Lex Ferenda

On August 30th, Eircom announced its intention to launch a new Capacity Based Bitstream product for its wholesale customers. Eircom stated that it would commence taking orders for this product on September the 24th.

The Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) directed Eircom, on Friday 14th September, not to launch this product and to refrain from taking and processing orders for this product, until such a time as Eircom demonstrates, to ComReg’s satisfaction, that it (Eircom) is fully compliant with all of its regulatory obligations, including those arising from Eircom’s dominance of the Wholesale Broadband Access market.

That’s the entire statement, by the way. Ouch. Here’s the product.

What’s going on here?

This came too late for last week’s presentation: via the Center for Media Research (here) via David Weinberger’s blog, results from Deloitte’s big survey, ‘State of the Media Democracy‘ (an awkward title). Try the PDF summary here - anyone got a copy of the raw data or do I have to sell a kidney for it?

40 percent of all survey respondents are making their own entertainment (editing movies, music and photos); 25 percent of Matures (61-75); 56 percent of all Millennials (18-24)
More than one in 10 Millennials are actively uploading their own videos on the Internet
51 percent of all survey respondents are watching/reading content created by others: 71 percent of Millennials, 56 percent of Xers; Boomers/Mature participation is less, but noteworthy

Now, sharing is caring, so here’s a list of the review and data sources I used in recent writing (well, for a particular element of it), it became a footnote in the SLS paper but it’s a fun list - may be helpful if not comprehensive

‘Results and analysis of the Web 2.0 services survey undertaken by the SPIRE project’ (11 June 2007)
W Dutton and E Helsper, The Internet In Britain 2007
Edison Media Research, ‘The Podcast Audience Revealed’ (19 March 2007),
UNESCO, New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension (February
2007)
OECD, ‘Participative Web: User-Created Content’ (DSTI/ICCP/IE(2006)7, 12 April
2007)
H Green & C Gannon, ‘Their Space: Education for a Digital Generation’

Rachel Cobcroft kindly reminds me to dive into Hitwise statistics in more detail, too…

How did we end up with this nonsense?

“I do intend to carry out a clear exploring exercise with the private sector … on how it is possible to use technology to prevent people from using or searching dangerous words like bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism,” (EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini) told Reuters.

This one’s for you, Frankie.

bomb
kill
genocide
terrorism
bomb+kill+genocide+terrorism

Also worth noting is that the top results for bomb are as follows

BOMB Magazine
Interviews between Artists, Writers, Musicians, Directors and Actors.
www.bombsite.com/

Bomb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A bomb is an explosive device that generates and releases its energy very rapidly. The explosion creates a violent, destructive shock wave. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb

Google bomb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Google bomb (also referred to as a ‘link bomb’) is Internet slang for a certain kind of attempt to influence the ranking of a given page in results …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bomb

Bomb it by AGame.com - Fun Games from thatvideogamesite.com
www.thatvideogamesite.com/play.php?id=678

bomb visual music
Bomb is a visual musical instrument, software that produces animated organic graphics in response to the keyboard, audio music, or on its own.
draves.org/bomb/

Flickr: Photos tagged with bomb
www.flickr.com/photos/tags/bomb/

A-Bomb WWW Museum ~ June,1995
Exhibits depicting the results of the bombing of Hiroshima through photographs, survivors stories, monuments and historical objects.
www.csi.ad.jp/ABOMB/

Bomb Hip-Hop
The Bomb Hip-Hop Entertainment site. Featuring all aspects of Hip-Hop culture (graffiti, DJin’ MCin’, breakin’ and much more), with articles, interviews, …
www.bombhiphop.com/

Howstuffworks “How Nuclear Bombs Work”
Nuclear bombs are the most serious looming threat in just about any major conflict. Learn what gives nuclear bombs such immense power and what the long-term …
science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm

:::DA BOMB BIKE ::
Makers of downhill, DS, XC and trials bicycles and components. Company news and contact details provided.
www.dabombbike.com/

Scary stuff indeed.

Truly random post ahead.

Passing through Newcastle (England) last week, I noticed a very distinctive font in use on the Metro (urban rail, mostly overground) - it was hard to miss when painted in huge letters on the walls of stations! A little bit of investigation turns up the information that it is called Calvert, named after its creator, the well-known designer Margaret Calvert.

