Lex Ferenda

Off obsessing about numbers and transfers at the Dublin constituencies count. Don’t break the Internet. Watch out for meteorites.

• RTE
• IrishElection.com

Election 2007: Watchdog probes text canvassing
Thursday, 24 May 2007 17:45
A number of candidates in today’s General Election have been sending out mobile phone texts urging people to vote for them.

Many of the recipients were not happy to be contacted in such a way.

The Data watchdog has said it has had a number of calls about text canvassing.

Interesting story, but terrible writing. Where is rte.ie getting its writers from? (This is the entire story, by the way).

Would love to meet the ‘Data watchdog’ some day, too. Perhaps he knows the Data Protection Commissioner.

At last, a judge who understands the Wikinderful age that we live in!

Record-editing judge scolded (Toronto Star)

(And no, he didn’t really do it on Wikipedia. But he’s well qualified for it now)

Greene’s Bookstore in Dublin closes tomorrow after over 160 years on Clare St in Dublin 2, near to the back of Trinity College, beside the National Gallery. I passed through it this morning and took a few other photos (included after the jump).

Greene’s was one of the first bookshops I visited on a regular basis. As all who have made that journey know, the ‘Wicklow bus’ (technically the Bus Éireann Route 133 service, although I’ve never known anyone to refer to it as that!) stops outside Greene’s, before looping around and down by Westland Row towards Busáras. So coming to Dublin as a teenager - and indeed through my first year as a university student - I stopped by a lot, and even to this day I’d normally take a quick look through the ‘barrows’ of cheap books piled up outside. Greene’s contained a small post office, which was also useful.

The shop itself is odd - a lot of secondhand books and unusual titles, a bit of tourist tat, some schoolbooks, and strong Irish history collections. It’s finally giving up on the real world (online and bulk sales will continue, apparently). However, it is a pity to see another bookshop go - particularly an independent one as well-known as Greene’s.

More: Spailpín Fánach (in Irish) | Declan Burke | Irish Times report

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Quite a few candidates have sent me their election materials in Irish (having noted, while reading the electoral register, that I go by an Irish-language name, first name and surname). I genuinely appreciated the thought and the effort (although of course as a long-time member of a party and a canvasser, I’m not really much of a floater!)

Anyway, I did receive a letter today, which made me laugh. It’s from Mr. McDowell, the current Minister for Justice and the leader of the Progressive Democrats (sometimes neither progressive nor democratic, but sometimes OK). And his office decided to write to me in Irish. But instead of, y’know, talking about PD policies and McDowell’s wonderful achievements for the constituency and country (and to be fair, he has done some good things, and I have agreed with a few of his policies, especially with regard to the reform of licensing laws), the entire letter is about the Irish language. And how much he loves it, how his children go to an Irish-speaking school, that he sometimes speaks it in the Dáil, who taught him Irish in school (an tAthar Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire SJ, who is a well-known figure in the Irish language community), and even a nice mention of his grandfather (Eoin Mac Néill), a founder of Conradh na Gaeilge.

Seriously - I’m not making this up. It’s like that wonderful speech in Myles na gCopaleen’s An Béal Bocht (the ‘poor mouth’ of this post’s title) where the ‘Gaelgeoir’ gives an entire speech about how great is to be speaking about Irish in Irish. Although I do have an interest in language policy (only natural), I really don’t care all that much for someone trying to pull that sort of emotional ‘I’m-one-of-you’ thing. Irish speakers have broad political interests, just like any other community or section of the community, and are not going to vote for a candidate based on who taught them in secondary school. Or am I wrong? Of course, it’s important to highlight policies of interest to a minority (especially when communicating with a presumed member of that minority). But a letter to (for example) gay voters wouldn’t be written in pink and have five paragraphs on how much fun the candidate had in the George last week and one paragraph on civil partnership.

Via slashdot, more fun and games relating to using an open wifi connection (or ‘unauthorised access’ as some like to call it). I wrote about this in some detail a while back, and this case (albeit with different legislation) is a useful reminder that these issues won’t go away. (Although, if we heed what Panorama is saying (story passed on off-blog by Eoin), no-one should be hanging around hotspots anyway!)

From the news reports, I see this gem:

Milanowski didn’t immediately cite or arrest Peterson, mostly because he wasn’t certain a crime had been committed. “I had a feeling a law was being broken,” the chief said.

Hmm.

I think this is the relevant legislation:

A person shall not intentionally and without authorization or by exceeding valid authorization do any of the following:

(a) Access or cause access to be made to a computer program, computer, computer system, or computer network to acquire, alter, damage, delete, or destroy property or otherwise use the service of a computer program, computer, computer system, or computer network.

