Undermining Digg

Digg occupies such an emblematic place in the Web 2.0 world that it's important to understand what's really going on with this increasingly powerful site (on the rare occasions that I've had stories dugg, my traffic has been stratospheric for a day or two before sagging inexorably down to its usual footling levels.)

So this story from Annalee Newitz on Wired News is at once fascinating and frightening:

I can tell you exactly how a pointless blog full of poorly written, incoherent commentary made it to the front page on Digg. I paid people to do it. What's more, my bought votes lured honest Diggers to vote for it too. All told, I wound up with a "popular" story that earned 124 diggs -- more than half of them unpaid. I also had 29 (unpaid) comments, 12 of which were positive.

Although it's worrying that Digg can be gamed so easily, there's hope too:

Ultimately, however, my story did get buried. If you search for it on Digg, you won't find it unless you check the box that says "also search for buried stories." This didn't happen because the Digg operators have brilliant algorithms, however -- it happened because many people in the Digg community recognized that my blog was stupid. Despite the fact that it was rapidly becoming popular, many commenters questioned my story's legitimacy. Digg's system works only so long as the crowds on Digg can be trusted.

Digg remains a fascinating experiment in progress; let's hope it works out.

Firewalls in Meatspace

Hmm, disturbing.

Patent Abuse

Oh, look. Here's yet another reason to get rid of patents:

Guess what? Radio frequency identification tags are insecure. But don't demonstrate the technology's problems at a security conference. If you do, HID Global, a manufacturer of access-control devices, might sue you for patent infringement.

...

The use of patent law to prevent vulnerability discovery and discussion is bitter irony, because a fundamental purpose of patent law is disclosure: In exchange for the right to exclude others from using, making or selling a novel invention, an inventor agrees to make public all the details. Once issued, patents are a searchable public record, and expire after 20 years.

Vietnam Eyes Open Source

It seems that the WTO's demands are starting to bite in Vietnam:

Though copyright sale isn’t very common on the Vietnamese market, at the end of 2006, several major state-owned businesses signed copyright contracts with Microsoft. An example was the Ministry of Finance, which bought 15.000 Office software copyrights. Vietnam Commercial Bank (Vietcombank) also signed agreements to have 4.000 permits for Microsoft Office 2003 within 3 years.

Vietnam’s starting to buy software copyrights is indeed a good sign showing that the country is starting to respect WTO rules. The fact that the Ministry of Finance, one of the most important ministries in Vietnam, plays the leading role, also helps to prove to the world that Vietnam intends to make good all of its software copyright pledges to the WTO.

And not surprisingly, people there are beginning to wonder if there isn't a better way - especially for a developing country that has better things to do with its financial resources than giving them to the richest man in the world and his company:

At a national conference on open-source software held in Hanoi at the end of 2006, Vietnam Information Association called for the use and development of domestic products, encouragement of free software with similar functions such as OpenOffice, and application of new technologies such as Web 2.0 which Google, Yahoo, Sun, Oracle are currently using.

As the WTO clamps down on countries that use unauthorised copies of software on a large scale, this kind of development is bound to be repeated.

Update: Meanwhile, here's another country with reasons of its own for preferring free software to the kind that comes from the US....

How Openness Prevents Plagiarism

Here's an important conclusion drawn from the rather sad Joyce Hatto saga:

It's a perfect example of what we've been saying about artists putting their work online: sharing files widely prevents plagiarism, by making it much easier to detect. One couldn't ask for a better drama to illustrate the point. Never mind Joyce Hatto — think instead of all those other pianists, whose recordings were passed off as her work: the only reason the hoax was detected was because their recordings were being shared online too!

Forking Xara LX

It is a truism in the open source world that the threat of a fork keeps code honest. When contributors who disagree with the way a project is going can simply start their own, there is a powerful incentive to take account of their concerns.

There was a great demonstration of how something as painful as a fork can, in fact, be cathartic, leading to a better, stronger result:

The Xara LX vector graphics editor took a big step forward last week. After months of gridlock between open source contributors to the project and its corporate owners, one of the contributors published his own fork of the code base -- and the company approved, offering to host it in the official Subversion repository.

A Brace of Virtual Worlds

I'm not quite sure what the collective noun for virtual worlds is, but here's a couple of new entrants to the world of worlds.

