Space-Time Travel Data is Analytic Super-Food!

Jeff Jonas has been thinking about all the data shadows we're leaving in our wake.

"It doesn’t matter who you say you are! Where you are (space), when you’re there (time), and your movements over time (travel) are closer to the truth. I’ve seen a lot of data in my life, and I’d like to think I have a decent grip on what can be accomplished with data and analytics. However, I recently stumbled upon some facts that have radically reshaped my understanding of the world we are living in. What I thought was years away is already here! Our toes are dangling over the edge of a very different future...

I can barely get my mind around the ramifications. My concept about what comes next shifts almost daily now. A government not so keen on free speech could use such data to see a crowd converging towards a protest site and respond before the swarm takes form – detected and preempted, this protest never happens. Or worse, it could be used to understand and then undermine any political opponent.

A stalker might be questioned just days after he starts and before his victim is personally aware of it – detection previously beyond human capacity. Maybe it’s not a crime in this case, and it turns out to be just a private investigator with poor tradecraft hired by a suspicious husband.

Such a surveillance intensive future is inevitable, irreversible and as I have said before here … irresistible.

Why? Companies must be competitive to survive and consumers have quite the appetite for almost anything that optimizes their life, especially if it’s cheap or free...

I think people should know about this imminent new age we are marching into."

US Copyright chief has serious concerns about Google Book settlement

The head of the U.S. Copyright Office has reportedly told a congressional committee that she has serious concerns about the Google book settlement. She suggested that parts of the settlement were "fundamentally at odds with the law."

Update: Here's her statement.
And the NYT on same.
And the 1709 blog.

Copyright trumps censorship in South Korea

From the 1709 blog:

"The authors of A Modern and Contemporary History of Korea have successfully sued their publisher for copyright infringement for publishing an altered version of the work. The publisher had been repeatedly ordered to revise ‘leftist’ sections by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology under the Elementary and Middle School Education Law. The Hankyoreh reports that ‘the court said that while this law could be used to order a suspension of publication if an alteration order is violated, it cannot be used to limit the right to the integrity of the work by the publisher’. The alterations have been the subject of a campaign by history teachers."

Also:

"An article in The Times suggests that Wordsworth Editions has secured an amazing coup by getting Stephen Joyce, James Joyce’s heir, to agree to a new budget edition of Ulysses. The article fails to mention that Joyce (1882–1941) is revived copyright, so anyone can publish Ulysses without Stephen Joyce’s permission so long as they cough up a reasonably royalty. OUP probably don’t pay any royalties to the Joyce estate on their edition as it was first published in 1993, after Joyce went out of copyright but before he came back in. The problem with publishing a budget edition of Ulysses may not be so much agreeing terms with the copyright owner as other costs – it’s long and notes are a must. For copyright owners like Stephen Joyce who are as concerned about controlling the manner of publication as seeing a financial return revived copyright is a small consolation."

Boyle: copyright black hole swallows our culture

James Boyle's latest article in the FT focuses on the Google Books settlement, which he explains would not be necessary if copyright law wasn't in such a mess. (The article is also available on his blog, where I first picked it up via my news feed reader).

"Librarians call it the 20th-century black hole. The overwhelming force is not gravity but copyright law, sucking our collective culture into a vortex from which it can never escape.

That culture includes millions of books Google wants to make available online. But many are concerned. The European Commission will hold hearings on Monday, while a US judge has extended the deadline for objections to a proposed US legal settlement."

James explains the key problems with the Google books settlement - Google's monopoly over commercially unavailable works and the index to all online books, lack of facility to download books, Google's ability to monitor your reading in unprecedented detail, lack of privacy protections etc. He goes on to conclude:

"What if the critics prevail and no settlement is reached? I would prefer us to fix copyright law so these issues disappear. But if we cannot do that, we need a second-best solution. Google’s escape module has flaws, lots of them, but it is better than staying in the black hole."

The day after the article appeared the EU Commission had their hearing and decided to oppose the Google Book settlement. James Boyle is scathing about their analysis:

"There are good reasons to worry about the Google Book Search Settlement, as I explained at length here. But of all of the reasons to oppose it, this utterly surreal statement is my favourite.

