Oscar Magi, the Italian judge presiding over the Google YouTube privacy/defamation liability case. Picture copyright Luca Bruno/Associated Press. Taken from The Guardian - click to view article.

– UPDATE Thursday 25th November, 23:25UTC:

Lilian Edwards has put together a really comprehensive analysis of the verdict on her blog. See also her prior post about it back in December.

Original post follows.

Wow.

Gosh, this is bad news.

Three of four Google employees on trial for defamation and violations of Italy’s privacy code, in reference to a video uploaded by a third-party to YouTube and subsequently taken down by Google after a takedown request, have been found guilty today by a court in Milan. They were absolved of the defamation charges but found guilty of privacy violations, and given six-month suspended sentences.

I haven’t been following this case in any detail, but what I can glean from the result seems more than a little out of step with the thrust of the E-Commerce Directive, given that they did not film, upload, or review the video, and acted to remove the content within a few hours of a police report (so presumably “expeditiously”).

But we are deeply troubled by this conviction for another equally important reason. It attacks the very principles of freedom on which the Internet is built. Common sense dictates that only the person who films and uploads a video to a hosting platform could take the steps necessary to protect the privacy and obtain the consent of the people they are filming. European Union law was drafted specifically to give hosting providers a safe harbor from liability so long as they remove illegal content once they are notified of its existence.

That’s taken from Google’s reaction on their blog.

This case has been ongoing for some time. There is analysis at Ars Technica and a somewhat contrary opinion at ZDnet blogs.

There is also good a BBC News report containing a video statement from a Google representative, who appears visibly shocked and emotional at the result. There is also coverage at The Guardian. And more for those who understand Italian at La Stampa and Corriere della Sera.

According to TechDirt, YouTube now receives 20 hours of video uploads every minute. It’s therefore worth noting that the Italian government have recently proposed making the approval of the Communications Ministry a prerequisite to uploading video onto the Web as part of their amendments to media law (presumably AVMS implementation?). A central part of Google’s argument in the case was the impracticality of such pre-approval/screening.

I hope the Commission go to town on Italy for failure to implement the E-Commerce directive’s safeguards.

Anyway, if you’re into law and open source, you could do a lot worse than to check it out. You can download a PDF of the entire thing, or order a print version via Lulu (which is very cool).

I guess I’m supposed to be neutral given that I run a lot of the reviews, copyedit and put the thing together, but the highlights for me are probably Silvia Pfeiffer’s article on open standards for video codecs in HTML5, which is well-written and extremely topical at the moment, and Susannah Sheppard’s article on the potential for competition law to affect Free Software, which is something I hadn’t directly considered before.

We’ve reached an interesting stage in the development of the journal. It’s now clear that it has a high degree of FOSS community support, and we are beginning to get the same from the academic community. Much work is still to be done though. We desperately need more submissions, could do with a more streamlined workflow, and on an ongoing basis we will require a more permanent governance structure.

One of the things that has helped most in achieving visibility is being part of the OCLC OAIster database. This is replicated across lots of libraries, as part of their ‘find an eJournal’ systems. It means that more academics and students are more likely to be able to find the publication without doing a web search.

We also now deposit DOI numbers with CrossRef – this helps articles maintain their authority if they get distributed across the web or hosted by some other server (as our licence policy allows).

Amendments already discussed

A light-hearted one to start you off:

Baroness Howe of Idlicote, on why investment in mobile networks is a good idea:

“Equally, the noble Lord, Lord Steel, made a very important point. I, too, live in one of the completely hopeless reception areas. Enough gigabytes need to be available so that the level is acceptable right across the country. I fear that we did not have enough gigabytes in the first place so that we could compete with countries such as Japan and so on. That is one of the problems with which we have to live.”

(6th Jan, Column 149)

Oh noes! We don’t have enough gigabytes!

Some enlightened talk – but full of bombast – from Lord Lucas on trust-busting (during a section about the universal service obligation on broadband providers). He is clearly a long-term BT critic:

“However, as the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, pointed out, we are facing not a tide but a tsunami-the dam has broken. He outlined a world where there is the growth of apps, to be followed by a decent e-book, at last-I am dead certain that Apple will not produce anything other than that. This will create an enormous change, not only for this part of the Bill but certainly for Clauses 4 onwards. I declare an interest as someone who earns most of his money from selling copyright on the net.

