Richard's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
This week’s favorites post comes from Richard, who’s from the UK, but will hopefully forgive my removing of the extraneous “u’s” from the word “favorite.”
This is the first time I've done the favorites post, so it is a
bit of an adventure for me. I've decided to start with the "Good
News" because there was actually quite a lot of it this week.
Firstly, on the legal front, there have been a number of good
decisions in the courts. In an echo of what happened to ACS law in
the UK earlier in the year Righthaven has been slapped down a number
of times, and there is some
possibility that this could go further than just losing the cases.
There are (as I write) actually three Techdirt stories on this, but
the biggest (and most commented on) is this
one. The key point about this particular story is that the judge has
not just rejected Righthaven for lack of standing, he has also
indicated that even if Righthaven had standing they would
still lose on grounds of fair use. Sadly the comments on this story
are swamped with largely irrelevant arguments, but you can get it down
to a small number of useful contributions by selecting only
insightful comments.
My second favorite piece of legal good news came early in the week with the
in New York that safe harbours can apply in pretty broad sets of
circumstances. It is really important that the creep of
secondary liability is arrested before it gets too far, and this
ruling draws a useful line in the sand.
Another kind of good news is when someone who previously had a
reputation for IP maximalism takes a new direction. This category
contains the somewhat unlikely combination of J.K.Rowling
and the Mexican
Congress. The Mexicans have apparently decided to reject ACTA,
which is surprising, given Mexico's extreme copyright length of
life+100. J.K. Rowling's good news is a move into ebooks with no DRM.
Given her previous history, this is something to be celebrated.
Of course, it can't all be good, and so I have decided to institute
the "Victor
Meldrew Award" (for those outside the UK or unfamiliar
with the TV character, his catchphrase was "I don't believe it!"
and the character saw himself as a "normal man in a world full
of idiots"). Righthaven figures in this category too in the
guise of a bizarre
argument made by "Plessy Ferguson" that the
Righthaven rulings somehow threaten Open Source licenses. Clearly the
author of this argument didn't understand Copyright law, Open Source
Licences or the Righthaven ruling because it makes no sense on any of
these counts. Righthaven lost because they attempted to transfer the
right to sue without transferring any other exclusive rights. Opens
source licenses don't even attempt to transfer these rights. The
copyright for each component of an open source system remains with
its original author (unless explicitly assigned to someone else such
as the FSF in a separate transaction). Finally, Copyright law does not
require you to hold the rights to every part of a program in order to
sue for a breach of the license. You only need to hold the rights to
some of it. Sadly, many commenters didn't seem to understand these
points either, so the comments were full of "educational
material"!
On a side issue regarding Righthaven's dealings with Stephens
Media, it seems to me that the transfer of the right to sue only
enables one scenario, which is as follows. Someone infringes on the
Copyright (still held by Stephens Media). Righthaven can't sue them
(according to the court ruling) but what if Stephens media sues them?
Well, they've transferred the "right to sue" to Righthaven –
so now Righthaven can sue Stephens Media for infringement of their
right to sue! The net effect of the legal knot created by the deal is
thus to effectively put the original material into the public domain
because no-one can exert the copyright! I'm pretty sure that wasn't
the intention of Stephens Media when they set this scheme up…
bizarre argument was put forward by a small UK lobbying
organisation, claiming that a lack of software patents was damaging
the UK software industry. Well, apart from the fact that the UK does in practice
actually have some software patents, the logic here was unbelievable
and the evidence lacking.
Other Meldrew contenders this week included the Winklevii, yet
again pursuing Facebook after only recently
appearing to give up and
our usual suspects Apple
and Disney
who seem to think that there
should be (is?) one law for them and another for everyone else!
Microsoft was caught playing the same game last week – but that's
outside my brief! Those who are familiar with Victor Meldrew will
remember that the show had its darker side, and indeed finished in
that mode. This week saw a "dark Meldrew event" when a
woman was arrested
by police for filming them from her own property. The
of the TSA are often in the
same vein and would probably win this award quite frequently if it
was run every week.
This leads us on to events that
are worrying — but not bizarre enough to be surprising. There's
usually quite a lot of this unfortunately, often from Sony
who seem to be determined to
stop any creative use of their equipment from happening. Abuse
of the patent system is
another common cause for concern; in this case BitTorrent is being
sued on the thinnest of pretexts. Then there is our old friend the
copyright lobbyist. The UK variety is in the news this week with an
to set up web censorship behind the public's back. The
minister concerned, in a move reminiscent of Pontius Pilate, seems to
want it to go ahead — but without (visible) government involvement,
presumably so he can give the lobbyists what they want but avoid the
blame from the public. US lobbyists have been active too, this time
to shift the cost of the Herculean task of copyright enforcement onto
the public purse. Of course
international lobbyists have not been quiet either, trying
to get a monopoly on the process of deciding the exceptions to
copyright.