European officials fear that if the Google project goes ahead in the US, a yawning transatlantic gap will open up in education and research.

“Oh my God! The Americans are about to create a private workaround of the enormous mess that we regulators have made of national copyright policy! They will fix the unholy legal screwups that leave most of the books of 20th century culture unavailable, yet still under copyright! They will gain access to their cultural heritage — giving them a huge competitive advantage in education. This MUST BE STOPPED!! No one can be allowed to fix this for any other country because then we would be left alone stewing in our own intellectual property stupidity! We must forbid their progress in order to protect our ignorance.”

But wait, there’s more. If anyone does do it, it must be the state! (Which so far has failed completely to provide legal access to orphan works or commercially unavailable works, works that are unavailable because of… wait for it, wait for it, the state locking up our cultural heritage unnecessarily)"

Tax Payers Alliance 'Big Brother Watch'

Via Spyblog:

"The Sunday Times carries this interesting announcement by the TaxPayers' Alliance, of a new campaign called "Big Brother Watch".

Their website www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk currently states that this is due to launch in October.

The fight against the "surveillance state" is obviously necessary, but what exactly can this new campaign achieve, that the existing campaign groups could not do just as well, or much better, if they had some more money ?

[...]

Why exactly should Spy Blog, or anybody else who cares about these issues, support Yet Another Campaign Organisation rather than existing ones like:

• the NO2ID Campaign,
  
• Privacy International,
  
• GeneWatch UK ,
  
• 
  
• the Open Rights Group
  
• the Foundation for Information Policy Research
  
• Action on Rights for Children
  
• Liberty Human Rights
  

etc. etc.

"

What Intellectual Property Law Should Learn from Software

From James Boyle, What Intellectual Property Law Should Learn from Software

Recommended.

Google page rank modelling biodiversity

From the BBC:

"Google's algorithm for ranking web pages can be adapted to determine which species are critical for sustaining ecosystems, say researchers.

According to a paper in PLoS Computational Biology, "PageRank" can be applied to the study of food webs.

These are the complex networks of who eats whom in an ecosystem.

The scientists say their version of PageRank could be a simple way of working out which extinctions would lead to ecosystem collapse...

Co-author Dr Stefano Allesina realised he could apply PageRank to the problem when he stumbled across an article in a journal of applied mathematics describing the Google algorithm.

The researchers say they had to make minor changes to it to adapt it for ecology.

Dr Allesina, of the University of Chicago's department of ecology and Evolution, told BBC News: "First of all we had to reverse the definition of the algorithm.

"In PageRank, a web page is important if important pages point to it. In our approach a species is important if it points to important species."

PageRank apparently performs as well as many of the current computational models that ecologists use in this area. Nice.

Musicians protest UK 3 strikes plans

I don't suppose Peter Mandelson expected this kind of negative reaction from musicians and composers when he proposed and defended introducing a three strikes regime in the UK.

"In a statement seen by the Guardian, a coalition of bodies representing a range of stars including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Damon Albarn attacks the proposals as expensive, illogical and "extraordinarily negative".

The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (Basca) and the Music Producers Guild (MPG) have joined forces to oppose the proposals to reintroduce the threat of disconnection for persistent file sharers, which was ruled out in the government's Digital Britain report in June.

The plans have already been attacked by privacy campaigners, internet service providers and a range of MPs, some of whom accuse the business secretary of being influenced by secret meetings with senior figures from the music and film industry, a charge he denies."

The Guardian has seen the groups' statement which apparently says:

"We vehemently oppose the proposals being made and suggest that the stick is now in danger of being way out of proportion to the carrot. The failure of 30,000 US lawsuits against consumers and the cessation of the pursuit of that policy should be demonstration enough that this is not a policy that any future-minded UK government should pursue."

Nesson responds to critics of his Tenanbaum strategy

Charles Nesson has responded to critics of his litigation strategy in the Tenenbaum case. Some highlights.

