Transparency and Open Government

Not my words, but those of that nice Mr Obama:

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Wow.

Specifically:

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing.

...

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government's effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions.

...

Government should be collaborative. Collaboration actively engages Americans in the work of their Government.

Read the whole thing - and weep for poor old, locked-up UK....

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Google and Microsoft Agree: This is Serious

You know things are bad when a coalition includes Google and Microsoft agreeing on something...

On Open Enterprise blog.

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RFCs: Request for Openness

There's a fascinating history of the RFCs in the New York Times, written by a person who was there at the beginning:

Our intent was only to encourage others to chime in, but I worried we might sound as though we were making official decisions or asserting authority. In my mind, I was inciting the wrath of some prestigious professor at some phantom East Coast establishment. I was actually losing sleep over the whole thing, and when I finally tackled my first memo, which dealt with basic communication between two computers, it was in the wee hours of the morning. I had to work in a bathroom so as not to disturb the friends I was staying with, who were all asleep.

Still fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a “Request for Comments.” R.F.C. 1, written 40 years ago today, left many questions unanswered, and soon became obsolete. But the R.F.C.’s themselves took root and flourished. They became the formal method of publishing Internet protocol standards, and today there are more than 5,000, all readily available online.

For me, most interesting comments are the following:

The early R.F.C.’s ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called “rough consensus and running code.” Everyone was welcome to propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used it, the design became a standard.

After all, everyone understood there was a practical value in choosing to do the same task in the same way. For example, if we wanted to move a file from one machine to another, and if you were to design the process one way, and I was to design it another, then anyone who wanted to talk to both of us would have to employ two distinct ways of doing the same thing. So there was plenty of natural pressure to avoid such hassles. It probably helped that in those days we avoided patents and other restrictions; without any financial incentive to control the protocols, it was much easier to reach agreement.

This was the ultimate in openness in technical design and that culture of open processes was essential in enabling the Internet to grow and evolve as spectacularly as it has. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have the Web without it. When CERN physicists wanted to publish a lot of information in a way that people could easily get to it and add to it, they simply built and tested their ideas. Because of the groundwork we’d laid in the R.F.C.’s, they did not have to ask permission, or make any changes to the core operations of the Internet. Others soon copied them — hundreds of thousands of computer users, then hundreds of millions, creating and sharing content and technology. That’s the Web.

I think this is right: the RFCs are predicated on complete openness, where anyone can make suggestions and comments. The Web built on that basis, extending the possibility of openness to everyone on the Internet. In the face of attempts to kill net neutrality in Europe, it's something we should be fighting for.

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The Latest Act in the ACTA Farce

I think the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement(ACTA) will prove something of a watershed in the negotiations of treaties. We have already gone from a situation where governments around the world have all-but denied the thing existed, to the point where the same people are now scrambling to create some semblance of openness without actually revealing too much.

Here's the latest attempt, which comes from the US team:

A variety of groups have shown their interest in getting more information on the substance of the negotiations and have requested that the draft text be disclosed. However, it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation. This allows delegations to exchange views in confidence facilitating the negotiation and compromise that are necessary in order to reach agreement on complex issues. At this point in time, ACTA delegations are still discussing various proposals for the different elements that may ultimately be included in the agreement. A comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist.

This is rather amusing. On the one hand, the negotiators have to pretend that "a comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist", so that we can't find out the details; on the other, they want to finish off negotiations as quickly as possible, so as to prevent too many leaks. Of course, they can't really have it both ways, which is leading to this rather grotesque dance of the seven veils, whereby bits and pieces are revealed in an attempt to keep us quiet in the meantime.

The latest summary does contain some interesting background details that I'd not come across before:

In 2006, Japan and the United States launched the idea of a new plurilateral treaty to help in the fight against counterfeiting and piracy, the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The aim of the initiative was to bring together those countries, both developed and developing, that are interested in fighting counterfeiting and piracy, and to negotiate an agreement that enhances international co-operation and contains effective international standards for enforcing intellectual property rights.

Preliminary talks about such an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement took place throughout 2006 and 2007 among an initial group of interested parties (Canada, the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland and the United States). Negotiations started in June 2008 with the participation of a broader group of participants (Australia, Canada, the European Union and its 27 member states, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States).

