The first-instance district court of Hamburg has ruled that the online news site Heise can be held liable for readers comments and "has had issued a temporary restraining order preventing heise online from publishing reader comments calling on others to overload a company's server by massively downloading a program."
The court said Heise should be liable for reader comments inciting destructive attacks online, whether they were aware of the specific comments or not. Heise had deleted the comments which has originally prompted the lawsuit but originally believed they only had to removed comments that they were aware of or had been notified of.
Heise apparently get about 200000 comments per month and software filters just aren't good enough to catch all the relevant subtleties (not to mention the false positive irritations they cause). Manual checking of that number of comments is not an option, so do Heise have to close down the commenting option? Well the German Supreme court ruled last year that sites like Heise could only be held liable if there were reasonable ways of reviewing the content third party contributors, so maybe not. The EU ecommerce directive of 2000 also says service providers don't have to comprehensively monitor comments they just transmit or store. So where does that leave Heise? Probably paying lawyers to test the limits of what the contradictions really mean.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
IPR battle at Cambridge University resumes
The battle over the intellectual property rights of academics at Cambridge University has started up again, according to Patent Baristas.
You'll probably find Ross Anderson has one or two things to say about that.
You'll probably find Ross Anderson has one or two things to say about that.
The $100 laptop
John is a little skeptical of the real utility of Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptops for children in the developing world.
" the pedagogical philosophy implicit in OLPC is clearly inspired by Negroponte's MIT colleague, Seymour Papert.
Papert is a visionary whose entire career has been driven by the idea of the digital computer as a revolutionary machine...
Papert is an engaging thinker and writer, but is essentially a techno-evangelist...
He is thus rather grandly contemptuous of mundane questions such as whether there is any evidence that giving kids computers is educationally better than giving them books..."
As I've said before, you can't get someone to understand the principles of drawing graphs by getting them to show you how many colours the graphics package on their computer can deploy in producing something that looks like a graph on screen. By all means exploit technology (including the humble pencil) in education where it is useful and let people play with technology in education in order to find out how it can be useful. But spending vast sums on technology in the blind faith belief that it will automatically improve things regardless of the context, is a mug's game.
" the pedagogical philosophy implicit in OLPC is clearly inspired by Negroponte's MIT colleague, Seymour Papert.
Papert is a visionary whose entire career has been driven by the idea of the digital computer as a revolutionary machine...
Papert is an engaging thinker and writer, but is essentially a techno-evangelist...
He is thus rather grandly contemptuous of mundane questions such as whether there is any evidence that giving kids computers is educationally better than giving them books..."
As I've said before, you can't get someone to understand the principles of drawing graphs by getting them to show you how many colours the graphics package on their computer can deploy in producing something that looks like a graph on screen. By all means exploit technology (including the humble pencil) in education where it is useful and let people play with technology in education in order to find out how it can be useful. But spending vast sums on technology in the blind faith belief that it will automatically improve things regardless of the context, is a mug's game.
EDRI
The latest and possibly the last EDRI newsletter has been published.
Contents:
Urgent call for pledges of support for EDRI-gram
1. Final push for single EP vote on data retention
2. EDRI and PI call on EP to reject data retention
3. Polish plans for 15 years mandatory data retention
4. Urgency procedure for draft French anti-terrorism law
5. New anti-terrorism measures in Denmark
6. Launch of Digital Rights Ireland
7. Illegal video surveillance on Slovenian motorways
8. Post-WSIS civil society letter to Kofi Annan
9. NL supreme court ruling on internet anonymity
10. Results e-society conference in Macedonia
11. Advocate General European Court rejects PNR deal
12. Cryptography almost banned in the Czech Republic
13. Agenda
14. About
Contents:
Urgent call for pledges of support for EDRI-gram
1. Final push for single EP vote on data retention
2. EDRI and PI call on EP to reject data retention
3. Polish plans for 15 years mandatory data retention
4. Urgency procedure for draft French anti-terrorism law
5. New anti-terrorism measures in Denmark
6. Launch of Digital Rights Ireland
7. Illegal video surveillance on Slovenian motorways
8. Post-WSIS civil society letter to Kofi Annan
9. NL supreme court ruling on internet anonymity
10. Results e-society conference in Macedonia
11. Advocate General European Court rejects PNR deal
12. Cryptography almost banned in the Czech Republic
13. Agenda
14. About
Ireland to challenge data retention deal
Irish justice minister, Michael McDowell, suggested in the wake of the agreement amongst most EU justice ministers about data retention, that Ireland would challenge the directive in the European Court of Justice, if it gets passed by the EU parliament next week.
