Informationoverlord

Web Worker Daily is asking a question that a number of people have asked during 2009, and that is – Is Twitter replacing the rss reader? Interestingly another blogger Jeff Tucker did a post yesterday entitled RSS Isn’t Dead, So Better Organize Your Feed Reader

I think the answer to WWD’s question probably depends on who you are and what you were using an rss reader for in the first place. For example in the WWD piece Mike McClure says “All but one of my news sites make announcements on Twitter anyway, so I don’t need to check yet another news source. If the news is big enough, it’ll be circulated enough that I’ll find out soon enough anyway.”

This seems fair enough if you are just looking for high level news from major sites, and as Dave Riddel says in the comments, Twitter’s new ‘lists’ functionality could help to manage rss feeds within Twitter (although he, like me, says ‘ I prefer to use the service primarily for conversation and keep my feeds separate’)

Jeff Tucker on the other hand seems to share my view on things. I love Twitter, and it is my most used ’social network’ tool outside of email these days, however the idea that it is replacing my rss reader is, for me, a joke. Twitter will give me a headline/post title and a link to the full text. How very web 1.0. The whole reason I embraced rss and rss readers was so that I could cover more sources, more quickly and efficiently, and so that I did not have to visit every site to find out if the content was something I needed to read. Most of my rss is either full text or includes an additional 2-4 lines taster of the content so that if I do have to click out to the full text at source I am 99% certain that I need to.

Most mornings I scan through about 500-700 items – both work related and pleasure - in my reader, and can do so within an about an hour. Doing that it Twitter would take me all day, or increase the chances of my missing something I should have picked up sooner.

Jeff Tucker meanwhile says RSS is still great for the following reasons:
• Publishes blog posts, website updates and news articles from around the Web.
• Highly efficient information management tool for reading content compared with Twitter. RSS can provide the complete content with inline images, video, rather than a less informative and two-step, 140-character Tweet plus link.
• Backward compatibility means RSS content can be shared via email, where much of the world still lives.
• Many other data feeds work only with RSS. For example, I just set up a survey and its online results feed only in RSS.

While RSS is slow (compared with real-time updates), lacks great interaction capabilities, and is somewhat cumbersome to set up and use, it still plays a unique and important role.

I totally agree. Whilst good organisation is key to getting the most out of an rss reader, the capabilities, functionality – and the ability to have most of that content in ONE place, without needing to visit EVERY site, makes it invaluable for managing rss.

This is not to say Twitter shouldn’t be used for rss, but I think it is better suited perhaps to thngs such as press releases from government departments and suchlike. Maybe you disagree?

Outside of stuff like that I feel that Twitter for rss, to me, is for people that either don’t follow much or have too much time on their hands if they can afford to follow every link to check the potential relevance of that content - but maybe people just follow feeds with more accurate headlines than I do. What do people think?

[Of course, I am going to post that I blogged this on Twitter, because Twitter is a great discovery tool for people you should add to your reader]

I see this week it was that time of year when surveys or reports come out detailing how much the UK economy is effected by ‘wasted time’ in the workplace. Of course, there is always a scapegoat for this and the headline in the Daily Telegraph ‘Twitter ‘costs British economy £1.38bn’ tells you where the finger is pointing this year.

IT services and technology company, Morse, commissioned the survey (no doubt for the purpose of getting headlines and stories like the one above mentioning them) Indeed they actually said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate, due to the fact that the people they spoke to may have lied about their ‘time wasting’ (this maybe due to the fact that of the 1,460 workers polled 57% said they spent an average of 40 minutes a WEEK on social networking sites).

A couple of years ago we had a slew of similar articles, all with Facebook in the headline. That time it was a study from UK employment law firm Peninsula. They found that the time employees spend online on social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace was costing the economy more than £130 million per day.

All I can say is I hope none of these people smoke too. A London School of Economics report earlier this year said smokers are costing businesses £2.1 million a year in sickness and yet more ‘time-wasting’ cigarette breaks.

