting service, found a new online home which was due to get launched on Monday, 1 October. Then the server where the site was to relocate got firebombed on Sunday, 30 September. Bear in mind that the linked report is from the folk with the web server that was attacked and they are clearly unhappy at events, whatever the source of the attack.
So far Usmanov is declining to sue Murray directly for defamation. Usmanov's lawyers say Murray's accusations are "false, indefensible and grossly defamatory" but the billionaire doesn't want to give the former diplomat a public platform to repeat those accusations.
So far Usmanov is declining to sue Murray directly for defamation. Usmanov's lawyers say Murray's accusations are "false, indefensible and grossly defamatory" but the billionaire doesn't want to give the former diplomat a public platform to repeat those accusations.
Dutch scrap evoting machines
Ian has an update from Anne-Marie Oostven on the decisions in the Nederlands to scrap electronic voting.
"Just a quick update on the Dutch e-voting situation. The last couple of days have been quite exciting in the Netherlands with regards to the use of voting computers. As you all might know, the foundation 'Wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet' initiated a serious debate about the risks associated with the use of the voting machines by approximately 98% of the Dutch population. It wasn't until the foundation showed with a well-documented hack how easy it was to commit fraud that Mr. Atzo Nicolai, the Dutch Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations, decided in December 2006 to set up two committees to investigate the electoral process...
The deputy Minister for Interior A. Bijleveld said in a first response that she would accept the committee's advice, and ban electronic voting. She announced that the 'Regulation for approval of voting machines 1997' will be withdrawn forthwith. Elections in the Netherlands will be held using paper ballots and red pencil for a while. After that, citizens will probably be using 'vote printers' and optical scan counting computers.
But this was not all! The icing on the cake came on yesterday 1 October 2007 when a Dutch judge declared that the use of the Nedap e-voting machines in recent Dutch elections has been unlawful. The District Court of Alkmaar decertified all Nedap voting computers currently in use in The Netherlands. The court order is a result of an administrative law procedure started by 'We do not trust voting computers' in March 2007.
More information: http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English"
"Just a quick update on the Dutch e-voting situation. The last couple of days have been quite exciting in the Netherlands with regards to the use of voting computers. As you all might know, the foundation 'Wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet' initiated a serious debate about the risks associated with the use of the voting machines by approximately 98% of the Dutch population. It wasn't until the foundation showed with a well-documented hack how easy it was to commit fraud that Mr. Atzo Nicolai, the Dutch Minister for Government Reform and Kingdom Relations, decided in December 2006 to set up two committees to investigate the electoral process...
The deputy Minister for Interior A. Bijleveld said in a first response that she would accept the committee's advice, and ban electronic voting. She announced that the 'Regulation for approval of voting machines 1997' will be withdrawn forthwith. Elections in the Netherlands will be held using paper ballots and red pencil for a while. After that, citizens will probably be using 'vote printers' and optical scan counting computers.
But this was not all! The icing on the cake came on yesterday 1 October 2007 when a Dutch judge declared that the use of the Nedap e-voting machines in recent Dutch elections has been unlawful. The District Court of Alkmaar decertified all Nedap voting computers currently in use in The Netherlands. The court order is a result of an administrative law procedure started by 'We do not trust voting computers' in March 2007.
More information: http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English"
P2P song swapping lawsuit begins
The Washington Post reports that one of the tens of thousands of folks targeted by the RIAA for swapping copyrighted songs via p2p networks is finally getting her day in court. Contrary to the report, this is not the first p2p song sharing case to see the inside of a courthouse (a woman was ordered to pay a little over $20k by a judge some time ago and the RIAA have backed of in a couple of cases I recall) but it will still be interesting to see how it goes.
US call for resignation of WIPO DG
Earlier this week, the US effectively called for the resignation of WIPO Director General, Kamil Idris. The US Ambassador to the UN, Warren W. Tichenor, outlined in great detail the allegations that have been made against Idris in the WIPO internal auditor's report, then called for him to answer the allegations publicly or resign.
"· The report that is the subject of this discussion, WIPO Internal Audit Report IAOD/INV/2006/2, has been available, in accordance with the WIPO Audit Charter, to all member states since it was issued in November 2006, 11 months ago.
· The report concludes that Director General made false statements on his original application for employment at WIPO and in official submissions thereafter and in so doing appears to violated both this organization's Staff Rules and Regulations and the principles I have just cited – those which govern the conduct of international civil servants.
· The report reveals that during the period 1982 to 2006, Director General used at least two different birth dates, one for employment purposes at WIPO and the other for personal purposes.
· The report also concludes that Director General knew since filing his original application for employment with WIPO in 1982 that the birth date reflected on this document was incorrect.
· The report states that notwithstanding Director General's admission that he was aware of the inconsistencies, and despite the numerous opportunities that presented themselves to rectify this error, he failed to rectify the discrepancies...
· To the Director General we say: clearly and convincingly answer the allegations against you in open forum in this General Assembly before Member States, or heed those calling for new leadership at WIPO."
Update: The Canadian Press has a brief report on the row.
"· The report that is the subject of this discussion, WIPO Internal Audit Report IAOD/INV/2006/2, has been available, in accordance with the WIPO Audit Charter, to all member states since it was issued in November 2006, 11 months ago.
· The report concludes that Director General made false statements on his original application for employment at WIPO and in official submissions thereafter and in so doing appears to violated both this organization's Staff Rules and Regulations and the principles I have just cited – those which govern the conduct of international civil servants.
· The report reveals that during the period 1982 to 2006, Director General used at least two different birth dates, one for employment purposes at WIPO and the other for personal purposes.
· The report also concludes that Director General knew since filing his original application for employment with WIPO in 1982 that the birth date reflected on this document was incorrect.
· The report states that notwithstanding Director General's admission that he was aware of the inconsistencies, and despite the numerous opportunities that presented themselves to rectify this error, he failed to rectify the discrepancies...
· To the Director General we say: clearly and convincingly answer the allegations against you in open forum in this General Assembly before Member States, or heed those calling for new leadership at WIPO."
Update: The Canadian Press has a brief report on the row.
RIPA Part III came into force on 1st October
The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act has been out of the cyber rights limelight for a while but it is worth noting that part III of the act came into force at the beginning of the month. Richard Clayton explains much better than I can:
"The commencement order means that as of October 1st a section 49 notice can be served which requires that encrypted data be “put into an intelligible form” (what you and I might call “decrypted”). Extended forms of such a notice may, under the provisions of s51, require you to hand over your decryption key, and/or under s54 include a “no tipping off” provision.
If you fail to comply with a notice (or breach a tipping off requirement by telling someone about it) then you will have committed an offence, for which the maximum penalty is two years and a fine or both. It’s five years for “tipping off” and also five years (an amendment in s15 of the Terrorism Act 2006) if the case relates to “national security”.
By convention, laws in the UK very seldom have retrospective effect, so that if you do something today, Parliament is very loth to pass a law tomorrow to make your actions illegal. However, the offences in Part III relate to failing to obey a s49 notice and that notice could be served on you tomorrow (or thereafter), but the material may have been encrypted by you today (or before).
Potentially therefore, the police could start demanding the putting into an intelligible form, not only of information that they seize in a raid tomorrow morning, but also of material that they seized weeks, months or years ago...
There are some defences in the statute to failing to comply with a notice — one of which is that you can claim to have forgotten the decryption key (in practice, the passphrase under which the key is stored). In such a case the prosecution (the burden of proof was amended during the passage of the Bill) must show beyond a reasonable doubt that you have not forgotten it. Since they can’t mind-read, the expectation must be that they would attempt to show regular usage of the passphrase, and invite the jury to conclude that the forgetting has been faked — and this might be hard to manage if a hard disk has been in a police evidence store for over a decade."
See the original for links.
"The commencement order means that as of October 1st a section 49 notice can be served which requires that encrypted data be “put into an intelligible form” (what you and I might call “decrypted”). Extended forms of such a notice may, under the provisions of s51, require you to hand over your decryption key, and/or under s54 include a “no tipping off” provision.
If you fail to comply with a notice (or breach a tipping off requirement by telling someone about it) then you will have committed an offence, for which the maximum penalty is two years and a fine or both. It’s five years for “tipping off” and also five years (an amendment in s15 of the Terrorism Act 2006) if the case relates to “national security”.
