Simon Phipps › Comments

UFO vapour trail? Northern Lights caught in spin cycle? Giant hoax (and I mean GIANT)? More details, please... - Simon Phipps

This is indeed a frequent fig-leaf used by mash-up creators on YouTube and elsewhere, and provides a good pointer to how the emerging digital culture thinks copyright law ought to work. - Simon Phipps

More high-value research that punches holes in the geek lifestyle. - Simon Phipps

Strong, sad story that's worth reading. Given the effects are so systemic and rely so much on the inability of individual wisdom to overcome systemic subconscious errors of risk evaluation, is there any hope left? - Simon Phipps

When you create any system, you create the game that plays it. Now lets reflect on what happens when criminals start faking real biometrics in order to conduct crimes against individuals, like fake bank transactions. Doesn't seem so smart to completely rely on biometric ID cards at that point. - Simon Phipps

Pamela doesn't miss a beat dealing with smears against her previous Groklaw posting. Once again well worth reading. - Simon Phipps

Insightful research suggests that there may be benefits from the moves that modern society is taking to ensure that adults, especially men, are either afraid of or prevented from interacting with children. - Simon Phipps

Speechless. - Simon Phipps

The problem is not the police; it's the fact that a badly thought-out law was put on the statute books and the police are now empowered and expected to enforce it. I picked the story from The Telegraph because they of all UK newspapers could be expected to find the real root-cause as the government's legislation and not the police. And yet they fail the test. This case is as clear a demonstration as could be created that we dare not allow the Digital Economy Bill to pass, with it's empowerment-on-trust of Lord Mandelson. - Simon Phipps

Even the recording industry finds our old-fashioned copyright system unworkable. Just how bad does it have to get before people wake up to the fact we're now in an internet age and that's a source of opportunity instead of threat? What's the betting things will get even worse under the intolerable worldview ACTA is introducing to fossilise copyright in the analogue age? - Simon Phipps

Whether these are a good idea or not for their intended use, the article makes no mention at all of their use by the police to track vehicles for other uses. Everywhere you see the phrase "speed camera" or "safety camera" think "surveillance camera" becuase these are general-purpose video cameras whose use is dictated purely by software. They can be used with great ease for general surveillance, and the more we allow on the streets the less freedom we have as a society, no matter what benefits may be used to justify their initial introduction. - Simon Phipps

The House of Lords debate uncovered the lack of accountability that has been caused by concentrating so many roles in a single department under Peter Mandelson. The Lords asked "Can so vast a department really be held to account effectively when its only Cabinet minister is here and not in the Commons?" but I'd go further and ask whether such a vast department can in any way be held accountable to Parliament. Lord Mandeson is clearly not a safe pair of hands for our liberty and he is using both of them to grasp it and reserve it to himself. - Simon Phipps

The detailed letter linked from this news release is well worth reading in full. It gives more insight into the case than has been available from any source to date. - Simon Phipps

Both. The question that remains is which is in control, and my sense from reading all the postings is that it's still the latter. - Simon Phipps

Wish I'd been able to go see Imogen Heap's tour, but she didn't come to the south. - Simon Phipps

Yes, there should. It's dirty bullying blackmail and the people doing it should be ashamed. The law needs reform to prevent it happening entirely and return copyright to its proper role policing the relationship between large corporations. - Simon Phipps

It absolutely is, because as I have said over & over open source is nothing to do with business. Open source is what happens when developers align a fragment of their interests with a fragment of the interests of many other developers and collaborate around a free software commons. It is not pro-business, anti-business, right-wing, left-wing - it is just what happens to software development when the internet is pervasive. Any business model is entirely up to the people involved and is never inherent in the community. When you think it is, it's probably going to turn out to be broken & need mending. - Simon Phipps

Eben Moglen sends a critique to the European Commission. - Simon Phipps

Worthwhile dissection of this outrageous assault on the future on behalf of the past. - Simon Phipps

Calm and devastating analysis of the security procedures at US (and other international) airports by a former police leader with both the experience to know and the hard nose to not complain unless it was really relevant. - Simon Phipps

More precisely, they take exception to section 17, the clause that would turn Mandelson and his successors into absolute monarchs of copyright enforcement. No-one in their right mind would think that clause was good and I can't help thinking it's there just to be removed as part of a compromise agreement that leaves the rest of the terrible ideas in this bill (like three-strikes disconnection) intact. Yes, I think the people behind this bill are that cynical. - Simon Phipps

Rather skewed in the direction of corporate competition rules, but a useful short summary of an important but impenetrable European landmark treaty. - Simon Phipps

Quite extraordinary (and uncharacteristically unprofessional) public statement on behalf of Eclipse that seems to me likely to raise more questions than it settles. - Simon Phipps

Valuable posting from Michael Geist again. Take careful note of this. Very few of the people I speak to are aware of ACTA. By the time everyone realises their rights relating to media and copyright have been abridged and their children have been criminalised, it will be too late for any one state to take action against this secretive, unaccountable, anti-democratic cartel. - Simon Phipps

Britain's police force again trying their best to be seen as out-of-touch, rights-hating and petty. Still the government has done nothing to correct the slide into authoritarianism. - Simon Phipps

Repeat after me: open source means more than just the license. We need a scorecard. (And before you say, I am well aware of Sun's shortcomings, I am still working on them). - Simon Phipps

Seems the slow roll-out of fibre in the UK caused in no small part by an incredibly badly structured tax imposed at the start of the decade. - Simon Phipps

"So the market is large, there seems to be vibrant competition, new entrants are disrupting it, and the established player's legacy is inhibiting its ability to compete." - Simon Phipps

It's more than a "reshuffle" - Baroso has built an entirely new structure for the Commission, and Kroes is now in charge of all things digital, including (apparently) telecoms. That makes her Czar of Three Strikes and High Lord of FOSS. She's also one of the seven bearers of the rings of power, AKA Vice President of the Commission. I'd say things just got a whole lot more interesting in this area. - Simon Phipps

When you create a system you create the game that plays it. The only way to prevent the system becoming the game is to change it. Obama has done the right thing. - Simon Phipps