Welcome to the World of Open Source Domotics
Canonical pulled off something of a coup at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when it announced its Ubuntu TV – inevitably dubbed "TV for human beings":
On The H Open.
20 January 2012
On The H Open.
19 January 2012
File Sharing Without The Internet: The Saharan Bluetooth Experience
A couple of months ago, Techdirt wrote about an EU politician's plan to build Internet surveillance into every operating system. As we pointed out then, this could easily be circumvented by using non-Net means for swapping files. It may not be driven by fears about spying, but it seems that communities in Western Africa are using Bluetooth connections between mobile phones to do exactly that:
On Techdirt.
A 'Trustworthy' Social Network For The Occupy Movement: Even If They Build It, Can They Ever Trust It?
The role of technology in the wave of protests that swept the world last year is a matter of debate. While some claim that social networks and mobile phones allowed protesters to organize themselves with an unprecedented speed and efficiency, others have seen their role as marginal – or even counterproductive, since these same technologies also allow governments to monitor events with greater ease than in pre-Internet days.
Techdirt.
Yet More Collateral Damage From SOPA/PIPA: Activism Through Satire
Among the many high-profile organizations that are joining the SOPA blackout today is Greenpeace. That's great, except that you can't read an important post on the Greenpeace UK web site about why it is opposing SOPA and PIPA (it should be available at 5 pm PST from the home page or here.
On Techdirt.
17 January 2012
Argentina Building Huge Biometric Database For Use With Police's Face Recognition Technology
One of the more unfortunate consequences of Moore's Law is that technologies that erode privacy are becoming cheaper every year – and hence more attractive to governments eager to spy on their own populace. The latest to heed the siren call of mass surveillance is Argentina.
On Techdirt.
Two Fatal Flaws in the O'Dwyer Judgment
So the long-awaited verdict on the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer has finally arrived, and, as feared, it's ridiculous. There are many others better qualified than I am to comment on the detailed legal issues of the lop-sided extradition treaty that lies at the heart of the case, so I would like to concentrate on two aspects that I feel better able to comment on. Both touch on what I think are fatal errors in the judgment; either is enough undermine its arguments.
On Open Enterprise blog.
13 January 2012
Indian Judge Tells Google And Facebook To 'Check And Remove Objectionable Material' Or Be Blocked
German Court: ISP Must Not Block Access To Foreign Sites, Even If They Are Illegal
Against a background where some European courts are telling ISPs that they must block access to certain sites (in Finland and the UK, for example), this news from Germany comes as a refreshing change (original German article in Der Spiegel):
On Techdirt.
Why Apple Will Not Be Part Of The Real Tablet Revolution
You don't have to be a marketing genius or industry pundit to foresee that tablets will be an extremely hot sector in 2012. The launch of Apple's iPad in 2010 largely defined the category, just as the launch of the iPhone defined a new kind of smartphone in 2007; in 2012 we will probably begin to see Android tablets start to gain major market share just as Android smartphones have done this year.
On Techdirt.
12 January 2012
Is Microsoft Blocking Linux Booting on ARM Hardware?
Back in September last year, there was a bit of a to-do about Microsoft's UEFI Secure Boot technology in Windows 8, when a Red Hat engineer posted the following:
On Open Enterprise blog.
11 January 2012
"An Open-Source World"? Where's The Open Source?
If we are to believe the early signs, 2012 may well be the year that British schools finally start to address the continuing shame that is ICT teaching. As I and many others have noted, the current approach essentially consists of sitting people in front of Microsoft Word and Excel and making them learn a couple of commands on the menus. It seems that the message has finally got through to the powers-that-be:
On Open Enterprise blog.
10 January 2012
How "Throwing One Away" Makes Open Source Better
There's a wonderful line in Fred Brooks' book "The Mythical Man-Month", where he says that when writing a program, plan to throw one way - you will anyway. But that's a bit of a problem for conventional software development, because it's not clear when the best time is to throw that one away.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Jazz Pioneer 'Jelly Roll' Morton's Music Finally Free For Re-use In Europe -- A Hundred Years Too Late
A recent Techdirt post reminded us that thanks to its crazy copyright laws, the US won't be seeing anything new in the public domain for many years. But even in those "fortunate" countries that get to use cultural works a mere 70 years after the creator's death, the situation is still pretty absurd.
