Informationoverlord

Until now, I have steered clear of the government posting out details of half the population. But then, I had thought it was all over. But wait, it now seems that we have sent the apologies - with yet more personal information - to the places where people used to live, not their current addresses.

Still, even this wasn’t as funny as Ministry of Justice Minister, Michael Wills, who has responsibility for data sharing and data protection matters telling a joint House of Commons and House of Lords select committee on human rights, that he was not informed about the data breach at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) before Alistair Darling’s public statement to the House of Commons. According to Wills this was ‘perfectly acceptable’. Well, that’s nice.

I’m sorry but we now have a situation where we have the biggest potential data protection cock up in government history, and the guy given responsibility for data protection finds out the same time as the general public. Astonishing. Wills did at least admit what the rest of the government failed to do, that the breach now raises questions about the security of the government’s National Identity Register and biometric ID cards. “We are going to obviously have to look at the national identity register in the light of all this …We are going to have to learn the lessons. Everything will have to be scrutinised and then we will assess it again.” ID Cards are not the answer people. Just say no.

Journalism.co.uk reports that Finnish news publisher Sanoma Digital has launched a user-generated news website that also uses an open-source journalism platform to gather material for a series of weekly freesheet newspapers. Launched last month, Vartti.fi is a fledgling project that allows users to break news by uploading multimedia content direct to the site. Vartti editors also publish story threads on the website and ask for multimedia submissions from the readers - setting them deadlines for their contributions

The EU Telecoms Commissioner, Viviane Reding, has been reaching out to the European Regulators Group (ERG) in a dinner speech at the Conference “Is it the right TIME?”- The future regulation of the Telecom, Informatics, Media and Entertainment sector in the EU”. Just two weeks after essentially announcing plans to replace them with a new European Telecom Market Authority, she announce she would work with the the European Regulators Group (ERG) to prepare a Commission Recommendation on Termination Rates before summer 2008, to address the consistency issues across member states on call termination charges, which should bring down the prices of mobile and fixed services for consumers. She also announced plans to produce a Commission Recommendation concerning the appropriate treatment of Next Generation Networks(NGNs). Whilst EU Recommendation are are not legally binding on Member States they do have political and moral significance and can be preliminary requirements to subsequent mandatory rules.

If all that wasn’t enough she additionally called on the ERG to work on a joint approach on the issue of geographic segmentation - the issue of and whether or not the different degree of infrastructure competition achieved could support regulatory measures differentiated between regions - to ensure that such measures, if they are taken, follow the same principles and are applied in the same fashion by national regulators (Ofcom’s second round market review of the wholesale broadband market in the UK broadband market is advocating such an approach. Ofcom’s proposals include the removal of regulatory obligations in certain geographic areas, whilst in other areas, regulatory obligations on BT and KCOM (formerly known as Kingston Communications) will remain, and will be strengthened in relation to KCOM to ensure transparency as to the quality of service for network access).

Discovered - through a comment left on the excellent Content & Carrier blog - another good looking Telco blog, by Dutchman, Rudolf van der Berg. Lunatic Thought has some cracking stuff on it, and his post on the proposed new European Telecom Market Authority is especially entertaining. Well worth a read.

Thanks to my friend Pete (now on honeymoon in Oz) for this rather splendid quote on Librarians from Tara Brabazon in the Times Higher Educational Supplement, Nov.16 2007 (p.14)

“Librarians are the Jedi Knights of the modern age, committed to reading, interpretation and thinking in a world of ignorance, managerialism and tabloidisation”

It comes from a piece entitle ‘Boomers in Thrall to Wiki Universe’ and article that laments the move from analogue to digital. I don’t agree with all that Tara says in the article but the above is a cracking quote.

I see T-Mobile Germany are going to start allowing German customers to buy Apple’s iPhone without a contract to its network - this after a Court upheld a challenge from Vodafone that the exclusive tying of the phone to a T-mobile contract was in breach of German law. In response T-Mobile has announced it will now sell people the handset for 999 euros !! (£719).

Now, if your were tied to the contract, the total cost of having the phone would be around 1500 euro; so you could say if you can keep your contract costs for two years to less that 500 euro, you’re going to come out ahead.