By convention, laws in the UK very seldom have retrospective effect, so that if you do something today, Parliament is very loth to pass a law tomorrow to make your actions illegal. However, the offences in Part III relate to failing to obey a s49 notice and that notice could be served on you tomorrow (or thereafter), but the material may have been encrypted by you today (or before).
Potentially therefore, the police could start demanding the putting into an intelligible form, not only of information that they seize in a raid tomorrow morning, but also of material that they seized weeks, months or years ago...
There are some defences in the statute to failing to comply with a notice — one of which is that you can claim to have forgotten the decryption key (in practice, the passphrase under which the key is stored). In such a case the prosecution (the burden of proof was amended during the passage of the Bill) must show beyond a reasonable doubt that you have not forgotten it. Since they can’t mind-read, the expectation must be that they would attempt to show regular usage of the passphrase, and invite the jury to conclude that the forgetting has been faked — and this might be hard to manage if a hard disk has been in a police evidence store for over a decade."
See the original for links.
Nu Labour values
Couldn't resist this - John, in full flow, sums up Nu Labour values:
"much of what is most detestable about New Labour — its authoritarianism, contempt for civil liberties, adulation of ‘wealth creation’, micromanagerial obsessiveness over ‘targets’, PFI, etc. — are actually more Brown’s creations than Blair’s. The only difference is that Brown is now varnishing them with a new layer of patriotic tosh about “Britishness”, “British values”, etc. If the Tories weren’t so pathetic there might be some hope of unhorsing the pompous ass."
"much of what is most detestable about New Labour — its authoritarianism, contempt for civil liberties, adulation of ‘wealth creation’, micromanagerial obsessiveness over ‘targets’, PFI, etc. — are actually more Brown’s creations than Blair’s. The only difference is that Brown is now varnishing them with a new layer of patriotic tosh about “Britishness”, “British values”, etc. If the Tories weren’t so pathetic there might be some hope of unhorsing the pompous ass."
Microsoft, antitrust and innovation
Georg Greve is not convinced by Microsoft's and the US Justice Department's complaints about the EU Court of First Instance siding with the Commission in their antitrust actions against the company.
"If one were to believe Microsoft, antitrust law is for sore losers who are too lazy to innovate, and the decision of the European Court of Justice against Microsoft was to the detriment of consumers around the world...
This allegation does not hold up to examination though. Allow me to tell you why.
1st Fallacy: That the Ruling Punishes Innovation
The first fallacy was that this kind of ruling punished the innovator. Who were the innovators? Real Inc. innovated the streaming media market, and Novell was the innovator in the workgroup server market. In both cases Microsoft unfairly leveraged its desktop monopoly to drive the innovator out of the market. That is why future innovators in Silicon Valley often do not receive venture capital if they do not have defensive strategies against Microsoft or at least a co-existence strategy. Quite often that strategy is to become successful enough to become an attractive purchase for Microsoft. Not much of a reward for innovation."
One of the functions of antitrust law is to create an environment that is protective of the innovator. Microsoft has not been an innovator.
2nd Fallacy: That Google, Apple and All Successful Companies Need to Fear
The second claim, echoed widely by major media outfits, is that Google and Apple should now be worried about similar lawsuits because of their large market shares. But antitrust law is not about having large market shares. Antitrust law says nothing about offering a product and gaining monopolies. As long as there is no distortion of competition in neighboring markets, this is legitimate.
What antitrust law cares about in this context is leveraging monopolies of one market into another through abusive practices. The Commission found Microsoft employing two abusive practices: bundling and the deliberate obstruction of interoperability.
"If one were to believe Microsoft, antitrust law is for sore losers who are too lazy to innovate, and the decision of the European Court of Justice against Microsoft was to the detriment of consumers around the world...
This allegation does not hold up to examination though. Allow me to tell you why.
1st Fallacy: That the Ruling Punishes Innovation
The first fallacy was that this kind of ruling punished the innovator. Who were the innovators? Real Inc. innovated the streaming media market, and Novell was the innovator in the workgroup server market. In both cases Microsoft unfairly leveraged its desktop monopoly to drive the innovator out of the market. That is why future innovators in Silicon Valley often do not receive venture capital if they do not have defensive strategies against Microsoft or at least a co-existence strategy. Quite often that strategy is to become successful enough to become an attractive purchase for Microsoft. Not much of a reward for innovation."
One of the functions of antitrust law is to create an environment that is protective of the innovator. Microsoft has not been an innovator.
2nd Fallacy: That Google, Apple and All Successful Companies Need to Fear
The second claim, echoed widely by major media outfits, is that Google and Apple should now be worried about similar lawsuits because of their large market shares. But antitrust law is not about having large market shares. Antitrust law says nothing about offering a product and gaining monopolies. As long as there is no distortion of competition in neighboring markets, this is legitimate.
What antitrust law cares about in this context is leveraging monopolies of one market into another through abusive practices. The Commission found Microsoft employing two abusive practices: bundling and the deliberate obstruction of interoperability.
WIPO unveils children's copyright law workbook
WIPO are back in the teach 'em young about copyright game with a new copyright workbook for kids. Nate Anderson at Ars Technica reckons it is surprisingly balanced when compared to previous efforts though William Patry has some concerns.
"The WIPO effort has a section on the public domain and other limitations (pages 40-47), a fact that distinguishes it from almost all other such efforts. The booklet even provides links to places where one can obtain access to pd or free use works. There are also features with young creators and good information about copyright basics. WIPO has made genuine efforts to present a balanced view.
My unease comes from the lengthy section on copyright infringement, including a page called "Game: Defending Authors and Performers," which attempts to teach children to distinguish between legal and illegal actions, prefaced with this statement: "You understand the purpose of copyright and related rights and want to respect the rights of authors and performers that you admire." Previous to this are conclusions like "Piracy makes legal copies more expensive," and paragraphs about piracy taking away needed incentives.
It is not impossible to view the pages and pages of biographies of young authors as the prelude to the section on piracy. None of the young authors featured are however likely to have any piracy worries and thus one wonders why the heavy emphasis on them: could the idea of transference be at play, a desire to have children identify with young authors their own age (or others they are told they "admire") and then transfer that identification to multinational corporate copyright owners? I don't defend piracy if defined as counterfeiting, but I think we have to be very careful not to manipulate young children under the guise of educating them."
Jon Newton at P2PNet is more blunt in his criticism.
"The book seems to me to be heavily weighted in favour of the copyright cartels and IMHO, any attempt at balance is little more than window dressing
For example, DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is an impossible concept which is being abandoned by the corporate entertainment cartels, with EMI, and Vivendi Universal leading the way.
Anything which can be seen or heard can be copied by one means or another.
But the WIPO book presents DRM as a fait accompli - a done deed.
It states, flatly:
And, “According to international laws, it is illegal to remove, change (alter), or get around (circumvent) DRM protection of a work.”
That’ll be news to a lot of people."
The book also says things like "Giving a classmate a copy of a CD you bought for yourself is illegal."
And Newton also says:
"Every one of the online sources is, of course, a hard-core, (bought-and-paid-for?) corporate entertainment industry-friendly web page.
Genuine information sites such as the Wikipedia, which provide un-spun, non-vested-interest, non-corporate information and points of view, are conspicuous by their total absence."
Not a big fan. I share Patry's and Newton's concerns.
Meanwhile in US and Canadian Otherworld land, the entertainment industry presses ahead with their standard approach to indoctrination targeting kids again.
"The WIPO effort has a section on the public domain and other limitations (pages 40-47), a fact that distinguishes it from almost all other such efforts. The booklet even provides links to places where one can obtain access to pd or free use works. There are also features with young creators and good information about copyright basics. WIPO has made genuine efforts to present a balanced view.
My unease comes from the lengthy section on copyright infringement, including a page called "Game: Defending Authors and Performers," which attempts to teach children to distinguish between legal and illegal actions, prefaced with this statement: "You understand the purpose of copyright and related rights and want to respect the rights of authors and performers that you admire." Previous to this are conclusions like "Piracy makes legal copies more expensive," and paragraphs about piracy taking away needed incentives.
It is not impossible to view the pages and pages of biographies of young authors as the prelude to the section on piracy. None of the young authors featured are however likely to have any piracy worries and thus one wonders why the heavy emphasis on them: could the idea of transference be at play, a desire to have children identify with young authors their own age (or others they are told they "admire") and then transfer that identification to multinational corporate copyright owners? I don't defend piracy if defined as counterfeiting, but I think we have to be very careful not to manipulate young children under the guise of educating them."
