Recommended - Exchange between Ernest Miller (Yale) and Fred von Lohmann (EFF)on compulsory licenses and Larry Lessig's lament about MP3.com's lawyers.

Charles Cooper thinks the Total Information Awareness programme is a good idea. Or, at least, that's what he has written, I suspect to bait the usual libertarians. He's right that DARPA (originally ARPA) was set up during the cold war (by Dwight Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launch of the sputnik satellite in 1957) "to think big about technology". It was essentially the then president's technology fast response agency, to avoid getting caught on the hop by the Soviets again.

As such DARPA shouldn't be castigated for proposing ideas like the TIA or the terrorism futures market, both of which are about using information for particular ends. He's wrong to imply that we should not worry about or thoroughly debate the real utility or specific deployment of such systems, however, because he hasn't seen any proof that TIA will lead an Orwellian future, though he has seen " the smoking hole that used to be the World Trade Tower complex in my hometown of New York City." In response I'm reminded of Ben Franklin's 1759 comment that "Those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I'm neither a US constitutional scholar nor even a US citizen but even to me there seemed to be fairly fundamental questions raised under the first, Fourth and Fifth Amendments by the proposed TIA as it had been described variously by George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft and other members of the current president's administration. There are intuitively obvious reasons to argue that the best available technologies should be put at the disposal of the 'good guys' in targetting and fighting the 'bad guys'. That's no reason to expand the notion to the extent that those same technologies should be deployed in the assumption that the only way to catch the bad guys is to assume everyone is a baddie, until they prove otherwise. The natural outcome of the latter scenario is that so much energy is expended on checking the innocent that the real bad guys find it much easier to get lost in the noise.

The UK has banned the iTrip device that allows you to play your iPod tunes on the radio. It facilitates breaches of the 1949 Wireless and Telegraphy act which requires anyone with a radio transmitter to have a license.

The Oyez project has released an "inaugural set of Supreme Court MP3 files." I've been listening to the argument of the the Katz v U.S. eavesdropping case and the re-argument of the Roe v Wade abortion case, as I've been sorting through some routine admin. work. Terrific to be able to hear these, although in the Katz file it seems not all the justices were miked up, so it's not possible to hear all their questions.

The big issues for the Autumn on this side of the pond look likely to be the round EU implementations of the copyright directive, the September EU parliament and Commission decisions on the patenting of software in the EU and the EU's IP enforcement directive and finally, I guess, any action the Commission decide to take against Microsoft. Throw DRM and trusted computing into the fray an you've got a complex 'mess', as my systems colleagues at the Open University would call it. The Foundation for Information Policy Research are leading the UK fight against the IP enforcement directive. As he has been making NGOs aware of the directive, FIPR Chairman and Cambridge University security specialist, Ross Anderson, has come to realise that this directive could have a significant effect on ordinary retailing,

"RFIDs (radio-frequency IDs) are devices smaller than grains of rice
that can be fitted on goods such as clothes and which will, when
integgorated electronically, return a 128-bit unique number. You can
think of them as bar codes that identify individual objects rather
than merely product ranges, and that can be read from a foot or two
away. Walmart has ordered its suppliers to fit them, so we're going to
get them in everything we buy for more than a few pounds, within a
couple of years, like it or not.

RFIDs will be useful in detecting and preventing counterfeit goods, so
they will be covered by the directive. It will be an offence to mess
with them, or to possess kit to mess with them."

So these RFIDs as copyright "technological protection measures" will effectively be able to be used to create market barriers. When it comes to RFIDs I had always been more concerned about the privacy implications but the market manipulation that Ross points out is not nearly as transparent, so is potentially being overlooked by policy makers and certain sectors of commerce which don't yet realise the impact they might have when combined with regulations like the proposed IP enforcement directive.

Well, there's been plenty going on since I've been away.

The RIAA have started their avalanche of subpoenas, the first stage in tracking down and suing P2P file sharers.

MIT and Boston college stand up to the RIAA.

Red Hat have stepped prominently into the SCO linux-unix battle.

