Here's an amusing barbed commentary from Ed Foster on the Diebold memos. He starts with his amended version of the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the speech, or of the press ... except as needed to allow trademark and copyright holders complete power to control discussions about their brands."
Monday, November 03, 2003
In response to the UK Office for National Statistics consultation exercise on "Modernising Civil Registration" FIPR has called on the government to ensure that a new electronic database of life events -- births, marriages, deaths etc. -- supports rather than reduces privacy and liberty. All very sensible as you would expect from FIPR.
Declan McCullagh tells us that the US Copyright Office have offered qualified support to Static Control in their ongoing DMCA dispute with Lexmark. Lexmark have successfully sued and got an injunction against Static Control to prevent them supplying cheaper refill cartridges for Lexmark printers. The cheaper refills apparently bypassed copy control technology built into the Lexmark versions. A good example of an OEM cornering the market in spares by building in digital fences and throwing their weight around on the anti-circumvention provisions of the DMCA - and not what the law was intended to be used for. The law already says you can bypass copy control/access measures "for the sole purpose of identifying and analyzing those elements of the program that are necessary to achieve interoperability." That is a less well known provision of the DMCA.
It remains to be seen how this opinion from the copyright office will affect the case. There are other substantive issues such as Static Control's alleged direct copyright infringement of Lexmark programs that may still swing the case Lexmark's way at the appeal.
It remains to be seen how this opinion from the copyright office will affect the case. There are other substantive issues such as Static Control's alleged direct copyright infringement of Lexmark programs that may still swing the case Lexmark's way at the appeal.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
PS Don't miss this Wired article on Brewster Kahle, Amazon's new search engine and "The fondest dream of the information age ... to create an archive of all knowledge."
I'm in a rush today but just wanted to draw your attention to this, which at first glance looks like a possible step in the right direction to getting a resolution to the file sharing issue.
A couple of MIT students have come up with a new system which taps into the MIT campus licensed cable TV network. The files are analogue not digital, which means the sound quality resides somewhere between a radio broadcast and a CD.
It means that the students get access to a big library of music and the copyright holders get paid a license fee. Sounds a better for the RIAA than a bunch of expensive lawsuits and PR disasters about suing 12 year olds and grannies.
A couple of MIT students have come up with a new system which taps into the MIT campus licensed cable TV network. The files are analogue not digital, which means the sound quality resides somewhere between a radio broadcast and a CD.
It means that the students get access to a big library of music and the copyright holders get paid a license fee. Sounds a better for the RIAA than a bunch of expensive lawsuits and PR disasters about suing 12 year olds and grannies.
Monday, October 27, 2003
James Grimmelmann, like Edward Felten yesterday, asks "Where will the madness end?"
"Here's a link to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site with the memos. Whoops, that's the Diebold home page. "
Beautiful.
"Here's a link to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site that links to a site with the memos. Whoops, that's the Diebold home page. "
Beautiful.
I've been thinking about using a different video for activity 1 of T182 Law the Internet and Society based on Larry Lessig's book, The Future of Ideas. Whilst digging out Lessig's Inaugural Meredith and Kip Frey Lecture in Intellectual Property, in March 23, 2001, at Duke University, I came across a terrific session with James Boyle:
Private Censorship and Perfect Choice: The Future of the Internet? Second Annual Duke Magazine Forum, featuring Duke Law Professor James Boyle in conversation with UNC Law Professor Adrienne Davis.
Articulate, entertaining and informative as ever, Jamie also gets put on the spot in relation to his perspective of the Napster case and explains the issues in the case in a way you just don't get in the usual polemics (both for and against). Although there were sound legal arguments in favour of Napster, the music industry also had a case and hence he did not sign up to the amicus brief supporting Napster. One example in Napster's favour was that intellectual property had never really concerned itself with private acts because it was really a form of industrial regulation. Also the Sony Betamax argument - Napster hadn't done anything itself any more than Sony with their video recorders, in relation to infringing copyright. Nevertheless, neither did he sign up to the specific overreaching arguments made by the music industry in the case because they would have effectively entailed making the open architecture of the Internet illegal. But in the end he came to the decision of not directly supporting Napster through asking the question: is this technology really going to encourage innovation in the long term or is this not-sanctioned use threatening innovation in the long term. Although the music industry's argument was questionable they did have a point. His friends said they should be allowed to engage in the kind of tactics that the music industry used. Jamie thinks that there is a serious issue in terms of making supported properly researched sensible and scholarly arguments in favour of real balance in the area of intellectual property. (As well as acting as activists supporting balance). We have to get away from the polemic dichotomy and emotive soundbites on both sides, if we are really going to make any progress towards that goal.
