Landmark software patent ruling in the UK

Back in November2007 I briefly commented on a case making its way to the High Court of England and Wales dealing with software patents. We now have a decision, and it may prove to be quite an important shift in the practice at the Intellectual Property Office.

The case is Astron Clinica Ltd & Others v The Comptroller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks [2008] EWHC 85 (Pat) . The ruling is particularly important as it was believed by many (myself included) that Aerotel was the final word with regards to software patentability. Those who follow the software patent debate, may recall that the IPO issued a set of guidelines arising from Aerotel which pretty much discourage outright software patent applications in the UK. This was not in line with practice at the EPO, or so it was believed by various parties which favour the patentability of software as such. This opinion was shared by a number of software developers, which then issued an appeal against the rejection of six separate patent applications made to the IPO. These applications had three things in common. They all represented claims for methods, devices and software. Examiners found that the claims on methods and devices were patentable, but that the software "as such" was not, based on the aforementioned guidelines and on the Aerotel ruling. What were the claims in those applications? I will quote from the ruling:

"Software 2000 has developed a method of generating bit masks for use with laser printers which results in higher quality images. It is implemented by programming a conventional computer, printer or copier to process images in a particular way. Software 2000 exploits its invention by selling the program to its commercial partners who then incorporate it in their printers and printer drivers, and distribute it to end users in the form of printers, computer discs and web downloads. The end users are located worldwide.

Astron Clinica was founded to commercialise skin imaging techniques developed at the University of Birmingham which enable images of the skin to be processed to identify the distribution and concentration of underlying skin chromophores. The invention described in its application provides a system and process for generating realistic images representing the results of planned cosmetic or surgical interventions which change the actual or apparent distribution of these chromophores. The invention is implemented by programming a computer to process images in a particular way. It is commercialised here and abroad by selling a disc which causes a computer to be configured so as to undertake the required processing.

Inrotis is a spin-off company established by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne to commercialise drug discovery and network analysis techniques. Broadly speaking, the inventions the subject of its two applications in issue concern methods of identifying groups of target proteins for drug therapy by processing proteome data defining proteins and protein interactions. The commercial product which Inrotis sells is a computer disc which causes a computer to be configured so as to carry out the necessary processing.

SurfKitchen is a mobile services company and has made an invention which improves the ability of mobile telephones to access services on the Internet. It is implemented by pre-storing a program on a mobile telephone memory or by downloading the program from the Internet. In either case the program is usually made available by one of SurfKitchen's commercial partners to whom it makes the program available on a computer disc.

Cyan Technology is a semi-conductor company which designs and builds microcontrollers. It has invented a method of generating data for configuring microcontrollers which greatly simplifies chip design and programming. The commercial products that implement the invention are computer discs and Internet downloads which cause a computer to be configured so as to undertake the required processing. Cyan Technology distributes these computer discs and Internet downloads worldwide."

As you can see, the claims are all very similar in the fact that there is a clear executable element to the invention. All of the applications relate to some form of software which runs on a device, be it printer, computer or mobile phone, which somehow improves the actual functionality of the recipient. The question facing the court was therefore whether the executable element is subject to patent protection. The answer is negative after Aerotel, but it also should be negative if one reads strictly Art 52(3) of the European Patent Convention, which clearly says that computer programs as such are not an invention. The problem has been that the practice at the EPO after various cases has been to allow patentability of executable computer programs, this has been repeatedly seen in various EPO Boards of Appeals cases (see T 1173/97, and most recently, T 0411/03).

The ruling has an extended section detailing existing legislation and case law, which I will ignore, as it is a common thread along these rulings. The meat of the matter however, is whether Kitchin J will agree with Aerotel and Jacob J in continuing the separate practice at IPO and EPO. I agree completely that the UK has been developing a completely different doctrine to that at the EPO with regards to software patentability, but I disagree that this is a bad thing. I have to say that I strongly believe that the various cases dealing with software patents in recent years had it right when it comes to analysing whether software as such is subject to patent protection. Jacob J clearly was not amused with the mental gymnastics exhibited by the EPO Board of Appeals to try to conveniently ignore the fact that the wording of Art 52(3) does not say what it clearly says. To be able to do this, the EPO invented the contrived and unworkable concept of "technical contribution", which does not exist in the legislation.

Unfortunately, Kitchin J decided that the split with the EPO should end. He claims to have read Aerotel closely, and he rightly points out that nothing in that decision prohibits the patentability of computer programs as such. He takes this as the permission needed to get back into EPO practice. He comments:

"... I do not detect anything in the reasoning of the Court of Appeal which suggests that all computer programs are necessarily excluded. I have identified the key aspects of the decision which relate to computer related inventions and they undoubtedly criticise the reasoning of the EPO Board of Appeal in each of the "trio" of cases. But the criticism is directed at the "any hardware will do" approach and the return to form over substance with the drawing of a distinction between a program as a set of instructions and a program on a carrier."

This is all the permission he needs, computer programs are back in the menu. He reasons:

"... it is highly undesirable that provisions of the EPC are construed differently in the EPO from the way they are construed in the national courts of a Contracting state. Moreover, decisions of the Board of Appeal are of great persuasive authority. In the light of Aetotel/Macrossan it is not open to this court to follow the decisions in the "trio". However the new approach can be interpreted to produce a result consistent with that obtained by applying the reasoning of the Boards of Appeal in IBM/Computer Program Product T1173/97 and IBM/Computer Program Product II T0935/97 - decisions which, I would add, are still followed in the EPO as shown, for example, by the decision of the Board of Appeal in Tao Group Limited (2007) T121/06."

While I can see the reasoning behind it, I have to say that this is an unfortunate decision. In my opinion, the wording of Art 52(3) of the EPC is more than clear, and ensuing cases have tried very hard to ignore the fact that it is very clear and unequivocal in order to allow for the patentability of computer programs. It is not up to the EPO Board of Appeals and the courts to change the wording of the treaty. Why not get it over and done with and actually push for amendment to the actual letter of the law?

You can see some thought on the case and an interesting series of comments at IPKat.

European Public Licence

On Friday 25 January I attended an expert meeting discussing the European Union Public Licence (EUPL). This is the latest member of the growing open source licence ecology, and if I must say so, it is quite a nicely drafted document (biased opinion warning, as I helped in checking the Spanish translation). The licence is initially intended to be used as the official release method for projects funded under the IDABC framework, but it is also intended to be the first open source licence with an officially sanctioned translation in 23 official languages of the EU, which in my opinion makes it particularly useful for public sector administrations across the continent. This I think is a great example of the importance given to open source by the European Commission.

There are three main features in the licence that I think make it useful. The first is its clear language and largely unambiguous wording, which makes it easier to understand than other licences out there (*cough* GPL v3 *cough*). Secondly, the licence contains a small yet functional patent clause, which is valuable for obvious reasons. Thirdly, it has a clever compatibility clause which allows wider freedom to developers in order to release modifications under one of the compatible licences, namely GPL (v2), OSL, CPL, EPL and Cecill. Here are some of the highlights from each of the presentations:

Francisco García Morán from the Directorate General in IT gave a background presentation giving the reasoning behind the Commission's interest in OSS. He mentioned that there have been other programmes in the past. Why does the Commission promote open source? Because it avoids lock-in, and because it is a paradigm which uses the power of communities. The key elements present in OSS is that it promotes interoperability and the support of open standards, also that they are community-friendly, and that it enhances competition. He stressed that the EUPL is not a goal, it is a means to facilitate OSS activities from the Commission.

Karel de Vriendt from IDABC gave some more specific introduction about the licence. There is the fact that there is software developed and owned by the Commission, via contractors, or as work-for-hire. He then stressed that the GPL may have enforceability issues in Europe, so research was commissioned in order to study available licences. EU legal services were unhappy with existing OSS solutions, and the study confirmed this concern. The Commission hired UNISYS and legal experts in order to draft the licence, which was approved in 2006 and launched officially in January 2007 in French, English and German. The licence then was translated into the remaining 20 languages and launched in January 2008. The Commission intends to licence software within the IDABC funding framework with the EUPL, but it is hoped as well that local administrations in member states will adopt it.