Jon Newton at P2PNet is more blunt in his criticism.
"The book seems to me to be heavily weighted in favour of the copyright cartels and IMHO, any attempt at balance is little more than window dressing
For example, DRM (Digital Restrictions Management) is an impossible concept which is being abandoned by the corporate entertainment cartels, with EMI, and Vivendi Universal leading the way.
Anything which can be seen or heard can be copied by one means or another.
But the WIPO book presents DRM as a fait accompli - a done deed.
It states, flatly:
In order to protect their works from infringement, right holders are using the same tool that made their works so vulnerable in the first place - digital technologies. Their use of these technologies, which make copyright infringement more difficult and facilitate the management of rights, is known as Digital Rights Management (DRM).In other words, DRM makes a mockery of fair use.
DRM tools can be used to mark digital works with copyright information. They can also be used to control the way in which a work can be used. For example, DRM can limit the number of copies that can be made of a work, can prevent changes from being made to a work, and can limit the devices on which a work can be enjoyed.
And, “According to international laws, it is illegal to remove, change (alter), or get around (circumvent) DRM protection of a work.”
That’ll be news to a lot of people."
The book also says things like "Giving a classmate a copy of a CD you bought for yourself is illegal."
And Newton also says:
"Every one of the online sources is, of course, a hard-core, (bought-and-paid-for?) corporate entertainment industry-friendly web page.
Genuine information sites such as the Wikipedia, which provide un-spun, non-vested-interest, non-corporate information and points of view, are conspicuous by their total absence."
Not a big fan. I share Patry's and Newton's concerns.
Meanwhile in US and Canadian Otherworld land, the entertainment industry presses ahead with their standard approach to indoctrination targeting kids again.
Had enough of drm? Johansson has too
Jesper Johansson has had enough of DRM so he's chucking out his Windows XP Media Center.
"Is it just me, or is DRM of movies and music the poster child for an inappropriate security v. usability tradeoff? How many billions has the industry spent on DRM schemes that the bad guys break in weeks? How many perfectly legitimate users has the industry annoyed and driven away? How many lost DVD sales has it caused? How many lost sales of Microsoft's Media Center software and Windows Vista has it caused because the DRM sub-system randomly decides that you must be a criminal? And, how many bootleggers has it stopped? Based on my last jaunt through a night market somewhere in the Far East the answer to the last question seems pretty clear at least."
Update: His domestic entertainment troubles have made the news.
"It must have been a slow news day today. I can't think of any other reason why the fact that an ex-Microsoft employee is considering installing a Linux box would be news. Imagine the articles if they realized that, right at this very moment, a whole slew of current Microsoft employees are probably using Linux at home. And, imagine the headlines if it got out that a Microsoft employee admired OpenBSD! Oh, no, wait, that already happened."
"Is it just me, or is DRM of movies and music the poster child for an inappropriate security v. usability tradeoff? How many billions has the industry spent on DRM schemes that the bad guys break in weeks? How many perfectly legitimate users has the industry annoyed and driven away? How many lost DVD sales has it caused? How many lost sales of Microsoft's Media Center software and Windows Vista has it caused because the DRM sub-system randomly decides that you must be a criminal? And, how many bootleggers has it stopped? Based on my last jaunt through a night market somewhere in the Far East the answer to the last question seems pretty clear at least."
Update: His domestic entertainment troubles have made the news.
"It must have been a slow news day today. I can't think of any other reason why the fact that an ex-Microsoft employee is considering installing a Linux box would be news. Imagine the articles if they realized that, right at this very moment, a whole slew of current Microsoft employees are probably using Linux at home. And, imagine the headlines if it got out that a Microsoft employee admired OpenBSD! Oh, no, wait, that already happened."
EDRI-gram
The latest EDRI-gram is out. Highlights:
"Human Rights in the Information Society - rediscover the proportionality
26 September, 2007 » Privacy | Global | Security
On 13-14 September 2007 the French Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO and the Council of Europe organised the conference "Ethics and Human Rights in the Information Society" in Strasbourg, to which EDRi was invited to contribute.
This conference was the third in a cycle of regional conferences on the ethical dimensions of the information society, which aims to contribute to the WSIS process and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The first two regional conferences took place in Latin-America and Africa. While the Latin-American conference contributed to the exchange of views in the region, the African conference was suffering from a lack of participation of local stakeholders. There, mainly African expatriots from the USA and Europe and representatives of South Africa were present.
At the conference in Strasbourg some estimated fifty participants were present. With equality of access, freedom of expression, identity and social networks and security and governance, the presentations and discussions covered the topics of the four round table sessions on a rather global level, while the draft code of ethics presented by the organisers was hardly discussed.
Different views on codes of ethics in general were expressed in the presentations and discussions. Questions like if soft law (like codes of ethics) is the right mean to address the global challenges of the Information Society, if the different ethical standards around the world can reasonably be merged into a single code of ethics, if it had been better to choose a multi stakeholder bottom up or a closed doors top down approach were addressed in various contributions but not finally agreed on.
There was mutual consent that human rights are the core ethical basis on which any regulation of the Information Society has to be built. Unfortunately it remains questionable if all participants share the same perception of what defining human rights as the core ethical basis means in practice. While for example some consider the CoE Cybercrime Convention to be a basis for a global regulation of the Information Society (this convention lacks - amongst others - privacy and civil rights protections and covers any crime where the evidence could be in computerised form), others like EDRi (and myself) argue that this convention should be rejected and is now more dangerous than ever.
In my presentation at the security and governance round table I consequently addressed the question if all the anti terror measures adopted in the last years in Europe were proportionate to the threat stemming from terrorism in this region. To this end I presented the findings on terrorism submitted by Europol.
According to Europol "EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007" terrorism in the EU is basically a local problem in France (separatists in Corsica) and Spain (separatists in the Basque region). The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the EU in 2006 was carried out in these regions (419 of 498 attacks). The rest were left or right wing motivated attacks. There were no successful Islamist terrorist attacks in 2006 and the vast majority of all attacks was not intending to kill. The number of arrested individuals differs. Of the 706 suspects 257 were suspected of islamism, 226 of separatism, 52 of left wing and 15 of right wing terror. Of the approx. 260 suspects of islamist terror less than 10 % (meaning less than 26) were suspected of the preparation, planning or execution of terrorist attacks.
Given this figures it is certainly questionable if measures like:
- mandatory data retention, that infringes the human rights of all 450 million Europeans,
- the transfer of passenger name records and SWIFT financial data to the US,
- the introduction of biometric identifiers in European passports,
- the mutual access of member states to police databases (Prüm Treaty)
and
- the central EU fingerprint database, that is planned for 2008,
are proportionate to the threat stemming from terrorism in Europe.
Given the series of measures for fighting terrorism and crime limiting the freedom of individuals and infringing human rights, it is necessary to reconsider their impact on human rights, which are the foundation of our society, and to rediscover the protection of human rights as a core obligation of all European states.
To this end, a multi stakeholder approach should be taken, involving all relevant groups, governments, the private sector and civil society alike. The first steps have already been taken during the World Summit on the Information Society and the IGF. The concrete outcome will depend on how seriously this process is treated and if the results elaborated will find their way into binding policy.
Ethics and human rights in information society (13-14.09.2007)
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=24772&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC...
UNESCO Draft Code of Ethics
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/24935/11841676611Code_of_Ethics.p...
EDRi's Contribution - The Interrelation of Human Rights and Security
http://www.unwatched.org/files/vortraege/Krisch_The_Interrelation_of_H...
German version
http://www.unwatched.org/node/633
Cybercrime Convention
http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=185&...
Eight Reasons the International Cybercrime Treaty Should be Rejected
http://www.treatywatch.org/about.html
EDRI-gram: ENDitorial: The 2001 CoE Cybercrime Convention more dangerous than ever (20.06.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.12/cybercrime-convention-dangerou...
Europol, EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007 (03.2007)
http://www.europol.europa.eu/publications/EU_Terrorism_Situation_and_T...
(Contribution by Andreas Krisch - EDRi)"
"Largest anti-surveillance street protest in Germany for 20 years
26 September, 2007 » Privacy | Telecommunication data retention
On Saturday, 22 September 2007, more than 15,000 took to the streets of Berlin under the slogan "Liberty instead of Fear - stop the Surveillance Mania!". Several Civil Liberty organisations, affiliated in the "Working Group Data Retention" (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung), organised the march.