First, what seems to be a Chinese Second Life clone, Hipihi. And then, not a million miles away, there's Outback Online, from the splendidly-named company Yoick, led by the even more splendidly-named Randal Leeb-du Toit. Maybe that's his in-world name....

Softly, Softly on Software Patents

This response to an e-petition "to make software patents clearly unenforcible" is interesting:

The Government remains committed to its policy that no patents should exist for inventions which make advances lying solely in the field of software. Although certain jurisdictions, such as the US, allow more liberal patenting of software-based inventions, these patents cannot be enforced in the UK.

The test used to discern between patentable and non-patentable subject matter in the UK has recently been clarified by the courts, and is applied rigorously by the Patent Office. Under this test, the true nature of the advance being claimed in a patent application must be determined, and if this advance lies solely in the field of software, or another non-technical field such as methods of doing business, the patent will not be granted. If the advance being made by an invention does lie in a technical field, it must also be non-obvious and sufficiently clearly described for the invention to be reproduced before a patent will be granted by the Patent Office.

The recently published Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, an independent review commissioned by the Government, recommended that patent rights should not be extended to cover pure software, business methods and genes. The Government will implement those recommendations for which it is responsible, and will therefore continue to exclude patents from areas where they may hinder innovation: including patents which are too broad, speculative, or obvious, or where the advance they make lies in an excluded area such as software.

Although it is little more than a statement that the current position will be maintained, it does contain the important confirmation that there are no plans to follow the US down the primrose path to the fiery furnace, and that US software patents are not enforceable in the UK. I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.

Credit, too, to the 10 Downing Street site for responding in this fashion to a petition that garnered relatively few signatures (I didn't see it and so didn't sign).

Second Life Gains a New Voice

This is something that many people have been waiting for:

Linden Lab, creator of virtual world Second Life, has announced that it will be adding voice capabilities to the Second Life Grid, as part of its ongoing drive toward creating a richer, more immersive virtual environment.

...

Scenario 1 - Residents can teleport to voice-enabled land, and automatically start speaking, with the volume of speech modified according to their spatial relationship with others. Up to 100 users can be present in the same audio channel at once.

Scenario 2 - Group conference calls for two or more Residents. This enables Residents to communicate with large groups across geographical boundaries (e.g. concert setting, or between pockets of land etc).

Scenario 3 - One-to-one personal communication. This enables Residents to privately share a conversation, which can be initiated by an Instant Message. Residents don’t have to be on voice-enabled land to do this.

It doesn't look like this new code will be open:

Core voice capabilities are provided by Vivox, under the terms of a service agreement with Linden Lab, incorporating 3D voice technology from DiamondWare

but it's good to see Linden moving forward.

When the Tardis Connects to the Dilithium Crystals

Chris Long tells it as it is:

my concern about all this is the ignorance of the technical thinking behind these ideas; ideas that have apparently been formulated by people who've learnt their technology from watching, James Bond, Star Trek, Dr Who and Blakes 7.

I can just imagine the conversation: "Q says we have to connect the Tardis engine to some dilithium crystals and throw some tachyon particles at it... What do you think Orac?"

Can you say ID card?

Virtually Patent

Here's a fascinating question:

how would you feel as a Second Life resident if a real world company stepped into Second Life and started patenting things left right and centre that you'd already done without their knowledge? The real world companies already have processes and budgets for setting up and defending patents; but being new to Second Life they may not know about what people have made already.

The issue raised here is what should be patentable in Second Life? This is easy, actually: nothing. Everything in Second Life is code; in particular, all the interesting stuff is done using the SL scripting language. Since neither software nor algorithms can be patented (at least in rational parts of the world), this clearly means that nothing in SL can be patented.

And that's right. If you could patent things, then, as the post puts it, things would get crazy:

How would you feel if using a cylinder for a chair was patented? And then a box prim for a chair was patented, and so on. You'd be wading through patents before you even rezzed a prim.

And this is precisely the situation for software in those parts of the world that allow broad software patents. That is, programmers have to worry that unwittingly they are infringing on somebody's "patent" on that code, even if they are simply employing the basic building blocks of programming - the "cylinders".