The Solution from the Dragon’s Den

Of course the problem with the whole idea of ‘time-wasting’ and articles talking about it, complete with pointing fingers is that they seem to exist in some kind of vacuum where it is reported as being a newand (of course) a bad thing. Morse are not to only people to be identifying the damage all this social networking and time-wasting is doing to the economy. Take this article by Theo Paphitis – from Dragon’s Den - in the Daily Mail last month, entitled ‘Why all bosses should do what I did and ban staff from Facebook’.

According to Theo ‘we have banned smoking in the office because it is bad for health and undermines the focus on work. All employers should be doing the same with frivolous networking on the net.’ [ I don’t know about you, but I have been guilty of some frivolous networking today]

Despite the article’s title he goes on to say that they didn’t ban Facebook or My Space outright but adopted a limited internet access policy ‘whereby employees were only able to visit certain sites which could be justified as useful for their work — such as business information or news services.’ The result ‘At a stroke, the creeping march of time-wasting came to a halt.’ [Wow, he’s good]

Theo is still a worried man though. He can see the future and the future’s Orange … O2, Vodafone, 3 etc . Yes, mobile. The solution ? Employers will have to institute ‘bans on the use of mobiles during working hours.’ This apparently is ‘only fair’ as ‘In the end, businesses and public services cannot survive if staff prefer to be socialising online rather than doing the job for which they are paid.’

Now, I’ve always quite liked Theo on Dragon’s Den, he is obviously a talented businessman. He is also apparently serious deluded if he believes that his suggestion is anything other than stupid, counterproductive and totally missing the point.

Neil Franklin, digital and social media advisor at the Department for Work and Pensions, cuts right to the chase when he said that employees who waste time on Facebook and other social networking sites have always wasted time. Social networks simply provide them with a new way of doing so.

You mean Twitter and Facebook didn’t invent time-wasting?

Yes, I know it seems hard to believe, but apparently workers were doing things that people classed as time-wasting before social networking sites. Let’s think back to when the internet and email started to be allowed into the workplace shall we. The FT reported on 21 May 2001 (Employer software will limit workers’ ‘e-breaks’) how employers were installing software to limit staff use of the internet ‘to crack down on time-wasting’. But, even further back in time than that, it was going on. No really, it was.

According to Norris Arthur Brisco ‘The Problem of preventing loafing or soldiering is a most serious one with every employer. The average workman is naturally inclined to take things easy and do the least amount of work necessary … soldiering is often deliberate as wasting time in order to make a job last’ He wrote this in 1913 in his book Economics of Business.

The reasons for not working flat out for the whole day may have been different – although ‘making the job last’ is by no means a practice that has disappeared – but workers have always ‘wasted-time’.

Is ‘non time-wasting’ a good goal?

Back in June 2001 the Daily Telegraph ran an article by Alison Eadie (’Even the sharpest minds need an occasional duvet day’ - Management matters - June 21, 2001 ) which commented on two recent studies one about the cost of people being off sick (whether real or otherwise) and one on time-wasting. She started totting up all the ‘lost money’ to the economy from this time off sick; playing solitaire on their PCs and surfing the internet for an hour each day; having fag breaks and tea and coffee breaks; going to the toilet; ‘water cooler’ type chats with colleagues etc. She concluded is was a wonder ‘UK plc is solvent’ (some today might question it is, of course)

What she concluded – correctly, in my opinion – is that ‘ Rather than telling us how many billions the economy is losing, these surveys show the pointlessness of worrying about every minute of the working day. We are supposed to be knowledge workers these days, not robots.’

She goes on to make a point I have made on this topic before, and one also picked up in an excellent article by Lisa Belkin in the New York Times from 2007 (’Time Wasted? Perhaps It’s Well Spent’, May 31, 2007) that we can’t maintain the same level of concentration at all times throughout the day -“The longer you work, the less efficient you are,” (Bob Kustka, Fusion Factor).

So, what is time-wasting?

