Should Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage that flaws in its software have caused around the world? It might have to, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal becomes law. Although that sounds an appealing prospect, one knock-on consequence could be that open source coders would also be liable for any damage that errors in their software caused....
On Linux Journal.
Great point here from Adam Tinworth, about why traditional publishers are suffering so badly at the hands of the bloggers:
the new breed of publisher - the ones doing it for pure passion, at virtually no cost - will and up wounding us where we're weakest. Because we've neglected parts of our audience, pandered to our own prejudices and missed opportunities.
*That* is why blogs have succeeded, and will continue to succeed until the gentlemen's club formerly known as publishing has an epiphany and sorts itself out.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
This is rich:
House of Commons officials have today called in the police to hunt down the mole who leaked details of MPs expenses.
The parliamentary officials spent the morning in talks with Scotland Yard, and made the decision this afternoon.
In a statement, officials said: "The House authorities have received advice that there are reasonable grounds to believe a criminal offence may have been committed in relation to the way in which information relating to Members' allowances has been handled.
Now, since said leak has shown probably several hundred "reasonable grounds" that fraud has been committed, might it not be a priority to investigate those first? And might it not look a little vindictive simply going after the leaker? And might not all this sorry saga be a rather strong argument for introducing a public interest defence for such leaks?
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One of the central themes of this blog is that the openness that powers the continuing rise and success of open source can be applied to most other areas – in business, and in life generally. No better proof of that could be found than the revelations today about the widespread and thoroughgoing abuse of the expenses system by senior UK politicians...
On Open Enterprise blog.
Oh, look, what a surprise: the UK government's plans implement a European human rights ruling that the "blanket" retention of suspects' data is unlawful proves to be a typical quibble about what "removing" the profiles means:The genetic profiles of hundreds of thousands of innocent people are to be kept on the national DNA database for up to 12 years in a decision critics claim is designed to sidestep a European human rights ruling that the "blanket" retention of suspects' data is unlawful.
The proposed new rules for the national DNA database to be put forward tomorrow by the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, include plans to keep the DNA profiles of innocent people who are arrested but not convicted of minor offences for six years.
The proposal would also apply to children from age 10 who are arrested but never successfully prosecuted.
In cases of more serious violent and sexual crime, innocent people's genetic codes will be kept for 12 years.
It was widely expected that the DNA profiles, samples and fingerprints of 850,000 innocent people kept on the database would be destroyed in response to the ruling by the European court of human rights last December.
Yet again this government shows its deep contempt for international courts, and demonstrates its profoundly cynical belief that the innocent simply haven't been proved guilty yet.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
Interesting to see Microsoft jumping on the openness bandwagon again - specifically, on the open government bandwagon:The Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) is a cloud-based collection of software assets that enables publicly available government data to be easily accessible. Using open standards and application programming interfaces (API), developers and government agencies can retrieve the data programmatically for use in new and innovative online applications, or mashups that can help:
* Improve citizen services
* Enhance collaboration between government agencies and private organizations
* Increase government transparency
* And more…
OGDI promotes the use of this data by capturing and publishing re-usable software assets, patterns, and practices. The data repository already holds over 60 different government datasets that are readily available for use in new applications, and is continuously updated with additional government datasets.
...
OGDI data is hosted in Windows Azure. It is accessible through open, standards-based web services from a variety of development environments, including Microsoft .NET, JavaScript, Adobe Flash, PHP, Ruby, Python, and others. Check out the Community for more information.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.
Somebody clearly doesn't understand open source:
Despite a mission to make the games as financially and environmentally sustainable as possible, the organisers of London 2012 have ruled out any significant use of open source software.
Open source is the *only* sustainable option for software, because it can be re-used - one of the great advantages of free software. So given that open source should be the only option, why aren't the organisers using it?“My primary driver here is to deliver the Olympics and that means using proven applications software and by and large that application software does not run on open standards – there are some exceptions to that we are running a little bit of Linux but by and large it is Windows orientated,” he said.
What planet is this man living on? "Proven software...does not run on open standards"? What, like Apache, or Sendmail or BIND or JBoss or MySQL? Well, it's clear which Olympics event *he* would come first in: clueless CIO twit of the year.
Not my words, but those of a certain Viviane Reding (NB: MS Word document):The fourth element I would like to underline is the recognition of the right to Internet access. The new rules recognise explicitly that Internet access is a fundamental right such as the freedom of expression and the freedom to access information. The rules therefore provide that any measures taken regarding access to, or use of, services and applications must respect the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, including the right to privacy, freedom of expression and access to information and education as well as due process.
Surprising news that Amendment 138 was put *back* in its original, stronger form, is welcome indeed, although it looks like the technicalities of net neutrality were beyond the MEPs. Still, kudos to the latter for standing up against the "three strikes" legislation: it's a good start, and an excellent sign for the future.
Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.
Yesterday I was praising Red Hat's submission to the EPO in its pondering of the patentability of software. Today, it's the FSFE's turn. They've produced a fairly short but sweet document, which has a sentiment close to my heart:4.(a) Does the activity of programming a computer necessarily involve technical considerations?
No. The reverse is almost invariably true. Any software program is the result of programming, which is in essence combining a series of algorithms, and algorithms are matematics.
Got it in one.
One of the unique features of free software is that it can be forked. Indeed, it is one of the most powerful incentives for projects to hew close to their users. If they stray too far, someone might decide that enough is enough, and fork the project to produce something closer to their needs.
Whether that project thrives is a matter of support: if it meets a genuine need in the community, it will pick up users and coders. If it does not, it will wither.
Against that background, the following news is rather exciting...
On Open Enterprise blog.
It seems that one of the main architects of the disgrace that is the Telecoms Package is the UK MEP Malcolm Harbour. Here's an indication that he doesn't know what he is talking about:According to rumours in cyberpsace the proposed new rules will impose conditional access to internet, providers will be able to limit the number of site you're visiting and Skype could be blocked. Is Internet freedom really at risk?
That's pure fantasy. The Telecoms package has never been about anything to do with restrictions on the internet. I am astonished to see this remarkable text from Black-out Europe. There is absolutely nothing in this proposal that says anything about that.
