Spreading Government Openness

For those of us that believe that openness is good for governments (and good for us), the question becomes: how can we encourage government at all levels to become more transparent? Requesting or demanding openness only goes so far, and can ultimately become depressing in the face of refusal. So what else can be done that's satisfying and effective?

How about this?

The mission of Sunshine Review is to create a place where regular people have the opportunity to breathe new life into the political system by demanding a transparent and honest government. Sunshine Review collects and shares information about government transparency, openness and accountability at the state and local level.

One of the ways it does that is by rating websites of local governments:

This page gathers the results of county website evaluations from all 50 states after all 3,140 counties in the country were evaluated by Sunshine Review contributors.

That's an extraordinary achievement, and indicates the scale and ambition of the project. The point being that the more publicity is given to shortfalls in sites - especially compared to their peers - the more likely laggards are to respond positively. Now, if we could only get this going over here....

The Tibetans' Secret Weapon: Openness

I came across this fascinating piece about how the Tibetan exile community not only keeps going in the face of China's unbending occupation of their homeland, but even manages to maintain some optimism. Here's a particularly heartwarming passage:

In the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) and elsewhere in China, the views of exiled Tibetans and portraits of the Dalai Lama are political taboos. But in Dharamsala everything from the "other side" is available: TV news and propaganda on several different Tibetan-language Chinese channels, dramas and (again) propaganda programmes dubbed into Tibetan. Their original target audience is ethnic Tibetans living in the TAR and in neighbouring regions of the PRC where many Tibetans live (Qinghai, Gansu and Sichuan - or in Tibetan, U-Tsang, Amdo and Kham).

Tibetan government-in-exile officials express confidence that Tibetans in Dharamsala won't be brainwashed by these Chinese TV channels, even that it is good for Tibetan communities to encounter Chinese arguments. Indeed, some young Tibetans in Dharamsala laughingly pointed out to me some absurdities in the propaganda TV programmes. The Tibetan officials, asked how they are going to deal with the Chinese government's heightened international PR offensive, expressed the belief that being open and honest is all they need to do.

While China clamps down on Tibetan culture, and blocks sites dealing with "forbidden" subjects like the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans in exile allow anyone to hear the Chinese side. Why? Because openness makes them stronger, and better able to counter Chinese arguments.

Moreover, the Tibetans have no fear of their people hearing the truth, unlike the fearsome and yet fearful Chinese leadership - a mighty dragon strangely afraid of the sunlight.

P2P is Political

Richard Stallman has always regarded free software as about freedom, and hence inherently political. And so it's no surprise that many aspects of openness butt against highly-sensitive areas - secrecy, privacy, etc. But that transition from programming to politicals seems to be taking place beyond free software, too:

a new poll conducted by Swedish newspaper DN.se predicts that the Pirate Party will get 5.1% of all votes in the upcoming EU elections this June - enough to guarantee a seat in the European Parliament. The poll further shows that the party is the second largest party among younger voters in the age group 18-30.

“This poll confirms our recent phenomenal growth in support, and says there will be pirates in Brussels after this election,” Pirate Party Leader Rick Falkvinge told TorrentFreak. “Scoring like this in a poll will further enhance support for the party. While there’s still much work to be done, we’re on the home stretch and have the goal in plain sight. June 7 is election day. On the morning of June 8, we’ll know.”

Clearly, the Pirate Party has been fortunate with the timing: had the trial taken place far from the European elections, the effect would have been muted. Nonetheless, I think it's significant that anger over the court's decision is spilling over into politics; I predict we'll see much more of this if - as is likely - we witness further unthinking rejections of today's digital culture and its norms.

Whatever Happened to OOXML?

Remember Open Office XML – a name chosen to be as confusingly close to OpenOffice XML as possible – better known as OOXML? Remember how just over a year ago this and many other blogs and news outlets were full of sound and fury, as OOXML slouched its way through the ISO standardisation process, finally staggering across the finishing line at the beginning of April 2008? I certainly do, but it's extraordinary how things can change in a year...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Patent Nonsense in Europe

Here's some interesting news on the European patent front:

Preliminary figures from the European Patent Office (EPO) reveal that the number of applications for new patents is down 7% in the first two months of 2009. This is the first reduction in patent applications in over a decade, sparking fears that Europe's knowledge economy is under threat.

