Lex Ferenda

Above The Law posted an MP3 (in YouTube format, i.e with blank/text screen, for hosting reasons) of a dreadful song written by/for law firm Nixon Peabody. Here’s the original post complete with various updates, and a post detailing the correspondence between the bloggers and the singing law firm. Unsurprisingly, the law firm tried to squash the song by talking about copyright. Never would have predicted that.

Now. This illustrates, to me, four things.

1. Trying to get things off the Internet remains difficult. Call it “the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” (incorrect in engineering terms as applied to this context but a nice starting point), call it “it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up”, call it whack-a-mole, call it Spartacus, whatever. Kill one and more appear.
2. On the other hand, we see - again - that the private gatekeepers (whether wishing to Do No Evil or otherwise) are still perfectly willing to take content down (although in this case we have no reason to believe that a 15-year-old with a Hotmail account was the sender. No. Just grownups with law firm accounts acting like 15-year-olds). The Above The Law people are asserting - vehemently - that they are entitled to post this. GooTube disagrees. And although point 1 does apply, the ease with which they will press the big red button is certainly cause for concern (and is among the themes of a forthcoming paper of mine)
3. The New York Times was delighted to write about the story and about Nixon Peabody’s attempts to get it off YouTube and the original blog. That is worth noting, but also an indication, perhaps, that we should be more concerned with the low-level DMCA-SLAPPing than with the big bangs, as if you have the Times on side, you’re probably doing alright…
4. I’ve listened to the song (which contains the line used at the title to this post - although I got it wrong the first time. Fixed now). I don’t care what Calvin Harris says. Some things are not acceptable, even in the 80s. It’s terrible.

Listen to the song for yourself here (MP3). Just don’t tell anyone.

Tags: youtube nixonpeabody

Allan Hutchinson of Osgoode Hall reviews two books, one of which already caught my eye when U of T Press put it in the new releases list: Ivory Tower Blues - A University System in Crisis. In Saturday’s Globe and Mail review section.

I have a few things I’ve been waiting to post, so why not roll them all in together. There’s a theme in that none of them are about law…and there’s some sort of cultural thread.

The Festival of World Cultures takes place in Dún Laoghaire (pron: dune leer-ah or dun leer-ee) this weekend. Photos if I get around to taking them. This was a great event last year.
 

Kew has started to beat the drum for a special Henry Moore exhibition (here’s a tantalising map (PDF); a version of Reclining Connected Forms (right) is about 30 seconds walk from where I’m typing from right now). Really hope to get to this at some stage.
 
 

Closer to home, the National Gallery has an exhibition of Jack Yeats works, Masquerade and Spectacle : The Circus and the Travelling Fair in the work of Jack B. Yeats, running until November. The Gallery houses the Yeats Archive and a whole heap of paintings. The first painting I can remember seeing in the National Gallery (pre-renovation edition) was Yeats’ The Liffey Swim (left).

The Quill and Quire blog (Q&Q is a Canadian periodical about books, books and more books), to my pleasant surprise, posted this photograph (right) of a sculpture outside Trinity’s library this afternoon. I’m a fan of the sculpture, by Arnaldo Pomodoro (and have managed to visit three others in the same series!); I posted a nice ramble as a comment to their post but I think they’ve all gone to the pub, as it’s in a moderation queue. Either that or I scared them (they came back).

Penguin has a series of retro cover books. Nice. Looking forward to spending too much money on them. (Soon, I’m buying this).

And finally. A collection of (mostly) fielding moments (the bulk of them are magic 6-3 plays) by John McDonald of the Blue Jays (that’s baseball, by the way). Some devoted fan put this together and it has just gone up on GooTube. A 6-3 play is where the shortstop (fielder who positions himself back and to the left of second base) gets the ball and throws it to first base, thus achieving an out. It’s a fairly standard play. McDonald has a particular way of doing this which you’ll see from the video…this, too, is art

Book review of this collection of essays, written at the request of the Journal of Common Market Studies (after the jump, version as submitted but with added hyperlinks for the web version; will add citation after publication).

I retain copyright but was required to grant ‘an exclusive licence to publish (the review) in printed and electronic form, in all languages, and to administer subsidiary rights agreements with third parties for the full period of copyright and all renewals, extensions, revisions and revival‘. Permission to publish on my own website is explicitly included in the agreement; what’s more, the fact that this license exists does not take away from any user rights such as fair dealing, educational use, etc. Then again, it is a book review by a graduate student so I don’t think anyone really cares about the IP rights in it…

Read more »

Hah, now you’re paying attention.

The Book Depository are giving away free books, but this week’s batch is gone and I’m getting one of them! They are promising future giveaways for bloggers and others so keep an eye on the enthusiastic editor’s blog.

Eoin Purcell’s blog (bibliophiles, subscribe to his feed, please) also mentions the offer and he’s getting a book too.

