Category Archives: DigitalRights

Lifeblogging – the ethical questions

So, I’ve just put a nominal amount into funding the kickstarter for Memoto – a GPS enabled 5Mp camera that one pins to ones clothes and takes regular geotagged pictures every few mins. I really want one, but the budget doesn’t stretch to $280 for a single unit, so a dollar to vicariously follow the project seemed a fair compromise.. :-)

It did get me thinking about the ethics of this, though – should you also wear a t-shirt saying you’re recording this? There was a BBC documentary I grabbed off iPlayer but haven’t listened to yet about lifeblogging, and there are a few people in Cambridge UK doing this right now. Was talking about the process rather than how people reacted to it, from the snatches I caught of the live broadcast.

Anyway, how would you react if I turned up with a lifelogging device? Would you ask for veto? What about if you found out that I’d had one later – would you feel your privacy had been invaded?

What about personal privacy of the owner? The current kickstarter uploads all the photos to the central site when it syncs; there are discussions about a local server to tie into the image browser, but how long term is the project? What if the tools to extract your images aren’t that sophisticated and you would need to recreate the metadata from the geotagging and file names?

Interesting stuff.

Rasberry Pi User Guide

By Upton and Halfacre

I pre-ordered this as soon as it was announced; in dead tree format, no less, as I was expecting to refer to it at a workbench. I ordered it partly because I thought it would be a useful get up to speed on the Pi I’d bought, but also because I wanted to put some cash the way of Upton, as he’s one of the leading lights behind the Raspberry Pi foundation, even if it had been mostly ‘ghostwritten’ by Halfacre.

If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting it to be much; a few desultory articles on plugging things together, and a short guide to Python. It turns out that its actually a really great guide that I have and will recommend to anyone with, or planning to get, a Pi!

The authors have made a decent spread of topics of things you might want to know and do with your device. As I read through it I thought how much it would have motivated me in my CDT course at school, having one of these. Heck, I even wondered why we didn’t prototype in the electronics component of the course – was breadboard around in the 80′s? Must have been, right? Anyway, its kicked my hardware hacking interest up a notch, even with my interest in Arduino (and thanks to the book I know understand why the Pi might be good some projects, and the Arduino others), so I will be shopping for breadboard and the like this weekend to start my project!

64 things

by Ben Hammersley

Been a fan of his writing for a while, even if he’s been a bit too cool at times, I find his blog writing very though provoking, and looking back, its informed a number of my approaches over the years. His OReilly book on RSS is still my go-to example of a well laid out book with all the information you need and no more.

Knew this was coming out, and leafed through the hardback in Heffers. One of the ‘things’, on the ’100 things’ ‘movement’, kept coming back to me, and I ended up buying it on Kindle over the holiday to get the meme out of my head. That only slightly worked, as I’ve been thinking about it ever since, particularly in light of Bruce Sterling’s ‘Viridian manifesto‘, which I guess inspired that. I find the challenge impractical on so many levels (not to mention example of a ‘first world problem’), but the minimalism draws me.

Good stuff, quite thought provoking, but light on detail on everything, with a conspicuous lack of footnotes or citations to back his assertions up. Not sure if it was aimed at digital policy makers, those struggling to come to terms to terms with the internet, or what.

Still, a good read, which I suspect I will be coming back to. I suspect that I shall get a lot more meat out of Stephenson’s ‘Some Remarks’, which I shall also purchase real soon, even with the offer of a loan. Then again, I have *so many* technical and non-fiction eBooks to get through, I’m having trouble justifying what I know will be a worthwhile read.

On the subject of reading on the Kindle App on the iPad, I enjoyed the experience slightly more than the other reading apps, and the note-taking was slightly easier, with the inbuilt dictionary being useful a few times. I made a load of notes and highlights, but cannot find a way to get them out of the App (edit; there are some here, but that’s not friendly.. edit[2] log into kindle.amazon.co.uk and get them from there, apparently (only at time of writing, no notes are shown, which implies my App isn’t uploading them, gr…, and of course a hardware kindle has them on its ‘usb drive’), so its back to good old faithful GoodReader.

