The world woke up this morning to a rising crest of hysteria about the arrival of a Royal baby, and the sound of David Cameron making a determined lunge to secure the Daily Mail/Mumsnet vote before everyone (including him) goes on holiday : by "declaring war" on Internet porn. As someone said on Twitter (there's always one), we're very keen on babies, just not on letting anyone see how they're made..
Dodgy jokes aside, Dave's latest vote gathering strategy is more sickening than funny. His speech - aimed apparently at a pre 1996 stage of Internet governance - about how to tame that pesky unregulated Internet and drive online porn into the sea can be found in its full glory here. Anyone who knows anything about the field will notice immediately that the speech cunningly and quite convincingly intermingles two entirely different topics: (1) access by children to entirely legal pornography (which is nonetheless "corroding childhood" - see below) and (2) the eradication of access to images of the abuse of children, possession of which is universally criminalised.
Children and legal pornographic content
Re (1), Pangloss is no more keen than most on some of the nastier aspects of modern easy access to legal pornography - recent research apparently showing that teenage male sexual expectations of girls (and girls expectations of their own bodies and actions) are formed largely by what they see porn stars doing springs to mind - but, as a society, we long ago made a decision that where we were talking about content that some like, but others find objectionable, and that does not, like "child pornography", record sex with persons who could not possibly consent, in principle, domestic use of it by adults is legal. That attitude may need revisited - we seem , possibly , to have seen public support for creation of new types of universally illegal pornography, such as violent and rape porn, and snuff videos. But to do so is a matter for parliamentary and public debate - not a matter for Google or ISPs to fix overnight because David Cameron likes to be seen as a caring family man. Hiding legal but nasty porn away from UK ISP subscribers by default-on porn filters may be a relief to some adults who can then happily assume the Internet is fixed and go back to the telly - but it is unlikely to stop children accessing it, and very very unlikely indeed to stop people making it when there are so many distribution channels left where a buck can be turned.
Cameron says he wants to stop "how online pornography is corroding childhood". But in fact even if we accept this is entirely the fault of online porn (what nothing to do with Rihanna? cheap alcopops? reality TV? the Sun?) almost as much as can sensibly be done to monitor or stop child access to unsuitable materials has already been done, destroying Cameron's voter-friendly assertion that Internet providers and search engines are obdurately refusing to take responsibility (we already know they don't pay tax, don't we boys and girls!) .
In fact driven by the abysmal PR associated with any tinge of friendliness to pedophilia, service providers too often lean in the other direction, of over blocking content. UK mobile operators, working on the assumption that children have unprecedented unsupervised access to Internet content via the mobile Web, sign up to a voluntary code where a safe filtered Net is provided unless you can prove you are an adult (not easy, and often a pain to do). Schools provide still further filters, often draconically over blocking everything from Facebook to fashion sites. Almost every UK ISP now provides family friendly filters to subscriber households for free on request. Google provides a Safe Search option which if used on strictest setting stops anyone searching on words like porn or rape - yes , just like Cameron says doesn't happen right now. The accountholder - ie, an adult - can lock Safe Search so that any kids in the household can't turn it off.
Yet strangely evidence, empirical and anecdotal, shows generally low uptake by parents on both these impressive safeguards. Why is that? Could it be parents aren't actually as bothered as they say about child safety ? Is that why Cameron thinks default opt-out from porn will solve the problem and if so, are children likely to be isolated from porn just because an automated filter is switched on? I doubt it - most kids do or can find out how to run a VPN or a proxy server access nowadays, , having learnt what these are by the kind educational services of the anti filesharing industries . What requiring adults to "opt into porn" will mainly do is provide a nice database somewhere of adults who dare to opt out of filters on the ground they have no idea what these so called porn filters might scoop out (LBGT material? Almost certainly. Safe sex or breast cancer info? Probably. Fanfic? Quite likely. ). At the moment we also have no idea who might get access to that list in some future unpleasant scenario (unevidenced rape accusations, custody battles and school or public sector employment checks come fast to mind). It would be nice to see the Information Commissioner having something to say about this aspect.
Access to images of child sexual abuse and stopping the underlying abuse
But returning to (1) , this is the part of this speech where Pangloss feels she has historical expertise and which made her truely angry this morning. Cameron's advisers - and hence Cameron himself, indubitably - know and have known for a very long time, that web blocking via the IWF blacklist does nothing but stop amateurish and accidental access to images of child sexual abuse ("stumbling upon" is the phrase most often used) and that this is a tiny, tiny part of the problem of real abuse to real children by hardened paedophiles and their suppliers. The IWF was truely set up to facilitate removal of child abuse images from UK servers and in that it has succeeded - less than 1 % of this material is now hosted in the UK. It was never meant to stop determined acess to foreign hosted material bceause it was known this was impossible. As long ago as 2005, Mike Galvin, then of BT and the IWF and one of the architects of Cleanfeed, admitted to the Guardian that it "won't stop the hardened pedophile" and that its main use was to help protect people who eg accidentally followed links to images of child abuse if sent in a spam email.
Unfortunately any political gesture connected to web blocking, that tiny part of the problem - recently brought to public attention in the not very statistical sample of the shape of the killers of Tia Sharp and April Jones - guarantees a Daily Mail headline. Result for politicians. But hardened or repeat pedophiles do not, as a rule, find the images they seek via Google - what and have their search record archived? - but from parts of the Net which are not part of the Web and which are not mapped by Google spiders - and hence not blockable by Google either.
These places are sometimes known as darknets, eg P2P sites for swapping illegal material - or "hidden services", the phrase the IWF uses in its latest report to describe anonymised websites where new pedophile material often makes its first appearance. The IWF know all about this, which is they recently hired a technical analyst to look into how to monitor this kind of traffic. CEOP knows too. The European Commission has spent a great deal of money funding research into P2P content blocking. In fact even I knew, as far back as 2000 when I first wrote in detail about the law and child sexual abuse. You can find a version of the same argument in the 2009 version of that piece here.
How then can pedophile access to images of child sexual abuse be controlled by mainstream search engines, if these predators do not largely use mainstream search engines? Simply, it can't. This doesn't stop Cameron saying that search engines should "step up to the plate" by blocking certain search terms. We dont know how this is meant to work yet, so it's difficult to critique. But one obvious criticism is that filter by keywords is easy for pedophiles to avoid - just use code words that run ahead of blocking, just as right now the word "Lolita" has come to signify underage sex - but will stifle legitimate searches by ordinary people. For example today I searched for Cameron's speech by putting in "cameron porn Internet speech". Tomorrow I may not be able to do that perfectly responsible thing. As usual the items that suffer from over-blocking tend to be the same marginalised concerns: survivors seeking advice, confused LGBT teens seeking community, etc.
What more can be done sensibly then? Spending money on the option that actually works: not avoidable and plaster-over-the-cracks blocking but actual take down of material abroad - most prevalently in the US (56% origin of child abuse images, say the IWF) , not some inpenetrable lawless post Soviet republic - and associated international policing co- operation. The IWF knows this. Their 2012 annual report still says : "We believe that the most effective way to eleminate child sexual abuse contentis to remove it at its source" Banks know this. They spend money on securing local take down of fraud and phishing sites abroad with the result that these sites come down in hours, while the sites that host child sex images stay up for often up to 60 days (also from the IWF report). CEOP knows this. Their former CEO Jim Gamble resigned two years ago because CEOP's budget was effectively being cut. Web blocking is much cheaper than policing, especially if you get Google to pay for it. Gamble was on the circuit the last few days, castigating Cameron for grandstanding for election votes .