Applications to the EPO have doubled since 1995, leaving the agency with a backlog of between 400,000 and 500,000 applications. More than half of the applications filed last year were not granted.

However, the advent of the financial crisis has brought a sharp downturn in the exponential growth of new intellectual property filings.

An EPO survey of its clients, published this week (April 27), forecasts a levelling-off of new patent applications in 2009 and 2010, but this study was conducted in mid-2008, and is unlikely to have factored in the recession, which has deepened in the meantime.

"Europe's knowledge economy is under threat"? I don't think so. Here's an alternative explanation. Patents have a clear cost, but the benefit they provide is far more vaporous. I suspect that as belts are tightened, people are realising that patents aren't actually worth getting in terms of the cost/benefit they represent.

When times are good, companies might merrily apply for patents on the assumption that they are a good investment, without thinking about it too much; but when considered carefully against a harsh economic background, maybe they don't look such a good idea - hence the drop in applications.

The Retreat from ID Cards Has Begun

This is significant:

Senior cabinet ministers are privately discussing a plan to scrap the Government's £5bn identity cards programme as part of cuts to public spending, The Independent has learnt.

Once such people start talking about it, even the most timorous will soon pluck up the courage to express their views; quickly we'll reach a classic tipping point when the majority hold the view that ID cards make no sense from any point of view.

But there are always some who remain prisoners of their delusions:

Your article of 28 April on ID cards is simply wrong on two fundamental points. The Government is committed to introducing ID cards.

Er, why would that be Jacqui?

ID cards will provide the public with a single, simple and secure way for individuals to prove their identity and safeguard their personal details – protecting the community against crime, illegal immigration, and terrorism.

Oh, I see. Why don't we just look at those, eh?

a single, simple and secure way for individuals to prove their identity

Well, no, it won't do that unless ID cards become compulsory for *every* occasion when I have to prove who I am. Now, that may be coming, but until then I'm still going to need to prove who I am by logging in to online services, or showing my library card. Is she really suggesting that the ID card replace *all* of those? If not, it will simply *add* to all of the other proofs that I need. ID cards only make sense if they satisfy a vital new need to prove who we are - for example, when stopped by the police in the street....

safeguard their personal details

How on earth does a centralised database "safeguard my details"? The ID card certainly doesn't - it's just a bit of plastic with a chip in; and as anyone who's been in computing for more than a couple of months knows, bringing data together in any way makes it less secure, not more. So what on earth is she rabbiting on about?

And as for

protecting the community against crime, illegal immigration, and terrorism

these were all debunked ages ago as the UK government desperately shopped around for some kind of justification for ID cards. It won't stop illegal immigration and it certainly won't stop "terrorism".

It hard sometimes to work out whether Ms Smith actually believes the nonsense she spouts, or just believes we're stupid enough to believe her. Either way, news that her colleagues are rapidly placing clear water between themselves and her deranged ideas on this one is welcome indeed. (Via OurKingdom.)

Towards Transparency for Europe

Regular readers of this blog will have spotted that I've been posting more about transparency recently. Of course, it's a natural extension of openness, and can equally be thought of as open government. Whatever you call it, it's apparently problematic for some people:

In the run-up to the European elections, some websites are trying to monitor MEPs according to their attendance in plenary sessions and committee meetings. But in practice the task is proving extremely difficult. EurActiv France contributed to this report.

Last week, one such website, www.parlorama.eu, was forced to shut down after its initiator was flooded with complaints from MEPs.

Flavien Deltort, a former MEP's assistant from Italy, had attempted to rate parliamentarians according to their attendance in plenary sessions, committee meetings and broader participation in parliamentary life.

But only two days after launching his website last week, Deltort was forced to close it down "due to the overwhelming volume of complaints". Threatened with prosecution by many MEPs, he decided to temporary close the website.

Although some of that prickleness may have been justified, I think it also shows that here in Europe we have a long way to go before we achieve open government. The US is already ahead, with campaigners like Larry Lessig working hard to make things more transparent, as well as splendid organisations like the Sunlight Foundation:

Our goal through our grant-making, blogging, projects, and technical leadership, is to use the power of the Internet to shine a light on the interplay of money, lobbying, influence and government in Washington in ways never before possible.

We need something similar here in Europe, but it looks like it's going to be a struggle to achieve that.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.

Newly in Newham

Those with good memories may recall that Richard Steel and I had something of a, er, discussion about open source in our respective blogs. This culminated in a suggestion from Richard...