The question is what constitutes wasted time, and whether you can apply one practice - for example accessing Twitter or Facebook - as wasting time for everyone that does so. I do not think you can. If I go back to Belkin, she hits the nail on the head when she says the problem is “what looks like wasting time from where you sit, could be a whirl of creative thought from where I sit”.

Her article also points to how many of us seem to be working longer hours, and how indeed for many of us the line between work and home has blurred. I work in a law firm where this is very clear. So the question then is, if I’m expected to work out of my contracted hours and check emails, answer calls etc, then it makes sense that at work I should be able to book my holiday, see what friends are up to on Facebook or Twitter and anything else the helps give a hint of the work/life balance we are all supposed to have.

Banning people from accessing things doesn’t work. There are companies and indeed some law firms that ban access (at work) to Facebook and Twitter etc – they probably were against the wheel when that first appeared too. It’s pointless. If you are wise you have a usage policy and you place your trust in your workforce not to abuse that trust. If they do you have a mechanism for warning them, listening to see if they have a justification for the alleged ‘abuse’ (i.e a proper appeal process) and eventually firing them if it is shown there was no justification and that those warnings were not heeded. It is always better to treat adults as adults rather than as children who can’t be trusted. If you don’t trust your employees, why should they invest their time in going that extra mile for you at work?

The only question to be asked in all of this is – Is the person doing their job? Is the work done, is the quality of a standard that is expected by your company, and the people you might work for? If the answer is yes, then maybe part of the reason for that is that some of that ‘wasted time’ has helped them to stay fresh, to be ‘happy’ in their work and to deliver that quality. Yes, I mentioned the ‘H’ word. I do so because the biggest threat to productivity is not staff members posting Tweets and updating their status’ on Facebook but is instead low staff morale, a lack of motivation, and a sense of not being (or feeling) valued by their employer. Many people work in companies and organisations who despite outward facing ‘we are one’ type values and proclamations have inward facing ‘us’ and ‘them’ hierarchies, they don’t make everyone feel part of the team and of the success’ of those teams. This breeds resentment, and a desire to actively waste time.

There is also a tendency – based on this trait – to see the kind of time-wasting we are talking about being levelled at people lower down the organisation chain. The further you go up the chain you soon identify another tried and trusted time-waster – meetings. Whilst many organisations are getting better at this and starting to use tools such as wikis and blogs to reduce the need for some meetings and to better focus the content of those that are still needed, meeting continue to be used by many as an excuse to avoid ‘real work’. How often are you in meetings where nothing is accomplished, where agendas are ignored or don’t exist or are meetings to discuss having another meeting?

How many people do you know who have meetings outside the office that ‘over-ran’ (usually via the shops).

Seriously, it is not a new phenomenon. Time wasting when it is being done in a manner that genuinely effects a person’s job performance, needs to be addressed. But this can be done in a grown up manner. We do not need to take a chain ‘em to the desk approach.

I’ll leave you with two final quotes: the first from Abigail Schoneboom, writing in Project Skive Background Paper: The History and Future of Skiving (November 21, 2004) and then Alison Eadie, and the final line of her article that could almost have been written with Theo Paphitis in mind.

“As the humane workplace reaches further into our lives, skiving is an important means of shielding our private and creative selves from its encroachments. Skiving does make work more fun and, arguably, is a compromise that absorbs our frustrations and prevents us from coming up with more radical challenges to the system. But skiving is also a quiet protest against the banality that underlies so much of white-collar work. And it expresses disdain for the interminable meetings, phone calls, and PowerPoint presentations that comprise our bloated workday.” (Abigail Schoneboom)

“Employers should put their stopwatches away and find something more useful to do. Who knows? It might add billions to the nation’s wealth.” (Alison Eadie)

Amen to that.

You, my regular reader, will no doubt have realised what a genius I am by now … or a genuine arse perhaps … but I think my true essence may have been captured by this new comment that was – for some strange reason – flagged as spam:

“A wonderful article…. In my life, I have never seen a man be so selfless in helping others around him to get along and get working. I feel good that there are people like you too. Thanks for this great weblog of yours. Its surely going to get me to go to higher places!”