Couldn't agree more. Jamie still finds the Napster case hard and although Larry Lessig has eloquently made the argument about Naspter as a celestial jukebox, the public debate never really got a handle on precisely the kinds of difficulties with the case Jamie articulates. It's a real pity we live in such a soundbite culture where if you have can't get an idea across in three seconds you automatically lose the argument. It undermines the real world possibility of getting to a satisfactory resolution of difficult problems, like balance in intellectual property in a digital age.
The Naspter discussion happens about 47 minutes into the recording, just in case you're thinking of fast forwarding to that bit. Jamie, unlike his namesake of the Kellner (Turner Broadcasting) variety, doesn't believe that fast forwarding is theft.
Private Censorship and Perfect Choice: The Future of the Internet? Second Annual Duke Magazine Forum, featuring Duke Law Professor James Boyle in conversation with UNC Law Professor Adrienne Davis.
Articulate, entertaining and informative as ever, Jamie also gets put on the spot in relation to his perspective of the Napster case and explains the issues in the case in a way you just don't get in the usual polemics (both for and against). Although there were sound legal arguments in favour of Napster, the music industry also had a case and hence he did not sign up to the amicus brief supporting Napster. One example in Napster's favour was that intellectual property had never really concerned itself with private acts because it was really a form of industrial regulation. Also the Sony Betamax argument - Napster hadn't done anything itself any more than Sony with their video recorders, in relation to infringing copyright. Nevertheless, neither did he sign up to the specific overreaching arguments made by the music industry in the case because they would have effectively entailed making the open architecture of the Internet illegal. But in the end he came to the decision of not directly supporting Napster through asking the question: is this technology really going to encourage innovation in the long term or is this not-sanctioned use threatening innovation in the long term. Although the music industry's argument was questionable they did have a point. His friends said they should be allowed to engage in the kind of tactics that the music industry used. Jamie thinks that there is a serious issue in terms of making supported properly researched sensible and scholarly arguments in favour of real balance in the area of intellectual property. (As well as acting as activists supporting balance). We have to get away from the polemic dichotomy and emotive soundbites on both sides, if we are really going to make any progress towards that goal.
Couldn't agree more. Jamie still finds the Napster case hard and although Larry Lessig has eloquently made the argument about Naspter as a celestial jukebox, the public debate never really got a handle on precisely the kinds of difficulties with the case Jamie articulates. It's a real pity we live in such a soundbite culture where if you have can't get an idea across in three seconds you automatically lose the argument. It undermines the real world possibility of getting to a satisfactory resolution of difficult problems, like balance in intellectual property in a digital age.
The Naspter discussion happens about 47 minutes into the recording, just in case you're thinking of fast forwarding to that bit. Jamie, unlike his namesake of the Kellner (Turner Broadcasting) variety, doesn't believe that fast forwarding is theft.
Insightful paper by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, edited by J.D Lassica, senior editor Online Journalism Review, on the future of participatory journalism, currently best represented by blogs. Dan Gilmore writes the Foreword and includes his much repeated meme that his "audience, never shy to let me know when I get something wrong, made me realize something: My readers know more than I do. This has become almost a mantra in my work." If you want understand blogs and what participatory journalism could be all about, you could do a lot worse than spend some time on this paper.
My colleague, John Naughton, is amongst the people alerting us to the notion that is might not be a great idea to buy into Microsoft's Office 2003 sales pitch.
Michael Robertson is possibly going a bit far in suggesting the software is a virus but I agree with John, that "You would have to be exceedingly stupid to fall for it."