It is wrong to see these things as a threat. They are an enormous opportunity. The way in which to harness an opportunity is not to live with the old monopolists and try to shore them up, doing cosy deals with the big beasts of the industry, but to encourage the underdogs and the people who are motivated to change.”

(6th Jan 2010, Column 159)

Perhaps not to positive on the copyright side, but at least with regard to broadband provision there’s some determination not to hand BT a chunk of change and not keep a tight reign on them. Anyway, Lucas’ amendment was withdrawn.

An attempt to usurp the special place of investment in public service broadcasting by Lord Howard of Rising (amendment 3, here):

“My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 4, 6, 7 and 31. These five amendments fall into a few different groups. Amendments 3 and 6 serve two purposes-first, to create a level playing field with respect to investment in media content, and, secondly, to highlight a further concern that this subsection may have on Ofcom’s ability to function properly. By removing the phrase “public service” from this duty, we are attempting to create a level playing field in the media sector.

We on this side of the Committee want to attract investment into UK content in general, rather than just public service content. Without this amendment, such a duty may put off potential investment into the UK media sector, because it would create a fear that Ofcom may intervene to the detriment of those not producing public service content. We do not believe that the state should choose what type of content non-public service broadcasters invest in. Consumers value choice above all else, and these amendments would ensure that this is protected.

(6th Jan 2010, Column 163-164)

Amendments still to be discussed

You can view a full list of amendments to be discussed in the Committee stage at the HoL site. From my (copyright policy) perspective, the most interesting are:

Amendment 33 (Lord Razzall; Lord Clement-Jones):

“Obligations on copyright holders

Copyright holders seeking to take action against subscribers for online copyright infringement must use the process set out in sections 124A to 124E of the Communications Act 2003 except in cases of actual or likely extreme prejudice.”

Amendment 34 (Lord Razzall; Lord Clement-Jones):

“Compliance with fundamental rights

In drafting or amending any code, laying any statutory instrument, or taking any other action under sections 124A to 124L of the Communications Act 2003 or under section 302A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Secretary of State must demonstrate before such action is implemented that he has considered whether such action—

(a)  is necessary and proportionate to the goal of protecting and enforcing copyright, and

(b)  that it appropriately balances the interest of rights holders and the interests of the public in due process, privacy, freedom of expression and other fundamental human rights guaranteed by inter alia the European Convention of Human Rights and the EC Charter of Rights.”

Amendment 56 and 57, on introducing a DMCA-style sworn statements to affirm that the accuser owns the copyright concerned and has collected the information legally:

“56 Page 6, line 24, at end insert “; and

(   )  includes a sworn statement by the person making the report that the information collected has been obtained in compliance with all relevant laws, including data protection and privacy laws, and by persons entitled to gather such information”

57 Page 6, line 24, at end insert “; and

(   )  includes a sworn statement and evidence that the person making the report owns the requisite copyright” “

I doubt those last ones will survive the Committee stage.

There are also a number of amendments clarifying the accusing tone of the language, from “infringement” to “infringement allegation”. These can be found throughout the tabled amendments.

Palm Pre

I purchased  Palm Pre (O2, UK) a few days ago, and I thought it would be interesting to post my impressions of it after having used most of the functions of WebOS, its operating system, and having played about with most of the built-in apps. I have been using the phone as my primary device during a few normal work/university days, which turned out to be an interesting test of the device’s hardware.

Let it be said at the outset that this is not a review: if you want that, have a look at the excellent Ars Technica pieces on the hardware and software aspects of the phone.

Read on for more…

Overall impressions

This is an extremely promising device, with a fundamentally modern architecture and interface metaphors appropriate for its multitasking, productivity-centric target audience. WebOS is not intended as an iPhone ‘killer’, and though it could fulfil some aspects of that role, I agree with Ars Technica’s assessment that WebOS and particularly the Pre are at heart messaging and presence-centric, rather than focusing on media and browsing.