I have often thought that reading my blog was a good way for people to get to higher places, and this obviously proves it. What insightful article was it that could have elicited such a response ?? Why, Spanish government departments, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies with rss feeds of course. Truly uplifting.

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.

It looks like the European Commission is now set to get its way and EU member states will get a French style 3 Strikes rule for alleged internet illegal filesharers and the like.

Just as it was announced that the conciliation procedure was set to start between member states and the European Parliament (EP) over the latter’s insistence that an amendment that guaranteed that an internet user’s internet access could not be restricted without a court ruling - which read:

“that no restriction may be imposed on the fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, save when public security is threatened where the ruling may be subsequent.”

It seems the EP have now capitulated and offered up a new text that removes the need for a court order to be required prior to cutting off someone’s internet access. The new text reads:

“Any such measures liable to restrict those fundamental rights or freedoms may only be taken in exceptional circumstances and imposed if they are necessary, appropriate and proportionate within a democratic society, and shall be subject to adequate procedural safeguards in conformity with the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and with general principles of Community law, including effective judicial protection and due process. In particular, any measures may only be adopted as a result of a prior, fair and impartial procedure ensuring inter alia that the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to be heard of the person or persons concerned be fully respected. Furthermore, the right to an effective and timely judicial review shall be guaranteed.”

Member States can still opt to have a requirement that a court order is needed, but it will no longer be a requirement.

The new text was penned by MEP Catherine Trautmann, who was responsible for the report that included the original amendment. Of her new text she says “Parliament’s delegation has agreed a compromise proposal that will serve as a basis for negotiations and towards which the Council and the Commission will be able to converge.”

The move should mean that the conciliation procedure that will take place between the Parliament and the Council between 4 November and 30 December should now be no more than a formality, as the council is unlikely to push for further amendments that might risk the amendment being agreed. None agreement on the clause would scupper the whole telecoms package, as the EU takes an all or nothing approach to passing law.

So, it looks like despite voting infavour of the original amendment twice in large numbers the ‘elected’ part of the EU is going to allow the ‘non elected’ part to get its own way. Would love to say I’m surprised, but I’m not. It was always going to happen.

Meanwhile, perfectly on cue, the French constitutional court approved the country’s “three-strikes” law (Hadopi), which will sever the Internet connections of those found to have been repeatedly infringing copyrights on file-sharing networks.

Update

According to a report by the excellent mLex, my view that the Member States would not try to push for more changes was wrong. They report that they still want to remove any mention of a “prior” judicial review, “presumption of innocence” and that measures may only be adopted “in exceptional circumstances” from the clause, instead adding in a number of exceptions to the latter requirement to involve the courts at all for “national security, defence, public security, and the prevention, investigation, detection and prosecution of criminals.” Drive that truck through that list now. A brave (or stupid) move by the member states who risk the EP reverting back to their original position.

Amber Corrin has written a very interesting story on Federal Computer Week entitled ‘DOD finds knowledge management a tricky fit’.

What made me laugh was how easy it was to replace mentions of the Defense Department with lawyers in statements like:

“As much as Defense Department officials like the idea of knowledge management, they are finding the discipline often does not fit easily into their daily operations.”

I don’t really know any lawyers who don’t think capturing and having access to the knowledge and expertise within the firm isn’t important, but I know less who regularly contribute to the systems and practices that achieve those ends. I think most of us recognise that the key is to try and get processes seamlessly intergraded into how our lawyers work – almost getting them to contribute without realising they are doing it, selling any benefit as a benefit to them individually in the first instance – things that benefit the individual with an associated benefit that benefits the wider community have always seemed to have a better chance of success to me.

Another great quote from the article comes from Robert Neilson, knowledge management adviser at the office of the Army Chief Information Officer who is quoted as saying:

“If you think you’ve [succeeded in knowledge management], you aren’t doing knowledge management. “There is no timeline.”

