The legal effects of some butterfly-effect typos; including mistaken offers, and restitution of mistaken payments

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| Contract, Mistaken offers, Mistaken payments, Restitution

The Book of Kells is one of the great treasures in the Old Library in Trinity College Dublin. It is a manuscript of the Four Gospels in Latin based on the Vulgate of St Jerome. It was written and illuminated in the ninth century, probably in part in a monastery on the island of Iona in Scotland, and in part in a monastery in Kells, Co Meath, Ireland. Though a great medieval treasure, it contains some typographical errors. For example, the Gospel of Luke has an extra ancestor in the genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3:26; pictured left). It seems that the scribe read “qui fuit mathathiae” as “qui fuit mathath | iae” and thus wrote “qui fuit mathath” (the first line in the picture on the left) and “qui fuit iae” (the second line in the picture). Even Homer nods.

I was reminded of this when I recently read an article by Tom Lamont about the effects of electronic typos: an SMS misdirected to a wrong mobile phone number (leading to a marriage!); a satnav directed to Rom (in Germany) rather than Rome (in Italy); a jet from Sydney directed to 15 degrees 19.8 minutes east (and landing in Melbourne) rather than 151 degrees 9.8 minutes east) (bound for Kuala Lumpur).…

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Klee/Seymour; or, The digital dysaguria of The Twittering Machine

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| Dysaguria

Veteran Irish journalist Vincent Browne presented the late-night political talk show Tonight with Vincent Browne on what was then TV3 from 2007 to 2017 (the programme is now The Tonight Show hosted by Ivan Yates and Matt Cooper on Virgin Media One). His famously waspish and curmudgeonly demeanour permitted him to adopt a technophobic persona, dismissing the considerable (almost cult) online following as “the twitter machine” (the twitter hashtag was #vinb; from small beginnings, it grew to become a vital part of the show; and nostalgia still drives some traffic).

Those halcyon days of Irish political twitter came back to me reading a review of Richard Seymour’s The Twittering Machine (Indigo Press, 2019) by Peter Conrad in The Observer the weekend before last. Here are some extracts, which give a sense of the review and a flavour of the book, as well as an explanation both of the book’s title and of the Klee painting (above left):


The Twittering Machine by Richard Seymour review – our descent into a digital dystopia

A stark polemic argues that social media may have unleashed an age of nihilism from which there is little hope of escape

Technology, as Richard Seymour says, always boasts of possessing superhuman powers, which is why it arouses our wary paranoia.

…

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The Great Hack and the dysaguria of Cambridge Analytica

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| Digital Rights, Dysaguria, Media and Communications, Privacy

Great Hack poster via IMDBThe Great Hack has just dropped on Netflix (IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes | wikipedia | poster left). It is a documentary that explores “how a data company named Cambridge Analytica came to symbolize the dark side of social media in the wake of the 2016 US presidential election”. Much has already been written about the Cambridge Analytica scandal (eg ICO here and here (pdfs) | Carole Cadwalladr in The Guardian), and a great deal more will be written as the movie is reviewed in the coming days. I don’t propose to add to those torrents here. Rather, I simply want to observe that there is a word for a company that symbolizes the dark side of social media.

Reacting to Thomas More’s coinage of “utopia” as the “perfect state”, from the Greek “eu” meaning “good”, and “topos” meaning “place”, John Stuart Mill coined “dystopia” as the “frightening state”, from the Greek “dys” meaning “bad”, and (again) “topos” meaning “place”. But, whilst “dystopia” is perfect to describe a “frightening state” and its frightened society, it is not particularly apt to describe a “frightening company” and its frightened society. Indeed, we don’t really have the words for when a corporate society goes bad; “dystopia” and “dystopian” have been pressed into service (even in the context of reviewing The Great Hack: “Watching this film, you literally start to wonder if history has been warped towards a sickening dystopia”); but the warped society in that movie is very different to the warped society in classic dystopian fiction (such as, to take the obvious example, Orwell’s 1984).…

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Not archiving the .ie domain, and the death of new politics

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| Copyright, GDPR, Privacy

Internet Archive Googly Eyes via FlickrAbout this time last year, the Government lost some votes on important issues as the Bill that became the Data Protection Act 2018 (also here) was at Committee Stage in the Dáil. Writing on this blog, I described this as an example of new politics making for interesting times. Rather magnanimously, they did not seek to reverse these defeats; at the last stage of the Bill, the Minister confirmed that it was “not [his] intention to revisit the putting of the amendment in any other form”. In the intervening year, much has changed – for one thing, we are a year closer to a general election, commentators forecast that the next budget in October will be this Government’s last, and there is speculation that the Taoiseach may even call a snap election earlier than that. All of this means that the detente of new politics is breaking down. There can be no surer sign of this than that the Government is no longer magnanimously prepared to accept parliamentary defeats, and will reverse them if it can. There was a shameful example of this arrogance earlier this week in the Seanad, during the Report Stage debate on the Copyright and Other Intellectual Property Law Provisions Bill 2018.…

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Denis O’Brien’s case against the Sunday Business Post should never have reached the High Court – updated

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| Defamation

Cover SBP 3 MarIn today’s Sunday Business Post (as trailed on the front cover, here; element left), I have an OpEd (sub req’d) in which I argue that O’Brien’s case should never have reached the High Court, and that the Department of Justice needs to publish its review of the Defamation Act as soon as possible (you can download it below). It’s part of a bumper collection of articles on the case (spread here and here):

Emmet Oliver: A man named Sue. The eagerness with which Denis O’Brien has taken legal actions in recent years shows the urgent need for a comprehensive overhaul of Ireland’s libel laws.