Where WebOS really comes into its own is in efficiently managing streams of contact, whether they be through email, IM, SMS or other means, and making real-time updates a pleasure to keep up with. This is a true multi-tasking phone, but unlike my old phone (a Nokia E71 running Symbian S60 3.1), multitasking feels as natural and well-integrated as on any good desktop OS. But unlike a desktop OS, WebOS adopts new metaphors for multitasking and interaction – the ‘card’, which despite having a few teething issues, is much more appropriate for a mobile device than anything imported straight from Mac OS or Windows, and gestures, which grace almost every aspect of the operating system. Most importantly, the innovations in WebOS are not intimidating – they are something that people will actually use.

On the downside, the hardware lets the OS down slightly, due to poor battery life and possibly suspect build quality.

Hardware

The European version of the Pre reminds me of my old Nokia N95 8GB, in terms of its build quality and overall form factor. Palm got the following things right:

• Perfect shape and size, although the stock rear cover is a bit slippy so I recommend using the one shipped with the Touchstone (the wireless charging device).
• Amazing, beautiful screen, on which pixellation is almost a non-issue, and the rounded corners are absolutely appropriate for WebOS. It dims in dark environments by just the right amount, too.
• Excellent touch system, enhanced by a really good capacitative technology
• Notification light (built in to the ‘home’ button). A plus.
• Gesture area below the screen generally works very well.
• Good reception – I am able to make calls with no issues in an area where my E71 tends to switch aggressively between 3G and GSM, leading to momentary drop-outs
• Good phone call sound quality and volume
• Excellent music playback through the headphone jack – as good sound quality as an iPod Touch.
• What seems like very fast graphics hardware, which will surely come into its own as WebOS matures.
• MicroUSB port a very useful addition (see hardware drawbacks below)
• TouchStone wireless charging implemented beautifully
• Good camera with decent flash
• Takes standard headphones, and compatible with BlackBerry/iPhone headsets. Win.

But there are some compromises in the hardware:

• Battery life is not great, and could be a dealbreaker for some. WiFi eats the battery for breakfast. My initial tests show that a full charge, with moderate use and without using WiFi, lasts around ten to eleven hours before the Pre starts complaining. It takes a bit over twelve hours before it actually switches itself off due to low power. Note that this testing isn’t exhaustive, and I do live in a very poor area for coverage, which tends to increase power usage.
• The cover on the USB port is difficult to open, and is certainly going to get damaged and/or lost as a result.
• The back of the Pre sometimes gets warm under use. Though this seems to be partially related to use, sometimes it happens when the phone is idle. I expect this will be improved with firmware updates, and could improve the battery life too.
• The plastic that the Pre is made from feels hard-wearing but perhaps a little cheap.
• The stock back cover is not totally flush with the components underneath, leading to an occasional and slight plastic creaky noise when using the left side of the keyboard.
• The ‘home’ key, while very useful as a notification light, could have been replaced with a non-protruding software key and left more room for gestures (as is the case on the Palm Pixi, the next WebOS device)
• The keyboard is pretty good, but feels like a downgrade from the great one on my E71. I’m getting used to it quickly though.

Software

In general, I cannot say enough good things about WebOS. It’s clearly an early-revision product, but it already shows enough promise that with the right nurturing from Palm and the developer community, it could be a real knockout. Apart from the lack of 3rd-party apps, it’s already highly competitive with the iPhone OS, the latest revisions of BlackBerry OS and Android 1.5.

I should also say that my Pre is running 1.1.3 firmware, which is older than the current US revision (1.2.1). It’s a shame that Palm were not able to update the European Pres, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that the issues fixed in 1.2.x are really fixed.

Notifications

• Beautifully done, simple as that. Every other phone should do notifications like this. Almost every app integrates with it seamlessly, and it’s easy to triage what you do and don’t need to look at. The music player swoops down into a simple set of controls complete with miniature cover art, the messaging app displays message previews.
• Most importantly, notifications are non-modal. You don’t have to stop what you’re doing and deal with them. Every non-critical notification disappears after a few seconds and shrinks into a tiny icon to let you get on with things.
• IMs and SMS messages can optionally be displayed as notifications even when the phone is locked. Very useful for at-a-glance message triage.

‘Cards’ – the task switcher

• Generally very good metaphor for interacting with different apps and screens. Gestures are well integrated and consistent.
• On the downside, sometimes it’s difficult to tell which activities are truly always-on, and which activities need a card kept open in order to work. For example, the IM client is always on even if you close Contacts, where it lives. But swipe away Tweed (the most popular Twitter client), and updates for it cease. Not unexpected behaviour given the integration of IM into the OS, but not very consistent from a UI point of view.
• Love the real-time updates of each card.