The rest, unfortunately, is the usual mixture of half-truths and outright fibs. But this constant trickle of such documents shows that they are taking notice of us, and that we must up the pressure for full disclosure of what exactly is being negotiated in our name.

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A Different Kind of Wörterbuch

Linguee seems to offer an interesting twist on a boring area - bilingual dictionaries:

With Linguee, you can search for words and expressions in many millions of bilingual texts in English and German. Every expression is accompanied by useful additional information and suitable example sentences.

...

When you translate texts to a foreign language, you usually look for common phrases rather than translations of single words. With its intelligent search and the significantly larger amount of stored text content, Linguee is the right tool for this task. You find:

* In what context a translation is used
* How frequent a particular translation is
* Example sentences: How have other people translated an expression?

By searching not only for a single word, but for a respective word in its context, you can easily find a translation that fits optimal in context. With its large number of entries, Linguee often retrieves translations of rare terms that you don't find anywhere else.

There two other points of interest. The source of the texts:

Our most important source is the bilingual web. Other valuable sources include EU documents and patent specifications.

And the fact that a "GPL version of the Linguee dictionary" is available.

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Google's Perpetual Monopoly on Orphan Works

Here's an interesting analysis of the Google Book Search settlement. This, you will recall, resolved the suit that authors and publishers brought against Google for scanning books without permission - something it maintained it could do without, since it only wanted to index its contents, not display them in their entirely.

At first this looked like an expensive and unnecessary way out for Google: many hoped that it would fight in the courts to determine what was permitted under fair use. But as people have had time to digest its implications, the settelement is beginning to look like a very clever move:

Thanks to the magic of the class action mechanism, the settlement will confer on Google a kind of legal immunity that cannot be obtained at any price through a purely private negotiation. It confers on Google immunity not only against suits brought by the actual members of the organizations that sued Google, but also against suits brought by anyone who doesn’t explicitly opt out. That means that Google will be free to mine the vast body of orphan works without fear of liability.

Any competitor that wants to get the same legal immunity Google is getting will have to take the same steps Google did: start scanning books without the publishers’ and authors’ permission, get sued by authors and publishers as a class, and then negotiate a settlement. The problem is that they’ll have no guarantee that the authors and publishers will play along. The authors and publishers may like the cozy cartel they’ve created, and so they may have no particular interest in organizing themselves into a class for the benefit of the new entrant. Moreover, because Google has established the precedent that “search rights” are something that need to be paid for, it’s going to be that much harder for competitors to make the (correct, in my view) argument that indexing books is fair use.

It seems to me that, in effect, Google has secured for itself a perpetual monopoly over the commercial exploitation of orphan works. Google’s a relatively good company, so I’d rather they have this monopoly than the other likely candidates. But I certainly think it’s a reason to be concerned.

Cunning.

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All Tatarstan Schools Moving to Free Software

Tatarstan is the place to be:

До конца текущего года все школы Татарстана планируется перевести на свободное программное обеспечение на базе операционной системы «Linux».

...

По словам замминистра, в каждой школе республики на уровне кружков планируется открыть курсы по обучению работе в «Linux» учащихся. Но до этого предстоит еще подготовить специалистов, которые будут руководить этими кружками.

Людмила Нугуманова заявила, что Татарстан полностью перейдет на программное обеспечение с открытым кодом на основе операционной системы «Linux». Ведь в 2010 году закончится подписка на лицензию базового пакета программного обеспечения для школ на платформе «Microsoft». «За продолжение подписки придется платить немалые деньги, либо остаться на нашем отечественном продукте «Linux», - отметила она.

Как сообщила начальник отдела развития информационных технологий в образовании Министерства образования и науки РТ Надежда Сулимова, в прошлом году новый софт установлен в 612 школах республики (всего в Татарстане функционируют почти 2,4 тысячи общеобразовательных учреждений).

[Via Google Translate: By the end of this year, all schools of Tatarstan plans to transfer to the free software operating system based on «Linux».

...

According to the Deputy Minister, in each of the school-level workshops are planned to open courses on the work of «Linux» students. But before that is still to prepare professionals who will lead these clubs.

Ludmila Nugumanova said that Tatarstan is fully pass on the software and open source based operating system «Linux». Indeed, in 2010, will end subscription base license software package for schools on the platform «Microsoft». «For the continuation of subscriptions to pay a lot of money, or stay on our domestic product« Linux », - she said.

