I don’t usually do this, but an Editorial in yesterday’s New York Times (13 June 2007; sub req’d) is so important, and so perfectly reflects my views, that it’s worth reproducing in full (in fact, I wish I’d written it). The headline is the title to this post: “Watching Your Every Move”, and the strapline on the electronic front page makes the point perfectly:

Privacy is too important to leave up to the companies that benefit financially from collecting and retaining data.

The Editorial itself ran as follows:

Watching Your Every Move

Internet users are abuzz over Google’s new Street View feature, which displays ground-level photos of urban blocks that in some cases even look through the windows of homes. If that feels like Big Brother, consider the reams of private information that Google collects on its users every day through the search terms they enter on its site.

Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last week or so, there have been some interesting developments on issues that have recently been the subjects of posts on this blogs.

Below the fold: censorship and freedom of expression (online, and in respect of films), privacy (online resources, and google), and the celtic tiger (for the hell of it). Read the rest of this entry »

As part of Amnesty International’s and the Observer newspaper’s Irrepressible campaign against internet repression, there will be a webcast on Wednesday 6 June 2007 at 18.30 (UK / 19.30 Europe / 13.30 EST / 10.30 PST) of a major debate on the struggle for freedom of expression in cyberspace. As their blurb puts it:

Amnesty and The Observer newspaper will use the internet to link activists from around the world to discuss the struggle against internet repression and to celebrate the irrepressible desire of people towards freedom of expression. The meeting will include participation from internet gurus, cyber dissidents as well as net activists, writers and journalists. Everyone will be able to participate to the debate online through a webcast on the day.

The Roman poet Juvenal asked Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (who will watch the watchers?). In a similar vein, one of Elvis Costello’s more acidic songs of loss is ‘Watching the Detectives’ (lyrics | lyrics with images | YouTube). If Google is the search engine which does (most of) our detecting for us, one of the animating questions of the moment is who is watching the Google detective on our behalf? One answer is provided by Article 29 of Directive 95/46/EC (also here) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data

This is the EU Data Protection Directive, and it is a major plank in the data protection strand of the EU’s information society policy. Read the rest of this entry »

Eagle eyed readers of this blog (well, there are two readers – hi, mum and dad – and at least one of you must be wearing your glasses as you read this) will have spotted the CC button at the bottom of the right tool bar, and its accompanying text, that “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License”.

The Creative Commons organisation helps webauthors to make their works freely available to be shared and reused, either by helping them put the works into the public domain or by retaining copyright whilst while licensing the work as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Studios make movies to make money; publishers publish books to make money; music companies produce cds to make money – content producers want to exploit their content to make money. That’s why they seek strictly to enforce their copyright in movies, books, music, and so on. It’s how they make their money. And they adopt measures to protect this content from piracy. So, they objected to the photocopier, and to double-tape decks, even though a photocopy or copied tape is rarely as good as the original. Now, however, the benefits of digital content are threatened by the ease of copying digital content without loss of quality. And the content producers, in particular the movie and music companies, are (controversially) trying to use technology to prevent such copying and (even more controversially) to use the law to support (and enforce) such anti-copying technology. They have failed to understand why it’s getting such a bad press, and they have become locked into a mindset that seeks to corall and control their content. And they can’t see that much of this anti-copying technology makes life very difficult indeed for their customers.

The challenge for these companies is to find a way to co-exist with both the advantages and disadvantages of digital content, without losing customers. Read the rest of this entry »

On the day I learn (hat tip Media Law Prof Blog) that US not-for-profit NGO Freedom House has released its annual global Freedom of the Press Survey for 2007 (Ireland fares reasonably well – equal thirteenth in Europe, equal sixteenth worldwide – but we could do better), I also learn (hat tip madisonian.net) that Verizon have made an extraordinarily tendentious free speech argument in favour of disclosing customer records to the US security services. Read the rest of this entry »

My, but the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland (BCI) is being busy. Two important developments deserve comment: this week’s new codes and today’s announcement of a new christian radio channel. And they are linked.

First, the Codes. Read the rest of this entry »