The All-Party Internet Group (APIG) will conduct an inquiry into Digital Rights Management and invites written submissions of 1000 words or less by 21 December. This is a great chance to make legislators think about the problems introduced by the recent ill-considered DRM laws and we can offer them some possible improvements. I think I will be asking for: 1. establishment of "fair circumvention" when DRM is being used to restrict what should be fair dealing or other vital acts - you can't make DRM systems "fail safe" but you can give some hope of recovering after they "fail closed"; 2. legislation to ensure that DRM system owners are held responsible for computer misuse (Sony?), privacy invasion and monopoly effects resulting from their DRM systems, which will help limit distortion; 3. requiring collecting societies to allow members to leave, rather than letting us see more reports about why some artists aren't using liberal licensing yet. If you can write a structured response to some or all of their questions, please do so. At worst, let's hope we can avoid the likes of the recent French proposal that could ban free software here... (Part of this item first appeared in an email to the fsfe-uk list on 5 December.)

The local BUG linked to a safe cycling quiz. I had a few problems with it because it needs javascript as well as the disclosed cookie requirement: PHP could do this without both, so I think it's slightly bad programming; but eventually I went through the questions. I was rather surprised to score only just over 50%. After reviewing the questions, it turns out that it's not because I do things seriously wrong: it's more that the question-setter seems a bit militantly anti-car and assumes that cycle lanes and cycleways won't be built to the national standard. To be fair, most are substandard, but I assumed the examples in the test questions were OK, in the absence of other information. I also disagree about the message sent by moving right on the approach to a narrow. It seems to make some drivers think you're going to make a right turn using the island as a refuge, so they move to undertake, which is really dangerous. They shouldn't overtake too near the island if your normal road position is good.

With Planet Scheme and more referrals, I seem to have gained many new readers recently, so here's a quick description of this blog. I'll post before noon each day if I'm in the office (where the computer that I use for writing is), usually at least Monday to Friday. I post about: scheme programming (also in scheme.rss), gnu/linux free software support (also in hacks.rss), koha development (also in koha.rss), creativity and copyright (also in affs.rss), running a non-traditional business, bicycling, events around Lynn, Norfolk and other events I take part in. If you would like to contact me about it, I prefer trackback: some posts include trackback URLs (and others aren't hard to guess); or my email info is linked from the top of my blog page now. Stuart wonders how to track use, reuse and repurposing - from when I was writing for "real" publications, I'd say that the same problem is faced by anyone doing a news release. All you can do is monitor the outlets and see where it goes. If you're lucky, you'll get pinged, but I think that happens only for about 1 in 10 or less. Anyone know real numbers for that? Can anyone expect audience statistics to be sorted out when even the copyright aspect of online syndication is still being figured out?

I've posted a translation of an easier to read article about the proposed DADVSI law (source: ffii.fr) which might help more people understand what the complaint is. Here's how I read it but I am not a lawyer, much less French. (Vive la Wallonie...)

I was too tired to do this really, but I wrote a translation of an article about the French anti-free software law which I mentioned earlier. So, remember: E&OE, no refunds, no warranty.

Today is the first day of the Lincoln Christmas Market. With over 300 stalls and many other attractions around the uphill quarter of Lincoln, it's probably the biggest in England and one of the biggest in Europe. If you're within a few hours of it, try a visit. Finishes Sunday (4 December).

From FSF France:

Friday November 18th, 2005, French Department of Culture. SNEP and SCPP have told Free Software authors: "You will be required to change your licenses." SACEM add: "You shall stop publishing free software," and warn they are ready "to sue free software authors who will keep on publishing source code" should the "VU/SACEM/BSA/FA Contents Department"[1] bill proposal pass in the Parliament.

WTF? This has got to be a joke... Please tell me this is a sick joke. (via MJ Ray)

On the first day of Christmas month, GPLv3 sent to me: three corporate counsels two FSF spokesmen, a research corporation director and a lawyer in a pear tree. No community projects support GPLv3? Were they excluded or did they refuse? If GPLv3 is a similar corporation-placater to the FDL, sacrificing freedom for sponsorship, I predict a riot. A bit of discussion about this problem here. The proposed resolution on publishing debian-private emails both contradicts itself and may have copyright problems. At best, reject. At least, amend. Also troubling, a claim from FSF France that new laws threaten free software developers or at least public distribution of source code. What madness is that?