As the head of the department of information technology in education the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Tatarstan Hope Sulimova, last year, new software is installed in 612 schools (only in Tatarstan there are almost 2,4 thousand general educational institutions).]

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How Can We Save Thunderbird Now Email is Dying?

I like Thunderbird. I've been using it for years, albeit now more as a backup for my Gmail account than as my primary email client. But it's always been the Cinderella of the Mozilla family, rather neglected compared to its more glamorous sister Firefox. The creation of the Mozilla Messaging subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation means that efforts are already underway to remedy that. But there's a deeper problem that Thunderbird needs to face, too....

On Open Enterprise blog.

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Top 10 Measurements for Open Government

One of the most exciting applications of openness in recent months has been to government. A year ago, open government was sporadic and pretty forlorn as a field; today it is flourishing, notable under the alternative name of "transparency". At the forefront of that drive is the Sunlight Foundation, which has just published a suggested top 10 measurements of just how open a government real is:

1. Open data: The federal government should make all data searchable, findable and accessible.

2. Disclose spending data: The government should disclose how it is spending taxpayer dollars, who is spending it and how it’s being spent.

3. Procurement data: How does the government decide where the money is getting spent, who gets it, how they are spending it and how can we measure success.

4. Open portal for public request for information: There should be a central repository for all Freedom of Information Act requests that are public to that people can see in real time when the requests come in, how fast the government responds to them.

5. Distributed data: The government should make sure it builds redundancy in their system so that data is not held in just one location, but held in multiple places in case of a disaster, terrorist attack or some other reason where the data is damaged. Redundancy would guarantee government could rebuild the data for future use.

6. Open meetings: Government meetings should be open to the public so that citizens can tell who is trying to influence government. All schedules should be published as soon as they happen so that people can see who is meeting with whom and who is trying to influence whom.

7. Open government research: Currently, when government conducts research, it usually does not report the data it collects until the project is finished. Government should report its research data while its being collected in beta form. This would be a measure of transparency and would change the relationship that people have to government research as it is being collected.

8. Collection transparency: Government should disclose how it is collecting information, for whom are they collecting the data, and why is it relevant. The public should have the ability to judge whether or not it valuable to them, and giving them the ability to comment on it.

9. Allowing the public to speak directly to the president: Recently, we saw the president participate in something called “Open for Questions,” where he gave the public access to ask questions. This allowed him to burst his bubble and be in touch with the American public directly is another measure of transparency.

10. Searchable, crawl able and accessible data: If the government were to make all data searchable, crawl able and accessible we would go along way in realizing all the goals presented at the Gov 2.0 Camp.

Great stuff, exciting times. Now, if only the UK government could measure up to these....

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Who Can Put the "Open" in Open Science?

One of the great pleasures of blogging is that your mediocre post tossed off in a couple of minutes can provoke a rather fine one that obviously took some time to craft. Here's a case in point.

The other day I wrote "Open Science Requires Open Source". This drew an interesting comment from Stevan Harnad, pretty much the Richard Stallman of open access, as well as some tweets from Cameron Neylon, one of the leading thinkers on and practitioners of open science. He also wrote a long and thoughtful reply to my post (including links to all our tweets, rigorous chap that he is). Most of it was devoted to pondering the extent to which scientists should be using open source:

It is easy to lose sight of the fact that for most researchers software is a means to an end. For the Open Researcher what is important is the ability to reproduce results, to criticize and to examine. Ideally this would include every step of the process, including the software. But for most issues you don’t need, or even want, to be replicating the work right down to the metal. You wouldn’t after all expect a researcher to be forced to run their software on an open source computer, with an open source chipset. You aren’t necessarily worried what operating system they are running. What you are worried about is whether it is possible read their data files and reproduce their analysis. If I take this just one step further, it doesn’t matter if the analysis is done in MatLab or Excel, as long as the files are readable in Open Office and the analysis is described in sufficient detail that it can be reproduced or re-implemented.

...

Open Data is crucial to Open Research. If we don’t have the data we have nothing to discuss. Open Process is crucial to Open Research. If we don’t understand how something has been produced, or we can’t reproduce it, then it is worthless. Open Source is not necessary, but, if it is done properly, it can come close to being sufficient to satisfy the other two requirements. However it can’t do that without Open Standards supporting it for documenting both file types and the software that uses them.

