Lex Ferenda

(With apologies for the headline).

I have been meaning to write this story for some time, and I had all the links etc in a draft post. Those who know me and see me on a regular basis have heard me rattling on about this for a while. Seeing as Slashdot has picked it up (and the NY Times has a brief mention from a while back here), though, I may as well just point in their direction. (I was proud of myself for my dirtdigging, so I should be grateful that other great minds went the same way).

So, there’s a proposal from the New York City pension funds to require Google to be a bit nicer on freedom of expression issues. It’s being voted on at the shareholders meeting on the 10th of May. You can read the full thing in the definitive proxy statement (the relevant bit is here. Read with pride how Google (”Do No Evil”) and its board recommends to all shareholders to vote against the resolution. Note additionally that the Google founders (”Do No Evil”) control a substantial proportion of the votes so the resolution doesn’t even have much of a chance. And note of course that votes proxied back to the Board (”Do No Evil”) will be cast against the resolution.

The operative bit is as follows:

Therefore, be it resolved, that shareholders request that management institute policies to help protect freedom of access to the Internet which would include the following minimum standards:

1) Data that can identify individual users should not be hosted in Internet restricting countries, where political speech can be treated as a crime by the legal system.

2) The company will not engage in pro-active censorship.

3) The company will use all legal means to resist demands for censorship. The company will only comply with such demands if required to do so through legally binding procedures.

4) Users will be clearly informed when the company has acceded to legally binding government requests to filter or otherwise censor content that the user is trying to access.

5) Users should be informed about the company’s data retention practices, and the ways in which their data is shared with third parties.

6) The company will document all cases where legally-binding censorship requests have been complied with, and that information will be publicly available.

(The recitals mention the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and so on).

Terrible stuff. Do no evil and vote against this nonsense.

Don’t forget that the EU is writing to Google about its privacy practices, and that Yahoo! is! being! sued! Let the games begin.

Do no evil.

Advice for all students facing into oral defences: What Not To Say.

In other news, the organisers of next month’s conference at Osgoode (last mentioned here) have just posted my paper on the conference website (Get it here, get the schedule and other papers here). This paper forms part of the supporting materials for my application to transfer to the PhD register - which is a nice landmark on the journey to a Fid. As I mentioned yesterday, the other bit is a report on what I’ve done so far. That’s finished now; great fun to write!

Irish bloggers, please spread the word. We may as well make the most of a daft Thursday election.

If you are unlikely to be able to vote in person on Thursday 24th May (and you are already registered to vote), it is not too late to apply for a postal vote. If you are accepted as a postal voter (due to being resident in a different place to where you’re registered - i.e. a student from Cork living in Dublin during term-time for college), you must vote by post - you can’t then turn up at your polling booth in Cork.

Your application for a postal vote goes to the local authority area in which you’re already registered (i.e. in the case of our example above, you send it to Cork).

This must be done by Tuesday. (An application by an elector to have his name entered in the supplement to the postal voters list received by the registration authority on or after the third day after the dissolution of the Dáil at a general election … shall not have effect in relation to that election or referendum).

Get a form here (but of course, send it to the right place - this is Dublin’s form). You’ll need your college/employer to sign it; and voting by post itself is a little convoluted. However, this may be of help to some of you.

If not, or if you’re not even on the register, remember that the supplementary register is open. Here’s the form (send to the area in which you live and wish to be registered). This closes 14 days (excluding Sun/bank holiday) before the election - which has been confirmed as Saturday 5th.

I’m writing up a report on what I’ve done in the great PhD adventure so far (part of the paperwork relating to transferring from the Masters to the PhD register). One of the highlights of last year was the excellent GikII workshop (info here, mentioned in passing on this blog at times) organised by Lilian Edwards (ably assisted by Andres Guadamuz, who was running the Computer Law conference taking place the same week). GikII (geek law) covers everything from sci-fi law to robot regulation and more. Lilian now has a post drawing our attention to the follow-up (full details):

19th September 2007
London
If you have a paper burning for the oxygen of publicity on any aspect of law AND technology, science, geek culture, blogs, popular culture, wikis, science fiction or fantasy, computer games, digital culture, gender on-line, MMORPGS, virtual property or online human personae, then come to GikII 2: All Your Bases Still Belong To Us!

Mark your diaries now! I hope to put something in this year - didn’t have the confidence for it last year, but I enjoyed the other paper thoroughly. (One of the organisers commented that I spent most of the time looking on in wonder, the silly grin growing with in line with the stranger papers!) Anyone going?

Seeing as I haven’t done it so far.

