Caught in the ACTA

Politicians remain the ultimate dinosaurs in terms of openness: ideally, the rich and powerful would like to make their cosy deals - often aimed at that dangerous openness - behind closed doors. Stuff like this, served up by the indispensable WikiLeaks:

US multi-lateral intellectual property trade agreement proposal, "Discussion Paper on a Possible anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement [ACTA]", circa October 2007.

The title is deceptive.

The agreement covers the copying of information or ideas in a wide variety of contexts. For example page 3, paragraph one is a "Pirate Bay killer" clause designed to criminalize the non-profit facilitation of copyrighted information exchange on the internet.

The document details provisions of a proposed plurilateral trade agreement that would impose strict enforcement of intellectual property rights related to Internet activity and trade in information-based goods. If adopted, a treaty of this form would impose a strong, top-down enforcement regime imposing new cooperation requirements upon internet service providers, including perfunctory disclosure of customer information, as well as measures restricting the use of online privacy tools.

The proposal also specifies a plan to encourage developing nations to accept the legal regime.

This secret agreement, drawn up without any public discussion or oversight, would basically impose all of the worst aspects of US intellectual monopolies on everyone in sight - starting with willing stooges like the UK, and progressing to the unwilling but powerless.

Collaboration of a Different Kidney

Collaborating for mutual benefit lies at the heart of open source, but not quite as profoundly as in this situation:

US doctors have carried out what is believed to be the world's first simultaneous six-way kidney transplant.

Six recipients received organs from six donors in operations at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.

The procedure was made possible after an altruistic donor - neither a friend nor relative of any of the six patients - was found to match one of them.

Five patients had a willing donor whose kidney was incompatible with theirs, but it did match another in the group.

This meant that suddenly, there were six people who could receive an organ.

Bye-Bye Biofuels...

When are people going to wake up to the fact that biofuels are not the solution, but actually exacerbate the world's problems?

A global rice shortage that has seen prices of one of the world's most important staple foods increase by 50 per cent in the past two weeks alone is triggering an international crisis, with countries banning export and threatening serious punishment for hoarders.

With rice stocks at their lowest for 30 years, prices of the grain rose more than 10 per cent on Friday to record highs and are expected to soar further in the coming months. Already China, India, Egypt, Vietnam and Cambodia have imposed tariffs or export bans, as it has become clear that world production of rice this year will decline in real terms by 3.5 per cent. The impact will be felt most keenly by the world's poorest populations, who have become increasingly dependent on the crop as the prices of other grains have become too costly.

...

Analysts have cited many factors for the rises, including rising fuel and fertiliser expenses, as well as climate change. But while drought is one factor, another is the switch from food to biofuel production in large areas of the world, in particular to fulfil the US energy demands.

And this is just the beginning....

Open Letter to America

Since some of America's top minds are apparently having a bit of bother deciding this one, I thought the following personal experiences might help. (Via Craig Murray.)

Update: Not that we can talk, of course.

Just How Healthy Will Google Health Be?

Ah, yes, Google Health:

Due to the sensitive and personal nature of the data that will be stored in Google Health, we need to conduct our health service with the same privacy, security, and integrity users have come to expect in all our services. Google Health will protect the privacy of your health information by giving you complete control over your data. We won't sell or share your data without your explicit permission. Our privacy policy and practices have been developed in thoughtful collaboration with experts from the Google Health Advisory Council.

All highly laudable.

So what happens when somebody turns up on Google's doorstep with a warrant, demanding information about an individual? Presumably, it will fight. And what happens when somebody *doesn't* turn up on Google's doorstep with a warrant, but just wants a quiet chat about the records of someone who is - because the US government says they are, but can't reveal the details because it's a state secret - a terrible wicked evil terrorist, and anyway has a funny-sounding name? Will it fight for them, too?

The Chumby Era Begins

Today is a Chumbylicious day:

Chumby Industries announced today the public launch of the chumby, its much-anticipated compact consumer Internet device that enables people to receive a constant personalized broadcast of their favorite parts of the Web. The chumby device is currently available in the U.S. at www.chumby.com for $179.95 including shipping.