After all this
negativity, I thought I would end on a positive note with my personal
favourites from the “DailyDirt” postings. The
sorting robot seemed
appealing, until I realised that the video
is hugely speeded up. So my personal selection here is the post on
Source Hardware. I've long
believed that Open Source software really needs to run on open
hardware, but this video
showed how the collaborative ideal is extending beyond computing into
other fields. Have a look at it. It will cheer you up!
Re:
Why is Islamaphobia even mentioned? Good point. Seriously you should know better than to use that word for two reasons. 1) It is offensive to genuine phobia sufferers to use their condition as a term of abuse in this way. 2) It is a word used for shutting down debate by conflating any rational criticism of the ideology of Islam (or the historical/current practices of Islamic regimes) with racist bigotry.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Iran is going to cease to exist
I was referring specifically to the Sunni/Shia split - which started more or less the moment the Mohammed died and has continued ever since.
This split is responsible for a large proportion of the troubles in the middle east. Historically it has only been contained by brutal dictatorships - such as the Ottoman Caliphs/Sultans and more recently the likes of Assad (senior) and Saddam Hussein.
Re: Re: Re: Iran is going to cease to exist
The solution, very, very simplified, is for Iran to become less extreme. Us too! Agree with your first statement- but - in what way are we extreme? Last time I looked we were pretty tolerant compared to Iran.
Re: Re: Re: Iran is going to cease to exist
Yes the CIA fucked up. Yes it created a mess. If you think the US in particular, or the West in general (Britain and France were heavily involved between WW1 and the mid 50's) are really responsible for the mess in the middle east you don't know enough history. The root causes go back about 1400 years. There was no course of action that Britain, France or the US could have taken that would have avoided a situation very much like what we see today. The real problem is that once the Nazis and the cold war were out of the way it was inevitable that older conflicts would resurface.
Re: Re: I've come out against the censoring here!
Although those of us who have been around a while will be aware that the report button has suffered from some mission creep. It was originally intended only for genuine spam.
I actually find it annoying when a comment is hidden - but still followed by multiple rebuttals.
AS a rule I would say that if you are going to reply to something then don't report it. If someone else has already put up a reply then don't report it either - unless the reply itself is also worthy of being reported
Re: Re: I've come out against the censoring here!
In Iran, that would be Ayatollah Khamenei, not President Rouhani, whose head covering is considerably smaller. As is his power. Although I suspect he wears the headgear and other garb as a ploy to allay suspicion. Ahmedinahjab, who was actually much more an Islamic extremist, wore a suit. Unfortunately we've been here before. An earlier president (Rafsanjani https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akbar_Hashemi_Rafsanjani) was similar to - if not more liberal than - Rouhani. Unfortunately he was judged too liberal to even stand for president more recently. However he was quite close to Rouhani. Rouhani, like Rafsanji before him, has limited freedom of action. Most recently he has actually been playing a smart game in keeping just the right side of Khamenei. I would jusge that he would view Telegram as a positive to his own political position. After all Rafsanjani is on record as saying: " We should let our media write within the framework of the law and we should not impose restrictions on them. ... We should let our media even criticize us. Our security forces, our police and other organs have to guarantee such a climate for criticism"
Re: 'More justifications for searches? Where do we sign?!'
If the UK police are even remotely similar to the US police Fortunately they aren't, at least for now. For one thing they don't have the option of shooting first and asking questions afterwards. Traditionally there have been some pretty good senior police officers in the UK. eg John Alderson https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/oct/11/john-alderson Sadly they remain quite rare
IEEE
I note the reaction of the IEEE:
"To ensure compliance, as well as respect the privacy of all individuals, IEEE has decided to apply GDPR standards to all individuals and not only European citizens."
and
"Other countries have already created regulations similar to the GDPR and additional countries are expected to follow the trend in the future. IEEE believes that by treating all individuals interacting with us as if the GDPR were applicable to them now we will be able to more easily respond to any additional requirements in the future."
from
https://supportcenter.ieee.org/app/answers/detail/a_id/3023/kw/gdpr
Not really as bad as you might think
Havinf had to look at this in more detail because of personal involvement I would conclude:
1. The headline demands look pretty horrific.
2. The detail includes an enormous number of exceptions that in fact nullify most of (1) except in the most egregious cases.
3. Lots of companies and organisations are overreacting.
4. Because of (3) the consultants are having a field day.
In short if you're not a large corporation and your not doing anything that most reasonable people would regard as immoral the chances of this impacting you are ~0
This post and the next one
"significant advantage" that no "co-operation" is required from a person.
Ah - but of course GDPR (see next post) is supposedly all about guaranteeing co-operation...
Except of course the law enforcement is exempt....
Quelle Surprise!
Re: Re: Problematic?
Well at least a pretence of fairness - which is more than what is required from private organisations.
Problematic?
Because regardless of how problematic it is for a private entity like Cambridge Analytica to have access to lots of data about American voters, for all those same reasons it is even more problematic for a government to.
I'd say it is more problematic if a private entity has this data. At least governments are generally under some kind of legal framework that requires "fairness" in some sense.