3G’s Gift To Humankind says technology journalist Karlin Lillington, today. Blogger and writer Damien Mulley wrote (back in May) that the end was nigh for overpriced wifi (and more!) We’re talking about broadband Internet access over 3G networks (with a fallback to GPRS out of coverage). With a cute little box you can add to your desktop or laptop or whatever (i.e. it’s not necessairly via a phone).

Right now, I live on a university campus, where I have *free* Internet access in my room, and a good wireless network across the campus. Therefore I’m not really in the market for paid always-on access. However, what Karlin, Damien and others are saying is particularly persuasive - I would be especially full of joy at the ‘taking it on the train’ and ‘using it to avoid paying €15 an hour hotspot charges’. There are some sceptical comments to Damien’s post, though, wondering what happens when the great public comes on board - will there be a significant drop in quality at that stage?

Effectively, we’re at ‘four pipes’ in Ireland now (to borrow the US anxiety about creating a ‘third pipe’), with DSL, cable, fixed wireless access (WiMax and other such services - Clearwire, Digiweb, and so on), and 3G. The most recent ComReg stats on broadband below are interesting, wonder if 3G takeup will have much an impact in the next round?

DSL 436,000
Fixed Wireless Access 94,100
Cable 64,500
Other 7,400 (satellite etc)

Source: Key Data June 2007

The Examear website has been replaced with a simple text notice. Perhaps something to do with the range of stories mentioned in this summary. Hard to believe this is for real.

Thankfully, the Internet Archive has preserved the original site (snapshot at 12 May 2007).

Just a sample:

Our spy wireless earphones are great for:
Students. Both high school and post secondary students. (Tests, Exams, presentations, group projects, speeches)
No more breaking your head over a difficult tests or exam
No more memorizing long and boring speeches
No more screwing your friends or group members
No more thinking about getting caught by using old notes - paper techniques
Listen to music whenever you want, at any time - in class.

Ofcom’s huge report on the communications markets in the UK (pursuant to statutory duty - see, it’s useful putting those odd sections into reforming statutes!) is just out.

For the researcher, this is a great report - it has statistics, overviews, summaries, and more. Dive right in. There goes my weekend.

Oh, and it’s not just market data - the title is just Ofcom-speak for ‘a bloody big report about media, telecoms, Internet, etc in the UK’. It’s a little-known rule in the Communications Act that says you have to use the work ‘market’ or ‘liberalised’ in every sentence

Start here…

Tongue-in-cheek but also with some great insights and statistics:

Daily Mail Diet (video) from Current TV.

Brave man. I could never do this!

No data protection exemption for YouTube baby battle video

This is a curious situation, not least for the connection with the Lindqvist case (case | commentary by Karen McCullagh via Jonathan Zittrain | a good summary from Findlaw), where the European Court of Justice interpreted the Data Protection Directive and found that the activities of nosy Lindqvist (who had posted what can only be described as relatively silly information about her neighbours on a website) were covered under the law and not exempted on the grounds of being purely personal. 

The case reported in The Register deals with video (which inevitably ended up on GooTube).  Now, of course, video is an important part of data protection, with (for example) CCTV use being restricted under the Directive.  I do appreciate the fears of the council, which argued:

“The Council believes that the YouTube recording breaches the Data Protection Act, since the recording was made without the knowledge or consent of our member of staff” … “We have concerns that, because the case involves court proceedings, it could prejudice child protection and safeguarding outcomes.”

The expert quoted in the article argues that Lindqvist prevents the videor in this case from relying on an exemption.  That is debatable, of course, but is on the face of it a strong point.  (One should note that there has been no conviction or anything, but our GooTube friends have taken down the video.  There’s a surprise).

Back to the Council’s worlds.  First of all, the court proceedings issue just confuses the matter - if it exists, it can and should be dealt with outside the context of data protection law.  Indeed, I think the valuable body of law that is data protection may not be appropriate as a general way of regulating video-on-the-Web. 

In truth, the Data Protection Act is being wielded as a shield by the Council to control what information is being circulated about its activities (and I’m not judging the rights and wrongs of the actual dispute here, which seems both painful and controversial: some more on the context and on what is said in the video here), which seems quite far from the purpose of data protection law in general.  I agree that ‘personal data’ should be given a broad interpretation, but when it comes to a State organisation using what may well be a figleaf of protecting the ‘data’ (presumably little more than the fact that the video is personal data in that it identifies a person, as surely the views expressed are corporate and not personal?) and using the handy data protection law as it’s the best tool at hand.  My fear is that it is also a blunt tool, and that its use in this way may encourage other corporations and public authorities to protect their interests in this way - which in turn can undermine public confidence in data protection as a consumer/citizen/end-user shield.

At least we can’t blame this one on the European Convention, which as all good Tories know, eats your babies. 

Your thoughts?

Tags: privacy dataprotection eu youtube