So if all these experienced child welfare advocates know this , why doesn't David Cameron ? Could it be he isn't thinking of the children after all?
Monday, July 22, 2013
Thursday, May 23, 2013
How to Go to GikII : a Beginner's Guide!
For any out there wondering how you start preparing to give a GIkII talk, here's a recent story that sums up the entire ethos I feel..
This story has everything: cutting edge technology, 3d printing, so hot it blisters, tick; cutting edge IT law topic of the IP implications - is it an infringement of copyright? of registered design? of trademark? does it matter if it is produced at home as a one off rather than commercially? what about the liability of Thingiverse where 3D blueprints are shared? tick; and the zinger, a great pop culture tie in.
As a clue, beginners could start with looking at the just passed Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act and the much debated s 74 repealing s 52 of the CDPA..
Summer is coming! Get your GIkII abstract in!
Printer Is Coming: Game of Thrones Fan Fashions 3-D Model of Winterfell
This story has everything: cutting edge technology, 3d printing, so hot it blisters, tick; cutting edge IT law topic of the IP implications - is it an infringement of copyright? of registered design? of trademark? does it matter if it is produced at home as a one off rather than commercially? what about the liability of Thingiverse where 3D blueprints are shared? tick; and the zinger, a great pop culture tie in.
As a clue, beginners could start with looking at the just passed Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act and the much debated s 74 repealing s 52 of the CDPA..
Summer is coming! Get your GIkII abstract in!
GIKII 2013 Goes to the Beach!!
GikII 2013 – Call for Papers
Sun, Sand and GikII VIII When robots, drones, autonomous agents, Facebook stalking, teleportation, 3D printing, MMORPGS, science fiction, computer games and superhero justice are discussed within the realms of the law and LOL cats, you know the time for the annual GikII workshop has arrived! Yes it’s time for GikII VIII – and a time to immerse ourselves in debates about cutting-edge technology, popular culture and the law.
When and Where?
GikII which has traversed through the exotic cities of Edinburgh, Oxford, London, Amsterdam and Göteborg in years gone by will arrive in sunny, golden-sandy Southern city of Bournemouth with its sparkling sea and almost California-like-but-not-quite atmosphere. It will be held on 16-17 September 2013 at the Executive Business Centre (EBC), Landsdowne Campus, Bournemouth University (EBC is a 5-minute walk from the Bournemouth train station). GikII is being hosted with the kind assistance of the Law Department and the Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management (CIPPM) at Bournemouth University. The dates provide you the opportunity to combine GikII VIII with the Society for Computers and Law Workshop (12-13th September in London) and make it a ‘Geek Week’ with a beach week-end in-between! We point out however that buckets and spades are not provided.
Registration
In keeping with tradition, there is no registration fee to attend GikII and priority is always given to speakers, but, there are some limited spaces available for students and non-speakers. To guarantee your place, please make sure you submit your paper early and register for the event. Registration will open on Eventbrite when acceptance of abstracts has been notified.
Submission of abstracts and deadline
Please send an abstract not exceeding 500 words to Professor Lilian Edwards (Lilian.Edwards@strath.ac.uk) and Dr Dinusha Mendis (dmendis@bournemouth.ac.uk). The deadline for submissions is 2 August 2013. We will be in touch shortly after the deadline to let you know about acceptance of your papers.
Main contacts
The Chair of the event will be Dr. Dinusha Mendis, Senior Lecturer in Law and Co-Director, CIPPM, Bournemouth University with assistance from Professor Lilian Edwards, Professor of Internet Law, University of Strathclyde and Deputy Director of CREATe
If required, Dinusha will be happy to provide information about accommodation, ranging from those with sea views (expensive) to those without (cheap). The information will also be available on the Eventbrite page at the time of registration.
Sunday, May 05, 2013
REF and other dangerous animals
Excellent comments , among many such, in piece on the harmful effects of REF in the Grauniad:
"For my money, the real issue is managerialism. Senior administrators decide everything now - not academics. And, unsurprisingly, they favour simple metrics (journal ranking lists and student satisfaction surveys) because they have neither the time, knowledge nor desire to actually engage with the content of research or teaching.
The ABS List used in business schools is an example here, it hasn't been updated since 2010 (prior to that it was updated pretty much every year). Why? Not because there's been no change in journal rankings but because research administrators couldn't plan effectively with a changing list. The result is that people are being rewarded for publishing in top journals which - possibly are no longer top journals - but this doesn't matter because administration is the name of the game. Likewise, in my experience as a lecturer "good teaching" means no complaints and a decent score on student evaluation forms. Everyone knows that these forms are stupid and any real feedback isn't contained in an average score out of five but is in the qualitative feedback to open questions. Because these are too hard to quantify the get thrown in the bin unread.
So the question is why have academics given universities over to "managers"?"
For the whole article, with interesting quotes from some universities which made Pangloss actually LOL, see here.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Life, Death, Privacy, Action! Or, “Spring is Coming” and About Bleeding Time:-)
Surliminal has been a busy little bee
lately since the official CREATe launch at end January (and not just because she’s read the entirety of the first four Game of
Thones novels since then.. beware I suspect a GikII paper on Westeros coming near you..) , so it seems about time to update the non-Twitter
audience with a bit of what has been going on!
First, my
PhD student,Edina Harbinja and I have been
doing a fair bit of work on our CREATe and Horizon sponsored project on legal
aspects of transmission of digital asets on death. As mentioned a bit ago, 14,000 word
summary of our work so far, which is soon to appear in a multidisciplinary
collection from Springer, can be found
on marvellous SSRN . That chapter aims to explore some of the major
legal issues pertaining to transmission of digital assets (such as social media
profiles, songs and videos purchased from iTunes and similar, photos posted on
Flickr, in-game assets, online reputations, virtual currencies etc) on death.
Particular focus is placed on recent case law concerning access to webmail after death, and bequeathing of iTunes
libraries. We survey the regulation of the area by platform terms of service, bespoke
legislation and existing executry law and ask (a) how far the new digital assets fall into
existing paradigms of property (b) the interactions between property,
succession, privacy and contract in this domain, especially in the context of
assets generated on intermediary sites such as social networks (c) whether we
need a notion of "post mortem privacy" and (d) briefly , some
solutions to some of the issues thrown up by previous sections, including
emerging legislation , and the new breed of "life after death"
technology assistants such as Legacy Locker.
The work on post mortem privacy in that piece lead, as also mentioned a few months back, to an interdisciplinary symposium at the
Amsterdam Privacy Conference last autumn, which in turn has now generated a special
section of the online peer reviewed journal SCRIPT-ed. It’s now on line with excellent
pieces by Edina
(law and DP), Damien McCallig (post mortem copyright), Elaine Kasket (psychology
and relationships after death), Jan Bikker (disasters and social media) and an editorial by me. Do have a look.
Secondly, I’ve been speaking to geeks
too much as ever :-) , and as a result have papers accepted for the Web Sci Conference
workshop on intersections between Web Science and Internet Science (Paris,
May 1), on social media and the impact
of real names policies (with Derek
Macaulay of Horizon/Nottingham University) ;
and for W3C (Rio,
May) Workshop on Privacy and Security in Online Media, (#psom) on differing
transatlantic approaches to Twitter
censorship , anonymity and disclosure policies (with Andrea Matwyshwn, Wharton, Penn University).
A longer version of the real names
policies paper is also going into a festschrift in presentation for a very
esteemed elder statesman of IT law, which I am very happy to be able to
contribute to. I think it’s a surprise till publication on May 1, so I won’t
spoil it by saying any more just now !
but will make it available shortly thereafter on SSRN and link to it from here.
