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One of the core areas that Mozilla is working on is user privacy, and
one important aspect of this is controlling cookies. Most people are
now aware that sites they visit seek to place cookies - small strings of
information - on their systems as a way of tracking when and what they
visit on that site. What many may not know is that so-called
"third-party" cookies are also widely used: these allow people to be
tracked as they move from site to site, and effectively enable a
detailed picture of their use of the Web to be built up.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
In an implicit acknowledgement that the Europe-wide protests against ACTA indicated that there was a problem with copyright in the digital age, the European Commission announced back in December what it called "an orientation debate on content in the digital economy." This is what that meant, apparently:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the richest seams of open data concerns transport. After all, by
their very nature, transport systems generate huge amounts of new data
every day -- times, routes, travel options. Similarly, huge numbers of
people use multiple means of transport, which means there is a big
potential audience for analyses of that data. And it's definitely in
the interest of transport operators to make that information freely
available so that developers can use it in new ways, since that is
likely to make traveling easier, and lead to increased custom.
On
Techdirt.
For a year now, Techdirt has been following the sorry saga of Germany's attempt to make search engines and others pay
for licenses to show even small excerpts from online newspapers. The
main motivation seems to be to take money from Google for being
successful, and to give it to the German publishers that are struggling.
On Techdirt.
As I noted recently in the context of the BBC inexplicably supporting the introduction of DRM into the HTML5 specification,
openness lies at the heart of the Web and the Internet. One of the
problems with true openness is that it has to be at every level: if any
part of a system is closed, it interferes with the openness of the
whole.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
If it is to be true to its name, the World Wide Web ought to reflect the
planet's full cultural and linguistic diversity. Currently, though,
many sites and tools remain optimized for English and its character set,
although that's gradually changing as other countries with different
languages and writing systems come online in greater numbers.
On
Techdirt.
The Internet as a mass medium is still relatively young, so it's no
surprise that its function in society and in our daily lives is still
being defined. One important question concerns the nature of our
actions online: to what extent are they public? Here's one rather
extreme view, expressed by Jürgen Maurer, vice-president of Germany's
Federal Criminal Police Office, as reported by Der Spiegel (original in German):
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt noted last year, France has a regrettable habit of dreaming up really bad ideas
when it comes to the Internet, most famously with the three-strikes
scheme, now known there by the name of the body the oversees it --
Hadopi. Guillaume Champeau points us to a piece in the French newspaper Libération, which contains yet more appalling possibilities (original in French).
On
Techdirt.
Long-time readers will remember the appalling way in which the UK's
Digital Economy Act was brought in - with no research, no debate, and
no democracy. At its heart lies the infamous "three strikes" idea: if
you are alleged - not proved, but merely alleged - to have shared files
online on three occasions you will be subject to some punishment.
Originally that was cutting off your hand, er, your Internet connection,
but as the discussions over implementing this unjust and punitive law
have dragged on, it's become less clear how it will actually work.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Techdirt has been writing for a while about China's policy of providing incentives to file patents -- regardless of whether those patents have any worth. That's led to a naïve celebration of the large numbers now being granted, as if more patents corresponded to more innovation.
On
Techdirt.
I've written a number of posts about Mozilla's rise and fall and
rise: how it went from saving the open Web and open standards in the
face of the stagnation brought about by Internet Explorer 6's long
dominance; to losing its way
somewhat, with the upstart Chrome threatening to supplant its role as
the "other" browser; and finally finding a role once more as it
concentrated on what it called Web apps.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
New Zealand has the unhappy distinction of being in the vanguard of
using the "three strikes" approach of punishment for people accused of
sharing unauthorized copies online. As in France and the UK, this was
brought in without any preparatory research to ascertain its
effectiveness, and without any real thought about the practical
implications. That makes a post by Susan Chalmers on the blog of
InternetNZ, a "non-profit open membership organisation dedicated to
protecting and promoting the Internet in New Zealand", particularly
valuable.
On
Techdirt.
Back in November last year, I wrote
about a particular class of open data - that regarding clinical trials
data. I pointed out that of all open data, it is arguably the most
important, because it can literally save lives - huge numbers of them.
That post was by way of a taster for future columns - like this one -
which touch on this area, since I believe it will become one of the most
important battlegrounds for openness in the next few years.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the reasons Techdirt rails against exaggerated responses to
supposed terrorist threats is that it has caused police forces around
the world to lose all sense of proportion -- literally, in the case of
this UK story from the Daily Mail.
On
Techdirt.
Recently, Techdirt noted that the European "database right" could pose a threat
to releasing public data there. But that assumes that central
governments are at least trying to open things up. A splendid piece by
Sebastian Haselbeck on the Open Gov Germany blog, with the
self-explanatory title "German government screws up open data," underlines that things can fail because the government itself sabotages transparency moves.
On
Techdirt.
The open source programming language Python
-- named after the British comedy series "Monty Python" -- became
popular in the 1990s, along with two other languages beginning with "P":
Perl and PHP. Later, they formed a crucial part of the famous "LAMP"
stack -- the GNU/Linux operating system + Apache Web server + MySQL
database + Python/Perl/PHP as scripting languages -- that underpinned
many of the most successful startups from this time.
On
Techdirt.
It seems like every other headline is about drones these days
-- drones being used in battle, drones being used by the police, drones
as a threat to privacy. As we've noted
before, it's easy to get the impression that drones are inherently
evil, and should be made illegal or something (good luck with that.)
But drones are simply a new kind of technology, largely made possible by
Moore's Law and the dramatic reductions in size, weight and cost it has
brought with it for electronic control devices. Like any other
technology, drones can be used for all kinds of purposes, both good and
bad. It's just that we have heard mostly about the more dubious ones.
To remedy that, here's a heart-warming tale of how drones could tackle one of the most serious threats facing wildlife around the world: poaching.
On
Techdirt.
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