Archive for January, 2008
As you may recall, the European Parliament's forthcoming report on the Cultural Industries has become the latest target of lobbying by the recording industry. First, they attempted to insert language that advocated that European ISPs filter and block their ownnusers on the basis of suspected infringement. As we explained to European Members of Parliament, such policies would not only harm the privacy and security of Net users - they would not even work to combat infringement. Like DRM, everyone would lose, including the music industry and artists that IFPI seeks to protect.
Read the rest at eff.org.
As has been reported by many elsewhere, the ODF Alliance published their annual report for 2007 noting, among other things:
- Twelve countries and six regional governments have adopted “pro-ODF policies”
- The latest countries are the Netherlands and South Africa, which require government agencies to use the format
- More than 40 applications now support ODF, and the Alliance’s membership ranks are set to rise above 500
The long and short of it is that the most open document format on the market *is* making progress, but one wonders if it will be enough.
Visit the ODF Alliance web site.
Tags: News
Even though I much prefer to dwell on local politics, it would seem that now is a good time to think about the presidential primaries, especially since the Feb. 5 California primary is just around the corner. On the Democratic side, I’ll start with Barack Obama. In a speech at Google, Obama noted the value of open standards:
We have to use technology to open up our democracy. It’s no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I’ll change that. I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats.
Before getting too carried way, note that he didn’t get very specific, and there is plenty of wiggle room around the term “universally accessible formats.” However, he scores points for at least using the right language. You can read his full IT plan here (PDF).
Noticeably absent from that document and, in fact, any of his speeches, is the mention of any sort of copyright reform or squashing the DMCA or even guaranteeing our rights to information. Given that the subject matter is quite politically charged, I would be shocked if he even addressed it at all before the election.
I’ll continue to follow Obama and report from other candidates as well.
Tags: News
To give some background on this issue, New York was the 5th state last year with some form of open formats legislation:
In its 2007 session, the New York State Legislature directed NYS Chief Information Officer/Director of the Office For Technology, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather stakeholder input regarding the mechanisms and processes for obtaining access to and reading electronic data so that such data can be created, maintained, exchanged, and preserved by the state in a manner that encourages appropriate government control, access, choice, interoperability, and vendor neutrality.
The original deadline for the request for comment was in December but has now been extended to January 18. See the instructions for the Request for Public Comment (RFPC) here. The RFPC directs interested parties to send email to erecords-study@oft.state.ny.us
Tags: Action, News
As you may have noticed, I’ve added a feed aggregator to more easily bring in pertinent news from the outside. So far, I’m tracking stories from the EFF, ConsortiumInfo.org, and Groklaw. If you have any requests, be sure to add them in the comments below. I have a special bias towards Andy Updegrove, so prepare to see lots of excerpts from him.
Tags: News
Back in December 2005, we announced the beginning of the end for DRM on music. Well, two years later, we're getting close to the end of the end, with Sony-BMG announcing that it, too, will be giving up on DRM for music downloads (at least for some of its catalog). Sony-BMG is the last of the four major labels to take this step.
It's about time. As online music retailers have been pointing out for years, DRM has only held back the authorized downloading services in their efforts to compete against the unauthorized world of P2P file sharing.
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This is the fifth chapter in a real-time eBook writing project I launched and explained in late November. Constructive comments, corrections and suggestions are welcome. All product names used below are registered trademarks of their vendors.
Chapter 5: Open Standards
One of the two articles of faith that Eric Kriss and Peter Quinn embraced in drafting their evolving Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) was this: products built to "open standards" are more desirable than those that aren't. Superficially, the concept made perfect sense – only buy products t...
Just three days into the new year, we have another example of DRM punishing paying customers, rather than "pirates." Netflix subscriber Davis Freeberg ran headlong into an incompatibility between Microsoft DRM and ... Microsoft DRM.
The trouble all started when Freeberg bought a new monitor for his Vista computer. When he decided to watch streaming movies from Netflix, Netflix documentation warned him that the recommended means of fixing a problem with DRM-restricted Netflix programming "may remove licenses to other content using Microsoft DRM" -- including, in particular, restricted programming he had already purchased through Amazon Unbox. Trying to resolve this problem just got Freeberg a tech-support runaround, with each company involved pointing the finger at another.
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It's not often I find myself at a loss for words when I read something, but this is one of those times.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it isn't really necessary for me to add any words to the following news, other than to characterize them with a Latin phrase lawyers use: Res ipse loquitor, which translates as "the thing speaks for itself." I'll give one clue, though: I've added this blog post to the "ODF and OOXML" folder. That's "OOXML" as in "the world must have this standard so that our customers can open the billions of documents that have already been created in older versions of" a certain office productivity suite.
So without further ado, here's the news, along with what a few other people have had to say about it [Update: ...
In one of his last official acts of 2007, President Bush signed into law the first major overhaul of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in more than a decade. The Open Government Act of 2007 makes much-needed changes to the FOIA process that will give Americans better access to information about their government at work, such as:
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