Unintended Consequences of DNS blocking

31 Dec 2011 by Dave.

Now that BT’s DNS service has been reviewed by a Court and the newzbin2 site been deleted, can I assume that all sites within the DNS database are permitted by the copyright holders and courts?

I feel that we as the ISP’s customers need some “certainty”.

Posted in copyright, newzbin2, digital economy, uk, internet, law, technology | No Comments »

Why the DE Act is not in breach of EU law?

30 Dec 2011 by Dave.

I have finally finished my summary of the Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act. [here]. I have posted it on this blog backdated it to 21st April 2010, since that is the day after the judgement was delivered, and close to when I started it.  It’s a hard read, and I am not sure my summary is much easier. It’s clearly taken a long time to read the judgement and write my review in hours taken and from when I started, for that I apologise. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading.

The ruling states that,

1. the DE Act is not a technical regulation and thus does not need to be notified to the EU Commission as part of the legislative process, although the subsidiary Ofcom regulations will.
2. the DE Act does not conflict with the EU’s E-Commerce Directive because the ‘mere conduit’ defence is not absolute, it does not require ‘general monitoring’, and copyright protection measures are excluded from the domain of the ECD.
3. the DE Act does not conflict with the EU or UK Privacy and Data Protection laws because copyright enforcement measures are permitted processing measures under the Law.
4. the DE Act does not conflict with the EU’s Authorisation Directive since the AD does not prohibit amendment or supplementary regulation, however it does invalidate some aspects of the proposed cost sharing order.
5. the claimants fail to prove that the DE Act and its parliamentary passage was sufficiently disproportionate to warrant being struck down i.e. that intellectual property rights are balanced against the rights of ISSPs and citizens by Parliament.

The ruling made no comments on the proportionality of any “Technical Measures” since they have not been drafted, agreed or promulgated.

The court made no comment on whether a law requiring “careful balance” on the issues of “fundamental rights” should be passed using the unprecedented accelerated procedures of House of Commons’ Wash-up. This process meant that the possibly 100’s of hours of review time spent by elected politicians was avoided. (The Commons spent under 10 hours considering the Bill.)

Judge Parker refused the claimants the right to appeal, but this has now been granted on all grounds except that the DE Act breaches the E-Commerce Directive by imposing a duty of general monitoring.  This was reported by the Guardian [here] and Linx [here].

Posted in digital economy, copyright, uk, europe, internet, politics | 1 Comment »

The Digital Divide in the UK

30 Dec 2011 by Dave.

While researching another blog article, I was pointed at the ONS’ Statistical Bulletin, “Internet Access - Households and Individuals, 2011“. This reports that 77% (up from 73% last year) of UK Households have internet access, and 79% of internet users think they can protect their privacy. (Yeah right!)

They ask those who do not have the internet “Why not?” and the reasons are, price of equipment, lack of skills or lack of need. I’d be interested in those who find the cost of connection too high?

Posted in uk, digital economy, statistics, internet, politics, technology | No Comments »

Program or be Programmed, it starts at school

11 Dec 2011 by Dave.

It would seem that even the IT industry is fed up with England’s IT education syllabus. A number of IT companies, most of them US subsidiaries have issued a “report” seeking to influence the quality of IT teaching in England. In an article, called “Coding the New Latin”, the BBC report,

Today, the report is dated 28th Nov, the likes of Google, Microsoft and other leading technology names will lend their support to the case made to the government earlier this year in a report called Next Gen. It argued that the UK could be a global hub for the video games and special effects industries - but only if its education system got its act together.

The BBC continue

But the problem, according to those campaigning for change, begins at school with ICT - a subject seen by its detractors as teaching clerical skills rather than any real understanding of computing.

It seems that these Hi-Tech companies argue that teaching in schools focuses too much towards using office software, by which we all mean Microsoft Office. Despite suggesting that we aim higher, the first quote points our children at the Entertainment industry and not computer design, manufacturing nor system software engineering.

My experience as an observer, and parent of school students is that the syllabus for our brightest and most committed IT students is exclusively about using Microsoft Office products. Frankly this bores the brighter students. This boredom was compounded at the turn of the century, if not today, by the decision taken by many schools to teach the GNVQ syllabus, and not the GCSE National Curriculum. This decision was taken because good GNVQs scored more highly than the GCSE in the school league tables and it could be taught (sometimes) with the same time commitment.

Let me assure you that the GNVQ IT syllabus is boring as fuck, requiring a very narrow rote based skill set demonstrating the ability to write a letter using Microsoft Word. There is no HTML, no CSS, no SQL, no scripting, no programming and very little hardware. My children didn’t  even open up a computer to examine the parts or to learn about, what are now called, user installations, such as memory DIMM installs. NOr did they even teach anything useful like how to configure an internet gateway or set a password on the router!

This shockingly unambitious syllabus is worsened by teaching staff in many cases with limited real experience of IT or Computing.

Today I go to seminars where senior software development managers are crying out with frustration that Universities aren’t turning out skilled programmers. In Britain we are struggling to write innovative code and code is constrained only by imagination ( and the speed of light).

Europe and the UK’s system software business is tiny, there’s only one European CPU and no European computer manufactures. Even in the mobile business we are in retreat with the demise of Psion and Nokia. We are almost at the point where all Europe’s computer scientists work for US companies.

So at last, even some of the campaigners for the current curriculum recognise that it’s 20 years too old. The reality is it’s designed to prepare us as consumers of foreign software and not to prepare us to be wealth creators in the 21^st century. We need change to encourage our best to work in IT and Computer Science, and contribute to the IT platform which will be the base for the next generation’s wealth creation and our, by which I mean those who want them soon’s, pensions.

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This is meant to be a rant about the British education system and so I have two postscripts

1. The UK’s early specialisation makes this an issue of crucial importance. People that fail or give up at GCSE (16) will be most unlikely to study such a subject at either “A” level (18_ or University.
2. I reckon that the Scottish Assembly has control of the Scottish curriculum. It seems odd to write about an English issue, but that’s how is as far as I know.

However, we can’t look at Education in isolation to certain macro- and industrial economic developments,

1. ARM is a beacon.
2. Nokia have given up, and soon most phones will use US authored operating systems; Nokia shit-canned their own phone operating systems.
3. Siemens is a system software licensee, the big European integrators don’t do system software.
4. MySQL AB (Sweden) sold itself to Sun Microsystems.
5. Canonical Ltd. is a UK quoted company, is this the last of the European Linux distros?

Posted in economics, education, digital economy, uk, europe, politics | 1 Comment »

A Nordic morning

04 Dec 2011 by Dave.

Just back from a trip to Guildford, to the Scandinavian Fair. We now have some Xmas presents for others, a hat for me, and some snacks with which to watch “The Killing”.

No pickled fish unfortunately, but we made up for that on the way home.

Posted in diary, europe | No Comments »