Unfortunately, however, most organisations have a kind of built in blindness to stupidity when it comes to this kind of thing. And the force of Microsoft's publicity will likely be more than strong enough to overcome voices of reason, thereby causing millions within and without organisations to turn from people into sheeple, and sign up in droves.
Like I said yesterday, potentially we can influence more with our purchasing power than our votes but we don't seem to see it that way. There seems to be wide spread apathy to the reality of voter or consumer power. And if you don't use it you'll lose it.
The Guardian on Saturday did a longish piece on the increasing scale of identity theft in the UK. This really is a growing problem and people would do well to be aware of it. 74 766 cases reported in the UK last year. And that's just the reported cases.
"In a survey last year, Experian, a
credit reference agency, found that 53 out of 71 local authorities
reported bin raiding was taking place in their areas, and getting
noticeably worse.
In a further analysis of 400 domestic bins, the agency found that
72% contained a full name and address, 40% contained a credit
card number and expiry date linked to an individual, and 20%
held a bank account number and sort code alongside a name.
Rifling through rubbish pays off. As does trawling through the
internet. To find more details of you, a fraudster could check out
the electoral roll, the national phone book and the directors'
database, as well as a few other data sources such as the land
registry (which holds your mortgage details)."
Nick Cohen in his latest polemic against the government says "Basic civil liberties are in dire jeopardy when anti-terrorist laws are used for day-to-day policing."
"For the past few weeks, the High Court in London has been considering the possibility that not even the threat of mass murder can make the British state grow up. Before it is an account of what happened to demonstrators who gathered in September outside Europe's biggest arms fair in London's Docklands. Cluster bombs, conventional bombs, each and every type of bomb, were on sale to buyers from pretty much every dictatorship on the planet. The demonstrators' number included Quakers and nuns...
Dozens of protesters were arrested and searched under Straw's anti-terrorism legislation none the less. Pennie Quinton wasn't even demonstrating. She was an accredited journalist who was making a film of the demo...
Her case was taken up by the civil rights group, Liberty, which asked the High Court to decide whether the police were using what were meant to be emergency powers against potential psychopaths as 'another tool in the kit of day-to-day policing'. Liberty's lawyers discovered that it has become routine for the police to declare the whole of London a special zone for anti-terrorist operations.
No one knew what the Met was up to because orders akin to the announcement of martial law were declared and confirmed in secret. From 13 August for 28 days and from 11 September for 28 days, the police had unconstrained power to treat everyone in London as a terrorist, and stop, search and hold them without cause or reasonable suspicion. "
Cohen is not Tony Blair's favorite journalist.
The New York Times is suggesting that Brazil is now a hotspot for cyber criminals. The journalist seems to be basing that assertion on a conversation with a computer savvy 22-year old Brazilian, the publisher of a hacker magazine in Brazil and a consultancy firm in London.
Michael Robertson is possibly going a bit far in suggesting the software is a virus but I agree with John, that "You would have to be exceedingly stupid to fall for it."
Unfortunately, however, most organisations have a kind of built in blindness to stupidity when it comes to this kind of thing. And the force of Microsoft's publicity will likely be more than strong enough to overcome voices of reason, thereby causing millions within and without organisations to turn from people into sheeple, and sign up in droves.
Like I said yesterday, potentially we can influence more with our purchasing power than our votes but we don't seem to see it that way. There seems to be wide spread apathy to the reality of voter or consumer power. And if you don't use it you'll lose it.
The Guardian on Saturday did a longish piece on the increasing scale of identity theft in the UK. This really is a growing problem and people would do well to be aware of it. 74 766 cases reported in the UK last year. And that's just the reported cases.
"In a survey last year, Experian, a
credit reference agency, found that 53 out of 71 local authorities
reported bin raiding was taking place in their areas, and getting
noticeably worse.
In a further analysis of 400 domestic bins, the agency found that
72% contained a full name and address, 40% contained a credit
card number and expiry date linked to an individual, and 20%
held a bank account number and sort code alongside a name.
Rifling through rubbish pays off. As does trawling through the
internet. To find more details of you, a fraudster could check out
the electoral roll, the national phone book and the directors'
database, as well as a few other data sources such as the land
registry (which holds your mortgage details)."