The point that came out of the conversation with Glyn Moody for me was that it may be more productive to focus on our ability to re-implement rather than to simply replicate. Re-implementability, while an awful word, is closer to what we mean by replication in the experimental world anyway. Open Source is probably the best way to do this in the long term, and in a perfect world the software and support would be there to make this possible, but until we get there, for many researchers, it is a better use of their time, and the taxpayer’s money that pays for that time, to do that line fitting in Excel. And the damage is minimal as long as source data and parameters for the fit are made public. If we push forward on all three fronts, Open Data, Open Process, and Open Source then I think we will get there eventually because it is a more effective way of doing research, but in the meantime, sometimes, in the bigger picture, I think a shortcut should be acceptable.

I think these are fair points. Science needs reproduceability in terms of the results, but that doesn't imply that the protocols must be copied exactly. As Neylon says, the key is "re-implementability" - the fact that you *can* reproduce the results with the given information. Using Excel instead of OpenOffice.org Calc is not a big problem provided enough details are provided.

However, it's easy to think of circumstances where *new* code is being written to run on proprietary engines where it is simply not possible to check the logic hidden in the black boxes. In these circumstances, it is critical that open source be used at all levels so that others can see what was done and how.

But another interesting point emerged from this anecdote from the same post:

Sometimes the problems are imposed from outside. I spent a good part of yesterday battling with an appalling, password protected, macroed-to-the-eyeballs Excel document that was the required format for me to fill in a form for an application. The file crashed Open Office and only barely functioned in Mac Excel at all. Yet it was required, in that format, before I could complete the application.

Now, this is a social issue: the fact that scientists are being forced by institutions to use proprietary software in order to apply for grants or whatever. Again, it might be unreasonable to expect young scientists to sacrifice their careers for the sake of principle (although Richard Stallman would disagree). But this is not a new situation. It's exactly the problem that open access faced in the early days, when scientists just starting out in their career were understandably reluctant to jeopardise it by publishing in new, untested journals with low impact factors.

The solution in that case was for established scientists to take the lead by moving their work across to open access journals, allowing the latter to gain in prestige until they reached the point where younger colleagues could take the plunge too.

So, I'd like to suggest something similar for the use of open source in science. When established scientists with some clout come across unreasonable requirements - like the need to use Excel - they should refuse. If enough of them put their foot down, the organisations that lazily adopt these practices will be forced to change. It might require a certain courage to begin with, but so did open access; and look where *that* is now...

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Why We Should Teach Maths with Open Source

Recently, I was writing about science and open source (of which more anon); here are some thoughts on why maths ought to be taught using free software:

I personally feel it is terrible to *train* students mainly to use closed source commercial mathematics software. This is analogous to teaching students some weird version of linear algebra or calculus where they have to pay a license fee each time they use the fundamental theorem of calculus or compute a determinant. Using closed software is also analogous to teaching those enthusiastic students who want to learn the proofs behind theorems that it is illegal to do so (just as it is literally illegal to learn *exactly* how Maple and Mathematica work!). From a purely practical perspective, getting access to commercial math software is very frustrating for many students. It should be clear that I am against teaching mathematics using closed source commercial software.

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User-Generated Content: Microsoft vs. Google

Back in November I was urging you to submit your views on a consultation document on the role of copyright in the knowledge economy, put out by the European Commission. The submissions have now been published online, and I'm deeply disappointed to see that not many of took a blind bit of notice of my suggestion...

On Open Enterprise blog.

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HADOPI Law Passed - by 12 Votes to 4

What a travesty of democracy:

Alors que le vote n'était pas prévu avant la semaine prochaine, les quelques députés présents à l'hémicycle à la fin de la discussion sur la loi Création et Internet ont été priés de passer immédiatement au vote, contrairement à l'usage. La loi a été adoptée, en attendant son passage en CMP puis au Conseil Constitutionnel.