Sevérine Dusollier from CRIS gave an excellent presentation on the legal background. She first explained the steps in the research leading to the final draft:
- Assessing the existing licences
- Adapting an existing licence? No
- Drafting new licence
- Making sure it is compatible with GPL
She stressed that the intended audience for the licence are public administrations. The fact that most of the existing licences are drafted with American law in mind created , the need to draft a licence that fits the European legal tradition. Some legal elements found in the research:

• Applicable law: most licences have US Law, Cecill uses French Law, OSL is the law of the residence of the licensor. EU Principle of choice if law is lex loci contractus, or consumer's residence.
• Jurisdiction: determined jurisdiction (US, California, Paris). OSL: country of residence of the licensor. EU principle: court of the defendant's residence, place where contract is performed, consumer's residence. Art. 238 Treaty of Europe gives jurisdiction to the ECJ in private matters.
• Terminology: US terminology and licensing style. GPL is valid in Europe according to courts, but making the language fit may require some work.
• Copyleft issues: moral rights are a problem for the copyleft clause, which creates compatibility issues (except in the UK, where software does not have moral rights).
• Liability and warranty: applicable law changes from one country to another, as this is a matter for commercial law and unfair terms. Limitation of liability clauses could threaten the validity of the licence, but it is all a matter of balance.
• Licence - Contract dichotomy: As it was mentioned before, other licences rely heavily on American law, where there is a practical distinction between a licence and a contract. The EUPL was drafted as a contract, but also to comply with the E-commerce directive.
• Compatibility: GPL monoculture creates some problems, particularly for lack of adaptation or lack of official translations into other languages.

She then mentioned that the best solution was to follow a licence adaptation process similar to Creative Commons, and how it has analysed things like moral rights. She finished by stating that apparently the open source community has received the EUPL reasonably well.

Philippe Laurent also from CRIS gave a thorough analysis of the compatibility issues, too detailed to make it justice in a blog post. One of the things that I got from his presentation is that he explained compatibility really well by thinking about the direction in which the compatibility should work. In other words, if the EUPL wants to be compatible with the GPL, it can do so downstream. Code licensed under the EUPL could be modified and distributed under the GPL because the clause says that it is a compatible licence. However, at the moment, the compatibility is not reciprocal. Some other legal points:

- Defensive patent clause: simplified language that makes it different (and probably better) than the GPL v3.
- Compatibility clause: the EUPL is unique in having a compatibility clause. Shouldn't we be using the term interoperable? No, interoperability means interchangeability, compatibility can be one way or the other.
- Copyleft has problems for compatibility, as it creates obligations down a stream of distribution. The way to make EUPL downstream compatible with the GPL or others is through the compatibility clause, it creates a clause which specifically lists licences to be considered compatible. Those licences will be deemed compatible, therefore software under the GPL can be modified and distributed under the GPL. In case of conflict, the conditions of the compatible licence will prevail. I thought that this was a short and elegant way of dealing with licence proliferation.
- Distribution chains: bundle of licences is the main way in which this is done in GPL. EUPL adds sub-licensing.
- ASP issues: Application Service Providers. Does it trigger copyleft clause? Not clear at the moment. This is not a copyright matter, it is completely a contractual issue.
- DRM: not dealt with by EUPL.
- GPL v3 elements: Internationalisation, contractors and outsourcing, DRMs, anti-lock down (anti-Tivoisation), patents, additional terms. Anti-lock down is all sort of code embedded in hardware is subject to the provisions, but this seems a bit extreme as t covers products like ABS in cars. Intended devices are mobile phones and TiVO.

This is a rather sketchy look at what was a very rich meeting. There was an extended discussion session where many things were dealt with in detail. For example, at the moment the licence relies on copyright concepts such as "making available to the public". These are not harmonised and may be difficult to interpret, particularly when dealing with ASPs. The consensus seems to be that there will be some sort of political decision that will eventually deal with the questions of ASPs from a contractual basis, just like the GPL v3. There were also problems highlighted by some experts with regards to derivative works (potentially relevant to dynamic linking). The EUPL contains a copyright notice (the work is copyright of the European Commission), some people want to remove the copyright notice to the Commission because it is confusing. This may be relevant to the assertion of moral rights in the UK, but the consensus was that it is a superfluous element. A lot of discussion went into the limitation of liability as some jurisdictions may have issues with the validity of the clause because of legal requirements (e.g. double signature requirement in Italy). There was also discussion about future versioning: Should EUPL make GPL v3-like changes? The consensus was that not yet. There is compatibility already via GPL v2 and Cecill. Most importantly, there are some elements in v3 which may prove problematic, particularly DRMs.

Microsfot case conference

Luca Rubini from the University of Birmingham informed us about this event, which we reproduce for interested readers.

The Microsoft Case:

The IT industry and the Future of EC Competition Law

Friday 16 May 2008 (4:30 – 6:30 pm)

The case: A 2004 Commission Decision and a 2007 Court of First Instance Judgment condemned Microsoft for not disclosing interoperability information with its Windows Operating System and bundling it with its Media Player. The case required one of the longest Commission investigations, took three years to pass judgment, and sparked controversy striking at the very core of issues such as innovation, competition, and consumer interest. On 14 January 2008, the Commission showed that is was willing to make the most of the case which favoured it, by formally launching against Microsoft two new investigations for similar charges.

The conference: As the newly opened investigations show, Microsoft is a landmark case for both its findings and future implications. This conference gathers leading experts from private practice, including those who have been directly involved in the case, and from academia. Its objective is to provide an insight into the difficult technical and legal context of the case and facilitate a discussion of its practical impact on the evolution of EC competition law and intellectual property in the IT sector and beyond.

Conference Programme 16:00 – 16:30 Registration and coffee 16:30-16:40 Welcome and introduction Chair: Dr Luca Rubini (IEL, Birmingham Law School) Professor Martin Trybus (Director, IEL, Birmingham Law School) 16:40-18:00 Presentations Mr Ian Forrester QC (White & Case, Brussels) Mr James Flynn QC (Brick Court Chambers, London) Professor Steven Anderman (Department of Law, University of Essex) Mr Derek Ridyard (RBB Economics, London) 18:00-18:30 Questions and discussion 18:30 – 19:30 Refreshments

Contact Details:

Administrator: Miss Chloe Howell Tel: 0121 414 6282 Tax: 0121 414 3585 Email: C.J.Howell@bham.ac.uk

Starts: 16 May 2008
Start Time: 4:30
Venue: University of Birmingham
Cost:
Full Rate:£65
Academic Rate: £45
Student Rate: £25
Contact: Chloe Howell

Peruvian dancer obtains IP rights over national dance

(via Oscar Monezuma) Peru and Chile have been involved in all sorts of disputes over te years, including war, territorial claims, football, and most importantly, pisco. Now a Peruvian woman has added to the often friendly animosity between the two countries by obtaining IP rights in Chile over "la marinera", a national dance from Peru. According to Terra news site, Cecilia Gurmendi is a Peruvian dancer who lives in Chile. She made a claim to the Chilean Intellectual Property Department to obtain protection for the Peruvian folkloric dance, which was granted. The article is not clear on the type of protection claimed, the title suggests that she patented the dance, but then they also claim that she has ownership over the name for a period of ten years. I will try to get more detailed legal information from my contacts in the countries involved, so stay tuned for updates.

This is an interesting twist to Chilean-Peruvian relations. Apparently Ms Gurmendi has made her claim to stop Chileans from stealing the national Peruvian dance, just like they did with pisco. According to the Terra article, anyone attempting to make a public display of La Marinera has to obtain permission from Ms Grumendi. But things do not stop there, her husband is trying to obtain intellectual property protection over religious processions involving the Cristo Nazareno, another Peruvian tradition.

I know this is not indicative of any larger trends, and it is simply a freakish legal incident, the likes of which makes the monotony of the black letter of the law easier to bear, but I think that there is something to be said about the growing impact of IP in the public's psyche. Using Intellectual Property as a tool for nationalism seems like a natural progression from abusing it for commercial purposes. Make a broad, unsubstantiated and preposterous claim, and see if it sticks.

Hey, it works for software patents, so why not for petty cross-border disputes?

Update: Thanks to one of the comments I have learned that La Marinera has been registered as a trade mark in Chile under class 41 in order to describe typical Peruvian dances.

