A Networked World

A voice of common sense

What Brian Rudman says : Referendum smacks of wasted money

Over the next few weeks, $8.9 million of taxpayers' money is going to be wasted on this meaningless, non-binding referendum. That's a quarter of the amount Barnados spent helping children in need last year.

It's more than half the Government funding for adult education, a programme which will be cut from next year to pay for meaningless extravagances like this.

The 200,000 Kiwis who take night classes might like to remind the smackers of this ... or feel guilty that they were among the 300,000 people who signed the petition calling for a referendum.

Also feeling guilty should be the law-makers and the bureaucrats who created a system which allows such a meaningless question to be put to voters.

"Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand." This question is so loaded as to be incomprehensible.

What does "good parental correction" mean in this context. What is "a smack". It also suggests that a smack, in this context, is a criminal offence. But it isn't. Two years ago, a grand coalition of parliamentarians - 113 to 8 - cobbled together a compromise to allay any such fears.

So we're wasting $8.9 million to express our opinion on something that isn't happening now and that no one has any plans to introduce.

In the deal hammered out between former Prime Minister Helen Clark and her successor, John Key, police were given the discretion not to prosecute a parent for the use of force against a child "if the offence is considered to be so inconsequential that there is no public interest in proceeding with a prosecution".

What the act (that the slap-happy fundies so oppose) did do was remove the anomaly that allowed a parent to thrash a child and then later in court, use the defence of "reasonable force for the purpose of correction". It's a defence not available to brawling adults. Nor to an adult disciplining a child who is not their own flesh and blood.

Too many people are addicted tol violence as the solution to their feelings of fear and frustration, especially when it comes to kids.

These same people are, in this case, liars and fear mongers and, since they force me, I will be voting Yes. If they want to be backed RIGHT into a corner, lets give it to them.

Unconscionable chiropractic behaviour

Thansk Jonnie for the pointer to Derren Brown's piece Simon Singh stands up to libel claims. Derren says:

I have put my name to a petition that feels that libel laws should not be used to silence discussion of medical practice and scientific evidence. This is following the British Chiropractic Association bringing a libel case against Simon Singh for questioning the evidence relating to their claims. It seems to many people, including your blogger, that the response to this should be open debate and defending of claims, not suing the respected author of an article for highlighting such doubts.

Simon has taken the brave move of appealing the pre-trial ruling, and Sense About Science have joined with him to gather support for the freedom of speech issue that underpins this. It can all be read about here. Simon is quoted as saying:

“It has been a stressful and frustrating twelve months since I published my article on chiropractors and their attempts to treat children with conditions such as asthma. The British Chiropractic Association’s decision to sue me for libel has been an enormous drain on my time and energy.

I have a horse in this race. I've had asthma all my life, Chiroppractic treatement has done wonders for my back when it was in acute pain, but using libel laws to silence debate on evidence is utterly unconscionable.

And absurd. We have so-called debates all the time about the effectiveness of medical treatments from triple vaccines and whether they cause autism (my 2c, even if they do in a very few cases, the risk is justified) to the plethora of drugs that have nasty side effects or don't work as well as the advertising suggests. This demand to be beyond criticism is all part of the corporatisation of society and its in the process of stopping. Chiros need to get with the programme, get down off their pedestals and defend their practiose or get into another line of business.

Another fascist gene expressed

I thought the NZ government had gone pretty far down the nutso legislation road with our incompetent Copyright protection laws, but this takes the cake. Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day.

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

Some questions

1. Is there now a global compact among nations now to co-ordinate their blacklists? What business does Australia have blacklisting denmarks' blacklist/ What POSSIBLE difference could it make?
2. Anti-abortionists may be misinformed and some advocate violence against women who have abortions and their practitioners. Here's the news, rational people want to know who these advocates are. Hiding them is the worst possible disservice to informed debate.
3. Big one. How in hell am I suppsoed to know whether i am linking to a banned website if I can't LOOK IT UP. Oh wait, some bureacratic snoop will TELL me.
4. Does publishing the URL of the banned site constitute LINKING to it? don't ask, tese bunnies wont know what you are talking about.

