skip to main |
skip to sidebar
The UK is famous for its abundant CCTV cameras, but it's also pretty
keen on the equally intrusive Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR)
cameras that can identify cars and hence their owners as they pass.
Here, for example, is what's been going on in the town of Royston, whose
local police force has just had its knuckles rapped by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) for the over-enthusiastic deployment of such ANPR systems there:
On
Techdirt.
At the beginning of last year we reported on a Swedish study that showed that streaming services had halved
the number of people who were downloading music illegally in
Scandinavia. That's a pretty stunning figure, but of course is only one
data point, which means that people can always argue that it's not
possible to generalize. So it's good that not just one but two new
reports confirm and broaden that finding.
On
Techdirt.
A few months ago we wrote about the extraordinary -- and worrying --
case of Eli Lilly suing Canada after the latter had refused to grant a
pharma patent. Eli Lilly's contention was that by failing to grant its
patent (even if it didn't meet the criteria for a patent in Canada),
Canada had "expropriated" Eli Lilly's property -- and that it should be paid $100 million as "compensation".
On
Techdirt.
One of the striking features of the Snowden story is that there has been
no serious attempt to deny the main claims about massive, global
spying. Instead, the fall-back position has become: well, yeah, maybe
we did some of that, but look how many lives were saved as a result.
For example, the day after the first leaks appeared, it was suggested
that PRISM was responsible for stopping a plot to bomb the NYC subways.
However, further investigation showed that probably wasn't the case.
On
Techdirt.
Two of the key arguments during the Myriad Genetics
trial were that gene patent monopolies stifle innovation by preventing
others from building on and extending key knowledge, and that they can
cause unnecessary suffering and even death by driving up prices for
medical treatment beyond the reach of many people. Even though the
Supreme Court struck down Myriad's key patents, reducing those issues
for DNA, a new technology with major ramifications for health runs the
risk of suffering from precisely the same problems.
On
Techdirt.
One technique in the world of pharma that has started appearing here
on Techdirt is "evergreening" -- making small changes to a drug, often
about to come off patent, in order to gain a new patent that extends its
manufacturer's control over it. The advantages for pharma companies
are evident, but what about the public? What economic impact does evergreening have? That's what a fascinating new paper in the open access journal PLoS Medicine seeks to establish:
On
Techdirt.
As we've noted before, many publishers have the crazy attitude that
ebooks shouldn't be lent by libraries, and that it should be made harder for people to access literature in these places if it's in a digital form. Over in the Netherlands, public libraries have had enough of this, and are taking legal action over the issue, as an article in Future of Copyright reports:
On
Techdirt.
Today, the European Parliament held a three-hour long debate on PRISM,
Tempora and what the EU response should be. Many wanted TAFTA/TTIP put on hold;
others didn't. But one theme cropped up again and again: the need for
strong data protection laws that would offer at least some legal
protection against massive and unregulated transfer of Europeans'
personal data to the US.
On
Techdirt.
As the growing number of Techdirt stories on the subject testify, drones
are becoming a more familiar part of modern life. But their presence
can add a new element to situations. An obvious example is during
demonstrations, where drones can be used to monitor those taking part --
but also the authorities' reaction. As with cases where members of the
public have used smartphones to capture police abuse, so drones offer the possibility of revealing questionable police activity that might in the past have gone unrecorded.
On
Techdirt.
In the past, Iran has provided plenty of light relief here on Techdirt, whether because of plans to build its own Internet, or thanks to weird stuff like this. But it looks like those days are over
following the election of a surprisingly-moderate President, Hassan Rouhani. Here, for example, are his thoughts on Net filters, as reported by The Guardian:
On
Techdirt.
Open standards has been a recurring theme here on Open Enterprise.
It's also been the occasion of one of the most disgraceful U-turns by
the European Commission. That took place in the wake of the European Interoperability Framework v1, which called for any claimed patents to be licensed irrevocably on a royalty-free basis. But when EIF v2 came out, we found the following:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
On Wednesday I wrote
about the Houses of Parliament deciding to use cloud computing
solutions, despite the fact that we now know - not just surmise - that
this is like handing your documents to the NSA.
As I noted, that may not be problematic if your documents were going to
be in the public domain anyway. But of course, that's only the case
for a tiny fraction of most companies' documents. And for those, it is
clearly the height of irresponsibility to place them with cloud-based
systems that are wide open to demands from the US government for any and
all data to be handed over, decrypted where possible.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last week I wrote about the perils
of using proprietary software, where companies regularly hand over
zero-day vulnerabilities to the US authorities who then go on to use
them to break into foreign systems (and maybe domestic ones, too, but
they're not owning up to that, yet....). Of course, cloud-based
solutions are even worse, as we've known for some time.