COMMUNIA Workshop

I attended a workshop on Friday in Turin, where I was attending the COMMUNIA workshop entitled Technology and the Public Domain. COMMUNIA is a European thematic network funded under the Econtentplus framework, which "aims at becoming a European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues concerning the public domain in the digital environment".

The workshop provoked some interesting discussion and had some good papers. My personal highlights were to hear Rishab Ayer Ghosh, who has edited a great book called Code. Also the workshop closed with a presentation by Séverine Dusollier, who impressed me as the most interesting proposal for the commons yet. Her proposal was with regards to the interaction between the public domain and the commons. What is the public domain? It is usually defined in negative terms, it is an absence of rights. It is not in legislations, so in most systems it is not even defined properly. What is the legal regime that applies to it? Her idea is to devise a legal regime for the public domain and make it an access right and a positive right subject to forms of protection, not subject to exclusivity. This has to do with some of copyright basics, such as the idea v expressions dichotomy, and the fact that the threshold of originality in copyright is very low. More and more things can be patented, so the public domain is being eroded. In order for it to survive, we need to express it possitively in the law.

What would be the shape of this positive public domain? That was less clear, and Séverine admitted that she is still thinking about it. She suggested that it could be to take the concept of commons (French Code version). "The use of the common is common to all."

Quite an intriguing theoretical discussion, but one of those large questions that we should ponder.

Patent for office surveillance software

Times Online has a report on new office surveillance software being designed by Microsoft. The software will monitor worker's performance by wireless sensors that measure "heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure." Even more interesting is the fact that the technology is the subject of a patent application by Microsoft.

Scary stuff, although the I'll save the moral panic for when the technology is widely available. I could insert a gratuitous mention to 1984, but I'd rather not.

Apple heralds the age of convergence

Everyone seems to be talking about the MacBook Air, although you will not see me parting from my 160HDD GB MacBookPro. Incidentally, why do some of Apple's new devices feel like a downgrade? The 16GB iPod Touch has nothing on my 60GB iPod. Anyway I digress.

One of the less publicised items from last night's Stevenote has been the iTunes Movie Rental (which incidentally, we're not getting this side of the Atlantic yet, what gives?). While this move was widely predicted by tech pundits around the world (which leads me to ask, am I a tech pundit now as well?), the real surprise for me is that it will be possible to download and watch movies directly to a TV using special software and an HDMI connection. This seems to me to be the true herald to the age of convergence, and seems to make a clear indication of intentions about Apple's future strategy.

The industry has to do something, after all, the Pirate Bay and similar sites are their direct competitors, even if they have been served with fresh legal documents from Sweden's prosecuting services.

Domain name disputes hit all time high

Domain name disputes against cybersquatting are at an all-time high according to data collected by WIPO. I must admit that I found this information rather surprising, as it was my understanding that after an initial period of healthy dispute settlements using ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), the number of disputes had been falling. According to WIPO's data, the statistics since 2000 are:

Year	Number of Cases
2000	1857
2001	1557
2002	1207
2003	1100
2004	1176
2005	1456
2006	1824
2007	2156

There's certainly a resurgence in the last three years. But why? WIPO is very efficient, and allows wider dissemination of the UDRP and its policies. WIPO's role as a dispute settlement provider assures that the UDRP will remain as one of the most successful examples of online dispute resolution in the world. However, the UDRP has often been accused of being pro-trade mark owner. For example, looking at WIPO's dispute outcome statistics per year, out of 11958 disputes, 65% have resulted in a favourable outcome for the complainant. If we consider that 22% of the disputes are dropped, only 11% complaints are dismissed. Granted, most of the defendants are cybersquatters, but one has to wonder about whether such a seemingly one-sided system can be sustained much longer. After all, losers can still initiate a dispute in their national courts.

Steady growth, finite resources, and arithmetic

This topic has little to do with IT Law, but it is part of my growing interest in the use of science for policy-making.

This video on YouTube has to be seen to be believed. There is an assumption that growth is good, our economic system relies entirely on steady growth. However, steady growth means that doubling figures, which means that resources start running out at a faster rate.

Seven random things

Mathias Klang has tagged me with the 7 random things meme. While researching this, I found that there are some rules. These are:

• Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
• Post these rules on your blog.
• List seven random and or weird facts about yourself.
• Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
• Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

1. I like researching the origin of memes.
2. I spend one month in Costa Rica every year.
3. I've been online since 1994.
4. I love sushi.
5. I am fond of anime's narrative style.
6. I am not good at thinking about random things about myself.
7. I hate making lists.

Researching this particular meme has been a true challenge because a lot of people do not link to the person who tagged them. Nevertheless, I have explored the furthest reaches of the blogosphere, and I think that I have found the original post. In my search for the origin, I have browsed the most inane blogs in the world; looked at backgrounds that would make you want to be colour-blind; listened to such inspirational Christian Western music that I had to turn off my speakers in order to retain my sanity (free web advise: DO NOT embed music on your website); learned more than I ever want to know about scrapping, tatting, quilting, crafting, being a mom in the USA; being a quilting tatting, scrapping mom in Oklahoma; seen more pictures of children than I care to count; and in general amazed at the wide diversity that is the Web 2.0 universe.

One of the things that I enjoy about these trips around the blogosphere, is how much they say about social networks. I reckon that this meme got started in April 2007 by a scrapper, which meant that during a month the meme was self-contained in scrapbooking circles. The meme moved on to Christian mothers, then quilters, then tatters, then inspirational speakers, and somehow it made the jump to academics (I have not been able to find the missing link between quilters and academics), which is how it got to me. More interesting for me is to see how the blogosphere is made up of little islands of interests which may seem trivial to outside observers, but which appear to be self-reinforced. I noticed that there are certain themes that are shared along those clusters, for example, the likelihood of encountering a bright background or a blog with music increases if other blogs in a cluster contain such themes.

By the way, I learnt that if you name your blog "My Crazy Life", it probably means that you are the most boring person in the face of the planet.

Now, I'm tagging Jordan, Nick, Lilian, Ian, Daithí, Nic and Fernando.

One Profit Per Child

The technology media has been filled with the story of the partnership dispute between One Laptop Per Child and Intel. For those unfamiliar with the story, OLPC is a non-profit organisation which produces affordable laptops to be sold to developing countries so that they can be distributed to children. The laptops are known for being innovative, compact and sturdy, they feature AMD processors and also do not have hard drives (storage is provided in memory chips like those found in USB keys and iPods). Intel had partnered with OLPC to provide an Intel version of the laptop, but the partnership was broken when a sales representative in Peru was caught lobbying the Peruvian education minister to flog their own product, called Classmate.

As far as narratives go, this one seems to hit most buttons. The large evil multinational corporation attacks the small and idealist non-profit organisation in order to gain more profits, while at the same time flogging their own project. However, the OLPC has been seriously criticised by industry insiders as a project with no-viability. Although I completely applaud OLPC and I share its goals, I'm rather sceptical about its future as well. If you are an education minister in a developing nation, and you have a limited budget, who are you going to trust? A non-profit company, or one of the largest IT companies in the world? Although it pains me to say it, were I in the same position I would look at Intel's deal twice.

Intel, bridging the digital divide one dollar at a time (apologies in advance for the gratuitous use of the word 'bridging' in connection with digital divide).

Format wars all but over: Sony won

The high-definition DVD war may be over as Paramount is set to choose Sony's Blu-ray format. Earlier in the week, Warner announced that it was going to release its catalogue on Blu-ray, which analysts say pretty much spells the demise of HD-DVD.

In my opinion, what really tipped the balance in favour of Blu-ray is the console wars. PS3 comes with built-in Blu-ray support, while Microsoft has refused to adopt HD-DVD in the Xbox 360. With the Sony console gaining a bit of momentum thanks to games like Assassin's Creed, it was only a matter of time for the studios to finally choose.

This war has been tipped as a re-telling of the VHS v Beta format struggle, a period of time that gave us the famous case of Sony v Universal. Ahhh! Those were the times when men were men, women were women, and small furry animals turned nasty if you fed them after midnight.

EU to adopt DRM policy?