Rule 1.
NEVER permit bureaucrats to make decisions about our freedoms.

Words almost fail me

But not quite. This piece of publication beggars belief. Campbell Smith: Anti-piracy law a reasonable way to protect artists' rights.

Its about the copyright protection act that was passed into law here last year and the subject of the international Internet Blackout campaign a couple of weeks ago that saw the most egregious section 92a delayed and possibly aborted. (and if you think I'm in a nasty mood about it, I pale into meekness compared with Colin Jackson's fulmination from last year which is STILL current.)

From a journalistic integrity perspective it fails on these counts

It does not reveal until the end of the piece that Mr Campbell has a vested interest as chief executive of the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand..
It does not make it obvious that his piece is an opinion with a partisan perspective but instead they carry it under "Technology" as if it is a news piece ABOUT his statement, with all the journalistic caveats that would then be in place
It claims to represent "Music makers" when it is clear that many artists do not support his position (See Creative Freedom)
It does not reveal that section 92a is deeply contested, impossible to implement justly, hated by the ISPs especially
It does not reveal that the proposed code of practise was full of holes and ridiculously easy to circumvent
It does not, above all, reveal that the section has been delayed by the Government, handed to the ISP's and copyright holders to sort out and, if they can't reach an agreement may be abandoned entirely rendering the whole piece of legislation moot.

Not acceptable journalistic standards. But then they also let him get away with the following

In the past few weeks there have been a lot of misleading reports and sensational propaganda about section 92A. It is not surprising that many have spoken out against the legislation. I would vote against it myself if it was half as bad as it is being portrayed by some of its critics.

Some people have suggested the new law would mean people keeping tabs on what internet sites people visit or monitoring people's email. That is not true.

Correct, it doesn't.

Others suggest that under the draft code of conduct designed to implement the law people will be summarily thrown off the internet for downloading a couple of unlicensed files. That is also not true.

Correct, straw man.

What would happen is simple. Right holders could log on to public file-sharing sites, just as anyone can, and note which IP addresses are being used to upload pre-release music or films or large amounts of copyright-infringing material.

Wrong, its not the uploading that is being targeted, it is the DOWNLOADING.

They would then prepare evidence,

Which will not be reviewed by any competent judicial authority, this is where it starts to go bad.

complete with details of the names of the copyrighted files being uploaded, exact timestamps and the protocol used, and send it to the relevant ISP. They would never see the personal details of the person behind that IP address.

The problem is that a PERSION will be disconnected, not an IP address, and the ISP is neither competwent nor authroised to decide whether the actual file is illegally owned by the downloader, nor are there any mechanisms in place to do that.

The ISP would then contact its user and warn them that they were breaking the law, advise them not to do it again and provide details of where to enjoy music legally online.

If the user kept breaking the law the ISP could close the internet account.

See? Simple. Well of course its simple, as stated, it breaches practically every aspect of natural justice and you can get simple as long as you are prepared to abridge anyone's rights.

Nowhere, BTW, does he mention that this is a protracted process to which the "offender" has any right to object or contest or be heard, although they do. Nor that the ISP again would have to weigh the contesting claims and determine (as in legally deteremine) who was right; no wonder they hate it.

In fact the contention is enough to abort the whole process anyway.

Even his own statement makes it clear that the ISP has to act as the judge and jury and enforcer of the law, roles for which they are not suited, prepared or entitled in this country.

None of that apparently matters to these guys. But it matters to a lot of other people, people who have raised a ruckus and stalled the law. ain't going to happen this way buster, which is why it is so bizarre that the Herald should run the piece at all.

Quis Custodiet

ISPos custodies: Some ISPs are fiddling with your pages.

GRADUATE STUDENTS at the University of Washington have found that some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are meddling with the contents of web pages in transit to their subscribers.

Their paper (pdf), which is to be delivered Wednesday at the Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation in San Francisco, outlines that about one per cent of the web pages that the researchers tested had been altered during transmission.

