Informationoverlord

As already mentioned by Phil Bradley, we attended Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’ debate last night on how to save $100 Billion. We had gone to wave the Library cause flag but didn’t get the chance.

The purpose was to have some debate ahead of George Osborne’s emergency budget cut-a-thon [ “Oh, it’s a scythe…..” Blackadder]

Anyway, Georgie boy was speaking in the commons a few moments ago and I suddenly thought of Chico Marx. That in turn lead me to the answers to all our problems - the past. Let’s look at how others coped …

Minister of Finance: Here is the Treasury Department’s report, sir. I hope you’ll find it clear.
Rufus T. Firefly: Clear? Huh. Why a four-year-old child could understand this report.
Rufus T. Firefly: Run out and find me a four-year-old child, I can’t make head or tail of it.

Rufus T. Firefly: Now that you’re Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we ought to have?
Chicolini: Well, I tell you what I think, I think we should have a standing army.
Rufus T. Firefly: Why should we have a standing army?
Chicolini: Because then we save money on chairs.

Freedonia’s Secretary of War: How about taking up the tax?
Rufus T. Firefly: How ’bout taking up the carpet?
Freedonia’s Secretary of War: I still insist we must take up the tax.
Rufus T. Firefly: He’s right, you’ve gotta take up the tacks before you can take up the carpet.

Prosecutor: Something must be done! War would mean a prohibitive increase in our taxes.
Chicolini: Hey, I got an uncle lives in Taxes.
Prosecutor: No, I’m talking about taxes - money, dollars!
Chicolini: Dollars! There’s-a where my uncle lives! Dollars, Taxes!

Secretary of Labor: The Department of Labor wishes to note that the workers of Freedonia are demanding shorter hours.
Rufus T. Firefly: Very well, we’ll give them shorter hours. We’ll start by cutting their lunch hour to 20 minutes.

Amazing how it was all there, totally clear in Duck Soup.

This is from the good people at Online Schools org who’s goal is to make education fun. “We’re a bunch of guys who spend our free time trying to come up with informative and engaging informational graphics. Its our way of making the world a better place.”

Via: Online MBA

The Digital Economy Bill finished its report stage in the4 House of Lords earlier this week (current text of bill to go to third reading here). Whilst the biggest news to come out of the report stage has been the well intentioned but bad new clause 17 and the possible widening of powers to block access to websites (A letter to the FT shows the variety of people and companies who oppose this clause), one of the more interesting things for me came on the final day when Lord Lucas tabled an amendment to add a “protection of the right to link to publicly available information on the internet”

He identified the issue that publishers have with the use of “a short text extract-for example, the headline or half of the first sentence or whatever-sufficient to give an indication of what the link leads to. “, especially by search engine and news aggregator sites such as Google news, and NewsNow (which publishes just the hyperlinked titles of articles)

He stated that publishers “are saying that the current fair use, which is limited to things such as reviews and research, does not cover the activities of search engines or news aggregators, and perhaps it does not…We, as Parliament, ought to draw the boundaries at a fair place for copyright owners and in a proper place for users of the internet. A link should be properly described, and it should be possible to use an equivalent of the right to make short extracts from reviews in order to describe that link. The publishers’ associations should get back in their box. ”

Lord Young, for the government, replied that he agreed that search and aggregation are both important but so, too, are the rights of content creators. He pointed the Lords to Meltwater v the Newspaper Licensing Agency were some of these issues are currently the subject of litigation before the Copyright Tribunal.

For those not familiar with this case, the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA) owned by the main eight national newspaper publishers had its remit extended from 1st January this year to cover paid-for monitoring of newspaper websites, so companies and sites who had been providing web monitoring, eClipping services to businesses for a price, suddenly found they needed to pay the NLA a license fee of around £10,000 per year. Meltwater, a clipping service is challenging the expanded NLA licence, calling it a “link tax”

The selling of services is the main point in this case according to the NLA, not the linking per se although obviously the likes of News Corp have made clear they would want to charge any sites providing links regardless of whether they were then selling a service on.

Anyway, according to Lord Young addressing the issue of whether it is possible to use short excerpts of a work without infringing copyright:”Ownership of copyright in a work gives the owner exclusive rights to do certain acts in relation to that work. Infringement occurs if a person does any of those acts in relation to the whole or a substantial part of that work without the consent of the right holder. It is possible to use excerpts of a work without the permission of the right holder and without infringing copyright if those excerpts are not substantial, or if one of the statutory exemptions applies … We will look at the situation, but, at the moment, we feel that this amendment is not the right one. ”

The problem, some would argue is that some publisher regard the title as a ’substantial’ part of the work, and clarity on this issue would be welcomed.