The questioner is wrong to frame this in terms of blocking *sites*: it's about blocking *services*, particularly ones based on new protocols piggy-backing on TCP/IP. The Telecoms Package gives telecoms companies the possibility of blocking anything it doesn't like at this level - killing net neutrality - provided they tell people what they are doing.
So Mr Harbour is absolutely incorrect to say "The Telecoms package has never been about anything to do with restrictions on the internet." He obviously doesn't understand what Blackout Europe is saying, as the latter's own post on the topic points out.
Remember how those magic ID cards would provide strong forms of identity, thus protecting us against terrorists, people traffickers et al.? Well, those plans have been watered-down, somewhat:High street chemists, post offices and photo shops are to be used to record the electronic fingerprints and other biometric data needed for the national identity card scheme, the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, is to announce today.
The decision to use high street shops sidesteps the need for the Home Office to set up a network of enrolment centres with mobile units to operate in rural areas.
Well, yes, it will save money, but it will also blast security holes through the entire scheme. Without rigorous oversight, it will be much easier to create fake ID cards - just what all those nasty terrorists, people traffickers and other ne'er-do-wells need. Which goes to show that the government isn't interested in increasing our security, just in gaining even greater control over us - and security go hang.
Here's a nasty meme that's beginning to swirl around:Microsoft (MSFT) is about to finally consummate a search deal with Yahoo -- and that's great. But if Redmond really wants to carve into's Google search business over the next 10 years, it needs to offer whatever it takes -- $800 million? $1 billion? more? -- to buy Twitter right now.
Eeek - that could be problematic, and I don't just mean because Twitter is built on open source software. The idea of Microsoft controlling my twittering is too horrible to contemplate, so what could I do?
The obvious answer is move to Identica, which is free software. The only problem with that is that I would probably lose most of the people following me. No huge disaster maybe, but going from 1000 followers to zero is not the most motivating of situations.
Ideally, there would be an easy way for my followers to opt to follow me on Identica - as easy as them clicking on a link in a tweet. Anyone know if that's currently possible, and if not, whether it's even plausible? But even then, there's the question of support for Identica in Twitter clients (to say nothing of the main Twitter site).
So what would *you* do if Microsoft bought Twitter?
Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.
A few weeks ago, Leo Babauta published a great post entitled "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (or, the Privatization of the English Language)" about yet another idiocy of the intellectual monopolists. Now he has another, winningly-entitled: "The Culture of Sharing: Why Releasing Copyright Will Be the Smartest Thing You Do." Here's the core message:Last year I Uncopyrighted my blog, Zen Habits, and my ebook, Zen To Done, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. People have used my articles in blogs, newsletters, magazines, ebooks, books and more. And yes, they’ve made profits off me without me getting any of that money … but at the same time, I’ve benefitted: my ideas have spread, my name and brand have spread, and my readership has grown and grown. Since I Uncopyrighted the blog, it has grown from about 30K subscribers to 113K.
You can Uncopyright your blog, your ebooks, and even your print books. And I can almost guarantee you: it’ll be the best thing you can do as a writer.
His heart is certainly in the right place; the only problem is that "uncopyrighting" is not as easy as it looks. Although Creative Commons has come out with what it calls cc0 - "no copyright" - I believe that in some jurisdictions it's practically impossible to renounce your rights as a creator (I'd be interested in receiving confirmation or refutation of this point.)
What you *can* do even there (presumably) is to adopt a licence that grants considerable rights to users (like the GNU GPL). But it's worth noting that most of these *depend* on copyright law, rather than denying it completely.
Six months ago I noted that the European Patent Office had embarked upon a fairly abstruse process....
On Open Enterprise blog.
Believe it or not, this saga isn't over, and things are going badly again. The Open Rights Group has a good detailed summary of what's happening, but the short version is this: all of the hard-won victories on the Telecoms Package may come to nought in a vote tomorrow through some outrageous bullying and trickery by national governments (especially UK and France.)
This means we need to write - or, better, phone - our MEPs, and get them to vote as follows:Here are crucial amendments you should tell MEPs to vote for:
* Trautmann's report
o Amendment 3=7: guarantee of access and distribution of any content/application/service
o Amendment 1CP=2=5=6=9: original 138
* Harbour's report
o Amendment 101=111=117: no discrimination in traffic management policies
o Amendment 102=112=118: regulatory powers against discriminated traffic management policies
o Amendment 62=94=104=119: original 166
o Amendment 96=106=120 : deleting cooperation between ISP and copyright holder about lawful content
As you can see, this has become hideously complicated thanks to the constant to-ing and fro-ing of votes and amendments. Perhaps it's simplest to ask them to vote for the "Citizen's Rights Amendments", and emphasise why it's important to do so. Basically, if they don't, we'll lost net neutrality in Europe, and also the right to judicial reviews before people are thrown off the net on the say-so of companies.
MEPs by country, complete with their direct telephone numbers, can be found on the excellent Quadrature du Net site, which has bags of background info. In the UK, you can find out who your MEPs are by entering your postcode into the WriteToThem service.
Update: This rather poorly-written piece ("digital copyright thieves"? - Sorry, you don't understand the law) suggests that a deal has been done:Last month, MEPs voted for a bill that read: “No restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities.” But, facing opposition from the Council Of Ministers, they on Tuesday rewrote the passage to read: “Recognising that the internet is essential for education and for the practical exercise of freedom of expression and access to information, any restriction imposed on the exercise of these fundamental rights should be in accordance with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.”
This is particularly nauseating:
“The spirit of the amendment has been respected ... we have avoided the rejection of the amendment.” Trautmann said the compromise writes a “sense of a principle” in to the bill.
No, you just gave in to bullying, love.
Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.
One of the more laughable reasons that traditional science publishers cite in their attempts to rubbish open access is that it's somehow not so rigorous as "their" kind of publishing. There's usually a hint that standards might be dropped, and that open access journals aren't, well, you know, quite proper.
And then this comes along:The Scientist has reported that, yes, it's true, Merck cooked up a phony, but real sounding, peer reviewed journal and published favorably looking data for its products in them. Merck paid Elsevier to publish such a tome, which neither appears in MEDLINE or has a website, according to The Scientist.
