The ever vigilant and enegetic Open Rights Group has discovered that the BPI drafted the contoversial web blocking amendment to the digital economy bill passed in the House of Lords. Here's Jim Killock of ORG:
"Just in case you were wondering where the idea for a web blocking amendment came from, we attach to this blog post a copy of the BPI’s draft, along with their justification for it.
Now, amendments often come from lobby and campaign groups, including us, not least because it’s the easiest way for them to show parliamentarians what they want. But the fact that twice, with the original copyright by diktat proposal, and then the web blocking proposal, the BPI essentially got to write what they wanted and get it proposed more or less wholesale as law, in such a tremendously sensitive area and in such a one-sided manner, shows something is very wrong with the way this debate is being conducted.
Parliamentarians need to recognize that copyright touches everyone and every technology in the digital age. It is no longer a question of inter-business regulation and deals. Getting copyright wrong has the potential to mess up our freedom of speech, prevent us from getting the benefits of new technologies, and damage society in other very profound ways.
It is therefore deeply inappropriate for such fundamental proposals to have been introduced by both the government or the opposition parties at the behest of one side of the debate. That applies just as much to disconnection, which Mandelson introduced in the sumer at the last minute under pressure again from the BPI and other rights holders.
As the Conservatives launch their digital policies today - we again ask why these proposals are being supported, in such direct contradiction to their apparent aims?"
And as Lilian Edwards points out in comments, since the BPI drafted the law, they can claim copyright in it and once it is passed ask an ISP to block the ORG site for posting a copy of their copyrighted material in full. Then as Francis Davey, Richard Clayton and others have pointed out the ISP has nothing to gain and significant money to lose by refusing to take the site down.
Ethan Zuckerman is one of a number of very smart people who have been working at Harvard for several years on the issue of net censorship. He has written a terrific article at World Changing this week pointing out that rhetorical calls from politicians to keep the Net free have to be backed up with a deep understanding of the complexities involved and real commitment and deployment of resources to address the problem.
"I strongly believe that we need strong, anonymized and useable censorship circumvention tools. But I also believe that we need lots more than censorship circumvention tools, and I fear that both funders and technologists may overfocus on this one particular aspect of internet freedom at the expense of other avenues. I wonder whether we’re looking closely enough at the fundamental limitations of circumvention as a strategy and asking ourselves what we’re hoping internet freedom will do for users in closed societies.
So here’s a provocation: We can’t circumvent our way around internet censorship.
I don’t mean that internet censorship circumvention systems don’t work. They do – our research tested several popular circumvention tools in censored nations and discovered that most can retrieve blocked content from behind the Chinese firewall or a similar system. (There are problems with privacy, data leakage, the rendering of certain types of content, and particularly with usability and performance, but the systems can circumvent censorship.) What I mean is this – we couldn’t afford to scale today’s existing circumvention tools to “liberate” all of China’s internet users even if they all wanted to be liberated...
In short: - Internet circumvention is hard. It’s expensive. It can make it easier for people to send spam and steal identities.
- Circumventing censorship through proxies just gives people access to international content – it doesn’t address domestic censorship, which likely affects the majority of people’s internet behavior.
- Circumventing censorship doesn’t offer a defense against DDoS or other attacks that target a publisher...
- We need to continue supporting circumvention efforts, at least in the short term. But we need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that we can “solve” censorship through circumvention. We should support circumvention until we find better technical and policy solutions to censorship, not because we can tear down the Great Firewall by spending more.
- If we want more people using circumvention tools, we need to find ways to make them fiscally sustainable...
- As we continue to fund circumvention, we need to address usage of these tools to send spam, commit fraud and steal personal data. … but we’ve got to find a solution that protects networks against abuse while maintaining the possibility of anonymity, a difficult balancing act.
- We need to shift our thinking from helping users in closed societies access blocked content to helping publishers reach all audiences...
- let’s find ways to challenge companies to build blocking resistance into their platforms and to consider internet freedom to be a central part of their business mission...
- The US government should treat internet filtering – and more aggressive hacking and DDoS attacks – as a barrier to trade. The US should strongly pressure governments in open societies like Australia and France to resist the temptation to restrict internet access, as their behavior helps China and Iran make the case that their censorship is in line with international norms. And we need to fix US treasury regulations make it difficult and legally ambiguous for companies like Microsoft and projects like SourceForge to operate in closed societies. If we believe in Internet Freedom, a first step needs to be rethinking these policies so they don’t hurt ordinary internet users.
The danger in heeding Secretary Clinton’s call is that we increase our speed, marching in the wrong direction. As we embrace the goal of Internet Freedom, now is the time to ask what we’re hoping to accomplish and to shape our strategy accordingly."
In the light of the web blocking amendment to the UK digital economies bill let me just repeat some of Zuckerman's suggestions:
continue to fund circumvention...
challenge companies to build blocking resistance into their platforms...
pressure governments in open societies...to resist the temptation to restrict internet access...
pressure governments in open societies...to resist the temptation to restrict internet access...
pressure governments in open societies...to resist the temptation to restrict internet access...
pressure governments in open societies...to resist the temptation to restrict internet access...