Calvert was one half of the pair of designers, working for a committee, that created the British road sign system (the pictures, the colour schemes, the font (”Transport“), and more. Jock Kinneir was Calvert’s boss: there’s a good summary of their work here. Calvert and Kinneir also designed Rail Alphabet for British Rail, which replaced Gill Sans (itself popping back into view this month through the Penguin Celebrations series).

All this leads into Dublin Bus having a new identity (old and new below) that I find quite striking - it is very sans serif (like Rail Alphabet and Transport) and quite different to the existing CIE 2000 (used by buses and trains, designed as a millennium celebration of some sort, it seems).

(For non-Dubs: the odd logo is based on the initials DB and the ‘castle’ motif of the city’s crest)

Oh, Canada. Helped to write a UN declaration on aboriginal rights (it took about a decade) and then (after a change in government) was one of only four countries (in the General Assembly, as the 61st session comes to a close) to vote against it. More here. Joining with the US, Australia and New Zealand. Colonies United.

Bulletin from the General Assembly with a report of the vote. Here’s the declaration. And here’s the ambassador’s speech, if you’re able for it.

Updates: News from the CBC, sorrow from Lori at metislaw and a thoughtful Australian perspective from Nic.

Sometimes, with an eye to future job applications, it’s hard to tell the difference between law schools - especially in jurisdictions like the US and UK that seem to have more law professors than Ireland has people.

Thankfully, though, stories like this (see also this) come along and remind you that sometimes, there is a difference between right and wrong…

On a much more cheerful note, best of luck to Salford Law School near Manchester, opening its doors this month.

(rather than a storm in a teacup, of course).

Thanks to the various people who sent me links to the Whirlpool controversy in Australia. It’s a textbook set of facts, with an angry plaintiff alleging a very old-world tort (injurious falsehood, in this case), a selection of annoyed customers (who aren’t being chased) and an ISP in the middle playing the role of unwilling defendant. Would probably be open-and-shut in the US, but much less so in Australia. I’m sure it will never get to court, although if it did, it would be interesting to see how the general issues about publisher liability were dealt with - the familiar Gutnick case (defamation) doesn’t really tackle that question head-on.

More coverage from Nic Suzor’s blog, the Sydney Morning Herald and ZDNet.

Oh, and here’s the statement of claim (PDF). Just in case, y’know, anyone who hasn’t read all the allegations of shoddy software and wants to catch up with them!

Woohoo! An update to the aggregator for everything to do with Irish politics. A working widget too.

Now all we need is some actual politics

This week, I’m at the Society of Legal Scholars annual conference in Durham (that’s in the north-east of England, for all those who said ‘where’s that?’ to me this week). Previous discussion here.

I’m speaking in the third cyberlaw session (Thursday morning), delivering a paper, Mass-aging Internet Law for Unwise Crowds (PDF). If you’re reading this and also going to Durham, say hello, and try to get me to come to your talk - it’s very hard to pick (here’s the programme (PDF)).

No idea whether there will be any live blogging…

Inspired by Peter Black post (itself inspired by this news), here’s a quick look at the browser stats for Lex Ferenda:

Unknown 32.3 %
MS Internet Explorer 32.2 %
Safari 12.4 %
Firefox 9.8 %
Opera 4.1 %
NewsGator (RSS Reader) 2.5 %
Mozilla 2.3 %
AppleSyndication (RSS Reader) 1.1 %
NetNewsWire (RSS Reader) 0.7 %
RssReader (RSS Reader) 0.5 %
Others 1.4 %

Last month it was:

Unknown 14946 33 %
MS Internet Explorer 14733 32.5 %
Firefox 6014 13.2 %
Safari 3736 8.2 %
Opera 1437 3.1 %
Mozilla 1058 2.3 %
NewsGator (RSS Reader) 981 2.1 %
AppleSyndication (RSS Reader) 698 1.5 %
NetNewsWire (RSS Reader) 539 1.1 %
RssReader (RSS Reader) 247 0.5 %
Others 901 1.9 %

and a year ago it was

Unknown 3294 46.6 %
MS Internet Explorer 1973 27.9 %
Safari 838 11.8 %
Firefox 705 9.9 %
Mozilla 107 1.5 %
Netscape 88 1.2 %
Opera 22 0.3 %
Camino 15 0.2 %
Links 13 0.1 %
Konqueror 8 0.1 %
Others 0 %