The authors document some alarming practices by some ISPs. They examined the data flowing to about 50,000 computers and found that certain ISPs were injecting adverts into web pages transmitted on their networks.

They also found that some web browsing and ad-blocking software was altering pages and creating security vulnerabilities at the same time.

Co-author and PhD student Charles Reis said, "The Web is a lot more wild than we originally expected."

I am SHOCKED, SHOCKED! I say, that there are business peop,le out there who would do such a thing. adulterating their service to increase their prof... Oh, wait.

And these are the people the media companies expect to protect THEIR interests and charge us for the privilege. Frankly if YOU want your browser to alter pages that is your right to do so, but if my ISP is switching content for their own profit, then we need to know which ISPs are doing it and publish the list.

Of course, they will probably remove their own names when the page is downloaded so we will need to have random spelling mutations in the page just so we can see an approximation of their names.

Wikileaks Under Attack

Just because sunlight is such a good antiseptic. From DailyKos: Wikileaks Under Attack: California Court Wipes Wikileaks.org Out of Existence.

One of the most important web sites in recent months has been Wikileaks.org.  Wikileaks has upset the Chinese government enough that they are attempting to censor it, as is the Thai military junta. Wikileaks is now under attack from a censorship effort by a California court.

    *

Created by several brave journalists committed to transparency, Wikileaks has published important leaked documents, such as the Rules of Engagement for Iraq, the 2003and 2004 Guantanamo Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures, and evidence of major bank fraud in Kenya that apparently affected the Kenyan elections.

As of Friday, February 15, those going to Wikileaks.org have gotten Server not found messages.

Today I received a message explaining that a California court has granted an injunction written and requested by lawyers for the Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer. It seems that the bank is trying to keep the public from accessing documents that may reveal shady dealings.

Wikileaks was only given a couple of hours notice "by email" and was not even represented at the hearing where a U.S. judge took such a drastic step attempting to totally shut down an important information outlet.

The result was this totally unprecedented attempt to totally wipe out the existence of Wikileaks:

"Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court."

[...] If this injunction stands, it will set an incredible precedent for all of us who use the web to unveil misbehavior by the rich and powerful.

So the response has been twofold; the first is the traditional one.

Fortunately, Wikileaks is fighting this unconstitutional attack on press freedom, aided by six pro bono attorneys in San Francisco.

The second, however, shows in spades that the people whose power comes from control of information haven't a clue about the Internet, and neither do many of the people who supposedly enforce the laws.

Its founders, knowing that governments and institutions will go to extreme lengths to censor the truth, have created an extensive network of cover names from which one can access their materials or continue leaking the secrets of  governments and the corrupt  rich and powerful.

The full list is here.

My Smart Brother

My brother is a pretty smart guy in a lot of ways, but the other day he outdid himself.

We were talking about the latest example of corporate failure at the highest level, Societe generale's $8 billion meltdown. Then came this headline.

An investigating judge has thrown out fraud charges against the so-called French rogue trader and released him under judicial supervision.

The judge rejected the the most serious charge facing Jerome Kerviel, attempted fraud.

The fact is that Kerviel was not apparently diverting any of the illicit profits that he had been making to his own account. Now given that the company was carefully turning a blind eye to those profits, there may be nothing to say that he was not skimming a small perk for himself, but lets say that he was totally square with the company.

Then it all went pear shaped and $80+ billion worth of trades went down the drain in one hit.

That's when brother had his brainwave. What if Kerviel had used a numbered Swiss bank account to short his own enormous trades, then ,let the whole bundle drop?

No fraud of his employer, his superiors donkey deep in the deals by corrupt oversight and many, many examples of just this kind of operation going belly up suddenly. Perfect cover and no connection between the trader and some distant other party in the derivatives game who presciently shorts the very trades that are going to fall apart.

My god what a scam that would be.

Oh, and brother is studying law, when he gets that ticket, don't find yourself on the other side of a case from him.