Health and Social Care Bill

Last week, I wrote to my MP, Julian Huppert, asking him to vote against the above bill, both in the motions being proposed in the Lib Dem conference, and the actual Bill itself.

He proceeded to do so, rebelling against the party line to do it. I would like to thank him publicly for doing so, and for representing me in that regard.

A few days later, I received an email from him, which explained his, and the Liberal Democrats position in more detail. As at the time he hadn’t got anything on his website and I thought the email gave a more nuanced view than some of the polarising opinions, I thought it was worth publishing here;

15 March 2012

Dear Mr Constable,

Thank you for contacting me to let me know of your concerns about the
Health and Social Care Bill.
I voted against the Bill last September, when it left the House of
Commons. Although the Bill by then was better than the version
originally proposed by Andrew Lansley, largely through the efforts of
my colleagues, I did not believe it had been improved sufficiently to
get public support and confidence.
In the months since then it has been debated in the House of Lords,
and I acknowledge that much work has been achieved, notably by Liberal
Democrat peers, to make further improvements.

I am proud of Liberal Democrat amendments to the bill that ensure that
competition is not the focus, that there is a duty to reduce health
inequality and that there is a greater priority for medical research.
We will continue to have universal health care that is free at the
point of care. I also welcome the clause in the bill that will ensure
that never again will Governments be allowed to favour private sector
contracts when there are existing NHS providers.

However, I believe that the improvements are still not enough and
crucially the bill is now opposed by the medical professionals who
would have to implement it.

I therefore voted in the House of Commons on 13th March for the
amendment tabled by some of my Liberal Democrat colleagues saying that
the House “declines to support the bill in its current form and calls
for an urgent summit of the Royal Colleges, professional bodies,
patients’ organisations and the Government to plan health reforms
based on the Coalition Agreement”. I also voted for the main motion
calling for the bill to be dropped, when the amendment was defeated,
because I believe that the NHS is too vital for the welfare of every
person in Cambridge to be broken up by unpopular reforms.

Sadly, I was not on the winning side in that debate and vote.

There has also been significant discussion of the NHS Transition Risk
Register, and whether it should be released. I welcome the ruling of
the Information Tribunal that the Government should publish the NHS
Risk Register and wrote immediately on the publication of the report
to the Secretary of State for Health asking that the register be
immediately released. I had previously written in similar terms after
the Information Commissioner’s original ruling, and signed an Early
Day Motion calling for the Risk Register to be released. I hope that
Andrew Lansley will do the right thing on this issue.

I do believe that the NHS needs improvement and reform. Everyone in
this country deserves a first class health service which protects
everyone regardless of ability to pay.

The 1997-2010 Labour government made a number of reforms that
introduced private sector providers into the health service and paid
them more than NHS providers for the same service, including £250
million for operations that were never performed. In addition a
botched computer system that never worked cost £12 billion pounds and
the Health Service was left with a bill for £60 billion from PFI
contracts. Labour’s response to these failures was to employ
management consultants, the number of in the NHS rose by eighty per
cent in the years 2008-2010. The 2010 Labour manifesto also contained
proposals for greater involvement of the private sector.

We should be under no illusion that the previous government’s reforms
left the health service with health outcomes that are below the EU
average and near bankrupt hospitals. I remain convinced that there is
a pressing need for reform.

I believe that the only way to maintain free universal health care is
through bottom-up reforms which are fully supported by clinicians on
the ground.

I hope the Government will be able to improve the NHS over the coming
years, but I believe that the current Bill will not make the changes
needed.

Thank you for writing to me about this important issue.

Yours sincerely,

Julian Huppert
Member of Parliament for Cambridge

Stop Murdoch’s BBC payments

Cribbed from the Azaaz.org site I registered a petition from;

The BBC is being forced to hand over tens of millions of pounds every year to line Murdoch’s pockets. Murdoch’s cronies in government are determined to save this scheme — but together we can stop this outrage.

These unbelievable regulations cost our public broadcasters up to £100 million a year. Rather than being paid for their great programmes, they actually have to pay BSkyB to show their programmes.