There, you are handing over all your data to the keeping of a company
that may be on the receiving end of a secret US government order to pass
it on to them - perhaps with necessary encryption keys too.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
At the end of last year, we wrote about an extraordinary attempt by the University of California (UC) to resuscitate the infamous "Eolas" patents that were thrown out
earlier by a jury in East Texas. Clearly, the University of California
likes patents, and the way that they can be used to extract money from
people with very little effort. In fact, it likes them so much it is
trying to privatize research produced by taxpayer-funded laboratories so
that even more patents can be taken out on the work, and even more
money obtained through licensing them. The background to this new approach,
implemented via a new entity provisionally entitled "Newco", is
described in a fantastic feature by Darwin BondGraham that appears in
East Bay Express:
On
Techdirt.
In the wake of the news that spies at GCHQ -- the UK equivalent of the NSA -- have been tapping
into every fiber optic cable that comes into and goes out of the
country, downloading and storing phone calls and Internet traffic for up
to 30 days, you might think the British authorities have enough
information at their disposal, without needing to turn to other sources.
But it seems not, according to the latest revelations in The Guardian:
On
Techdirt.
As we've noted before, when it comes to the Internet, governments around
the world have an unfortunate habit of copying each other's worst
ideas. Thus the punitive three-strikes approach based on accusations,
not proof, was pioneered by France, and then spread to the UK, South
Korea, New Zealand and finally the US (where, naturally, it became the
bigger and better "six strikes" scheme). France appears to be about to abandon this unworkable and ineffective approach, leaving other countries to deal with all the problems it has since discovered.
On
Techdirt.
It's hard to believe that the heady times that saw SOPA's rise and fall are only a year and a half ago. Of course, SOPA didn't die, but was merely "delayed". But if you've ever wondered what happened to it, wonder no more; it emigrated to Russia, as TorrentFreak reports:
On
Techdirt.
There finally seems to be a growing recognition in many countries that
copyright is not fit for the digital age. In the US, the Copyright Registrar
has spoken on this; in the UK, the Hargreaves Review delineated many
problems; and more recently, Australia, too, is starting to address the
question. As part of the process of implementing Hargreaves'
recommendations, the UK government is carrying out a consultation on
whether the UK should adopt the full list of copyright exceptions that
are laid out in the EU Copyright Directive, which provides the
overarching framework for copyright in Europe. It has now published some questionnaires seeking input in this area:
On
Techdirt.
It is extraordinary how companies have failed to grasp three basic facts
about DRM: that DRM only needs to be broken once, and it is broken
everywhere, thanks to the Internet; that DRM is always broken at
least once; and that once DRM is broken, anything still with that DRM is
effectively worth less than zero -- since copies freely available
online never have DRM. Despite these inconvenient truths, copyright
companies continue to hope that there is some magic technology that will
"protect" them from the pirates. Here's the latest forlorn attempt to do that, as reported by paidContent:
On
Techdirt.
Here on Techdirt we've had stories about how the ubiquity of digital cameras is changing the way we look at public events and art.
But as has also become clear, the ability to take photos of more or
less everything we see brings with it certain problems -- especially if
what we see are police.
So it was perhaps inevitable that the politicians would start to get
involved, in order to "solve" some of those problems. Here's a rather extreme example from Sweden, as reported by TechHive:
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt readers may recall that over three years ago, the UK's Digital Economy Act was passed in totally disgraceful
circumstances. Since then, almost nothing has been heard about it, as
British civil servants grapple with the fact that this poorly-drafted
law is almost impossible to implement in any sensible way. If you were
wondering what is going on behind the scenes, James Firth has put
together a fascinating post piecing together the information that he was
able to glean. The main point is that the UK's "three-strike" warning letters won't be going out for years:
On
Techdirt.
One of the problems with the debates around copyright and patents is
that they too often assume that intellectual monopolies are necessary in
order to promote innovation or even basic economic activity. But that
overlooks all kinds of domains where that's not true. In the field of
technology, free software and the other open movements based on sharing
are familiar examples of this kind of thing. Less well known so are the
so-called "informal economies" found in many parts of the world.
On
Techdirt.
So the revelations from Edward Snowden keep on coming, exposing
ever-more profound attacks on privacy and democracy in the UK and
elsewhere. News that GCHQ is essentially downloading, storing and searching
through the entire flow of Internet traffic that comes into and goes
out of the UK without any specific warrant to do so is one side of that.