An eclectic collection of conscientious objectors from the tech industry, the NGO sector and academia have come together to point out some of the major flaws in amendment 120 to the digital economies bill facilitating web blocking.
"Amendment 120A Digital Economy Bill March 10th, 2010
Dear Sirs,
We regret that the House of Lords last week adopted amendment 120A to the Digital Economy Bill. This amendment not only significantly changes the injunctions procedure in the UK but will lead to an increase in Internet service providers blocking websites accused of illegally hosting copyrighted material without cases even reaching a judge. The amendment seeks to address the legitimate concerns of rights-holders but would have unintended consequences which far outweigh any benefits it could bring.
Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other Internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take. There are myriad legal, technical and practical issues to reconcile before this can be considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option. In some cases, these may never be reconciled. These issues have not even been considered in this case.
The Lords have been thoughtful in their consideration of the Bill to date. It is therefore bitterly disappointing that the House has allowed an amendment with obvious shortcomings to proceed without challenging its proponents to consider and address the full consequences. Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the Internet in the UK and elsewhere, threatening freedom of speech and the open Internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a Parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor law making.
We are particularly concerned that a measure of this kind as a general purpose policy could have an adverse impact on the reputation of the UK as a place to do online business and conflict with the broader objectives of Digital Britain. This debate has created a tension between specific interest groups and the bigger prize of promoting a policy framework that supports our digital economy and appropriately balances rights and responsibilities. All parties should take steps to safeguard this prize and place it at the heart of public policy in this area.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Allan, Director of Policy EU, Facebook
Neil Berkett, Chief Executive, Virgin Media
Matt Brittin, Managing Director, Google UK and Ireland
Charles Dunstone, Chairman, Talk Talk Group
Jessica Hendrie-Liaño, Chair, Internet Services Providers Association (ISPA)
Jill Johnstone, International Director, Consumer Focus
Jim Killock, Executive Director, Open Rights Group
Mark Lewis, Managing Director, eBay UK Ltd
Ian Livingstone, Chief Executive, BT Group
Professor Sarah Oates, University of Glasgow
Dr Jenny Pickerill, University of Leicester
Mark Rabe, Managing Director, Yahoo! UK and Ireland
Dr Paul Reilly, University of Leicester
Jess Search, Founder, Shooting People independent film makers
Professor Ian Walden, Queen Mary, University of London
Tom Watson MP"
Christian Engström writes that an EU Parliament resolution has been tabled on 'Transparency and State of Play of ACTA negotiations'. The resolution:
"1. Reminds that the Commission has since the 1 December 2009 the legal obligation to immediately and fully inform the European Parliament at all stages of international negotiations;
2. Expresses its concern over the lack of a transparent process in the conduct of the ACTA negotiations which contradicts the letter and the spirit of the TFEU; is deeply concerned that no legal base has been established before the start of the ACTA negotiations and that no parliamentary approval has been asked for the mandate;
3. Calls on the Commission and Council to grant public and parliamentary access to ACTA negotiation texts and summaries in accordance with the Treaty and the Regulation 1049/2001 on Public Access to Documents;
4. Calls on the Commission and Council to pro-actively engage with ACTA partners to rule out any further negotiations of an a piori confidential nature and to timely and entirely inform Parliament about its initiatives in this regard; expects the Commission to make proposals already prior to the next negotiation round in New Zealand in April 2010 and to demand that the issue of transparency is put on the agenda of that meeting, and to refer to Parliament the outcome of this round immediately after its conclusion;
5. Stresses that, unless the Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, Parliament reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives;
6. Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of ACTA's implementation on fundamental rights and data protection, on the ongoing EU efforts to harmonise IPR enforcement measures, and on E-Commerce, prior to any EU agreement to a consolidated ACTA treaty text, and to timely consult with Parliament about the results of this assessment;
7. Welcomes affirmations by the Commission that any ACTA agreement will be limited to the enforcement of existing IPRs, with no prejudice for the development of substantive IP law in the European Union;
8. Calls on the Commission to continue the negotiations on ACTA in order to improve the effectiveness of the IPR enforcement system against counterfeiting;
9. Urges the Commission to ensure that the enforcement of ACTA provisions - especially its provisions on copyright enforcement procedures in the digital environment - are fully in line with the acquis communitaire; demands that no personal search is undertaken at the EU borders and requests full clarification of any clauses that would allow for warrantless searches and confiscation of information storage devices, such as laptops, cell phones and MP3 players, by border and customs authorities;
10. Considers that in order to respect fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy, with full respect for subsidiarity, the proposed Agreement must refrain from imposing any so called "three strikes" procedures, in full respect of the decision of Parliament on article 1.1b in the (amending) Directive 2009/140/EC that calls to insert a new para 3 a to article 1 Directive 2002/21/EC on the matter of "three strikes"
11. Emphasizes that privacy and data protection are core values of the European Union, recognised in Article 8 ECHR and Articles 7 and 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which must be respected in all the policies and rules adopted by the EU pursuant to Article 16 of the TFEU;
12. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Commission, the Council and the Governments and Parliaments of ACTA negotiation participants."