55 groups called for participation, among them the "Young Liberals" (Junge Liberale, Youth organisation of the FDP), Buendnis 90 / Die Gruenen, ver.di, journalist associations, ATTAC, the Protestant telephone Counselling (evangelische Telefonseelsorge), medical associations, FoeBuD e.V., and the Chaos Computer Club. German EDRi members CCC, FIfF, FoeBuD and NNM played an active role in organizing the protest. Police initially estimated 8,000 participants, later correcting their count to confirm the working group's numbers.
"This is the largest protest for civil liberties and privacy protection since the census in 1987", Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein said to news portal tagesschau.de
Rena Tangens of FoeBuD e.V.: "The overwhelming success of this protest shows that by now a large proportion of the population are worried about our constitutional state. Citizens do not want our democracy to be turned into a surveillance state. The Bundestag must reject the proposed date retention bill."
The large turnout of 15,000 shows that people consider the continuing tightening of security and surveillance laws to be decidedly too far-reaching. Citizens are concerned, not because of the supposed danger of international terrorism, but because of the impertinence and lack of restraint security politicians show in declaring civil rights and liberties defunct. The large cross-section of society participating in the demonstration makes it evident that these are not the views only a few civil rights experts, but that the issue now unites broad parts of the population. Politics cannot ignore this signal.
The organisers decisively criticised actions by the police, as well as some radical left-wing demonstrators: "A bloc of radical left-wing demonstrators did not abide by police obligations. The police in turn used disproportionate means in reaction to violations such as disguising and use of oversize banners, and did not appear to pursue de-escalation in all situations. The massive use of video cameras by the police, especially at this particular protest march, was a provocation. Overall, however, these were marginal incidents which did not impair the progress of the demonstration."
Rena Tangens remarked, "On balance it was a very positive, creative and colourful demonstration, in which hackers demonstrated peacefully beside doctors, and the 'Young Liberals' beside the 'Left Party' (Linkspartei)." The Giant Data-Octopus ("Datenkrake") of FoeBuD e.V., the "glass patient" on the car of the "Freie Aerzteschaft" (an occupational union of physicians), as well as several trojan horses were among the March's highlights.
Patrick Breyer of the Working Group Data Retention announces further activities: "We will resist data retention by all legal means." According to the working group about 20,000 citizens have already declared their support for the prepared constitutional recourse (Verfassungsbeschwerde) against data retention.
Among other things the demonstration takes a stand against the retention of data about telecommunication behaviour of the entire population, that is on this Autumn's political agenda in Germany, as well as against the covert online-searching of computers. Key demands include a halt to new surveillance laws and a review of existing surveillance laws.
Home page of the demonstration - Working Group Data Retention
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Radio1984 feature live from the demonstration (22.09.2007)
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/Demo_berlin_2007_english...
German version
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/Demo_berlin_2007_deutsch...
Biggest demonstration for more data protection and privacy since 20 years! (in German only, 22.09.2007)
http://netzpolitik.org/2007/groesste-demonstration-fuer-mehr-datenschu...
Thousands of citizens demonstrate for "Freedom instead of Fear" (in German only, 22.09.2007)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/96385
Berlin Data Tussles (in German only, 24.09.2007)
http://ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:Berliner%20Datenkämpfe/256868.html
Biggest data protection demonstration within 20 years (in German only, 23.09.2007)
http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/berlin_aid_133680.html
Other articles about the demonstration (in German only)
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Pressespiegel
(Contribution by Jan E. Hennig and Bernd Sieker, EDRI-member FoeBuD - Germany)"
"Recommended Reading
26 September, 2007 » Privacy | Biometrics
Data Protection Framework Decision: EDPS concerned about dilution of Data Protection standards
http://edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/EDPS...
Nuffield Council on Bioethics : The forensic use of bioinformation: ethical issues. This Report considers whether current police powers in the UK to take and retain bioinformation are justified by the need to fight crime. Executive Summary
http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/The_forensic_use_of_b...
Full Report
http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/The_forensic_use_of_bioinformation_-_ethical_issues.pdf"
See original for links.
"Human Rights in the Information Society - rediscover the proportionality
26 September, 2007 » Privacy | Global | Security
On 13-14 September 2007 the French Commission for UNESCO, UNESCO and the Council of Europe organised the conference "Ethics and Human Rights in the Information Society" in Strasbourg, to which EDRi was invited to contribute.
This conference was the third in a cycle of regional conferences on the ethical dimensions of the information society, which aims to contribute to the WSIS process and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The first two regional conferences took place in Latin-America and Africa. While the Latin-American conference contributed to the exchange of views in the region, the African conference was suffering from a lack of participation of local stakeholders. There, mainly African expatriots from the USA and Europe and representatives of South Africa were present.
At the conference in Strasbourg some estimated fifty participants were present. With equality of access, freedom of expression, identity and social networks and security and governance, the presentations and discussions covered the topics of the four round table sessions on a rather global level, while the draft code of ethics presented by the organisers was hardly discussed.
Different views on codes of ethics in general were expressed in the presentations and discussions. Questions like if soft law (like codes of ethics) is the right mean to address the global challenges of the Information Society, if the different ethical standards around the world can reasonably be merged into a single code of ethics, if it had been better to choose a multi stakeholder bottom up or a closed doors top down approach were addressed in various contributions but not finally agreed on.
There was mutual consent that human rights are the core ethical basis on which any regulation of the Information Society has to be built. Unfortunately it remains questionable if all participants share the same perception of what defining human rights as the core ethical basis means in practice. While for example some consider the CoE Cybercrime Convention to be a basis for a global regulation of the Information Society (this convention lacks - amongst others - privacy and civil rights protections and covers any crime where the evidence could be in computerised form), others like EDRi (and myself) argue that this convention should be rejected and is now more dangerous than ever.
In my presentation at the security and governance round table I consequently addressed the question if all the anti terror measures adopted in the last years in Europe were proportionate to the threat stemming from terrorism in this region. To this end I presented the findings on terrorism submitted by Europol.
According to Europol "EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007" terrorism in the EU is basically a local problem in France (separatists in Corsica) and Spain (separatists in the Basque region). The vast majority of terrorist attacks in the EU in 2006 was carried out in these regions (419 of 498 attacks). The rest were left or right wing motivated attacks. There were no successful Islamist terrorist attacks in 2006 and the vast majority of all attacks was not intending to kill. The number of arrested individuals differs. Of the 706 suspects 257 were suspected of islamism, 226 of separatism, 52 of left wing and 15 of right wing terror. Of the approx. 260 suspects of islamist terror less than 10 % (meaning less than 26) were suspected of the preparation, planning or execution of terrorist attacks.
Given this figures it is certainly questionable if measures like:
- mandatory data retention, that infringes the human rights of all 450 million Europeans,
- the transfer of passenger name records and SWIFT financial data to the US,
- the introduction of biometric identifiers in European passports,
- the mutual access of member states to police databases (Prüm Treaty)
and
- the central EU fingerprint database, that is planned for 2008,
are proportionate to the threat stemming from terrorism in Europe.
Given the series of measures for fighting terrorism and crime limiting the freedom of individuals and infringing human rights, it is necessary to reconsider their impact on human rights, which are the foundation of our society, and to rediscover the protection of human rights as a core obligation of all European states.
To this end, a multi stakeholder approach should be taken, involving all relevant groups, governments, the private sector and civil society alike. The first steps have already been taken during the World Summit on the Information Society and the IGF. The concrete outcome will depend on how seriously this process is treated and if the results elaborated will find their way into binding policy.
Ethics and human rights in information society (13-14.09.2007)
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=24772&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC...
UNESCO Draft Code of Ethics
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/24935/11841676611Code_of_Ethics.p...
EDRi's Contribution - The Interrelation of Human Rights and Security
http://www.unwatched.org/files/vortraege/Krisch_The_Interrelation_of_H...
German version
http://www.unwatched.org/node/633
Cybercrime Convention
http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/QueVoulezVous.asp?NT=185&...
Eight Reasons the International Cybercrime Treaty Should be Rejected
http://www.treatywatch.org/about.html
EDRI-gram: ENDitorial: The 2001 CoE Cybercrime Convention more dangerous than ever (20.06.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.12/cybercrime-convention-dangerou...
Europol, EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report TE-SAT 2007 (03.2007)
http://www.europol.europa.eu/publications/EU_Terrorism_Situation_and_T...