Sadly though I’m not gonna be able to
make Rio (catastrophe! merde!) because I’ve chosen instead to present a paper
with Edina, again on post mortem privacy, at the 6th Annual Berkeley Privacy Law ScholarsConference 2013 (June 6-7) which is the best privacy conference in the world
bar none. Presenting there will be quite nerve racking! but as the soon as the
paper’s done it’ll be (surprise) up on SSRN for comments. I may take in a few
other events in the Bay Area/Seattle/Vancouver round that time so let me know if there’s
anything I ought to particular note or to which I could contribute.
Finally, my piece on social networks, code, law and privacy which has long languished sadly on SSRN
collecting downloads (124? not so bad!), has finally been published in the very excellent Brown ed
Research Handbook On Governance Of The Internet (Edward Elgar, 2013 ) where you will also find
some very interesting contributions from luminaries such as TJ McIntyre (on transatlantic and Uk
regulation of Internet porn, very useful), Graham Greenleaf on global data protection, Chris Marsden, Milton Mueller
and ooh, many more.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Vacancy in IT/IP law at Strathclyde!
SCHOOL OF LAW
LECTURER/SENIOR LECTURER IN IT AND/OR DIGITAL IP LAW
(£33,230 - £53,233 PER ANNUM)
The School is seeking to appoint a Lecturer or a Senior Lecturer to strengthen its portfolio in the broad
areas of IT law, digital IP law, digital media and/or telecoms law. The successful candidate will be
expected to contribute to the research of the Centre for Internet Law and Policy and to the further
development of Masters provision in the field as well as making a wider contribution within the Law
School.
Full details here, will also shortly be on jobs.ac.uk
....And yes I do have lots of ideas for actual blog posts -- sometimes even drafts -- just been quite a lot on.
For where I've been lately, try Twitter, natch, but also ..
CREATe got launched! Our website is here. My first Storify of the day is here. Our work programme with details of times and events is here. Comments very welcome. (I'm Deputy Director with special portfolio for digital world and new business models.) My short blog piece on the future of copyright and new business models is here. Fortunately, I do not have a copy of interview they made me do on Good Morning Scotland at 7.20am..
I wrote a 14,000 word chapter with my PhD student Edina Harbinja on transmission of digital assets on death, which will be going into a (mainly technical) Springer collection in the domain some time in 2013.
Edina and I have also put together a special collection of short interdisciplinary pieces on death, digital assets and post mortem copyright and privacy for my favourite open access journal SCRIPT-ed, which is coming our round about April 2013.
I dashed off a short piece on s 127 of the Communications Act and why it's a joke which became for some reason about the most reprinted and retweeted thing I've ever written.
I'm waiting with baited breach for the updated piece on social networks and privacy I wrote er some time ago to actually come out in the REsearch Handbook on Internet Governance from Edward Elgar. edited by Ian Brown .
We hired the PhD student in copyright and data mining - he's arriving in May and this project just gets more and more exciting and topical.
I've been tracking , and almost reduced to tears at, the progress (or regress) of the draft Data Protection Regulation - at the moment it's looking horribly like Big Industry 1: Fundamental Rights in Europe 0 - let's hope for extra time..
I went a lot of places, talking mainly about the DP Regulation, though sometimes also about death, robots, social media and copyright (not all together). They were all fun, but the best was probably Japan, where I took part in a week long meeting on social media and privacy in Asia in Nov/December 2012 hosted by Andrew Adams at Meiji University. Ryokan are ace :-)
The best present I got for speaking was, however, at Oslo, where they gave me an entire cured leg of mutton which could easily be used as a murder weapon. Like Oscar Pistorius, I am now keeping it under my bed, just in case ..
LECTURER/SENIOR LECTURER IN IT AND/OR DIGITAL IP LAW
(£33,230 - £53,233 PER ANNUM)
The School is seeking to appoint a Lecturer or a Senior Lecturer to strengthen its portfolio in the broad
areas of IT law, digital IP law, digital media and/or telecoms law. The successful candidate will be
expected to contribute to the research of the Centre for Internet Law and Policy and to the further
development of Masters provision in the field as well as making a wider contribution within the Law
School.
Full details here, will also shortly be on jobs.ac.uk
....And yes I do have lots of ideas for actual blog posts -- sometimes even drafts -- just been quite a lot on.
For where I've been lately, try Twitter, natch, but also ..
CREATe got launched! Our website is here. My first Storify of the day is here. Our work programme with details of times and events is here. Comments very welcome. (I'm Deputy Director with special portfolio for digital world and new business models.) My short blog piece on the future of copyright and new business models is here. Fortunately, I do not have a copy of interview they made me do on Good Morning Scotland at 7.20am..
I wrote a 14,000 word chapter with my PhD student Edina Harbinja on transmission of digital assets on death, which will be going into a (mainly technical) Springer collection in the domain some time in 2013.
Edina and I have also put together a special collection of short interdisciplinary pieces on death, digital assets and post mortem copyright and privacy for my favourite open access journal SCRIPT-ed, which is coming our round about April 2013.
I dashed off a short piece on s 127 of the Communications Act and why it's a joke which became for some reason about the most reprinted and retweeted thing I've ever written.
I'm waiting with baited breach for the updated piece on social networks and privacy I wrote er some time ago to actually come out in the REsearch Handbook on Internet Governance from Edward Elgar. edited by Ian Brown .
We hired the PhD student in copyright and data mining - he's arriving in May and this project just gets more and more exciting and topical.
I've been tracking , and almost reduced to tears at, the progress (or regress) of the draft Data Protection Regulation - at the moment it's looking horribly like Big Industry 1: Fundamental Rights in Europe 0 - let's hope for extra time..
I went a lot of places, talking mainly about the DP Regulation, though sometimes also about death, robots, social media and copyright (not all together). They were all fun, but the best was probably Japan, where I took part in a week long meeting on social media and privacy in Asia in Nov/December 2012 hosted by Andrew Adams at Meiji University. Ryokan are ace :-)
The best present I got for speaking was, however, at Oslo, where they gave me an entire cured leg of mutton which could easily be used as a murder weapon. Like Oscar Pistorius, I am now keeping it under my bed, just in case ..
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Come study with me! PhD studentship in copyright
This 3 year full-time PhD studentship
is offered with a start date of January 2013 or as soon as possible
thereafter. The successful candidate will receive an annual stipend of
£13,590 and a fee-waiver for those eligible for Home/EU fees (2011/12
rates).
This studentship will be co-supervised at Strathclyde University between the School of Law and School of Business. The research topic forms part of the work programme of a large four-year £8m Centre, CREATe, the Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology, which is a consortium consisting of the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Nottingham, St Andrews UEA and Goldsmiths, alongside over 80 industry and public sector arts partners. The studentship will be co-supervised by Professor Lilian Edwards (Law) and Dr Stephen Tagg (Business). Profesor Edwards is also Deputy Director of CREATe, whose lead institution is Glasgow. It is expected the successful candidate will be given opportunities to interact with the rest of the CREATe team and its activities. The student will have access to facilities in both Faculties and be based physically at Strathclyde.
The project to which the studentship is attached is shared between Strathclyde and the Horizon Digital Economy Hub at Nottingham, and deals with the legal, technical and social issues around data mining and the cultural industries. Data mining allows new data to be extracted from old by automated means, ie, from existing large sets of texts or data. Examples include mining existing databases to create profiles about data subjects for use in targeted advertising; police use of data-mining of social networks for law enforcement and surveillance; and research use of datasets, eg, comparing incidences of words in variant texts of Shakespeare plays, or looking for new drugs by analysing existing papers on drug formulae. The recent Hargreaves report on copyright reform recommended a limited new exception to copyright for data mining, but this is opposed by industry players such as the publishers’ association. The PhD candidate recruited will be expected to work on the copyright and other legal as well as business and cultural implications of data mining.