Now, open access in itself isn't going to stop this kind of thing, but it seems highly unlikely that anyone would try it, given that the results would be freely available for any Thomas, Richard or Harold to peruse.
One reason why Elseview probably thought they could pull it off was that they knew few people would look at this stuff - which is why it's not in Medline, and why it doesn't have a website. Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow and all that.
So, next time high-falutin' publishers look down on open access journals - especially if it's Elsevier - just remind them about the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine episode....
This is what the virus really looks like:
1 atgaaggcaa tactagtagt tctgctatat acatttgcaa ccgcaaatgc agacacatta
61 tgtataggtt atcatgcgaa caattcaaca gacactgtag acacagtact agaaaagaat
121 gtaacagtaa cacactctgt taaccttcta gaagacaagc ataacgggaa actatgcaaa
181 ctaagagggg tagccccatt gcatttgggt aaatgtaaca ttgctggctg gatcctggga
241 aatccagagt gtgaatcact ctccacagca agctcatggt cctacattgt ggaaacatct
301 agttcagaca atggaacgtg ttacccagga gatttcatcg attatgagga gctaagagag
361 caattgagct cagtgtcatc atttgaaagg tttgagatat tccccaagac aagttcatgg
421 cccaatcatg actcgaacaa aggtgtaacg gcagcatgtc ctcatgctgg agcaaaaagc
481 ttctacaaaa atttaatatg gctagttaaa aaaggaaatt catacccaaa gctcagcaaa
541 tcctacatta atgataaagg gaaagaagtc ctcgtgctat ggggcattca ccatccatct
601 actagtgctg accaacaaag tctctatcag aatgcagatg catatgtttt tgtggggtca
661 tcaagataca gcaagaagtt caagccggaa atagcaataa gacccaaagt gagggatcaa
721 gaagggagaa tgaactatta ctggacacta gtagagccgg gagacaaaat aacattcgaa
781 gcaactggaa atctagtggt accgagatat gcattcgcaa tggaaagaaa tgctggatct
841 ggtattatca tttcagatac accagtccac gattgcaata caacttgtca gacacccaag
901 ggtgctataa acaccagcct cccatttcag aatatacatc cgatcacaat tggaaaatgt
961 ccaaaatatg taaaaagcac aaaattgaga ctggccacag gattgaggaa tgtcccgtct
1021 attcaatcta gaggcctatt tggggccatt gccggtttca ttgaaggggg gtggacaggg
1081 atggtagatg gatggtacgg ttatcaccat caaaatgagc aggggtcagg atatgcagcc
1141 gacctgaaga gcacacagaa tgccattgac gaaattacta acaaagtaaa ttctgttatt
1201 gaaaagatga atacacagtt cacagcagta ggtaaagagt tcaaccacct ggaaaaaaga
1261 atagagaatt taaataaaaa agttgatgat ggtttcctgg acatttggac ttacaatgcc
1321 gaactgttgg ttctattgga aaatgaaaga actttggact accacgattc aaatgtgaag
1381 aacttatatg aaaaggtaag aagccagcta aaaaacaatg ccaaggaaat tggaaacggc
1441 tgctttgaat tttaccacaa atgcgataac acgtgcatgg aaagtgtcaa aaatgggact
1501 tatgactacc caaaatactc agaggaagca aaattaaaca gagaagaaat agatggggta
1561 aaactggaat caacaaggat ttaccagatt ttggcgatct attcaactgt cgccagttca
1621 ttggtactgg tagtctccct gggggcaatc agtttctgga tgtgctctaa tgggtctcta
1681 cagtgtagaa tatgtattta a
Amazing what a few As, Cs, Gs and Ts can do.... (Via Common Knowledge.)
A question that often comes up is why people blog and twitter. I've given various answers over the years, but once again Mike Masnick says it best of all:
These discussions are like another graduate degree for me, because I constantly have to think, rethink, defend and truly understand the arguments I'm making. It's hard to overstate how incredibly valuable that's been. The fact that many journalists refuse to engage in that sort of conversation actually shows through in their work: they don't want to bother. They like to position themselves as experts, but many don't really understand what they're talking about. Engaging in the conversation may be a lot of work -- and, at times, it can be frustrating or seemingly pointless. But, the massive amount of value I've received from those discussions -- just like the student in the story above -- is almost impossible to quantify. People talk about the importance of ongoing education. That's exactly what these conversations are for me.
As I wrote two years ago, one of the most worrying aspects of bird flu (remember that?) was that virus sequences were not being shared well, which meant that it was hard for experts to track its development and come up with a vaccine. Well, in one respect, swine flu seems to be an improvement over the avian variety:In contrast to H5N1 bird flu, all the genetic sequences of this H1N1 are being posted on bulletin boards like GISAID, where scientists can access them and compare preliminary analyses.
The GISAID system was set up in 2006 by scientists who protested that H5N1 sequences were not being made freely available.
Here's what the GISAID site says:This platform is designed and maintained by scientists for scientists from various disciplines e.g. veterinary and human virology, bioinformatics, epidemiology, immunology and clinical analysis etc. From here on, you will find a series of services, including the EpiFlu Database (developed by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in conjunction with other partners of this initiative) providing secure storage and the analysis of genetic, epidemiological and clinical data.
Researchers like you have come together to empower this publicly accessible platform, free-of-charge to all researchers in the world who agree to the same terms, to foster a better understanding of the influenza virus. Following the correspondence letter in Nature, we have all pledged to share the data, to analyze the findings jointly, and to publish the results collaboratively, on the basis of open sharing of data respecting the rights and interests of all involved parties.
One fascinating aspect of this is that to view the data you must agree to the data-sharing that lies at the heart of the site:
Before you can enter, you are required to register and agree to the Terms of Use of our platform, as GISAID implements a particular data-sharing concept that has facilitated the flow of influenza sequence data to the public.
This creates an information commons, just as free software does.
Maybe there's hope for us yet.