Election on May 24 (sez the Sindo via David Cochrane).

Nothing on any of the obvious places (rte.ie, ireland.com, etc), and I went paper-hunting about 45 minutes ago and nowhere in Dublin 2 seemed to have the Sundays yet.

Very addictive remix by cult favourites Chromeo of sensehtion-of-the-moment (Leslie) Feist’s cover of Nina Simone’s See Line Woman (Feist calls it Sea Lion Woman). Feist’s new album is out this week, by the way.

More Chromeo: here, more Feist: here. Both songs are favourites of mine: great to see them come together in this…

(Alternative link)

The House of Lords (judicial) has turned its learned gaze to the question of sex.

In today’s decision (Belfast City Council v Miss Behavin’: [2007] UKHL 19), the Lords find (unanimously) that the system and the decision relating to an application for a licence by a Belfast-based ’sex shop’ did not violate article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The Lords engage in an interesting analysis on the value of speech, and also dismiss the idea that human rights concerns need to be explicitly (no pun intended) discussed at decision stage (i.e. that there is no formal obligation to consider FoE issues, but the decision/result must be ECHR-compliant). I’m not particularly in agreement with either plank of the decision. However, it’s worth reading for paragraph 1 (Hoffman) alone!

What is the position under Irish law of access to the Internet via unsecured Wifi?

This is an issue that has arisen in the UK (with a conviction under the Communications Act), but Eoin asked me to do some work on this (supervisors get to do that), and has kindly given me permission to publish my preliminary findings here. I do have my doubts on the intepretation of the UK act and its application to using someone else’s broadband but I’ll touch on that later on.

The key question is whether there is an Irish version of s 125 of the (UK) Communications Act 2003, which provides that:

A person who- (a) dishonestly obtains an electronic communications service [ECS], and (b) does so with intent to avoid payment of a charge applicable to the provision of that service, is guilty of an offence.

(ECS elsewhere defined as: “a service consisting in, or having as its principal feature, the conveyance by means of an electronic communications network of signals, except in so far as it is a content service”)

And the answer is ’sort of’.

We start with the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act 1983 (which I’ll call the P&T Act): this is the law that set up An Post and Telecom Éireann (TÉ) as monopoly semi-states for post and telecoms respectively. The Act provides (s 99(1)) that:

A person who wilfully causes the company to suffer loss in respect of any rental, fee or charge properly payable for the use of the telecommunications system or any part of the system or who by any false statement or misrepresentation or otherwise with intent to defraud avoids or attempts to avoid payment of any such rental, fee or charge shall be guilty of an offence.

(”The company” being TÉ). All we have from the Dáil record on why we got this section is that the section “penalises the fraudulent or attempted fraudulent use of the telecommunications system. This closes a gap in existing laws.” Thanks.

After a whole series of amendments/rereadings, I conclude that the section currently stands like this:

A person who wilfully causes an authorised undertaking to suffer loss in respect of any rental, fee or charge properly payable for the use of something (see below) or who by any false statement or misrepresentation or otherwise with intent to defraud avoids or attempts to avoid payment of any such rental, fee or charge shall be guilty of an offence.

which is similar to (but not the same as) the UK provision, and thus preventing a clear answer. In this post, I cover what operators are protected, what services are referred to, what cases have been taken, and the background to the UK provisions.

Read more »

The Political Studies Association of Ireland is organising a conference for postgraduate students, taking place here in TCD on Friday and Saturday next. Here’s the programme; almost all of it is parallel sessions, with papers given by current postgrad research students. The range of topics is great - everything from “Between Orange and Green? A study of immigrants’ attitudes towards politics in Northern Ireland” to “Electoral Systems and their role in democratization in Sub Saharan Africa” and much more. For the students of technology and society among you, you might enjoy Laura Sudulich’s paper on Irish political parties and ICT use or Benjamin Cook’s discussion of ‘democratization through blogging’.

There’s no conference fee, but you need to join the PSAI (€30 for students) in order to attend - and you can do this at registration (4-5pm, Arts Building (6th floor - IIIS), Trinity College).

Here’s a great list of the ‘best and worst Internet laws‘ from Eric Goldman. Spotted on Slashdot.

Don’t forget that if you would like to participate in a fun experiment, putting together a series of articles or presentation on Internet law and policy reform in Ireland, I’m looking for your help. We’ll launch this during the election but with an eye to the next government, rather than to the current campaign. The idea is to get some good ideas into the policy process, rather than into manifestos (everyone else is doing that and most of them are long written anyway!). Don’t be shy.