There is also a petition on the 10 Downing St site asking the Govt to create a specific freedom to create, aggregate, copy, publish and follow links to publicly available information on the internet.

The High Court has dismissed BSkyB’s appeal against rulings by the Competition Commission (CC) and the Secretary of State, as upheld by the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT), that directed BskyB to decrease its 17.9% shareholding in ITV to below 7.5%. The court did disagree with the CAT’s conclusion as to media plurality, reinstates the CC conclusion on that point, and suggests now that possible difficulties in applying section 58(2C) and section 58A(5) of the Enterprise Act 2002 have been identified, that the government should look to amend the legislation accordingly.

The Court identified that the key issue on media plurality turns on the correct view of the interaction between section 58(2C) and section 58A(5) of the Enterprise Act 2002 , and in particular on the meaning of the phrase, not defined in the Act, “sufficient plurality of persons with control of … media enterprises” in section 58(2C)(a).

58A(5)
(5) For the purposes of section 58, where two or more media enterprises—
(a) would fall to be treated as under common ownership or common control for the purposes of section 26, or
(b) are otherwise in the same ownership or under the same control,
they shall be treated (subject to subsection (4)) as all under the control of only one person.
58(2C)

(2C) The following are specified in this section—
(a) the need, in relation to every different audience in the United Kingdom or in a particular area or locality of the United Kingdom, for there to be a sufficient plurality of persons with control of the media enterprises serving that audience;
(b) the need for the availability throughout the United Kingdom of a wide range of broadcasting which (taken as a whole) is both of high quality and calculated to appeal to a wide variety of tastes and interests; and
(c) the need for persons carrying on media enterprises, and for those with control of such enterprises, to have a genuine commitment to the attainment in relation to broadcasting of the standards objectives set out in section 319 of the Communications Act 2003.

It concluded:

“[I]t seems to us that the Commission was correct to hold that, whereas in reckoning the number of controllers of media enterprises for the purposes of section 58(2C)(a) only one controller is to be counted in respect of both or all of the relevant enterprises (here Sky and ITV), nevertheless, when it comes to assessing the plurality of the aggregate number of relevant controllers and to considering the sufficiency of that plurality, the Commission may, and should, take into account the actual extent of the control exercised and exercisable over a relevant enterprise by another, whether it is a case of deemed control resulting from material influence under section 26 or rather one of actual common ownership or control. It does not seem right to us to read the artificial effect of section 58A(5), in a case within paragraph (a), as extending farther than is necessary and clearly required by that provision. This reading of the subsection puts it in the same category as section 58A(4), being ancillary to the provisions of section 58. It applies to the calculation of the number of controllers, both as regards the merged or merging enterprises and as regards any others serving the relevant audience. On the other hand, it does not allow the provision to have an overriding effect, excluding a consideration of the limited extent (if it be the case) of any control actually exercised or exercisable by a controlling enterprise over another enterprise, in the course of the qualitative assessment which is required on an investigation by the Commission in relation to the particular public interest consideration identified in section 58(2C)(a).
In relation to the concern expressed by the Tribunal about the possibility of an increase in the level of control or influence without a new RMS arising, so that the merger control provisions would not apply (referred to at paragraph [103] above), on the one hand that possibility does not appear to exist in the present case because of the application to Sky of the 20/20 rule (see paragraph [44] above) and on the other hand, in a case in which that possibility does or might exist, the Commission would be entitled to take it into account when considering the sufficiency of the plurality of the controllers as matters stand following the RMS.
It seems to us unsatisfactory that the terms of the Act should have been open to the conflicting interpretations placed on it by the Commission and the Tribunal. If it were thought that to limit the deeming effect to one of number alone does not allow for sufficient protection of the sensitive interest of media plurality, it should not be difficult to amend the legislation accordingly, now that possible difficulties in applying the current legislation have been identified. ”

The court notes that whilst this does not affect the outcome of the present case, it may be of relevance in future. The Court refused BskyB permission to appeal to the Supreme Court on one point as regards the rejection of a possible alternative remedy, but noted that ity remains open to BskyB to apply to the Supreme Court itself for such permission to appeal.

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WHOIS information for euodia.com (or as we like the call them The World’s Local Scammers, as based in South Korea]

[Querying whois.internic.net]
[Redirected to whois.asadal.com]
[Querying whois.asadal.com]
[whois.asadal.com]
Asadal, Inc.(whois.asadal.com) Whois Service

Domain : euodia.com

Registered Date : 1998. 09. 12.
Expiration Date : 2012. 09. 12.
Valid Date : 2012. 09. 12.
Last Updated Date : 2009. 02. 09.