A little bigger than a coffee cup, the Wi-Fi connected chumby provides people with a fun, hassle-free way to enjoy what they want most out of the Internet at a glance and wake up to thousands of different streaming Internet radio stations, custom "alarm tones," videos and more. With a large and growing base of content from the Internet, including the latest news, weather and entertainment, as well as the ability to share photos, widgets and e-cards with family and friends, the chumby is one of the most versatile and lifestyle-friendly Internet enabled devices on the market today.

One reason why it is so versatile is that it runs GNU/Linux and is designed to be hacked. Here's what Linux Journal had to say on the subject:

“Chumby Industries was formed by hackers who wanted to create something interesting, useful and different. The starting point was the humble clock radio”, its creators explain. Since then, Chumby has evolved from a clock in a cushion to an Any-purpose Net-native Linux device. That's any with a capital A, because the Chumby is built to be hackable at every level, including the physical. Not only does it sense motions and squeezings, but it also hosts an assortment of charms, through its “outerware API”. The charms and much more about the Chumby were designed by Susan Kare (who designed the original desktop icons for the Macintosh and Windows, among too many other things to mention). Susan is Creative Director for Chumby. The company might be cuddly, but it means business too.

And if that's not enough, one of the founders of Chumby is Bunnie Huang, ace hardware hacker. I'm sure that the Chumby will not only be hugely successful, but will spawn an entire industry of configurable consumer widgets.

The only blemish is that you can't currently buy the Chumby outside the US.....

Bye-bye US Business Method Patents?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Copyright Laws: What a Load of Rubbish

Unbelievable:

If you came across a trash can filled with lawfully made compact discs and DVDs that the copyright owner had authorized to be put in that trash can and then thrown away because it didn’t want to pay the postage to have them returned, do you think you could be criminally prosecuted for selling those copies, and would you think that the copyright owners would be entitled to restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act? If you answered no to these questions, you would be wrong according to the Eighth Circuit.

The New China Syndrome

Here's a fascinating article about how China's $1.4 trillion - yes, that's a trillion - holdings of dollars are subsidizing the American way of life, keeping its own people poorer than they might be, and what it all means for the US, China and the rest of us. I was particularly struck by the following the following:

The fair reason for concern is, again, the transparency problem. Twice in the past year, China has in nonfinancial ways demonstrated the ripples that a nontransparent policy creates. Last January, its military intentionally shot down one of its own satellites, filling orbital paths with debris. The exercise greatly alarmed the U.S. military, because of what seemed to be an implied threat to America’s crucial space sensors. For several days, the Chinese government said nothing at all about the test, and nearly a year later, foreign analysts still debate whether it was a deliberate provocation, the result of a misunderstanding, or a freelance effort by the military. In November, China denied a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the Kitty Hawk, routine permission to dock in Hong Kong for Thanksgiving, even though many Navy families had gone there for a reunion. In each case, the most ominous aspect is that outsiders could not really be sure what the Chinese leadership had in mind. Were these deliberate taunts or shows of strength? The results of factional feuding within the leadership? Simple miscalculations? In the absence of clear official explanations no one really knew, and many assumed the worst.

Openness: the solution to everything (well, almost)....

Bring on the Ferrets

A dissertation on copyright in 19th-century America may not sound exactly like beach reading, but the fact is that US law in this area affects the rest of the world - not least because of the US's heavy-handed attempts to extend its application around the globe:

With the rise of digital reproduction and the expansion of the Internet, copyright issues have assumed tremendous prominence in contemporary society. Domestically, the United States is awash in copyright-related lawsuits. Internationally, fears of copyright violation strongly influence U.S. foreign policy, especially with China. Hardly a week goes by without some new copyright-related headline in the news. In a globalized world with cheap digital reproduction, copyright matters.