Christian Engström provides a link to a Microsoft Word version of the full resolution. Amonsgt quite a range of demands including a ban on ACTA introducing 3 strikes, the resolution threatens that the parliament will apply to the European Court of Justice for greater transparency and public access to the details of the ACTA negotiations.
"The entire family of devices built on the iPhone OS (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad) have been designed to run only software that is approved by Apple—a major shift from the norms of the personal computer market. Software developers who want Apple's approval must first agree to the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement.
So today we're posting the "iPhone Developer Program License Agreement"—the contract that every developer who writes software for the iTunes App Store must "sign." Though more than 100,000 app developers have clicked "I agree," public copies of the agreement are scarce, perhaps thanks to the prohibition on making any "public statements regarding this Agreement, its terms and conditions, or the relationship of the parties without Apple's express prior written approval." But when we saw the NASA App for iPhone, we used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ask NASA for a copy, so that the general public could see what rules conrolled the technology they could use with their phones. NASA responded with the Rev. 3-17-09 version of the agreement (it has reportedly been revised somewhat since—please send us the current version if you are able).
This "license agreement" is particularly relevant right now, given the imminent launch of the iPad and anytime-now issuance of the U.S. Copyright Office's ruling regarding jailbreaking of the iPhone.
So what's in the Agreement? Here are a few troubling highlights:
Ban on Public Statements...
App Store Only...
Ban on Reverse Engineering...
No Tinkering with Any Apple Products...
Kill Your App Any Time...
We Never Owe You More than Fifty Bucks...
Overall, the Agreement is a very one-sided contract, favoring Apple at every turn. That's not unusual where end-user license agreements are concerned (and not all the terms may ultimately be enforceable), but it's a bit of a surprise as applied to the more than 100,000 developers for the iPhone, including many large public companies. How can Apple get away with it? Because it is the sole gateway to the more than 40 million iPhones that have been sold. In other words, it's only because Apple still "owns" the customer, long after each iPhone (and soon, iPad) is sold"
I've been brushing up on Maxwell's Equations - I was one of those people who found vector calculus fun when I was in school and college - and noted one of the books students are recommended these days is Daniel Fleisch's A Student's Guide to Maxwell's Equations. It's one of the few books I've come across to focus entirely on the four equations which constitute the mathematical foundation of the modern world - all forms of elecromagnetic communication are based on them. Usually you have to trawl through a lot of theory to get to the equations, as in Feymann's excellent Lectures on Physics but students (and I admit to still being guilty of this) tend to like the most efficient route (aka shortcuts).
It's a terrific little book but for educational technologists the interesting addendum is Fleisch's website accompanying the book on which is included not just the usual correction notes but solutions to all the problems set at the end of each chapter and podcasts to go with each section of each chapter of the book. The podcasts take the form of lectures that sometimes repeat but also expand on the material in the book or explain it in a slightly different way, an excellent resource for not just those with a predisposition towards aural learning but average individuals like yours truly too. I'd have included answers to the problems at the end of the book too. In the days when I did sums seriously I liked to be able to check I had got the right answer without having to go off and check a separate source. There was nothing as irritating as those maths texts that didn't include the answers at the back or only included a small sample of them.
That minor grumble aside, is this the future of the textbook? I've agreed to write a chapter on information policymaking for a reader on the nature of information to be edited by my esteemed colleagues at the OU, Magnus Ramage and David Chapman. Maybe I should think of doing a complementary podcast to go with it?
Copying by librarians: parts of published sound recordings and films...
Copying by librarians or archivists: unpublished sound recordings and films...
Copying by Educational Establishments...
Preservation of Cultural Heritage...
...but not format shifting and parody, two of the key areas noted by Gowers. Hugo Cox at the 1709 Copyright blog points out some of the reasons why these have been omitted - primarily because it is complicated and the government don't want to antagonise the content industries with a general election imminent -and in the meantime people still continue to copy millions of songs (eg from CDs) onto millions of digital music players in the confident belief that it is perfectly legal to do so. Unfortunately that belief is misplaced, unless they happen to be resident in a jurisdiction other than the UK that does permit format shifting.
According to ORG the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are proposing an amendment to the digital economy bill in the House of Lords that would facilitate the blocking of websites suspected of hosting or distributing copyrighted materials without permission.
"
Amendment 120a
LORD CLEMENT-JONES
LORD HOWARD OF RISING
Leave out Clause 17 and insert the following new Clause— "Preventing access to specified online locations for the prevention of online copyright infringement In Part 1 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, after section 97A insert—
"97BPreventing access to specified online locations for the prevention of online copyright infringement
(1) The High Court (in Scotland, the Court of Session) shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, requiring it to prevent access to online locations specified in the order of the Court for the prevention of online copyright infringement.