(Contribution by Andreas Krisch - EDRi)"
"Largest anti-surveillance street protest in Germany for 20 years
26 September, 2007 » Privacy | Telecommunication data retention
On Saturday, 22 September 2007, more than 15,000 took to the streets of Berlin under the slogan "Liberty instead of Fear - stop the Surveillance Mania!". Several Civil Liberty organisations, affiliated in the "Working Group Data Retention" (Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung), organised the march.
55 groups called for participation, among them the "Young Liberals" (Junge Liberale, Youth organisation of the FDP), Buendnis 90 / Die Gruenen, ver.di, journalist associations, ATTAC, the Protestant telephone Counselling (evangelische Telefonseelsorge), medical associations, FoeBuD e.V., and the Chaos Computer Club. German EDRi members CCC, FIfF, FoeBuD and NNM played an active role in organizing the protest. Police initially estimated 8,000 participants, later correcting their count to confirm the working group's numbers.
"This is the largest protest for civil liberties and privacy protection since the census in 1987", Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner of Schleswig-Holstein said to news portal tagesschau.de
Rena Tangens of FoeBuD e.V.: "The overwhelming success of this protest shows that by now a large proportion of the population are worried about our constitutional state. Citizens do not want our democracy to be turned into a surveillance state. The Bundestag must reject the proposed date retention bill."
The large turnout of 15,000 shows that people consider the continuing tightening of security and surveillance laws to be decidedly too far-reaching. Citizens are concerned, not because of the supposed danger of international terrorism, but because of the impertinence and lack of restraint security politicians show in declaring civil rights and liberties defunct. The large cross-section of society participating in the demonstration makes it evident that these are not the views only a few civil rights experts, but that the issue now unites broad parts of the population. Politics cannot ignore this signal.
The organisers decisively criticised actions by the police, as well as some radical left-wing demonstrators: "A bloc of radical left-wing demonstrators did not abide by police obligations. The police in turn used disproportionate means in reaction to violations such as disguising and use of oversize banners, and did not appear to pursue de-escalation in all situations. The massive use of video cameras by the police, especially at this particular protest march, was a provocation. Overall, however, these were marginal incidents which did not impair the progress of the demonstration."
Rena Tangens remarked, "On balance it was a very positive, creative and colourful demonstration, in which hackers demonstrated peacefully beside doctors, and the 'Young Liberals' beside the 'Left Party' (Linkspartei)." The Giant Data-Octopus ("Datenkrake") of FoeBuD e.V., the "glass patient" on the car of the "Freie Aerzteschaft" (an occupational union of physicians), as well as several trojan horses were among the March's highlights.
Patrick Breyer of the Working Group Data Retention announces further activities: "We will resist data retention by all legal means." According to the working group about 20,000 citizens have already declared their support for the prepared constitutional recourse (Verfassungsbeschwerde) against data retention.
Among other things the demonstration takes a stand against the retention of data about telecommunication behaviour of the entire population, that is on this Autumn's political agenda in Germany, as well as against the covert online-searching of computers. Key demands include a halt to new surveillance laws and a review of existing surveillance laws.
Home page of the demonstration - Working Group Data Retention
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Radio1984 feature live from the demonstration (22.09.2007)
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/Demo_berlin_2007_english...
German version
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/images/Demo_berlin_2007_deutsch...
Biggest demonstration for more data protection and privacy since 20 years! (in German only, 22.09.2007)
http://netzpolitik.org/2007/groesste-demonstration-fuer-mehr-datenschu...
Thousands of citizens demonstrate for "Freedom instead of Fear" (in German only, 22.09.2007)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/96385
Berlin Data Tussles (in German only, 24.09.2007)
http://ftd.de/politik/deutschland/:Berliner%20Datenkämpfe/256868.html
Biggest data protection demonstration within 20 years (in German only, 23.09.2007)
http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/berlin_aid_133680.html
Other articles about the demonstration (in German only)
http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Pressespiegel
(Contribution by Jan E. Hennig and Bernd Sieker, EDRI-member FoeBuD - Germany)"
"Recommended Reading
26 September, 2007 » Privacy | Biometrics
Data Protection Framework Decision: EDPS concerned about dilution of Data Protection standards
http://edps.europa.eu/EDPSWEB/webdav/site/mySite/shared/Documents/EDPS...
Nuffield Council on Bioethics : The forensic use of bioinformation: ethical issues. This Report considers whether current police powers in the UK to take and retain bioinformation are justified by the need to fight crime. Executive Summary
http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/The_forensic_use_of_b...
Full Report
http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/The_forensic_use_of_bioinformation_-_ethical_issues.pdf"
See original for links.
Cases to watch out for at the ECJ
contentandcarrier have produced a list of interesting European Court of Justice cases in the area of communications and media law or generally falling under the EU framework on electronic communications networks.
The Europa website also has a guide to these cases up to 2003 and is due to publish an updated guide in the none too distant future.
Daithi particularly likes one related to the Italian broadcasting landscape, Case C-380/05.
[legalise]
"Reference has been made to the Court of Justice of the European Communities by order of the Consiglio di Stato of 19 April 2005, received at the Court Registry on 18 October 2005, for a preliminary ruling in the proceedings between Centro Europa 7 Srl and Ministero delle Comunicazioni (Ministry of Communications) e Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, (Authority for Security of Communications) Direzione Generale Autorizzazioni e Concessioni Ministero delle Comunicazioni (Directorate General for Authorisations and Concessions in the Ministry for Communications) on the following questions:
Does Article 10 of the ECHR, as referred to in Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union, guarantee pluralism in the broadcasting sector, thus requiring the Member States to secure pluralism and competition in the sector based on an antitrust system which, in relation to technological development, secures network access and multiplicity of operators and renders duopolistic market behaviours unlawful...
Under Community rules (primary and secondary legislation) on workable competition in the broadcasting sector, ought the national legislature to have avoided extending the old transitory analogue system on the advent of the terrestrial digital system (and the attendant generalised transition to digital)? Only if analogue broadcasting is ended and replaced by the switch to digital will it be possible to reallocate frequencies freed for various uses. If terrestrial digital is merely operated alongside analogue, there will be an attendant accentuating of the scarcity of available frequencies owing to the existence of analogue and digital transmission in parallel (simulcast).
Lastly, is the pluralism of sources of information and of competition in the broadcasting sector, which is guaranteed by European law, secured by national rules, such as law no 112/2004 providing for a new limit of 20 percent of resources linked to a new very wide criterion (the ICS - integrated communications system - Article 2(g) and Article 15 of law no 112/2004). This criterion also brings in activities which do not affect media pluralism, whereas under antitrust law the 'relevant market' is constructed normally by differentiating the markets in the broadcasting sector by drawing a distinction between pay/TV and non-pay TV operating via the airwaves (reference is made inter alia to the Commission cases COMP/JV. 37-BSKYB/Kirch Pay TV Regulation (EEC) No 4064/89 Merger Procedure 21/03/2000 and COMP/M.2876-Newscorp-TELEPIU Regulation (EEC) No 4064/89 Merger Procedure 2/04/2003."
[/legalise]
Worth reading in full if you're a legal geek or an insomniac, though definitely not for the fainthearted. You have to hand it to the lawyers who dig through these regulations. I never realised there were quite so many grounds on which to challenge the allocation of the digital spectrum in relation to broadcasting and that's just in Italy. Although it is a real pity in many ways that this stuff has to be sorted out through the courts, just think of the number of jumping off points for challengers to the broadcast status quo in every member state. Whether that is a good thing or not I leave the reader to decide.
The Europa website also has a guide to these cases up to 2003 and is due to publish an updated guide in the none too distant future.
Daithi particularly likes one related to the Italian broadcasting landscape, Case C-380/05.
[legalise]
"Reference has been made to the Court of Justice of the European Communities by order of the Consiglio di Stato of 19 April 2005, received at the Court Registry on 18 October 2005, for a preliminary ruling in the proceedings between Centro Europa 7 Srl and Ministero delle Comunicazioni (Ministry of Communications) e Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, (Authority for Security of Communications) Direzione Generale Autorizzazioni e Concessioni Ministero delle Comunicazioni (Directorate General for Authorisations and Concessions in the Ministry for Communications) on the following questions:
Does Article 10 of the ECHR, as referred to in Article 6 of the Treaty on European Union, guarantee pluralism in the broadcasting sector, thus requiring the Member States to secure pluralism and competition in the sector based on an antitrust system which, in relation to technological development, secures network access and multiplicity of operators and renders duopolistic market behaviours unlawful...
