23 November 2013
A New Chapter for Open Source?
Back in April, I wrote about in interesting new venture from the Linux Foundation called the OpenDaylight Project. As I pointed out then, what made this significant was that it showed how the Linux Foundation was beginning to move beyond its historical origins of supporting the Linux ecosystem, towards the broader application of the important lessons it has learnt about open source collaboration in the process. Following that step, we now have this:
On Open Enterprise blog.
Windows 8+TPM: Germany Warns of 'Loss of Control'
Last year, I wrote about some serious issues with Microsoft's Secure Boot Technology in Windows 8. It seems that the German government has started to wake up to problems with Windows 8, as this headline in Die Zeit attests:
On Open Enterprise blog.
The Canary in the Coal Mine: Groklaw Shuts Down
If you follow me on Twitter or elsewhere, you'll have noticed that I've been tweeting rather extensively about the NSA's spying, the most recent attacks on Glenn Greenwald and now the Guardian. If you were still wondering what any of this has to do with open source, this latest news might clarify things a little:
On Open Enterprise blog.
Open Source in the UK: Sharing the Fire
As even a cursory glance at articles on Open Enterprise over the last few years will indicate, open source is a massive success in practically every market. Except, unfortunately, on the desktop (famously) and more, generally, for consumers. And as Aral Balkan points out in an important post from a few weeks ago, that's a real problem:
On Open Enterprise blog.
TTIP Update II
As I noted in my first TTIP Update about the current negotiations between the EU and US over a massive trade agreement that is far from being only about trade, it is probably true that it will not include many of the more outrageous ideas found in ACTA last year. But that is not to say that TTIP does not threaten many key aspects of the Internet - just that the attack is much more subtle.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Did You Know that Mozilla is Hijacking the Internet?
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the incredible spectacle of the European arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) attacking Mozilla on the grounds that the latter had "lost its values" because it insisted on defending the users' rights to control how cookies were used on their systems.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Is Apache the Most Important Open Source Project?
Back in the mists of time - I'm talking about 2000 here - when free software was still viewed by many as a rather exotic idea, I published a book detailing its history up to that point. Naturally, I wrote about Apache (the Web server, not the foundation) there, since even in those early days it was already the sectoral leader. As I pointed out:
On Open Enterprise blog.
Is This Finally the Year of Open Source...in China?
One of the long-running jokes in the free software world is that this year will finally be the year of open source on the desktop - just like it was last year, and the year before that. Thanks to the astounding rise of Android, people now realise that the desktop is last decade's platform, and that mobile - smartphones and tablets - are the future. But I'd argue that there is something even more important these, and that is the widespread deployment of open source in China.
On Open Enterprise blog.
27 October 2013
When Transparency Is A Matter Of Life And Death
Against a background of the leaks about NSA spying, transparency -- or lack of it -- is a hot topic at the moment. But there are situations where it can be even more important than just a matter of enhancing confidence in government actions and acting as a check on them, as this Wired story about Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) makes clear:
On Techdirt.
European Commission Report Says Open Access At 'Tipping Point'
Techdirt has been reporting for some time on the growing number of moves towards making academic work freely available to the public -- for example this recent major boost from the University of California. But what about the bigger picture? How is open access doing overall? The European Commission has just published a new report trying to answer those questions, which offers an extremely upbeat assessment:
On Techdirt.
Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'
Some stories, you just couldn't make up. Like this one, reported on the UK site Reprieve, about a failed attempt to pass some reading material to one of the people detained at Guantanamo Bay. Something unsuitable you might guess, perhaps advocating terrorist ways? Well, not exactly:
On Techdirt:
Did New Zealand Spooks Tap Into PRISM To Spy On Dotcom?
As Techdirt has reported, the attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand to the US have turned into one of the most catastrophically bungled legal cases in a long while. One of the biggest scandals to emerge was that New Zealand citizens had been wiretapped in an effort to gain evidence against Dotcom, since domestic spying was forbidden there just as it is in the US (oh, wait...). Unfortunately, rather than rapping knuckles and telling the local spooks not to do it again, the New Zealand government has instead just brought in new legislation to make it legal in the future.
On Techdirt.
Russia Prepares To Block Tor And Anonymizing Proxies
As more and more countries start introducing Web blocks, some people console themselves with the "at least there's always Tor" argument. Politicians may be slow, but they are not all completely stupid, and they are beginning to get the message that Tor and other anonymous services potentially render their Web blocks moot. It's then not a huge leap for them to move on to the next stage -- banning or blocking Tor -- as Russia now seems to be contemplating, according to this article on Russia Today:
On Techdirt.