(via Becky Hogge and others) The European Commission released last week a statement in which it seems to advocate for more DRM across Europe. Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for the Information Society and the Media, commented that:

"We have to make a choice in Europe: Do we want to have a strong music, film and games industry? Then we should give industry legal certainty, content creators a fair remuneration and consumers broad access to a rich diversity of content online. I will work on these issues with my colleagues in the Commission and propose a Recommendation by mid-2008 on new ways for achieving a single market for online content. I ask in particular Europe's consumer associations to take a very active part in this debate. Because for online content, the demand and preferences of 500 million potential consumers are the strongest arguments for achieving new solutions at EU level."

Brave words. How does the Commission pretend to achieve this goal of strengthening content providers? Amongst other things, they intend to create a transparent DRM framework! They say, and I quote:

"Interoperability and transparency of Digital Rights Management systems (DRMs) – Technologies that support the management of rights and the fair remuneration of creators in an online environment can be a key enabler for development of innovative business models. Lengthy discussions amongst stakeholders have yet to lead to the deployment of interoperable and user-friendly DRM solutions. The Commission therefore seeks to establish a framework for DRM transparency concerning, amongst others, the interoperability of different DRMs, and ensuring that consumers are properly informed of any usage restrictions placed on downloaded content, as well as of the interoperability of related online services." (emphasis mine)

This is an incredibly misinformed paragraph. The Commission assumes that DRMs are key for remuneration of online content providers, but this wild assumption is not based on any evidence whatsoever. They then recognise that there really has not been any user-friendly and interoperable DRM solution, which sort of contradicts the previous statement. How do they know that DRM can help creators if they recognise that such a system has not worked in the past? The Commission then tells us that the solution to the perceived lack of interoperable DRM is even more regulation!

Here is some free advice for the Commission. DRM has passed on, is no more, it has ceased to be, it has expired and gone to meet its maker, is a stiff, bereft of life, it rests in peace, its metabolic processes are of interest only to historians, it's shuffled off this mortal coil, it's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible!

The Commission does not need to create a framework for DRM interoperability, the market has killed it off. Spend our taxes in something more productive. May I suggest regulating dwarf tossing once and for all?

BTW, Defective By Design has a campaign on this subject.

CC in UK TV

Channel 4 has been airing a program called Picture This, where 6 members of the public who submitted their pictures to a competition were selected to compete for a gallery exhibition and a book deal. The program is being sponsored by Flikr, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that all of the images displayed in the introduction, conclusion and ad transitions were licensed under CC licences.

Although the CC symbol is difficult to see, this is to my knowledge the first showing in UK prime time TV of CC images.

User Generated Content and copyryght

Peter Jaszi, Professor at the American University Washington College of Law, has written to let us know of the release of a report on User Generated Content and copyright entitled Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video. The study includes a blog. I'll let the report's press release provide more details about the content:

"A new, first-of-its-kind study conducted by American University Professors Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi finds that many online videos creatively use copyrighted materials in ways that are eligible for fair use consideration under copyright law. In short, they are potentially using copyrighted material legally. These uses—an exercise of freedom-of-speech rights--are currently threatened by anti-piracy measures online. The authors will discuss their findings at a Monday panel on digital rights management, at the 2008 International Consumer Electronics Show Monday, Jan. 7 in Las Vegas, NV.

The study, Recut, Reframe, Recycle: Quoting Copyrighted Material in User-Generated Video (centerforsocialmedia.org/recut), identifies nine kinds of uses of copyrighted material, ranging from incidental (a video maker’s family sings “Happy Birthday”) to parody (a Christian takeoff on the song “Baby Got Back”) to pastiche and collage (finger-dancing to “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”).

Researchers in the Washington College of Law and School of Communication followed thousands of links for videos on 75 online video platforms and discovered nine popular kinds of use (extensive database of examples at centerforsocialmedia.org/recutvideos). They are:

1. Parody and satire: Copyrighted material used in spoofing of popular mass media, celebrities or politicians (Baby Got Book)
2. Negative or critical commentary: Copyrighted material used to communicate a negative message (Metallica Sucks)
3. Positive commentary: Copyrighted material used to communicate a positive message (Steve Irwin Fan Tribute)
4. Quoting to trigger discussion: Copyrighted material used to highlight an issue and prompt public awareness, discourse (Abstinence PSA on Feministing.com)
5. Illustration or example: Copyrighted material used to support a new idea with pictures and sound (Evolution of Dance)
6. Incidental use: Copyrighted material captured as part of capturing something else (Prisoners Dance to Thriller)
7. Personal reportage/diaries: Copyrighted material incorporated into the chronicling of a personal experience (Me on stage with U2 … AGAIN!!!)
8. Archiving of vulnerable or revealing materials: Copyrighted material that might have a short life on mainstream media due to controversy (Stephen Colbert’s Speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner)
9. Pastiche or collage: Several copyrighted materials incorporated together into a new creation, or in other cases, an imitation of sorts of copyrighted work (Apple Commercial)"

I've had a brief look at the website and the report, and this looks very thorough. It is great to see UGC being taken seriously by academics of the highest calibre.

Chinese search engine wins copyright infringement case

Various news sources have been reporting that the Beijing High Court has ruled in favour of popular search engine Baidu.com in a copyright infringement suit brought by major record companies. The dispute arose by the existence of a dedicated music search function called Baidu MP3, which allowed users to find infringing copies hosted by third parties. Four major record companies (Universal, EMI, Warner, Sony BMG) and their subsidiaries sued Baidu in 2005 for copyright infringement, alleging that the search engine allowed the download of 137 of their songs. A court ruled in favour of Baidu in November, but the music companies appealed.

This seems like a reasonable decision which lends credit to those of us who believe that linking to infringing material is not infringement as such.

This seems like a good story with which to start 2008. Happy New Year!

Egypt to 'copyright' antiquities

According to the BBC, Egypt will pass a new law which will require licence fees from anyone reproducing Egypt's vast archaeological heritage, be it museum pieces or monuments. Although the article is not particularly clear on the details, the BBC interviewed Zahi Hawass, the chair of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, who claims that the law is needed to support and maintain Egypt's archaeological treasures. He also claims that the law will have an effect worldwide.

I'm rather curious about this law. It seems like this would be some sort of statutory copyright extension to items which never had copyright. This has been done before in slightly different manner. In the UK, s301 of the CDPA provides perpetual royalties for adaptations and public performances of the play "Peter Pan". These statutory extensions however cannot be enforced outside of the territory that implemented them, which leads me to wonder about the validity of such efforts.

The strange world of blog comments

While this blog has achieved decent readership figures, the comment function is still rather under-used. There are several reasons for that: in my experience there seems to be a critical mass of readers vs comments, which I have not reached yet; Blogger's interface does not encourage comments; and also most of my readers do so via RSS feed (250 daily subscribers to the feed).

I do not delete comments, unless they are spam, even if they are critical of what I have written (one warranted criticism here, and one laughable attempt here). The most common type of spam is about Costa Rican property (such as with this post), and about WoW gold farming for obvious reasons, but most intriguingly, this post generates a lot of in-game currency spam! There must be a Korean game named ILAWS...

Despite the lack of comments, there have been some notable exceptions. Some of the most commented posts are on hot topics, such as Free Software, software patents, and P2P. However, there is one post that still generates comments to this day, and it is this post about sex offenders. Given the nature of the comments, I am guessing that the post comes up highly when someone is searching for sex offender registers, or something similar.

However, in a weird sequence of posts I found one that is even stranger, which I reproduce without the names:

"I noticed that you had a variety of sex-orientated posts and they are moderated. Please make sure that when you read this that you don't post it for all to see, I'm a attorney in North Texas and it would cause me and my office manager X all sorts of grief if seen and reported. I'm planning a surprise trip for him, so we can leave between Christmas and February. We're interested in Eastern European countries where the age of consent for same sex is lowered to 13 or 14. To avoid attention could you post a 1 liner, "Fun for boys in Grapevine TX" with the age and county, so that it wouldn't draw any attention, such as "Fun for boys in Grapevine TX 13 Siberia". If you needed to e-mail back to me post the 1 liner, "Fun in Grapevine TX please email me".
Sincerely,
Y"

I believe a prank (or something nastier) is being played on someone. I googled the combination of names and found a post under this same name in a website advertising gay erotic products. Even more bizarre, the person who is supposed to have made this post is indeed a lawyer in Texas specialising in Family Law, but in a strange twist there are records of disciplinary action taken against him in the Texas bar for, amongst other things, deceit and misrepresentation (suffering a 3 year suspension). As I see it, there are two possibilities here:

• The comment's author is truly monumentally stupid and decided to leave evidence in a blog of his plans to engage in under-age sex. I find this option highly unlikely.
  
