EU Telecoms Promote "Legitimate" Content

Interesting initiative from the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO):

ETNO is launching a new online content web site today, to raise awareness of attractive online offers put on the market by its members throughout Europe to download music, films or watch TV. ETNO members believe that offering a wide choice of online services is the best way to promote a legitimate use of the Internet and fight against illicit file-sharing.

"The rapidly growing choice of legitimate online content services illustrates the increasing cooperation between e-communications providers and content owners in order to respond to consumer demand for price-worthy, secure and user-friendly services”, says Michael Bartholomew, ETNO Director.

The new ETNO web site gives a non-exhaustive overview of services available including IP TV, video on demand or music downloads, offered by ETNO members through different platforms and devices to meet user’s demands.

"User-demand for content is the basis of our actions. ETNO members develop and promote business models for content online offers, including music, films and TV. This list will of course need to be continuously updated,” says Patrik Hiselius, TeliaSonera, Chair of ETNO’s Content Working Group.

Increasing choice of legitimate content online and raising awareness among users are the best instruments to fight against illicit file sharing.

“Illicit file sharing represents a major burden for all stakeholders, including internet service providers. Education is key. Users should not be unreasonably criminalised or stigmatised. Through this new web site, ETNO members show their commitment to play their part and cooperate with rightsholders under the existing legal framework, in a scenario where choice and availability for the consumer, and rights and privacy for the citizen are all fully guaranteed”, added Bartholomew.

ETNO calls on policy makers and stakeholders to work together in order to ensure the wide availability of legitimate content offerings and to enable new creative market-driven business models to emerge.

This isn't perfect - I have problems with this "illicit file sharing", and the phrasing of "users should not be unreasonably criminalised or stigmatised", but what's interesting is that it shows an awareness of the broader issues, and of the fact that customers have rights as well as holders of intellectual monopolies. It suggests to me that the telecoms companies are beginning to understand that things are changing, and are beginning to change their own stance in response too.

OpenStreetMap Passes 100,000 Users

Although many people have heard of OpenStreetMap, not everyone realises just how damn successful and important it is becoming. Here's one indication:

Sometime during Monday 16th March 2009 OpenStreetMap gained it’s 100,000′th registered user account!

Moreover, the graph on the page linked to above also shows that there are now over one billion track points on its maps.

I predict that soon people will be talking about OpenStreetMap as a demonstration of how openness works in the same awed tones as they do now about GNU/Linux.

Yet More Open Source for South Africa

Yesterday I wrote about India's opposition backing open source more fully, and here's a good update on what's happening in South Africa:

“The move to open source software has not been as fast as we would have liked, but we are now entering a new era. In the past, open source deployments were mostly spontaneous and ad-hoc. We now have a more systematic approach.” In years past many government departments pursued their own open source migrations, usually in isolation from one another, and with varying degrees of success.

...

Now, says Webb, the State IT Agency (Sita) is assuming the role of paving the way for OSS migration by finalising standards and conducting pilot projects to make it easier for all to implement open source software successfully. ... Webb also says that Sita expects all government department websites to be running on open source software “very soon”.

There's clearly a pattern emerging here around the world, as governments their loyal opposition first experiment with open source, and then commit to it whole heartedly.

Opening Minds about Closed Source

One of the most exciting experiences in blogging is when a post catches fire - metaphorically, of course. Often it happens when you least expect it, as is the case with my rant about Science Commons working with Microsoft, which was thrown off in a fit of pique, without any hope that anybody would pay much attention to it.

Fortunately, it *was* picked up by Bill Hooker, who somehow managed to agree and disagree with me in a long and thoughtful post. That formed a bridge for the idea into the scientific community, where Peter Murray-Rust begged to differ with its thesis.

Given all this healthy scepticism, I was delighted to find that Peter Sefton is not only on my side, but has strengthened my general point by fleshing it out with some details:

Looking at the example here and reading Pablo’s Blog I share Glyn Moody’s concern. They show a chunk of custom XML which gets embedded in a word document. This custom XML is an insidious trick in my opinion as it makes documents non-interoperable. As soon as you use custom XML via Word 2007 you are guaranteeing that information will be lost when you share documents with OpenOffice.org users and potentially users of earlier versions of Word.

