Lex Ferenda

Here, at last, is a review of the GikII workshop held in London on September 19th. Rather than link to each paper individually (as this review covers the entire programme), this is a link to the index of all presentations, ready for download (most are powerpoints, a few are full papers). The affiliations (university or other) of presenters are included in brackets, and I’ve linked to blogs where I know of them (add a comment if I leave yours out).

Session 1: Virtuality and Virtual Communities

Andres Guadamuz (and his alter ego Technollama) (Edinburgh) reviewed the various types of economic and governance models within virtual worlds, drawing intriguing parallels with failed states in the real world. It was appropriate that he was followed by a just-off-the-train Abbe Brown (also of Edinburgh) with a look at competition and human rights law within games/virtual worlds - summarising some of the IP-related cases commenced to date and even taking a leap into the idea of ‘digital feudalism’ and a speculation in the discussion on the similarities between portability of phone numbers and portability (between worlds) of virtual world characters and creations…

The third paper by Faith Lawrence (Southampton) crossed over with the Edinburgh pair in a concern with the role of hosts/owners and their relationship with the community - in this case, the topic was Livejournal and the controversial attempts by the admins to crack down on certain content (laughably overbroad in some cases, with highly inconsistent application of terms of service).

Session 2: CyberCrime: All Your Secrets Are Belong To Us

The first paper was co-written by a holy trinity consisting of Lilian Edwards (Southampton), Chris Marsden (Essex) and Ian Brown (Oxford); the introductory discussion on facebook and cyberstalking led to a fairly serious examination of software defaults, code theory and consumer and privacy law - no mean feat in fifteen minutes. Andrea Matwyshwn (Pennsylvania) (and I must again mention her amazing technopolity.org resource) spoke about ‘black collar crime’, with a focus on international law solutions and the potential difficulties inherent in future approaches. Equally scary was the discussion by Judith Rauhofer (Central Lancashire / Liverpool John Moore) on threats not from black criminals but instead governments - of course, privacy and the fact that the culture of individual privacy and associated expectations is changing.

Session 3: I Can Has Personal Data? Kthxbye

Judith’s paper was a good bridge to an entire session about privacy; kicking off with Rebecca Wong (Nottingham Trent) and Joseph Savarimithu (Liverpool), with Rebecca doing the talking and driving straight into Lindqvist, made even more useful by a discussion of the national laws and indeed the changes made in some jurisdictions post-Lindqvist (the case is the infamous one, discussed here, of apparently private information on a gossipy local website being considered as covered under article 3(2) of the Data Protection Directive. Federica Casarosa (EUI) was also concerned with the Directive, and in particular the discussions of the Article 29 WOrking Party on Google’s activities. Finally, Gayle Trigg (Wragge & Co, yes - lawyers!) made the link between personal data and Web 2.0, discussing the ups and downs of ‘push’ media and social networking, and reinforcing the interesting points from earlier on how contract-based this all is…

Session 4: Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades: Technology Meets Law, News at 10

Well, the first paper here (straight out of lunch) was my own net neutrality presentation, and there’s more about that over here. Burkhard Shafer, Wiebke Abel and Gerald Shaefer chipped in with a very mind-bending look (and I mean that in a good way!) at how artificially intelligent ‘agents’ could be regulated (in particular in the context of war/conflict), where the relationship between human and agent was either non-cooperative or asymmetrical (as distinct from easier co-operative symmetrical arrangements, e.g. in commercial situations). Thomas Otter (moved up from a later scheduled session for logistical reasons) looks at software design and its relationship with legislation and regulation, and in this presentation focused on accessibility, generally and in relation to Web 2.0. It was a very persuasive presentation but also realistic, and I think it made quite an impression on us, particularly in relation to enthusiastic proclamations on the liberating value of technology - yes, there are examples of good, but also of new barriers, and Thomas discussed and explained both.

Session 5: Extreme IP

And this was lots of fun - beware, those of you who think that IP and extreme cannot go together. Caroline Wilson (Southampton) started off with a look at trademarks in virtual worlds, including a helpful overview of the development of virtual worlds, and looking not just at what you would expect (how do trademarks fare virtually) but at new opportunities (virtual representation, especially with emerging technologies), of things like senses and smells - and wondering whether the trademark register could be ‘in’ a virtual world…from that, we moved from the virtual parlour into the tattoo parlour, with Jordan Hatcher’s discussion of copyright and tattoos. This was lots of fun (with lots of pictures and hypotheticals) as well as thoroughly researched, and has already appeared on BoingBoing, so I’ll ditch my notes on that and let you go there. The third and final paper in this session came from Fernando Barrio (London Met), discussing the phenomenon of patent trolling, including further discussion of terms of service and ‘patent peace clauses’ of dubious enforceability. Hmmm. This was one of the most worrying papers, in that patent bullying is not necessarily as eye-catching as copyright, but the iceberg is very deep below the water line.