On Open Enterprise blog.

Oi, OIN: What Took So Long?

When the Open Innovation Network announced that TomTom was joining, just after Microsoft accused the latter of infringing patents related to Linux, I was sceptical. After all, the former

was formed to promote Linux by using patents to create a collaborative environment. It promotes a positive, fertile ecosystem for Linux, which in turns drives innovation and choice in the global marketplace. This helps ensure the continuation of innovation that has benefited software vendors, customers, emerging markets and investors.

Now, I'm all in favour of ecosystems, but it's hard to see how this kind of organisation would help TomTom much. Well, some details are starting to emerge of how OIN aims to fight back against this kind of thing:

Open Invention Network (OIN), a collaborative enterprise that enables innovation in open source and an increasingly vibrant ecosystem around Linux, today announced that U.S. patents 5579517, 5758352 and 6256642 have been placed for prior art review on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website associated with the Linux Defenders portal. These patents were recently cited in litigation that targeted TomTom NV.

OIN's mission includes encouraging the Linux community to review patents-of-interest that may be of suspect quality or riddled by questions regarding prior art. Accordingly, the patents used in the recent TomTom patent action have been posted by OIN for review and submission of prior art by the Linux community. Submissions may be made by visiting http://www.post-issue.org, clicking on the appropriate patent and selecting "Submit Prior Art".

Right, so it seems that OIN won't be doing anything directly, other than getting the relevant patents posted on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website associated with the Linux Defenders portal.

Isn't this a rather roundabout way of doing things? I can't help feeling that this could have been done rather quicker: after all, if it's just a matter of posting the relevant patents for people to examine and poke holes in, why wasn't it done as soon as Microsoft attacked TomTom? Did we really need to wait for TomTom to join OIN, and for the latter to pass the message down the chain a few weeks later?

Perhaps the community needs to think about how this kind of stuff can be done more expeditiously given that patent attacks against open source are likely to increase, and that prior art is a powerful weapon to deploy against them in jurisdictions foolish enough to allow software patents in the first place.

Foolish Phorm

Earlier this year, I had some problems with a statement from the Open Solution Alliance's Anthony Gold. Here are my comments from the time...

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Closing the European Internet

Openness lies at the heart of the Internet, at every level. Indeed, the success of the Internet, and of the open services that run on top of it, was one of the first - and remains one of the most important - demonstrations of the benefits of adopting open architectures. Unfortunately, it's an openness that is fairly subtle for non-technical people; above all, it's not at all obvious to politicians, who seem to assume that apparently minor tweaks won't change things much....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Taiwan Adopts "Three Strikes" Law

Bad news, bad law:

The Legislative Yuan ratified yesterday the latest revision of the Copyright Law to empower Internet service providers (ISPs) to "strike out" Internet surfers who have violated others' copyrights and posted unauthorized content on any Web sites.

The new rules will exempt the ISPs from any responsibility for offenses caused by pirating parties in order to avoid litigation by copyright owners.

But the service providers will be obliged to inform the pirating parties about the infringement on the copyrights.

They can suspend part or all services to the pirates after giving three warnings.

The pirates will still face lawsuits from the copyright owners.

No details on whether this needs judicial oversight, but don't hold your breath...

Tropical Disease Initiative Releases Kernel

No, really:

There is an urgent need for identifying new targets for drug discovery. This urgency is even more relevant for infectious diseases affecting third-world countries, which have been historically neglected by the pharmaceutical industry. For example, only ~10% of the R&D resources have been spent on illnesses that represent the 90% of the total disease burden in the world (Munos 2006), which translates in that just ~1% of newly developed drugs are for tropical diseases (Maurer et al. 2004).

At the beginning of the 90s, an initial Linux kernel conceived and created by Linus Torvalds paved the way for a wealth of open and free software programs and operating systems. Here we introduce what we believe can be regarded as an initial kernel for drug discovery with the hope that it will sparkle new ways for developing drugs against organisms that cause tropical diseases. The TDI kernel (v1.0) includes 297 potential drug targets against the 10 selected genomes and is freely and publicly accessible in a World Wide Web server, which was developed with Web2.0 tools for easy dissemination of the deposited data.

It's amazing how metaphors can spread.

You can browser the kernel - *their* kernel - here.

Who Owns Commercial Open Source – and Can Forks Work?