I would tend to agree with this, it should be an evolving, rolling processes, and it should be an integral process within every business and organisation. This is particularly true in cases such as the law, when what differentiates a law firm from another is their knowledge. That is what they are selling, that is their product: Knowledge. A fact often overlooked or not recognised by many withing the profession.

However, neither of these was my favourite quote from the article though. That is reserved for Bobby Caudill, solution architect, Global Government Solutions at Adobe. Now it was unclear whether he was talking generally or was being specific to the DoD when he said:

“People are not accustomed or trained for collaboration. It’s a cultural issue.”

I’m hoping it was generally, because if the armed forces aren’t trained for collaboration, then who exactly is?!!

That aside, I’m also not sure I accept the statement, or at least without contect. Most people - outside of work at least - are more than accustomed to collaboration through things such as teams sports. I would agree, however, that in the workplace we have yet to fully rid ourselves of the ‘knowledge is power’ idea, where people hold on to what they know believing it gives them an advantage or power over others they work with.

It is an ongoing fight, but slowly people are starting to see that - to paraphrase the great Mr Spock ‘that the knowledge of the many outweighs the knowledge of the few or the one’.

The All Party Parliamentary Communications Group (apComms) is an independent group of MPs and Lords, from all political parties, which seeks to encourage debate on a range of communications issues, have published the findings of its public inquiry “Can we keep our hands off the Net?”

The report makes refreshing reading, and makes some good points. It includes 11 recommendations for the government: -

1. A recommendation for a Green Paper on Privacy, with a view to bringing forward a Privacy Bill in the next Parliament that sets out simply expressed, but far-reaching, protection for everyone’s privacy in both the offline and online worlds

2. A recommendation to terminate the current policy-making process on what should be done about illegal file sharing; restarting it once the EU has finished negotiating the “Telecoms Package”. Future policy, the report clearly states, should not include the disconnection of end users, because this is not in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment

apComms go as far as to say the Government should “terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new consultation once the EU has made its decisions.”

What I enjoyed about this topic was apComms took lots of evidence from the entertainment industry wanting ISPs to be forced to do more to tackle the problem of illegal filesharing. They agreed it was a problem but still concluded that “much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.”

3. Recommendations on behavioural advertising to ensure that it is only operated on an explicit, informed, opt-in basis. UKCCIS should consider further regulations to apply to behavioural advertising that is aimed at children and young people.

Phorm was centre of the debate here and apComms were disappointed that despite a request sent to Google to submit evidence on this issue and others, it didn’t (as they say, disappointing considering it is market leader on online advertising) My favourite quote here was from The Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) “On the issue of behavioural advertising and Phorm, I will simply reiterate the comment of FIPR’s General Counsel, Nicholas Bohm: it is amazing that the Home Office gave out free legal advice [ It said Phorm’s service does not fall foul of RIPA] and disappointing that it was so inaccurate.” apComms note that, the Home Office does not make the law of the land, nor does it usually set out to interpret its meaning.

4. A recommendation that eSafety should be included in the core school curriculum, with appropriate topics being taught at Key Stages 1 through 4. Also, the Government should establish a national coordinating body to ensure that eSafety messages and teaching remain up-to-date.

5. A recommendation that network operators and retail outlets cooperate in providing point-of-sale literature on eSafety messages for mobile phones. The report also recommends that, for reasons of clarity, Ofcom should ensure that child protection filters are enabled by default for every type of mobile Internet access device, whether they be handsets or “dongles”.

6. A recommendation that the Government, in consultation with the EU Commission, establish whether the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) should extend its “notice and take-down” mechanisms to the whole world, and if not, work to establish such a global system.

I agreed here with the views put forward by the OpenRights Group who are generally anti blocking and think illegal content should be dealt with at source and not by an approach which just pretends it’s not there. This echoes my own view expressed in ‘Filtering out child porn — smoke and mirrors?’ – (2004) 6 EBL 10, 11 – where I said “surely the approach should not be to block access to these sites but to remove the sites themselves…These laws and filtering programmes, although good PR for those involved, arguably merely hide it away, rather than actually do anything about the problem itself.”