He also makes some practical suggestions about how the open world can work with Microsoft:

In conclusion I offer this: I would consider getting our team working with Microsoft (actually I’m actively courting them as they are doing some good work in the eResearch space) but it would be on the basis that:

* The product (eg a document) of the code must be interoperable with open software. In our case this means Word must produce stuff that can be used in and round tripped with OpenOffice.org and with earlier versions, and Mac versions of Microsoft’s products. (This is not as simple as it could be when we have to deal with stuff like Sun refusing to implement import and preservation for data stored in Word fields as used by applications like EndNote.)

The NLM add-in is an odd one here, as on one level it does qualify in that it spits out XML, but the intent is to create Word-only authoring so that rules it out – not that we have been asked to work on that project other than to comment, I am merely using it as an example.

* The code must be open source and as portable as possible. Of course if it is interface code it will only work with Microsoft’s toll-access software but at least others can read the code and re-implement elsewhere. If it’s not interface code then it must be written in a portable language and/or framework.

Great stuff.

Update: Peter has written more on the subject.

India's Main Opposition Party Backs Open Source

As I've noted before, you can tell open source has entered the mainstream when political parties try to outbid each other in establishing their open credentials. Further evidence of this trend now comes from India, where The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the largest opposition party, has released its “IT vision”, document which includes a healthy chunk of openness....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why Music Companies are Doomed Regardless

One of the favourite tropes in the music industry is that they'd all be rolling in it like the good old days if it weren't for those nasty people downloading music for free. Here's a perceptive analysis that explains why that isn't so:

the newspaper industry is in the same death spiral as the recording industry, without the lawbreaking that’s commonly blamed for the recording industry’s troubles. And it seems to me that this poses a philosophical challenge to DeLong’s theory that the problem is a lack of respect for “property rights.” The decline of the newspapers is clearly a story of technological progress producing increased competition and entrepreneurship—precisely the sort of thing libertarians normally celebrate. The news business has gotten far more competitive over the last decade, and we’re now seeing a normal shake-out where the least efficient firms go out of business.

I think the fact that this is happening in an industry without a piracy problem should give us second thoughts about blaming the decline of other copyright industries on BitTorrent. The newspaper example suggests that even if we could completely shut down peer-to-peer networks, we should still expect the recording industry to decline over time as consumers gravitate toward more efficient and convenient sources of music. Piracy obviously accelerates the process, but the underlying problem is simply this: the recording industry’s core competence, pressing 1s and 0s on plastic disks and shipping them to retail stores, is rapidly becoming pointless, just as the newspaper industry’s core competence of pressing ink on newsprint and dropping them on doorsteps is becoming obsolete. Not surprisingly, when a technology becomes obsolete, firms who specialize in exploiting that technology go out of business.

Gotcha.

A Paean to Free Culture

Beautifully-written piece by Roger Lancefield providing a lucid explanation of why free culture is both profound and inevitable. Here's the peroration:

So finally, free culture is nothing more than, and nothing less than, mankind’s natural propensity to communicate, collaborate and share. It is not a fad, it goes much deeper. Characterising it in narrow terms as a politically motivated cult, or as a commercially damaging movement is missing the big picture, for these things are not of its essence. It first and foremost is a technology-facilitated extension of our normal modes of behaviour — and this is why it is inevitable, profound and unstoppable.

Amen to that.

Open Source Cloud Computing Made Easy

Creating a business around free software is hardly a new idea: Cygnus Solutions, based around Stallman's GCC, was set up in 1989. But here's one with a trendy twist: a company based on the open source *cloud computing* app Hadoop, an Apache Project...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why We Need Open Data

Despite the good-natured ding-dong he and I are currently engaged in on another matter, Peter Murray-Rust is without doubt one of the key individuals in the open world. He's pretty much the godfather of the term "open data", as he writes:

Open Data has come a long way in the last 2-3 years. In 2006 the term was rarely used - I badgered SPARC and they generously created a set up a mailing list. I also started a page on Wikipedia in 2006 so it’s 2-and-a-half years old.