I've written a number of times about Spain's use of free software, notably at the provincial level. There's even a handy - if rather out-dated - map that shows the extent of Penguin love there. Sadly, it looks like Microsoft is making the Spanish government an offer it thinks it can't refuse:According to a press release from HispaLinux, Spain's national Linux association, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government is finalizing a plan that would supply all children who attend state schools with personal computers with touch-screens so to "promote awareness within families of the usefulness of information and communication technologies and encourage their use." Specifically, we're talking about Microsoft technologies.
Despite the enormous load this plan would have on the budget of each autonomous region (which would have to foot the bill), and hence, on the taxpayer, not a cent would find it's way back to any Spanish company. The Spanish Ministry of Education has not considered any other vendor apart form Microsoft, there hasn't been a public contest, and the media and other vendors were not informed about the pilot program until it was over. Furthermore, no other alternative has been considered.
If the plan gets the green light, it would have dire consequences for the communities of Andalucía, Castilla-La Mancha, Extremadura, Valencia, and all the other autonomous regions that already have a Linux-based IT infrastructures, which have already been paid for and are in use, in place within their school systems.
This is really scandalous on so many levels.
It's clearly born of ignorance about what is really being offered - lock-in to Microsoft's systems - in the naive belief that touch-screens are somehow the future, probably just because the iPhone has one.
It is born of arrogance that the government knows better, and therefore needn't consult with others that might have a view or - heaven forfend - knowledge on the subject.
And it's born of sheer stupidity, throwing away the huge lead that Spain had in this area, forcing local governments that had saved money by opting for GNU/Linux to waste money on an unnecessary and doubtless insecure solution from Microsoft, and as a result making the country dependent on a foreign supplier when it could have nurtured its own domestic software industry.
Shame on the Spanish government.
If you want to see how misguided the British publishing industry's attitudes are to copyright and its users, you could do worse than read what the outgoing president of the Publishers Association has to say on the subject....
On Open Enterprise blog.
For those of us that believe that openness is good for governments (and good for us), the question becomes: how can we encourage government at all levels to become more transparent? Requesting or demanding openness only goes so far, and can ultimately become depressing in the face of refusal. So what else can be done that's satisfying and effective?
How about this?The mission of Sunshine Review is to create a place where regular people have the opportunity to breathe new life into the political system by demanding a transparent and honest government. Sunshine Review collects and shares information about government transparency, openness and accountability at the state and local level.
One of the ways it does that is by rating websites of local governments:This page gathers the results of county website evaluations from all 50 states after all 3,140 counties in the country were evaluated by Sunshine Review contributors.
That's an extraordinary achievement, and indicates the scale and ambition of the project. The point being that the more publicity is given to shortfalls in sites - especially compared to their peers - the more likely laggards are to respond positively. Now, if we could only get this going over here....
I came across this fascinating piece about how the Tibetan exile community not only keeps going in the face of China's unbending occupation of their homeland, but even manages to maintain some optimism. Here's a particularly heartwarming passage:
In the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and elsewhere in China, the views of exiled Tibetans and portraits of the Dalai Lama are political taboos. But in Dharamsala everything from the "other side" is available: TV news and propaganda on several different Tibetan-language Chinese channels, dramas and (again) propaganda programmes dubbed into Tibetan. Their original target audience is ethnic Tibetans living in the TAR and in neighbouring regions of the PRC where many Tibetans live (Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan - or in Tibetan, U-Tsang, Amdo and Kham).
Tibetan government-in-exile officials express confidence that Tibetans in Dharamsala won't be brainwashed by these Chinese TV channels, even that it is good for Tibetan communities to encounter Chinese arguments. Indeed, some young Tibetans in Dharamsala laughingly pointed out to me some absurdities in the propaganda TV programmes. The Tibetan officials, asked how they are going to deal with the Chinese government's heightened international PR offensive, expressed the belief that being open and honest is all they need to do.
While China clamps down on Tibetan culture, and blocks sites dealing with "forbidden" subjects like the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans in exile allow anyone to hear the Chinese side. Why? Because openness makes them stronger, and better able to counter Chinese arguments.
Moreover, the Tibetans have no fear of their people hearing the truth, unlike the fearsome and yet fearful Chinese leadership - a mighty dragon strangely afraid of the sunlight.
Richard Stallman has always regarded free software as about freedom, and hence inherently political. And so it's no surprise that many aspects of openness butt against highly-sensitive areas - secrecy, privacy, etc. But that transition from programming to politicals seems to be taking place beyond free software, too:a new poll conducted by Swedish newspaper DN.se predicts that the Pirate Party will get 5.1% of all votes in the upcoming EU elections this June - enough to guarantee a seat in the European Parliament. The poll further shows that the party is the second largest party among younger voters in the age group 18-30.
“This poll confirms our recent phenomenal growth in support, and says there will be pirates in Brussels after this election,” Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “Scoring like this in a poll will further enhance support for the party. While there’s still much work to be done, we’re on the home stretch and have the goal in plain sight. June 7 is election day. On the morning of June 8, we’ll know.”
Clearly, the Pirate Party has been fortunate with the timing: had the trial taken place far from the European elections, the effect would have been muted. Nonetheless, I think it's significant that anger over the court's decision is spilling over into politics; I predict we'll see much more of this if - as is likely - we witness further unthinking rejections of today's digital culture and its norms.
Remember Open Office XML – a name chosen to be as confusingly close to OpenOffice XML as possible – better known as OOXML? Remember how just over a year ago this and many other blogs and news outlets were full of sound and fury, as OOXML slouched its way through the ISO standardisation process, finally staggering across the finishing line at the beginning of April 2008? I certainly do, but it's extraordinary how things can change in a year...
On Open Enterprise blog.
Here's some interesting news on the European patent front:Preliminary figures from the European Patent Office (EPO) reveal that the number of applications for new patents is down 7% in the first two months of 2009. This is the first reduction in patent applications in over a decade, sparking fears that Europe's knowledge economy is under threat.
Applications to the EPO have doubled since 1995, leaving the agency with a backlog of between 400,000 and 500,000 applications. More than half of the applications filed last year were not granted.
However, the advent of the financial crisis has brought a sharp downturn in the exponential growth of new intellectual property filings.
An EPO survey of its clients, published this week (April 27), forecasts a levelling-off of new patent applications in 2009 and 2010, but this study was conducted in mid-2008, and is unlikely to have factored in the recession, which has deepened in the meantime.