Francesca Comyn: A refusal to wave the white flag. At its core, The Sunday Business Post’s victory over tycoon Denis O’Brien in the High Court was a broader win for journalism and the Irish media.

Susan O’Keeffe: Defamation ruling a victory for freedom of the press. Even when journalists are sure of their facts, they take a risk once they tangle with power, a risk worth taking because it’s important for journalism and democracy.

Eoin O’Dell: O’Brien’s case should never have reached the High Court. The Department of Justice needs to publish its review of the Defamation Act as soon as possible (you can download it below).…

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Orphan works – a small corner of copyright law that will suffer after Brexit

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| Copyright

BL-spare-rib-final-homepage-banner-(element)From today’s Guardian:

Spare Rib digital archive faces closure in event of no-deal Brexit

EU copyright exception would no longer protect British Library scans of pioneering feminist magazine

Spare Rib, the trailblazing women’s magazine that defined generations of feminism, faces the axe from the British Library’s digital archive if there is no Brexit deal, it has emerged

The magazine ran from 1972 to 1993, and all 11,000 articles, cartoons and photographs were made digitally available in 2015 as part of the joint efforts of the British Library (BL) and the Spare Rib Collective.

The British Library’s website explains:

Spare Rib Archive – possible suspension of access

Polly Russell explains why the Spare Rib resource may be suspended in the event of a ‘no deal’ withdrawal from the EU

In 2015, as part of our commitment to making our intellectual heritage available to everyone for research, inspiration and enjoyment, the British Library digitised and made available the full run of the feminist magazine Spare Rib available via the Jisc Journals platform.

The EU orphan works directive currently allows … material [where the rights-holder cannot be identified after a diligent search] to be made available by cultural heritage institutions. Around 57% of the Spare Rib archive – some 11,000 articles and images from 2,700 contributors – benefits from this protection.

…

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The further GDPR travails of Ross O’Carroll-Kelly

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| GDPR

Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (pictured left) is in GDPR-trouble again. Last time, he was fired from his job as an estate-agent for failing to report a data breach, when his work lap-top was stolen from his car just as the GDPR came into full effect. This time (as recounted in last Saturday’s Irish Times magazine; audio here), he learns to his great cost the power of the data subject access request under Article 15 GDPR.

The background is well explained by Jennifer O’Connell’s experiences also recounted in last Saturday’s Irish Times magazine. Her story starts with staff members in a hotel asking customers: “If you enjoyed the service, would you minding leaving a TripAdvisor review, and mentioning me by name?” As she explains

It’s not only people in the service industry whose job security now rests on the whims of the terminally irate. If you’re a writer, Goodreads and Amazon reviews are your nemesis. If you’re a driver, it’s Uber. If you rent out your house, it’s Airbnb. If you’re a journalist, it’s the below-the-line comments.

She hasn’t reviewed the hotel waiter yet (she’ll be kind); but “in a Dublin hotel a few months ago, unable to sleep due to the sound of the four-hour, vigorous, live-action porn show on the other side of the cardboard door connecting [her] room with the one next door, [she] lay there plotting [her] TripAdvisor review”.…

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Navigating Privacy in a Data Centric World

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

Jules Polonetsky, via FPF siteOn Monday, 28 January 2019, 16.00-17.30, in Regent House (map), Trinity College Dublin, Jules Polonetsky (CEO, Future of Privacy Forum; pictured left) will give a public lecture on

Navigating Privacy in a Data Centric World

Almost every area of technical progress today is reliant on ever broader access to personal information. Companies, academic researchers, governments and philanthropists utilise ever more sensitive data about individuals movements, health, online browsing, home activity, social interactions. To collect the data, cars, drones, phones, wearables, TVs and faces are tracked. Sensors that see and hear collect new types of information and machine learning provides exponentially deeper analysis. Will European data protection reshape the leading data intensive technologies? With the backlash against tech company practices lead to regulation in the US and globally? What role for Ireland at the centre of the new generation of regulation and tech development? Can data be mined for the benefit of society without creating an Orwellian future?

Jules Polonetsky is CEO of the Future of Privacy Forum (PFP). It is a nonprofit organisation that serves as a catalyst for privacy leadership and scholarship, advancing principled data practices in support of emerging technologies. FPF brings together industry, academics, civil society and other thought leaders to explore the challenges posed by technological innovation and develops privacy protections, ethical norms and workable business practices.…

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