Of course you could also say, well for just 50 euros more I can buy a pretty decent spec MacBook instead …

Mergermarket, a service I use most days, have launched mergermarket Mobile. “Use any mobile web browser (BlackBerry, Palm Treo, mobile/cell phones) to get your personalized articles anytime, on-the-go.”

The European Parliament Committee on Culture and Education has officially approved the text of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, paving way for the full Parliament is to take its final plenary vote on the text, which the committee did not change, in Brussels on 29 November. If Parliament backs the committee vote in plenary, then the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive could be announced in the EU Official Journal before the end of the 2007. The Audiovisual Media Services (AVMS) Directive, which will update the existing Television Without Frontiers Directive

Rupert White (Gazette) reports that Law firms are failing clients by not keeping up with their technology needs, according to a survey of general counsel.

Charlene Li at the Harvard Business blog: Why Your Company Needs To Be on Facebook.

Bruce MacEwan (Adam Smith Esq) looks at the marriage of a certain Chance and Turner 20 years ago..

docstoc is a user generated community where you can find and share professional documents. Find free legal documents and free business documents. Upload your documents for all the world to share.

SiteShuffle is “the NEW Web application that turns your HOMEPAGE into a WEBSITE PLAYER, and gives you the ability to Fastforward or Rewind through a LINKLIST of your favourite WEBSITES” … Hmmm, yes, functionality I don’t want.

EMI has decided to go after Michael Robertson’s (mp3.com/Lindows/ fame) latest venture, mp3tunes. The site, which allows users to create a digital locker to back up their music collections - and then access and stream them from any computer is being accused of ‘eroding legitimate sales of music through both traditional and online channels’. The EMI lawsuit additionally claims that it unlawfully enables, encourages and profits from massive copyright infringement by its users. “Mp3tunes enables and encourages users to stockpile digital music files - overwhelmingly infringing music files - in their Mp3tunes locker”, the suit states.EMI’s lawsuit also complains both about Sideload.com, and additional service offered by MP3tunes. Sideload is an audio search engine. It has links to audio files and shows you where those files are on the net. These files can then be streamed or added to your locker. Sideload does not host any files itself.

According to EMI the majority of songs available from Sideload links are illegal infringing copies and therefore so are the songs in users’ lockers. Despite being told of this Roberston and mp3tunes have done nothing to stop it say EMI. They additionally state that users’ who need to sign up with an email address and password regularly post these details on other sites so that anyone can access their lockers and illegally download song files.

EMI is seeking a preliminary and permanent injunction enjoining mp3tunes and Roberstson from continuing to operate the site, under charges of infringement of EMI’s reproduction rights; infringement of EMI’s public performance rights; Inducement of copyright infringement; contributory copyright infringement; vicarious copyright infringement; common-law copyright infringement of pre-1972 works; and unfair competition as to pre-1972 works.

Robertson had expected the action and filed a suit against the threat of EMI action asking to court - and a jury - to rule mp3tunes legal, and no responsible for any potentially infringing content of its users. Robertson stated that the sites terms and conditions make it abundantly clear that users agree not to upload music that infringes copyright of others, and that whilst mp3tunes can identify songs in a customer’s locker, it has no means of determining the origin of the track.

If informed - through the correct Digital Millennium Copyright Act procedure of infringing material on the site, or linked to from the site, the content is removed, and Roberston states that 350 such songs identified by EMI were immediately removed from the site.

Robertson is no stranger to this kind of case. Back in 2000, he ran Mp3.com. That site offered a myMp3 service which copied and stored a database of close to 80,000 CDs on its own servers, and then allowed customers to listen online to music from the database if they proved they had their own copy of the CD.

A federal judge ruled that MP3.com were guilty of secondary copyright infringement by enabling downloading of unlicensed music, whose copyright was owned by Universal. It cost Mp3.com $100 million. Robertson then sold the company (to Cnet)

I have a locker on mp3tunes. It is great for backing up any stuff than I just buy digitally. Are there people out there that have ‘illegal copies’ of things in their lockers? I’m sure there are, but this suit is yet another example of the industry ‘not getting it’.  And as long as they keep not getting it, things are only going to get worse for them.