In coming days, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will decide whether to renew this dreadful deal and Murdoch’s scandals have put him on the back foot. Our pressure can stop this BBC robbery. Click here to send your message to Hunt now:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_murdochs_bbc_robbery_2/?tta

These are our millions — handed over in license fees to fund British programmes, not to boost Murdoch’s profits. But an unfair system of “retransmission fees” designed by Murdoch leaves the BBC and other broadcasters with no choice. They are forced to pay BSkyB to show their channels, even though they add huge value to the satellite platform — accounting for 41% of all shows watched on BSkyB and vastly increasing customer retention.

Amazingly, Murdoch has argued the exact opposite in the US — there, he charges cable TV companies over $250 million a year to show his programmes. With the same deal Murdoch gets in the US, our public service broadcasters would have hundreds of millions of pounds extra every year to invest in great programmes. This money would allow the BBC to reverse its cuts to BB4 and local radio overnight.

Murdoch’s cozy relationship with our politicians has won him this outrageous UK scheme — but his power is starting to crumble, and together we can end it. Labour has already come out against this deal, and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is about to make his decision in his communications review — send your message now to make sure he stops this outrage.

SOURCES

Re-transmission fees in the UK: the case for change (independent report):
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/reports/pdf/RetransmissionandAccessChargesReview.pdf

How the BBC can stand up to parasitic Sky (The Guardian):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/02/maimed-bbc-parasitic-sky

Broadcasters union backs call for reform (BECTU):
http://www.bectu.org.uk/news/1408

UKUUG Spring 2011 Conference

I was lucky to be able to attend this year, as work had agreed to send me on it, and hadn’t reneged when I’d handed in my notice, although I did end up volunteering to pay for the travel and take holiday, so its only some impact for them..

Most impressed with the trains from Peterborough to Leeds – clean, on time and with free Wifi (for 15 mins, then chargeable), and power sockets at every seat.  Makes me wonder what the hell the cambridge operators are doing when the Leeds line can obviously muster this..  Also most impressed with Google maps/Navigation on my HTC Wildfire.  It directed me walking from the train station to event, and hotel, flawlessly.  Pity the battery didn’t hold out all day, though.  I really should be able to listen to a couple of hours of music, walk for 30 mins with the GPS on and make a couple of phone calls without using up all the juice.

Conference was good and increasingly attracting the DevOps crowd, which is a very good thing – preventing the conference from fading into obscurity and obsolescence.  Inspiring talks from Matthew Macdonald-Wallace and Adrian Kennard in particular, although I enjoyed the talks on Ceph, Git and DNSSEC also, and have some new projects to investigate as a result.

Thanks to Google for the excellent stationary swag, and for paying for dinner at the excellent Leeds Armoury.

Good fun, interesting talks and people and not too much intrusion into work for those attending via that.  Bloody good value.

Where to buy eBooks?

That’s DRM free legal ones, that is.

Answering this question for a friend on Twitter, I thought I’d posted my links here, but evidently not, so;

Technical

OReilly (specifically their ‘deal of the day‘)

Safari (also OReilly, but subscription with ‘tokens’ for chapter downloads – not signed up for this yet, but really should based on how much I’ve spent on their ‘deal of the day’)

Safari (via the Cambridge Library, if you have a library card)

Fiction

Fictionwise – the first people to do commercial DRM free eBooks of living authors, from way back when.  Most new content contains DRM these days, but they have a lot of out-of-print and short story stuff at reasonable prices – I’m still reading my way through the stuff I bought there..

Webscription – a number of publishers use this as their portal, and it seems to do most formats (crucially, epub, mobi and PDF)

Some others that might be of use, but I’ve not used, and you can’t get the latest ‘blockbuster’ from..

Feedbooks; not read anything from them, but linked via Aldiko.