Nick Cohen in his latest polemic against the government says "Basic civil liberties are in dire jeopardy when anti-terrorist laws are used for day-to-day policing."
"For the past few weeks, the High Court in London has been considering the possibility that not even the threat of mass murder can make the British state grow up. Before it is an account of what happened to demonstrators who gathered in September outside Europe's biggest arms fair in London's Docklands. Cluster bombs, conventional bombs, each and every type of bomb, were on sale to buyers from pretty much every dictatorship on the planet. The demonstrators' number included Quakers and nuns...
Dozens of protesters were arrested and searched under Straw's anti-terrorism legislation none the less. Pennie Quinton wasn't even demonstrating. She was an accredited journalist who was making a film of the demo...
Her case was taken up by the civil rights group, Liberty, which asked the High Court to decide whether the police were using what were meant to be emergency powers against potential psychopaths as 'another tool in the kit of day-to-day policing'. Liberty's lawyers discovered that it has become routine for the police to declare the whole of London a special zone for anti-terrorist operations.
No one knew what the Met was up to because orders akin to the announcement of martial law were declared and confirmed in secret. From 13 August for 28 days and from 11 September for 28 days, the police had unconstrained power to treat everyone in London as a terrorist, and stop, search and hold them without cause or reasonable suspicion. "
Cohen is not Tony Blair's favorite journalist.
The New York Times is suggesting that Brazil is now a hotspot for cyber criminals. The journalist seems to be basing that assertion on a conversation with a computer savvy 22-year old Brazilian, the publisher of a hacker magazine in Brazil and a consultancy firm in London.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
Techlawadviser, Kevin Heller, thinks in the wake of the MPAA campaign in schools maybe someone "should create a legitimate lesson plan and offer it to volunteers to teach middle school and high school kids about copyright law instead of allowing them to be inundated with corporate propaganda."
Donna thinks it is a good idea and is looking for volunteers.
Donna thinks it is a good idea and is looking for volunteers.
A couple of Spiked reports right on the button with respect to the mid week BBC programme, The Secret Policeman, exposing a handful of racist police officers. As Josie Appleton says, the
"report showed the impact of
diversity policies: most people had learnt the approved terms to use
in public, whatever their private views. But enforcing this kind of
personal etiquette won't help to reduce real racism, and indeed may
increase resentment of ethnic minorities."
John Dean served as President Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for about three years. He has written two books about the experience and the Watergate scandal, Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). He's none too impressed at the performance of the current White House resident, George Bush and has regularly criticised him in the mainstream press. His latest critique draws on details recently published in a book by the editor of the Nation, David Corn, called The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the politics of Deception. It has to be said that Corn is not exactly a fan of the president either. Dean seems to believe that Bush merits his own special prosecutor in the Kenneth Starr mould to investigate a range of areas from Iraq's WMDs to his relationship with Enron chairman Ken Lay, and including stem cell research, alleged criminal expose of a CIA operative, management of pre and post September 11th, and his tax plans amongs others. Bush, Blair and spin certainly haven't done a whole lot for the credibility of politicians but then I wonder if nowadays we can have more influence with the pound (or dollar or euro) we spend rather than the vote we cast? Sorry state of affairs.
The Miscrosoft settlement judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly,
"urged government lawyers Friday to investigate why only nine companies so far have paid Microsoft to license its technology for their own software products, agreements central to the success of a landmark settlement negotiated with the Bush administration." Microsoft could be looking at many more court dates ahead.
The case of Bret McDanel is another example of why computer security folk need to be very careful how they tred. McDanel served 16 months in prison technically for transgressing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. His crime was that he spotted serious security flaws in his company's software. He reported these to the management but they ignored them. After quitting the company he then decided to email their customers to point out the flaws. His former employers didn't take too kindly to this and got the authorities involved. McDanel was prosecuted convicted and jailed. After the event, and with the support of the tenacious Jennifer Granick at Stanford the prosecutors have now agreed that McDanel was wrongfully convicted and are supporting his appeal to get the conviction overturned. This doesn't happen very often so credit must go to the officials involved.