(Source, what I think is relevant is italicised)

And the Irish legislation is even more (unintentionally) hostile…

Worth keeping an eye on all this.

Because there’s an election on, if you haven’t heard.

Just a note. There is a moratorium on discussion of elections on TV and radio: (self-imposed in the case of) RTÉ and (BCI-imposed in the case of) private independent broadcasters are affected. Given that people who should know better apparently don’t, let me clarify:

a - this is not legislative in nature (’self-denying ordinance’ is a good phrase)
b - it has no impact on print.
c - it has no impact on the Internet. That includes things like videos. Most broadcasters apply the moratorium to the text elements of their websites (voluntarily). And this is not a complicated issue of cyberlaw. It’s simply

For the 1,000 people who are going to stop me and say something smart-assed, there is no restriction on campaigning the day before an election (maybe if RTÉ shut up counting down to the moratorium this wouldn’t be such a misconception!). (This one is a close cousin of the supposed law that you are not allowed to leaflet on election day. Not true. There’s a restriction on activities in the vicinity of a polling station but there’s certainly no such thing as a general rule (although of course people are free to declare a ‘truce’ if they wish).

I had my second stint on Today FM talking about other areas of electoral law (polling day procedures, ID, fraud etc). It’s at the end of this clip. One thing I couldn’t recall at the time was the exact nature of prosecutions to date under the Electoral Act - turns out it seems the only completed conviction was this poor fool, who got an €800 fine for double voting. So let me say it here - again and again - you do not need a polling card to vote. It is a useful thing - reminds you of time, place etc and that you’re on the register - but it is not mandatory. (You do need to be on the register, and to have adequate ID, of course).

Some unusual clips for your attention:

• Current indie favourites The Klaxons doing an unusual version of mid-90s dance track “Not Over Yet” (by ‘Grace’, basically a Paul Oakenfold and friends project): watch them do it live
• The Lancashire Hotpots pay ‘tribute’ to dance music with a medley (in Lancashire style) of Call On Me (Eric Prydz), Drop The Pressure (Mylo), From Paris to Berlin (Infernal), Hey Girl Hey Boy (Chemical Brothers), I See You Baby (Groove Armada), Firestarter (Prodigy), Born Slippy (Underworld) - it’s the Bang Bang Thumpy Dance Megamix! - get the whole thing at the Myspace page or watch a rehearsal version at GooTube.

A disappointing story on the Irish national framework of qualifications in today’s Sunday Tribune (a ’serious’ newspaper), with the Further Education Training and Awards Council (FETAC) coming in for some criticism. Disclosure: I am a former member of the Council of HETAC, FETAC’s sister body.

The Sunday Tribune has discovered that one state awards body, FETAC, has approved courses in bar skills, learning to be a security guard and becoming a retail sales assistant, which are ranked at Level 4, the same level as an ordinary level Leaving Certificate.

Want higher education? Just learn how to make a sandwich

Round of applause for the excellent journalism at the Tribune - in particular for their ‘discovery’ (given that FETAC publishes information on its website and institutions advertise courses heavily, it must have been hard work). Remind me what the difference between the Trib and a tabloid is?

The story is based on arguments made by the “Network for Irish Educational Standards” (website), which is a number of lecturers at IT Tralee. While I do think that issues of quality and standards in higher education are worth debating, taking the word of a campaigning ‘network’ (which itself is best summarised by its domain name stopgradeinflation.ie) and adding trashy journalism to it falls short of the mark. The Network may have a point but they have a particular message to put and, I think, the fault lies with the newspaper rather than with their spokesperson for how they used the statements.

If there is actual evidence (as distinct from sneering about sandwiches and lawnmowing) that FETAC are doing something wrong, I’d like to see it. Until then, though, this seems nothing more than an Irish version of the “Mickey Mouse degrees” fuss in the UK (which involved a lot of unresearched, unfair criticism of media studies in particular). I’m sure if we went back 200 years, the very prospect of universities devaluing their role as purveyors of classical knowledge through teaching science would raise just as much alarm…

Your thoughts?

This is fun. I spotted it on Boing Boing (here) - and that post has a good collection of format links, so that’s a good way to get to it. The original is at Stanford. Kudos to Eric Faden for spending what must have been days on getting the clips together.

Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University provides this humorous, yet informative, review of copyright principles delivered through the words of the very folks we can thank for nearly endless copyright terms.

Has to be seen to be understood!