On peine à en croire la démocratie dans laquelle on prétend vivre et écrire. Après 41 heures et 40 minutes d'une discussion passionnée sur le texte, il ne restait qu'une poignée de courageux députés autour de 22H45 jeudi soir lorsque l'Assemblée Nationale a décidé, sur instruction du secrétaire d'Etat Roger Karoutchi, de passer immédiatement au vote de la loi Création et Internet, qui n'était pas attendu avant la semaine prochaine. Un fait exceptionnel, qui permet de masquer le nombre important de députés UMP qui se seraient abstenus si le vote s'était fait, comme le veut la tradition, après les questions au gouvernment mardi soir. Ainsi l'a voulu Nicolas Sarkozy.

...

Quatre députés ont voté non (Martine Billard, Patrick Bloche et deux députés non identifiés), et une dizaine de mains se sont levées sur les bancs de la majorité pour voter oui. En tout, 16 députés étaient dans l'hémicycle au moment du vote.

[Via Google Translate: While the vote was not expected until next week, the few members in the chamber at the end of the discussion on the Creation and Internet law were invited to proceed immediately to vote, contrary to custom.The law was passed, until it passes then CMP in the Constitutional Council.

It is difficult to believe in democracy in which we aim to live and write. After 41 hours and 40 minutes of passionate discussion on the text, there remained only a handful of courageous members around 22:45 Thursday evening when the National Assembly decided, on the instructions of the Secretary of State Roger Karoutchi to pass immediately to vote on the Creation and Internet law, which was not expected before next week. One exception, which allows you to hide the large number of UMP deputies who would have abstained if the vote had been, as tradition dictates, after the government issues Tuesday night. Thus wished Nicolas Sarkozy.

...

Pack is voted. Four members voted no (Martine Billard, Patrick Bloche and two unidentified deputies), and a dozen hands were raised on the banks of the majority to vote yes. In all, 16 MPs were in the chamber for the vote.]

So one of the most important, and contentious piece of legislation in recent years is passed by trickery. In this way, those pushing this law have shown their true colours and their contempt for the democratic process.

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"Piracy Law" Cuts *Traffic* not "Piracy"

This story is everywhere today:

Internet traffic in Sweden fell by 33% as the country's new anti-piracy law came into effect, reports suggest.

Sweden's new policy - the Local IPRED law - allows copyright holders to force internet service providers (ISP) to reveal details of users sharing files.

According to figures released by the government statistics agency - Statistics Sweden - 8% of the entire population use peer-to-peer sharing.

The implication in these stories is that this kind of law is "working", in the sense that it "obviously" cuts down copyright infringement, because it's cutting down traffic.

In your dreams.

All this means is that people aren't sharing so much stuff online. But now that you can pick up a 1 Terabyte external hard drive for less than a hundred quid - which can store about a quarter of a million songs - guess what people are going to turn to in order to swap files in the future?

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Open Science Requires Open Source

As Peter Suber rightly points out, this paper offers a reversal of the usual argument, where open access is justified by analogy with open source:

Astronomical software is now a fact of daily life for all hands-on members of our community. Purpose-built software for data reduction and modeling tasks becomes ever more critical as we handle larger amounts of data and simulations. However, the writing of astronomical software is unglamorous, the rewards are not always clear, and there are structural disincentives to releasing software publicly and to embedding it in the scientific literature, which can lead to significant duplication of effort and an incomplete scientific record. We identify some of these structural disincentives and suggest a variety of approaches to address them, with the goals of raising the quality of astronomical software, improving the lot of scientist-authors, and providing benefits to the entire community, analogous to the benefits provided by open access to large survey and simulation datasets. Our aim is to open a conversation on how to move forward.

The central argument is important: that you can't do science with closed source software, because you can't examine its assumptions or logic (that "incomplete scientific record"). Open science demands open source.

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Second Chance at Life

Two years ago, the virtual world Second Life was everywhere, as pundits and press alike rushed to proclaim it as the Next Big Digital Thing. Inevitably, the backlash began soon afterwards. The company behind it, Linden Lab, lost focus and fans; key staff left. Finally, last March, Second Life's CEO, creator and visionary, Philip Rosedale, announced that he was taking on the role of chairman of the board, and bringing in fresh leadership. But against an increasingly dismal background, who would want to step into his shoes?

From the Guardian.

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Trailing Clouds of Openness

As you may have heard, there's been a bit of a to-do over a new “Open Cloud Manifesto.” Here's the central idea:

The industry needs an objective, straightforward conversation about how this new computing paradigm will impact organizations, how it can be used with existing technologies, and the potential pitfalls of proprietary technologies that can lead to lock-in and limited choice....