On Techdirt.
09 January 2012
UK Government Betrayal of Open Standards Confirmed
Just before Christmas I wrote a fairly strongly-worded condemnation of what I saw as the imminent betrayal of open standards by the UK Cabinet Office. This was based on reading between the lines of a new Procurement Policy Note, plus my thirty years' experience of dealing with Microsoft. At the time, I didn't have any specific proof that Microsoft was behind this shameful U-turn, but Mark Ballard has, it seems:
On Open Enterprise blog.
07 January 2012
Why SOPA Would Be A Disaster For Scientific Publishing
One of the many dangerous aspects of SOPA/PIPA is that its backers seem to have given no thought to what the unintended consequences might be. In particular, there is no awareness that it might wreak serious damage in areas that are very distant from the core concerns of unauthorized copies of music or films – such as scientific publishing.
On Techdirt.
06 January 2012
Will The Food Industry Ever Swallow Transparency's Bitter Pill?
A fascinating trend in recent years has been the gradual move from a presumption of secrecy to one of openness, transparency and sharing. This began with free software/open source, and has progressively spread to include areas such as open content, open access, open data, open science and open government.
Here's the latest field where people are advocating a more open approach:
On Techdirt.
05 January 2012
If Libraries Didn't Exist, Would Publishers Be Trying To Kill Book Lending?
Against the background of today's war on sharing, exemplified by SOPA and PIPA, traditional libraries underline an inconvenient truth: allowing people to share things – principally books in the case of libraries – does not lead to the collapse of the industry trying to sell those same things. But publishers really don't seem to have learned that lesson, judging by this article in the New York Times about the nonsensical attitude they have to libraries lending out ebooks:
On Techdirt.
Is Monmouthpedia The Future Of Wikipedia?
One of the central questions the Wikipedia community grapples with is: What exactly is Wikipedia trying to achieve? For example, does it aspire to be a total encyclopedia of everything? What is the appropriate level of detail?
On Techdirt.
German Court Decisions Make Everyday Use Of The Internet Increasingly Risky There
Perhaps there's something about the German legal system that encourages judges to push their interpretation of the law to the limit, without any concern for whether the results of that logic are absurd. At least that is the impression you might get from two recent cases whose judgments both make use of the internet by ordinary citizens increasing fraught with legal risks.
On Techdirt.
04 January 2012
Of Open Source and the European Commission
At the end of last year I reported on the worrying signs of vacillation from the UK government over its support for truly open standards. At least it's relatively straightforward to keep tabs on what's happening in Blighty; Europe is another matter - I find the labyrinthine bureaucracy and its digital shadow pretty hard to navigate. So I was pleased to come across the following page, entitled "Strategy for internal use of OSS at the EC".
On Open Enterprise blog.
Beyond The Internet Of Things Towards A Sensor Commons
Already it's clear that one of the hot tech topics of 2012 will be "The Internet of Things" – the idea that even the most mundane objects will be hooked up to the Net and communicating over it. So far, pundits have concentrated on trivial applications like being able to check your fridge's contents from a browser, but potentially it could be much more than that if the "things" are groups of sensors whose data can be usefully aggregated.
On Techdirt.
03 January 2012
What should free software do in 2012?
In my last column, I suggested that one of the best things that Mozilla could do in order to promote the Open Web and openness in general would be to support the battle for online freedom in more general ways. That's something it has already started doing, notably in trying to halt the passage of the awful Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that is currently grinding through the US legislative process.
On The H Open.
30 December 2011
Johnson & Johnson Refuses To License Three HIV Drugs To Medicines Patent Pool; Invites Patent Override
By their very nature, drug patents can create monopolies that allow prices to be kept artificially high. In other domains that may be simply an annoyance or inconvenience, but in the world of medicines, it can be a matter of life or death for those unable to afford those inflated prices.
On Techdirt.
OpenStreetMap: The Next Wave Of Commoditization For Startups?