• The author is engaged in a systematic smear campaign designed to tarnish a lawyer's reputation through the use of blogs, forums and search engines. The fact that this is a family lawyer could mean that this person has a serious enemy online.
  

This brings home once more one of the most serious pitfalls in the participatory web. The potentials for misuse of all of these amazing tools is disproportionate. Although these attacks are lost in minor blogs that nobody who knows the person is ever likely to read, the damage would be done through Google. Nowadays we all google potential employees, people we meet randomly, speakers at a conference, etc. Imagine that a person was looking to hire this lawyer. The first page of results shows that he was suspended from practice, and later on he would find some unsavoury pages. The result is easy to fathom.

Political power in Web 2.0

Canadian bloggers and IT Law gurus Michael Geist and Howard Knopf have pulled an amazing feat using Facebook and Youtube. They posted a video on Youtube opposing a DMCA-like reform to Ottawa's copyright law, and then created a group on Facebook that opposed the amendments, which managed to get 28,000 members (and spawned a lot of other groups, such as the aptly named "No American Style Copyright Law in Canada"). According to the article, they have managed to postpone the reforms.

Congratulations!

Post-modern scam

(via Rena Gertz) When the scam becomes the scam, are we faced with post-modern fraud? This one pretty much redefines chutzpah.

UNION BANK PLC
COMPENSATION OFFICE UNION BANK/ UNITED NATIONS 2007 SCAM VICTIMS
COMPENSATIONS PAYMENTS.
ATTN: SIR/MADAM,
REF/PAYMENTS CODE: UNB/06654 $150,000 USD.

This is to bring to your notice that we are delegated from the UNITED
NATIONS in Central Bank to pay 150 victims of scam $150,000 USD (One Hundred
and Fifty Thousand Dollars Only each).You are listed and approved for this
payment as one of the scammed victims to be paid this amount, get back to
this office as soon as possible for the immediate payments of your $150,000
USD compensations funds. On this faithful recommendations,we want you to
know that during the last U.N. meetings held at Abuja, Nigeria, it was
alarming on the money lost by various individuals to the scams artists
operating in syndicates all over the world today.

In other to compensate victims, the UNITED NATIONS Body is now paying 150
victims $150,000 USD each in accordance with the UNITED NATIONS
recommendations. Due to the corrupt and inefficient Banking Systems in
Nigeria, the payments are to be paid by Central Bank Nigeria as
corresponding paying bank under funding assistance by the governments of USA
, CANADA and BRITAIN.

Any benefactor of this compensation award will have to be first cleared and
recommended for payment by UNION BANK PLC. According to the number of
applicants at hand, 114 Beneficiaries has been paid, over a half of the
victims are from the United States, we still have an outstanding of 36 scam
victims left to be paid. Other victims who have not been contacted can
submit their application as well for scrutiny and possible consideration.

We shall feed you with further modalities as soon as we get response from
you on how you intend receiving your compensation payment. Send a copy of
your response and payment code to our remittance officer:

NAME: Mr Steven Ade
SCAMMED VICTIMS /REF/PAYMENTS CODE:
UNB/06654 $150,000 USD.
PHONE NUMBER:+234-808-454-0643
EMAIL:unionbankplc.ng231@yahoo.ca

Yours Faithfully,

Mrs. May Udoh

SCRIPT-ed December 2007

The fourth issue of the fourth year of SCRIPT-ed, is now live. In this issue:

Editorial

• SCRIPT-ed Redux: New Challenges, New Directions
  Shawn H.E. Harmon and Wiebke Abel, pp.301-303

---

Peer-Reviewed Articles

• A Private Law Approach to Privacy; Mandatory Law
  Colette Cuijpers, pp.304-318
  


• Emerging Global Networks for Free Access to Law: WorldLII’s Strategies
  Graham Greenleaf, Philip Chung and Andrew Mowbray, pp.319-366


• Can Article 5.7 of the WTO SPS Agreement be a Model for the Precautionary Principle?
  Niu Huei-Chih, pp.367-388


• The Protection of Personally Identifiable Information
  DeLiang Liu, pp.389-406


• Net Neutrality and Consumer Access to Content
  Christopher T Marsden,pp.407-435


• Identity Theft and Systems Theory: The Fraud Act 2006 in Perspective
  Anne Savirimuthu and Joseph Savirimuthu, pp.436-461

---

Analysis

• Robots Bowling Alone: Evolving Post-Technological Humans
  David Koepsell, pp.462-467
  


• Copyright and Research: A Different Perspective
  Jan Velterop, pp.468-472

---

Reports

• Institute of Medicine, Law & Bioethics (IMLAB)
  Amanda Warren-Jones, p.473-477
  This is the first in a series of reports on the work of research centres working in SCRIPT-ed's areas of interest.
  

---

Book Reviews

• The Regulatory Challenge of Biotechnology: Human Genetics and Food Patents
  by Han Somsen (ed)
  Reviewed by Kate Getliffe, pp.478-481
• Biotechnology and International Law
  by Francesco Francioni and Tullio Scovazzi (eds)
  Reviewed by Andrea Glorioso, pp.482-489
• Unravelling the Myth around Open Source Licences
  by Lucie Guibault and Ot van Daalen
  Reviewed by Andres Guadamuz, pp.490-492
• The Troubled Pregnancy: The Legal Wrongs and Rights in Reproduction
  by J.K. Mason
  Reviewed by Alasdair Maclean, pp.493-496
• New Directions in Copyright Law
  by Fiona Macmillan (ed)
  Reviewed by Daithí Mac Síthigh, pp.497-498

Wikipedia makes a move towards CC

(via Lessig blog and various mailing lists) Licence geeks know that Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation Licence (GFDL). This is a nifty little licence used for publishing documentation with software projects. However, the GFDL is incompatible with Creative Commons licences. The incompatibility comes because the copyleft clause in the GFDL only allows for redistribution under the unmodified terms of the same licence. It also allows for commercial reuse of the work, which makes it incompatible with the more popular CC licences (BY-NC-SA and BY-NC-ND). The closest licence to the GFDL is Attribution/Share-alike.

Now the Wikimedia Foundation has announced that it will allow migration to Creative Commons BY-SA, which is a huge step in the standardization of CC licences as the option of choice for open content (as an aside, SCRIPT-ed is moving towards Creative Commons as default licensing option). This a momentous change for Wikipedia, and certainly a welcome one. There are several questions as to legitimacy, and whether or not contributors should get a say as to the licensing of each article.

Cybercrime in emerging economies

One of the surprises from my trip to Costa Rica has been the prevalence in the media of stories regarding internet fraud, phishing and other hacking attacks. Back in August the police arrested 16 individuals involved in identity theft in order to remove ¢800 million CRC (about $1.6 million USD) from bank accounts.

The relative unfamiliarity with new technologies, coupled with some insecure institutional practices and balances, have meant that cybercrime has become a profitable exercise in Costa Rica. In the UK, users are covered by all sorts of consumer protection at national and European level, but here users run with all of the risks from fraud. With better systems in place, it would be possible to weed out a lot of the most basic attacks, but identity checking is seriously lacking. It seems unfair that users should bear the brunt of the liability for online fraud.

Things are changing however. The national press has been educating readers about phishing and other scams, and some banks have started implementing better checks, or imposing caps on online transactions per day. Scotiabank has even gone as far as to issue consumers with a password generating keyring, a device that randomly generates a new passcode every 60 minutes or so, and which is synchronised with the account (this would however, leave the user vulnerable to mugging, but I digress).

The law has also been changed, there is now a criminal offence against internet fraud which carries a maximum 10 years.

I guess that bridging the digital divide means that the number of potential cyber-victims increases, and the law should change accordingly.

On leave

I'm spending December in the beautiful and sunny Costa Rica, so expect fewer posts than usual. Normal service will resume in January.