Tony Blair is apparently backing away from a national ID card

A UK government funded report supposedly to determine how to stimulate broadband rollout has declared that DRM is the only way to do this. (Do I hear 'interests' and 'vested' and perhaps even 'smells' coming together in some combination?) I can't put it better than Ross Anderson: "I deeply resent the use of my tax money to help Disney and Microsoft grind their axes. But this sort of nonsense cannot just be ignored - if not rebutted it will become policy."

The FBI are targetting VOIP as a threat to national security

The ACLU are challenging the constitutionality of the USA-PATRIOT Act

UCITA has taken a big blow as National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws put their support for it on ice.

The UK draft proposal on the implementation of the EUCD reaches its first birthday, as the UK Patent Office as putting the final touches to the final draft.

Queensland University staff have their pcs scanned for MP3 files.

Congress sees the introduction of the P4 bill with the stated aim of protecting children from P2P porn.

The UK Human Rights Act gets accused of fostering a culture of litigation

Dow Jones win a hearing in Australia to appeal the Gutnick online defamation decision.

Sony win the playstation mod chip appeal in Australia

EBay have $29.5 million dollars in damages awarded against them for patent infringement

The consumer commission in Australian rejects a complaint about copy protected CDs

Mitch Bainwol, a republican party staffer, replaces Hilary Rosen at the RIAA

The EFF issue advice on how to avoid getting sued by the RIAA

A US appeal court oks the evidence of a Turkish hacker in a child pornography case

The Pentagon propose and then withdraw the idea of a terrorism futures market.

The European Commission declare that they are likely to fine Microsoft for continuing anti-competitive practices.

Amazon begin working with publishers on the idea of an online searchable non-fiction books archive.

And that's just for starters. I'm really backed up with work so don't have the time to expand on these but there's plenty of background to be had on all these stories from all the usual suspects listed under my links.

Take a few minutes to read Take Another Little Piece of My Art by Derek Slater. It's worth it. Also his experiment with blogging using his analysis of the Napster case. Actually why not just take a run over to a copyfighter's musings and have a look for yourself at Mr Slater's recent thoughts. Some interesting ideas on Richard Posner's decision in the Madster case, in particular.

The US Senate has voted to cut off funding to the Total Information Awareness computer-surveillance program.

Kevin Poulson at SecurityFocus is reporting DirecTV dragnet snares innocent techies "In recent months the satellite TV giant has filed nearly 9,000 federal lawsuits against people who've purchased signal piracy devices. But some of those devices have legitimate uses, and innocent computer geeks are getting caught in the crackdown. "

Meanwhile the Grokster/Morpheus case is apparently being fast-tracked for review by the 9th circuit Court of Appeals.

Overture to a patent war? (via Corante) is worth a read.

I'm off to spend the next week at an Open University summer school, teaching first year technology students about the structures of bridges and planes, and the uses and limitations of mathematical, physical and computer models.

Yes Magazine have been following up on the electronic voting and voter purging issue.

Hector MacQueen, law professor at Edinburg University, points to an email alert from the editors of World Intellectual Property Report, entitled IP Commission OKs Spying on Internet Users to Protect Copyright:

"PARIS--A copyright advisory board within France's Ministry of Culture
has accepted government plans to increase surveillance of Internet
users as part of a wider bid to stop illegal copying and transmission
of protected artistic works in cyberspace.
The Superior Council for Artistic and Literary Intellectual Property
(Conseil Superieur de la Propriete Litteraire et Artistique, or
CSPLA) announced June 26 that it would support proposed legislation
now working its way through Parliament that aims to adapt copyright
protection to the Digital Age, principally through greater spying on
Internet users.
The CSPLA opinion was issued in response to parliamentary debate on
legislation -- the Law on the Digital Economy -- that would adopt
European Union Directive 2001/29/EC, of May 22, 2001, on the
Harmonization of Certain Aspects of Copyright and Related Rights in
the Information Society.
A united version of the legislation -- combining a text approved
last February by the National Assembly, or lower house, of
Parliament, and one approved by the Senate, or upper house, in late
June -- is expected to be passed by Parliament by year-end, after
fine-tuning by members of both houses and concerned government
ministries.
The CSPLA opinion -- which demands "reconciliation" between long-
standing concerns over privacy protection and individual liberties
and the growing need for copyright protection on-line -- is likely to
weigh heavy with Culture Ministry officials when they are asked for
future comment on the bill.
(The full report will appear in the August issue of World E-Commerce
& IP Report. Copyright 2003, BNA International Inc.) "