Three years ago, Tom Foremski wrote an interesting piece called “Adapt or die--the choice facing the open source movement“, which began:

Can Larry Ellison be stopped? By which I mean could Oracle shut down the fledgling open-source software movement through a series of acquisitions??

On Linux Journal.

EU on ACTA: "TRIPS Is Floor Not Ceiling"

Getting information about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is like getting blood from a stone, but here's an article with some useful informtion:

The EU Commission is “committed to improve the international legal framework for IP protection” and sees “ACTA as one way to reach that goal,” Devigne said. There was no intention to duplicate TRIPS. Rather, “we want to go beyond it,” he said, adding, “TRIPS is the floor, not the ceiling.”

Well, that's pretty clear: they are aiming to produce something even worse than TRIPS. This, though, is less convincing:

“It is not that we want to hide something, we just don’t have something to show.” Devigne also rejected all claims about a possibly secrecy in the negotiations. “Quite on the contrary, for international trade negotiations we normally do not have such a democracy exercise where everybody can raise their concern,” said Devigne. For this kind of negotiations the Commission would normally only consult with member states.

One other nugget is the following:

so far there is only consensus in any case to exempt patents from criminal law sanctions.

Drip, drip, drip....

MEPs: Do not Enclose the Cultural Commons

Nicely put by the Open Rights Group:

Wednesday is the last full day to lobby your MEPs in Strasbourg before this Thursday’s vote on copyright term extension.

A cross party platform of MEPs have tabled an amendment to reject the proposal to extend the term of sound copyrights beyond 50 years. Contact your MEPs in Strasbourg and ask them to support the rejection amendment tabled by Sharon Bowles, Andrew Duff and Olle Schmidt ALDE, Guy Bono, PSE, Christofer Fjellner, Zuzana Roithova, Anna Ibrisagic EPP.

It also points to this amazing article from the FT of all places, called "Do not enclose the cultural commons":

Copyright is an act of force: it is the means by which states forcibly establish artificial monopolies in cultural works. There are two arguments why governments can legitimately do this. The first is to ensure efficient incentives for cultural production. The second is to ensure that artists get a fair reward for their contribution to our culture’s enrichment. In the absence of copyright, the ease with which cultural works can be reproduced may leave creators with neither efficient incentives nor fair rewards.

But neither consideration justifies extension of copyright beyond the current 50 years. If anything, copyright terms are currently too long.

Wow, at least we're having an impact *somewhere*: the FT talking about enclosing the commons, and intellectual monopolies...

Anyway, as usual, here's my quick note that I've sent to my MEPs via WriteTotThem:

I am writing to ask you to vote against the proposal to extend the term of sound copyrights beyond 50 years, and to support the rejection amendment tabled by Sharon Bowles, Andrew Duff and Olle Schmidt ALDE, Guy Bono, PSE, Christofer Fjellner, Zuzana Roithova, Anna Ibrisagic EPP.

By now, it has been established that there is no economic justification for extending copyright; that doing so will harm the vast majority of people, and put money in the pockets of a very few, mostly well-off, musical superstars. This measure is quite simply lobbying at its worst.

But you don't have to believe me. Here's what the Financial Times' Editors, hardly anti-business, wrote earlier this week:

“Copyright extension is, in the main, just the well-known strategy of powerful companies: profit-grabbing through lobbying for state protection. That is bad enough. Worse is the chilling effect it can have on creativity: the industry is already on a legal crusade against the sampling of copyrighted material into new original work. This is like the Grimm brothers’ descendants suing Disney for using their fairy tales.

The cultural industries are over-protected. If cultural works were less greedily hoarded, consumers would enjoy more variety – and artists would create more freely.”

Indeed, it points out:

“If anything, copyright terms are currently too long.”

For these, and all the other well-rehearsed reasons why copyright extension would be a retrograde step, I urge you to vote for the rejection amendment.

A Timeline of Microsoft Hurt

I've often written about particular instances where Microsoft has bullied competitors; it's a pretty sorry tale. But that story becomes extraordinary when told in detail, and as a sequence of actions whose sole purpose was to drive off competition by any means.