The same post gives perhaps the best explanation of why open data is important; it's nominally about open data in science, but its points are valide elsewhere too:

* Science rests on data. Without complete data, science is flawed.

* Many of todays global challenges require scientific data. Climate, Health, Agriculture…

* Scientists are funded to do research and to make the results available to everyone. This includes the data. Funders expect this. So does the world.

* The means of dissemination of data are cheap and universal. There is no technical reason why all the data in all the chemistry research in the world should not be published into the cloud. It’s small compared with movies…

* Data needs cleaning, flitering, repurposing, re-using. The more people who have access to this, the better the data and the better the science.

Open data is still something of a Cinderella in the open world, but as Peter's comments make clear, that's likely to change as more people realise its centrality to the entire open endeavour.

Shining Light on Why Microsoft Loves LAMP to Death

Here's an interesting little tale:

I was fortunate enough to spend last Thursday with a group of LAMP engineers who have some experience with Windows Server and IIS, and who are based in Japan.

The three - Kimio Tanaka, the president of Museum IN Cloud; Junpei Hosoda, the president of Yokohama System Development; and Hajime Taira, with Hewlett-Packard Japan - won a competition organized by impress IT and designed to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility. The competition was titled "Install Maniax 2008".

A total of 100 engineers were chosen to compete and seeded with Dell server hardware and the Windows Web Server 2008 operating system. They were then required to deploy Windows Server/IIS and make the Web Server accessible from the Internet. They also had to run popular PHP/Perl applications on IIS and publish technical documentation on how to configure those applications to run on IIS.

The three winners were chosen based on the number of ported applications on IIS, with the prize being a trip to Redmond. A total of 71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS, and related new "how to" documents were published to the Internet. Some 24 applications were also ported onto IIS based on existing "how to" documents.

So let's just deconstruct that, shall we?

A competition was held in Japan "to get competitive LAMP engineers to increase the volume of technical information around PHP/IIS and application compatibility"; they were given the challenge of getting "popular PHP/Perl applications on IIS", complete with documentation. They "succeeded" to such an extent, that "71 applications out of the targeted 75 were ported onto IIS, of which 47 were newly ported to IIS".

But that wasn't the real achievement: the real result was that a further 47 PHP/Perl apps were ported *from* GNU/Linux (LAMP) *to* Windows - in effect, extracting the open source solutions from the bottom of the stack, and substituting Microsoft's own software.

This has been going on for a while, and is part of a larger move by Microsoft to weaken the foundations of open source - especially GNU/Linux - on the pretext that they are simply porting some of the top layers to its own stack. But the net result is that it diminishes the support for GNU/Linux, and makes those upper-level apps more dependent on Microsoft's good graces. The plan is clearly to sort out GNU/Linux first, before moving on up the stack.

It's clever, and exactly the sort of thing I would expect from the cunning people at Microsoft. That I understand; what I don't get is why these LAMP hackers are happy to cut off the branch they sit on by aiding and abetting Microsoft in its plans? Can't they see what's being done to their LAMP?

Defining Moments in Web History

Although Tim Berners-Lee made his “Information Management” proposal back in March 1989, the key moment for what became the World Wide Web was October 1994, when the start-up Mosaic Communications – later known as Netscape – released its browser, optimised for PC users and dial-up modems....

On Computer Weekly.

BBC Team Exposes...its Windows-centricity (Again)

There's something of a brouhaha over this report from the BBC...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Russia Rolls Out Open Source for Government

Russia is rapidly turning into open source's best-kept secret. A little while back I wrote about plans to roll out free software to all schools; more recently, there has been talk about creating a Russian operating system based on Fedora. And now there's this:

На сайте Минкомсвязи РФ опубликованы проекты документов, посвященных переходу органов государственной власти на свободное программное обеспечение. В документе «Методические рекомендации по разработке и приобретению программного обеспечения для использования в органах государственной власти и бюджетных учреждениях» имеется рекомендация органам госвласти и бюджетным учреждениям отдавать предпочтение свободному ПО при выборе программных средств, за исключением случаев, когда СПО не обладает необходимой функциональностью.