On Open Enterprise blog.

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Do Open Source Companies *Really* Support Free Software?

Asterisk, a PBX, telephony engine, and telephony applications toolkit, is one of open source best-kept secrets. As with many open source projects, there is a company has been set up to provide support, Digium. Here's its latest press release....

On Open Enterprise blog.

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Bad News: Microsoft Gets its Way with TomTom

Well, the question as to how the great Microsoft vs. TomTom suit would finish has been answered:

Microsoft and TomTom announced on Monday that they have reached a settlement in their respective patent suits....

On Open Enterprise blog.

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Open Source Social Documentation for Museums

Again, open source reaches ever-new bits:

The new MAA Documentation System combines open-source technologies with deep social computing principles to create a truly innovative approach to museum documentation. The new MAA Documentation System shifts the age-old documentation principles of standardized description and information accumulation to multi-vocal and multi-source accounts and distributed documentation.

For the past few years, the MAA has been developing an open-source Documentation System. With over 20 years experience of developing its own Documentation Systems and Collections Management Systems, the MAA is just about to finish one of the most ambitious upgrades of its history. In fact, this system is the result of a complete re-think of its documentation practices. Thought the new system takes account of documentation standards, such as SPECTRUM, and newer developments such as CollectionSpace, it differs from the traditional approaches is several key respects.

And if that isn't wonderful enough, this new project comes from Cambridge's Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology - known to its friends as Arch and Anth. Its old, Victorian(?) building was one of the most atmospheric places in Cambridge.

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Save the European Internet – Write to Your MEPs (Again)

Last week I was urging you to write to a particular set of MEPs about proposed changes to the Telecoms Package, which is wending its slow way through the European Union's legislative system. Now it's time to write to *all* you MEPs, since a crucially important vote in a couple of committees is to take place tomorrow. You can read more about what's been happening and why that's a problem on the La Quadrature du Net site, which also offers a detailed analysis of the Telecom Package and the proposed amendments.

Here's what I've just sent to all my MEPs using WriteToThem:

I am writing to ask you as my representative to contact your colleagues on the IMCO and ITRE committees about crucial votes on the Telecoms Package, taking place in 31 March. At stake is nothing less than the future of the Internet in Europe. If amendments being supported by AT&T and others go through, the main driver of the Internet – and with it, online innovation – will be nullified.

This would be deeply ironic, since it was in Europe that the most important online innovation of all – the Web – was invented. In fact, no less a person than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, its inventor, has warned (at http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144) that the loss of net neutrality – which is what some of the proposed amendments would lead to – would have made it impossible for him to have carried out his revolutionary work. If we wish Europe to remain in the forefront of digital innovation, it is vital that the net neutrality of the Internet be preserved.

This is a complex issue – I personally find it very difficult to navigate through the many conflicting options before the committees. Fortunately, others have already done the hard work, and boiled down the recommendations to the following.

For your colleagues on the IMCO committee, please urge then to:

Vote against the amendments authorizing “net discrimination” and guarantee it is not put in place, by :

rejecting amendements 136=137=138 pushed by AT&T (and the related recitals 116, 117=118)

voting for amendment 135 bringing protection against “net discrimination”

as a default, if the first ones were all rejected, vote for ams 139+141

Vote for positive protection of EU citizens' fundamental rights in amendments 72=146

Vote for protecting EU citizens' privacy by rejecting amendment 85 and voting for am. 150.

Similarly, for those on the IMRE committee, please ask them to:

Protect EU citizens fundamental rights and freedoms by voting for amendment 46=135 (first reading amendment 138).

Reject the notion of “lawful content” in amendment 45 for it is a major breach to the technical neutrality of the network, would turn operators into private judges, and open the door to “graduated response” (or “three strikes”) schemes of corporate police.

If you or your colleagues are interested in seeing the detailed analysis of all the amendments, it can be found here:

http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecoms_Package_2nd_Reading_ITRE_IMCO_Voting_List.

This is a critical series of votes for the Internet in Europe. At a time of great economic turmoil, the last thing we can afford is to throttle Europe's entrepreneurial spirit; for this reason, I hope that you will be able to convince your colleagues on the committees to vote as suggested above.

