Massive Overblocking Hits Hundreds Of UK Sites

Two years ago, Techdirt reported on a very troubling ruling in the UK courts that BT had to block access to the Usenet service provider Newzbin2. At the time, many feared that this would be the thin end of the wedge, giving copyright companies an easy way to shut down other sites. And with that power, of course, would come the inevitable errors, blocking completely unrelated sites. Just how seriously those mistakes could be is shown by this recent case of massive overblocking, reported here on PC Pro: 

On Techdirt.

UK's 3-Strikes Plan Continues To Grind Through The System; Still Not In Force, Still Awful

As Techdirt reported in 2010, the passage of the Digital Economy Act was one of the most disgraceful travesties of the UK parliamentary process in recent times; it was badly drafted, hardly revised and then pushed through with almost no debate in the dying moments of the previous government. Since then, two UK ISPs -- BT and TalkTalk -- have challenged the Act in the courts, but lost earlier this year. 

On Techdirt.

How Even Highly-Targeted Censorship Can Lead To Overblocking

As the battle rages over SOPA and PIPA, censorship is very much on people's minds. But there are many different kinds of censorship, operating at different levels of precision. For example, while some forms are crude and inexact, like Homeland Security's shutdown of 84,000 sites, others are highly targeted, and designed to block in a very specific way. 

On Techdirt.

BT Joins the Patent Hall of Shame

Those with good memories may recall the following amusing episode when BT wanted to sue people for daring to use its super-duper patented hyperlink invention:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source and the Fear of Failure

Yesterday I took part in an interesting event organised by BT called "Accelerating Enterprise adoption of Open Source Software" (disclaimer: filthy lucre was involved.) One topic that elicited much comment was why the public sector has singularly failed to deploy open source. As well as political issues (Tony Blair was and presumably still is manifestly in awe of (Sir) Bill Gates), there's another important issue to do with a fear of failure.

Nobody in government wants to take a chance on something new, so they stick with the old suppliers and the old solutions. When those (almost inevitably) fail, this causes people to be even more cautious, and so the vicious circle continues.

That's clearly bad news for open source, but here's a particularly good articulation of why the fear of failure is bad for governments more generally:

When I’ve spoken with government people, they confess a phobia of failure. Yet without the opportunity to fail, government – like industry and media – cannot experiment and thus innovate. We must give government the license to fail. That is difficult, especially because it is the citizenry that must grant that permission. I think government must begin to recast its relationship by opening up pilot procts to input and discussion, to smart ideas and improvements. I’m not suggesting for a second that every decision be turned into a vote, that law become a wiki. Government still exercises its responsibility. But it needs to use the new mechanisms of the web to hear those ideas. I would look for examples to Dell’s Ideastorm, Starbucks’ My Starbucks Idea, and Best Buy’s Idea Exchange.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Fon and Games with "Three Strikes"

Interesting:

BT’s wifi network has reached half a million hotspots. Fon has made a major contribution toward its growth, since about 90% of the BT hotspots are BT Fon. The rate of growth is such that, together with BT, we are on the way to one million hotspots. This is the goal for February 2010.

Suppose, now, that people use some of those million hotspots to download copyright material: how easy is it going to be (a) establishing exactly who downloaded it and (b) cutting off that person?

Gives a new meaning to the term "hotspot"...

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Why Open Source isn't Tiddly for BT

I'd come across TiddlyWiki before, but never really got what it was about....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Seven things people didn't know about me...

...And probably didn't want to. Thanks to that nice Mr Mark Surman, I have been not only tagged but also subjected to fiendishly-clever emotional blackmail in the accompanying email:

I realize this is corny. But corny can be fun. This kind of fun is something I dare you to have.

The rules are:

Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.


Share seven facts about yourself in the post.


Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.


Let them know they’ve been tagged.

Sigh. So, here goes:

1. As I child, I kept frog spawn (still abundant in those far-off days), fascinated by the extraordinary metamorphosis it underwent. Once, among the many froglets that emerged, one had six legs, and two had five (all extra forelimbs.)

2. At primary school, I was one of the ugly sisters in “Cinderella”. I still remember the rather fetching pink and lime-green dress that I wore.

3. I spent most of my free time at secondary school playing bridge. Unfortunately, I used the Blue Club system, which, according to Wikipedia, is no longer popular, making it even more of an utter waste of time.

4. I was Senior Wrangler in the 1977 Tripos. Barely anyone knows what that means; even fewer care. 100 years ago, it would have guaranteed me a pampered college fellowship for life. I regard it as lucky escape.

5. My first post-university job was as a maths supply teacher for 30+ 15-year-olds in Catford, South London, most of whom were larger than me, but rather less interested in mathematics than I was. I lasted two months before being escaping to publishing.

6. I was taken off a train at near-gunpoint in Belarus for travelling without a transit visa. At 5 o'clock in the morning. I then had to rush to the immigration office attached to the Grodno border station and get a visa before the waiting train left for Vilnius with all my luggage on board.

7. I am powerless in the presence of honey-roasted cashews. An interesting case of where traditional mathematics breaks down, and 1+1=3.