Session 6: Access All Areas - A2K/CC/E-democracy

Our final session was a real mixed bag, covering everything from music to monks to lunatics. Richard Jones (Liverpool John Moore), complete with a sound sample, delivered a paper on folk music and Creative Commons - and what’s more, he is in the middle of some empirical work on copyright and folk musicians - the very best of luck to them, and I look forward to seeing the results. Ray Corrigan (OU) drew on tradition too, being in particular the Colmcille story (”to every cow its calf, to every book its child-book (copy)”) - I’m well-familiar with the story and with some of the sources but Ray’s research was thorough and he clearly had a great time digging into the sources and the legal arguments. Go read the paper, and next time you see some copyright zealot relying on a fifth-hand recollection of the legend, send them a copy. And then, an appropriate ending came by way of Simon Deane-John’s review of new applications and platforms and how they interact with politics and decision-making, tying up quite a few loose ends from the day’s proceedings.

The public lending right bill is up in the Seanad (Senate) this week - it got trapped in the election and is only resurfacing now.

Eoin Purcell has a good post dissecting it from a publisher’s point of view.

The history here is that the EU adopted a fairly daft provision in a copyright directive (wiping out the traditional position whereby lending of books in most types of library did not have copyright implications) and Ireland, sensibly, refused to apply this to public libraries. Alas, the Commission won the eventual legal battles (there were other refuseniks too), and we needed to write a bill.

I lobbied against this bill when the drafts were being discussed; I do support public money for authors and indeed even some measure of relating compensation to reading habits - but this is wrong, wrong and still wrong. The publishers of 100 years ago warned us that libraries would destroy the book industry. Lads (Eoin excluded), it hasn’t happened, and the fact that you were so wrong should encourage you to pipe down about it.

The fact that someone borrows a book from a public library (one of the most important parts of the public services and the education system, in my view) should not even be an issue for copyright law. No-one gains, and there are much better ways to support authors and small publishers. The loss is in the commodification of the library system and the creeping influence of copyright discourse in hitherto protected areas.

My work against the bill was very small and it was focused on the educational libraries. I’m relieved to see that the bill that emerged will not apply to educational libraries (who would have a stupidly time-consuming responsibility for dealing with data collection for the external agency responsible for PLR administration, and need more financial support and open access principles, not daft laws that will only slow them down), and of course, the big gain for the library communities is that the funding will come from the Arts budget and not the library budget (which comes via Environment & Local Government). Apparently, according to what was said in the Seanad, the education exemption will be put beyond any doubt at committee stage - and of course, the EU requirement is that the exemption be a genuine exemption (and not the cheeky Irish version of exempting all public libraries the first time out!).

The Irish Writers’ Union make a very strong case for supporting writers, and I don’t question that one bit. Many Senators speaking on the Bill made the point that the proposed scheme will benefit ’smaller’ authors. That’s absolutely laudable and they are right to support it on that basis. And I know we have no choice in putting this legislation through. I still sort of regret it, though.

Finishing off with a paragraph from a letter I wrote for the Union of Students in Ireland (my then employer!) to the then-Minister drafting the Bill, Michael Ahern. For these reasons, and for the reasons outlined above, it is very important that the exemption for educational libraries be included in the new Bill.

We welcome the fact that you have indicated publicly that educational establishments will be exempted from the scope of the revised scheme, and would strongly urge you to ensure that this proposal is included in statute law, in order to protect the important role of such libraries. The functions of an academic library differ from that of other public libraries, and the justification
for PLR payments (i.e. compensation for lost sales) cannot be transposed to libraries in educational institutions, where the book stock is typically wide-ranging and of substantial benefit to staff and students within that institution. Furthermore, any attempt to require such libraries to retain and manage data for the purpose of PLR payments would be a further administrative burden that libraries do not need, especially given the requirements of compliance with copyright legislation and licence arrangements related to student and staff photocopying.

Get it right.