German Supreme Court Confirms RapidShare Must Police The Internet And Restrict Anonymous Use
A post on TorrentFreak updates us on the continuing saga of the file-hosting site RapidShare. The Supreme Court in Germany has apparently confirmed a regional High Court decision that had itself confirmed two earlier verdicts concerning the Swiss company:
On Techdirt.
Undownloading: Further Proof Those eBooks You Paid For Really Aren't Yours
Over the years Techdirt has run a number of stories that make it abundantly clear that you don't own those ebooks you paid for. But in case you were still clinging to some faint hope to the contrary, here's a cautionary tale from Jim O'Donnell, a classics professor at Georgetown University. He is currently attending the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Singapore, and naturally wanted to bring along some serious reading material; ebooks on an iPad seemed the perfect way to do that. As O'Donnell explains:
On Techdirt.
Who Will Take The Privacy Seppuku Pledge?
When Techdirt wrote recently about yet another secure email provider opting to close down its service rather than acquiesce in some future US government demand to spy on its users, we noted that Cryptocloud has promised something similar for a while -- what it terms "corporate seppuku":
On Techdirt.
Massive Overblocking Hits Hundreds Of UK Sites
Two years ago, Techdirt reported on a very troubling ruling in the UK courts that BT had to block access to the Usenet service provider Newzbin2. At the time, many feared that this would be the thin end of the wedge, giving copyright companies an easy way to shut down other sites. And with that power, of course, would come the inevitable errors, blocking completely unrelated sites. Just how seriously those mistakes could be is shown by this recent case of massive overblocking, reported here on PC Pro:
On Techdirt.
The Getty Gets It: 'Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come'
Techdirt has published a number of posts that explore the issue of whether art organizations can stop people sharing images of works in their collections when the latter are indisputably in the public domain. Even if museums might be able to claim copyright in their "official" photographic images, the more important question is whether they ought to. The good news is that some institutions are beginning to realize that using copyright monopolies in this way contradicts their basic reason for existing -- to share the joy of art. Here, for example, is a wonderful statement of that principle from the Getty Museum entitled "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come":
On Techdirt.
Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share
Prefixing concepts with the epithet "open" has become something of a fashion over the last decade. Beginning with open source, we've had open content, open access, open data, open science, and open government to name but a few. Indeed, things have got to the point where "openwashing" -- the abuse of the term in order to jump on the openness bandwagon -- is a real problem. But a great post by David Eaves points out that the spectrum of openness actually extends well beyond the variants typically encountered in the West:
On Techdirt.
Latest 'Think Of The Children' Scaremongering: Pirated Films Might 'Disturb' Them
Just last week we heard how Russia has extended its "think of the children" law to include copyright infringement. That was a classic case of function creep, but here's a more direct invocation of "the children" in order to attack unauthorized downloads of files, this time in the UK:
On Techdirt.
Copyright Lawyers vs Patent Lawyers Smackdown: And The Winner Is...
You may remember a rather wonderful court case from 2012 that pitted copyright lawyers against patent lawyers over the issue of whether submitting journal articles as part of the patenting process was fair use. Well, we now have the judge's decision, as GigaOm reports:
On Techdirt.
University Of California Gives Big Boost To Open Access, Still Confused About Sharing Knowledge
Techdirt has been monitoring for a while the inexorable rise of open access in the academic world. But even against a background of major wins, this latest news from the University of California (UC) is still big, not least because it seems to represent a major shift there:
On Techdirt.
British Library Network Blocks 'Hamlet' For 'Violent Content'
The use of Web blocks -- usually "for the children" -- is becoming depressingly common these days. So much so, that many people have probably come to accept them as a fact of online life. After all, the logic presumably goes, we can't do much about it, and anyway surely it's a good thing to try to filter out the bad stuff? Techdirt readers, of course, know otherwise, but for anyone who still thinks that well-intentioned blocking of "unsuitable" material is unproblematic, the following cautionary tale from the British blogger W.H. Forsyth may prove instructive:
On Techdirt.
Australian Copyright Industry Says Proposal To Bring In Fair Use Is 'Solution For Problem That Doesn't Exist'
A couple of months back, Techdirt wrote about Australia's proposals to shift from the current fair dealing approach to fair use as part of wide-ranging reform of copyright there. When something similar was mooted in the UK as part of what became the Hargreaves Review, it was shouted down by the copyright maximalists on the grounds that it would lead to widespread litigation. As Mike pointed out at the time, that's nonsense: the existence of a large body of US case law dealing with this area makes it much easier to bring in fair use without the need for its contours to be defined in the courts.
On Techdirt.
How To Solve Overclassification: Give Government Departments A Limited Annual 'Secrecy Budget'
Recently we noted that "overclassification" of sensitive material actually leads to more secrets being revealed. The New York Times has published an interesting article that picks up on this theme, and gives the following concrete example of how overclassification has been harmful to the US:
On Techdirt.