Major League baseball are planning to sue websites describing games for intellectual property infringement.
"Bob Bowman, who oversees Major League Baseball Advanced Media, says it's time to assert property rights: "One way to exhibit a live baseball game is TV. Then there's radio. The third is offering real-time data online. To us, there's no difference.""
That could have come straight out of the mouth of Jamie Kellner of Turner Broadcasting who believes taping tv programmes and fast forwarding the ads is theft.
In the wake of Swarthmore college authorities harsh treatment of the students civil disobendience campaign against Diebold, students from other univerities such as MIT are signing up.
Looks like the ubiquitous Jack Valenti may be finally thinking of retiring after 37 years as head of the MPAA.
"report showed the impact of
diversity policies: most people had learnt the approved terms to use
in public, whatever their private views. But enforcing this kind of
personal etiquette won't help to reduce real racism, and indeed may
increase resentment of ethnic minorities."
John Dean served as President Richard Nixon's White House lawyer for about three years. He has written two books about the experience and the Watergate scandal, Blind Ambition (1976) and Lost Honor (1982). He's none too impressed at the performance of the current White House resident, George Bush and has regularly criticised him in the mainstream press. His latest critique draws on details recently published in a book by the editor of the Nation, David Corn, called The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the politics of Deception. It has to be said that Corn is not exactly a fan of the president either. Dean seems to believe that Bush merits his own special prosecutor in the Kenneth Starr mould to investigate a range of areas from Iraq's WMDs to his relationship with Enron chairman Ken Lay, and including stem cell research, alleged criminal expose of a CIA operative, management of pre and post September 11th, and his tax plans amongs others. Bush, Blair and spin certainly haven't done a whole lot for the credibility of politicians but then I wonder if nowadays we can have more influence with the pound (or dollar or euro) we spend rather than the vote we cast? Sorry state of affairs.
The Miscrosoft settlement judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly,
"urged government lawyers Friday to investigate why only nine companies so far have paid Microsoft to license its technology for their own software products, agreements central to the success of a landmark settlement negotiated with the Bush administration." Microsoft could be looking at many more court dates ahead.
The case of Bret McDanel is another example of why computer security folk need to be very careful how they tred. McDanel served 16 months in prison technically for transgressing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. His crime was that he spotted serious security flaws in his company's software. He reported these to the management but they ignored them. After quitting the company he then decided to email their customers to point out the flaws. His former employers didn't take too kindly to this and got the authorities involved. McDanel was prosecuted convicted and jailed. After the event, and with the support of the tenacious Jennifer Granick at Stanford the prosecutors have now agreed that McDanel was wrongfully convicted and are supporting his appeal to get the conviction overturned. This doesn't happen very often so credit must go to the officials involved.
Major League baseball are planning to sue websites describing games for intellectual property infringement.
"Bob Bowman, who oversees Major League Baseball Advanced Media, says it's time to assert property rights: "One way to exhibit a live baseball game is TV. Then there's radio. The third is offering real-time data online. To us, there's no difference.""
That could have come straight out of the mouth of Jamie Kellner of Turner Broadcasting who believes taping tv programmes and fast forwarding the ads is theft.
In the wake of Swarthmore college authorities harsh treatment of the students civil disobendience campaign against Diebold, students from other univerities such as MIT are signing up.
Looks like the ubiquitous Jack Valenti may be finally thinking of retiring after 37 years as head of the MPAA.
Friday, October 24, 2003
Young Aaron Swartz is annoyed about Diebold using copyright law to cut off the publication of their embarrassing internal memos.
Meanwhile the Swarthmore students who have set up a campaign of civil disobedience against Diebold are beingopposed by their college authorities. Next step the ACLU or similar group launching a legal suit to fight for the students' constitutional rights anyone? Especially after the university decided to start terminating the internet accounts of any student linking to any site that links to a political protest site that links to the Diebold memos.
Bruce Schneier does a typically incisive piece on the data mining I was talking about yesterday
"There's a common belief - generally mistaken - that if we only had enough data we could pick terrorists out of crowds...