"Europe's knowledge economy is under threat"? I don't think so. Here's an alternative explanation. Patents have a clear cost, but the benefit they provide is far more vaporous. I suspect that as belts are tightened, people are realising that patents aren't actually worth getting in terms of the cost/benefit they represent.
When times are good, companies might merrily apply for patents on the assumption that they are a good investment, without thinking about it too much; but when considered carefully against a harsh economic background, maybe they don't look such a good idea - hence the drop in applications.
This is significant:Senior cabinet ministers are privately discussing a plan to scrap the Government's £5bn identity cards programme as part of cuts to public spending, The Independent has learnt.
Once such people start talking about it, even the most timorous will soon pluck up the courage to express their views; quickly we'll reach a classic tipping point when the majority hold the view that ID cards make no sense from any point of view.
But there are always some who remain prisoners of their delusions:Your article of 28 April on ID cards is simply wrong on two fundamental points. The Government is committed to introducing ID cards.
Er, why would that be Jacqui?
ID cards will provide the public with a single, simple and secure way for individuals to prove their identity and safeguard their personal details – protecting the community against crime, illegal immigration, and terrorism.
Oh, I see. Why don't we just look at those, eh?a single, simple and secure way for individuals to prove their identity
Well, no, it won't do that unless ID cards become compulsory for *every* occasion when I have to prove who I am. Now, that may be coming, but until then I'm still going to need to prove who I am by logging in to online services, or showing my library card. Is she really suggesting that the ID card replace *all* of those? If not, it will simply *add* to all of the other proofs that I need. ID cards only make sense if they satisfy a vital new need to prove who we are - for example, when stopped by the police in the street....safeguard their personal details
How on earth does a centralised database "safeguard my details"? The ID card certainly doesn't - it's just a bit of plastic with a chip in; and as anyone who's been in computing for more than a couple of months knows, bringing data together in any way makes it less secure, not more. So what on earth is she rabbiting on about?
And as forprotecting the community against crime, illegal immigration, and terrorism
these were all debunked ages ago as the UK government desperately shopped around for some kind of justification for ID cards. It won't stop illegal immigration and it certainly won't stop "terrorism".
It hard sometimes to work out whether Ms Smith actually believes the nonsense she spouts, or just believes we're stupid enough to believe her. Either way, news that her colleagues are rapidly placing clear water between themselves and her deranged ideas on this one is welcome indeed. (Via OurKingdom.)
Regular readers of this blog will have spotted that I've been posting more about transparency recently. Of course, it's a natural extension of openness, and can equally be thought of as open government. Whatever you call it, it's apparently problematic for some people:
In the run-up to the European elections, some websites are trying to monitor MEPs according to their attendance in plenary sessions and committee meetings. But in practice the task is proving extremely difficult. EurActiv France contributed to this report.
Last week, one such website, www.parlorama.eu, was forced to shut down after its initiator was flooded with complaints from MEPs.
Flavien Deltort, a former MEP's assistant from Italy, had attempted to rate parliamentarians according to their attendance in plenary sessions, committee meetings and broader participation in parliamentary life.
But only two days after launching his website last week, Deltort was forced to close it down "due to the overwhelming volume of complaints". Threatened with prosecution by many MEPs, he decided to temporary close the website.
Although some of that prickleness may have been justified, I think it also shows that here in Europe we have a long way to go before we achieve open government. The US is already ahead, with campaigners like Larry Lessig working hard to make things more transparent, as well as splendid organisations like the Sunlight Foundation:
Our goal through our grant-making, blogging, projects, and technical leadership, is to use the power of the Internet to shine a light on the interplay of money, lobbying, influence and government in Washington in ways never before possible.
We need something similar here in Europe, but it looks like it's going to be a struggle to achieve that.
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Those with good memories may recall that Richard Steel and I had something of a, er, discussion about open source in our respective blogs. This culminated in a suggestion from Richard...
On Open Enterprise blog.
When the Open Innovation Network announced that TomTom was joining, just after Microsoft accused the latter of infringing patents related to Linux, I was sceptical. After all, the former
was formed to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment. It promotes a positive, fertile ecosystem for Linux, which in turns drives innovation and choice in the global marketplace. This helps ensure the continuation of innovation that has benefited software vendors, customers, emerging markets and investors.
Now, I'm all in favour of ecosystems, but it's hard to see how this kind of organisation would help TomTom much. Well, some details are starting to emerge of how OIN aims to fight back against this kind of thing:Open Invention Network (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux, today announced that U.S. patents 5579517, 5758352 and 6256642 have been placed for prior art review on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website associated with the Linux Defenders portal. These patents were recently cited in litigation that targeted TomTom NV.
OIN's mission includes encouraging the Linux community to review patents-of-interest that may be of suspect quality or riddled by questions regarding prior art. Accordingly, the patents used in the recent TomTom patent action have been posted by OIN for review and submission of prior art by the Linux community. Submissions may be made by visiting http://www.post-issue.org, clicking on the appropriate patent and selecting "Submit Prior Art".
Right, so it seems that OIN won't be doing anything directly, other than getting the relevant patents posted on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website associated with the Linux Defenders portal.
Isn't this a rather roundabout way of doing things? I can't help feeling that this could have been done rather quicker: after all, if it's just a matter of posting the relevant patents for people to examine and poke holes in, why wasn't it done as soon as Microsoft attacked TomTom? Did we really need to wait for TomTom to join OIN, and for the latter to pass the message down the chain a few weeks later?
Perhaps the community needs to think about how this kind of stuff can be done more expeditiously given that patent attacks against open source are likely to increase, and that prior art is a powerful weapon to deploy against them in jurisdictions foolish enough to allow software patents in the first place.
Earlier this year, I had some problems with a statement from the Open Solution Alliance's Anthony Gold. Here are my comments from the time...
On Open Enterprise blog.
Openness lies at the heart of the Internet, at every level. Indeed, the success of the Internet, and of the open services that run on top of it, was one of the first - and remains one of the most important - demonstrations of the benefits of adopting open architectures. Unfortunately, it's an openness that is fairly subtle for non-technical people; above all, it's not at all obvious to politicians, who seem to assume that apparently minor tweaks won't change things much....