Pirate Bay loses IFPI domain

Kopimists around the world are grieving the loss of the IFPI.com domain (which stands for International Federation of Pirates Interests) in a WIPO dispute over its ownership. The owner, as such things stand, was the Pirate Bay.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry initiated a domain name dispute with WIPO to earn the transfer of the domain. In a decision dated November 19, a WIPO dispute settlement panel decided to transfer the domain from Pirate Bay back to the IFPI on the grounds that "... The Complainant has provided and the Panel accepts, evidence of its many trademark rights for IFPI and its reputation in several countries including the UK. The Disputed Domain Name is identical to the IFPI trademark."

Pirate Bay may appeal, but I seriously doubt that they will be successful. You have to give it to them though, they have style.

ISPs acting on Bittorrent

(via Ars Technica) EFF has released a report outlining several practices at Comcast, a popular American ISP. This is controversial, because some ISPs sell themselves as high-speed with no restrictions, which would be violated by bandwidth throttling and traffic shaping. Comcast claims that it delays bittorrent traffic, and does not block it.

What is traffic shaping? It is a method on imposing speed restrictions on certain types of traffic, such as Bittorrent, under the assumption that it slows down the quality of service to those who are not downloading at the moment. Regardless of who you believe, bittorrent hogs a lot of bandwidth in what appears to follow a Pareto distribution where few users use up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth. If that is the case, why should we get upset by ISPs imposing some form of traffic restriction on users that use up a lot of resources? One answer is that the assumption that bittorrent traffic is illegal is not always warranted. Just this week I used bittorrent to download Open Office, Knoppix and SuSE Live CD, all perfectly legitimate open source software. I also downloaded a copy of XP SP2 as my (also legitimate) CD was giving me problems when installing it in my MacBook.

Having said that, it is clear that the vast majority of traffic that uses bittorrent protocols is infringing. If we start with that assumption, it seems fair that other types of traffic be given priority in the network. As an online gamer, I hate network lag and poor quality of service, and any technical issue that can be used to solve such issues should be applauded.

Case against Creative Commons dropped

Those of you interested in Creative Commons may remember that the organisation was sued by a family in Texas as a result of a Flickr image that got misused by Virgin Mobile Australia (more details here). The complaint against Creative Commons from the Chang family was with regards to negligence, as they argued that CC owed a duty of care to its licensors, and should have educated them better. It is not clear from the blog entry about whether this action followed conversations with the Chang family, but I noticed that the plaintiffs also dropped their case against Virgin USA, which leads me to believe that this is not a settlement.

It seems to me that the Chang family has had a look at their case, and probably realised that their strongest claim is against Virgin Australia for their disastrous campaign. Although I think that the case against CC was clearly weak, I do believe that the organisation should think hard about situations in which a licence is offered as the default option. While it may increase licence take-up, it may create more situations like this one.

Virtual week

Last week I was rather quiet for several reasons. On Wednesday I presented a paper entitled "Build Your Own World" at the beautiful Glasgow venue called The Lighthouse (available from the awesome Slideshare website). I was very impressed with the knowledgeable and diverse audience, but I am now a complete convert to Keynote's capabilities to deliver beautiful and useful presentations. This paper was part of a series of events organised by Urban Learning Space, a technology think-tank supported by Scottish Enterprise. I mostly talked about virtual worlds as the next stage in the user-generated content revolution, but I concentrated on some of the legal issues and potential problems that we will face.

After that I attended the screening of Bloodspell, the first Machinima feature-length film, which is also licensed under a CC licence. I should not sound too surprised, but I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. If you don't mind the polygonal characters, the story was very entertaining, and I found myself laughing at the right places. It was actually quite a funny film, and it served to reinstate my faith in the use of new technologies in order to empower creators to distribute their work to a wider audience. The question and answer session was very enjoyable, chaired by the always astute panGloss. The event was organised by London Metropolitan University (thanks again to Fernando), and by the amazing ORG, who just released their second year review.

Speaking of ORG, Jordan Hatcher has informed us that the report on the usage of Creative Commons by cultural heritage organisations is out now.

France set to punish pirates

President Nicolas Sarkozy has a new target: Internet pirates. According to Reuters, France is set to punish illegal downloaders by cutting off their broadband. Apparently, they will receive warnings, and at the third their ISP will be forced to cut them off.

I am sure that many people will make this claim in the future, but can I state for the record that this will not work? Content will be masked, VPNs will be unleashed, and the arms race between content providers and downloaders will continue.

There are however, interesting options on interoperability, and compromises form industry to provide content that plays everywhere. France is indeed becoming the capital of interoperability.

Quoting the opening of Bloodspell (of which I will give a full report soon), piracy is wrong. So don't steal any boats.

Another academic scam

I've just received a second academic scam. My comments in green:

From: un.academicawards@katamail.com [this would be more convincing if it was masked as a UN addres]

UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY AWARDS COORDINATOR [actually, there is such thing as the UN University!]
BRENT ADAMS (UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL GRANTS)
UNIVERSITY STAFF AND UNDERGRADUATE AWARD DEPT
REF NO: 05/0029-UNG/0901-03
BATCH NO: 11-4120/UNG/0307
SERIAL NO: AA01/07/003/UNEG

ATTN: WINNER/RECIPIENT.

RE: 3rd Annual University Staff And Students Award.

This is to notify you that you have emerged as one of the recipients of the 3rd Annual University Staff And Students Award Grants of the UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL GRANTS for this year. [Me? I won? Wow!]

Your University email address, picked from your school website and attached to ticket number [I still like the idea of allocating grants this way, saves you filling hateful applications]: 003-0155107-07 with serial number.: AA01/07/003/UNEG which drew the numbers: 10-01-44-86-23 [numbers make it sound soooo official, I'm impressed] which emerged as the 4Th place winning numbers in category "A" amongst other ten email addresses selected from the best 200 Universities worldwide [Nice, Edinburgh Uni is now one of the top 20 universities in the world. We rock!]. Your Award Fund/prize is $500,000.00 (FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND US DOLLARS) [wait a second, the other email I received offered me £500k GBP! The dollar is not worth much these days in case you haven't heard] which is credited in cash to file with REF:05/1128-ISA/0001-1.

There are a total of 30 winners in this year's award draw who won under categories "A", "B" and "C". All the winners/recipients of this award were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from the best 200 Universities worldwide [it's teh lottary!]. The award which is given annually since 2005 is promoted and sponsored by the UNITED NATIONS, eminent personalities like the Ovorangwen of Benin, The Sultan Of Brunei, Abdullah II Bin Al Hussein (The King of Jordan) and Bill & Melinda Gates are also donors to this year's award [yes, and I can shoot laser from my eyes].

This award is an initiative towards the development and enhancement of global education, the assistance of the less privileged university undergraduates, the appreciation and compensation of hardworking university staff across the world and the encouragement of the use of internet. [of course I deserve this money! I'm hardworking less privileged university staff that encourages the use of internets.]

Your award fund is deposited with our designated paying bank with your ticket number and serial number. You are warned to keep this award information strictly confidential until your award has been processed and your fund remitted to your account to avoid double claim [or perhaps to.... *gasp* allow the fraud to run its course?]. Please be informed that your above award fund has been insured under insurance fund policy which assures you that you will receive your award fund complete without any deduction from the fund for security reasons [that does not make any sense, but it sure makes it sound official]. There are accredited agents in charge of the claims of the awards in the 3 respective categories who are located in Africa, Asia and Australia [why Australia? There's nothing down there but dingoes and poisonous critters]. You are advised to contact the agent in charge of your category (A) with the necessary information as given below to enable him process the claim of your award fund. Below are the information you are required to email to your agent:

1. Name in full
2. Country of Origin
3. Name of University
4. Contact Address
5. Age
6. Sex
7. Occupation
8. Phone/Fax
9. Batch Number
10. Serial Number
11. Reference Number
12. Amount Won
[Now we're getting somewhere, you want my bank details, together with all sorts of information that will make it easy for them to get all of my money out of my account, right?]