(2) In determining whether to grant an injunction under subsection (1), the Court shall have regard to the following matters—
(a) whether a substantial proportion of the content accessible at or via each specified online location infringes copyright,
(b) the extent to which the operator of each specified online location has taken reasonable steps to prevent copyright infringement content being accessed at or via that online location or taken reasonable steps to remove copyright infringing content from that online location (or both),
(c) whether the service provider has itself taken reasonable steps to prevent access to the specified online location,
(d) any issues of national security raised by the Secretary of State.
(e) the extent to which the copyright owner has made reasonable efforts to facilitate legal access to content,
(f) the importance of preserving human rights, including freedom of expression, and the right to property, and
(g) any other matters which appear to the Court to be relevant.
(3) An application for an injunction under subsection (1) shall be made on notice to the service provider and to the operator of each specified online location in relation to which an injunction is sought and to the Secretary of State.
(4) Where—
(a) the Court grants an injunction under subsection (1) upon the application of an owner of copyright whose copyright is infringed by the content accessible at or via each specified online location in the injunction, and
(b) the owner of copyright before making the application made a written request to the service provider giving it a reasonable period of time to take measures to prevent its service being used to access the specified online location in the injunction, and no steps were taken, the Court shall order the service provider to pay the copyright owner's costs of the application unless there were exceptional circumstances justifying the service provider's failure to prevent access despite notification by the copyright owner.
(5) In this section— "copyright owner" includes a licensee with an exclusive licence within the meaning of section 92 of this Act, "infringing content" means content which is produced or made available in infringement of copyright, "online location" means a location on the internet, a mobile data network or other data network at or via which copyright infringing content is accessible, "operator" means a person or persons in joint or sole control of the decisions to make content accessible at or via an online location, and "service provider" has the meaning given to it by section 97A(3) of this Act.
(6) Subsections (1) to (5) shall come into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by order appoint not less than 3 months and not more than 12 months after subsections (1) to (5) have been notified to the Commission of the European Communities ("the Commission") in accordance with the obligations of notification imposed by Directive 98/34/EC.
(7) If any comments are received from Member States of the European Union or the Commission after subsection (1) to (5) have been so notified and the Secretary of State reasonably considers amendments are necessary to give effect to such comments, he may make the necessary regulations within the period referred to in subsection (6)(a), to amend subsections (1) to (5)."""
I've written a short note to Lords Razzall and Clement-Jones, as follows:
"As a technology academic who has been studying these issues for some years, I'm writing to ask you to withdraw your amendment 120a to the Digital Economies Bill. Experience in the US and around the world has demonstrated that this kind of legal regime has little or no impact on the level of copyright infringement happening on the Internet and lots of innocent individuals and businesses get unfairly affected by having Internet materials blocked.
Just a couple of days ago a talk by the world renowned digital copyright expert and Harvard law professor, Lawrence Lessig, was taken down by YouTube due to unfounded allegations of copyright infringement.
The kinds of blocking and software filters that get employed tend to be relatively crude and don’t do value judgements. Perfectly legitimate sites become collateral damage and illegal ones just move to avoid the blocks.
In 1999 a big US internet service provider, IDT, shut down all internet traffic originating in the UK because of a spam problem they traced to a computer at Leeds University. There is little reason to suppose if an allegation - and remember all it takes is an allegation for ISPs to act in order to avoid any liability - is made of mass copyright infringement originating from a particular source that similar kinds of blockages will not occur under the kind of regime you are proposing.
The takedown regime in the US under the digital millennium copyright act has been widely documented as disproportionately affecting innocent individuals and businesses by organisations as diverse at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Google.
Despite your clause asking that due consideration be given to human rights the proposed amendment is likely to have a chilling effect in practice as website owners and ISPs act to avoid potential liability on the basis of mere accusation as in the case of the Lessig speech in recent days.
Thanks for taking the time to consider my necessarily brief thoughts (due to pressure of other commitments) on your amendment."
Update: My note had no effect. They passed amendment 120a. Lilian Edwards does a lovely job of explaining the problems with it.
Daithí MacSíthigh has just pointed out, via Twitter, a terrific BAILLI rss feed utility set up by Nick Holmes and others via Yahoo Pipes. Super Net strikes again.
"Since full transparency requires consensus of all the ACTA partners, the text simply can't be released until everyone is in agreement. Of course, those same countries hasten to add that they can't name who opposes ACTA transparency, since that too is secret.
No longer. In an important new leak from the Netherlands (Dutch, Google English translation, better English translation), a Dutch memorandum reporting back on the Mexico ACTA negotiation round names names, pointing specifically to which countries support releasing the text and which do not... the UK has played a lead role in making the case for full disclosure of the documents and is of the view that there is consensus for release of the text (there is support from many countries including the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, and Austria). However, the memo indicates that several countries are not fully supportive including Belgium, Portugal, Germany, and Denmark. Of these four countries, the Dutch believe that Denmark is the most inflexible on the issue.
