Posted on April 19, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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I can think of a Lego fan who would love these. I wonder how long the trademark and patent threats that take these off the market will take to come?
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Lovely graphic demonstrates that Eyjafjallajoekull volcano has probably done more to save the planet from global warming in a week than our politicians have achieved in their lifetimes…
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Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ There’s a link
Posted on April 18, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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“participants have reached unanimous agreement that the time is right for making available to the public the consolidated text coming out of these discussions” — About time too. They couldn’t keep it secret any longer because too many people – including those inside the process – thought it was a disgrace. I wonder if they had to surrender any principles to the US in order to gain that unanimous agreement? We’ll know on Wednesday, after which the “you’re wrong and I’ll not tell you why” defence for ACTA’s apologists is also off the table.
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“any reasonable analysis shows that a monthly password change has little or no end impact on improving security! It is a ‘best practice’ based on experience 30 years ago with non-networked mainframes in a DoD environment” — Given how old this article is, surely corporate security experts should have got a clue by now?
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Excellent article differentiates open source and crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the phenomenon previously known as sharecropping. Sadly it characterises the attitude many corporations have towards the communities they have created and call “open source communities”. But truly open source communities align the fractional self-interest of many around the evolution of a free software commons, and that is almost the polar opposite of crowdsourcing.
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Good to see a politician taking the need for a leap into the connected era seriously. I fear Tom may have alienated himself from his party leadership, so this initiative is unlikely to spread fast. But he’s a crucial voice of reason in this particular debate and needs our support.
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Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Going Open
Posted on April 17, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Something grated throughout the debate that resulted in the Digital Economy Act here in the UK. I couldn’t quite articulate it until I was pointed by a blog posting towards an excellent article by Lawrence Lessig, “Getting out values around copyright right” (PDF), based on a keynote in 2009 at a conference for educators in the US. It’s a fine article.
The observations at the beginning of the article provide an excellent overview of what are, for me, Lessig’s most important observations about copyright – that the current, digital, meshed society presents many cases for which the antique copyright regime we have now is inadequate. He then goes on to consider how we should respond to this challenge if we are educators, and provides a final explanation of the Google book-scanning issue. Continue reading →
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Filed under: Copyright | Tagged: Debill, Education | 1 Comment »
Posted on April 16, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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I was lucky enough to be sent an early copy of this documentary. It’s well worth watching, both for the opportunity to see so many of the people who are influential in software freedom philosophy and law and for the great explanations of the issues around the Bilski case and the mission creep which has led to software patents. Share it with friends as this issue is only going to get more important as ACTA promotes criminalisation of patent infringement.
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I’m not sure what I think about this fixation on enforcement. It seems to chill confidence in the very objective that software freedom was supposed to achieve – wide usage leading to contribution leading to more software freedom. Chill usage and surely software freedom spreads more slowly?
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Yes, the US Trade Representative really is saying “choose your freedoms”. It seems we can only have process transparency in exchange for an early surrender of citizen freedoms under ACTA. Disgusting.
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: Software Patents | 5 Comments »
Posted on April 15, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Concise and sensible article is pretty damning of Mandelson over DeBill, and rightly so: “Legislators have a responsibility to strike a balance between the competing needs of right-holders and of society. But when it comes to copyright legislation, they ignore the public interest.”
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JK Rowling analyses – in The Times, no less – the Tories £150 tax break for married couples and finds it wanting: “David Cameron tells us that the Conservatives have changed, that they are no longer the “nasty party”, that he wants the UK to be “one of the most family-friendly nations in Europe”, but I, for one, am not buying it. He has repackaged a policy that made desperate lives worse when his party was last in power, and is trying to sell it as something new.”
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Good to see this fact, which many of us have known for ages, finally showing up officially. Of course, the ACTA folks (like the DeBill people) will carry on acting as if the opposite is true and acting to “protect the creative industry”. But that’s because they are representative only of industry stakeholders and not of the commons and the really important stakeholder that benefits from it – us.
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I missed this when it came out last year – thanks for the link, Michael. It provides a good overview of btrfs as well as sketching the differences between it and ZFS.
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Filed under: Links | Comments Off on ☞ Inside Politics
Posted on April 14, 2010 by Simon Phipps
I spent a few days last week at a workshop with a number of other people concerned about software freedom and the law around it. One of the speakers gave a presentation about software patents, confirming that, regardless of whether software patents “as such” were permitted throughout Europe, it was easy to obtain patents on ‘inventions facilitated by software’. This reminded me that I’ve previously proposed ideas for patent reform that bear repetition. Coming back to it after three years, there was surprisingly little that needed changing so apologies if it’s not new to you (and thanks for being a regular reader!)
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Filed under: Patents | Tagged: Reform | 18 Comments »
Posted on April 13, 2010 by Simon Phipps
§ The election season has finally arrived in the UK, and leaflets have started to pour through the front door – too many to easily scan for The Straight Choice. Meanwhile on the web all sorts of election-related sites are springing up in an attempt to mobilise people, including Democracy Club and Vote Geek organising locally, 38 Degrees pinpointing issues, YourNextMP providing candidate details, Open Rights Group obsessing about the Digital Economy Bill (with some justification) and so on. There are so many of them that we need a web site just to keep track of them. Continue reading →
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Filed under: Issues | Tagged: Digital Liberty, Election | 1 Comment »
Posted on April 12, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Filed under: ACTA, Links | Comments Off on ☞ ACTA: Support The Wellington Declaration
Posted on April 12, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Geeks Vote Too
As the election in the UK approaches, I think it’s time to tell the people chasing our votes that actually we do understand the issues around digital liberty and we think it’s time for them to listen to us as well as the lobbyists. After all, we have votes and the lobbyists don’t.
I’ve designed the simple logo you see to the left. It’s meant to capture the idea that I’m a geek with a vote. During the election season, I intend to wear a badge with this logo, or at some events a t-shirt. I’d be delighted if other people did the same, and/or used the image online.
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Filed under: Issues, Webmink | Tagged: Election | 1 Comment »
Posted on April 11, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Filed under: Webmink | Tagged: Announcement | Comments Off on Comment ratings now enabled on all posts
Wild Webmink 