In what almost amounts to a thought experiment, we see again the absurdity of allowing software - which is essentially just ideas and algorithms - to be patented. All it does is to impeded innovation. And to those who, in the absence of patents, worry about people stealing bits of their code, that's what copyright is for: it protects particular instantiations of ideas in code, not the ideas themselves, which remain freely available to all for further use and development.

It is no coincidence that the GNU GPL - essentially the constitution of free software - depends on copyright law to work. There is no contradiction between free software and copyright - quite the contrary; it is patents and free software that are intellectual matter and anti-matter.

3D Viewer for Second Life

Sounds cool:

The University of Michigan 3D Lab has brought Second Life one step closer to real life by developing stereoscopic support for the Second Life viewer. This recent addition allows visitors wearing special glasses to see the objects of Second Life pop out of the screen similar to watching a 3D movie. Using the recently released source code by Linden Labs, Gabriel Cirio and Eric Maslowski have developed a stereoscopic version of the Second Life viewer that works with a large-screen stereo projection system. This lowcost system uses passive stereo based on polarizing filters and was built from off-theshelf components.

Further proof, if any were needed, of why opening up the code is good for everyone.

The EU Thinks it Can Pwn You

Sigh.

EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini has assured Germany's Federal Minister of the Interior Wolfgang Schäuble (Christian Democratic Union; CDU) of his "full support" for the plans of the federal government to engage in so-called online searches of private PCs.

Leaving aside the issue of the gross privacy intrusion this represents, and leaving aside the fact that it seems to be espousing police cracking of computers, there's a teeny-weeny problem here. It's called a firewall; it's what any sane person connected to the Internet will have on their system precisely to prevent crackers gaining access.

While politicians and their advisers remain so ignorant of technology there's hope for us yet.

Crying into Our Beer

At first blush, this sounds good:

The University of Manchester has secured a £8.4 million deal to become one of the country's largest repositories of facts and figures.

The award by the Economic and Social Research Council will renew the services which are free of charge for researchers and students until 2012. Tens of thousands of people are already using them.

But the clue is "free of charge": we're talking free as in beer, here, people.

So, a missed opportunity here to make this data - precisely the kind of stuff that should be available in an unfettered form - truly free. It makes you want to weep.

The Enclosure of the Starbucks Experience

Here's an insightful piece:

Let’s face it: a brand is all about creating a monoculture. It is all about efficiencies, bureaucratization of process, and the marketing of a single cultural image. It is all about carefully crafting an experience and then monetizing it. The commodification of experience is the polar opposite of what a commons offers. In this case, the market is trying to replicate that which only the commons can truly generate.

As more and more companies seek to emulate Starbucks, and to tap into the power of the commons, this paradox is one that will increasingly crop up. It hints, perhaps, that the commons simply does not scale.

Happy Birthday Browser

Or so it seems:

1991: Tim Berners-Lee, the acknowledged inventor of the World Wide Web, introduces WorldWideWeb, the first practical web browser.

A Crack in the Windows Tax?

One of the worst abuses of Microsoft's desktop power is that it is often very hard to buy a PC without being forced to pay for Windows, whether you want it or not. At long last, there are some cracks appearing in this monolithic approach, thanks, it seems, to Dell's Ideastorm:

It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems.

As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux. In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don't want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line. We are continuing to investigate your other Linux-related ideas, so please continue to check here for updates.

It's a pity this weclome move is vitiated by a pathetic attempt at justifying the latter-day Windows tax:

We don't want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another.

So instead of "alienating" some GNU/Linux users, Dell decided it was better to alienate all of them. Right, that makes business sense. Now, tell me again why Dell is losing market-share?

Calling Ballmer's Bluff

This was something I was going to write about, but someone has gone one better and come up with an entire site devoted to the idea:

Open Letter to Steven Ballmer

It's come to many in the Linux community’s attention you have claimed again and again, that Linux violates Microsoft's intellectual property. Not only that, but it's been reported Microsoft has convinced businesses to pay for a Linux patent that you can't provide.

Therefore, this website will serve as a response to this accusation, and within it, a request. The request is simple, since you, Microsoft, claim to be so sure of yourself: Show Us the Code.

Show us the code, indeed.

Someting is Open in the State of Denmark

Good news from Denmark:

On Friday, the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, made a press announcement (Danish) about his plan for following up on the Parliament Resolution 8 months ago.