Applicants can come from any relevant background including science, technology, law or business, but a basic understanding of and interest in intellectual property law is desirable. Candidates should have at least a good 2:1 Honours first degree in relevant discipline and a relevant Masters is desirable though not essential.
Deadline for receipt of completed applications: Monday 17th December 2012.
Please send covering letter explaining why you want to do this PhD, cv including full academic qualifications, and indicate two referees, at least one academic.
Informal enquires: Please contact Professor Lilian Edwards (lilian.edwards@strath.ac.uk )
For further project details and information on how to apply please contact:
Patricia Bunce, Graduate School Manager, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Room LH128, Lord Hope building, 141 St. James Road, Glasgow
G4 OLT
Email: patricia.bunce@strath.ac.uk. Tel: +44 (0)141 444 8452
This studentship will be co-supervised at Strathclyde University between the School of Law and School of Business. The research topic forms part of the work programme of a large four-year £8m Centre, CREATe, the Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology, which is a consortium consisting of the Universities of Glasgow, Strathclyde, Edinburgh, Nottingham, St Andrews UEA and Goldsmiths, alongside over 80 industry and public sector arts partners. The studentship will be co-supervised by Professor Lilian Edwards (Law) and Dr Stephen Tagg (Business). Profesor Edwards is also Deputy Director of CREATe, whose lead institution is Glasgow. It is expected the successful candidate will be given opportunities to interact with the rest of the CREATe team and its activities. The student will have access to facilities in both Faculties and be based physically at Strathclyde.
The project to which the studentship is attached is shared between Strathclyde and the Horizon Digital Economy Hub at Nottingham, and deals with the legal, technical and social issues around data mining and the cultural industries. Data mining allows new data to be extracted from old by automated means, ie, from existing large sets of texts or data. Examples include mining existing databases to create profiles about data subjects for use in targeted advertising; police use of data-mining of social networks for law enforcement and surveillance; and research use of datasets, eg, comparing incidences of words in variant texts of Shakespeare plays, or looking for new drugs by analysing existing papers on drug formulae. The recent Hargreaves report on copyright reform recommended a limited new exception to copyright for data mining, but this is opposed by industry players such as the publishers’ association. The PhD candidate recruited will be expected to work on the copyright and other legal as well as business and cultural implications of data mining.
Applicants can come from any relevant background including science, technology, law or business, but a basic understanding of and interest in intellectual property law is desirable. Candidates should have at least a good 2:1 Honours first degree in relevant discipline and a relevant Masters is desirable though not essential.
Deadline for receipt of completed applications: Monday 17th December 2012.
Please send covering letter explaining why you want to do this PhD, cv including full academic qualifications, and indicate two referees, at least one academic.
Informal enquires: Please contact Professor Lilian Edwards (lilian.edwards@strath.ac.uk )
For further project details and information on how to apply please contact:
Patricia Bunce, Graduate School Manager, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Room LH128, Lord Hope building, 141 St. James Road, Glasgow
G4 OLT
Email: patricia.bunce@strath.ac.uk. Tel: +44 (0)141 444 8452
Monday, October 29, 2012
Skyleaks? or Dye Another Day
Like most the UK, Pangloss went to see the new Bond flick Skyfall at the weekend. It's still a right rollicking ride, hugely enjoyable and proudly British, and Pangloss loved most of it (especially the reference to the A9 as a major highway which made most of an Edinburgh audience collapse in laughter). I could have done without quite so references to Bond getting on, being an old dog etc. as Mr Craig is quite plainly fitter than a very fit fiddle and all he needs to do is put a bit of Grecian 2000 on those grey chest hairs. But that's not why I'm writing this blog (though it would be nice to explore the very odd showdown between Bond and Javier Bardem, the homoerotic nature of Bond passim and the wonderfully deconstructive implication that 007 is no stranger to the Love that Dare Not Speak Its Name. But anyway.).
No the major interest for IT lawyers in the new Bond is almost certainly that the villain is Julian Assange. Yes, really. When we first meet "Mr Silva", he is in a room surrounded by computer servers, lecturing Bond (tied appealingly to a chair, though sadly with more clothes on than in Casino Royale) on how running-around espionage is passe and how he can destroy governments, change the world and topple regimes from his own desk by use of computer technology. Later on his master plan involves stealing a list of all Western intelligence agents and leaking them, 5 at a time, to the Internet. Finally, Javier Bardem, the actor portraying our digital dissident, has naturally black hair but for purposes of film is dyed Boris Johnson blonde. Clearly, Silva = Assange and I am not the only person to have thought this by any means.
What fewer of the mainstream film review columns have referred to is the rather disturbing pro-secrecy agenda of the film connected to the threat posed by Silva/Assange. Well, you say as one, it's a film about a secret agent , what did you expect, The Audacity of Hope? Well indeed, and certainly Sam Mendes the director seems a thoughtful man not some Cameronian stooge. But as the Guardian Comment is Free column does note, Bond always reflects the cultural zeitgest, and its villains even more so: and setting up in opposition, James Bond, recently seen jumping out of a helicopter with the Queen, and M/Judi Dench , best known for portraying various Queens of England , against the deadly threat to freedom of justice of Wikileaks, is certainly an interesting spectacle for the average liberal Internet commentator.
Having picked Wikileaks as the villain though, what is even more interesting is the completely Homeland approach the film then takes to the security services. Topically, the film's semi-climactic scene centres on Judi Dench as M defending MI6 at a Parliamentary Hearing, as not an outdated boy's game but a still relevant essential service . Under fire, M/the Queen says (I paraphrase slightly): "Who needs all this openneess, transparency and accountability lark? There are terrorists out there who are more invisible than Reds under the bed! They don;t even have the decency these days to come from an actual country we can nuke from orbit, damnit! So why would you rather feel safe and trust us, the guys that know stuff, or have all these pesky civil liberties and judicial enquiries?? "
The subsequent shoot out in the House of Commons in which the MP i/c MI5 (hunky Rafe Fiennes) throws away his Rules of Order, pulls out a gun and turns into the Sundance Kid to Bond's Butch Cassidy subsequently proves (of course )that M is right.
All this seems mightily topical at the time that the Communications Data Bill is itself heading for that big shoot out in Parliamentary committee land. Much has been made of the Bond franchise's recent penchant for product placement. Heineken has been cited this time round as the major customer, with a bottle perched prominently on Daniel's magnificant (if slightly greying) chest in one scene. But wouldn't it be funny if a few used notes had also passed hands for a certain government department - delivered perhaps in rain-mac and dark sunglasses by Theresa May?? :-)
No the major interest for IT lawyers in the new Bond is almost certainly that the villain is Julian Assange. Yes, really. When we first meet "Mr Silva", he is in a room surrounded by computer servers, lecturing Bond (tied appealingly to a chair, though sadly with more clothes on than in Casino Royale) on how running-around espionage is passe and how he can destroy governments, change the world and topple regimes from his own desk by use of computer technology. Later on his master plan involves stealing a list of all Western intelligence agents and leaking them, 5 at a time, to the Internet. Finally, Javier Bardem, the actor portraying our digital dissident, has naturally black hair but for purposes of film is dyed Boris Johnson blonde. Clearly, Silva = Assange and I am not the only person to have thought this by any means.