Under Community rules (primary and secondary legislation) on workable competition in the broadcasting sector, ought the national legislature to have avoided extending the old transitory analogue system on the advent of the terrestrial digital system (and the attendant generalised transition to digital)? Only if analogue broadcasting is ended and replaced by the switch to digital will it be possible to reallocate frequencies freed for various uses. If terrestrial digital is merely operated alongside analogue, there will be an attendant accentuating of the scarcity of available frequencies owing to the existence of analogue and digital transmission in parallel (simulcast).
Lastly, is the pluralism of sources of information and of competition in the broadcasting sector, which is guaranteed by European law, secured by national rules, such as law no 112/2004 providing for a new limit of 20 percent of resources linked to a new very wide criterion (the ICS - integrated communications system - Article 2(g) and Article 15 of law no 112/2004). This criterion also brings in activities which do not affect media pluralism, whereas under antitrust law the 'relevant market' is constructed normally by differentiating the markets in the broadcasting sector by drawing a distinction between pay/TV and non-pay TV operating via the airwaves (reference is made inter alia to the Commission cases COMP/JV. 37-BSKYB/Kirch Pay TV Regulation (EEC) No 4064/89 Merger Procedure 21/03/2000 and COMP/M.2876-Newscorp-TELEPIU Regulation (EEC) No 4064/89 Merger Procedure 2/04/2003."
[/legalise]
Worth reading in full if you're a legal geek or an insomniac, though definitely not for the fainthearted. You have to hand it to the lawyers who dig through these regulations. I never realised there were quite so many grounds on which to challenge the allocation of the digital spectrum in relation to broadcasting and that's just in Italy. Although it is a real pity in many ways that this stuff has to be sorted out through the courts, just think of the number of jumping off points for challengers to the broadcast status quo in every member state. Whether that is a good thing or not I leave the reader to decide.
B2fxxx Not a UK blog
reCAPCHA helping to digitise books
Here's a great idea - reCAPCHA.
" A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs...
To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then, to make them searchable, transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.
" A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You've probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from "bots," or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs...
To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then, to make them searchable, transformed into text using "Optical Character Recognition" (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
But if a computer can't read such a CAPTCHA, how does the system know the correct answer to the puzzle? Here's how: Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine, with higher confidence, whether the original answer was correct.
Currently, we are helping to digitize books from the Internet Archive."
Monday, October 01, 2007
Professor Reed's manifesto for Web 2.0
Chris Reed's manifesto for the regulation of Web 2.0 has been doing the rounds and cheering up some geeks and bloggers.
"A MANIFESTO FOR RADICAL INACTION
To: All those concerned with the regulation of Web 2.0 who know enough
to know that they know nothing.
1. When, as they will, politicians take up the cry of commentators that "This is awful. Something must be done!" we must resist them to our last breath. Laws about the internet made this way have consistently failed to achieve their aims and produced unintended, unfavourable consequences. It always ends in tears.
2. For the time being we must preserve the liberties of online intermediaries so that Web 2.0 can continue to evolve. One day we will understand what responsibilities they can fairly be asked to shoulder. Meanwhile we must muddle along, extending and adapting our current laws to new problems as best we can. If something really must be done, we should question and question again until satisfied that it will not do more harm than good.
3. So far as we are able, we must divert lawmakers into fixing problems that we at least vaguely understand. The most pressing of these are online privacy and intellectual property rights in the new Web 2.0 creations. Fortunately both these require years of international negotiation, which will give us time to identify the best solutions.
We owe it to the future to prevent the mistakes of the past. Aux armes
Netoyens!"
My 'Future of Content' co-conspirators will note Professor Reed's perspective on the centrality of IP and privacy in the mix.
Meanwhile whilst we were in the midst of our blog debate last week, Gilberto Gil, Brazil's minister for culture, was calling for a version of Martin's free digital society.
"Today's digital technologies represent a fantastic opportunity for democratizing access to knowledge. We have found that the appropriation of digital technology can be an incredible upgrade in skills of political self-management and the local political process."
"A MANIFESTO FOR RADICAL INACTION
To: All those concerned with the regulation of Web 2.0 who know enough
to know that they know nothing.
1. When, as they will, politicians take up the cry of commentators that "This is awful. Something must be done!" we must resist them to our last breath. Laws about the internet made this way have consistently failed to achieve their aims and produced unintended, unfavourable consequences. It always ends in tears.
2. For the time being we must preserve the liberties of online intermediaries so that Web 2.0 can continue to evolve. One day we will understand what responsibilities they can fairly be asked to shoulder. Meanwhile we must muddle along, extending and adapting our current laws to new problems as best we can. If something really must be done, we should question and question again until satisfied that it will not do more harm than good.
3. So far as we are able, we must divert lawmakers into fixing problems that we at least vaguely understand. The most pressing of these are online privacy and intellectual property rights in the new Web 2.0 creations. Fortunately both these require years of international negotiation, which will give us time to identify the best solutions.
We owe it to the future to prevent the mistakes of the past. Aux armes
Netoyens!"
My 'Future of Content' co-conspirators will note Professor Reed's perspective on the centrality of IP and privacy in the mix.
Meanwhile whilst we were in the midst of our blog debate last week, Gilberto Gil, Brazil's minister for culture, was calling for a version of Martin's free digital society.
"Today's digital technologies represent a fantastic opportunity for democratizing access to knowledge. We have found that the appropriation of digital technology can be an incredible upgrade in skills of political self-management and the local political process."
VAT charges introduced for EU Second Lifers
I included a note about ICrave TV and Lessig's notions on zoning the Net in my Future of the Net Pt 2 post last week. Tony Hirst has just pointed me to a note about Linden Labs' decision to charge VAT to Second Life users resident in the EU.
"At around 4PM PST, while most of Europe slept, an email was sent out about a new policy at Linden Lab. Those European customers who were awake got a bit of a nasty shock:
Now users of SL are, understandably, not always entirely truthful about their details so what if you said when signing up that you lived in a diferent country to where you are actually resident? According to Linden Labs FAQ:
How does Linden Lab determine who to charge VAT for?
"At around 4PM PST, while most of Europe slept, an email was sent out about a new policy at Linden Lab. Those European customers who were awake got a bit of a nasty shock:
Hello,
We have identified that you reside in a European country. Accordingly, your next bill will reflect Value Added Tax (VAT) charged at the rate specified by your country. Please note that VAT applies to all payments to Linden Lab such as land sales, monthly maintenance fees and Premium subscription fees.
If you are eligible for a VAT exemption, you may submit proof of your exemption status, such as your VAT number, here:
https://secondlife.com/account/vat_enter_id.phpIf you have other questions, please read the VAT FAQ:
http://secondlife.com/corporate/vat.phpYou can also contact us via the support portal:
http://secondlife.com/supportBest regards, and thank you for your continuing support.
Linden Lab
Creators of Second Life"
Now users of SL are, understandably, not always entirely truthful about their details so what if you said when signing up that you lived in a diferent country to where you are actually resident? According to Linden Labs FAQ:
How does Linden Lab determine who to charge VAT for?
"When you registered your account, you told us what country you live in. If that country is in the EU, then VAT is applied.
If you say that you come from a different country that doesn't charge VAT, it's very likely that discrepancies between your IP address and your declared country would get caught in our risk detection system and may cause your account to be flagged for review or even suspended."
This was inevitable and the only surprising thing is that it has taken them so long to get round it, though I suspect dedicated Second Lifers won't be seeing it like that.Friday, September 28, 2007
Who's up for change
William Heath is asking: How do we measure who in the tribe is ready for change? The 'tribe' of the title being those involved in public services.
Harvard bookshop overdoes the IP claims
Had to blog this:
"With the exception of the IP Mafia and its supporters/enablers, just about everyone recognizes that folks sometimes use copyright as an anticompetitive tool or tool for intimidation rather than to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by ensuring creators get compensated. While we can argue about how often this occurs or how much it genuinely chills free speech, you occasionally run into a case of copyright abuse so utterly blatant that it cries out for legal action — or at the very least a healthy dose of ridicule.
