Lex Ferenda

Life intervened to stop me posting about this so far, but if you’re one of the two Netizens in the world to have missed this story so far, here are the highlights. ‘Web 2.0′ (a very silly name) is apparently trademarked by Tim O’Reilly’s company (it’s his term), and their ‘media partners’ (CMP). IT@Cork have a conference that dares to use such in its title. The trademark (EU pending, which is what’s relevant here) is for use with conferences and so on - the Web 2.0 conferences are a big (and incredibly expensive) deal.

You can guess what happened next? IT@Cork gets a legal letter (despite having invited Tim to the event and receiving a polite ‘I can’t make it’). Tom Raftery posts it. The ‘blogosphere’ goes crazy. (A little too crazy for my liking - there are reasonably complex legal issues here, but such is the way of the world). It gets /.ed.

To me, the most constructive thing to do is to object to the registration, or alternatively to avoid the use of the term (i.e. deny it oxygen). I think that the registrants were right to protect the mark, but wrong to register it in the first place. Dead wrong. You can’t try and popularise an idea while making it difficult to even discuss it.

Anyway, Tim O’Reilly has (just!) responded with a lengthy and careful post. I giggled at his description of legal language as the special language that lawyers use to cover their various bases is as odd and arcane as a Perl program might appear to most lawyers. As a techie-lawyer/lawyer-techie (not being a real lawyer, of course), I think (or like to think) that there’s a way across the bridge, and that not every cease and desist letter needs to sound as bad as they do - or, heaven forbid, that a technology ‘business’, with knowledge of the dangers of overzealous law and IP in particular, might think twice before sending the letter, or even joining the debate on whether the laws-that-lead-to-C&Ds-like-confetti should even exist.

I hope that this affair (which involves quite a lot of harsh words) will encourage the O’Reilly bit of the world to decide whether Web 2.0 is and shall be a conference marketing tool or a real concept. I’m not convinced after the last week’s worth of reading that it can be both.

Note: The crosslinking in this post has led to an awful lot of spam comments. So I’m closing comments on it entirely. If you really want to say something and are not a robot, please email me.

This is again not a serious post about law and technology and Important Stuff. It’s much more important than that.

Tim Hortons is the biggest coffee and donut store in Canadia. But it’s so much more than that - it’s a true Canadian icon, and the subject of PhDs, newspaper articles, and lots of conversations (usually conducted over coffee and Timbits). It’s hard to explain its appeal, but it definitely has *something*. The company merged with Wendy’s (hamburgers, US-based) in the 1990s but still does the vast majority of its business in Canada. There are a few stores in the US, mainly in New York State and near to the Canuckistani border.

Last year, a small number of shops here in Dublin started selling Tim Hortons donuts, or perhaps doughnuts. This was a natural enough progression, as IAWS/Cuisine de France, an Irish-based company, was involved in setting up a large warehouse-type operation in Ontario to supply bread-type products to TH stores around Canada, as part of the expansion of sandwich options. And we were very glad, and grateful. Someone even blogged with delight about it. But where was the coffee?

A hint came with expansion plans from Spar (convenience store chain), announced earlier this year, which included a mention of Tim Hortons as part of their new ‘food strategy’.

Anyway. Right beside the Jervis Luas stop, outside the Jervis Shopping Centre, there is a branch of Spar. And a blessed, happy branch it is. For inside it, you find a mini-Tim Hortons store, complete with lots of donuts and Timbits, and a counter. Behind the counter lives a staff member, a machine for various fancy coffees, and a real filter-with- coffee-pot setup. And it’s even reasonably priced (€2 for a large coffee). And there is a video screen with interesting ‘facts’ about the company and its founder (Tim Horton himself. Don’t ask me about the missing apostrophe, otherwise I’m going to have to explain Quebec language laws, and you don’t want that).

They even give you proper cups, like everything else direct from Canada (right down to the bilingualism). There is a God.

Freedom of expression sometimes seems to be a little out of fashion even among activists.  Freedom of speech won’t feed my children.  It’s only a Western value right? - we can’t force ‘our’ culture on ‘them’.  Google (’Don’t Be Evil‘) did evil. PATRIOTs understand that to protect our liberties, you must ignore them.  If you’re anti-war, then you can ignore the bad deeds of countries who are anti-US and thus On Your Side.  And we DEFINITELY can’t offend religious people, especially when they are Oppressed Groups and thus Always Right.  Got that?