Wikipedia integrity
I had the priviledge of meeting the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, last week, at the inaugural gathering of the Open Rights Group. Wikipedia is a fantastic online encyclopedia, which, given the fact that anyone can alter an entry, is mostly remarkably reliable. Occasionally things go wrong, however, as this story in the New York Times illustrates. A Mr. Seigenthaler was shocked to find an entry on himself in Wikipedia, suggesting he might have been involved in serious crimes. The entry has since been corrected but the poster has not been identified. Mr. Seigenthaler has decided not to pursue the issue, though it would be possible for him to get a court order to ask the poster's ISP to identify the culprit and then pursue a defamation case. Sensibly he forgoes the opportunity to invest large sums in lawyers and the associated stresses of lawsuits, though he says he's learned a clear lesson:
"We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research, but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects."
The article also describes Jimmy Wales reaction
"Mr. Wales said in an interview that he was troubled by the Seigenthaler episode, and noted that Wikipedia was essentially in the same boat. "We have constant problems where we have people who are trying to repeatedly abuse our sites," he said.
Still, he said, he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.
In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.
The real problem, he said, was the volume of new material coming in; it is so overwhelming that screeners cannot keep up with it."
"We live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research, but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects."
The article also describes Jimmy Wales reaction
"Mr. Wales said in an interview that he was troubled by the Seigenthaler episode, and noted that Wikipedia was essentially in the same boat. "We have constant problems where we have people who are trying to repeatedly abuse our sites," he said.
Still, he said, he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site's strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems.
In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.
The real problem, he said, was the volume of new material coming in; it is so overwhelming that screeners cannot keep up with it."
Monday, December 05, 2005
Court upholds random NY subway searches
Professor Dan Solove is annoyed at a recent court decision upholding the right to the police to engage in random searches on the New York subway.
"After making its general incantation of deference (which means that the government will automatically win), Judge Berman goes on to articulate the "persuasive" arguments of the government:
The court also reasons:
It is bad enough that so much money and resources must be wasted on a largely symbolic exercise to make public officials look like they're doing something to protect us when they're not. This cosmetic program for public officials which drains money from other more serious threats. It is even worse that people must sacrifice liberty and convenience too."
You have to admit he has a point.
"After making its general incantation of deference (which means that the government will automatically win), Judge Berman goes on to articulate the "persuasive" arguments of the government:
The Court is also persuaded by Commissioner Sheehan's opinion that the Program "reinforces the awareness of police officers, transit workers and the public of the need to be alert."This is a silly argument. Essentially, the court says that providing the police with greater abilities to engage in searches without constitutional protections will make the police more "alert." Well, that's nice -- we should all be happy to sacrifice liberties so that the police become more alert. And the court notes that it will teach the public to be more alert too. So the argument is that we can make the people more alert by intruding upon their privacy. Let's try strip searches -- these will certainly make the cops more alert, and it will have great effects on public alertness too, and the cops can have a lot of fun at the same time.
The court also reasons:
[T]he Court is persuaded that the randomness of the searches rather than the actual number of searches conducted is (primarily) what makes the Container Inspection Proogram effective.In other words, the court is saying that any small increase in terrorists believing they might get caught makes such a policy an effective. But if "effectiveness" is to have any meaning, the benefits of a policy that requires a sacrifice in liberty should be more than just trivial or speculative. There is no evidence that this policy will have any deterrent effect...
It is bad enough that so much money and resources must be wasted on a largely symbolic exercise to make public officials look like they're doing something to protect us when they're not. This cosmetic program for public officials which drains money from other more serious threats. It is even worse that people must sacrifice liberty and convenience too."
You have to admit he has a point.
Felten: DMCA should not protect spyware
Ed Felten thinks the DMCA should not protect spyware and he's submitted a request for an exemption along these lines to the US copyright office.