So, as a loyal Princeton alum (Go Tigers!), it gives me great pleasure to hold up for public opprobrium, general mockery, and possible legislative organizing the ridiculous claim by the Harvard University Bookstore, aka the Harvard Coop. As reported by the Harvard Crimson (Official motto: “No, we do not tell you where in the YaRd you can PaRk your damn caR”), the Harvard Coop claims it can eject students that write down the prices and ISBN numbers of text books. Why? According to Harvard Coop President Jerry P Murphy, “the Coop considers that information the Coop’s intellectual property.”"
See the original for links and further details. But throwing students out of a bookshop for writing down prices and ISBNs? Well I have been banging on about the perils of IP coming to a university campus near you for a very long time now...
"With the exception of the IP Mafia and its supporters/enablers, just about everyone recognizes that folks sometimes use copyright as an anticompetitive tool or tool for intimidation rather than to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” by ensuring creators get compensated. While we can argue about how often this occurs or how much it genuinely chills free speech, you occasionally run into a case of copyright abuse so utterly blatant that it cries out for legal action — or at the very least a healthy dose of ridicule.
So, as a loyal Princeton alum (Go Tigers!), it gives me great pleasure to hold up for public opprobrium, general mockery, and possible legislative organizing the ridiculous claim by the Harvard University Bookstore, aka the Harvard Coop. As reported by the Harvard Crimson (Official motto: “No, we do not tell you where in the YaRd you can PaRk your damn caR”), the Harvard Coop claims it can eject students that write down the prices and ISBN numbers of text books. Why? According to Harvard Coop President Jerry P Murphy, “the Coop considers that information the Coop’s intellectual property.”"
See the original for links and further details. But throwing students out of a bookshop for writing down prices and ISBNs? Well I have been banging on about the perils of IP coming to a university campus near you for a very long time now...
The Future of Content Pt4
Will Woods' contribution to our four way blog debate experiment is now up. He rounds off with an interesting list of predictions.
"(1) A cashless and cacheless society...
(2) Personalised filtering...
(5) Those who think they control information will get a wake up call...
(7) People will become the user interface...
(8) Technology will diversify not integrate?"
It's been an interesting exercise in sharing some thoughts openly and in a semi-structured fashion with colleagues. AJ Cann found the postings too long for what he would usually expect of blogs and reckons the power of blogging lies in microchunking content. Certainly blogs are terrific for just that, especially when you do most of your blog reading via an rss news reader as I do. But I share Martin's view of the value of variety in blogs. The kinds of blogs I read serve broadly four different functions for me -
None of the blogs mentioned reside exclusively in the category I've noted them under and the beauty of the format is they can and do move across the boundaries where necessary. In any case Martin has drawn some conclusions and also has some general thoughts on the experiment, which are well worth a read.
"(1) A cashless and cacheless society...
(2) Personalised filtering...
(5) Those who think they control information will get a wake up call...
(7) People will become the user interface...
(8) Technology will diversify not integrate?"
It's been an interesting exercise in sharing some thoughts openly and in a semi-structured fashion with colleagues. AJ Cann found the postings too long for what he would usually expect of blogs and reckons the power of blogging lies in microchunking content. Certainly blogs are terrific for just that, especially when you do most of your blog reading via an rss news reader as I do. But I share Martin's view of the value of variety in blogs. The kinds of blogs I read serve broadly four different functions for me -
- News/information/serendipity/professional currency - e.g. John Naughton
- Commentary (both general and in-depth) and techno-gadgetry - e.g. Tony Hirst
- Pointers to very specific areas of interest e.g. EFF Deeplinks or Scotusblog
- Topical academic discourse (not subject to the usual delays of the publishing cycle) e.g. Balkanization or Becker-Posner
None of the blogs mentioned reside exclusively in the category I've noted them under and the beauty of the format is they can and do move across the boundaries where necessary. In any case Martin has drawn some conclusions and also has some general thoughts on the experiment, which are well worth a read.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Slesinger loses latest Pooh round against Disney
This one hasn't been heard from for a while but the Slesingers have lost the latest round in the long running legal dispute over unpaid royalties from Disney on the Winnie the Pooh character.
Dutch abandon evoting
Via Colm MacCárthaigh : apparently the Dutch have abandoned e-voting after years of using a system they didn't know was insecure.
Bertie Ahern spent 60 million euro on ostensibly the same e-voting system a few years ago but never got to deploy it. The Taoiseach has regularly complained loudly about the luddites who got in his way and how the world would laugh at the Irish with our quaint old voting pencils. So I don't suppose this news will help him to change his mind about the machines and scrap them... that is if the news ever reaches him. He has recently been rather preoccupied with his cross examination at the hands of tribunal looking into his personal finances.
Bertie Ahern spent 60 million euro on ostensibly the same e-voting system a few years ago but never got to deploy it. The Taoiseach has regularly complained loudly about the luddites who got in his way and how the world would laugh at the Irish with our quaint old voting pencils. So I don't suppose this news will help him to change his mind about the machines and scrap them... that is if the news ever reaches him. He has recently been rather preoccupied with his cross examination at the hands of tribunal looking into his personal finances.
Future of content part 3 response
I've been perusing Patrick's contribution to our four way blog discussion on the future of content. He says
On a separate issue relating to Wikipedia, which both Martin and Patrick refer too, I admit to being one of the original skeptics who laughed and said it couldn't possibly work. An encyclopedia with apparently no quality control and no form of sensible editorial process - if ever there was going to be definitive proof positive of millions of monkey's with keyboards being unable to reconstruct the works of Shakespeare this was it. Yet Wikipedia did work and it worked because of fiercely dedicated communities of interest that sprang up around the collections of entries. If someone tried to pollute one of these entries with jokes or distortions they would get quickly corrected by the interested communities/individuals who monitored them closely. But Wikipedia grew and the real and the regulatory world came calling in the form of intellectual property and defamation laws and the tendency for certain entities to arrange the favourable adjustment of their own entries or those related to them. The Wikipedia folk were obliged to introduce an editorial control process and not be quite so open.
By coincidence, Wendy Seltzer is giving two lectures at Cornell University today on "Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies" (3pm there, 8pm in the UK) and "Righting the Copyright Balance" (7.30pm there, 12.30am in the UK), outlining some of the concerns I have about the influence of the entertainment industry on the future of content. Thanks to Fernando Barrio, whose blog I added to my newsreader after his entertaining presentation at GIKII 2 last week, for the pointer.
Yet the OU has now opened up its content, and for some good reasons. Some of those reasons are complex, but underneath it I think there are two principles one altruistic and one more selfish:I think there is another more fundamental reason for the need for open educational content. The outputs of content production are the inputs to future creative endeavors and individual and collective learning processes. If these outputs get locked up and ghettoized behind pay-per-view virtual walls well then Spider Robinson's timeless Melancholy Elephants tells of the consequences, for future creators in particular, far more elegantly than I can.
Altruistic reason for open content: there is more value in having the world see this resource than if we store it away or try to sell it
Selfish reason for open content: if we don’t do it someone else will, and then what are we left with
On a separate issue relating to Wikipedia, which both Martin and Patrick refer too, I admit to being one of the original skeptics who laughed and said it couldn't possibly work. An encyclopedia with apparently no quality control and no form of sensible editorial process - if ever there was going to be definitive proof positive of millions of monkey's with keyboards being unable to reconstruct the works of Shakespeare this was it. Yet Wikipedia did work and it worked because of fiercely dedicated communities of interest that sprang up around the collections of entries. If someone tried to pollute one of these entries with jokes or distortions they would get quickly corrected by the interested communities/individuals who monitored them closely. But Wikipedia grew and the real and the regulatory world came calling in the form of intellectual property and defamation laws and the tendency for certain entities to arrange the favourable adjustment of their own entries or those related to them. The Wikipedia folk were obliged to introduce an editorial control process and not be quite so open.
By coincidence, Wendy Seltzer is giving two lectures at Cornell University today on "Protecting the University from Copyright Bullies" (3pm there, 8pm in the UK) and "Righting the Copyright Balance" (7.30pm there, 12.30am in the UK), outlining some of the concerns I have about the influence of the entertainment industry on the future of content. Thanks to Fernando Barrio, whose blog I added to my newsreader after his entertaining presentation at GIKII 2 last week, for the pointer.
The Future of Content Pt 2 follow up
Martin has now responded to my earlier piece and Patrick McAndrew has followed through also with part 3 (beta).