Some people think that only countries have constitutions. I find that strange, since both write at Planet Debian; surely, Debian is not a country! [Update: As hinted in the comments, I did not get MJR's posting. My bad. Let it be known here that he expresses roughly the same argument I presented above.] In fact, the European Union is a country. It has a bicameral parliament (the council of ministers is sufficiently upper-house-like to qualify as one IMHO), a currency it governs, a passport, and it is the highest authority inside its borders. It is an unusual country in that its meber states have broad powers, but it is a country nonetheless. It possesses all four of the defining properties of statehood according to the Montevideo convention: The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into relations with the other states. The first three are uncontroversial, and though the fourth is weak, it is present. (Okay, that last paragraph is controversial, and I know the arguments are not airtight, but I do believe the case is valid.)

MJ Ray implied that anyone who thought the DFSG only applied to programs, not documentation, was negligent about DFSG and that the only such people who are exempt from that criticism are those who joined Debian before the Social Contract. That is blatantly wrong and bordering on outrageous revisionism. I joined Debian two-three years after the Social Contract was adopted. I read it and understood it (at least thought I did) when I joined. However, there was no "documentation is software and therefore must fall under DFSG" movement back then. It seemed to me then, and I still believe it, that the opposite was a silent consensus. I one uploaded into main a package containing almost nothing but explicitly non-free documents. (The documents have since been freed.) I was sincere in that attempt and in my argumentation at that time, and at least one of the then-current ftpmaster team must have agreed with me, since the package passed NEW checks. (Granted, I also argued that the packages would be later freed, but that should not have affected the decision if nonfree documents really had been deemed to be against the SC.) It seems to me that the current consensus is a recent one, certainly less than four years old. I have decided to honor that consensus, but don't come tell me that I was dishonest when I joined!

Linux Gazette have a (non-free) article on learning to program with DrScheme which was announced to the scheme-uk mailing list. A few critical comments there, but all good awareness-raising. I quite like the new lisp logo by Conrad Barski.

… and for now, it’s 1.5rc2 that got in experimental. I made some changes to the firefox wrapper script so that it should be quicker to launch firefox in most cases. We don’t try to find the JVM version, since the ones we wanted to set LD_ASSUME_KERNEL for have been ABI incompatible for a while, and we don’t remove the XUL.mfasl and other problematic files since it is now correctly (I hope) by firefox itself. And if bugs arise again, we’ll try to fix in upstream code, not in wrapper script… I also fixed the dash bug and another one in xpidl. For what it’s worth, I did some testing with JVMs and firefox. I got success with

• Sun JRE 1.5update5,
• Sun 1.4.2_10,
• IBM 1.4.2SR3 (but not with java-package, see bug #338277),
• Blackdown 1.4.2-02 and 1.4.1-01.

On the other hand,

• IBM 1.3.1SR8 segfaults,
• Blackdown 1.3.1+02a and 1.3.0-FCS are built against libxpcom.so with older C++ ABI, so ld can’t find __vt_17nsGetServiceByCID,
• Sun 1.3.1_10 can’t load libstdc++-libc6.1-1.so.2.

This reminded me a lot of the diaries which used to appear in some columns in Computer Express, which I read when first starting out:

"I've learned a lot more in the past two days that I would have done just using Ubuntu on my laptop and having the odd fiddle with different apps. Never *ever* let your kids near your servers......."

