A good cause as well as a good campaign (in terms of the technology and ideas): FindHabeas.com from the ACLU. You can add Habeas Corpus as a friend on Myspace, read blog entries (a colour-coded mix of actual updates and fictional reports from the chase to find him), and more. We even have some AIM/MSN icons - a nice way to spread a campaign.
1. Spotted at the University train station in Birmingham, this poster from Central Trains:
Yes, it is a list of the names, (outline) addresses and fined amounts of fare-dodgers. Yikes.
2. BBC Radio 1 has been playing this track, Thou Shalt Always Kill (myspace | video). I can’t get R1 via the Net at the moment, and have no cable, so I only get to listen when I’m within physical range of the FM transmitters. Anyway, it’s a great song (like the late-90s Sunscreen song except without the psychobabble, the self-righteousness and the nonsense). Go listen.
3. Eeugh. The nice picture of Trinity’s Old Library, and the reference to the wonderful Iveagh Gardens, are perhaps the only redeeming features of this cringe-inducing New York Times article on how to spend 36 hours in Dublin. Oh blogging community, we can surely do better than this - anyone want to start work on an alternative?
Expect relative slience for a couple of days, as I’ll be at the University of Birmingham Graduate Centre for Europe conference; I’m speaking as part of a panel on ‘convergence of values and practices’ on the topic of Law, Technology and European Cultures: Convergence? (see what I did with the word convergence there? I need to get out more). The image on the left (which leads to a better PDF) is the poster presentation that accompanies my talk.
Back Sunday.
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
I didn’t get a chance to post this yesterday (a long work day, watching a prolonged cricket game, and iWork letting me down by crashing and not backing up - a rare failure), but it’s still useful (a day late) to note the birthday of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, celebrating 25 years today (just a few months older than I am!). Especially given that the current Canadian government appears to be refusing to acknowledge the anniversary (presumably Prime Minister Harper is sticking his fingers in his ears and singing la la la la la I can’t hear you, as with so much else). Then again, the current government does not really like judges and judicial activism all that much. The official title of the Prime Minister’s own case (as a private citizen, before election) against the federal government (where he relied upon the Charter, of course) has never been more appropriate: Harper v Canada.
The same government has also abolished the funding scheme that allowed applicants with equality and language cases against the Government to seek support for legal costs (some of the more famous challenges, on things like disability access, same sex relationships and the fairness of juries, were funded this way). (It may be worth noting that the last Tory government in the early 90s tried to cancel it too, but backed down in the face of public outrage, and that the 2006 decision to abolish the Challenges program was accompanied by a frankly bonkers decision to kill the Law Commission too. Apparently it’s all part of a liberal conspiracy (not only that, but the Commission allowed “well-known lesbians” to contribute to the writing of discussion papers. What next?)
In any event, today (well, yesterday) is also a day for celebration, and the University of Ottawa organised a fantastic-looking conference (PDF) on the legal and social history of the Charter to date. Well done.
Slaw.ca has a beautiful scrapbook page. It’s worth a visit.
This lovely article in today’s Observer discusses the phenomenon of music in libraries (in the UK).
Three observations.
Anyway, the point is that there’s no problem in ’shattering the silence’, as long as there are cultural (rather than crap-band-promotional) reasons for it. So play on, with moderation.
Last week, I read this Guardian story about Internet use habits. It was based on a relatively silly piece of research (carried out by YouGov for a money website, to get some cheap publicity I think…although the funders express surprise at the coverage), but what struck me was the word ‘wilfing’ (or ‘to wilf’) - apparently derived from ‘what was I looking for’. Technically that should be wwilf, but never mind. Anyway, it struck me that I had never heard it before, but it was a nice word. Apparently Scottish people are the biggest wilfers.
Anyway, it turns out that the researchers may well have made it up. (Fun debate at Wikipedia) That, in itself, wouldn’t be a problem - the annoying thing is the attempt to pretend that it was a preexisting, ‘cool’ word. Of course, survey research can involve the creation of a word, acronym or term (entire books and theories are based around such), but there really is no need to pretend, is there? A Google News search shows no mention prior to this particular press release; it’s never been mentioned in Usenet (other than for people called Wilf or Wilfing).
On the other hand, the Urban Dictionary has a series of defintions (with sexual connotations, of course!) that predate this article. I wonder if that’s deliberate?