The whole point of the ICO/data protection act/GDPR is to prevent the collection of this data without consent.
So if UK law had been complied with by Cambridge Analytics then this data wouldn't exist in the first place.
Of course, by having this data they have committed an offence and the data itself is now evidence.
In short it is necessary for the legal system to get this data in order to enforce the laws that are supposed to protect privacy.
You are complaining about the very thing that is supposed to prevent the problem in the first case.
How stupid is that??
You beileive?
We might see the problem more easily if it were, say, Russian regulators demanding Cambridge Analytica give it all the data it has,
You believe the Russian government doesn't already have this data???
Re: Re: Devil's advocate
Hmmm really? From personal experience of people asking me to do so it's pretty far from what you are saying. However M$ is offering some pretty good pricing for Office 365 specially with that 1Tb offering that comes attached so I always try to divert them towards signing up. And free software like Libre Office are pretty good for your everyday use, I've used for a long time at work before we got M$ Office licenses that weren't 20 years old. My personal experience is a little different... I too use libreoffice routinely myself on my work laptop - MS office was installed on my machine by my employer - but I never used it and it wasn't activated. The when someone else wanted to borrow my machine for presentations at a conference they wanted to use MS powerpoint and so we hit the 30 day "activate deadline". Annoyed by this I later took the machine back to tech support and they activated it. Later they changed the machine's identity to conform to may physical office move - and forgot to re-activate office. So now the "non-activated" nag is back. The point is that seeing the non-activated nag message doesn't necessarily mean that the s/w is unlicensed - merely that the habitual user doesn't use that s/w and can't be bothered to get tech support to fix it. In short, without further detail, this could easily be a non-story.
Re: Meanwhile, Israel ACTUALLY murdering protesters with "butterfly" bullets.
But all Timmy does is jeer at Israel's chosen enemy (one of the many which are chosen due to rabid religious beliefs Exactly whose rabid religious beliefs are you talking about? - because Iranian and other Islamic beliefs seem a lot more rabid than those of the Israelis.
Re: Meanwhile, Israel ACTUALLY murdering protesters with "butterfly" bullets.
Techdirt silent on recent dozens of Palestinian protesters dead and over a thousand more, inclulding children, deliberately targeted for crippling wounds in joints. I hate to break it to you but Techdirt isn't a general political blog. It is a technology blog that occasionally strays into political territory when there is a technical angle to the politics. SO whilst it is reasonable to make political comments about such articles, complaining that the blog doesn't cover your particular grievance is not sensible. BTW - the Israel Palestine issue is way nto complicated for your oversimplifications - and whilst there is a lot wrong with Israeli policy, particularly under the present leadership, it is still a better place to live for those Israeli arabs whose ancestors didn't flee in 1948 than any of the neighbouring arab countries. Destroying that relatively civilised space would not be a step forward.
Re:
If Iran goes and has its own Arab Spring, (Persian Spring? Keep in mind they're not Arabians there,) though, in the current climate the best-case scenario is likely to be more or less the same thing we saw in Egypt: trading one oppressive, anti-democratic Islamist regime for another, and when the smoke clears they'll have a bunch of people dead, a bunch of property damaged or destroyed, and no additional freedom to show for it. I think there is a good chance that you are wrong about this one. The reason is that the Iranian people have now had 40 years of Islamic rule and have learnt to dislike it. The other middle eastern regimes were still basically secular dictators hailing from the age of arab nationalism (1950s-60s) before the Saudi petrodollars got to work in reinvigorating Islam as a political force. Ironically the Saudi motivation for this was to bolster Sunni Islam against the Iranian Shia version. So in the Sunni Arab world the popular revolutionary groundswell is still Islamic (which is why encouraging regime change in Egypt, Syria and for that matter Iraq, has proved so disastrous). Iran is now different and if the current Islamic regime is toppled it is reasonable to hope that it will be replaced with something better.
Re:
How frequently that source, or author, accurately reports the news. A much better criterion would be " how often do they report or give publicity to, alternative opinions.
Re:
Therein lies the challenge with building out algorithms to automate this process. Let's say you assign a credibility score based on the historic human-based scoring of credibility by source. How frequently that source, or author, accurately reports the news. With as polarized as sources are today, the dog person and the cat person training an algorithm will come away with completely different automated processes reflecting their subjective world view. Actually it is far more complicated than that. There is no straight left - right axis anymore Foreign policy is even more complicated. Compare for example George Galloway's take on the world with that of Peter Hitchens. On the Israel vs Arab (Muslim) axis they would violently disagree On the Russia vs the West axis they agree (with each other) and both disagree with the western establishment view. The fact is that most people (and news outlets) are a mixture of different biases on different topics - and they may change with time. Generally I tend to trust the BBC and the Guardian - but on some issues I know that they have a bias and so I will look at other sources too.
Re: "trustworthy" MSM can easily become war propaganda cheerleaders
And it looks like something similar is in process right now with Iran/Russia.