If you're interested in how Microsoft sought to undermine DR-DOS, WordPerfect, Netscape and Java - to say nothing of GNU/Linux - you can find out here in this document from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS). As you might guess from the subject matter of the report, this is a bunch of companies who are not overly enamoured of Microsoft:

ECIS has acted as an advocate of interoperability since its inception in 1989. The association believes strongly in the benefits of a competitive and innovative ICT sector, and seeks to support such an environment by actively participating in the promotion of any initiative aimed at favoring interoperability, competition on the merits, innovation, and consumers' interests in the area of information and communication technology.

ECIS’ members include large and smaller information and communications technology hardware and software providers Adobe Systems, Corel, IBM, Nokia, Opera, Oracle, RealNetworks, Red Hat, and Sun Microsystems.

Leaving aside the sad fact that a European organisation can't spell "favouring", it's pretty clear that this is not an objective, balanced picture. But as far as I can tell, it's not untruthful, and its statements are butteressed with references to relevant documents and news items that make it useful for further exploration.

Battle for the Soul of the European Internet

Even though the internet is 40 years old, and the Web 20, it's only in the last couple of years that European politicians have started to take a deep interest in its workings – and implications for society. However, the flurry of activity we have seen in recent months more than makes up for that long neglect....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.

Internet Censorship, Salami-style

This is bad news:

Mobile operators will appoint an independent classification body (see Glossary) to provide a framework for classifying commercial content that is unsuitable for customers under the age of 18. The framework will be consistent with standards used in other media and only treat as 18 content that would receive an 18 type classification for the equivalent material in, for example, magazines, films, videos and computer games.

Commercial content providers will be required to self-classify as 18 all content unsuitable for customers under the age of 18, in accordance with the framework. This requirement does not apply to premium rate voice or premium rate SMS (texting) services, which will continue to operate under the ICSTIS Code of Practice.

By default, all commercial content not classified as 18 will be unrestricted.

Each mobile operator will place commercial content classified as 18 behind access controls and only make it available to those customers that it has satisfied itself, through a process of age verification, are 18 or over.

The mobile operator will also place behind access controls all commercial content chat rooms, unless they are moderated chat rooms.

This doesn't apply to "Internet content" - yet:

Mobile operators have no control over the content that is offered on the Internet and are therefore unable to insist that it is classified in accordance with the independent classification framework.

Mobile operators will therefore offer parents and carers the opportunity to apply a filter to the mobile operator’s Internet access service so that the Internet content thus accessible is restricted. The filter will be set at a level that is intended to filter out content approximately equivalent to commercial content with a classification of 18.

But guess what? Once all those filters are in place, wouldn't it be really convenient - sorry, wouldn't it combat terrorism and fight child pornography - if we applied those same filters to the Internet everywhere?

See? Salami-style censorship: you won't notice a thing... (Via Glyn Wintle).

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.

Urgent: Please Write to your MEPs about Amendment 138

Sorry, it's time to get those virtual quills out, and to write to your MEPs. There's a crucial vote coming up in the next couple of days that may see net neutrality killed in Europe thanks to the British and French governments. La Quadrature du Net has the details; here's my letter:

I am writing to ask you to urge your colleagues, particularly those on the ITRE committee, to vote in favour of amendment 138/46 to the Telecoms Package, and not to allow it to be deleted or watered down in any way – for example, by making it an indicative recital instead of an article.

As a journalist who has been writing about the Internet since 1994, I know how important it is that the connection is provided without any technical restrictions. This is the only way that innovations can emerge – indeed, the British inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has said that if restrictions of the kind that the striking of amendment 138/46 will allow were in place back in 1989, the Web would never have taken off. This means that if the amendment is dropped or weakened, Europe may well miss out on the next Internet revolution – hardly what the European Union is seeking to do with its wider support for innovation.

To its great credit, the European Parliament has consistently fought to retain this protection for users, and I urge you and your colleagues to continue to stand up for European citizens who are being sidelined by the proposal from some governments to drop amendment 138/46.

Please send your own variation before tomorrow evening. Remember: it's *your* Internet they want to ruin.

Another Reason Copyright is Evil

Usually, I attack copyright on very general grounds - it's a monopoly, it's locking up knowledge, blah-blah-blah. But here's a new one to add to the list: it can endanger freedom of expression.

Given the way in which copyright law was transplanted into China without a fulsome cultural understanding of the values that informed the system, it seems the power of copyright can be easily usurped for means that infringe on political and civil rights. And yet, the United States, through the WTO process, is seeking stronger copyright protection in China.