You Can' Buy "Systems"

As a rule of thumb, it would be safe to check any purchase you are thinking of making and if it claims to be a system, don't touch it with a bargepole: $40m system to stop reoffending crims 'a failure'.

A multimillion-dollar system designed to stop prisoners reoffending after their release appears to have failed.

The "integrated offender management" (IOM) system was described by the Corrections Department in 2000 as "the biggest single initiative the department has undertaken to reduce reoffending".

See that word "system"? Bad sign. And it gets worse.

But it has failed to move the two-year reconviction rate of released prisoners from 55 per cent - the rate when the system started.

[...] Canterbury University criminologist Dr Greg Newbold told an Australasian sociology conference in Auckland yesterday that the system had become "a large and expensive failure".

"It's another wreck on the scrapheap of abandoned fads of criminal rehabilitation," he said.

Here's a major problem.

The system is a computerised way of managing all offenders.

Any computerised system that costs more than $10 million is practically guaranteed to fail at some significant level. QED.

"The idea is that all offenders are classified on reception into security and treatment categories, a sentence plan is developed and people suitable for treatment are directed into programmes which are consistent with their criminogenic needs," Dr Newbold said.

"It's like a hospital - you go to hospital, you get diagnosed, you get treated.

There's another way that it is like a hospital. Its clean, its hygienic, it smells of isopropyl alcohol. Above all it means that managers don't have to TOUCH, or talk tyo, or think about, the problems or smell, see or hear the people. After all, they have a SYSTEM to do that for them, computerised even, and I'll bet it produces the prettiest graphs and reports.

"The expectations were extremely high. The significant cost of establishing and operating IOM, about $40 million a year, was expected to be offset by the increasing effectiveness of the interventions.

"They predicted up to a 25 per cent reduction in annual inmate intakes."

We. Don't. Learn. Some years ago the cops had the same expectations of a similar system for case management, called INCIS, they were so sure that they started firing the staff who would certainly become surplus once the system was up to speed.

One of the many such deals that crashed and burned before it cleared the parking lot.

But Dr Newbold, who served seven and a half years in Paremoremo Prison in the 1970s, said he predicted in 2002 that the system would not work because most prisoners, unlike patients, did not want to be "cured".

"They like the way they are. They want to give up going to jail. They don't want to give up offending."

Damn, you mean filling in a form doesn't actually change anything?

I once worked under a radio station manager who was the darling of head office because his reports were always on time, in full and had neat graphs and tables. He went through about 4 managerial jobs before they realised that he was useless.

That was back in 1985 or so. 22 years on and all we have done is double the rate at which disasters happen, raise the cost to the power of 3 and produce even nicer graphics to support the case for piddling away public money.

I get phone calls

I had a call last night from Timothy O'Callaghan, Partner, Piper Alderman, the law firm that sent the vague and  rather snotty note the other day about the Aussie Yellow pages post.

With an apology.

Apparently I was sent the note in error, it was NOT unauthorised use of the trademark at all;

Your article was identified as an occasion of incorrect use of the "Yellow Pages" trade mark,  but not infringing use. Our instructions were  request you to:

1. use the ® symbol next to the trade mark "yellow  wherever it is used in order to demonstrate that it is a registered trade mark in Australia; and
2. use the name of the product as a noun (eg "the Yellow Pages® Directory")

Mhmm. Like THAT will fly. I was very polite on the phone, he even thanked me for my attitude, but I did point out that Yellow pages is now a generic term, a bit like Google really, or Xerox.

For the record, the reply.

Hi Tim

At 05:25 p.m. 3/12/2007, you wrote:

Letter attached as discussed today.

Thank you for the way in which you responded to my telephone call.

My pleasure. It was good to hear that it was a foulup; happens in the best ordered families.

As to the request for the form of use of the Yellow pages name, as I indicated, I probably wont go that far.

In the first place the use of trade names in news and commentary pieces is very rarely cited as you request.

To instance only "The seeds of discontent" by Simon Webster, an opinion piece from Today's SMH, who cites numerous registered trade marks without the form of attribution you request.