Registrant : euodia
Email : euodia@chollian.net
Zip Code : 140-600
Address : .. pobox 131 yongsan postoffice yongsan-gu
Phone : 02-3272-8022
Publishes : Y

Administrative Contact : euodia
Email : euodia@chollian.net
Zip Code : 140-600
Address : .. pobox 131 yongsan postoffice yongsan-gu
Phone : 02-3272-8022
Publishes : Y

Technical Contact : euodia
Email : euodia@chollian.net
Phone : 02-3272-8022
Publishes : Y

Name Server #1
Hostname : ren1.inempire.com
IP Address : 210.124.122.35

Name Server #2
Hostname : ren2.inempire.com
IP Address : 211.53.209.135

Domain Status : REGISTRAR-LOCK

- ASADAL, Inc. -

In no particular order: -

1.The Beaches of Agnes
2.O’Horten
3.500 Days of Summer
4.Let the Right One In
5.Star Trek
6.Me and Orson Welles
7.Slumdog Millionaire
8.Frost/Nixon
9.The Wrestler
10.Gran Torino

Rage Against The X Factor this year and download “Killing in the Name” from December 13th, in an effort to make it this year’s Christmas Number One. Join the 400,000 strong at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=logo#/group.php?gid=2228594104

My girlfriend’s sister, Linda, who is Librarian/Library Manager at Peckham Library in London, now has a music video claim to fame. Around 1min and 20 seconds into this Newton Faulkner video for his new single - Over and Out , Linda is seen in the library serving Newton, and showing some good back acting action.

So, after my questioning how Mr Murdoch could be giving his physical papers away cheap or for free on the one hand and want to charge for that content online on the other, comes the news that  News International is pulling the plug on its afternoon freesheet, the London Paper. The London Paper recorded a pre-tax loss of £12.9m in the year to 29 June 2008 on a turnover of £14.1m. In the previous 10 months it had lost £16.8m. It’s move from the market will leave Associated Newspapers’ London Lite all alone in the freesheet market. The market never needed two afternoon freesheets, especially as the actual layout and content of both was virtually identical, and its questionable whether it needs a free afternoon freesheet at all. The question will then be whether London Lite follows suit and quits the market.  It should.

Was thinking I’ve been meme-less for a while, so whilst Iwas sitting waiting for a help desk to sort out something for me I thought how about 3×3 or 333: Three Books, Albums, and Films you’d recommend from 2009, thus far. Things you think were good enough to deserve wider attention. Here are my 3×3.

Books

Anne Tyler – ‘Noah’s Compass’. The best writer in the world. Period. Subtle, unshowy, but once again displaying her sharp observation of the mundane and her understanding of human condition.

Seb Hunter – ‘How to be a Better Person’. A wonderfully funny tale of the author’s attempts to improve himself through doing as much volunteer work as possible over a two year period. I also recommend this as an excuse to also mention his other books: ‘Hell Bent for Leather’ (a tale of growing up liking Heavy Metal), and ‘Rock me Amadeus’ (a tale of trying to learn to like Classical music). Both hugely funny and entertaining.

Richard Price – ‘Lush Life’ . He wrote on The Wire, but was already a good novelist – Clockers and Blood Brothers are great – but this gritty piece of Wire-like police procedural is quite possibly his best book yet.

Albums

Phoenix – ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ French indie-pop. No, really. If you bought into the whole MGMT ’sound’ last year, this will be right up your street.

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Humbug’. Have always found the AM interesting rather than compelling musically. On this album, their third, it all just seems to come together for me. Now worthy of all that initial hype.

The Low Anthem - ‘Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’. A bit Fleet Foxy at times, but with a bit wider musical variety. One of the discoveries of 2009. http://www.myspace.com/lowanthem

Films

500 Days of Summer. A summer film actually worth seeing! A smart engaging story of love and relationships that doesn’t insult its viewers’ intelligence. Warm, witty, and packed with great performances.

The Beaches of Agnes. A fun and quirky autobiographical documentary about the life of French film-maker, and artist Agnes Varda.

O’Horten .  Odd Horten drives trains in Norway. It’s his last day at work. Well, that’ the plot sorted.  I found myself enjoying this little film that had: no gratuitous violence, sex, or swearing, and was, instead, just a nice little film about learning to live.