Browser

• Generally excellent, and well integrated into the system. A ‘real’ web browser, and about as fast as the iPhone 3G’s.
• Occasional issues with JavaScript-driven sites, such as Facebook’s x.facebook.com. Full Facebook is fine though.
• Integration of the browser into WebOS’ universal search system is very good. From a standing start, only one tap is required to look up a term in Google, Wikipedia or Twitter (not including typing the actual term of course).

Messaging app (IM and SMS)

• Generally superb. The threaded messaging is service-agnostic, meaning if you SMS someone, and they reply using IM, the messages will show up in one integrated conversation.
• Could do with supporting more IM networks. This is likely to happen soon as it’s based on libpurple, which supports more IM networks than… well, anything else.
• Can’t get it to connect to AIM. No idea why.
• Seems to support multiple accounts for the same IM network: nice.
• The ‘return’ key sends messages: the problem is, it’s really easy to hit accidentally. I’ve sent a few unfinished messages this way and had to revise them.

Email app

• Excellent. Fast, powerful and easy to use.
• The ‘all inboxes’ view, and the ‘favourite mailboxes’ system are really useful, and make browsing big IMAP accounts easy.
• Message composition is nicely done, and integrates with the notification system (the message being sent flows into the notification bar and is progress is visible while engaging in other tasks).
• Push IMAP works well but the Pre can occasionally drop mailbox connections without warning or notification, and not resume them for up to a couple of hours.
• Could do with a search mechanism (this is present in WebOS 1.2.x)
• I haven’t tested Exchange, so I can’t say anything about that.

Music player app

• Notwithstanding the fact that the Pre no longer works with iTunes, the music player is really quite good overall.
• The Cover Flow interface for skipping through playlists is great.
• Should have a podcast system whereby podcasts can be downloaded over the air, rather than relying on syncing with a computer.

Contacts/Synergy

• Great principle (integrating contacts across many cloud services into one address book).
• Problematic implementation: it’s difficult to sync straight from a desktop computer, and Synergy can present you with far too many contacts, many of whom may not want on your phone. With Synergy, it’s possible to sync all contacts from a service or none.
• Could do with supporting more services. LDAP directories and SyncML servers are high on this list.
• LinkedIn is also missing as a data source, but this is fixed in WebOS 1.2.1.
• I’ll say it again: SyncML should be implemented and integrated into Palm Profile.
• On the individual contact level, metadata support and the interface are excellent. WebOS supports names for phone numbers (like “office phone”, “US mobile”) which sync from the cloud.
• It’s very easy and clear how to do most tasks, like add a number from the call log to a new or existing contact.

Calendar

• Generally good, with a great interface. The separate day, week and month views show enough to be useful without clutter.
• But same issues as with contacts: ‘all or nothing’ syncing from the cloud. No direct syncing capabilities for desktop machines.
• No CalDAV support, presumably apart from with Google Calendar.

App Catalogue and 3rd-party apps

• Generally shows promise, though some of the apps present are just sophisticated re-workings of existing web apps.
• EverNote app shows the potential of the environment – it’s really very well done.
• Not really a shop yet in Europe – free apps only at this stage.
• 3rd-party apps often do not respect localisation preferences, for example erroneously showing dates in US formats, temperatures in Fahrenheit, and so on.
• The prospect of ‘homebrew’ apps graduating onto the main App Catalogue is very encouraging.

Miscellaneous

• The lock screen is really good – offers PIN security or a simple ‘swipe to unlock’ mechanism
• The quick launcher is nicely done – a swipe up from the gesture area accesses common favourites
• Speed generally good. The Pre only slows to a crawl in one circumstance: while installing an app. After that it returns to normal.
• Photos app should support more upload services, like Flickr. It presently only supports Facebook and Photobucket.
• Google Maps app does not have Street View, and sometimes craps out when no internet connection is available.
• Google Maps app shows distances in miles and feet, with no option to change it to Metric.
• No way of syncing memos and tasks to anything (apart from third-party solutions)
• No way to move the text ‘cursor’ apart from tapping at a particular place in a word. If part of the word has scrolled past the edge of the screen, you are forced to delete enough of the text so that you can see the bit you want to edit. Difficult to explain, but not so good. Fixed in WebOS 1.2.