That seems to be taking place through an extremely generous
interpretation of the out-of-date RIPA law
that is supposed to bring some level of accountability to just this sort
of thing. The fact that it doesn't shows that we must reform RIPA and make it fit for the Internet age.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The last couple of weeks have been full of the revelations about NSA spying
on a massive scale. What has been slightly disconcerting is that the
agency and its defenders have essentially tried to argue that the spying
doesn't matter because it's only aimed at "foreigners". But that's us:
which means that we are the target of this spying, even if others get
caught up in it too.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Irrespective of the details of the current revelations about US
spying being provided by Edward Snowden in the Guardian, there is
already a huge collateral benefit. On the one hand, the US government
is falling over itself to deny some of the allegations by offering its
own version of the story. That for the first time gives us official
details about programmes that before we only knew through leaks and
rumours, if at all. Moreover, the unseemly haste and
constantly-shifting story from the US authorities is confirmation, if
anyone still needed it, that what Snowden is revealing is important -
you don't kick up such a fuss over nothing.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Remember the Digital Economy Act, surely one of the most disgraceful
episodes in recent British political history? It was "passed" back 2010
- I use inverted commas, since it was actually rammed through an almost
empty House of Commons in the guttering hours of the previous
government, with no scrutiny, riding roughshod over all those pointing
out it was both unjust and unworkable.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The extraordinary revelations about the NSA's global spying programme Prism
have only just started - was it really just last Thursday that things
began? So it would be extremely rash to attempt any kind of definitive
statement about what is going on. But that doesn't preclude a few
preliminary comments, as well as initial thoughts on what action those
of us in Europe might take in response.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
It's been a while since I wrote about net neutrality, but of course
it's never gone away as an important theme. Indeed, it was inevitable
that it would start to rear its ugly head again, since so many powerful
companies have vested interests in destroying it. For example, in
Germany the telecom giant Deutsch Telekom (DT) has already made a move
to kill net neutrality by giving preference to its own IPTV platform. This has led to a heated debate about net neutrality in that country (for those who read German, the site hilf-telekom.de offers some hilarious satire of DT on the subject.)
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Mozilla and its central Firefox project are themes that I have
returned to often on this blog. That's not so surprising: Mozilla is
one of the oldest free software projects, starting back in 1998 when Netscape stunned the world by announcing that it would open up its key product, Netscape Navigator.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
"Law is the operating system of our society ... So show me the
manual!" Not alas, my witty words, but those found on the site
Public.Resource.Org, run by the redoubtable Carl Malamud.
The basic idea is simple: that laws can only be obeyed if they are
truly public, which means freely available, not hidden behind paywalls.
After all, how can the phrase "ignorance of the law is no excuse" have
any validity when key documents are only available to those with pockets
deep enough to afford them?And not just laws: we need case law and
associated government regulations too.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
I love the spring. Not, of course, because of the glorious weather,
since we don't have any. But because it's time for the annual BSA report
on piracy, which is guaranteed to provide me with hours of innocent fun
as I go through finding its methodological errors and dodgy data.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
I've written a number of posts looking at less-familiar advantages of
open source over closed source, and here's another one. Proprietary
systems can't be forked, which means that it's not possible to change
the underlying ethos, for example by tweaking the software or using code
on a different platform. But you can with open source, as this
interesting example shows.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
I've written
a few times about open data in the context of clinical trials - the
information that must be provided when new drugs seek approval. As I
noted, there is a growing movement
to make such basic safety data freely available, the idea being that it
could then be analysed by third parties, perhaps finding new
applications of drugs, overlooked problems, or even wilful concealing of adverse effects.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The revelations of Edward Snowden about the NSA's snooping of citizens
both inside and outside the US are posing more questions than they
answer at the moment. One key area is whether the use of encryption --
for example for email -- is effective against the techniques and raw
power available to the NSA (and equivalents in other countries). That's
something that has come up before in the context of the UK's Snooper's
Charter. When a top official there was asked whether the proposed
surveillance technology would be able to cope with encrypted streams, he
replied: "it will." Snowden's claims about massive, global spying makes the issue even more pertinent.
On
Techdirt.
As we've noted before, Hadopi has been a colossal failure
on just about every metric, and now seems on the way out. But French
taxpayers' money is still being wasted on the scheme, which continues to
send out huge numbers of warnings. Ironically, given its imminent
demise, Hadopi seems to have finally claimed its first disconnection
victim, as PC Inpact reports (original in French.)
The person involved has been sentenced to disconnection for 15 days,
and must pay a €600 fine. Strangely, it seems that he or she shared
only a couple of works, so even that brief period seems harsh. However,
there is still scope for an appeal, so the sentence is not yet definite.
On
Techdirt.
News that the NSA has unfettered access to most of the leading Internet
services inevitably has an international dimension. After all,
Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and the rest of the Naughty Nine
all operate around the world, so spying on their users means spying on
people everywhere. Indeed, as Mike explained earlier today, the NSA is
actually trying to quell criticism by selling this news as something
that purely concerns non-Americans (although that's clearly rubbish.)
On
Techdirt.
Posts