I just wanted to add a few comments initially relating to Martin's piece. He says
The second point is that we basically have "zero privacy" (as Scott MacNealy said) on the Net. The way to tackle totalitarian regimes is to not be afraid (as is the way to tackle terrorism but now I'm getting even more side-tracked) but this is a risky business in these places, involving threat to life and liberty. Dissident bloggers are relatively easy to find - ISPs and tech cos are the choke points with the necessary information to hand over to the authorities - and as Cardinal Richelieu said, he only needed "six lines written by the most honest man" to present sufficient evidence to hang him. I wrote on this blog last year
Thirdly, remember a few years ago when a handful of fuel protesters with mobile phones blockaded fuel depots and brought the UK to a grinding halt? Well the law has been changed and if they try it again they could very well get picked up by the police and disappear for 28 days (or longer if the government follow through with intentions to extend the term of detention without charge).
Moving on to the commerce end of things, Martin says
Absolutely spot on - commerce has to adapt to the new technological context. Google didn't exist a little over a decade ago and it's almost hard to believe Microsoft is a young a company as it is. And sure, the established commercial landscape and players in any market changes over time but that amoral focus on the bottom line doesn't change and the commercial pressures to stick up barriers to a new technological contexts, just long enough to underpin, nurture, grow profit margins and leverage power in the new reality, never goes away.
Martin also points out that just because governments and commerce want to control the Net doesn't mean they can.
But again what you've got to understand here - and it is difficult to emphasise this sometimes without sounding like a raving loonatic - is that the people (and their lawyers and the politicians they hold undue influence over) who run the content companies and other IP based industries, live in a completely different universe to the rest of us, with regard to their perspective on what the law ought to be. And they have the commercial, financial and political clout to ensure it is shaped in their favour. (Take a look at Jessica Litman's and Peter Drahos's terrific books Digital Copyright and Information Feudalism for engaging narratives on how these processes unfold in the US and international arenas)
The late Jack Valenti of the MPAA said the VCR relationship to the US movie industry was like that of the Boston strangler to a woman home alone. Jamie Kellner head of Turner Broadcasting believes TV viewers have a contract with the network to "watch the spots [adverts]" and that recording programmes for later viewing and then fast forwarding through the ads is theft. Why you you think the fast forward button on my DVD player is disabled when I want to skip those copyright notices at the beginning of a DVD? The US Movie industry run the DVD Content Control Association (DVDCCA) which licences tech companies to manufacture approved DVD machines with approved DRM mechanisms to play their DVDs.
I don't see how digital content shrinkwrap and clickwrap boilerplate licences, whether for software or any other product, which effectively say (and I paraphrase)-
"We cannot ever, under any circumstances, be held liable, even if proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be totally negligent when our product destroyed your life."
- could withstand appropriate scrutiny under the Unfair Contract Terms Act of 1977 or of the whole branch of civil liability tort law, which applies to normal products. But they do and courts repeatedly uphold them and we continue to buy generation after generation of substandardly secured software, for example, under purchasing conditions totally stacked in favour of the vendors.
The regulatory instruments and frameworks surrounding modern digital technologies are quite surreal. Technologists and educators need to be a lot more tuned into them than we are, if we are firstly to begin to understand them and secondly start to do something about imposing some semblance of reality on them in order to at least give Martin's vision of an accessible, sustainable, open content future a small glint of a fighting chance.
I just wanted to add a few comments initially relating to Martin's piece. He says
But equally they [governments like China and Saudia Arabia] have really struggled to control information. Sure they’ve tried and had some success but this has had more to do with the immaturity of communication technologies, not the increasing ability of governments to censor information. The general trend is towards more freedom of information and as mobile devices and broadcasting/networking equipment become more powerful this will only increase.I'm tempted to get into a long note here about civil rights and the Net but I'll restrict it to a three points. Totalitarian regimes rule through fear - brutalise a sufficient proportion of the population and the rest fall into line. They don't require total control, just enough. If the great firewall of China is 80% effective (and regular readers of this blog will know how much I detest filter software) it is effective enough.
The second point is that we basically have "zero privacy" (as Scott MacNealy said) on the Net. The way to tackle totalitarian regimes is to not be afraid (as is the way to tackle terrorism but now I'm getting even more side-tracked) but this is a risky business in these places, involving threat to life and liberty. Dissident bloggers are relatively easy to find - ISPs and tech cos are the choke points with the necessary information to hand over to the authorities - and as Cardinal Richelieu said, he only needed "six lines written by the most honest man" to present sufficient evidence to hang him. I wrote on this blog last year
Yahoo! chief, Jerry Yang, "feels horrible" that Yahoo! helped the Chinese authorities to jail journalists. When asked about the arrests he said they "are never things you go home and feel good about. We feel horrible about that...We have no way of preventing that beforehand....If you want to do business there you have to comply."
Badly damaging someone's life is merely the price of doing business. The heart of the business process is amoral hence the key rule is caveat emptor, where the 'emptor' encompasses everyone who comes into contact with that business in any way. It's kind of ironic that doing business fundamentally depends simultaneously on trust and lack of trust.
I doubt Mr Yang will get much sympathy over his horrible feelings but my question would be at what point does he believe the price of compliance becomes too high?
Thirdly, remember a few years ago when a handful of fuel protesters with mobile phones blockaded fuel depots and brought the UK to a grinding halt? Well the law has been changed and if they try it again they could very well get picked up by the police and disappear for 28 days (or longer if the government follow through with intentions to extend the term of detention without charge).
Moving on to the commerce end of things, Martin says
Sure the respective industries want to control it, but the point is they can’t anymore. This is because technologically they’ll always be beaten, and also because the online world allows new market players who will offer an alternative, often a free one. They have to adapt or die – look at photography: Kodak might have wanted to control the print process but ultimately digital cameras and Flickr meant they couldn’t.
Absolutely spot on - commerce has to adapt to the new technological context. Google didn't exist a little over a decade ago and it's almost hard to believe Microsoft is a young a company as it is. And sure, the established commercial landscape and players in any market changes over time but that amoral focus on the bottom line doesn't change and the commercial pressures to stick up barriers to a new technological contexts, just long enough to underpin, nurture, grow profit margins and leverage power in the new reality, never goes away.
Martin also points out that just because governments and commerce want to control the Net doesn't mean they can.
I heard Robert Cailliau, a colleague of Tim Berners-Lee, once argue that we were reaching the edges of our understanding of the complexity in the net. He joked that maybe it was using us to get built.Since I've just published a book, one of the underlying themes of which is that we are pretty poor as a species at deploying, securing, controlling and regulating large information systems, I can only agree wholeheartedly with Martin and Robert Cailliau on this one.
But again what you've got to understand here - and it is difficult to emphasise this sometimes without sounding like a raving loonatic - is that the people (and their lawyers and the politicians they hold undue influence over) who run the content companies and other IP based industries, live in a completely different universe to the rest of us, with regard to their perspective on what the law ought to be. And they have the commercial, financial and political clout to ensure it is shaped in their favour. (Take a look at Jessica Litman's and Peter Drahos's terrific books Digital Copyright and Information Feudalism for engaging narratives on how these processes unfold in the US and international arenas)
The late Jack Valenti of the MPAA said the VCR relationship to the US movie industry was like that of the Boston strangler to a woman home alone. Jamie Kellner head of Turner Broadcasting believes TV viewers have a contract with the network to "watch the spots [adverts]" and that recording programmes for later viewing and then fast forwarding through the ads is theft. Why you you think the fast forward button on my DVD player is disabled when I want to skip those copyright notices at the beginning of a DVD? The US Movie industry run the DVD Content Control Association (DVDCCA) which licences tech companies to manufacture approved DVD machines with approved DRM mechanisms to play their DVDs.
I don't see how digital content shrinkwrap and clickwrap boilerplate licences, whether for software or any other product, which effectively say (and I paraphrase)-
"We cannot ever, under any circumstances, be held liable, even if proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be totally negligent when our product destroyed your life."
- could withstand appropriate scrutiny under the Unfair Contract Terms Act of 1977 or of the whole branch of civil liability tort law, which applies to normal products. But they do and courts repeatedly uphold them and we continue to buy generation after generation of substandardly secured software, for example, under purchasing conditions totally stacked in favour of the vendors.
The regulatory instruments and frameworks surrounding modern digital technologies are quite surreal. Technologists and educators need to be a lot more tuned into them than we are, if we are firstly to begin to understand them and secondly start to do something about imposing some semblance of reality on them in order to at least give Martin's vision of an accessible, sustainable, open content future a small glint of a fighting chance.
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