What fewer of the mainstream film review columns have referred to is the rather disturbing pro-secrecy agenda of the film connected to the threat posed by Silva/Assange. Well, you say as one, it's a film about a secret agent , what did you expect, The Audacity of Hope? Well indeed, and certainly Sam Mendes the director seems a thoughtful man not some Cameronian stooge. But as the Guardian Comment is Free column does note, Bond always reflects the cultural zeitgest, and its villains even more so: and setting up in opposition, James Bond, recently seen jumping out of a helicopter with the Queen, and M/Judi Dench , best known for portraying various Queens of England , against the deadly threat to freedom of justice of Wikileaks, is certainly an interesting spectacle for the average liberal Internet commentator.
Having picked Wikileaks as the villain though, what is even more interesting is the completely Homeland approach the film then takes to the security services. Topically, the film's semi-climactic scene centres on Judi Dench as M defending MI6 at a Parliamentary Hearing, as not an outdated boy's game but a still relevant essential service . Under fire, M/the Queen says (I paraphrase slightly): "Who needs all this openneess, transparency and accountability lark? There are terrorists out there who are more invisible than Reds under the bed! They don;t even have the decency these days to come from an actual country we can nuke from orbit, damnit! So why would you rather feel safe and trust us, the guys that know stuff, or have all these pesky civil liberties and judicial enquiries?? "
The subsequent shoot out in the House of Commons in which the MP i/c MI5 (hunky Rafe Fiennes) throws away his Rules of Order, pulls out a gun and turns into the Sundance Kid to Bond's Butch Cassidy subsequently proves (of course )that M is right.
All this seems mightily topical at the time that the Communications Data Bill is itself heading for that big shoot out in Parliamentary committee land. Much has been made of the Bond franchise's recent penchant for product placement. Heineken has been cited this time round as the major customer, with a bottle perched prominently on Daniel's magnificant (if slightly greying) chest in one scene. But wouldn't it be funny if a few used notes had also passed hands for a certain government department - delivered perhaps in rain-mac and dark sunglasses by Theresa May?? :-)
Friday, September 28, 2012
Creativity, Innovation and all that jazz
This event was a little unusual , for Pangloss anyway, in that the Lisbon Council had energetically sent out a Belgian surrealist photographer to the home abodes of all the contributors to take pix of us, not only in our natural habitat, but with the intent of showing our true souls :-) Thus Pangloss evocatively had a lovely day out in Edinburgh taking Bart Goossens (the photog) around nice restaurants at the waterfront in Leith (see photo above!), followed by afternoon tea at the Modern Art Gallery and finishing up with dinner in a pub. That's my soul in a bucket :-)
Anyway the resulting photos are so delightful that Bart has offered a deal to us all whereby we can use the photos he took for non-commercial purposes such as web sites (like this!) but agree to negotiate a fee if commercial use is made of the photos thereafter. As I prepare my e-commerce class for 2012/13 this seems a nice example of an open content business model, which will almost certainly generate both profit and goodwill. The photos come from http://www.mbargo.be where offers should be made for reproduction!
Also - spot the odd one out...
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
2012/13 : the video!
It's become a Pangloss tradition at the start of the new academic yesr to find a new video i can use to scare the students.
THis year's conveniently just arrived courtesy of @niccuzor - thanks Nic!
Friday, September 21, 2012
Section 127 Communications Act 2003 - Threat or Menace?
EDIT: this piece brought in a lot of reaction, for which I am grateful.
Partly as a result, a rather more tidied version can now be found here which you are suggested to jump to (though do comment here!)
(The title , which I have used in various forms before, recalls J Jonah Jameson, the irascible boss of Peter Parker aka SpiderMan whom JJJ of course famously detested. "Spiderman: Threat or Menace?" was his favourite headline and I have been using it ever since, though perhaps never as appropriately as here.)
Anyway. Section 127 of the Comms Act 2003 , once one of the more obscure provisions of the cybercrime world, has had a good workout lately. Famously, Paul Chambers was accused and convicted of sending "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" (s 127 (a)) because he had sent a humorous and frustrated tweet saying : ""Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!!". (Pangloss can dare quote this in full now the prosecution has been overturned :-)
After a long period of #TwitterJokeTrial campaigning and on the third attempt, an appeal court saw sense and conceded that ""a message which does not create fear or apprehension in those to whom it is communicated, or who may reasonably be expected to see it, falls outside this provision [of the 2003 Act]". In other words, a joke issued to the world and indeed accessible with identification by the very people it might offend, is clearly not meant to be taken seriously and thus is neither menace or threat for any reasonable person.
Meanwhile, however, s 127 prosecutions continue or are suggested by a public increasingly fed up with racist bullies, trolls, stalkers etc online. Yesterday a 29 year old man was arrested and charged by the Greater Manchester police, apparently under s 127, for putting up a Facebook page which appeared to praise Dale Creggan who is accused of the murder of two policeman.
Also yesterday, the DPP, Keir Starmer, was driven by the rise of s 127 prosecutions and apparent mounting calls for its catch-all use in any case of disturbing content on social media to declare that he would be issuing guidance on social media prosecutions. Asked to consider whether to prosecute an idiot who had made trollish and homophobic tweets about the Olympic diver Tom Daley (note the homophilic photo accompanying :-), the DPP has already correctly indicated that s 127 is not a free Joker card for prosecuting content which however upsetting to some, would normally fall with guarantees of freedom of expression in a democratic society. In particular he quoted the seminal ECHR case of Handyside (1976) 1 EHRR 737 which says that freedom of expression includes the right to say things that "offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population".
Why then, we might ask, is s 127 drafted so widely? Partly because although it appears to be a modern post-Internet provision , its direct and very close antecedents actually date from long before the Internet era and even before Handyside. These antecedents include the Post Office (Amendment) Act 1935 (and two subsequent PO Acts) - which dealt with messages sent by post and telephone - the British Telecoms Act 1981, and the Telecommunications Act 1984, s 43. Section 127 of the 2003 Act basically repeats the 1984 Act provision wholesale, itself almost a word for word repetition of these earlier Acts, changing only the ambiguous application to any "public telecommunication system" (a necessity following the demise of the state monopoly telephone network and the rise of the Internet, and nicked as a phrase from EC telecoms law) whose definition was debated in Chambers (see further a para or two on..)
This legislative history is narrated in DPP v Collins (para 6), a very interesting decision on s 127, involving a man who made repeated telephone to his local MP's office asking for him to do something about the "black bastards" - or similar terms. He was charged with sending "grossly offensive" messages under s 127. On appeal to the House of Lords, the charge was upheld but the interest for me lies in LJ Bingham's analysis at para 7 of whta s 127 is for.
It is crucial here, parenthetically, to note that s 127 is not a lone legislative bulwark against Internet trolls and harassers. Plenty of other legislation than s 127 is available to deal with content on social networks which appears to offends the public . For example, in another current controversial case, 19-year-old Azhar Ahmed is currently facing charges of “racially aggravated public order offences” after he posted an angry Facebook status update about the reporting of the latest British Army fatalities in Afghanistan. Racially motivated tweets posted relating to Stan Collymore and Fabrice Muamba have also been prosecuted under this legislation.The Protection Against Harassment Act 1997, which operates slightly differently in England and Scotland, prescribes that any two "acts" which form a course of harassing conduct can be charged as a crime. These provisions have been used successfully to charge trolls who send repeated upsetting or vile messages to users on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Nicola Brookes, eg, to great publicity, recently won a Norwich Pharmacal order against FB to start procededings under the 1997 Act against her online trolls. An Adjournent Debate in Parliament on 17 September 2012 noted not only these but also the possibilities of using the Public Order Acts and the Computer Misuse Act. Private civil damages can also be obtained both under the PAHA and by common laws like libel. All these options are well known and recorded in CPS guidance.