...

Также опубликован проект плана перехода органов государственной власти и бюджетных учреждений на использование свободного программного обеспечения. Проект включает ряд действий, необходимых для поэтапного внедрения СПО в российские госструктуры, включающий обучение государственных служащих, проведение пилотных проектов по внедрению СПО, поддержку разработки свободного ПО в России.

[Via Google Translate: The site Minkomsvyazi Russian Federation published a draft document on the transition state authorities to free software. The document «Guidelines for the development and acquisition of software for use in public authorities and budget organizations» has recommended authorities gosvlasti and budgetary institutions to give preference to free software in the selection of software, except when the ACT does not have the necessary functionality.

...

It also published a draft plan of government bodies and agencies to use the budget of free software. The project includes a number of actions required for the phased introduction of ACT in the Russian government, including the training of public servants, a pilot project on introduction of ACT, support the development of free software in Russia.]

Aside from the scale of these plans, which foresee all Russian government departments using free software, and civil servants being trained in its use (a shrewd move), what's particularly interesting is the formulation that open source will be the default except where it does not have the necessary functionality. This approach has been adopted elsewhere, and is reasonable enough, although it's important not to allow lock-in to proprietary formats to lock out open source solutions based on open standards.

Whatever happens in detail, Russia's announcement is not only important in itself, but also provides a useful addition to the roster of governments making the switch to free software. As the latter grows, so will the pressure on other countries to follow suit.

Open Science, Closed Source

One of the things that disappoints me is the lack of understanding of what's at stake with open source among some of the other open communities. For example, some in the world of open science seem to think it's OK to work with Microsoft, provided it furthers their own specific agenda. Here's a case in point:

John Wilbanks, VP of Science for Creative Commons, gave O'Reilly Media an exclusive sneak preview of a joint announcement that they will be making with Microsoft later today at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

According to John, who talked to us shortly after getting off a plane from Brazil, Microsoft will be releasing, under an open source license, Word plugins that will allow scientists to mark up their papers with scientific entities directly.

"The scientific culture is not one, traditionally, where you have hyperlinks," Wilbanks told us. "You have citations. And you don't want to do cross-references of hyperlinks between papers, you want to do links directly to the gene sequences in the database."

Wilbanks says that Science Commons has been working for several years to build up a library of these scientific entities. "What Microsoft has done is to build plugins that work essentially the same way you'd use spell check, they can check for the words in their paper that have hyperlinks in our open knowledge base, and then mark them up."

That might sound fine - after all, the plugins are open source, right? But no. Here's the problem:

Wilbanks said that Word is, in his experience, the dominant publishing system used in the life sciences, although tools like LaTex are popular in disciplines such as chemistry or physics. And even then, he says it's probably the place that most people prepare drafts. "almost everything I see when I have to peer review is in a .doc format."

In other words, he doesn't see any problem with perpetuating Microsoft's stranglehold on word processing. But it has consistently abused that monopoly by using its proprietary data formats to lock out commercial rivals or free alternatives, and push through pseudo-standards like OOXML that aren't truly open, and which have essentially destroyed ISO as a legitimate forum for open standards.

Working with Microsoft on open source plugins might seem innocent enough, but it's really just entrenching Microsoft's power yet further in the scientific community, weakening openness in general - which means, ultimately, undermining all the other excellent work of the Science Commons.