The Euston Manifesto (officially published this weekend!) makes it very clear.

We reject the double standards with which much self-proclaimed progressive opinion now operates, finding lesser (though all too real) violations of human rights which are closer to home, or are the responsibility of certain disfavoured governments, more deplorable than other violations that are flagrantly worse. We reject, also, the cultural relativist view according to which these basic human rights are not appropriate for certain nations or peoples.

And later on…

We uphold the traditional liberal freedom of ideas. It is more than ever necessary today to affirm that, within the usual constraints against defamation, libel and incitement to violence, people must be at liberty to criticize ideas — even whole bodies of ideas — to which others are committed. This includes the freedom to criticize religion: particular religions and religion in general. Respect for others does not entail remaining silent about their beliefs where these are judged to be wanting.

So.  Why the lengthy quotes and the ranting?

Reason A is that I’ve been dealing with the Google-China issue in my current research.  So it’s on my mind.  Reason B is that I wrote an extended rant for a Labour newsletter defending freedom of expression in the context of the ‘cartoons’ hoohah (which I’ll add to the writings page soon).  But reason C, and the best of them all, is the shiny new box appearing in the sidebar.  It’s part of Amnesty’s new campaign, Irrepressible.info - launched today in the Observer newspaper, focused on online free speech.

Click on it, please

RSS feeds are very useful (although not supported in Camino, my current browser - more’s the pity, cause cousins Firefox and Safari have it sorted already!).  Virtually all blogs have a feed (and Lex Ferenda is no exception), and an increasing amount of news sites have added a feed or feeds.  If you’re new to the concept, take a look at the BBC’s introduction.

I’m not being obnoxious in using the abbreviation - it’s that there is some debate over what it actually stands for.  Seriously.

Anyway.  Not all sites have seen the RSS light (yet).  That’s where Ponyfish comes in.  You can create a feed for any site - although it works best on pages that are updated in a reasonably consistent way.  You don’t need to set up an account to play with, although if you’re going to make more serious use of it, it’s a good idea (there are free and premium options).  And yes, I’m sure that it’s easy enough to program your own version of it, but that’s waaaaay beyond my techie abilities.

Thanks to Lo-Fi Librarian for highlighting this app.

The European Parliament is holding hearings on the Audiovisual Media Services directive (the update to the EU’s Television Without Frontiers, last updated in the mid-90s) proposed by the European Commission.  TWF deals with issues such as advertising, satellite broadcasting, rights to sporting events, and so on.  The biggest issue in the debate over updating it is how to deal with ‘non-linear’ content (web-based or mobile-delivered media, essentially).  There’s been a lot of opposition from various corners of the media industries, and when I posted about the alliance of companies seeking amendments, I suggested that things were about to get more interesting.  Now that’s quite relative, I suppose, but we did have the amusing spectacle of the Commissioner responsible (Viviane Reding) apparently getting some tough questions at a press conference held to mark the Council’s outline support (that’s the EU council of ministers responsible for all this jazz, keep up at the back).

So, to the Parliament.  One of the most amusing features is the fact that not one, not two, not even three but six committees are involved, showing yet again how ‘media’ is so difficult to put under a single heading.  So the committees on Culture and Education, Industry, Research and Energy,  Internal Market and Consumer Protection, Economic and Monetary Affairs, Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, and finally not forgetting Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, are all taking this on.  (Apologies for the Unnecessarily Germanic Capital Letters but them’s the titles they use)

Session one has a law professor, someone from OFCOM and the general director of French TV.  Session 2a (advertising) has an advertisers’ rep and a consumers’ rep, 2b (product placement) sees the president of the scriptwriters’ association and someone from Endemol (production company) and 2c (copyright) features the presidents of RAI (Italian state broadcaster) and the European Telecoms & Network Operators Association.  These three items are referred to as ‘economic’ aspects. (Ouch)

The second day deals with ‘non-economic’ aspects, including jurisdiction (Swedish broadcasting commissioner and someone from Astra (satellite)), ‘protection of minors and human dignity’ (effectively the censorship debate, with the director of the ‘Digital Media Association’ and AN Other down to speak), and cultural diversity/pluralism (a broadcasting association and the European federation of journalists).