One of the striking features of some of the most successful startups over the last ten years – companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter – is that their infrastructure is based almost entirely around open source. Of course, that shouldn't really be surprising: open source allows people to get prototypes up and running for the price of a PC, which is great for trying out ideas with live code. And yet despite these zero-cost origins, open source software scales up to supercomputing levels - the perfect solution for startups that hope to grow.
On Techdirt.
29 December 2011
The Great Digitization Or The Great Betrayal?
One of the great tasks facing humanity today is digitizing the world's books and liberating the huge stores of knowledge they contain. The technology is there – scanners are now relatively fast and cheap – but the legal framework is struggling to keep up. That can be seen in the continuing uncertainty hovering over Google's massive book scanning project. It can also be observed in some recent digitization projects like Cambridge University's Digital Library:
On Techdirt.
27 December 2011
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.
23 December 2011
Daft Idea Of The Week: Giving People Copyright In Their Faces
Copyright maximalism has proceeded along two axes. The first is the term of copyright, which has been steadily extended from the basic 14 years of the 1710 Statute of Anne to today's life + 50 or 70 years, depending on the jurisdiction. The other is the scope of copyright, where there are constant attempts to make yet more fields of human endeavor subject to it – for example fashion or food.
On Techdirt.
Brazil's Copyright Reform Draft Bill: The Good, The Bad And The Confused
As this timeline indicates, Brazil's attempts to draw up a copyright reform bill have been dragging on for five years now. That in itself wouldn't matter too much – the process of updating major laws is by its very nature a complex and slow process; but during those five years there has been a change of administration, and with it, apparently, some major shifts in policy.
On Techdirt.
22 December 2011
UK Government Open Standards: The Great Betrayal of 2012
Back in February of this year, I wrote about PPN 3/11, a Cabinet Office “Procurement Policy Note - Use of Open Standards when specifying ICT requirements” [.pdf], which contained the following excellent definition of open standards:
On Open Enterprise blog.
21 December 2011
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.
Do We Really Need Copyright For Academic Publishing?
QuestionCopyright has an interesting article about the role that open access might play in opening up China to new ideas. But what really caught my attention was the following section:
On Techdirt.
Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated
Trey Ratcliff is an extremely successful photographer, who specializes in HDR photography. His blog Stuck in Customs is the top travel photography blog on the internet, with over a million views each week.
On Techdirt.
Open Access Is Spreading -- But Is It Really Open Access?
Three Strikes Approach Rejected By Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Gov't Seeks Censorship Plan Instead
The contentious nature of the "three strikes" response to unauthorized sharing of copyright materials can be seen by the legal battles being fought around it across Europe. That's particularly the case in Ireland, which has emerged as a key testing ground for the approach and its legality.
On Techdirt.
19 December 2011
EU Council Quietly Adopts ACTA, By Hiding It In An Agriculture And Fisheries Meeting
At the end of last week, the Council of the European Union – which is where national ministers from each EU country meet to adopt laws and coordinate policies – had a meeting. A group of some 40 ministers for agriculture and fisheries signed off on a range of important matters, including:
On Techdirt.
Apple Abuses Patent System Again To Obstruct W3C Open Standard
Apple has been garnering quite a reputation for itself as a patent bully, for example using patents around the world in an attempt to stop Samsung competing in the tablet market, and bolstering patent trolls. But that's not enough for the company, it seems: now it wants to use patents to block open standards.
On Techdirt.
Former Tunisian Regime Goes Beyond Spying On Internet Traffic... To Rewriting Emails & More
Most people instinctively appreciate the dangers of government surveillance. But at least it's possible to be on your guard when you suspect such surveillance may be present by taking care what you write and send. You might even use some industrial-grade encryption for the important stuff.
On Techdirt.
16 December 2011
People in Glasshouses (With Windows) Shouldn't Throw Stones
It's no secret that Windows Phone is struggling desperately in the battle against the smartphone leaders, iPhone and Android. And desperate times demand desperate measures; but even so, this move by Microsoft is pretty extraordinary:
On Open Enterprise blog.
What Should Mozilla Do?
There has been a flurry of excitement about Mozilla recently. Not, as you might hope, about the latest version of Firefox; one of the unintended consequences of the rapid release approach currently adopted is that nobody really gets excited about the constant flow of new versions, which is a pity.