That law has been shaped by the 19th-century experience. And what a century:

The bill in substance provides that […] copyright patents shall be granted to foreigners; they may hold these monopolies for forty-two years; the assigns of foreigners may also obtain copyrights; all postmasters and customs officers throughout the United States are constituted pimps and ferrets for these foreigners; it is made the duty of postmasters to spy out and seize all books going though the mails that infringe the copyrights of foreigners; if an American citizen coming home brings with him a purchased book, it is to be seized on landing unless he can produce the written consent of the man who owns the copyright, signed by two witnesses. Who the said owner may be, in what part of the world he lives, the innocent citizen must find out as best he can, or be despoiled of his property.

The source of this heated prose of pimps and ferrets? The May 19, 1888 issue of Scientific American.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Gambling

John Naughton points us to a nicely-written piece by John Lanchester about the way the City - and its global mates - work using derivatives to the tune of $85,000,000,000,000 (sorry, no mistake in that number of zeroes.)

It's a long piece because it's describing something that's complicated - sometimes made intentionally more complicated by the banking industry for the purposes of obfuscation - but at its heart it amounts to a very simple thing: gambling. As Lanchester writes:

The list of individual traders who have lost more than a billion dollars at a time betting on derivatives is not short: Robert Citron of Orange County, Toshihide Iguchi at Daiwa, Yasuo Hamanaka at Sumitomo and Nick Leeson at Barings, just to take examples from the early 1990s. In Leeson’s case in 1995, it was a huge unauthorised position in futures on the Nikkei 225, the main Japanese stock exchange. Leeson had been doubling and redoubling his bets in the belief/hope that the index would rise, and hiding the resulting open position – a gigantic open-ended bet – in a secret account. (Incidentally, Leeson’s big bet was on the Nikkei holding its level above 18,000. At the time of writing, 121/2 years later, the index sits at 15,454 – proof, if it were needed, that when prices go down they can stay that way for a long time.) The loss eventually amounted to £827 million, and destroyed Barings, Britain’s oldest merchant bank.

Got that? These are bets, pure and simple, on the way that things will work out. You can dress them up as you will, you can complexify them as you will, but at bottom they are simply gambles.

Now, add that fact to the distasteful sight of the US - a country that probably uses derivatives more than any other, and also probably makes more money from derivatives than any other, trying to stop online gambling with non-US companies - for example by buying off pathetically greedy entities like the EU:

The United States has reached a deal with the European Union, Japan and Canada to keep its Internet gambling market closed to foreign companies, but is continuing talks with India, Antigua and Barbuda, Macau and Costa Rica, U.S. trade officials said on Monday.

Since I'm no expert on derivatives, I don't know the extent to which you can buy them online from anyone anywhere, but I would be utterly astonished if you couldn't (and this suggests you can.) So you have a fundamental cognitive dissonance between the extraordinary use of derivatives worldwide, and the US attempt to ban online gambling though non-US companies.

Maybe the idea is that only the ultra-rich should be allowed to gamble wherever they want.

Bali Bellyache

Had enough of the blind, egoistical obstructionism at Bali? Do something about it. (Via Green Monk.)

(Copyright) Darkness Visible

The benighted policy of extending copyright terms again and again is made visible in a nice graphic accompanying this post:

The term of copyright has steadily expanded under U.S. law. The first federal copyright legislation, the 1790 Copyright Act, set the maximum term at fourteen years plus a renewal term (subject to certain conditions) of fourteen years. The 1831 Copyright Act doubled the initial term and retained the conditional renewal term, allowing a total of up to forty-two years of protection. Lawmakers doubled the renewal term in 1909, letting copyrights run for up to fifty-six years. The 1976 Copyright Act changed the measure of the default copyright term to life of the author plus fifty years. Recent amendments to the Copyright Act expanded the term yet again, letting it run for the life of the author plus seventy years.

What's wrong with this picture?

The Supreme Court has held that legislative trick constitutional, notwithstanding copyright’s policy implied aim of stimulating new authorship—not simply rewarding extant authors.

Actuate's Actual Open Source Snapshot

One of the sure signs that open source is moving into the mainstream is the number of surveys about it that are being conducted. The great thing about these is that while individually they bolster the case for open source in different areas, collectively they are almost overwhelmingly compelling.