• Monsanto.
• The Land
• Tour de France
• Roundup
• champagne
• The Young Ones
• Coles

Interestingly they don't even capitalise Champagne and the only names distinguished are a newspaper and a TV show which are italicised.

To do as you ask would set me well outside the mainstream of such material. I'm afraid yellow pages needs to make some more effective efforts to understand and participate in the online world.

If they need a strategist, I'm available.
=)

Cheers

And if they want advertising, they can pay for it.

Unauthorised use of the Registered Trade Mark "Yellow Pages"

I guess it had to happen sooner or later

I just had an email from one Sue Cremer, Personal Assistant at Piper Alderman which promotes itself as the "Best Professional Services Firm in South Australia 2007"

They claim that this posting last year Endangered Species - Australian Yellow Pages infringes their client's trademark by my "use" of their trademark and that the posting might mislead poor widdle you to believe that I have an association with their client, Yellow pages or Sensis.

Now it beats me how I am "using" their trademark beyond "quoting" it in a series of screen shots to demonstrate that their search tools are really not up to snuff. I am certainly not pretending to be a business directory or to provide phone numbers and other details to anyone who uses my site, and if I HAD a business relationship or "association" with the companies I would expect that it would damned quickly have been severed for publicly giving them a zinger.

But I'm always interested in learning something new so here's the challenge; what's their problem?

Oh, and at the end of their pdf attachment they invite me to signal my co-operation by writing the same on the letter and faxing them a copy back. Right, like I'll sign up to fix an unspecified example of an unspecified infringement to satisfy a company that already has more money than god and spends too little of it on putting together a decent web strategy.

Or could it be that they just don't like being criticised and are trying to use an irrelevant piece of law to shut me up? Nah, that would be unprincipled and stupid, I might blog about it, couldn't happen.

Update

This is what they sent

This is what they got back.

Please explain in what way I am infringing the use of the trademark. I am not conducting any business as a telephone book, telephone directory, business directory or any other kind of telephone number search tools, nor am I attempting to pass myself off as the "yellow pages" I do not offer search of the yellow pages or anything like it, nor do I attempt to sell advertising, listing or any other kind of service as yellow pages or anything of that kind.

The page to which you refer is a criticism of the efficacy and adequacy of the Yellow Pages search tools on the date specified and in doing so demonstrates the efficacy by quoting (via screen shot) the points that I wish to make. No reasonable person could possibly mistake my blog for the Yellow Pages and even if they did, could not possibly find any such service there.

Under fair use provisions I am entitled to "quote" from a source and identify that source correctly so that there is no doubt about the point, intention or organisation to which I refer. I do that, and no more.

Furthermore you suggest that my "use" of the trademark Yellow Pages or a mark which is substantially identical or deceptively similar to your clients registered trade marks, infringes your clients trade mark rights.

Can I ask you to be specific please? What "use" of the trademark itself am I making, or is the trademark I am using substantially similar or deceptively similar to your client's? Or perhaps it is all three. Then we come to the term "use". Please be good enough to specify the "use" to which I am putting this actual, or similar or deceptive trademark and whether said trademark is the actual one, or some similar or deceptive one.

Finally you suggest that such use is "likely to mislead members of the public into believing that there is an association between your organisation and our clients."

I would be fascinated to learn from you the nature of the "association" implied, expressed or entailed in the article to which you refer. Please specify both the kind of association and the specific language used to imply that that would be likely to lead people to that assumption.

Frankly, that is absurd on its face and indicates that you have not bothered to read the article that you refer to. At no point do I claim to have such an association (beyond that of interested user), nor do I hint, imply or invite the reader to assume such a relationship. However, if you can specify the precise language to which you refer I will be more than happy to reconsider.

I am, however, critical of the product/ service being offered by Yellow Pages as inadequate to the environment in which it is being offered. Could it be that your clients are not happy with that criticism and, rather than engage with me about it, or responding to the criticism as they are both entitled and enabled to do in the comments on the posting, they have resorted to using your offices and an irrelevant piece of law in an attempt to intimidate me into shutting up and going away?