Security is always a trade-off: How much security am I getting, and what am I giving up to get it? These "data-mining" programs are not very effective. Identifiable future terrorists are rare, and innocents are common. No matter what patterns you're looking for, far more innocents will match the patterns than terrorists because innocents vastly outnumber terrorists. So many that you might as well not bother. And that assumes that you even can predict terrorist patterns. Sure, it's easy to create a pattern after the fact; if something identical to the 9/11 plot ever happens again, you can be sure we're ready. But tomorrow's attacks? That's much harder."
All is not well on the IPR front at Cambridge University. Dr M.R. Clark of the Department of Pathology has "detailed practical experience of how the University policy was operated for many years by the Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office (WILO) and also more recent experience of the Research Services Division (RSD) and the Technology Transfer Office (TTO). What I can say immediately is that there has been a profound philosophical change in the way that the TTO operates
when compared to the WILO, particularly with regard to the involvement of University academics in the discussions over commercial exploitation of their IPR."
Via such routes does the abuse of intellectual property interfere with education.
A report commissioned by the Danish government concluded in early October that open source software was critical for any serious attempt at "e-government".
"RightsWatch is the name of a research project aimed at developing consensus and
promoting awareness of self-regulatory notice and takedown (NTD) procedures for
Europe, as a tool to achieve prompt removal of copyright-infringing material from the
Internet."
They've just produced a white paper that summarises their work. "The RightsWatch partners would welcome your views on the project's findings. "
Reporters without Borders have just published their Second world press freedom ranking. Finland, Iceland, Netherlands and Norway top the rankings. Ireland is 17th, the UK 27th.
"The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders. "
The EU gets good ratings apart from Italy (54th) and Spain (equal 42th).
Meanwhile the Swarthmore students who have set up a campaign of civil disobedience against Diebold are beingopposed by their college authorities. Next step the ACLU or similar group launching a legal suit to fight for the students' constitutional rights anyone? Especially after the university decided to start terminating the internet accounts of any student linking to any site that links to a political protest site that links to the Diebold memos.
Bruce Schneier does a typically incisive piece on the data mining I was talking about yesterday
"There's a common belief - generally mistaken - that if we only had enough data we could pick terrorists out of crowds...
Security is always a trade-off: How much security am I getting, and what am I giving up to get it? These "data-mining" programs are not very effective. Identifiable future terrorists are rare, and innocents are common. No matter what patterns you're looking for, far more innocents will match the patterns than terrorists because innocents vastly outnumber terrorists. So many that you might as well not bother. And that assumes that you even can predict terrorist patterns. Sure, it's easy to create a pattern after the fact; if something identical to the 9/11 plot ever happens again, you can be sure we're ready. But tomorrow's attacks? That's much harder."
All is not well on the IPR front at Cambridge University. Dr M.R. Clark of the Department of Pathology has "detailed practical experience of how the University policy was operated for many years by the Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office (WILO) and also more recent experience of the Research Services Division (RSD) and the Technology Transfer Office (TTO). What I can say immediately is that there has been a profound philosophical change in the way that the TTO operates
when compared to the WILO, particularly with regard to the involvement of University academics in the discussions over commercial exploitation of their IPR."
Via such routes does the abuse of intellectual property interfere with education.
A report commissioned by the Danish government concluded in early October that open source software was critical for any serious attempt at "e-government".
"RightsWatch is the name of a research project aimed at developing consensus and
promoting awareness of self-regulatory notice and takedown (NTD) procedures for
Europe, as a tool to achieve prompt removal of copyright-infringing material from the
Internet."
They've just produced a white paper that summarises their work. "The RightsWatch partners would welcome your views on the project's findings. "
Reporters without Borders have just published their Second world press freedom ranking. Finland, Iceland, Netherlands and Norway top the rankings. Ireland is 17th, the UK 27th.
"The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders. "
The EU gets good ratings apart from Italy (54th) and Spain (equal 42th).
According to Silicon.com MIT are winding down their RFID research and closing their Auto ID Center that did the research. Expect RFID tags to get widely deployed by the retail value chain in the none too distant future.