Genre Specific – go by recommendation only; drivethrurpg.com RPG related works inc fiction (checkout Eclipse Phase and Shadowrun for examples)

Mixed – both Fiction & Reference

Archive.org/openlibrary.org (the latter has some interesting proposals for DRM-aided lending eBooks that I haven’t fully explored yet  -and may not as its Win/Mac only due to the dreadful Adobe Digital Editions)

Project Gutenberg – the original eBook project digitising out of print texts.  I recently bittorrentted (as they encourage, and I left the torrent open for a couple of weeks to give something back) the DVD they make available of all their books – 7.8GB of text!

eBook friendly publishers

Tor – they often do free downloads of authors works inc commissioning short stories (and when launched gave away loads of eBooks); worth keeping an eye on.

Night Shade Books (via webscription, above)

eBook friendly Authors

Cory Doctorow – one of the first; you can often find eBook apps like Stanza and Alkido with sections to download his works, as they;re all Creative Commons licensed. He also writes some though provoking commentary on the eBook market, including some columns in Publishers weekly that are worth seeking out (but also see below)

Charles Stross – well worth reading his blog for his thoughts on the industry and technology.

John Scalzi

Robin Sloan – I particularly recommend downloading his ‘Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-​​Four-​​Hour Book Store’

eBook podcasts

The Dragon Page – Cover to cover; slightly cheesy but usually has interesting information each week, and at least one of the hosts makes money from fiction eBooks.

eBook software

Calibre – eBook management; works on all three OS’s, handles all file formats

Aldiko – Android eBook reader with built in download sites & options fro free/creative commons books

Stanza – iPhone (Ios I suppose I should say) client similar to the above; now ceased development because (IIRC) they were bought by Amazon and it became the Kindle App.

Regarding BBC’s amendment to the multiplex licence for DTT

To:  Andrew.Dumbreck@ofcom.org.uk

Dear Sir,

As per; http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/tvlicensing/enquiry/ofcom_bbc.pdf

I am unclear as to the public benefit, in particular as to why the BBC should be approaching Offcom “to take steps to ensure that reception equipment will implement the specified content management arrangements”.

It would seem to me that;

a) Since the BBC is publicly funded, the direction should come from the licence fee payers and not the third party content owners – if they wish to lobby, surely they should do so directly?

b) There is no benefit for the licence payer, and potentially considerable cost, as if I read the amendment correctly, the scrambling can only be undone by new boxes, rendering the current crop of set top boxes etc, obsolete and non-functional, requiring new boxes to be purchased – already a sore point for those forced to purchase one by the digital switchover.

I would ask you to refuse this ammendment on these grounds.

Thanks,

John, Licence fee payer.

Digital Britian Letter to David Howarth

a copy of my recent writetothem.co.uk letter to my MP;

Dear David Howarth,

I am writing to you with regard to the Digital Britian report, particularly the recommendations on tackling piracy on-line;

http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html

I am disturbed by the recommendation to grant Offcom powers to curtail users internet rights & access of alleged (but not proved in a court of law) copyright infringers. I am concerned by, and deeply regret the proposed blurring of Ofcom’s role, supposedly to protect competition and the public interest, to one of altering market access and conditions in favour of incumbent players.

There appears to be no suggestion of a requirement to take users to court before curtailing their access. This looks like HADOPI-lite: muzzling of users and potential harm to the internet’s infrastructure and lawful businesses, to protect failing business models in the entertainment industry. Regulations around enforcement will be drafted by industry and approved by the regulator, Ofcom – with no oversight by the public.

The likely victims will not be the hard core downloaders or pirates, but, as the RIAA’s campaign in the US has shown, the victims will be the innocent, naive, and collaterally-damaged legitimate services, alongside traditional ‘consumers’ who will find the market benefits of near zero-marginal cost distribution potentially reduced by near monopoly control of a small number of rightsholders.

Artists definitely need fair compensation for their work and copyright needs to function well in the digital world. But clamp downs that damage the internet’s open-ness and our human rights further undermine copyright’s reputation.

I am writing to you in my belief that this will rebound, either by restricting innovation and competition, or undermining copyright’s reputation. I would also ask you to remind others in parliment, and represent my view in this way should legislation be drafted around this, that it is our human right to have a legal process before being found guilty and punished.