US Government War On Hackers Backfires: Now Top Hackers Won't Work With US Government
Techdirt has noted the increasing demonization of hackers (not to be confused with crackers that break into systems for criminal purposes), for example by trying to add an extra layer of punishment on other crimes if they were done "on a computer." High-profile victims of this approach include Bradley Manning, Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown and of course Edward Snowden.
On Techdirt.
UK's Ofcom Recognizes That Copyright Can Be A Threat To User Generated Content
One of the central problems of laws that deal with copyright is that they are essentially products of a time when the distinction between creator and audience was clear-cut. The move to digital and the rise of the Internet has changed all that, allowing hundreds of millions of people to become new kinds of creators. They may not write entire symphonies or paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but what they lack in scale and intensity they make up for in frequency and spontaneity.
On Techdirt.
New Vietnam Decree Says Blogs And Social Media Must Contain Only Personal Information, Not News Reports
Around the world, we have been watching the gradual taming of social media, especially in countries where governments keep mainstream media on a tight leash. But even against that background, this news from the Bangkok Post about Vietnam's latest moves to censor online content is pretty extraordinary:
On Techdirt.
As Russia Expands Its 'Think Of The Children' Laws To Copyright, Agency In Charge Investigated For Infringement
Last week we wrote about how the Russian equivalent of SOPA had been amended in order to ban swearing online. Although that was worth noting for its entertainment value, probably more important is the fact that the same law -- originally brought in to take down sites about drugs, suicide and child pornography -- has also been widened to include copyright infringement, as TechWeekEurope reports:
On Techdirt.
Survey: Most Italian Internet Users Think Ignoring Copyright Harms Publishers, But Not Society As A Whole
One of the heartening recent developments in the world of digital copyright is that we have moved on from manifestly biased surveys about the evils of piracy and how the solution to everything is harsher punishment for infringement and longer copyright terms, to independent analyses that seek to understand rather than judge and lecture. There's also been a new focus on learning what the public thinks might be an appropriate balance for modern copyright -- something that nobody cared about in the past.
On Techdirt.
TPP Negotiations Deprive New Zealanders Of Promised Copyright Consultation -- For Secret Reasons
One of the myths perpetuated by governments taking part in major international treaty negotiations like ACTA, TPP and TAFTA/TTIP is that somehow no national sovereignty is given up during the process, and that therefore the public shouldn't worry about what goes on in those secret meetings. That's clearly absurd, because negotiations involve concessions, usually by the weaker parties, which often touch on national competences.
On Techdirt.
Could Open Source Make GMOs More Palatable?
As a recent DailyDirt noted, opinions on the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are sharply divided. But that heated argument tends to obscure another problem that Techdirt has often written about in other fields: the use of patent monopolies to exert control, in this case over the food chain. By inserting DNA sequences into plants and animals and obtaining patents, the biotech industry is granted surprisingly wide-ranging powers over how its products are used, as the Bowman case made clear. That's potentially problematic when those products are the foods that keep us alive.
On Techdirt.
Peru Proposes Default Internet Censorship Requiring Opt-in To View Pornography
Techdirt has run a number of posts about David Cameron's dangerous plans to apply default online censorship and make porn opt-in in the UK, supposedly to "protect the children". Now it looks like Peru is following suit (original in Spanish):
On Techdirt.
26 October 2013
Trade Agreements With Mexico And South Korea Turned Out To Be Disasters For US: So Why Pursue TPP And TAFTA/TTIP?
Two massive trade agreements currently being negotiated -- TPP and TAFTA/TTIP -- could potentially affect most people on this planet, either directly or indirectly through the knock-on effects. Like all such agreements, they have been justified on the grounds that everyone wins: trade is boosted, prices drop, profits rise and jobs are created. That's why it's been hard to argue against TPP or TAFTA -- after all, who doesn't want all those things?
On Techdirt.
What Exactly Does The EU Plan To Do On Net Neutrality?
There are few areas in tech policy where the waters are so muddied as those swirling around net neutrality. That's as true for the EU as it is for the US. The latest statement by the person responsible for this area in the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, does little to clarify things.
On Techdirt.
Discontent With Secrecy And One-Sided Nature Of TPP Spreads Among Participating Nations
Last week Mike wrote how frustration at the unremitting secrecy surrounding TPP, and the refusal to allow members of the public in whose name it is being negotiated to express their views, has led to the creation of a new participatory Web site by the "Fair Deal Coalition." Many of the best-known groups fighting for more balanced copyright laws in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have signed up, including Techdirt.
On Techdirt.