On Open Enterprise blog.
Bad news, bad law:
The Legislative Yuan ratified yesterday the latest revision of the Copyright Law to empower Internet service providers (ISPs) to "strike out" Internet surfers who have violated others' copyrights and posted unauthorized content on any Web sites.
The new rules will exempt the ISPs from any responsibility for offenses caused by pirating parties in order to avoid litigation by copyright owners.
But the service providers will be obliged to inform the pirating parties about the infringement on the copyrights.
They can suspend part or all services to the pirates after giving three warnings.
The pirates will still face lawsuits from the copyright owners.
No details on whether this needs judicial oversight, but don't hold your breath...
No, really:There is an urgent need for identifying new targets for drug discovery. This urgency is even more relevant for infectious diseases affecting third-world countries, which have been historically neglected by the pharmaceutical industry. For example, only ~10% of the R&D resources have been spent on illnesses that represent the 90% of the total disease burden in the world (Munos 2006), which translates in that just ~1% of newly developed drugs are for tropical diseases (Maurer et al. 2004).
At the beginning of the 90s, an initial Linux kernel conceived and created by Linus Torvalds paved the way for a wealth of open and free software programs and operating systems. Here we introduce what we believe can be regarded as an initial kernel for drug discovery with the hope that it will sparkle new ways for developing drugs against organisms that cause tropical diseases. The TDI kernel (v1.0) includes 297 potential drug targets against the 10 selected genomes and is freely and publicly accessible in a World Wide Web server, which was developed with Web2.0 tools for easy dissemination of the deposited data.
It's amazing how metaphors can spread.
You can browser the kernel - *their* kernel - here.
Three years ago, Tom Foremski wrote an interesting piece called “Adapt or die--the choice facing the open source movement“, which began:
Can Larry Ellison be stopped? By which I mean could Oracle shut down the fledgling open-source software movement through a series of acquisitions??
On Linux Journal.
Getting information about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is like getting blood from a stone, but here's an article with some useful informtion:The EU Commission is “committed to improve the international legal framework for IP protection” and sees “ACTA as one way to reach that goal,” Devigne said. There was no intention to duplicate TRIPS. Rather, “we want to go beyond it,” he said, adding, “TRIPS is the floor, not the ceiling.”
Well, that's pretty clear: they are aiming to produce something even worse than TRIPS. This, though, is less convincing:“It is not that we want to hide something, we just don’t have something to show.” Devigne also rejected all claims about a possibly secrecy in the negotiations. “Quite on the contrary, for international trade negotiations we normally do not have such a democracy exercise where everybody can raise their concern,” said Devigne. For this kind of negotiations the Commission would normally only consult with member states.
One other nugget is the following:
so far there is only consensus in any case to exempt patents from criminal law sanctions.
Drip, drip, drip....
Nicely put by the Open Rights Group:Wednesday is the last full day to lobby your MEPs in Strasbourg before this Thursday’s vote on copyright term extension.
A cross party platform of MEPs have tabled an amendment to reject the proposal to extend the term of sound copyrights beyond 50 years. Contact your MEPs in Strasbourg and ask them to support the rejection amendment tabled by Sharon Bowles, Andrew Duff and Olle Schmidt ALDE, Guy Bono, PSE, Christofer Fjellner, Zuzana Roithova, Anna Ibrisagic EPP.
It also points to this amazing article from the FT of all places, called "Do not enclose the cultural commons":
Copyright is an act of force: it is the means by which states forcibly establish artificial monopolies in cultural works. There are two arguments why governments can legitimately do this. The first is to ensure efficient incentives for cultural production. The second is to ensure that artists get a fair reward for their contribution to our culture’s enrichment. In the absence of copyright, the ease with which cultural works can be reproduced may leave creators with neither efficient incentives nor fair rewards.
But neither consideration justifies extension of copyright beyond the current 50 years. If anything, copyright terms are currently too long.
Wow, at least we're having an impact *somewhere*: the FT talking about enclosing the commons, and intellectual monopolies...
Anyway, as usual, here's my quick note that I've sent to my MEPs via WriteTotThem:I am writing to ask you to vote against the proposal to extend the term of sound copyrights beyond 50 years, and to support the rejection amendment tabled by Sharon Bowles, Andrew Duff and Olle Schmidt ALDE, Guy Bono, PSE, Christofer Fjellner, Zuzana Roithova, Anna Ibrisagic EPP.
By now, it has been established that there is no economic justification for extending copyright; that doing so will harm the vast majority of people, and put money in the pockets of a very few, mostly well-off, musical superstars. This measure is quite simply lobbying at its worst.
But you don't have to believe me. Here's what the Financial Times' Editors, hardly anti-business, wrote earlier this week:
“Copyright extension is, in the main, just the well-known strategy of powerful companies: profit-grabbing through lobbying for state protection. That is bad enough. Worse is the chilling effect it can have on creativity: the industry is already on a legal crusade against the sampling of copyrighted material into new original work. This is like the Grimm brothers’ descendants suing Disney for using their fairy tales.
The cultural industries are over-protected. If cultural works were less greedily hoarded, consumers would enjoy more variety – and artists would create more freely.”
Indeed, it points out:
“If anything, copyright terms are currently too long.”
For these, and all the other well-rehearsed reasons why copyright extension would be a retrograde step, I urge you to vote for the rejection amendment.
I've often written about particular instances where Microsoft has bullied competitors; it's a pretty sorry tale. But that story becomes extraordinary when told in detail, and as a sequence of actions whose sole purpose was to drive off competition by any means.
If you're interested in how Microsoft sought to undermine DR-DOS, WordPerfect, Netscape and Java - to say nothing of GNU/Linux - you can find out here in this document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). As you might guess from the subject matter of the report, this is a bunch of companies who are not overly enamoured of Microsoft:ECIS has acted as an advocate of interoperability since its inception in 1989. The association believes strongly in the benefits of a competitive and innovative ICT sector, and seeks to support such an environment by actively participating in the promotion of any initiative aimed at favoring interoperability, competition on the merits, innovation, and consumers' interests in the area of information and communication technology.
