Defend the Data Protection Act

One of the most important and earliest pieces of legislation concerning digital information is the Data Protection Act (DPA). Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill, currently before Parliament, would effectively nullify the DPA, since it would allow Ministers to use information gathered for one purpose for another – one of the things the DPA is there to prevent.

I therefore urge you to use the WriteToThem service to contact your MP, asking them to vote against the measure. Here's what I've sent:

I would like to express my concern about Clause 152 of the Coroners and Justice Bill. As you know, this would enable any Minister by order to be able to take any information gathered for one purpose - across the public and private sector - and use it for any other purpose. This would effectively nullify the Data Protection Act (DPA) – one of the key pieces of legislation for the digital age – and leave British citizens quite defenceless in this important sphere.

Not only would this be bad in itself, it would be done in a way that undermines Parliament: Ministers would be able to ignore the DPA for any purpose whenever it suited them, without any need to return to Parliament to have the move scrutinised.

I am writing to you to ask you to vote against this pernicious move. Moreover, please know that if the Clause is passed, I refuse to give my consent to the arbitrary sharing of my information under any ‘Information Sharing Order’.

Sharing is Part of the Human Condition

I missed this when it first came out, but it's too good not to er, share:

“Since the dawn of time, human beings have felt the need to share - from food to art. Sharing is part of the human condition. A person who does not share is not only selfish, but bitter and alone,” Coelho told TorrentFreak, explaining why he decided to share his books for free.

And he should know:

Paulo Coelho, the best-selling author of “The Alchemist”, is using BitTorrent and other filesharing networks as a way to promote his books. His publishers weren’t too keen on giving away free copies of his books, so he’s taken matters into his own hands.

In Praise of Modularity

On Open Enterprise blog.

Sharing Rules of Thumb

One of the key properties of open endeavours is winnowing down and sharing of essential information so that others can build on it. Here's a site that seems to be a distant cousin:

A hundred years ago, people used rules of thumb to make up for a lack of facts. Modern­ day rule of thumbing is rooted in an overabun­dance of facts. The average person, confronted with the Internet’s oceans of data and multiple overlapping Ph.D. dissertations, often is as perplexed as a pioneer chemist trying to whip up a little gun­powder without a formula. A pilot in a tight spot doesn't ask questions about aeronautical en­gineering; a pilot in a tight spot asks "now what?" There are times when you don't need to know the best way to do something. These are times for ballpark figures, for knowing what you probably can get away with.

Surprisingly addictive. (Via Joho the Blog.)

The Real Big Switch

An eloquent statement by John Wilbanks about the commons, sharing and solving complex problems:

One of the reasons I believe so deeply in the commons approach (by which i mean: contractually constructed regimes that tilt the field towards sharing and reuse, technological enablements that make public knowledge easy to find and use, and default policy rules that create incentives to share and reuse) is that I think it is one of the only non-miraculous ways to defeat complexity. If we can get more people working on individual issues – which are each alone not so complex – and the outputs of research snap together, and smart people can work on the compiled output as well – then it stands to reason that the odds of meaningful discoveries increase in spite of overall systemic complexity.

He concludes:

It is not easy. But it is, in a way, a very simple change. It just requires the flipping of a switch, from a default rule of “sharing doesn’t matter” to one of “sharing matters enormously”.

That's what it's all about, people.

An Intellectual Approach to File Sharing

I've always assumed the Swedish Pirate Party were a bunch of anarchists who wanted to cock a snook at authority by disrupting one of its precious intellectual monopolies, and have some fun along the way.

I was wrong.

It turns out that there is some pretty deep thinking behind what they are doing, as evidence by this fascinating interview with Rick Falkvinge, founder and the leader of the party:

What was remarkable was that this was the point where the enemy - forces that want to lock down culture and knowledge at the cost of total surveillance - realized they were under a serious attack, and mounted every piece of defense they could muster. For the first time, we saw everything they could bring to the battle.

And it was... nothing. Not even a fizzle. All they can say is "thief, we have our rights, we want our rights, nothing must change, we want more money, thief, thief, thief". And shove some poor artists in front of them to deliver the message. Whereas we are talking about scarcity vs. abundance, monopolies, the nature of property, 500-year historical perspectives on culture and knowledge, incentive structures, economic theory, disruptive technologies, etc. The difference in intellectual levels between the sides is astounding.

So now we know what the enemy has, and that they have absolutely nothing in terms of intellectual capital to bring to the battle. They do, however, have their bedside connections with the current establishment. That's the major threat to us at this point.

Intellectual capital? Hm....

And then he goes on to make this important point:

The people who have been led to believe that file sharing can be stopped with minimal intrusion are basically smoking crack.

Early on in the debate, we dropped the economic arguments altogether and focused entirely on civil liberties and the right to privacy. This has proven to be a winning strategy, with my keynote "Copyright Regime vs. Civil Liberties" being praised as groundbreaking.

The economic arguments are strong, but debatable. There are as many reports as there are interests in copyright, and every report arrives at a new conclusion. If you just shout and throw reports over the volleyball net at the other team, it becomes a matter of credibility of the reports. When you switch to arguing civil liberties, you dropkick that entire discussion.

Obviously I need to pay more attention to these people.

How Openness Prevents Plagiarism

Here's an important conclusion drawn from the rather sad Joyce Hatto saga:

It's a perfect example of what we've been saying about artists putting their work online: sharing files widely prevents plagiarism, by making it much easier to detect. One couldn't ask for a better drama to illustrate the point. Never mind Joyce Hatto — think instead of all those other pianists, whose recordings were passed off as her work: the only reason the hoax was detected was because their recordings were being shared online too!

The Biter Bit - by Bits

Now that the flow of highly-personal "security" information between the US and other countries is a two-way thing, I predict people in the former are going to become as unenthusiastic about it as those in the latter:

Welcome to the new world of border security. Unsuspecting Americans are turning up at the Canadian border expecting clear sailing, only to find that their past -- sometimes their distant past -- is suddenly an issue.

While Canada officially has barred travelers convicted of criminal offenses for years, attorneys say post-9/11 information-gathering, combined with a sweeping agreement between Canada and the United States to share data, has resulted in a spike in phone calls from concerned travelers.

...

Oh, and by the way, if you don't need to travel to Canada, don't think you won't need to clear your record. Lesperance says it is just a matter of time before agreements are signed with governments in destinations like Japan, Indonesia and Europe.

"This," Lesperance says, "is just the edge of the wedge."

Oh, yes, indeedy.... (Via Slashdot.)