You wait and wait and then a whole load come along at once…

Books are dangerous and you’d be best placed to avoid them. Especially in the US. Apparently taking down ISBNs gets you kicked out of the bookshop (they’re copyrighted, apparently - news to me and certain others). If you are silly enough to buy the book, then of course, Homeland Security will want to write it down (presumably they check it twice, while figuring out if you’re naughty or nice). Unfortunate enough to be a prisoner? Better check if it’s on the approved list of religious books (for prison libraries), then.

All this is but a preface to wishing you a very happy and thoughtful Banned Books Week

If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the Government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.

(Justice William Brennan, US v Eichmann 496 US 310 (1990))

Of course, if Verizon does it (on the public spectrum) it’s OK. More on that in a bit.

They have been busy down in Cork…

1. Via Fiona de Londras (who is no stranger to blogging) comes news of a new blog project of hers, the blog of the Centre for Criminal Justice and Human Rights. The CCJHR hosted a great conference on criminal law and the ECHR in June, and it’s great to see the blog up and running.

2. Initial details of the 2007 Legal Education Symposium have been published - UCC will host it, in Cork on December 7th. I have a particular attachment to this event - I was one of the organisers of the first Legal Education Symposium in September 2006, and I’ve just registered for the Cork event. Best of luck to the organisers…

(had to restart my computer mid-post, apologies for the half-finished post that some of you may have seen)

Last Wednesday’s GikII 2 workshop, sponsored by the AHRC Centre for IT & IP Law up in Edinburgh but held (thanks to Ian Brown: site | blog) at UCL and co-chaired by the inimitable Technollama and Pangloss (or Andres Guadamuz and Lilian Edwards, in the real world), was an awful lot of fun.

I’d like to get around to a proper report, but for now, here are the slides from my presentation, “Im in ur tube blocking ur internets: The Politics, Perception and Parody of Network Neutrality Legislation”. There were many excellent presentations and I look forward to plugging them in the next few days…

Colour version at AHRC site
Greyscale version hosted here
Nice comments 1 (the llama)
Nice comments 2 (Fernando)
Nice comments 3 (Lilian)

I’m hosting the Blawg Review this week, and a roundup of the week in legal blogging will hit the Web (which is now available in book form!) next Monday.

To submit a post of your own, or an interesting post that you’ve seen, please follow the submission guidelines here.

I’ve written a report for the Society for Computers and Law (SCL) website on last week’s Law 2.0 conference in London:

Lawyers, legal academics, programmers, business persons, media makers and the occasional stray PhD researcher (like this author) gathered in sponsor Herbert Smith’s London offices on a bright Monday morning this September. The purpose? Facing an ambitious challenge - discussing ‘Law 2.0 ‘, under the patronage of the Society for Computers and Law and the careful watch of conference chair Professor Lilian Edwards (Southampton University).

Read the full thing here.

A very interesting morning here in Exchange Square, on the east side of central London (more on that later) - but a few miles (if even that) to the west, of course, the UK iPhone launch is taking place. I’ve been too absorbed in note-taking etc to watch much of the blow-by-blow coverage, but this - posted-all-at-once - version is great.

Very surprised at no 3G - everyone was saying that was going to be the key - but pleasantly surprised at the deal with The Cloud (using Cloud wifi hotspots, common in urban areas, will be included in the unlimited data plan, i.e. all the tariffs). But, we don’t have a similar service in Ireland, and the story of the last few months here is how a 3G modem will kill overpriced hotspots around the country (and maybe even have an impact on the home broadband market).

(By the way, I was on a GNER train again last week - wifi in all carriages. Irish Rail, what are you waiting for?)

UK price: £269, monthly plans from £35.

No word, at least so far, on Irish rollout. Over to you, readers-who-aren’t-multitasking-unsuccessfully-like-me. Do we like this?

Microsoft v Commission, published yesterday.

Today, after a very early start and a smooth journey from Dublin to central London, I’m at the seminar on ‘Law 2.0: New Speech, New Property, New Identity‘ organised by the Society for Computers and Law and chaired by Lilian Edwards of Southampton’s new ILAWS institute.

Have a peek at the programme here. We’re coming to the end of the third of four sessions (having discussed privacy, Web Thingey (replacing 2.0 - Chris Reed’s amusing on-the-spot edit), and even the semantic Web); for practical reasons I’m going to wait to put a round-up of today’s discussions on this blog, probably tomorrow morning.