Gator have been suing to stop their name being associated with the term "spyware." In "See you later, anti-Gators?" at News.com, Paul Festa reports:
'In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message.
"There is this feeling out there that they won the lawsuit, and people are starting to get scared," said one employee of a spyware-removal company, who asked not to be named. "We haven't been sued, but we've heard that other companies are being sued for saying this and that, so we've changed our language" on the company Web site... '
...Companies like Gator are the Goliath that average computer users are up against in the war for online privacy," Ed English, CEO of InterMute, said last month.'
Personally I detest pop up ads, whatever you call them. I'm no fan of the surreptitious collection of personal data either.
The Australian ISP that has been sued by the music industry is denying that it acted as a host for copyright infringing files.
'In response to a libel lawsuit, an antispyware company has settled with Gator and pulled Web pages critical of the company, its practices and its software. And other spyware foes are getting the message.
"There is this feeling out there that they won the lawsuit, and people are starting to get scared," said one employee of a spyware-removal company, who asked not to be named. "We haven't been sued, but we've heard that other companies are being sued for saying this and that, so we've changed our language" on the company Web site... '
...Companies like Gator are the Goliath that average computer users are up against in the war for online privacy," Ed English, CEO of InterMute, said last month.'
Personally I detest pop up ads, whatever you call them. I'm no fan of the surreptitious collection of personal data either.
The Australian ISP that has been sued by the music industry is denying that it acted as a host for copyright infringing files.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
The Max Planck Society this week issued "The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities." Extract:
"The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet
as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously,
these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of
scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open
Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open
Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the
Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and
human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers,
research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need
to consider.
Goals
Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the
information is not made widely and readily available to society. New
possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form
but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet
have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source
of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the
scientific community.
In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of
knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and
transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and
compatible."
Very noble.
"The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.
We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet
as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously,
these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of
scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.
In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open
Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open
Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the
Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and
human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers,
research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need
to consider.
Goals
Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the
information is not made widely and readily available to society. New
possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form
but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet
have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source
of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the
scientific community.
In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of
knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and
transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and
compatible."
Very noble.
How do we use data mining to catch the bad guys whilst at the same time not catching or undermining the civil liberties of the good guys? According to Wired, "A panel of lawmakers, think tankers, data miners and civil libertarians" on Tuesday "couldn't even begin to make up their minds."
I'm not surprised. As I've said before, it appears intuitively obvious that he best available technologies should be put at the disposal of the good guys in order to stop/catch the bad guys. The real world is not quite so simple, however, and the checks and balances as well as the information overload and resource issues associated with this are anything but intuitively obvious. Not to mention the fact that the good guys and bad guys cannot be easily identifed by their respective white and black clothing.
I'm not surprised. As I've said before, it appears intuitively obvious that he best available technologies should be put at the disposal of the good guys in order to stop/catch the bad guys. The real world is not quite so simple, however, and the checks and balances as well as the information overload and resource issues associated with this are anything but intuitively obvious. Not to mention the fact that the good guys and bad guys cannot be easily identifed by their respective white and black clothing.
The MPAA has launched its classroom campaign to educate children about "digital citizenship." (No I'm not kidding). The associated propaganda sheet... er, sorry... I mean booklet... is called "What's the Diff? A Guide to Digital Citizenship." All the usual soundbites are in there. According to Donna Wenthworth, Wendy Seltzer of the EFF and Berkman Center at Harvard has done her own interpretation of some of the soundbites:
* To legally own it, legally buy it.
Sorry, kids--no more birthday presents!
* If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it.
The library will now be closing its doors.
* Copying a movie or CD for a friend is illegal.
Mommy taped ABC's "movie of the week" for Sally's
mommy. Now Mommy is going to jail.
* If you wouldn't take a movie or CD from the
shelves of a store without paying for it, then why do
it online?
It only looks like the song is still online on the "shelf."
* To legally own it, legally buy it.
Sorry, kids--no more birthday presents!
* If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it.
The library will now be closing its doors.
* Copying a movie or CD for a friend is illegal.
Mommy taped ABC's "movie of the week" for Sally's
mommy. Now Mommy is going to jail.