Most notably the Malicious Communications Act 1988 still exists (unlike the 1984 Act s 43, which s 127 replaced) though it does not extend beyond England and Wales,. Again though a pre-Internet statute, it was updated in 2001 by an amending Act to apply to "electronic communications" - oral or otherwise, and not just therefore applying to the poison pen letters which seem to have been the initial target. But the 1988 Act prescribes that the communication must be "sent to another person". It does not anticipate or apply to broadcast or one-to-many communications. These would have been the topic of the bradcastiong laws. And the ease with which a private individual can nowadays be their own broadcaster using only a Twitter account would not of course have occurred to the 1988 legislator. So the 1988 Act would not apply to Paul Chambers telling the world about his frustration at Doncaster Airport nor (say) the racists bullies who left tweets for Fabrice Muamba.
So, going back to LJ Bingham in Collins, in para 7 he observes the existence of the 1988 Act and thus deduces that the purpose of s 127 is "not to protect people against receipt of unsolicited messages which they may find seriously objectionable". Instead, it is "to prohibit the use of a service provided and funded by the public for the benefit of the public for the transmission of communications which contravene the basic standards of our society".
This history can clearly be seen of course in the preceding ancestor statutes - which originate from a time of state monopoly services over post and phone. What LJ Bingham seems to be acknowledging is that s 127 as formulated way back when, was about not wasting public money on transmitting material which was unpleasant. As such, the words used forbid categories of speech which would now be permitted speech in public using the Handyside test - or to put it another way, would be allowed in any pub or park. The proximate reason s 127 is more restrictive than the ordinary law on speech not via electronic means, is because it involved a public facility such as the postal service, or later, BT.<
Except now it doesn't, or only very tangentially. Twitter is a private service run on private servers. So is Facebook. People use the Internet to access it, which, yes, involves (sometimes) use of the facilities of former public utilities, but in essence, the experience of tweeting is as privately funded now as the experience of walking into M & S. In #TwitterJokeTRial, this point was raised but the position of the lower courts in Chambers that a tweet is sent via a "public electronic communications network" , was upheld . There Crown Court Judge Davies agreed that "the fact that [Twitter] is a private company is in our view irrelevant" and "the mechanism by which [the tweet] was sent was a public electronic network and within the statutory defuinition... Twitter as we all know is widely used by individuals and organisations to disseminate and receive information,, it is inconceivable that grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages sent in this way would not be potentially unlawful" (para 23, [2012] EWHC 2157). Pangloss, I'm afraid, has to diagree. If certain mesages shouldn't be broadcast to the public at at large because they are beyond what is allowed by Handyside then they should be specifically provided for - by acts like the Race Relations Acts and the PAHA . There should not be a general ticket to restrict speech online which would be lawful offline.
This, in my view, is the nub of what has gone wrong with s 127 lately. Statute law designed:
(a) primarily to regulate one-to-one communications, rather than one to many (whatever LJ Bingham said, it is clear almost all the wording of s 127 comes directly from statutes mainly intending to deal with malicious one-to-one phone calls or letters) and
(b) designed to safeguard a public utility built with public money
is now being applied to a privately owned, publicly accessed, many-to-many domain where, everyone agrees, the normal laws of the land relating to freedom of speech should apply - except that's just not how s 127 is written; and interpreting it to come out that way, for both prosecutors, defense lawyers, and ordinary folk, is a bloody and increasingly hard task.
There is an obvious way forward. Abolish s 127 with all its ambiguities and loose wording and extend the Malicious Communications Act to apply to the whole of the UK. That deals with one to one abusive electronic communication. Then stop, and have a decent debate about how to alter norms of behaviour on social media to reflect a civilised world - a debate which Pangloss suspects, will have almost nothing to do with law.
(The title , which I have used in various forms before, recalls J Jonah Jameson, the irascible boss of Peter Parker aka SpiderMan whom JJJ of course famously detested. "Spiderman: Threat or Menace?" was his favourite headline and I have been using it ever since, though perhaps never as appropriately as here.)
Anyway. Section 127 of the Comms Act 2003 , once one of the more obscure provisions of the cybercrime world, has had a good workout lately. Famously, Paul Chambers was accused and convicted of sending "by means of a public electronic communications network a message or other matter that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character" (s 127 (a)) because he had sent a humorous and frustrated tweet saying : ""Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I am blowing the airport sky high!!". (Pangloss can dare quote this in full now the prosecution has been overturned :-)
After a long period of #TwitterJokeTrial campaigning and on the third attempt, an appeal court saw sense and conceded that ""a message which does not create fear or apprehension in those to whom it is communicated, or who may reasonably be expected to see it, falls outside this provision [of the 2003 Act]". In other words, a joke issued to the world and indeed accessible with identification by the very people it might offend, is clearly not meant to be taken seriously and thus is neither menace or threat for any reasonable person.
Meanwhile, however, s 127 prosecutions continue or are suggested by a public increasingly fed up with racist bullies, trolls, stalkers etc online. Yesterday a 29 year old man was arrested and charged by the Greater Manchester police, apparently under s 127, for putting up a Facebook page which appeared to praise Dale Creggan who is accused of the murder of two policeman.
Also yesterday, the DPP, Keir Starmer, was driven by the rise of s 127 prosecutions and apparent mounting calls for its catch-all use in any case of disturbing content on social media to declare that he would be issuing guidance on social media prosecutions. Asked to consider whether to prosecute an idiot who had made trollish and homophobic tweets about the Olympic diver Tom Daley (note the homophilic photo accompanying :-), the DPP has already correctly indicated that s 127 is not a free Joker card for prosecuting content which however upsetting to some, would normally fall with guarantees of freedom of expression in a democratic society. In particular he quoted the seminal ECHR case of Handyside (1976) 1 EHRR 737 which says that freedom of expression includes the right to say things that "offend, shock or disturb the state or any sector of the population".
Why then, we might ask, is s 127 drafted so widely? Partly because although it appears to be a modern post-Internet provision , its direct and very close antecedents actually date from long before the Internet era and even before Handyside. These antecedents include the Post Office (Amendment) Act 1935 (and two subsequent PO Acts) - which dealt with messages sent by post and telephone - the British Telecoms Act 1981, and the Telecommunications Act 1984, s 43. Section 127 of the 2003 Act basically repeats the 1984 Act provision wholesale, itself almost a word for word repetition of these earlier Acts, changing only the ambiguous application to any "public telecommunication system" (a necessity following the demise of the state monopoly telephone network and the rise of the Internet, and nicked as a phrase from EC telecoms law) whose definition was debated in Chambers (see further a para or two on..)
This legislative history is narrated in DPP v Collins (para 6), a very interesting decision on s 127, involving a man who made repeated telephone to his local MP's office asking for him to do something about the "black bastards" - or similar terms. He was charged with sending "grossly offensive" messages under s 127. On appeal to the House of Lords, the charge was upheld but the interest for me lies in LJ Bingham's analysis at para 7 of whta s 127 is for.