Exams
Open University exam results will be available soon. To those who don't do as well as you'd hoped, just remember that it's not the end of the world. Even the best of students can and sometimes do find things going wrong.
Getting through the process of distance learning whilst holding down a job and looking after a family and all the other real life committments that OU students typically have, is a major success in itself. So give yourself a pat on the back even before the results arrive - you deserve it.
Getting through the process of distance learning whilst holding down a job and looking after a family and all the other real life committments that OU students typically have, is a major success in itself. So give yourself a pat on the back even before the results arrive - you deserve it.
Open letter on data retention
A whole plethora of digital rights groups have written an Open Letter to the European Parliament on Data Retention.
58000 people from all over Europe have signed a petition against data retention.
Will it make a difference to the European Parliament vote on the issue on 13 December? Only time will tell but it looks like the version of the proposal to go before the parliament will require two years data retention.
This process of repeatedly sending back lousy legislative proposals through the EU system, until opposition is chipped away though the lack of energy to be bothered with it again, seriously undermines the EU. But then representative democracy, which is what the parliament is supposed to be based on, only works if a sufficient number of dedicated people (albeit that sufficent number can range from 1 upwards) take an active interest. Nearly 60000 people have shown an interest here but in this case I'm not sure it's going to be enough.
58000 people from all over Europe have signed a petition against data retention.
Will it make a difference to the European Parliament vote on the issue on 13 December? Only time will tell but it looks like the version of the proposal to go before the parliament will require two years data retention.
This process of repeatedly sending back lousy legislative proposals through the EU system, until opposition is chipped away though the lack of energy to be bothered with it again, seriously undermines the EU. But then representative democracy, which is what the parliament is supposed to be based on, only works if a sufficient number of dedicated people (albeit that sufficent number can range from 1 upwards) take an active interest. Nearly 60000 people have shown an interest here but in this case I'm not sure it's going to be enough.
Parliamentary drm enquiry
From the All Party Internet Group website: "(APIG)The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) is to hold a public inquiry into the issues surrounding Digital Rights Management (DRM)...
The inquiry seeks written evidence particularly focusing upon the following:
Whether DRM distorts traditional tradeoffs in copyright law;
Whether new types of content sharing license (such as Creative Commons or Copyleft) need legislation changes to be effective;
How copyright deposit libraries should deal with DRM issues;
How consumers should be protected when DRM systems are discontinued;
To what extent DRM systems should be forced to make exceptions for the partially sighted and people with other disabilities;
What legal protections DRM systems should have from those who wish to circumvent them;
Whether DRM systems can have unintended consequences on computer functionality;
The role of the UK Parliament in influencing the global agenda for this type of technical issue.
APIG calls upon interested parties to present written evidence to the inquiry before 21st December 2005.
Written evidence should be submitted to admin@apig.org.uk. APIG may, at its discretion, ask for oral evidence from witnesses in January 2006 at the Houses of Parliament."
The inquiry seeks written evidence particularly focusing upon the following:
Whether DRM distorts traditional tradeoffs in copyright law;
Whether new types of content sharing license (such as Creative Commons or Copyleft) need legislation changes to be effective;
How copyright deposit libraries should deal with DRM issues;
How consumers should be protected when DRM systems are discontinued;
To what extent DRM systems should be forced to make exceptions for the partially sighted and people with other disabilities;
What legal protections DRM systems should have from those who wish to circumvent them;
Whether DRM systems can have unintended consequences on computer functionality;
The role of the UK Parliament in influencing the global agenda for this type of technical issue.
APIG calls upon interested parties to present written evidence to the inquiry before 21st December 2005.
Written evidence should be submitted to admin@apig.org.uk. APIG may, at its discretion, ask for oral evidence from witnesses in January 2006 at the Houses of Parliament."
Transformational government
William Heath has posted his comments on the UK CIO Council IT strategy in four pieces. He thinks the main issues are:
- the fundamental premise that services should be personalised and directed at people, when I'd rather see simple, open and navigable government (which is less ambitious, cheaper and less intrusive)
- making identity government-controlled and tying it to the compulsory biometric scheme with audit trail
- grudging lip-service to privacy when human dignity is paramount
- whether or not the executive focus and energy is there to deliver changes like shared services.