Via Michael Carroll at Villanova, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have just published a Handbook on Intellectual Property and Traditional Knowledge

Two democrats are proposing a bill, Author, Consumer, and Computer Owner Protection
and Security (ACCOPS) Act of 2003, that would lead to jail time for file sharers. One of these, Howard Berman, was the guy who previously introduced a bill to provide copyright holders with immunity for damaging other people's computers.

Copyfight has lots of links to pieces on Berman's proposal.
Whilst Berman wants to jail file sharers, the head of Interpol wants a global crackdown on piracy which he links to terrorism.

Hot on the heels of Germany being the fifth EU country to implement the EU copyright directive, the Commission have decided to pursue the other member states for failure to do so yet.

Loyola University Chicago releases two student names to RIAA.

Just got time to point you at the terrific Donna Wentworth's Copyfight and A copyright cold war? The polarized rhetoric of the peer-to-peer debates by John Logie at FirstMonday.
Also, one of my students just pointed me at this amusing cartoon at User Friendly.

Alan Cunningham of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute, University of London, has started a weblog on issues related to intellectual property, law, technology, philosophy and economics.

The End of End-to-End? By Simson Garfinkel at ECommerce Times:
"Whenever you hear a company bragging about the great services it can offer directly in its
network, understand that it is trying to kill end-to-end. Personally, I'd rather have a dumb
network, a pair of smart endpoints, and a future"

The latest Journal of Information Technology Law has just been published. Refereed articles include:
Trademark Infringement, the Internet and Jurisdiction
by Professor David Bainbridge, Aston Buiness School
Internet File-sharing and the Liability of Intermediaries for Copyright Infringement:A Need for International Consensus by Matthew Just, University of Warwick
Software Development, Intellectual Property, and IT Security
by Robert Gehring, Technical University of
Much Pain for Little Gain? A Critical View of Software Patents
by Christian Koboldt, DotECon Consultants, London
Bearing the Burden: Small Firms and the Patent System
by Stuart Macdonald, Sheffield University
Software Patents and Innovation
by Sylvain Perchaud, President of Europe Shareware:Association Pour la Promotion des Auteurs Européens de Sharewares
There is also a commentary on two of the articles on software patents
The Proposed Software Directive: A User's Comments
by Simon Davies, Patent Attorney, D Young and Company

Musical collaboration across space and time via Creative Commons.

From Larry Lessig's blog, a (warning: large mp3) "wonderful radio show from the Columbia Workshop in 1937 about characters leaving the “copyright lane” for the “public domain.” It is a brilliantly complex and funny tale that reveals an understanding about the value of the public domain that would be hard to recognize today." The show was written by Eustace Wyatt.

A barrister, Jon Holbrook, is not happy with UK government's proposed law on corporate killing. He explains why in Spiked magazine.
"In summary: the government is proposing to create an offence of homicide where criminal guilt
exists in the absence of personal criminal guilt, where the management's errors may not amount to
gross negligence and where the death may not have been the direct result of those errors...
The offence of corporate killing has been devised as a means of securing a conviction for a
person's death where the moral culpability for manslaughter does not exist. The notion of criminal
responsibility is being degraded to such an extent the offence of corporate killing will be criminal in
name only."
Thoughtful piece. Unlikely to make an impact though because the proposed law has such intuitive political and popular appeal. I hasten to add that just because something is intuitively appealing on the surface does not necessarily mean it is correct.