This seeming inconsistency may not currently be a large issue because of the more explicit means of control available to the Chinese government. However, as political pressure mounts on the human rights front, it is possible that the Chinese government may have to be more covert in their attempts to suppress political speech. If that happens, copyright law may begin to look appealing to the Chinese government as a means of control.

Put it in your diaries...

Don't Do as I Do, Do as I Say

Wasn't Damian Green threatened with life imprisonment for allegedly doing precisely this:

Government officials handed confidential police intelligence about environmental activists to the energy giant E.ON before a planned peaceful demonstration, according to private emails seen by the Guardian.

Correspondence between civil servants and security officials at the company reveals how intelligence was shared about the peaceful direct action group Climate Camp in the run-up to the demonstration at Kingsnorth, the proposed site of a new coal-fired power station in north Kent.

Intelligence passed to the energy firm by officials from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) included detailed information about the movements of protesters and their meetings. E.ON was also given a secret strategy document written by environmental campaigners and information from the Police National Information and Coordination Centre (PNICC), which gathers national and international intelligence for emergency planning.

So it's official now, I take it: *they* can break any law they like, while we are afforded no protection from them - even by innocence.

Rufus Pollock On Copyright and its Sorrows

Brilliant, succinct post by Rufus Pollock explaining what copyright is supposed to be doing (if it's doing anything):

copyright is instrument created in order to promote the interests of society as a whole not to promote the interests of the producers of creative works. Of course we care about remunerating producers and artists both because they are members of society but also, and more importantly, because by remunerating them we ensure the creation of more works which society as a whole can enjoy.

Nevertheless, it is essential to keep in mind that the purpose of copyright is broader than to promote the interests of a single group. This fact then is central to any assessment of the form and level of copyright and it has important implications. For example if we have a proposal that will help artists but overall harm society we should not support that proposal.

Moreover, he puts his finger on precisely why people flout current copyright laws - and how to fix it:

the successful enforcement of any rule depends on that rule having public legitimacy — being considered reasonable by the majority of the populace. Currently that is not the case: copyright suffers from a serious lack “respect” and has marked lack of public legitimacy.

If you wish to change that we need the rules to be fair and balanced — it hard to have respect and enforcement of an unfair system. For example, copyright term should be reduced and we should expressly avoid extensions, especially retrospective ones like that currently before Parliament in relation to sound recordings. Such policies appear to reflect nothing more than special interest lobbying and this can only make copyright’s “marked lack of public legitimacy” worse — I would note here the recent joint statement put out European IP law centres who emphasized that retrospective term extension would seriously undermine respect for copyright and make “piracy the easy option”.

Exactly; he is even able to single out why copyright is now going through a crisis in this respect:

I would also argue that just rules must also be reasonable rules. For example, is it reasonable in an age of costless reproduction to continue to promote a model of copyright based on exclusive rights? Much of the “problem” of unauthorised file-sharing could be resolved if we moved to an alternative compensation system based on an equitable remuneration right approach.

*This* is what the media industries just cannot grasp: that costless reproduction has changed the public's perception of what is fair. This, in its turn, means that content producers have to change their own expectations - and business models - if they want society to enforce properly the rules surrounding copyright.

What are the Legal Implications of Cloud Computing?

To say that cloud computing is trendy would be an understatement: the topic is almost inescapable in the world of computing these days. I've written about it from the viewpoint of open source several times, because there are a number of important issues arising out of clouds: much of their infrastructure is based on free software, and there are interesting questions to do with licensing that clouds pose for applications. But one aspect almost never considered is even higher up the stack: the legal side of their use....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody.

Copyright Industries' Pyrrhic Victories

It's extraordinary how much that formerly-drab old subject of copyright is in the news these days. There's the Amazon Kindle story, the Pirate Bay judgement and the report, yesterday, that Britain's copyright laws are the "worst by far".

Although much of this bad news, notably the idiotic Pirate Bay ruling - these were links, people, you know, just like Google - there's a silver lining of sorts. The gulf between what the laws on copyright say and what people think is fair to do (picking up on the ethical aspect of copyright, again) is so vast and unbridgeable now that I think we're going to see a massive collapse of copyright soon.

As "young people" grow up and become the mainstream voting population, there is simply going to be zero sympathy for the greed and obtuseness of the intellectual monopolists. The current "victories" of the media industries will prove to be Pyrrhic.

Follow me on Twitter @glynmoody