It is crucial here, parenthetically, to note that s 127 is not a lone legislative bulwark against Internet trolls and harassers. Plenty of other legislation than s 127 is available to deal with content on social networks which appears to offends the public . For example, in another current controversial case, 19-year-old Azhar Ahmed is currently facing charges of “racially aggravated public order offences” after he posted an angry Facebook status update about the reporting of the latest British Army fatalities in Afghanistan. Racially motivated tweets posted relating to Stan Collymore and Fabrice Muamba have also been prosecuted under this legislation.The Protection Against Harassment Act 1997, which operates slightly differently in England and Scotland, prescribes that any two "acts" which form a course of harassing conduct can be charged as a crime. These provisions have been used successfully to charge trolls who send repeated upsetting or vile messages to users on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Nicola Brookes, eg, to great publicity, recently won a Norwich Pharmacal order against FB to start procededings under the 1997 Act against her online trolls. An Adjournent Debate in Parliament on 17 September 2012 noted not only these but also the possibilities of using the Public Order Acts and the Computer Misuse Act. Private civil damages can also be obtained both under the PAHA and by common laws like libel. All these options are well known and recorded in CPS guidance.
Most notably the Malicious Communications Act 1988 still exists (unlike the 1984 Act s 43, which s 127 replaced) though it does not extend beyond England and Wales,. Again though a pre-Internet statute, it was updated in 2001 by an amending Act to apply to "electronic communications" - oral or otherwise, and not just therefore applying to the poison pen letters which seem to have been the initial target. But the 1988 Act prescribes that the communication must be "sent to another person". It does not anticipate or apply to broadcast or one-to-many communications. These would have been the topic of the bradcastiong laws. And the ease with which a private individual can nowadays be their own broadcaster using only a Twitter account would not of course have occurred to the 1988 legislator. So the 1988 Act would not apply to Paul Chambers telling the world about his frustration at Doncaster Airport nor (say) the racists bullies who left tweets for Fabrice Muamba.
So, going back to LJ Bingham in Collins, in para 7 he observes the existence of the 1988 Act and thus deduces that the purpose of s 127 is "not to protect people against receipt of unsolicited messages which they may find seriously objectionable". Instead, it is "to prohibit the use of a service provided and funded by the public for the benefit of the public for the transmission of communications which contravene the basic standards of our society".
This history can clearly be seen of course in the preceding ancestor statutes - which originate from a time of state monopoly services over post and phone. What LJ Bingham seems to be acknowledging is that s 127 as formulated way back when, was about not wasting public money on transmitting material which was unpleasant. As such, the words used forbid categories of speech which would now be permitted speech in public using the Handyside test - or to put it another way, would be allowed in any pub or park. The proximate reason s 127 is more restrictive than the ordinary law on speech not via electronic means, is because it involved a public facility such as the postal service, or later, BT.<
Except now it doesn't, or only very tangentially. Twitter is a private service run on private servers. So is Facebook. People use the Internet to access it, which, yes, involves (sometimes) use of the facilities of former public utilities, but in essence, the experience of tweeting is as privately funded now as the experience of walking into M & S. In #TwitterJokeTRial, this point was raised but the position of the lower courts in Chambers that a tweet is sent via a "public electronic communications network" , was upheld . There Crown Court Judge Davies agreed that "the fact that [Twitter] is a private company is in our view irrelevant" and "the mechanism by which [the tweet] was sent was a public electronic network and within the statutory defuinition... Twitter as we all know is widely used by individuals and organisations to disseminate and receive information,, it is inconceivable that grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing messages sent in this way would not be potentially unlawful" (para 23, [2012] EWHC 2157). Pangloss, I'm afraid, has to diagree. If certain mesages shouldn't be broadcast to the public at at large because they are beyond what is allowed by Handyside then they should be specifically provided for - by acts like the Race Relations Acts and the PAHA . There should not be a general ticket to restrict speech online which would be lawful offline.
This, in my view, is the nub of what has gone wrong with s 127 lately. Statute law designed:
(a) primarily to regulate one-to-one communications, rather than one to many (whatever LJ Bingham said, it is clear almost all the wording of s 127 comes directly from statutes mainly intending to deal with malicious one-to-one phone calls or letters) and
(b) designed to safeguard a public utility built with public money
is now being applied to a privately owned, publicly accessed, many-to-many domain where, everyone agrees, the normal laws of the land relating to freedom of speech should apply - except that's just not how s 127 is written; and interpreting it to come out that way, for both prosecutors, defense lawyers, and ordinary folk, is a bloody and increasingly hard task.
There is an obvious way forward. Abolish s 127 with all its ambiguities and loose wording and extend the Malicious Communications Act to apply to the whole of the UK. That deals with one to one abusive electronic communication. Then stop, and have a decent debate about how to alter norms of behaviour on social media to reflect a civilised world - a debate which Pangloss suspects, will have almost nothing to do with law.
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
The Internet A Decade Later
This is the most stunning infographic I have seen in some time on the changes the Internet has wrought over a decade : The Internet A Decade Later
I may use this to kick off the newly revamped E-Commerce module this autumn :-)
Thanks to BestEducated for putting this out under CC license!
I may use this to kick off the newly revamped E-Commerce module this autumn :-)
Thanks to BestEducated for putting this out under CC license!
Tuesday, July 03, 2012
7th Gikii 2012 - call for papers!!
Call for Papers: 7th
Gikii Workshop, 17-18 September 2012
UEA London
102 Middlesex Street
London E1 7EZ UK
102 Middlesex Street
London E1 7EZ UK
It’s harder than it used to be to write a Call for Papers
for GikII, the so-cool-it-hurts blue skies
workshop for papers exploring the interstices between law, technology and
popular culture. Back in the day, you
could dazzle the noobs just by mentioning past glories like the first paper on
Facebook and privacy, Harry Potter and
the Surveillance of Doom, regulation of autonomous
agents according to the Roman law of slavery, edible technologies
and copyright
in Dalek knitting patterns. But nowadays we live in a world where we
routinely encounter unmanned
surveillance drones used to deliver tacos or made out of cats , commercial
asteroid mining with Richard Branson, 3d printers used to create
human organs and the fact that Jeremy Hunt still has a job.
Still, if any
of these or the other many phenomena of the digital age in desperate need of
legal attention are digging a tunnel out of your brain, then send us an
abstract for the 7th Gikii workshop!
Maybe this year it will be your paper which contributes the seminal
GikII meme following in the honoured footsteps of LOLcats, flying penises, and
knitted Daleks.
Gikii has run since 2006
in venues such as Edinburgh, Oxford, London, Amsterdam and Gothenberg with
attendees coming from Europe, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, India and Latin
America. There is no conference fee, but attendees may be asked to contribute
to the conference dinner on 17th September. If desired, we can suggest
London accommodation ranging from cheap to more expensive. This year’s Gikii is run with the kind
assistance of the Law School, University of East Anglia at their London centre,
and will commence at lunchtime Sep 17th running through to end
September 18th. These dates also offer
an opportunity to combine GikII with the 7th SCL Policy Forum
(details at http://www.scl.org/site.aspx?i=ev25696
) in what has been termed the “week of geek”.
Abstracts of no longer than 500 words should be sent to lilian.edwards@strath.ac.uk and "Karen
Mc Cullagh (LAW)" K.Mccullagh@uea.ac.uk by August 13th 2012. Acceptances will be announced shortly thereafter. A limited
number of places will be available for participants not giving papers, and preference
will be given for these to scholars (including postgraduate students) who have
not previously attended GikII. Registration for these places will open at
gikii.com when acceptance of abstracts is notified.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Strange Case of SOCA and Conspiracy to Defraud
Pangloss is intrigued and slightly amazed to discover that a well known download site called "Rnbxclusive" was taken down yesterday by authority of SOCA, the UK's Serious and Organised Crime Agency and its front page replaced with this:
On being questioned by various, including the highly handy David Meyer of ZDNet, SOCA have confirmed (a) that this message is genuine and did come from them (b) that the site has been "taken down" under the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud.