Outside of the Europe, the memo identifies three problem countries. While Japan is apparently supportive, both South Korea and Singapore oppose ACTA transparency. Moreover, the U.S. has remained silent on the issue, as it remains unconvinced of the need for full disclosure. In doing so, it would appear that the U.S. is perhaps the biggest problem since a clear position of support might be enough to persuade the remaining outliers."
"Facebook this week was awarded a patent pertaining to streaming "feed" technology, more specifically "dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network," complementing another patent filing that has been published but not yet approved.
The implications for this, as AllFacebook.com pointed out earlier on Thursday, are far-flung: Facebook may choose to pursue action against other social-media sites that potentially violate this patent. Twitter, as AllFacebook points out, is effectively one giant news feed, to the extent that it clearly has influenced some of the changes that Facebook made to its own feed technology."
How can we claim to encourage innovation with patents when this kind of thing gets through?
Update: Andres Guadamuz has taken the trouble to go through the patent and confirms it should not have been granted.
"Microsoft has managed to do what a roomful of secretive, three-letter government agencies have wanted to do for years: get the whistleblowing, government-document sharing site Cryptome shut down.
Microsoft dropped a DMCA notice alleging copyright infringement on Cryptome’s proprietor John Young on Tuesday after he posted a Microsoft surveillance compliance document that the company gives to law enforcement agents seeking information on Microsoft users. Young filed a counterclaim on Wednesday — arguing he had a fair use to publishing the document, a full day before the Thursday deadline set by his hosting provider, Network Solutions.
Regardless, Cryptome was shut down by Network Solutions and its domain name locked on Wednesday — shuttering a site that thumbed its nose at the government since 1996 — posting thousands of documents that the feds would prefer never saw the light of day.
Microsoft did not return a call for comment by press time.
The 22-page document (.pdf) contains no trade secrets, but will tell Microsoft users things they didn’t know."
Lawyers accidentally courting bad publicity again presumably?
Update: Someone in Microsoft with the requisite clout has seen and imposed some sense. Network Solutions emailed John Young:
"Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:22:59 -0500
From: "DMCA"
To: "John Young"
We would like to notify you that Microsoft has contacted us regarding www.cryptome.org. Microsoft has withdrawn their DMCA complaint. As a result www.cryptome.org has been reactivated and this matter has been closed. Please allow time for the reactivation to propagate throughout the various servers around the world.
Linda L. Larsen, Designated Agent
Network Solutions, LLC
Telephone: 703.668.5615
Facsimile: 703.668.5959
Email: dmca[at]networksolutions.com"
Peter Murray-Rust, University of Cambridge (UK), Cameron Neylon, STFC (UK), Rufus Pollock, Open Knowledge Foundation and University of Cambridge (UK), John Wilbanks, Science Commons have just published the Panton Principles for open data in science.
"
Science is based on building on, reusing and openly criticising the published body of scientific knowledge.
For science to effectively function, and for society to reap the full benefits from scientific endeavours, it is crucial that science data be made open.
By open data in science we mean that it is freely available on the public internet permitting any user to download, copy, analyse, re-process, pass them to software or use them for any other purpose without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. To this end data related to published science should be explicitly placed in the public domain. Formally, we recommend adopting and acting on the following principles:
Where data or collections of data are published it is critical that they be published with a clear and explicit statement of the wishes and expectations of the publishers with respect to re-use and re-purposing of individual data elements, the whole data collection, and subsets of the collection. This statement should be precise, irrevocable, and based on an appropriate and recognized legal statement in the form of a waiver or license. When publishing data make an explicit and robust statement of your wishes.
Many widely recognized licenses are not intended for, and are not appropriate for, data or collections of data. A variety of waivers and licenses that are designed for and appropriate for the treatment of data are described here. Creative Commons licenses (apart from CCZero), GFDL, GPL, BSD, etc are NOT appropriate for data and their use is STRONGLY discouraged. Use a recognized waiver or license that is appropriate for data.
The use of licenses which limit commercial re-use or limit the production of derivative works by excluding use for particular purposes or by specific persons or organizations is STRONGLY discouraged. These licenses make it impossible to effectively integrate and re-purpose datasets and prevent commercial activities that could be used to support data preservation. If you want your data to be effectively used and added to by others it should be open as defined by the Open Knowledge/Data Definition – in particular non-commercial and other restrictive clauses should not be used.
Furthermore, in science it is STRONGLY recommended that data, especially where publicly funded, be explicitly placed in the public domain via the use of the Public Domain Dedication and Licence or Creative Commons Zero Waiver. This is in keeping with the public funding of much scientific research and the general ethos of sharing and re-use within the scientific community. Explicit dedication of data underlying published science into the public domain via PDDL or CCZero is strongly recommended and ensures compliance with both the Science Commons Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data and the Open Knowledge/Data Definition."
I've been thinking recently about the kind of traps in thinking that we can get infected with due to the nature of our modern, short-attention-span driven media and politics and the language that is used by broadcast and newspaper journalists, commentators and politicians.