Check out this from an 'urban infiltration' enthusiast at Declan McCullagh's Politech.
"Over the years, it becomes
glaringly obvious to explorers such as ourselves, that almost all of
the critical infrastructure of large cities is _totally_ vulnerable.
Electricity, water, gas, communications, sewage, drainage, rail - all of
them could be shut down over wide areas for days or weeks by simple acts
of vandalism, at remote and unguarded locations...
... we have two observations:
1. It would be easy for anyone wishing to massively disrupt society,
to successfully attack the crucial infrastructure (and escape free.)
2. Suck attacks do not seem to occur...
...The only possible conclusion, is that there is simply no one seriously
interested in committing major infrastructure attacks. And that implies
there are actually no true (or even wannabe) 'terrorists' among us.
And never have been."
I don't accept the conclusion but if s/he is correct about the vunerability of the infrastructure, it is surprising that we have not yet had such an attack.

Some stories of interest from the US press:
Net Radio Group Threatens to Sue RIAA in the Washington Post
How to Make a Sonic Purée From Pop Snippets in the New York Times
and
PATENT BENDING in the New Yorker.
Extract from the latter -
Innovators came up with new ways of selling products, handling
suppliers, running organizations, or managing information. If the ideas were good, the innovators got rich, but they also got
imitated, which made them less rich than they might have been.....
Those were the days. Now the first thing someone with a good notion does is press the government to protect it. Priceline
patented its reverse-auction method for selling cut-rate airline tickets. I.B.M. patented a method for keeping track of people
waiting in line for the bathroom."
This is a bit like getting a patent on the idea of fishing, not a new kind of fishing rod but the idea of fishing itself.

A French court has castigated EMI for inadequate warnings on copy protected CDs, apparently saying they mislead consumers. My schoolboy french is not up to the job of translating the court's opinion but it is available online.

Shawn Fanning is, according to the LA Times, "looking for backers of technology he's developing that would let file-sharing networks distribute music without violating copyrights"

Posting here is likely to slow to a trickle over the summer as I get hit with lots of exam marking and summer school as well as a couple of weeks leave.

Notable: The World Intellectual Property Organisation have received a challenge from a diverse group with interests in the "explosion of open and collaborative projects to create public goods. " Signatories to a letter to the Director General of WIPO, requesting that WIPO "convene a meeting in calendar year 2004 to examine these new open collaborative development models, and to discuss their relevance for public policy" look likely to have that request fulfilled. James Love of the Consumer Project on Technology seems to have organised the letter and co-signatories include James Boyle, Larry Lessig, Yochai Benkler, Diane Cabell, Tim Hubbard, Bruce Perens, Ralph Nadar, Laurie Racine, Richard Stallman, Jonathan Zittrain. Other organisations associated include the Consumers Association in the UK and Medecins sans Frontieres.

Also notable: MIT are launching a "Government Information Awareness" GIA project in response to the US government's TIA programme. Wired News explains.

If you get a chance read The Copyright Cage by Jonathan Zittrain, published in the latest edition of Legal Affairs. Also Orin S. Kerr's "Seeing it Both Ways" in the same edition.

New Scientist is reporting that stem cells have enabled paralysed rats to walk. This brings to mind parallel issues and a speech by the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, speaking in Edinburg earlier this year. He said "The world's response to the HIV/AIDs pandemic has been murder by indifference... HIV/AIDS is a modern apocalypse. It is a catastrophe that exceeds everthing else in human history in the field of communicable diseases, and it is impossible to understand the depth of the excruciating human toll without keeping in mind that we have never dealt with this kind of human phenomenon before." He went on to make the point that hundreds of billions of dollars have been magically found for the fight against terrorism, yet the West could put a major dent in the fight against AIDS with just $10 billion per year. Koffi Annan has set up the Global Fund to this end but has so far only got pledges to the cummulative effect of about $2billion and only a fraction of those pledges actually donated. Lewis said "We could stop this pandemic in its tracks in a few short years. We know what to do - we simply must find the will to do it."

In the thick of all this internet law and technological developments there is the background not just of the effects of the changes, which most of accept all too passively, but also of the use to which we actively put these developments. I haven't touched on the ethical issues in stem cell research but if we are going to engage in these kinds of developments we surely should be looking at them in the kind of global equitable context that Lewis is so passionate about?

I'm irritated because I just wrote a longish piece about GILC's latest newsletter and lost it in the bowels of Blogger when I tried to post. I'll just point to the newsletter at this point and not repeat my comments.