The implementation plan is presented in a report which suggests that “open standards should be implemented gradually by making it mandatory for the public sector to use a number of open standards when this becomes technically feasible”.

The report identifies an initial sets of open standards as candidates for mandatory use from 1 January 2008 “if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve additional costs to the public sector”.

Hope for WIPO?

OK, I admit it: I've been a teensy bit negative about WIPO in the past. In part, this was because I thought there was precious little hope it would ever change substantively. Looks like I was wrong:

The agreement on dozens of WIPO reforms was broader and more substantive than had been anticipated. Some of the measures signal important changes in this controversial UN body. WIPO members agreed to "consider the preservation of the public domain within WIPO's normative processes and deepen the analysis of the implication and benefits of a rich and accessible public domain." WIPO agreed to "promote measures that will help countries deal with IP related anticompetitive practices." "Norm-setting activities shall . . . take into account different levels of development" and "take into consideration a balance between costs and benefits." WIPO adopted an expanded mandate to undertake studies to assess the economic, social and cultural impact of intellectual property practices and norm setting activities. All of this signals a new tone and approach for WIPO. In a sense, WIPO is finally entering the new century, and responding to the growing demand for reforms, and a more balanced approach to intellectual property protection.

DRM Causes Piracy

So far from being an impediment to so-called "online piracy," it's DRM itself that keeps fueling it and driving it forward.

Yup. (Via Slashdot.)

The Biter Bit - by Bits

Now that the flow of highly-personal "security" information between the US and other countries is a two-way thing, I predict people in the former are going to become as unenthusiastic about it as those in the latter:

Welcome to the new world of border security. Unsuspecting Americans are turning up at the Canadian border expecting clear sailing, only to find that their past -- sometimes their distant past -- is suddenly an issue.

While Canada officially has barred travelers convicted of criminal offenses for years, attorneys say post-9/11 information-gathering, combined with a sweeping agreement between Canada and the United States to share data, has resulted in a spike in phone calls from concerned travelers.

...

Oh, and by the way, if you don't need to travel to Canada, don't think you won't need to clear your record. Lesperance says it is just a matter of time before agreements are signed with governments in destinations like Japan, Indonesia and Europe.

"This," Lesperance says, "is just the edge of the wedge."

Oh, yes, indeedy.... (Via Slashdot.)

Renew for Freedom: Use It or Lose It

Brits, awake!

Why you should renew your passport, or apply for one IMMEDIATELY if you are aged 16 or over.

The Identity Cards Act 2006 turns your passport into a one-way ticket to control of your identity by the government. It means lifelong surveillance, and untold bureaucracy. This website, produced by the NO2ID campaign, is about how you can renew or apply for a passport to avoid being forced to register on the ID scheme database.

Everyone adult in the UK should do this now; I did as soon as Mad-eyed Tony pushed through his crazy ID Cards legislation, and they started building ID interrogation centres around the UK:

On March 26th 2007 the first of a new network of 69 government ID interrogation centres will open for business. If you apply for your first adult passport after this date, then you may be called for a compulsory "interview" at one of them.

So basically, you have to pay for the privilege of being interrogated; er, anybody seen the film Brazil?

Commons Sense from the EU Parliament

There's a lot wrong with EU Parliament (the small matter of expenses, for a start), but it does seem to have its heart in the right place (next to its wallet, perhaps...).

For example, the spectrum dividend produced by switching terrestial television from analogue to digital means that there's a whole load of yummy electromagnetic spectrum coming up for grabs. Some people (broadcasters etc.) just want to the whole lot auctioned off, but since this spectrum is a commons, and so belongs to you and me, wouldn't it be nice if we got to use through unlicensed frequencies?

And lo and behold, that's just what the EU Parliament is recommending:

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions entitled 'A market-based approach to spectrum management in the European Union',

etc.

etc.

etc.

(Via openspectrum.info.)

Alfresco Sees the (GPL) Light

So, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) company Alfresco has moved from the Mozilla Public Licence to the GNU General Public Licence (with the horribly-named "FLOSS exception"). This is good for Alfresco, and good for the GPL commons. It's also a nice confirmation of some of the things I was saying in this recent article about licensing, with the witty title "Lizenz zum Geldverdienen". Oh, yes, it's, er, in German (but an English version should follow in in due course).