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Diebold certified in spite of court order
It seems that the North Carolina Board of Elections has certified Diebold Election Systems to sell electronic voting equipment in the state, in spite of a federal judge's order that Diebold hand over their source code and list of programmers. Does this mean they have secretly handed over the required details (even though they claimed that they would rather withdraw from tendering) or that the Board officials were unaware of the judge's decision when they approved Diebold as an electronic voting machine vendor?
Saturday, December 03, 2005
UK intellectual property review
The UK Treasury has announced a review of intellectual property.
"At the Enterprise Conference on 2 December 2005, the Chancellor announced that, as part of the Pre-Budget Report 2005 package, he was asking Andrew Gowers to lead an Independent Review to examine the UK’s intellectual property framework, reporting to the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in Autumn 2006."
Under "scope" the final bullet point says
"The review will provide an analysis of the performance of the UK IP system, including inter alia...
whether the current technical and legal IP infringement framework reflects the digital environment, and whether provisions for ‘fair use’ by citizens are reasonable."
Which is interesting because we don't have "fair use" in the UK. We have "fair dealing" which though similar is not the same. "Fair use" in the US, for example, allows the making of copies of CDs for personal use, whereas "fair dealing" in the UK does not.
"At the Enterprise Conference on 2 December 2005, the Chancellor announced that, as part of the Pre-Budget Report 2005 package, he was asking Andrew Gowers to lead an Independent Review to examine the UK’s intellectual property framework, reporting to the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in Autumn 2006."
Under "scope" the final bullet point says
"The review will provide an analysis of the performance of the UK IP system, including inter alia...
whether the current technical and legal IP infringement framework reflects the digital environment, and whether provisions for ‘fair use’ by citizens are reasonable."
Which is interesting because we don't have "fair use" in the UK. We have "fair dealing" which though similar is not the same. "Fair use" in the US, for example, allows the making of copies of CDs for personal use, whereas "fair dealing" in the UK does not.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Dutch e-citizen charter
William Heath thinks the Dutch 10 point e-Citizen Charter might be what we need for Europe. I'll have to come back to this as other things are pressing but it raises all kinds of interesting questions.
Turning the Net into cable TV
David Bollier advises:
"Beware the privateers! They whisper sweetly of fantastic new services they will provide – a faster Internet, better quality, even medical alerts for consumers….and blah-de-blah. Their unspoken agenda, however, is to convert the open Internet commons into a pay-for-performance marketplace. The companies who control the “pipes” of the Internet – i.e., the telephone and cable TV companies – are starting to make their move.
It’s imperative that we pay close attention to these plans – and register our objections to Congress and the companies themselves."
"Beware the privateers! They whisper sweetly of fantastic new services they will provide – a faster Internet, better quality, even medical alerts for consumers….and blah-de-blah. Their unspoken agenda, however, is to convert the open Internet commons into a pay-for-performance marketplace. The companies who control the “pipes” of the Internet – i.e., the telephone and cable TV companies – are starting to make their move.
It’s imperative that we pay close attention to these plans – and register our objections to Congress and the companies themselves."
Thursday, December 01, 2005
Copyright dispute over book cover
Thomas Friedman and his publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, have been sued over the cover on his latest book, The World is Flat. (Interestingly enough I see Amazon UK have "No Image Available" for the cover at the moment).
Freidman used an image from a poster he'd bought many years ago, of a painting done by artist Ed Miracle, showing boats sailing over the edge of the world, which featured the caption "I told you so." His publisher had duly licenced the right to use the image from the poster company. The poster company, unfortunately didn't hold the copyright in the image. They only had a licence to sell about a thousand posters and that licence expired in 1996.
The author said: "We didn't try to cheat anybody. We did it [purchased the rights] through normal channels. We thought this was all legal, kosher, and right. I feel bad that this happened, and I couldn't feel more bad for him [Miracle]."
The artist's agent, Rose von Perbandt, said "Is there no one in the press that sees the irony of a book on globalization—whose author stresses the need to protect against piracy and strengthen intellectual property protection—that is infringing the copyrights of the artist whose work was used on the cover?"