ECIS’ members include large and smaller information and communications technology hardware and software providers Adobe Systems, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.
Leaving aside the sad fact that a European organisation can't spell "favouring", it's pretty clear that this is not an objective, balanced picture. But as far as I can tell, it's not untruthful, and its statements are butteressed with references to relevant documents and news items that make it useful for further exploration.
Even though the internet is 40 years old, and the Web 20, it's only in the last couple of years that European politicians have started to take a deep interest in its workings – and implications for society. However, the flurry of activity we have seen in recent months more than makes up for that long neglect....
On Open Enterprise blog.
Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.
This is bad news:Mobile operators will appoint an independent classification body (see Glossary) to provide a framework for classifying commercial content that is unsuitable for customers under the age of 18. The framework will be consistent with standards used in other media and only treat as 18 content that would receive an 18 type classification for the equivalent material in, for example, magazines, films, videos and computer games.
Commercial content providers will be required to self-classify as 18 all content unsuitable for customers under the age of 18, in accordance with the framework. This requirement does not apply to premium rate voice or premium rate SMS (texting) services, which will continue to operate under the ICSTIS Code of Practice.
By default, all commercial content not classified as 18 will be unrestricted.
Each mobile operator will place commercial content classified as 18 behind access controls and only make it available to those customers that it has satisfied itself, through a process of age verification, are 18 or over.
The mobile operator will also place behind access controls all commercial content chat rooms, unless they are moderated chat rooms.
This doesn't apply to "Internet content" - yet:Mobile operators have no control over the content that is offered on the Internet and are therefore unable to insist that it is classified in accordance with the independent classification framework.
Mobile operators will therefore offer parents and carers the opportunity to apply a filter to the mobile operator’s Internet access service so that the Internet content thus accessible is restricted. The filter will be set at a level that is intended to filter out content approximately equivalent to commercial content with a classification of 18.
But guess what? Once all those filters are in place, wouldn't it be really convenient - sorry, wouldn't it combat terrorism and fight child pornography - if we applied those same filters to the Internet everywhere?
See? Salami-style censorship: you won't notice a thing... (Via Glyn Wintle).
Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.
Sorry, it's time to get those virtual quills out, and to write to your MEPs. There's a crucial vote coming up in the next couple of days that may see net neutrality killed in Europe thanks to the British and French governments. La Quadrature du Net has the details; here's my letter:I am writing to ask you to urge your colleagues, particularly those on the ITRE committee, to vote in favour of amendment 138/46 to the Telecoms Package, and not to allow it to be deleted or watered down in any way – for example, by making it an indicative recital instead of an article.
As a journalist who has been writing about the Internet since 1994, I know how important it is that the connection is provided without any technical restrictions. This is the only way that innovations can emerge – indeed, the British inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has said that if restrictions of the kind that the striking of amendment 138/46 will allow were in place back in 1989, the Web would never have taken off. This means that if the amendment is dropped or weakened, Europe may well miss out on the next Internet revolution – hardly what the European Union is seeking to do with its wider support for innovation.
To its great credit, the European Parliament has consistently fought to retain this protection for users, and I urge you and your colleagues to continue to stand up for European citizens who are being sidelined by the proposal from some governments to drop amendment 138/46.
Please send your own variation before tomorrow evening. Remember: it's *your* Internet they want to ruin.
Usually, I attack copyright on very general grounds - it's a monopoly, it's locking up knowledge, blah-blah-blah. But here's a new one to add to the list: it can endanger freedom of expression.Given the way in which copyright law was transplanted into China without a fulsome cultural understanding of the values that informed the system, it seems the power of copyright can be easily usurped for means that infringe on political and civil rights. And yet, the United States, through the WTO process, is seeking stronger copyright protection in China.
This seeming inconsistency may not currently be a large issue because of the more explicit means of control available to the Chinese government. However, as political pressure mounts on the human rights front, it is possible that the Chinese government may have to be more covert in their attempts to suppress political speech. If that happens, copyright law may begin to look appealing to the Chinese government as a means of control.
Put it in your diaries...
Wasn't Damian Green threatened with life imprisonment for allegedly doing precisely this:Government officials handed confidential police intelligence about environmental activists to the energy giant E.ON before a planned peaceful demonstration, according to private emails seen by the Guardian.
Correspondence between civil servants and security officials at the company reveals how intelligence was shared about the peaceful direct action group Climate Camp in the run-up to the demonstration at Kingsnorth, the proposed site of a new coal-fired power station in north Kent.
Intelligence passed to the energy firm by officials from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) included detailed information about the movements of protesters and their meetings. E.ON was also given a secret strategy document written by environmental campaigners and information from the Police National Information and Coordination Centre (PNICC), which gathers national and international intelligence for emergency planning.
So it's official now, I take it: *they* can break any law they like, while we are afforded no protection from them - even by innocence.
Brilliant, succinct post by Rufus Pollock explaining what copyright is supposed to be doing (if it's doing anything):
copyright is instrument created in order to promote the interests of society as a whole not to promote the interests of the producers of creative works. Of course we care about remunerating producers and artists both because they are members of society but also, and more importantly, because by remunerating them we ensure the creation of more works which society as a whole can enjoy.
Nevertheless, it is essential to keep in mind that the purpose of copyright is broader than to promote the interests of a single group. This fact then is central to any assessment of the form and level of copyright and it has important implications. For example if we have a proposal that will help artists but overall harm society we should not support that proposal.
Moreover, he puts his finger on precisely why people flout current copyright laws - and how to fix it:the successful enforcement of any rule depends on that rule having public legitimacy — being considered reasonable by the majority of the populace. Currently that is not the case: copyright suffers from a serious lack “respect” and has marked lack of public legitimacy.
If you wish to change that we need the rules to be fair and balanced — it hard to have respect and enforcement of an unfair system. For example, copyright term should be reduced and we should expressly avoid extensions, especially retrospective ones like that currently before Parliament in relation to sound recordings. Such policies appear to reflect nothing more than special interest lobbying and this can only make copyright’s “marked lack of public legitimacy” worse — I would note here the recent joint statement put out European IP law centres who emphasized that retrospective term extension would seriously undermine respect for copyright and make “piracy the easy option”.