I wish, for example, that people would stop using the term 'Islamist' in the context of terrorist activities. Using the word 'Islamist' as a pseudonym for 'terrorist' creates a disproportionate, tension-inducing and misleading mindset, connecting the extreme activities/beliefs of the few with a particular set of religious beliefs of a large number of people, in this case Muslims.
The meme:
Islamist = Terrorist
is a significantly destabilizing one in our society. Demonising over a billion people because of the actions of a few extremists - and statistically speaking the proportion of terrorists in the world is absolutely tiny - gets innocent people hurt. And remember if those tiny number of terrorists succeed, with the unintended aid of the media and politicians, of causing the non muslim population of the world to fear the muslim community, then the terrorists are winning. Because that is what terrorism is all about - spreading fear and consequent instability.
In the late 1980s or early 1990s, I can't remember exactly when, I was once asked by a work colleague in the aerospace industry, at a time when the 'Irish' = 'Terrorist' meme was still infecting people (and I quote):
"Why do you Irish people kill our British soldiers?"
I had known the guy, or thought I did, for several years and clearly this question had been nagging him for some time. I was sufficiently shocked and irritated that I told him that perhaps the question he should be asking, since the people of Northern Ireland were British citizens*, was "Why do British people kill British soldiers?" That wasn't at all well received but then I still proceeded to attempt to explain something of the historical tensions between Ireland and Britain and within Ireland and Northern Ireland; and that when you create a society where there are internecine tensions and fears and you provide various opposing factions with arms, then all kinds of innocent people get hurt, even by those nominally on their own side, as in the case of so called 'friendly fire'.
My questioner had absolutely no interest at all in the history lesson and got extremely angry at my complete slur on the army - how dare I suggest British soldiers would hurt each other, even by accident. He demanded that I name the names of every British soldier that had fired on or hurt a colleague. When I said that wasn't the kind of information I carried around in my head, he concluded that not only had I grossly slandered the UK's fighting forces but that I was lying and clearly an active supporter of terrorists determined to continue killing soldiers. (As it turned out there had been an incident between a couple of soldiers on the streets of Northern Ireland a few weeks prior to our conversation but I don't recall if the name of either party was released.)
Neither one of us came out of the encounter either too happy or with much credit and I don't suppose our friendship was ever the same again but when the 'certain community' = 'terrorist' meme takes hold then it can lead to all kinds of corrosive effects.
Now I generally oppose censorship and to a large degree buy into the US founding fathers concept underlying the first amendment to their constitution (gauranteeing freedom of expression) that I might disagree with what you say but nevertheless defend your right to say it. Heaven knows I've been on the receiving end of enough censorship from software filters over the past 8 years which label my blog a sex site because of the triple x in the title and the url. But the kind of nuanced public debate envisaged by the founding fathers where 'bad' speech would be tackled head on and overcome by 'good' speech seems, sadly, not to be possible in today's world. 'Bad' simplistic memes, like 'Islamist' = 'terrorist' have just as much and sometimes more staying power than 'good' memes, such as 'most people regardless of creed, race or religion' = 'decent'. As Deborah Lipstadt has said:
"Reasoned dialogue has a limited ability to withstand an assault by the mythic power of falsehood."
I made a hash of attempting a reasoned dialogue with my friend but we never got past his complete belief in the false idea that 'Irish people' wanted to kill British soldiers.
Much deeper dialogue is possible and indeed happens on the Internet than through conventional news and broadcast media. Witness, for example, Jack Balkin's amazing blog where, freely available, we get the kind of contempory analysis of US politics and law from the top legal scholars of the day that no news organisation in the world produces. Simplistic memes, however, also often spread more widely and faster on the Net.
Where does that leave us in the context of my specific concern over the current 'Islamist' = 'terrorist' false meme? Well we could make a small start by simply asking responsible news organisations to stop using the word 'Islamist' as a pseudonym for 'terrorist'. Is this censorship? Possibly (but I don't really want to get the political correctness police on the case as that tends to lead to counterproductive backlash). Or is it a suggestion to encourage better, more neutral, news reporting language? Is encouraging the use of better language censorship? Perhaps but if that's what it takes to impede the spread of and begin to cure the infection of the noxious 'Islamist' = 'terrorist' meme then in this limited and very specific instance I'm for it.
* Just to clarify, people of Northern Ireland are also entitled to Irish citizenship and to hold an Irish passport.
Ross Anderson talking buckets of common sense for the BBC about security and the Net:
It's a pity more of Ross's contribution wasn't included in the final broadcast of The Virtual Revolution: The Enemy of the State. We don't know if the teenager interviewed by Dr Krotoski was involved in the attacks on Estonia as he claims for example; but as Ross says the key element of the story was not a group of teens engaging in a simple network attack but the poor state of the Estonian critical systems security. The BBC has made available a transcript of the interview with Ross and some of the other rushes from the programme.
Cory Doctorow is in fine form over at the Guardian today.
"So when Ofcom told Auntie that it hadn't made the case for DRM, that the social harms outweighed the benefits, and that it wouldn't allow the BBC to add DRM after all, it seemed like the regulator had really stepped up to do its duty: protecting the public interest, protecting the rights of disabled people, protecting the rights of British firms to field innovative new devices into the British marketplace.