Anyway, much as random, silly websites are great fun, let us not forget the role of random, silly and extremely obsessive books. Today, we see the results of the ‘oddest title of the year’ competition (via the Guardian again): The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification. (And they can’t resist the caption that the book is a ‘runaway success’. Eek)
I’m trying to finish up some (non-blog) writing, so I can’t finish the ten things I want to post here. However, for now can I recommend:
Ross Wynne’s entertaining and provocative calculation of the environmental impact of the Live Earth concert(s)
Justin Mason on Greens and Vaccines. Scary stuff.
Chaucer (well, not quite) hath a blog. Via the Guardian books blog.
In my view, the worst time to discuss new ways of regulation or control is in the wake of a dramatic event. And yet, as night follows day, the fuss over Kathy Sierra and death threats rolls on with discussion of codes for bloggers/blogging.
Some views, in no particular order.
1. State regulation of speech is normally a bad thing.
That’s the background fact here. However, why are we then so willing to encourage regulation of speech by the celebrities of blogging and their corporate vehicles?
Take Tim O’Reilly (not literally). He is promoting the code of conduct idea. For very good reasons, I’m sure. (They came up with the first draft at the ETech conference, $1500 registration fee. Cigars, anyone?) However, let’s not forget Web 2.0 (as if we could). O’Reilly writes a lot about the idea and how important it is. And then his company chases poor Tom Raftery for daring to mention it! And in a remarkable coincidence, there is an ad on the side of the page where he calls for the code, advertising a 100-page book (Principles and Best Practices, no less) on how to work with Web 2.0 (for a mere $375!). If you want to share it with your co-workers, you can use all Web 2.0 technologies to collaborate in the sharing of information. Whoops, I mean, you can buy a Site License to put the PDF on ‘up to 5′ computers. Silly me.
So how can I trust that O’Reilly won’t be selling restricted, grossly overpriced PDFs on ‘how to comply with the Code’ in a year’s time? Perhaps ‘principles and best practices for blogging’?
Short answer: I don’t, and I won’t.
And don’t get me started on process issues - you can have all your Wikis in the world but if you write the first draft over coffee at a commercial convention of rich techies, we’re going nowhere.
2. Threats to free speech are important and should be discussed.
I do believe that we should discuss the protection of journalists and writers.
So let’s see.
So a Mexican radio reporter gets shot coming out of the studio, while a rich, well-connected white, technologically literate American PR writer has some nasty pictures posted about her on websites.
Right so.
(This is not to condone any of the threats against Sierra, who I don’t know or have any grudge against. My criticism is not of her, but of the others who are giving disproportionate time and effort to talking about her)
3. What Damien said: 1 | 2 (and not what the Guardian said he said!)
4. This is nothing new.
Ooh, look, it’s Abuse 2.0. We must deal with these new issues. Abusive responses have been with us from pre-written culture. (What else is heckling?)
So let’s take a look at this groundbreaking news item that was so important it’s been reported on countless news sites.
1. Somebody writes a blog.
2. Somebody reads this blog.
3. The person who reads the blog sends the person who writes the blog a message informing them they would be killed.Am I missing something here? Nobody was murdered. No crimes were committed*. The same thing that’s been happening on the internet for two decades has happened yet again. The faceless masses make baseless asses of themselves; it’s the nature of the internet.
(source) (* this is not necessarily true, for the record, but the rest of the point still stands)
5. This is not about blogs.
If anything, this is a debate about offensive speech. Making it into some sort of constitutional moment for the bloody blogosphere or talking about ‘threats to bloggers’ is silly. And as it happens I do believe that some of the debate on gender and blogging are overdue, and interesting, but we would all be better served by reading Judy Wajcman again rather than trying to construct a hyperbolic narrative from certain unpleasant incidents involving a high-profile speaker/consultant.
6. The code sucks.
Seriously, it does.
To give but one example. Copyright violations are either legal or illegal - we don’t need a Bloggers’ Scout’s Honour Code to deal with things that people post. It’s bad enough having one set of copyright police. I don’t even like the first lot, so why would I want a second lot, without the possibility of voting them out of office?
7. Badges? We no need no steenking baa-dges.
I’ll come back to this topic, because it’s related to the debate that Lawrence Lessig is engaged in regarding ‘harmful to minors’ tags and the ideas around content labels. I think that embedding the views of one cultural/legal system can be fine within that system, but you have to be aware of the wider impact. I.e. a badge or (especially) a HTML tag indicating ’safety’ may be self-regulatory or child-targeted in one jurisdiction, but used by authorities in another as a clear black line between permissible and impermissible. So while the Americans can say that the Nice-Blog-Badge is just a marker for the discerning reader, the existence of the badge and the system makes it easier for (e.g) a European government to require all schools to block blogs without the Nice-Badge. So we need to have that conversation.