Another Problem with UK's 'Nudge Censorship': No Clear Accountability
As Tim Cushing has noted, David Cameron's half-baked plan to make online pornography opt-in in the UK has continued to earn him ridicule around the world. Despite that fact, there is already talk about extending this censorship approach to a host of other completely legal areas. The UK Open Rights Group (ORG), which discovered that slide into general censorship, not just of porn, has published another post which points out a further reason why what they call "nudge censorship" -- using default blocks that require a conscious opt-in to remove -- is so dangerous: the lack of clear accountability:
On Techdirt.
Russia To Ban Swearing On The Internet
A year ago, we wrote about a Russian law that introduced a blacklist designed to block access to information on drugs, suicide and child pornography (all for the children, of course.) Strangely, that same law was then used to silence leading reporters who dared to criticize the government (bet nobody saw that coming....)
On Techdirt.
Tell Old Pharaoh: Let My Postcodes Go
The story of open data in the UK has been fairly uplifting in recent years, as more and more public datasets are released under liberal licences. Even the big holdouts - things like Ordnance Survey - have gradually loosened their grip. The same is true for the Postcode Address File (PAF), which has a surprising long history:
On Open Enterprise blog.
TTIP Update I
At the start of this year I flagged up the likelihood that hugely important trade negotations between the EU and US would start in due course. A few months later, I gave some more background to that move, as well as the text of a document calling for the participants to avoid repeating the grave mistakes of ACTA, which ultimately led to that agreement being rejected in the European Parliament on July 4 last year.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Russia to Ban Swearing Online: UK to Follow?
Yesterday I wrote about the slide into censorship and self-censorship that the UK government's misbegotten plans to impose a default set of Net blocks could bring about. Of course, the UK is not alone in seeking to introduce disproportionate schemes. Here's one from Russia:
On Open Enterprise blog.
UK Sliding into Something Worse than Censorship
Unless you have been living under the proverbial rock, you will have heard and probably read plenty about the UK government's grandstanding proposals to make pornography opt-in. I won't waste your time by going through the many reasons why that is a foolish idea and won't achieve the things the government says it will. Instead I'd like to concentrate on some disturbing hints about where this could be going, and why we need to start fighting any such plans now.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Yet More Security Reasons to Give Microsoft a Miss
In the wake of Microsoft's dire financial results, it might seem a little unsporting to draw attention to more of the company's problems. But its continuing stranglehold on companies and governments around the world means that such measures are justified, not least because people are suffering as result - millions of them.
On Open Enterprise blog.
EU Kills Net Neutrality, Threatens Online Openness
I've been trying to fathom what exactly Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for the Digital Agenda, intends to do about net neutrality in Europe for a while. Back in January of this year, I asked: "Will Neelie Kroes Defend or Destroy EU Net Neutrality?", and in June I was still wondering: "What's the Net Net on Neelie Kroes's EU Net Neutrality?"
On Open Enterprise blog.
Mozilla Comes under Attack - and of Age
Back in March, I wrote about the odd little attack by the European arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) on Mozilla's plans to put control of cookies firmly in the hands of users. Alas, the IAB seems not to have come to its senses since then, but has instead doubled down, and launched one of the most bizarre assaults on Mozilla and the open Web that I have ever read. I warmly recommend you to read it - I suspect you will find it as entertaining in its utter absurdity as I do.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Can You Trust Microsoft With Your Company Secrets?
About a month ago, I wrote about the extraordinary fact that Microsoft routinely hands over zero-day exploits in its applications to the US government for the latter to use in the short window before they are announced and plugged. On thing that allows is for "foreign" governments and companies to be targetted and various levels of access to be gained in a way that is hard to protect against.
On Open Enterprise blog.
EU Copyright: The Right to Read and the Right to Mine
A year ago the European Parliament rejected ACTA - a real milestone in the fight to bring some balance to copyright, since it was the first time that a major international treaty was thrown out in this way, largely because of its one-sided and disproportionate approach to that area.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Urgent: Please Contact MEPs Now for Spying/TAFTA Vote
As you will have noticed, European politicians have suddenly become rather interested in the revelations about NSA spying now that it seems that they, too, have been targeted. This led to a three-hour long debate in the European Parliament yesterday, which was striking for the number of speakers calling for the imminents TAFTA/TTIP trade negotiations to be postponed until after the US has responded to the allegations - and promised to behave better in the future.
On Open Enterprise blog.
Latin American Countries Band Together To Fight Growing Problem Of Investor-State Disputes
As Techdirt has observed, investor-state dispute resolution (ISDR) is turning into a major weapon that corporations can deploy against nations in order to claim damages for some alleged loss of future profits as a result of government action -- for example, stricter health or environmental regulations. Last year alone, 62 new investment arbitration cases were initiated against nations, and a record award of $1.77 billion was made against Ecuador.
On Techdirt.
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