It would have been far better to work with OpenOffice.org to produce similar plugins, making the free office suite even more attractive, and thus giving scientists yet another reason to go truly open, with all the attendant benefits, rather than making do with a hobbled, faux-openness, as here.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody

Assessing Android

Not surprisingly, given the nature of this blog, I'm pretty favourably disposed towards Google's Linux-based Android platform, even though I don't possess the only phone currently using it, T-Mobile's G1. But it's hard to tell just how well it's doing against the iPhone, say. If any one knows, it's T-Mobile, so I was interested to receive this morning some tantalising tidbits from Richard Warmsley, head of Internet and Entertainment at T-Mobile UK.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Free Our Books: Extending Open Access

I've written much about open access on this blog; but generally that's been about open access to articles in academic journals. Another huge class of material paid for by the taxpayer is academic books. So, applying the same logic as for articles, shouldn't we all have free access to digital copies? That's what Free Our Books thinks:

Public funds pay vast majority of the academic research; the results should therefore be public. Inexpensive electronic publishing should make this possible. But private publishing companies still own these results, and restrict access to them by charging exorbitant fees. In the case of academic journals, publishing companies are making huge profits by requiring publicly funded universities to pay very high subscription fees on behalf of students and academics.

We, the citizens, through the state, pay for the production of academic books and research papers twice, first through salaries and research grants, and second through the purchase of books and journal subscriptions. This is how the the most fundamental principles of academia, to study and to share its findings, are obstructed, and its operation is made far more expensive and cumbersome. Good news is that this has been partially recognised and Research Councils UK (RCUK) has pushed hard (2005) in the direction of both mandatory self archiving (2006) of all research outputs and open access in general.

When it comes to books, the argument, however, isn't as simple and as straight forwad as in the case of Guardian's campaign Free Our Data - whose name we're reusing. Nor has it been problematised widely, like it has been in the case of journals and RCUK recommendations. Significant contribution of editors, subeditors, proofreaders and other working on texts being produced (wages) and personal gain of authors of best selling works (share of sales) complicates the issue. In short, open access and self-archiving of publicly funded books, whose importance for social sciences and humanities is enormous (unlike in physics and maths) is yet to be widely discussed and there aren't immidiately obvious solutions visible. That is, unless we treat books, as we think we should, as just another form of research output - both when funded directly by one of RCUK councils, or by the individual universities.

(Via Open Access News.)

Labour's Open Hypocrisy

The "O" word has been much on the lips of the UK government recently, what with all the nice things it's been saying about open source, and now this:

The independent Power of Information Task Force published its report on 2 March. The report contained 25 challenging recommendations to government aimed at improving the use of information in this new world. The Task Force's work has been recognised internationally as providing a cutting-edge vision, with examples of what modern public service delivery might be.

The Government welcomes the task force’s vision, accepts its overall messages and will be responding on the detailed recommendations shortly. We are already taking steps to implement this vision and in 2009 we will seek to deliver the following:

Open information. To have an effective voice, people need to be able to understand what is going on in their public services. Government will publish information about public services in ways that are easy to find,easy to use, and easy to re-use, and will unlock data, where appropriate, through the work of the Office of Public Sector Information.

Open innovation. We will promote innovation in online public services to respond to changing expectations. The Government will seek to build on the early success of innovate.direct.gov.uk by building such innovation into the culture of public services and public sector websites.

Open discussion. We will promote greater engagement with the public through more interactive online consultation and collaboration. We will also empower professionals to be active on online peer-support networks in their area of work.

Open feedback. Most importantly, the public should be able to have a fair say about their services. The Government will publish best practice in engaging with the public in large numbers online, drawing on the experience of the www.showusabetterway.com competition and the www.londonsummit.gov.uk, as well as leading private sector examples like www.ideastorm.com.

Open information, open innovation, open discussion, open feedback: well, that's just super-duper and fab and all that, but why not allow a little openness about what the UK government is doing? How about getting rid of the absurd Official Secrets Act, the very antithesis of openness? How about putting the teeth back in the Freedom of Information Act? How about not refusing to publish documents about the Iraqi war? How about letting us see details of MPs' expenses? How about letting us know where our MPs live? How about letting the public openly rate the government itself - the one group that seems excluded from the wonderful plans to "ebay-ise" UK public life?