"this trial was not an exercise in getting joel off the hook...

starting from scratch the fair use issue now looms as a fundamental question in the allocation of function between judge and jury as providing a limitation in wisdom to the expansive power of copyright, so let them doubt, then consider, then be convinced...

there are two questions: first, when, if ever (and i say never) did congress decide that draconian damages against noncommercial consumers was the appropriate response to peer-to-peer file sharing? second, reached only if the answer to the first requires it, would be whether the power to impose this damage at the unconstrained behest of the copyright industry imposed upon individual by civil process (thereby bypassing the protections afforded criminal defenants) with no attendant compensatory component, no proof of actual damage caused by the defendant, purely for deterrence of conduct involving no trespass is unconstitutional."

There are some important issues to be addressed in the case as Prof. Nesson says and it will continue to be an interesting one to watch.

SCO revivial

Here's something else I missed whilst on holdiday, the SCO case has been revived according to the Washington Post.

Groklaw has more details.

And Hugo Cox comments at the 1709 blog.

Firefox Plug-In Frees Court Records

This one happened in August when I was on holiday but according to Wired,

"Access to the nation’s federal law proceedings just got a public interest hack, thanks to programmers from Princeton, Harvard and the Internet Archive, who released a Firefox plug-in designed to make millions of pages of legal documents free.

Free as in beer and free as in speech...

The plug-in was released by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy, coded by Harlan Yu and Tim Lee, under the direction of noted computer science professor Ed Felten."

Live webcasts of sports events on Internet don't violate copyrights

An Israeli court has reportedly held that live webcasts of sports events on Internet don't violate copyrights so "live-footy.org web site will be allowed to continue free broadcasts of Premier League soccer games."

I'd really like to see the detailed decision. Apparently the judge held that copyright was not breached because web broadcasting is not the same as TV broadcasting and the web viewers would not necessarily therefore be lost paying customers. She refused to allow the identity of the website owner to be revealed and sanctioned the continuation of the sites coverage of the premier league.

Update: I forgot to mention that the Premier League are natually planning to appeal the decision.

Quantum administrators

There's a cost cutting efficiency drive sweeping the public services sector at the moment and it struck me that the obsessional, sometimes ambition driven, sometimes absolute belief in the desirability of

• delivering a standard service to everyone through
• neutralising the infinitely variable and therefore unreliable human elements by
  
• breaking organisational processes into smaller and smaller constituent parts
• the operation and cost of which can be rigorously bureaucratically controlled

is a bit like taking one of the athletes preparing for the 2012 Olympics and cutting them up into their constituent atoms, in the hope that by controlling the atoms you can somehow engineer a medal winning performance. The essence of what was once an elite athlete has long since disappeared and you are so far away from controlling the atoms in a way that would secure that elusive medal and so buried in the vast task of trying to control them, that not only have you not noticed the athlete has been killed but the only thing you can think of doing is divide the atoms up into their even smaller sub atomic particles. And so you sail blindly and vigorously into the completely alien quantum universe, so far beyond the rules of nature of the macroscopic world of the athlete and comprehensibilty to the skill set you bring to it that... well... let's say the medal is not getting any closer.

I've had the privilege of working at the Open University for over 14 years now and the secret of our success has being putting people in touch with people and the absolutely phenomenal goodwill that generates, in spite - shock horror - of the flawed variability of humankind. That public services cost cutting has reached us too but I'm hoping the quantum administrative mindset - a universal constituent in all large organisations (commercial and public sector) that seem to evolve universally towards a state of insanity - can be held at bay suffiently to ensure the survival of the essence of what the OU is all about: to be open to people, places, methods and ideas and promote educational opportunity and social justice by making high-quality university education open to everyone.

Mandelson on why UK is going for 3 strikes

Peter Mandelson has been explaining in this morning's Times why he is pushing the UK government towards a 3 strikes law.

"The Government decided to reopen the issue of suspending internet connections as a sanction of last resort against the most egregious offenders for two simple reasons. First, taking something for nothing, without permission, and with no compensation for the person who created and owns it, is wrong. Simple as that. I was shocked to hear that as much as half of all internet traffic in the UK is for the carriage of unlawful content...