This was a view supported to a degree by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) who made a point to the committee that “The current strategic focus is on the product (i.e. images and content) rather than behaviour. Consequently ‘blocking’ is a tool rather than a solution to child sexual abuse and exploitation where technology is a factor, as it does not take into account developments in how offenders use technology and the fact that websites are no longer the primary mechanism for the distribution of child abuse material.” This final point is a very good one, and one often glossed over in the clammer for headlines grabbing announcements.

7. A recommendation that the Government does not legislate to enforce the deployment of blocking systems based on the IWF lists. This has the potential to damage future attempts to fix problems through self-regulation, and will thus, in the long term, be counterproductive.

8. A recommendation that Ofcom keep the issue of “network neutrality” under review and include a section in each annual report that indicates whether there are any signs of change.

9. A recommendation that Ofcom regulate to require ISPs to advertise a minimum guaranteed speed for broadband connections.

10. A recommendation for a voluntary code for ISPs relating to the detection of, and effective dealing with, malware infected machines in the UK. If this voluntary approach fails to yield results in a timely manner, then Ofcom should unilaterally create and impose such a code on the UK ISP industry.

11. A recommendation that the law be revised, so that ISPs can to take proactive steps to detect and remove inappropriate content from their services, without completely losing important legal immunities which fit with their third party role in hosting and distributing content.

I have had enough of Tesco. Whilst other companies such as Waitrose and drinks giant Diageo make the decision to pull their advertising from appearing during Fox News commentator Glenn Beck’s show (which is also broadcast on the Sky TV platform in Britain) Tesco continue
This issue relates to the presenter’s accusation that President Barack Obama was racist, claiming that the US President has a “deep-seated hatred for white people”. Yes, that man who had a white mother hates white people. It has all become clear now. Thank you Glen.

Beck is one of a number of rightwing fuckwits that appear on Fox, who love the sound of their own voice and being controversial and sowing the seeds of hate rather than love. He’s very popular. Indeed he is a fine example of why James Murdock reckons that the shackles should be taken of the British Media landscape, so we can get us some of this quality journalism.

According to Tesco “[we] buy advertising space, often as a package, across a range of channels and time slot,” and that “the placing of our advertising is not a statement of support or otherwise for the programming content.”

Tesco just look stupid. Tesco’s comment’s imply that they have no control over where there ads are placed, which is, of course, utter bollocks. Part of the point is to get your ads in programmes where your ‘target audience’ are. Also, can you see them coming out with the same argument if a BNP party political broadcast was sandwiched between two of its ads? I think not.

I have no doubt Tesco will pull their ads eventually, if for nothing else, just due to PR pressure. Yes, they wont even be able to stand by their own flawed logic for not removing their ads. If they’d have come out with more robust arguments – whether it be free speech or whatever - I’d have had a lot more respect for the current decision not to pull the ads.

And speaking of fuckwits, the BBC unearthed another one this week, when it came to light that Strictly Come Dancing star Anton Du Beke (or plain ol’ Anthony Beke or BURK as I prefer to call him) exchanged some harmless ‘banter’ with his dance partner, Laila Rouass, (who apparently was in Footballers’ Wives) when he told her “Oh my God, you look like a Paki.” (she has an an Indian mother and Moroccan father).

Just so we’re clear though, Anton was a pains to say that he had apologised. He also added: “I am not a racist and that I do not use racist language” (well, except for that time when I called someone a Paki obviously, he seemed to forget to add to the statement).

The BBC – who have high hopes for Anton as a presenter (some even mentioning him as a replacement for Brucie himself) – are standing by him. Bless. Expect to see Mr De Burk leave the show sooner rather than later.