Conclusions

So, in summary: “fix the niggly software issues, sort out the battery management, and you’re onto a serious winner”.

As for whether I’ll keep mine, I’ll see whether the battery life issue can be tolerated, and whether it looks like Palm will update the firmware to improve it. Extended batteries are beginning to become available, which will help. I have about ten days left in which to decide if the excellent software is worth this compromise, so we’ll see…

You can find the first issue table of contents here, or you can download the entire issue as a PDF file.

This is something I’ve been working on for some time, and I’m very glad to see it get out the door (so to speak) at last. I started work on it while I was an intern at Free Software Foundation Europe, and have been doing bits and pieces in my spare time ever since.

I am eternally grateful to all authors who submitted work for the first issue, to Shane Coughlan for his assistance, to NLnet and Mozilla for sponsoring it, to Tomasz Politanski for his wonderful graphic design work, and finally to the Editorial Committee for overseeing the process.

Graeme West

2. Zero desire to give money to Bono.

You see my problem.

Unlike most instant messaging protocols, XMPP is an open standard. Like e-mail, it is an open system where anyone who has a domain name and a suitable Internet connection can run his own Jabber server and talk to users on other servers. The standard server implementations and many clients are also free and open source software.

From the Wikipedia entry on XMPP

In practice, that means that I can have a Jabber account that’s identical to my email address, and by using server conduits, I talk to friends on AIM and MSN Messenger, without them even knowing that I’m not directly logged in to those services.

I now have four Jabber accounts:

• one self-hosted Jabber server, identical to my primary email address, and links to my MSN Messenger, AIM and Yahoo! accounts through server conduits
• A Gmail account, which also works as a Jabber account
• A work Jabber account
• A Nokia Ovi IM account, just as a trial

Is there any way to unify these?

Given that Jabber is built to mirror the way that email works, is there an equivalent of email forwarding? If this were email, I’d simply have them all forward to one account.

I must retain all my accounts, as I need to be accessible on all the addresses. But I’d like to only have to sign in to one, and have a single contact list containing all my contacts from each account.

Solutions, clever people?

Is it just me, or is the Internet increasingly becoming a bordered world?

From iTunes store accounts linked to credit cards, to GeoIP technology, it seems that services are relying more and more on being focused on one, geo-politically defined audience.

The most annoying instance of this is the BBC iPlayer. The absurd situation of BBC Worldwide, the commercial division of the BBC which sells programmes and formats outside the UK, as well as bandwidth concerns, has led to geographic restrictions being placed on where the iPlayer can be accessed from. Unfortunately, the implementation isn’t linked to having paid for a TV licence (and therefore accessible from anywhere), but rather based on GeoIP technology: checking AS numbers, reverse DNS lookups and other such things against known geographic locations. There are workarounds, but blech to that.

This seems poor to me. The geographic restrictions are some of the main reasons the iPlayer is reliant on DRM and proprietary technologies, things the BBC, as a public broadcaster, should not be involved with.

The same sort of thing is going on with Hulu, NBC.com, and the like. But those are commercial companies, not publicly-funded broadcasters with a public service mission.

It’s unfortunate not only for that reason, but also because end-to-end openness and non-discrimination is one of the best things about the Internet. It’s a positive benefit to me that a I get exactly the same connectivity regardless of location. Things might happen slower, but a lack of discrimination and intermediate futzing is definitely a good thing.

We don’t want to get to a situation where there’s a British Internet *shudder*, German Internet, Australian internet, and so on. So let’s just nip this in the bud, folks. If it’s out there, it’s out there.

</rant>

Time difference from broadcast to posting on iPlayer: 1 hour
Time difference from broadcast to availability (in presumably higher quality) via BitTorrent: 2 hours

Impressive no? Especially as the BitTorrent release groups have to re-encode the stuff before posting it.

“Overthrowing Government on a Budget”

“Rembrandt, Pr0n and Robot Monkeys: Lessons From the Present About Flesh and Technology”

“Tracking Arms Dealers with Python and Bits of String”

From the Open Tech 2008 line-up.