And then Ofcom caved. In its latest consultation on the matter, Ofcom takes it as a given that the BBC will be allowed to add DRM to our licence-funded television signals. Instead of asking whether there is a case for DRM, Ofcom offers up a string of "have you stopped beating your wife yet?" questions, like, "Do you agree that the BBC's proposed approach for implementing content management would safeguard citizens' and consumers' legitimate use of HD content, and if not, what additional guarantees would be appropriate?"
Did you catch that? Not "Can DRM be used to safeguard legitimate uses?" but rather, "Which DRM should we use to make sure this happens?"
[...] the BBC has been told by its licensors that they won't allow their programmes to be aired in high-def without DRM... But how credulous do you have to be to take a threat like this seriously?
[...] The FCC caved, just like Ofcom...
So we sued...
The court agreed with us. They recognised that being a telcoms regulator doesn't give you the right to regulate receivers and the devices they connect to. The Broadcast Flag died before it could be enacted."
"Should copyright holders be allowed to get the identities of Internet users behind an IP-address for private prosecutions, or should that ability be left solely with the police? That’s the key question behind a pivotal hit movie camcorder case which is set to move amid an unusual amount of secrecy to Norway’s Supreme Court...
Simonsen, a law firm which since 2006 had held a license to monitor alleged pirates and collect their IP-addresses, demanded that the ISP connected with the IP-address hand over the identity of the subscriber, something it had thus far refused to do. The request had the support of the Norwegian telecoms authorities which in this case made a special exception to the country’s Privacy Act, enabling the person’s identity to be handed to a group other than the police – if the court agreed.
On May 5th 2009, Simonsen received the decision from the court but the verdict was kept a secret from the public. Espen Tøndel said this was to prevent the possibility of evidence being spoiled. This lack of transparency caused an uproar"
A few weeks ago Google announced, in the wake of ‘a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure’ and to widespread plaudits in the Western media at least, that the company was taking a stand against China. They would no longer censor Chinese search results in accordance with the local laws and if the government didn’t like it then they would withdraw their business from the country. US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, subsequently criticised China over the attacks and called on Google to avoid facilitating "politically motivated censorship".
In The Enemy of the State, the second programme of the OU/BBC's The Virtual Revolution series, Dr Aleks Krotoski looks at China via the notion of a digital arms race between the individual and the state, a model through which the government attempts to control the individual by mass censorship, propaganda and surveillance.
Many people are aware of the “Great Firewall of China”, the internet filters deployed by China to censor web pages containing terms like ‘Falun Gong’, ‘Dalai Lama’ or ‘Tiananmen Square massacre’. Yahoo!, another big US technology company, has been accused of working “regularly and efficiently with the Chinese police" to hand over the personal details of dissident web bloggers, leading to terms of 8 and 10 years respectively for Li Zhi and Shi Tao for criticising their government. Microsoft, Cisco and numerous other global companies have also been vilified for cooperating in censoring the web in China. Most defend themselves, as Google do, “in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results.”
As an Irish, white, middle class academic, resident in the UK, I can grumble about unethical behaviour of big business and the poor human rights record of regimes like China or Iran through the lens of a simplistic algorithm:
China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea = totalitarian states
Therefore,
Censorship + surveillance = scary + bad
And,
Citizen anonymity = necessary + good
Yet such smug simplistic models rarely tell the real story. It is not just the supposed totalitarian states that are engaged in large scale censorship and surveillance. Freedom of speech has never been an absolute. Even in the US, where it is protected by the first amendment to the constitution, citizens don’t have the freedom to yell “fire!” in a crowded theatre.
At the behest of the UK government, in response to a failed attempt to blow up a plane with explosives hidden in the attacker’s underpants, HeathrowAirport has installed digital strip search machines for the masses. UK Transport Secretary Andrew Andonis said: "In the immediate future, only a small proportion of airline passengers will be selected for scanning. If a passenger is selected for scanning, and declines, they will not be permitted to fly." You will not be allowed on a plane at Heathrow if you refuse to go through a digital strip search when asked.
Laws in the UK, US and a range of other Western democracies require surveillance capability to be built into our communications networks, large scale data retention and the construction of large databases of personal information, all in the name of combating terrorism, crime or protecting children and intellectual property. Wide scale censorship of the Net takes place not just in China and Saudi Arabia but in the UK, parts of the US, Canada, Spain, France, Australia, Germany and many other countries in an attempt to block such horrors as child pornography or Nazi propaganda. Yet that is ok in the simplistic model of the world I presented earlier:
UK, US, Germany, France = democracies
Therefore,
Censorship + surveillance = necessary to protect children + stop terrorists
And
Anonymity = bad, if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear
But the model quickly breaks down on all fronts when examined in any detail. Firstly you have to realise that software filters, known by critics as ‘censorware’, don’t do value judgments. They often censor perfectly legitimate sites and fail to block illegal ones. They often also censor websites which are critical of the companies selling the filter software. And in 1999 a big US internet service provider, IDT, shut down all internet traffic originating in the UK because of a spam problem they traced to a computer at LeedsUniversity.