The web is awash with complaints that this is the UK's version of SOPA and that the domain name was taken down extra territorially (registered to GoDaddy, in the US, not within SOCA jurisdiction) and without due process. This may well be true.But this rather unexpected approach to the war on file sharing raises for me a number of other, perhaps even more awkward questions.
First and foremost, where was the fraud? Copyright infringement, even criminal copyright infringement , is simply not the same thing as fraud (just as rape is not the same as murder - not all crimes imply each other :-) Fraud at common law requires in general intent to deceive and the making of false representations to the public. (It is explicit that conspiracy to defraud was used so we are not referring here to the Fraud Act 2006) .Was Rnbxclusive saying or implying its downloads were legal? That would be fraud. But in that case, the downloaders would be the victims - the deceived - and certainly not part of the conspiracy. So it is hard to square this version of events with the claim that visitors to the site might be liable to ten years in jail. Nor to explain the capture of their personal data (their IP address etc) without consent . Such processing of personal data can be legitimised without consent if the intent is to detect and prosecute crime - one of the major DP exceptions - but is that a legitimate and proportional response when the data captured is that of the victims? In any case the wording of the notice hardly makes it sound as if visitors to the site were being regarded as victims rather than perpetrators of crimes.
One of the problems about these fraud theories is we cannot tell, as the site and the evidence has been removed. Here we see some of the advantages of transparency and due process in producing public credibility. Without evidence, it is hard not to think that a charge of conspiracy to defraud was used to give access to higher penalties and perhaps more importantly to legitimise the involvement of SOCA at all.
SOCA's remit on its website is to deal with "serious organised crime that affects the UK and our citizens. This includes Class A drugs, people smuggling and human trafficking, major gun crime, fraud, computer crime and money laundering." Delve further down and SOCA does have a remit to deal with "intellectual property crime". But even a quick skim of this page produces the impression (which Pangloss already anecdotally had) that SOCA's job is to deal with physical counterfeiting - knock off Guccis et al - and with their equivalent version in digital land - knock off games and software. SOCA's role historically has not been to be involved in small scale domestic filesharing. If they are moving into this, there should surely be some kind of public debate or even notice about financial priorities and overlap with the myriad other bodies, both private and public, involved in the "war on piracy".
Which brings me to my final point which is why are we spending public resources on this when the issue is one where the music industry has just been given the route to police its own patch effectively? Newzbin, much written of in this parish, now clearly gives rightsholders the right to seek blocking orders , in court, with full publicity and due process. Surely SOCA should have rung the BPI (or whoever) and said "look, here's some lovely evidence for you?" There are some serious questions to be asked here about public/private overlap (or complicity), resource allocation and due process and publicity.
ps ah - useful and to some extent reassuring info here from Glyn Moody , which seems to say this action was based not on common or garden filesharing but on the owners of the site having obtained pre release music tracks by fraud (possibly actual hacking ?) , which is the (alleged one should say) offense for which one person has been arrested. That does make more sense and would fall within SOCA's remit much more firmly.
pps This still leaves the question though of whether visitors to the site who download items without knowledge of how the site had obtained them (it seems now, (some ), by fraud/possible hacking) could be treated as conspirators in the fraud charge. I an not an English criminal lawyer but I somewhat doubt it. The police quote here uses the word "knowingly" which is what you would normally expect for mens rea. If it is to be presumed anyone who downloads from any site on the Internet should be aware of the possibility of fraudulent obtaining of that item, without checking out the rights of the site to license the item - an almost impossible task for the average punter - then we really have made infringing copyright by private` downloading a crime punishable by 10 years in jail. Not what SOCA intended I suspect..
On being questioned by various, including the highly handy David Meyer of ZDNet, SOCA have confirmed (a) that this message is genuine and did come from them (b) that the site has been "taken down" under the common law offence of conspiracy to defraud.
The web is awash with complaints that this is the UK's version of SOPA and that the domain name was taken down extra territorially (registered to GoDaddy, in the US, not within SOCA jurisdiction) and without due process. This may well be true.But this rather unexpected approach to the war on file sharing raises for me a number of other, perhaps even more awkward questions.
First and foremost, where was the fraud? Copyright infringement, even criminal copyright infringement , is simply not the same thing as fraud (just as rape is not the same as murder - not all crimes imply each other :-) Fraud at common law requires in general intent to deceive and the making of false representations to the public. (It is explicit that conspiracy to defraud was used so we are not referring here to the Fraud Act 2006) .Was Rnbxclusive saying or implying its downloads were legal? That would be fraud. But in that case, the downloaders would be the victims - the deceived - and certainly not part of the conspiracy. So it is hard to square this version of events with the claim that visitors to the site might be liable to ten years in jail. Nor to explain the capture of their personal data (their IP address etc) without consent . Such processing of personal data can be legitimised without consent if the intent is to detect and prosecute crime - one of the major DP exceptions - but is that a legitimate and proportional response when the data captured is that of the victims? In any case the wording of the notice hardly makes it sound as if visitors to the site were being regarded as victims rather than perpetrators of crimes.
One of the problems about these fraud theories is we cannot tell, as the site and the evidence has been removed. Here we see some of the advantages of transparency and due process in producing public credibility. Without evidence, it is hard not to think that a charge of conspiracy to defraud was used to give access to higher penalties and perhaps more importantly to legitimise the involvement of SOCA at all.
SOCA's remit on its website is to deal with "serious organised crime that affects the UK and our citizens. This includes Class A drugs, people smuggling and human trafficking, major gun crime, fraud, computer crime and money laundering." Delve further down and SOCA does have a remit to deal with "intellectual property crime". But even a quick skim of this page produces the impression (which Pangloss already anecdotally had) that SOCA's job is to deal with physical counterfeiting - knock off Guccis et al - and with their equivalent version in digital land - knock off games and software. SOCA's role historically has not been to be involved in small scale domestic filesharing. If they are moving into this, there should surely be some kind of public debate or even notice about financial priorities and overlap with the myriad other bodies, both private and public, involved in the "war on piracy".
Which brings me to my final point which is why are we spending public resources on this when the issue is one where the music industry has just been given the route to police its own patch effectively? Newzbin, much written of in this parish, now clearly gives rightsholders the right to seek blocking orders , in court, with full publicity and due process. Surely SOCA should have rung the BPI (or whoever) and said "look, here's some lovely evidence for you?" There are some serious questions to be asked here about public/private overlap (or complicity), resource allocation and due process and publicity.
ps ah - useful and to some extent reassuring info here from Glyn Moody , which seems to say this action was based not on common or garden filesharing but on the owners of the site having obtained pre release music tracks by fraud (possibly actual hacking ?) , which is the (alleged one should say) offense for which one person has been arrested. That does make more sense and would fall within SOCA's remit much more firmly.
pps This still leaves the question though of whether visitors to the site who download items without knowledge of how the site had obtained them (it seems now, (some ), by fraud/possible hacking) could be treated as conspirators in the fraud charge. I an not an English criminal lawyer but I somewhat doubt it. The police quote here uses the word "knowingly" which is what you would normally expect for mens rea. If it is to be presumed anyone who downloads from any site on the Internet should be aware of the possibility of fraudulent obtaining of that item, without checking out the rights of the site to license the item - an almost impossible task for the average punter - then we really have made infringing copyright by private` downloading a crime punishable by 10 years in jail. Not what SOCA intended I suspect..
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
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