Because, strange as it may seem, openness does not have hard lines: if you're going to be open, you're going to be *really* open, everywhere. Otherwise, it just further debases an increasingly fashionable concept, takes our cynicism up a notch or three, and alienates those of us fighting for *real* openness.

South Korea Joins the "Three Strikes" Club

For years, the content industries having been trying to get laws passed that would stop people sharing files. For years they failed. And then they came up with the "three strikes and you're out" idea - and it is starting to be adopted around the world. First we had France, then countries like Italy, Ireland - and now South Korea:

On March 3, 2009, the National Assembly's Committee on Culture, Sports, Tourism, Broadcasting & Communications (CCSTB&C) passed a bill to revise the Copyright Law. The bill includes the so called, "three strikes out" or "graduated response" provision.

...

The provision gives authority to order ISP to send warning letters to the users, delete or stop transmission of illegal reproductions, suspend or terminate the accounts of the users, or close the bulletine boards to the Ministry. It also gives power to order information and telecommunication service providers to block connections to their information and telecommunication network of such ISPs.

...

The modified bill will be up for vote in April, and it is most likely that the bill pass in the National Assembly and come into force in April.

What's the secret? why has the "three strikes" idea caught on where others have failed? And what is the best way to stop it spreading further?

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody

Sailing to Port 25

An interesting move by Microsoft:

I would like to introduce Mark Stone, who will be a regular contributor to Port 25 going forward. Mark has a long association with open source.

He did his first Linux install in 1994 and, in the fifteen years since, has served as O'Reilly's executive editor for open source, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Linux Technology, publisher for the web arm of SourceForge's open source evangelism efforts, and later Director of Developer Relations for SourceForge.

During that time he helped Microsoft launch its first two open source projects on SourceForge.net. He has also co-edited two of the foundational books on open source: Open Sources and Open Sources 2.0.

At SourceForge, and as an independent consultant, he has worked with technology companies large and small to help them formulate their community engagement strategy around open source.

He has most recently been working at Microsoft to help identify and support community projects that advance open source on the Windows platform.

Alas for the well-intentioned souls in Redmond, such snuggling up to the open source community is rather vitiated by this kind of stuff.

Guardian Leads the Way (Again)

At a time when most newspapers are talking doom and gloom, the Guardian is instead *doing* something - and thriving (maybe there's a correlation?). Here's its latest shrewd move:

The Guardian today launched Open Platform, a service that will allow partners to reuse guardian.co.uk content and data for free and weave it "into the fabric of the internet".

Open Platform launched with two separate content-sharing services, which will allow users to build their own applications in return for carrying Guardian advertising.

A content application programming interface (API) will smooth the way for web developers to build applications and services using Guardian content, while a Data Store will contain datasets curated by Guardian editors and open for others to use.

So far, so conventional. Here's the important bit:

The Guardian is positioning its Open Platform as a commercial venture, requiring partners to carry its advertising as part of its terms and conditions, while BBC Backstage states clearly that its proposition is for individual developers designers and not for "big corporates".

This is the future of content, which will be made available freely, but revenue-generating features will be bolted on to it as above. (Disclosure: I occasionally write for the Guardian; but not much.)

Wired's Open Government Data Wiki

Wired has an idea:

If you're a fan of free data flow into and out of the government, Vivek Kundra seems like an ally. But we can't rest on our laurels. Now is exactly the time when lobbying for particular data and documents to be made accessible could be most effective.

Data.gov is coming: Let's help build it.

The solution? You - and a wiki:

We've established this wiki to help focus attention on valuable data resources that need to be made more accessible or usable. Do you know of a legacy dataset in danger of being lost? How about a set of Excel (or — shudder — Lotus 1-2-3) spreadsheets that would work better in another format? Data locked up in PDF's?

This is your place to report where government data is locked up by design, neglect or misapplication of technology. We want you to point out the government data that you need or would like to have. Get involved!

Based on what you contribute here, we'll follow up with government agencies to see what their plans are for that data — and track the results of the emerging era of Data.gov.

With your help, we can combine the best of new social media and old-school journalism to get more of the data we've already paid for in our hands.