Secondly, anyone with even the mildest understanding of the value of personal privacy has no time for the over-used empty soundbite ‘nothing to hide nothing to fear’, deployed regularly by politicians with large database ‘cures’ for various societal ills.
And thirdly, the thing about technical and legal architectures of surveillance is they are not the exclusive playground of the good guys. The Internet makes our world more complicated not less so. Government computers are widely and virtually irreversibly networked with private sector machines; and governments have not got a great record of building totally reliable, fit-for-purpose, secure information systems. Large, valuable, porous information systems with built-in surveillance tools are very attractive targets for individuals, organisations and states with malign intent.
They also have a tendency to be misused by public officials because they are convenient to use. So for example council officials in the UK use anti-terror laws and technical facilities to spy on families suspected of lying on their forms when applying to get their children into good state schools. After the terrorist attacks of 11th September 2001, then President George W. Bush ordered the National Security Agency to use surveillance systems hardwired into the telecoms network to illegally engage in mass warrantless wiretapping of the phone conversations of tens of thousands of people.*
Although there have been a variety of instances of US military information finding its way into Chinese hands via the hacking of US military systems and possibly vice versa, we have not yet really seen a whole lot of this. But as Ross Anderson says in the Virtual Revolution, as the world becomes more connected the opportunity for nations to do bad things to each other will increase, especially since the tools of surveillance and espionage are literally being designed and built into our communications systems.
Ironically, by building a surveillance infrastructure in the name of security, Western governments and commercial organisations are making us much less secure not more so. Systems with no such in-built surveillance tools, but instead constructed on the principles of “net neutrality”** supported by President Obama recently in his first state of the union address, are more secure.
I’m not suggesting the UK government have anything like the totalitarian intent of the cold war East German or Soviet regimes or that MI5 or MI6 have the terrifying influence of the Stasi, the KGB or the Nazi SS. Gordon Brown is certainly no Mao Zedong and respected journalists like Henry Porter or former Information Commissioner Richard Thomas are not going to suddenly be detained and locked up for 10 years for repeatedly accusing the government of “sleepwalking into a surveillance state”. But we continue to construct and expand these systems at our peril and the threats they pose are real not virtual.
In the spring of 2004 over 100 mobile phones used by key members of the Greek government including the Prime Minister, minister for justice and foreign minister were subject to covert wiretapping which lasted for over a year. It’s still not clear who did the spying but the facility to do it was built into the Vodaphone phones by Ericsson. It was only supposed to be switched on if permission was granted through appropriate legal processes. Somebody figured out how to switch it on. Without permission.
A leaked MI5 memo, in recent days, has outlined the problem of Chinese spying on UK business both through conventional and electronic means. Again China is the bad guy, this time using the internet for industrial espionage rather than waging war on its own citizens.
The services and components of the global surveilled communications infrastructure, apparently used by China for such nefarious activities, are supplied by global corporations like Vodaphone, Ericsson, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Intel, Nokia, Siemens and yes, Google; as well as dynamic home grown manufacturing industry within China and other cheap manufacturing bases like India. These companies variously do business in the EU, the Americas, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Asia because such business provides a return for their shareholders. To the degree that such business facilitates economic development in countries like China, and the consequent improvement of overall living standards, that’s generally a good thing. To the extent that it facilitates the suppression of basic civil rights, such companies need to be more active in engaging with the Chinese authorities in ways that can influence them to respect such rights more widely and more wisely.
Time will tell what effect the current Google exchanges with the emerging economic superpower will have. As to whether it is enlightening to view the Web in the context of China through the model of a digital arms race between the individual and the state, I’ll leave you the reader to decide.
But the final word goes to James Fallows, who has regularly and eloquently argued that China’s relations with the West are more complex and potentially beneficial for both sides, that “China is a still-poor, highly-diverse and individualistic country whose development need not "threaten" anyone else and should be encouraged” but also warns:
“In a strange and striking way there is an inversion of recent Chinese and U.S. roles. In the switch from George W. Bush to Barack Obama, the U.S. went from a president much of the world saw as deliberately antagonizing them to a president whose Nobel Prize reflected (perhaps desperate) gratitude at his efforts at conciliation. China, by contrast, seems to be entering its Bush-Cheney era. For Chinese readers, let me emphasize again my argument that China is not a "threat" and that its development is good news for mankind. But its government is on a path at the moment that courts resistance around the world. To me, that is what Google's decision signifies.”
* For a really interesting perspective on phone tapping in historical context is it worth having a look at this Pathé News clip from 1957, http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=33047 , on the widespread shock over the illegal wiretapping of a phone conversation between a UK barrister Patrick Marriman and his client, a known and self confessed criminal, Billy Hill.Thanks to Richard Lamont via the ukcrypto list for the pointer to that little gem.
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