The above listed information are to be emailed to our accredited agent in charge of category "A" award claims with his contact information as provided below:

Name : Rev. Jim Edwards [Reverend? Ah yes, play the religious card. Men of the cloth are intrinsically reliable, right?]
Email: jimedwards2020@yahoo.com [Hint for future scams: Yahoo accounts are bad idea]
jimedwards2121@hotmail.com [Hint for future scams: Look at the above hint, but replace Yahoo with Hotmail.]
Phone: 011-234-703-045-4042 [Allow me to get a list of World's calling country codes. +234 is Nigeria. Colour me surprised!]

CALL HIM FOR MORE DIRECTIVES IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU EMAIL YOUR INFORMATION TO HIM. DIAL PLUS (+) IN PLACE OF (011-) IF YOU ARE CALLING HIM FROM ANYWHERE OUTSIDE U.S.A.

WARNING!!! [Danger! Danger! Your caps key is stuck!]

(1) YOU MAY RECEIVE THIS NOTIFICATION MORE THAN ONCE AS THIS ORGANIZATION RE-SENDS THIS NOTIFICATION TO THE AWARD RECIPIENTS IN MOST CASES UNTIL EVERY RECIPIENT HAS CLAIMED HIS OR HER PRIZE. ANY OTHER NOTIFICATION OF THIS NATURE RECEIVED BY ANY WINNER BEARING ANOTHER TRADE MARK OR CONTACT INFORMATION SHOULD BE IGNORED OR FORWARDED TO YOUR CLAIMS AGENT IMMEDIATELY, THIS HELPS US TO FIGHT THE ACTIVITIES OF IMPOSTORS. [Translation: we send this to several people, so you may receive it again, which is not an indication of a fraudulent transaction.]

(2) SUBMISSION OR PROVISION OF WRONG INFORMATION TO YOUR AGENT LEADS TO IMMEDIATE DISQUALIFICATION AND CANCELLATION OF YOUR AWARD. [Translation: Don't play with us.]

Congratulations!!!

Sincerely,
Brent Adams
University Awards Coordinator,
United Nations Educational Grants.

Second Life PI

Is your wife cheating you on the virtual world? Do you want to check on the extra-curricular activities of a future employee? Hire SL(eye) Investigations! Their services include:

• Vetting & Pre-Employment Screening
• Asset Tracking
• People Tracing
• Theft & Fraud Investigation
• General Research
• Computer Security & Data Recovery

The site seems to be a place holder, but I find the implications fascinating.

Research grants: the new identity fraud scam

We have all become used to identity fraud scams coming from the daughter of the late Prime Minister of Burkina Faso; or lottery winning addresses for the UK National Lottery mysteriously coming from Yahoo Hong Kong addresses. I have just received a first, which I thought I would share with you. This is, to my knowledge, the first scam directed towards academics that I have ever seen. My comments in red:

SUBJECT: GRANT AWARD DONATION!! [Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a deceased mind]
FROM: ukfoundation@award.com [what, no .org.uk or .ac.uk domain?]
REPLY TO: claimsofficeruk@uk2.net [and even stranger, the reply-to address is different, and from a cheap ISP. I'm getting suspicious now]

THE UK FOUNDATION FOR BASIC RESEARCH. [I'm going to ignore the fact that such body does not exist] [ ]

The Uk Foundation for basic research would like to notify you that you have been chosen by the board of trustees as one of the final recipients of a cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, educational, and business development [aren't I the lucky one?].The Uk Foundation for basic research was conceived with the objective of human growth, educational and scientific research, with a mind also for Community development. [you forgot to mention World Peace]

In conjunction with the ECOWAS [the Economic Community Of West African States? I'm starting to guess where this is coming from] ,UNO and the EU We are To celebrate the 30th anniversary program, We are giving out a yearly donation of £500,000.00 (five hundred thousand pounds sterling) each to 100 lucky recipients. These specific Donations/Grants will be awarded to 100 lucky international recipients worldwide; in different categories for their personal business development and enhancement of their educational plans. This is a yearly program, which is a measure of universal development strategy.

Based on the random selection exercise of internet websites and millions of supermarket cash invoices worldwide [wait, research grants given on the basis of supermarket cash receipts? Well, there's an idea for the UK research councils!], you were selected among the lucky recipients to receive the award sum of ( £500,000.00 ) Five hundred thousand dollars as charity donations/aid from the Uk Foundation, ECOWAS, EU and the UNO in accordance with the enabling act of Parliament [I'm guessing that telling us which Act of Parliament is out of the question?]. (Note that all beneficiaries email addresses were selected randomly from over 100,000 internet websites or a shop'scash invoice around your area in which you might have purchased something from).

You are required to contact the Claims Processing Manager below, for qualification documentation and processing of your claims. Please endeavor to quote your Qualification numbers (N-222-6647, E-910-56), REF Number: SW/90/0021/7896/56 BATCH No: 34/0065/KJY in all discussions [meaningless yet official-looking numbers make everything look better].

Executive Sec. MR. George Jackson.
Claims Processing Manager
TEL: +4470 1114 6946
FAX: +4470 9287 1710
Email: claimsofficer07@merseymail.com
Email: claimsofficeruk@uk2.net

NOTE:THE FOLLOWING DETAILS ARE NEEDED FROM YOU AS TO ENABLE YOUR DONATION FUNDS RELEASE !
1. Full Names:
2. Residential Address:
3. Direct Phone No:
4. Fax Number:
5. Email address:
6. Qualification numbers:
7. Sex:
8. Nationality:
9. Occupation:
10.Age:

[Now we're getting somewhere! They want my personal details... I smell identity fraud down the line].

Finally, all funds should be claimed by their respective beneficiaries,no later than 20 days after notification. Failure to do so will mean cancellation of that beneficiary and its donation will then be reserved for next years recipients.

On behalf of the Board kindly, accept our warmest congratulations [the comma should go after Board].

In your best interest to avoid mix up of numbers and names of any kind, we request that you keep the entire details of your award strictly from public notice until the process of transferring your claims has been completed, and your funds remitted to your account [Oops, does that mean that I won't be getting my research grant? Say it isn't so!]. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants/nonparticipants of this program [unscrupulous people trying to take advantage of others? Whoever heard of such a thing?].

Sincerely Yours,

MRS.MARRY JACK.
THE PROMOTION COORDINATOR, [Note to future frauds: choosing a believable name would make your scam more effective. Mary Jackson would be a better option].

High Court to review software patents

(via press release) Four UK technology companies have appealed a ruling from the Intellectual Property Office denying them patentability over a computer implemented invention. The self-styled High Tech Four ( Astron Clinica, Software 2000, Surf Kitchen and Cyan Holdings) had an adverse ruling from the IPO where it applied its guidelines on patentable subject matter issued last year in the wake of Aerotel's decision.

I have not had time to read through their claims, but it seems that they object to the restriction of patentability of software as such, and they want to reverse current practice at the IPO which is unfavourable to the patenting of computer implemented inventions, and they claim is contrary to current practice at the EPO and other continental patent offices.

It seems like we will get another software patent ruling soon, which has to be welcome. However, being the shallow person that I am, I cannot help but comment on the name the High Tech Four. What are they? Patentabilty super heroes? Their motto: "We Fight for Justice, Freedom, and Fair Rulings in IPO Subject Matter Decisions!"

The Bad Web

The Internet is a bad, bad place. I'm reading "The Cult of the Amateur", the much maligned book by Andrew Keen, and it does not make happy reading. He has a bone to pick with the web as we know it, elsewhere he commented that:

"When I look at today’s Internet, I mostly see cultural and ethical chaos. I see the eruption of rampant intellectual property theft, extreme pornography, sexual promiscuity, plagiarism, gambling, contempt for order, intellectual inanity, crime, a culture of anonymity, hatred toward authority, incessant spam, and a trash heap of user-generated-content (whew, what a mouthful!). I see a chaotic humans arrangement with few, if any, formal social pacts."

All revolutions need their grumpy sceptics, and Keen is making a lot of money as the outspoken critic of Web 2.0, peer production and what he considers is an environment that glorifies communist ideals. One needs to see who is praising Keen to understand who his audience is: the Daily Mail, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, etc.

However, Keen's message may have a resounding endorsement in the way some governments respond to online threats. Instead of better policing, the UK gets a scaremongering campaign that tells us to beware of social networking sites and open wireless spaces. We need education and proper policies, but the UK governments is only giving us message that reeks of Daily Mail Luddism.