We could do with something similar here: Free Our Data, are you listening?

Germany Funds Open Source Software

I missed this when it first came out a couple of weeks ago:

Der Bundesrat hat am 20.2.2009 dem Gesetz zur Sicherung von Beschäftigung und Stabilität in Deutschland zugestimmt und so den Weg für die geplanten Investitionen frei gemacht. Im „Pakt für Beschäftigung und Stabilität in Deutschland“ sind auch 500 Mio. Euro für Maßnahmen im Bereich der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik enthalten, deren Verwendung durch den Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Informationstechnik gesteuert wird. Von diesen 500 Mio. Euro stehen 300 Mio. Euro sofort zur Verfügung. 200 Mio. Euro wurden durch den Haushaltsausschuss des Deutschen Bundestages bis zur Vorlage konkreter Maßnahmen gesperrt.

...

„"Ziel der Maßnahmen ist es, die Bereiche Green-IT, IT-Sicherheit und Open-Source auszubauen sowie innovative zukunftsfähige Technologien und Ideen für die Verwaltung nutzbar zu machen."“ sagt Staatssekretär Dr. Beus. Hierzu gehöre auch, ergänzend in die Weiterentwicklung der zentralen IT-Steuerungsmechanismen des Bundes zu investieren, um IT-Großprojekte künftig effizienter und schneller umzusetzen.

[Via Google Translate: The Federal Council decided on 20.2.2009 to the law to secure employment and stability in Germany, and approved, paving the way for the planned investment made. In the "pact for employment and stability in Germany" are also 500 million for activities in the field of information and communications technology, whose use by the Federal Government for information technology is controlled. Of these 500 million euros 300 million immediately available. 200 million euros were fixed by the Budget Committee of the German Bundestag pending concrete actions blocked.

...
"The aim of the measures is to improve the areas of Green IT, IT security and open-source develop sustainable and innovative technologies and ideas for the administration to use." Says Secretary of State Dr. Beus.It also includes, in addition to the development of the central IT control mechanisms of the federal investment to large-scale IT projects will be implemented more efficiently and faster.]

Every little helps. (Via PSL Brasil.)

UK Government Wants to Kill Net Neutrality in EU

The UK government is fast turning into the digital villain of Europe as far as the Internet is concerned. Not content with monitoring everything we look at online, it now wants to break Net Neutrality so that it can block out chunks of the Internet is disapproves of - killing Net Neutrality in the process.

That, at least, is the effect of a proposed amendment EU's Telecoms Package, currently being circulated according to Monica Horten's IPtegrity site:

The UK government wants to cut out users rights to access Internet content, applications and services. Some of the information used to justify the change has been cut and pasted from the Wikipedia.

Amendments to the Telecoms Package circulated in Brussels by the UK government, seek to cross out users' rights to access and distribute Internet content and services. And they want to replace it with a ‘principle' that users can be told not only the conditions for access, but also the conditions for the use of applications and services.

As Horten explains:

The proposed amendments cut out completely any users' rights to do with content - whether accessing or distributing - which would appear to be in breach of the European Charter of Fundamental rights, Article 10. The Charter states that everyone has the right "to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers." In the digital age, the Internet, and the associated applications and services provided by the World Wide Web, is the means by which people exercise that right.

...

The amendments, if carried, would reverse the principle of end-to-end connectivity which has underpinned not only the Internet, but also European telecommunications policy, to date.

The proposal is not just against the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, but will also bring the European Council in conflict with the European Commission and the European Parliament. Unfortunately much of the real power in Europe still lies with the Council, so if this proposal is accepted there, it might still be imposed against the wishes of everyone else.

SCO What? It's Patently over for Copyright

Remember SCO? It's a once-important company that developed a death-wish by suing IBM in 2003. As Wikipedia explains...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Not that We Live in a Police State...

...but there is this:

Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.

...


Police surveillance teams are also ­targeting journalists who cover demonstrations, and are believed to have ­monitored members of the press during at least eight protests over the last year.

Because we know that all journalists are scum, anyway....