Second, our creative businesses drive much of our economy... we should create a regulatory environment where they can operate without having to deal with illegal competition.

Crucially, if these changes can give the creative businesses and their partners the space to develop new business models that support more new artists, acts and films, then surely we are duty bound to consider them. "

You have to hand it to the entertainment industry lobbyists - they're good at getting influencial politicians fighting their cause. Ruled out by the European Parliament, mulitple jurisdictions all over the world, the Council of Europe, dicta in the the European Court of Justice Promisicae case, and even declared unconstitutional by the highest court in France, 3 strikes gets a new lease of life in the UK, where it had been ruled out by the prime minister, all because music industry executives manage to organise a friendly chat with Peter Mandelson. I do agree with him on one point though and have been saying it for several years:

"Provide customers with a good quality, cheap, safe and efficient experience, and they will ditch illegal downloading."

Convenience beats free every time.

Twitter's bid to trademark 'tweet' fails

Also from last Friday's Guardian: Twitter's bid to trademark 'tweet' fails

"The word "tweet" may have entered the international lexicon thanks to an explosion in 140-character microblogging messages, but an attempt by Twitter's founders to trademark it has been rejected.

Twitter applied to the US patent and trademark office last month for ownership of the word but the request was provisionally denied on the grounds that other companies had filed for trademarks of very similar words."

Teen jailed over Facebook death threats

An 18 year old in the UK has been jailed for making death threats on Facebook according to the Guardian.

"A teenager who posted death threats on Facebook has become the first person in Britain to be jailed for bullying on a social networking site.

Keeley Houghton, 18, of Malvern, Worcestershire, has been sentenced to three months in a young offenders' institution after she posted a message saying that she would kill Emily Moore. She pleaded guilty to harassment.

On 12 July, Houghton updated her status on Facebook to read: "Keeley is going to murder the bitch. She is an actress. What a fucking liberty. Emily Fuckhead Moore.""

Another example of not just the nastiness but also the stupidity of online bullying - they don't seem to realise that they are leaving clear hard evidence of their odious behaviour.

3 strikes for the UK?

The Guardian is reporting that the UK government are planning to introduce a three strikes law for suspected internet copyright infringers.

"People who persist in swapping copyrighted films and music will have their internet

connections cut off under tough new laws to be proposed by the government today.

The measures also include taking the power to target illegal downloaders away from regulator Ofcom and giving it to ministers to speed up the process.

The decision to cut off peer-to-peer filesharers is unexpected since it was ruled out by the government's own Digital Britain report in June as going too far."

Google must reveal blogger's ID in defamation case

From the Findlaw tort blog:

"Model Liskula Cohen was victorious this week in her efforts to get Google to turn over the IP address and email address of an anonymous blogger who allegedly defamed her. She celebrated, according to the New York Post, by forgiving her attacker (one Rosemary Port, who was apparently retaliating against Cohen for some nasty things Cohen allegedly told Port's boyfriend), and dropping a $3 million lawsuit against her.

Perhaps Liskula Cohen was feeling generous, but do the rest of us have to worry about the "anonymous" things we post on the internet? Are you on the verge of being outed, and sued, by the next person who doesn't like what you have to say?"

Remember the post is referring to US not UK defamation law.

Eircom to block internet access to Pirate Bay as other firms refuse

The Irish Times reported last week that Eircom is blocking access to Pirate Bay.

"EIRCOM WILL block its internet customers accessing the Pirate Bay website from September 1st, but other internet service providers (ISPs) have refused a similar request from Irish record labels.

Pirate Bay (piratebay.org) is a notorious Swedish website which provides links to places where copyrighted material such as movies and music can be downloaded for free.

Under an out-of-court agreement with EMI Records, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warners in January, Eircom agreed to cut off customers found to be repeatedly downloading music illegally. The deal also required Eircom to cut off access to Pirate Bay if requested."

Amazon, Yahoo, Microsoft oppose Google book settlement

From the NYT:

"Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo are planning to join a coalition of nonprofit groups, individuals and library associations to oppose a proposed class-action settlement giving Google the rights to commercialize digital copies of millions of books."