On The H Open.
A Rational Way To Dispose Of Counterfeit Designer Clothes: Donate Them To The Homeless
The narrative around counterfeit goods usually ends with their seizure. We rarely get to hear or see what happens to them afterwards unless some token burning or breaking is laid on for the cameras' benefit. That makes the following story doubly noteworthy: we not only find out where fake designer clothes go after they have been seized in the UK, we discover that they are put to an excellent use:
On Techdirt.
15 December 2011
Harkening to Hargreaves: UK Copyright Consultation
The road to copyright reform is a long one, full of false starts and diversions. Those with good memories may recall the Gowers Review from 2006, which made lots of sensible suggestions, all of which were promptly ignored by the UK government. So following the good work of the Hargreaves Report, the very real risk was that it, too, would be simply filed and forgotten.
On Open Enterprise blog.
13 December 2011
Open Data: Europe Starts to Get It
As readers of this blog will have noticed, open data is particularly hot at the moment. Whether that will endure is another matter, but for the moment we should be grateful for all the politicians jumping on this particular bandwagon, and we should grab the open data they are releasing with both hands while we can. Here's the latest convert, the European Commission itself:
On Open Enterprise blog.
EU's Advisor On Supporting Net Activists Previously Forced From German Government...By Net Activists
The Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, Neelie Kroes, recently made quite a stir when she dubbed copyright "a tool to punish and withhold". Now she's back with two major projects: a pan-European open data stategy and the "No Disconnect Strategy":
On Techdirt.
12 December 2011
HADOPI Wants To Research File Downloads: Shouldn't It Have Done That First?
One of the most important aspects of the UK's Hargreaves Report was that it called for copyright policy to be based on evidence. It also noted that so far that simply hadn't been the case, and that practically all of the so-called "studies" used to justify laws in this area came from the copyright industries, with missing or dubious methodologies.
On Techdirt.
11 December 2011
Open Source, Open Data, Open Innovation
A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the South Tyrol Free Software Conference. This was the first time I'd visited Bolzano/Bozen; although I was only there fore a few hours, it was enough to appreciate its charms and wonderful setting.
For the record here's my speech:
Open Innovation, Open Data and more from SFScon on Vimeo.
As you might notice, this is not in the Queen's English; my slides, however, are, and can be found embedded below (also downloadable).
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
09 December 2011
Spotting Counterfeit Chips Is Hard; Spotting Digital Piracy Is Even Harder
One of the favorite techniques of those pushing for ever-more severe penalties for copyright infringement is to blur the distinction between analog counterfeits and digital copies. The argument then becomes: "counterfeit drugs can kill people, therefore we must come down hard on online filesharing." This trick can be seen most clearly in ACTA, which stands for "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement", but where the most problematic sections concern digital piracy, not counterfeits.
On Techdirt.
08 December 2011
From Open Source to Open Research: Horizon 2020
Last week I took part in a meeting at the European Parliament entitled “Horizon 2020: Investing in the common good”. Here's the background:
On Open Enterprise blog.
Making AIDS Drugs Affordable With Prizes, Not Patents
Of all the dysfunctional parts of the patent system, drug patents are arguably the worst, since the exorbitant prices that patent monopolies allow mean that millions of people simply cannot afford medicines that would keep them alive or would improve their quality of life substantially.
On Techdirt.
Who Owns The Data Collected About You From Devices Inside Your Body?
People have started to wake up to the fact that companies like Google and Facebook hold huge quantities of data about their users. That raises questions about who owns what there, and to what extent users should be allowed access. Now Hugo Campos is asking the same question about a different kind of personal data – that being collected by a cardiac defibrillator implanted in his chest:
On Techdirt.
07 December 2011
Getting It: In A World Of Digital Abundance, Sell The Scarcities
A recurrent refrain from the copyright industries is that you can't make money from digital goods if they are freely available online. To which Techdirt has been pointing out for years that not only are there many ways of doing precisely that, but lots of people are already coining it as a result. One of the Guardian's columnists has noticed one of them - that in a world of digital abundance, you can make money by selling associated scarcities:
On Techdirt.
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