It's a fair point, which goes to show that even those with an interest in strong intellectual property rights, including Pulitzer Prize winning journalists/authors, can sometimes accidently get entangled in the complexity of the current IP landscape.
Freidman used an image from a poster he'd bought many years ago, of a painting done by artist Ed Miracle, showing boats sailing over the edge of the world, which featured the caption "I told you so." His publisher had duly licenced the right to use the image from the poster company. The poster company, unfortunately didn't hold the copyright in the image. They only had a licence to sell about a thousand posters and that licence expired in 1996.
The author said: "We didn't try to cheat anybody. We did it [purchased the rights] through normal channels. We thought this was all legal, kosher, and right. I feel bad that this happened, and I couldn't feel more bad for him [Miracle]."
The artist's agent, Rose von Perbandt, said "Is there no one in the press that sees the irony of a book on globalization—whose author stresses the need to protect against piracy and strengthen intellectual property protection—that is infringing the copyrights of the artist whose work was used on the cover?"
It's a fair point, which goes to show that even those with an interest in strong intellectual property rights, including Pulitzer Prize winning journalists/authors, can sometimes accidently get entangled in the complexity of the current IP landscape.
IPPR report
The Institute for Public Policy Research has just released a report "Markets in the Online Public Sphere." As the author of the report Will Davies puts it the report covers "the politics and economics of online information, and why policy-makers find it so hard to accertain the 'public interest' in this confusing terrain."
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
President Bush disaster
I don't think Rupert Murdoch really would have wanted this image to come across the way it does...
Diebold ordered to supply source code
A federal judge has ordered Diebold to hand over the source code on its electronic voting machines to North Carolina state officials. From the EFF:
"a North Carolina judge today told Diebold Election Systems that the e-voting company must comply with tough North Carolina election law and dismissed the company's case seeking broad exemptions from the law.
EFF intervened in the case earlier this month, after Diebold obtained a broad temporary restraining order that allowed it to evade key transparency requirements without criminal or civil liability. The law requires escrow of the source code for all voting systems to be certified in the state and identification of programmers. In today's hearing, the judge told Diebold if it wanted to continue in the bidding process for certified election systems in the state, it must follow the law and if it failed to do so, it would face liability...
Diebold could appeal the ruling, go forward with its bid, or withdraw from the process. However, Diebold told the court that it would likely withdraw the bid if the company did not have liability protection.
North Carolina experienced one of the most serious malfunctions of e-voting systems in the 2004 presidential election when over 4,500 ballots were lost in a voting system provided by Diebold competitor UniLect Corp. The new transparency and integrity provisions of the North Carolina election law were passed in response to this and other documented malfunctions that have occurred across the country."
It is very good news that a judge should enforce transparency requirements on a voting machine vendor. Given that Diebold have explicitly now threatened to withdraw from the bidding process rather than hand over theie source code, it will be interesting to watch to see if they follow through on that. Transparency is fundamental to the democratic process and no amount of technology or commerce should be allowed to undermine that.
"a North Carolina judge today told Diebold Election Systems that the e-voting company must comply with tough North Carolina election law and dismissed the company's case seeking broad exemptions from the law.
EFF intervened in the case earlier this month, after Diebold obtained a broad temporary restraining order that allowed it to evade key transparency requirements without criminal or civil liability. The law requires escrow of the source code for all voting systems to be certified in the state and identification of programmers. In today's hearing, the judge told Diebold if it wanted to continue in the bidding process for certified election systems in the state, it must follow the law and if it failed to do so, it would face liability...
Diebold could appeal the ruling, go forward with its bid, or withdraw from the process. However, Diebold told the court that it would likely withdraw the bid if the company did not have liability protection.
North Carolina experienced one of the most serious malfunctions of e-voting systems in the 2004 presidential election when over 4,500 ballots were lost in a voting system provided by Diebold competitor UniLect Corp. The new transparency and integrity provisions of the North Carolina election law were passed in response to this and other documented malfunctions that have occurred across the country."
It is very good news that a judge should enforce transparency requirements on a voting machine vendor. Given that Diebold have explicitly now threatened to withdraw from the bidding process rather than hand over theie source code, it will be interesting to watch to see if they follow through on that. Transparency is fundamental to the democratic process and no amount of technology or commerce should be allowed to undermine that.
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