I’m not too impressed with the range of speakers, although given the various layers to the debate and the directive, there is a limit on how many different angles can be dealt with!  On the other hand, the questions to be addressed  are really excellent, and make controversial statements from various perspectives that, if dealt with, will provide for a useful debate.

Andrew Ó Baoill writes that James Carey has died. Carey was a professor who worked in media studies, communciations studies, etc. Although there’s nothing elsewhere about his passing that I can find, Andrew is based in Carey’s old stomping ground of the University of Illinois and thus may have local information, so am sure the obits etc tomorrow will cover the story.

I had an interesting introduction to Carey’s work. He wrote very clearly on communications and took a theoretical position that was critical of sender-message-receiver and medium-neutral notions within communication studies. A few summers ago, I worked as a research assistant for Liora Salter at York University in Canada (who bears absolute responsibility, incidentally, for my entry into cyberlaw and ultimately this current PhD…), who did work on communications and culture, alongside many other things. And the very first task that I worked on was assisting with an article (published here - PDF) on ‘Science and Public Discourse’. The usual stuff for an RA - checking citations, finding bibliographic information, etc.

In a fit of nostalgia, I’ve just reread the article, which is still a fantastic read (I never got around to reading the published version!) as well as my notes compiled for Prof. Salter. Footnote 15, citing Carey’s challenge to old-style communication models in her paper is the reason that during that summer, I devoured Carey’s writings, as well as the grandfather of Canadian communications studies - Harold Innis - and the old reliable, McLuhan. The three make up a triangle of sorts. My subsequent studies with the Open University barely mentioned them, focusing instead on the pair of Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall (and setting them up as different approaches to culture in the first instance…).

I’ve recently been reading a lot of Manuel Castells. His ideas on space, time and flows etc (a little off the point even for this gentle meandering) are to me strongly influenced by Carey and by Carey-interpreting-Innis. Carey, though, hasn’t really been cited or acknowledged all that much in the legal side of information/cultural/communications writings in recent years. His books aren’t well known in Irish universities, let alone in law schools. But understanding his understandings of how meaning is produced and how information flows could open doors within many areas of law and legal theory, especially in intellectual property. So here’s hoping for a change.

James Carey RIP.

Next month, I’m flying from Vienna to Galway, and it turned out that the least expensive route was Vienna-Manchester-Galway, with Aer Arann looking after the Manchester-Galway part of the trip. Now, with this interesting little story from the Guardian, things could get quite interesting.

Our story begins with a man with an ordinary name (Andy Parsons) trying to make an ordinary enough journey, from France (Angers) to Manchester. First, he was changed to Nantes (by bus), then flown to Ireland (Cork), spent a night there, sent by taxi to Waterford (2 hours), then by bus to Dublin (3 hours) and finally flown to Manchester. It took 30 hours.

If I end up blogging from Boston waiting for a boat to Havana in order to complete my Manchester-Galway journey, don’t say you weren’t warned..

(There’s an awful Gaeilge/Béarla pun in the title, if you’re amused by such things. If not, then I beg your forgiveness)

Faculty and staff of the English Department will gather at the Brandeis IT center Friday to honor the ThinkPad with a Purple Hard Drive, traditionally awarded to computers that die at least 100 pages into a dangerously boring thesis.

Heroic Computer Dies To Save World From Master’s Thesis (from The Onion, via blogless Eoin)

Hi spambots.  Because of you, all comments will now be held for moderation, unless you’ve commented before and I’ve established that the author is not trying to sell me a mortgage, Viagra or other such dubious product.

Sorry.

And it’s a Western Union office.  In Dublin.  And he tried to send some money.  But he can’t, because of this: (extract from Irish Times, subscription required for full story)

Mohammed Ali (31), a father-of-one who has been living in Ireland for six years and is due to become a naturalised Irish citizen shortly, said the money was a present for his sister-in-law who lives in Karachi.

After providing additional proof of his identity, Western Union staff told him he was able to proceed with the transaction. However, Mr Ali said he never received an apology.

OK let’s thing about that one for a moment.  His name was Mohammed Ali.  How thick were the Western Union staff?  I suppose we should be grateful that they didn’t accuse him of being a fake boxer. I bet he ‘looked like a terrorist’ too.  Imagine an Irish guy going into a bank in London and being refused a transaction because his name “Paddy Murphy” matches a wanted IRA terrorist’s name…