Sadly, this is really important and really urgent. Please add your voice if you can, or the Internet as we know may cease to exist in Europe soon, to be replaced with something closer to a cable TV service. You have been warned.

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Building on Richard Stallman's Greatest Achievement

What was Richard Stallman's greatest achievement? Some might say it's Emacs, one of the most powerful and adaptable pieces of software ever written. Others might plump for gcc, an indispensable tool used by probably millions of hackers to write yet more free software. And then there is the entire GNU project, astonishing in its ambition to create a Unix-like operating system from scratch. But for me, his single most important hack was the creation of the GNU General Public Licence....

On Linux Journal.

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Phished by Visa

This is utterly scandalous:

Not content with destroying the world’s economies, the banking industry is also bent on ruining us individually, it seems. Take a look at Verified By Visa. Allegedly this protects cardholders - by training them to expect a process in which there’s absolutely no way to know whether you are being phished or not. Even more astonishing is that this seen as a benefit!

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Craziness. But it gets better - obviously not everyone is pre-enrolled in this stupid scheme, so they also allow for enrolment using the same inline scheme. Now the phishers have the opportunity to also get information that will allow them to identify themselves to the bank as you. Yes, Visa have provided a very nicely tailored and packaged identity theft scheme. But, best of all, rather like Chip and PIN, they push all blame for their failures on to the customer

I've instinctively hated these "Verified by Visa" ever since they came out, and tried not to use them. The fact that they are not just inherently insecure, but encouraging merchants to use this in the most insecure way possible, is astonishing even for an industry as rank and rotten as banking.

The one consolation has to be that Verified by Visa is so demonstrably insecure that it should be easy to challenge in court any attempts to make customers pay for the banks' own stupidity.

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Why Everyone Hates the PRS

Another classic post from Mike Masnick about the absurdities our current copyright regime visits upon us:

PRS has now threatened a woman who plays classical music to her horses in her stable to keep them calm. She had been turning on the local classical music station, saying that it helped keep the horse calm -- but PRS is demanding £99 if she wants to keep providing such a "public performance." And it's not just a one-off. Apparently a bunch of stables have been receiving such calls.

That's pathetic enough, but it's Masnick's parting shot that really struck me:

The group seems to believe that playing music in almost any situation now constitutes a public performance and requires a licensing fee. You just know they're salivating over the opportunity to go after people playing music in their cars with the windows down.

Because you know what? I bet the PRS is really considering how to do this.

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"Three Strikes" Struck Down for Third Time

As I wrote earlier today, things are looking bad for the Internet in Europe. But the European Parliament continues to do its bit protecting you and me. Here's the latest from the excellent Quadrature du Net site:

The European Parliament, endorsing the Lambrinidis report and turning its back on all the amendments supported by the French government and defended by Jacques Toubon and Jean-Marie Cavada, has just rejected "graduated response" for the third time. France is definitely alone in the world with its kafkaesque administrative machinery, an expensive mechanism for arbitrary punishment.

The report of Eurodeputy Stavros Lambrinidis concerning the protection of individual liberties on the Internet has just been confirmed by the European parliament by an overwhelming vote of 481 to 252.

It stands in clear opposition to the French HADOPI law in "holding that illiteracy with computers will be the illiteracy of the 21st century; holding that guaranteeing Internet access to all citizens is the same as guaranteeing all citizens access to education and holding that such access must not be refused in punishment by governments or private organizations; holding that this access should not be used abusively for illegal activities; holding that attention must be paid to emerging questions such as network neutrality, interoperability, the global accessibility of all Internet nodes, and the use of open formats and standards."

The approval of the Lambrinidis report and the rejection of the French amendments is the third consecutive time that the European Parliament has rejected the French "graduated response", since the approval of the Bono amendment to the report on cultural industries and the well-known
Bono/Cohn-Bendit/Roithova Amendment 138.

Furthermore, all the amendments supported by the French government, notably those proposed by Eurodeputies Jacques Toubon and Jean-Marie Cavada, have been rejected. They were trying specifically to prevent measures related to graduated response, showing that the French government realizes that Europe is about to render the HADOPI law obsolete before it even comes to a vote.

Alas, this is by no means the end. The same wretched clause will come bounding back, along with all kinds of other stupidities. The fight goes on....

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