The technophobes strike back

So Marina Hyde at The Guardian is at it again. The UK hosts now four million blogs, and all she can say is "Oh Noes!" The article makes an interesting point about the loss of privacy awareness in the younger generations, which is true, but then goes on to equate this phenomenon with blogging, as if all bloggers were posting their daily events all the time. Instead of celebrating the wonderful diversity in opinion and the rise of a more informed an self-empowered society, the technophbes of the world resent us having opinions and making them known.

It is true that the blogosphere is full of dross and inane content, but so what? It is true that simply by writing a blog one is not assured visitors, but so what? Millions of people are writing down news of interest, posting their thoughts, sharing their pictures, and this is a bad thing why? Not all bloggers use their real identity, so why equate blogging with privacy concerns? Ms Hyde has confused her Web 2.0 tools, she must be thinking of social networking.

This inane blogger is now signing off.

EU asks US to remove internet gambling restrictions

The EU Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, is on his way to the United States to continue compensation talks with trade representatives in order to reach a settlement over the internet gambling ban. Mandelson has commented that the US should not discriminate against EU online gambling firms.

The US lost the WTO trade dispute with Antigua and Bermuda over whether online gambling was discriminatory against trading partners by imposing a double standard. The US has escalated its ban, which is seen by many as over-reaching its borders. Perhaps the solution lies in some of the threats made by the smaller nations. If the US will not comply with WTO disputes, then they will not enforce TRIPS.

Another Second Life sex toy dispute goes to court

(Via ZDNet News) Back in July we covered an incipient IP dispute involving sex toys in Second Life. The conflict involved the makers of the popular Second Life line of sex toys called SexGen, which include such items as the SexGen Platinum Base Unit v4.01. I have done some research, and apparently the aforementioned virtual devices help Second Lifers simulate intercourse with their avatars. Were I a lesser blogger, I would hereby insert various tawdry and crude jokes about such inane waste of virtual time, but I will avoid the temptation and behave.

SexGen toys are owned by Eros LLC, which is operated by one Mr Stroker Serpentine (subtle yet effective avatar name). Eros sued an alias (avatar by the name of Volkov Catteneo), a dispute that is still under way. Now Eros has filed another trade mark complaint, this time against one identifiable person (one Thomas Simon, aka Rase Kenzo), and ten John Does. Eros claims that the defendants have been selling items bearing the SexGen mark, and misrepresenting that they are legitimised to do so.

We wish the best of luck to Eros in their litigation efforts. There is obviously a lot of money involved in the virtual sex industry, and the economic model followed by these companies relies heavily on their brand.

I don't know why, but all of this talk of sex in Second Life makes me feel like I'm missing some importaint detail, much like I have arrived late at a movie and I'm trying to catch up. Perhaps it is just that I am unimaginative and I just don't get it.

Crime Investigation 2.0

Three people are being held under suspicion of murdering British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia. What makes this murder investigation different to others is that it comes with a Web 2.0 angle, as investigators trawl through Facebook and Myspace accounts in order to obtain clues.

The use of social networking as a tool for criminal investigation is a logical step, as most victims know their killers (in the United States for example, only 14% of murders are committed by strangers). That being the case, more and more police investigations will move online to try to get an idea of potential perpetrators from pictures, friends lists and mailing lists.

*looks twice at Facebook friends list*

Urban Spaces event in Glasgow

More self-promotion of speaking arrangements. Well, if I cannot have self-promotion in my own blog, then where can I have it? Anyway, here is the information:

Build your own world
Andres Guadamuz, AHRC
21 November 2007 10am - 12.30pm The Lighthouse, Glasgow Free

Andres Guadamuz is an academic interested in the ownership implications of new technologies; in particular he researches intellectual property issues in User Generated Content and the so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon. He will deliver a presentation in which he will look at the creation of urban spaces within so-called virtual worlds, such as the popular environment known as Second Life. He will ask about the ownership issues that surround the creation of intangible property, putting forward the idea that we already have legal tools to think about virtual existence.

Andres is a keen blogger (technollama.blogspot.com), a member of Creative Commons Scotland, and he has also acted as a consultant for the World Intellectual Property Organization. Currently Andres is a Lecturer in E-Commerce Law at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also a co-Director of SCRIPT.

To reserve a place, please contact ULS Events Manager Yvonne Kincaid at yvonne.kincaid@urbanlearningspace.com or call 0141 225 0103. Please note that places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. Interest has been high so please book early to avoid disappointment. If you are unable to attend this event, presentation slides and a podcast recording of the event will be available to download from our website.

for more information on this event please visit www.urbanlearningspace.com/events

Bloodspell and the raise of machinima

Bloodspell: The rise of machinima
Viewing and panel

22 November 2007
5.15 - 8.30pm
London Metropolitan University Graduate Centre
166-220 Holloway Road
London, N7 8DB

Bloodspell is the world's first feature-length machinima, and it is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. Bloodspell "is a story of a world where men and women carry magic in their blood, and spilling it can unleash terrible power."

This event is organised by the London Metropolitan Business School and the Open Rights Group (special thanks to Michael Holloway and Fernando Barrio for their excellent organisation skills in putting this together). For those new to the topic, "machinima", in very basic form, involves the use of software that has been designed to create video-games to produce films with their own script and narrative. The word “machinima” was coined some time ago by Hugh Hancock, who has also written and directed Bloodspell.

The evening will start with Hugh Hancock introducing the concept of machinima and the movie, to be followed by a viewing of Bloodspell. After the viewing a panel will address the issues raised by the film to then open the floor for discussion. The panel includes:

Chair
Professor Lilian Edwards, Director of the Institute for Law and the Web at Southampton (ILAWS) of Southampton University

Panellists

• Holly Ayllet, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at London Metropolitan University and Managing Editor of Vertigo Magazine.
• Ian Brown, Research Fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute of Oxford University
• Andres Guadamuz, Co-Director of SCRIPT, the Centre for Research in IP and Technology Law at The University of Edinburgh.

Join the Facebook event group.

LARP: bringing games to life

Reading about the Tower of London GPS game has got me thinking about the future of role-playing gaming, gadgets, and some potentially interesting legal issues (this is a technology law blog after all, despite my efforts to forget that fact from time to time).

The growth of ubiquitous smart phones and GPS devices has opened up the world to the massification of Live Action Role-Playing Games (LARPs or LRPs). LARPs are not a new development. Dramatic re-enactment of open-ended scenarios has been with us for a while. However, up until now it has been seen as an uber-geek thing to do, designed only for people who like dressing up in weird costumes wielding swords and shouting at one another. However, new technologies have the potential to bring this practice back to life by using all sorts of portable devices that we already own.

The interaction between LARPs and new technologies have also the potential to resurrect Virtual Reality. Remember VR? It was one of the central plots in Cyberpunk novels of the early 90s, and it has been considered a bit passé. However, there seems to be a trend forming in bringing back some form of virtual reality. I'm currently reading Halting State, which in my opinion manages to depict the best application of what could be called the overlay world. Imagine goggles that allowed you to see everything normally, but with super-imposed data from the Internet that gave you directions, told you when your bus was coming (with a nice arrow display that told you where it was), and even marked people with criminal convictions (Stross jokingly mentions that the overlay could show neds with ASBOs). In the same book, Stross describes LARPs through the use of GPS and mobile phones, one of which is people playing at being football hooligans. Another recent book where this augmented reality is discussed is William Gibson's Spook Country, which describes potential artistic uses of AR displays to superimpose crime scenes involving dead celebrities, or to show giant objects that are not really there.

The implications for gaming are clear. If we could use a combination of GPS and AR goggles to display gaming overlays, the world would become a playground. See the success of the Wii in bringing gaming to non-gamers, and you can see the potential for the technology. Imagine games where you are part of a murder story, you go along with your normal life, but you could be given prompts to clues depending on your location.

And what about the legal implications? Where to begin? The first one is the potential ownership issues with the vast amounts of data that could be made available through these devices. Some content would have to be encrypted, or only available via specific proprietary devices, which brings the issues of payments, hacking and technological protection, not to mention RFIDs, privacy and all sorts of other issues.

Happy Late Halloween

Best. Pumpkins. Ever.


Some other great examples at Wired.