* If you wouldn't take a movie or CD from the
shelves of a store without paying for it, then why do
it online?
It only looks like the song is still online on the "shelf."
Via the EDRi-gram newsletter: The European Parliament's Judicial Affairs Committee (JURI)
should have discussed its Report on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights on Monday.
But 199 amendments have been proposed already and the translators were so overwhlemed they didn't get it translated into the EU's eleven official languages on time. English, Greek and Danish versions of the 159 page document were available just hours before the meeting. So no substantive business was done.
French MEP Janelly Fourtou (who is married to the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, Jean-René Fourtou) wants this directive to become law before the EU elections next summer.
"Mrs. Fourtou has been under attack from a large number of her Parliament colleagues, even from within her own Conservative Group. She is criticised for introducing a set of amendments criminalising even small-scale file sharers - and for her defence of an article in the draft directive that constitutes a violation of the EU's rules of procedure.
Article 20 of the draft directive deals with criminal law provisions for infringements of intellectual property rights. Some of the sanctions foreseen pre-empt a possible decision by a Court of Justice on whether such an infringement has taken place at all, and therefore constitutes so-called substantive law. In the EU's complicated lawmaking process, which foresees different procedures for different fields of competence, creating substantive criminal law is still an intergovernmental competence and can not take place under the co-decision procedure.
4 of the amendments aim at deleting Article 20, but Mrs. Fourtou and Commission officials alike are not willing to even discuss this. The initial discussion of the Report will now, as it seems, take place either on Tuesday, November 4th - the date initially foreseen for the vote in the Committee - or on November 6. The vote in the Committee would then take place either on November 26 or the following day, which would mean the vote in Plenary would have to take place in the week following December 15.
EU Commission: Proposal for a Directive on measures and procedures to
ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights [COM (2003) 46]
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2003/com2003_0046en01.pdf
Janelly Fourtou's Draft Report on this Directive
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/498789en.pdf
199 Amendments to the Fourtou Report
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/509224en.pdf
Law Professors criticise IPR Enforcement Directive
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/cornish.pdf
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, consultant on EU privacy issues)"
should have discussed its Report on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights on Monday.
But 199 amendments have been proposed already and the translators were so overwhlemed they didn't get it translated into the EU's eleven official languages on time. English, Greek and Danish versions of the 159 page document were available just hours before the meeting. So no substantive business was done.
French MEP Janelly Fourtou (who is married to the chief executive of Vivendi Universal, Jean-René Fourtou) wants this directive to become law before the EU elections next summer.
"Mrs. Fourtou has been under attack from a large number of her Parliament colleagues, even from within her own Conservative Group. She is criticised for introducing a set of amendments criminalising even small-scale file sharers - and for her defence of an article in the draft directive that constitutes a violation of the EU's rules of procedure.
Article 20 of the draft directive deals with criminal law provisions for infringements of intellectual property rights. Some of the sanctions foreseen pre-empt a possible decision by a Court of Justice on whether such an infringement has taken place at all, and therefore constitutes so-called substantive law. In the EU's complicated lawmaking process, which foresees different procedures for different fields of competence, creating substantive criminal law is still an intergovernmental competence and can not take place under the co-decision procedure.
4 of the amendments aim at deleting Article 20, but Mrs. Fourtou and Commission officials alike are not willing to even discuss this. The initial discussion of the Report will now, as it seems, take place either on Tuesday, November 4th - the date initially foreseen for the vote in the Committee - or on November 6. The vote in the Committee would then take place either on November 26 or the following day, which would mean the vote in Plenary would have to take place in the week following December 15.
EU Commission: Proposal for a Directive on measures and procedures to
ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights [COM (2003) 46]
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/com/pdf/2003/com2003_0046en01.pdf
Janelly Fourtou's Draft Report on this Directive
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/498789en.pdf
199 Amendments to the Fourtou Report
http://www.europarl.eu.int/meetdocs/committees/juri/20031020/509224en.pdf
Law Professors criticise IPR Enforcement Directive
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/cornish.pdf
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, consultant on EU privacy issues)"
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