The latest such survey comes from Actuate. It's actually an update of an earlier, more circumscribed one, and it ranges far more widely:

Following research first conducted in November 2005, exclusively targeted at financial services companies in the UK and Europe, the 2007 Actuate Open Source Software Survey broadened its scope to include research attitudes to open source systems in both North America and Germany. The 2007 survey also extended beyond financial services to include public services, manufacturing and telecommunications (telco) in the new regions and now uniquely provides a detailed local insight as well as interesting regional comparisons across the geographies and the vertical sectors within them.

The top-line result?

Half the organizations surveyed stated that open source is either the preferred option or is explicitly considered in the software procurement process. One surprising note is that one-third of the organizations surveyed are now likely to consider open source business intelligence in their evaluations. This is a huge shift from just a few years ago.

The survey is available free of charge, but registration is required.

O(A) Look: Now There's a Surprise

As I've mentioned, getting OA to US-funded research is proving incredibly difficult. Here's one reason why:

In a list of Sen. James Inhofe's top contributors for the 2001-2006 Senate election cycle, Opensecrets.Org identifies Reed Elsevier Inc. as his 11th largest contributor, with $13,250 in contributions. Opensecrets.Org notes:

The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization's PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals' immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Before he withdrew them, Sen. Inhofe was the sponsor of two amendments to delete or weaken the NIH Open Access Mandate in the FY 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations bill.

I'm almost ashamed to have worked for Reed Elsevier long, long ago.

The US Slouches Towards Open Access

Good news, America:

Tonight the Senate passed the Labor-HHS appropriations bill containing the provision to mandate OA at the NIH. More, the vote was a veto-proof 75-19.

Ah, yes, but the bad news?

Yes, this is big, even if we cleared this hurdle only to face a Bush veto.

It is extraordinary how difficult it is proving to give the US people access to the research they pay for.

SWIFTly Out of the Frying Pan...

...it seems:

The supervisory board of SWIFT has approved the plans for the restructuring of the systems architecture of the financial messaging network the outlines of which had been known for some time. The core of the realignment is the creation of a global data processing center in Switzerland.

And into the fire:

To this will be added a command-and-control center in Hong Kong.

So now it will be the Chinese eavesdropping on our financial transactions, not the Americans. Oh well, at least it reflects the world's coming New Order....

Glimmer of Hope for US Patent System

A small step towards patent sanity has been taken:

The House approved the most sweeping changes to United States patent law in more than half a century on Friday in a victory for computer companies like Microsoft and finance companies like Goldman Sachs.

Specifically:

The measure passed by the House would change the rules at the Patent and Trademark Office so patents would go to the first person to file an application, not necessarily the first inventor. That would limit years-long disputes over who was the first to invent new technology and would bring the United States in line with other countries’ patent rules. It would also allow third parties to introduce evidence against applications and would create a system, called post-grant opposition, to challenge new patents.

In litigation, it would limit where patent suits could be filed so that cases are not concentrated in court districts deemed favorable to plaintiffs, create a new way to calculate damages to reflect the contribution of the invention to the overall product and allow immediate appeals of court rulings on the interpretation of patent terms while cases are proceeding.

Er, Respect is Something You Earn, Actually

It must be a bit irksome being an antitrust regulator in the United States when your European counterparts are (a) more likely to interfere with the private sector and (b) look disdainfully at federal agencies as wishy-washy.

Which is probably why William Kovacic, one of the Federal Trade Commission's five members, spent nearly an hour on Monday defending the American approach as reasoned and no less thorough than that of its cross-Atlantic counterparts. There is a "tendency on the part of our European colleagues to dismiss the U.S. experience," he said.

Well, one word: Microsoft.

Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES!

I've covered the dispute between the US and Antigua over online gambling before, but it looks like there's a chance the perfect endgame is actually going to play out:

Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others.

That is, either the US is forced to admit to the global community its hypocritical attitude to online gambling, and allow foreign companies to operate sites accessible by Americans; or the entire edifice of intellectual property in the US is rogered; or the WTO implodes.

Sounds like win-win-win to me. (Via TechDirt.)