Exactly; he is even able to single out why copyright is now going through a crisis in this respect:I would also argue that just rules must also be reasonable rules. For example, is it reasonable in an age of costless reproduction to continue to promote a model of copyright based on exclusive rights? Much of the “problem” of unauthorised file-sharing could be resolved if we moved to an alternative compensation system based on an equitable remuneration right approach.
*This* is what the media industries just cannot grasp: that costless reproduction has changed the public's perception of what is fair. This, in its turn, means that content producers have to change their own expectations - and business models - if they want society to enforce properly the rules surrounding copyright.
To say that cloud computing is trendy would be an understatement: the topic is almost inescapable in the world of computing these days. I've written about it from the viewpoint of open source several times, because there are a number of important issues arising out of clouds: much of their infrastructure is based on free software, and there are interesting questions to do with licensing that clouds pose for applications. But one aspect almost never considered is even higher up the stack: the legal side of their use....
On Open Enterprise blog.
Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.
It's extraordinary how much that formerly-drab old subject of copyright is in the news these days. There's the Amazon Kindle story, the Pirate Bay judgement and the report, yesterday, that Britain's copyright laws are the "worst by far".
Although much of this bad news, notably the idiotic Pirate Bay ruling - these were links, people, you know, just like Google - there's a silver lining of sorts. The gulf between what the laws on copyright say and what people think is fair to do (picking up on the ethical aspect of copyright, again) is so vast and unbridgeable now that I think we're going to see a massive collapse of copyright soon.
As "young people" grow up and become the mainstream voting population, there is simply going to be zero sympathy for the greed and obtuseness of the intellectual monopolists. The current "victories" of the media industries will prove to be Pyrrhic.
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As RMS emphasises again and again, at the heart of free software lies an ethical vision of sharing and mutual respect. Although open source blurs that vision somewhat thanks to the glasses of pragmatism that it wears, the basic idea is still there. And yet we talk relatively little about that ethical aspect, which is a pity, because it is both important and interesting.
Just how interesting can be seen in this splendid essay "Ethical Visions of Copyright Law" from James Grimmelmann, who is Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School. As its title makes clear, the focus is on copyright, but Stallman's approach to subverting copyright to make it more ethical occupies an important place in the argument. Here's part of the introduction:copyright law imagines that we are ethical beings, capable of being creative and of being touched by the creativity of others, inclined to be sociable and to return good for good. It has in mind a deontic vision of reciprocity in the author-audience relationship. Or, more succinctly, authors and audiences ought to respect each other.
That may sound like a platitude, but it isn’t. Everyone agrees that authors and audiences ought to respect each other, but they come to blows over how that respect ought to be expressed. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) thinks that audiences don’t respect authors enough; the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) counters that it’s the authors who aren’t showing enough respect for audiences. Meanwhile, free software advocates and fans of the commons sketch pictures of respectful exchange that look very different from the marketplace exchanges that both the RIAA and EFF treat as normal.
We can learn some very interesting things about the state of the copyright debate by looking closely at those disagreements. When the EFF tells the content industries not to “sue their customers,” it’s making an ethical argument that’s the mirror image of the content industries’ call for people to “respect copyrights.” The arguments are the same, just directed at opposite sides of the author-audience relationship. Compare those arguments with the genuine radicalism in the way that some free software advocates don’t care whether programming remains a viable profession. They see legal restrictions on user freedoms as inherently unethical; no amount of software produced or programmers employed could justify them.
As scholars, we should pay attention to these ethical visions, because they are descriptively important to how people behave, because they affect the persuasiveness of our policy arguments in the public arena, and because they make provocative claims about what intellectual property law ought to look like. This essay will find evidence of these visions in the language and structure of intellectual property law, and in the rhetoric that activists use as they make arguments about intellectual property. These ethical visions link copyright law’s rules to a model of how those regulated by copyright law could and should behave.
As you might expect, the Creative Commons movement also figures largely, and the essay picks out an interesting fact about it:
To summarize, there’s a significant ambiguity in Creative Commons’ response to the copyright system. It could be saying (or could be seen to say) that the system is out of balance because authors have exclusive rights they don’t need and don’t want to use. It could also be saying (or could be seen to say) that the system is out of balance because authors have exclusive rights they shouldn’t have and shouldn’t be allowed to use. In either frame, its licensing strategy is a natural response designed to encourage a healthier balance. But the latter frame, let us be clear, is a challenge to the default ethical vision of copyright itself, not merely a critique of authorial behavior made from within that vision.
Great stuff - highly recommended.
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The influence of RMS on the world of free software and beyond is, of course, immense. But sometimes his presence is more symbolic than real, as he seems to disappear off the map for weeks at a time, with little in the way of public statements or comments. Maybe this can be put down to the frequent travelling that he undertakes, as he continues tirelessly to spread the word about freedom. Whatever the reason for those intermittent silences, it's interesting to note something of a flurry of comments from him recently, and in quite surprising contexts.
The first was the on Amazon's Kindle, which I wrote about yesterday. That was about DRM, a long-standing concern of RMS. Now here's another rather unexpected intervention, this time concerning Second Life of all things, where a group of virtual users are getting some real-world grief from a bunch of lawyers:
When I read about how the heirs of the Dune fortune attacked Second Life users, my first thought was about how nasty and foolish they were being. My second thought was that the article serves its readers poorly, when it uses the vague term "intellectual property" to describe the legal issue at stake here.
The term "intellectual property" is an incoherent muddle: it lumps together various unrelated laws that do different things. (See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html.) A few of those that use the term know this, and use it to to spread confusion. The rest think the term has a concrete meaning, and are just passing along their own confusion.
This is not a statement of anything new - Stallman's been pointing out how misleading the term "intellectual property" is for some time. But what's interesting is that (a) he somehow came across this rather obscure instance of the term being abused and (b) decided to post his comments.
Let's hope it's a sign of a more general engagement with these and related matters: his rigorous approach remains an important yardstick against which everyone else is measured.
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Something strange is happening at the WIPO: it's becoming more reasonable. Where once it was a bastion of intellectual monopoly intransigence, it is now showing signs of being, well, more *open* to new ideas....
On Open Enterprise blog.
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