Interesting case out of the US District Court (Washington) this week, looking at the issue of whether an individual can re-sell software on sites such as ebay under the US’s first sale doctrine. The Court said yes, and the existence of the shrinkwrap ‘licence’ does not prevent you from doing so.

The case concerned an eBay merchant named Timothy Vernor. Over a number of years Mr Vernor has bought authentic AutoCAD packages at garage/office sales and put them up for auction on eBay. Each time Autodesk, the makers of AutoCAD, issued DMCA cease and desist notices to try and block the auctions arguing that it only licenses copies of its software, rather than selling them, and that therefore any resale of the software constitutes copyright infringement, and warning him that they would take further legal action if he persisted in his actions.

The Licence Agreement that comes with the software includes a number of restrictions on use including a prohibition on ‘rent, lease, or transfer [of] all or part of the software. Documentation, or any rights granted’ without the written consent of Autodesk.

Last year Judge Jones dismissed Autodesk’s motion to dismiss or grant summary judgement finding that whilst the mere possession of a copyrighted copy pursuant to a licence is not a sale, in this case the critical issue was whether the person who paid for the software was allowed to keep it or not. If they were, then, it was a sale.

Finding conflicting precedents, Judge Jones decided that the Ninth Circuit court’s ruling in United States v. Wise, which directly addressed the classification of sales and licenses for the purposes of first sale with respect to film prints, was the most appropriate and lead to a conclusion that ‘the transfer of AutoCAD packages from Autodesk to CTA - the company Vernor bought his copies from in an office sale - was a sale with contractual restrictions on use and transfer of the software’. As a result Mr Vernor could invoke the first sale doctrine and sell his copies of the software without committing a copyright violation.

The Judge also dismissed the argument that Mr Vernor and anyone he subsequently sold the software to are bound by the Autodesk licence saying “The Autodesk License is expressly “nontransferable.” License: Grant of License. Autodesk does not explain how a nontransferable license can bind subsequent transferees.”

However, he added if they believed the licence did bind Mr Vernor and others it would need to file a new motion addressing that argument.

The parties then filed cross-motions for summary judgment. This week the court issued a new judgment, once again in favour of Mr Vernor.

Judge Jones wrote that little had changed in the intervening 17 months and there was not materially different facts before the court than at that time. He did not accept Autodesk’s assertion that the court’s interpretation of owner would harm both software producers and consumers, and found Autodesk’s attempt to establish the common understanding of “ownership” by citing a legal dictionary equating ownership with unrestricted ownership as consistent neither with Wise nor with common understanding.

“For example, a person who buys a home is nonetheless restricted in his use and subsequent transfer of the home by property laws, zoning ordinances, and fair housing statutes. No one would characterize the person’s possession, however, as something other than ownership. Similarly, the court cannot characterize Autodesk’s decision to let its licensees retain possession of the software forever as something other than a transfer of ownership, despite numerous restrictions on that ownership,” he said.

I Fully expect Autodesk to appeal this. Whilst I like Judge Jones’ logic, it would not be a big surprise to see another court take a different line, and accept Autodesk’s argument that unless the shrinkwrap licence itself is struck down as unenforcebale that the licence makes it clear that the author retains ‘ownership’ of the software, and all you as a user are ‘buying’ is the license to use the software. As such you cannot ’sell’ that software to anyone else, because you don’t own it.

Of course, if you are a consumer this argument is quite ridiculous. But, that’s the law for you.

Woodsiegirl - yes her again, had a nice post about why she became a librarian. She liked it so much she set up a wiki for others to share their stories too.

She became a librarian by accident. My mom often used to mention my name and accidents too.

When I was younger, a lot of friends had birthdays in September and October. I felt left out having to wait until December, and the final day of December at that, for my birthday. It was at that moment I knew that i wanted to be a Libran.

This goal has been misheard frequently over the years by people who were convinced that what I actually wanted was to become a Librarian. Eventually, I gave in.

And the rest, as they say, is actually quite dull and boring - well except fpr those years as Ron Jeremy’s stunt double - and explains why I don’t have any friends or get out much

The end