The rules say I must now pass on this poisoned chalice to others, but unlike Mark I won't add any pressure: please feel free to ignore if you wish, or have already been tagged – I did search, but happily Google is not yet omniscient.

The names below are all key people in the UK world of openness in various ways, and I think it would be interesting to find out more about them. They are (in alphabetical order):

OpenStreetMap's Steve Coast

Open data defender Peter Murray-Rust

Alfresco's John Newton

Sun's Simon Phipps

BT's JP Rangaswami

Boycott Novell's Roy Schestowitz

Open government enthusiast Tom Steinberg

Open Me Kangaroo Up, Sport

Having had their plan to combine their broadband TV services kyboshed by the Competition Commmission, the BBC and ITV today said they plan to do it anyway - but this time to open up the infrastructure to all comers.

The two broadcasters, along with BT, said they want to foster a "common industry approach" that's "open for all public service broadcasters, device developers and other ISPs". All this will be founded upon "a standards based open environment".

Yes, but *how* open?

Having Lots of Fon

One of the blogs I really enjoy reading is that of Fon's founder, Martin Varsavsky. What I love about his writing is his candour: he clearly writes what he thinks, even if it's slightly painful for others - or himself. I've already noted this interesting comment:

Fon has to provide special VPN tunneling technology in the UK for the UK secret services to investigate suspected criminals and terrorists when they log on to our WiFi signal.

Strangely, this passage has now been "disappeared" from the original post....

Here's some more interesting info - not quite so controversial, this time:

Fon now has 10 times more hotspots around the world than our second closest rival. In the UK and Japan our coverage is especially good. With this crisis Fon cannot think of deep pocketed investors continuing to cover high burn rates, regardless of the fact that our investors are BT, Google, eBay, Itochu, and some of the largest VCs in the world.

BT Calls on Open Source

On Open Enterprise blog.

Striking Back Against the Three-Strikes Rule

As I noted yesterday, the idea of banning people from the Internet after "three strikes" is both outrageous and unworkable. One reason advanced for the latter is that people may be piggybacking on your wireless router, so they get the files and you get the blame.

That may well be true, but I find this rather weak as a potential defence, since it means that you would need to leave your router open, which many would be chary about. But I've just realised that there's a way to do this that goes beyond simply leaving it open and hoping: you join the Fon community, which is all about opening up your router in a controlled way. What's even better, is that it's backed by none other than BT in the UK:

BT and FON have joined forces to create a Wi-Fi community that allows its members to connect for free to thousands of places around the UK and the world, by simply sharing some of their Internet connection at home.

This tie-up with BT always struck me as masterly, because it meant that Fon was suddenly "official", and not some wild hacker thing that ought to be shut down. And yet shutting it down is the only way you could stop strangers from downloading copyright material through your shared connection.

So the three-strikes idea comes down, in part, to this: whether the UK government really wants to scupper BT's attempts to provide "Wifi for everyone", as it puts it, to keep a few lazy media companies quiet for a while - until they realise that plan 'C' has failed too.

Das ist Ja Doof!

Many years ago the last major British computer manufacturer ICL launched One Per Desk, one of the craziest early computers ever. It was based on the famous Sinclair QL - as used by one Linus Torvalds - and had small tapes instead of disc drives (no, they never worked). But what was most striking about this misbegotten device, was the name of one of the rebadged versions, which came from BT. It was called Tonto - Italian and Spanish for "stupid."

Well, the meme lives on:

Doof, a new London-based startup went into public beta at the beginning of October offering casual gaming wrapped-up with social networking in a good-looking package.

"Doof" is German for "stupid"....

BT Learns It's Fun to Share with Fon

Interesting:

BT and FON have joined forces to create a Wi-Fi community that allows its members to connect for free in thousands of places around the UK and the world.

Two things strike me: that BT has effectively sanctioned the use of its data network for Fon connections - and hence validated the whole Fon idea; and that the (revolutionary) idea that everyone gains if everyone shares is being promoted by one of the largest and most traditional companies in the UK. We're making progress.

GPL > BT?

As an ex-victim of British Telecom, I have to say that to see it apparently humbled by the forces of light in this way is doubly delicious:

BT's wireless broadband router Home Hub may be in breach of the terms of Linux's General Public License, after it emerged the device runs on open source code.

...

BT responded quickly and posted an admission that it was using open source software and made it available to download late last week. However, investigation by the Freedom Taskforce, the part of Free Software Europe which deals with licensing, said BT had not in fact published the complete code.

The saga is clearly not over yet, but what's significant is that a very large multinational like BT would at least want to look like it's complying: that's power. And if you don't believe that there's something new in the air, here's exhibit number 2.

Bruce Schneier, the Man from BT???

Say it ain't true, Bruce:

Britain's BT Group has snapped up United States-based Counterpane Internet Security for a sum of more than $20 million as part of a continuing commitment to the security offering and overall growth of its Global Services business.

Counterpane provides managed network security services.

As part of the deal, Counterpane's founder, CTO and highly regarded security guru, Bruce Schneier, will join the BT payroll. Schneier will maintain his position as CTO within Counterpane, based in Mountain View, Calif.

Bruce Schneier, security god, meets BT, ex-monopolistic monster.

Ah, well, I suppose you deserve the dosh, if nothing else.