-- Win2k to Linux upgrade, or "How I learned to Love the Kernel" by Paul Ireland to Peterboro' LUG Over in Norwich, people are preparing for the Norwich Forum on ID Cards this Saturday.

itv4 launches tonight on freeview and ntl cable, but it seems that Sky have an administrative problem that will stop it being on Sky until next week. Anyone else suspicious? To compensate, itv4 launch night is being broadcast on Men and Motors too (which is visible across Europe, I think). The talk on the newsgroups suggests that itv4 is on satellite and it's only the non-standard Sky EPG which won't be updated. If you want it sooner, you may be able to use a standard DVB-S receiver or "Add Channels". Eutelsat float price falls. The report suggests it's because of other floats, people not wanting to invest so much in communications and bad bank practices. BBC World closes 10 radio services, opens 1 TV service which might suggest how much more expensive TV is to make. Meanwhile, a report says:

"Public service broadcasters are compromising quality to compete with commercial channels, and many of them depend on Governments or political parties. Meanwhile, ever-larger concentrations are developing in the commercial sector, often with clear political affiliations."

(Television across Europe report from OSI EUMAP) There's a guide to what I'm planning to do Real Soon Now: konekti la komputilon al televido If you want to get involved with radio instead, you could answer this call for help with rampART radio, from ram radio. I think they were interesting listening during G8 and on 7 July, but maybe they need a different approach for the rest of the time. RampART broadcast over the internet, which was how I listened. Many of the documents describing the internet are non-free, which is a silly silly pain. I've supported the petition about Problems with the IETF's copying permissions, by Simon Josefsson (author of libidn and gnutls) but I haven't done more yet. Moving to games, Sam Hocevar's post about Monsterz is unhappy with the difficulty of finding items for it:

"it makes me feel like coders are years ahead in terms of sharing their digital work for everyone to use and improve."

He's not alone. Want a big example? Stuart Yeates noticed that ibiblio's torrents have poor copyright info. I've also spotted Sourceforge and BerliOS hosting non-free data in the past. That's really annoying: you can't adapt everything you download from them and you have to read the terms really closely if you want to develop free software. It surprises me that Sourceforge and BerliOS stick so closely to the FSF's software=programs myth. It might be surprising that ibiblio's torrents seem blind to copyright metadata, but it's probably little surprise that a European Commission group assumes that strong, standardised, zealously-enforced copy controls are The Only Way and has meant the EFF Urges Fresh Inquiry Into Ramifications of DRM. There's news of a peer-to-peer technology that honours copyright law, by Derek Sooman. Will it work? Will it support liberal copyright terms as well as Big Media Grabs? Might Big Media outdo ibiblio? I doubt it.

Tomorrow (1 November), there's a protest against the Norwich Northern Distributor Road (N25) taking place in... Ely... which seems to be where the powers that be decided is a good place for the public examination of the east of England plan. It would make too much sense to hold it in any of the main cities, wouldn't it? On the plus side, Ely is a main railway junction, so maybe people will turn out despite the terrible roads to it.

"* poof... Clippie appears * It looks like you're trying to type a job advertisement. Shall I ..."

-- darsh, replying on-list to the day's third spam

"H5N1 BIRD FLU BELIEVED TO BE FIRST VIRUS UNABLE TO SPREAD THROUGH MICROSOFT OUTLOOK Researchers Shocked to Finally Find Virus That Email App Doesn't Like"

-- Mock news release forwarded to ALUG by Tony

ALUG had a kit-meet last Sunday and there's some description of what happened on the mailing list. A week or two ago, there was some discussion about improving the ALUG wiki. I think it was broken while trying to cure the repeated spam attacks while I was abroad in the summer. The immediate problem has been fixed now and there was an offer of renovation, which I'm trying to take up. Around the same time, I outlined some planned improvements for the main site which are described on their own page now. The release announcement provoked a typical discussion about how the site needs rewriting to do things it already does. :-/ I hate it when that happens. All the world's a webmaster these days. One practical improvement idea and one good suggestion so far, too, so maybe it's worth it :-) A retheme competition was started at Brett Parker's web site, and there's a later version of my entry too.

There are three ways in which your new web site is worse than the previous site :- 1. it is hard to read. It doesn't set a background colour (which is good because my browser preferences are my preferred colours), but it sets black text, which is hard to read on my preferred background. This means the site is not following the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. 2. All of my links and bookmarks for pages on the council web site have been broken. This is very irritating. I will delete most of the links rather than try to find the pages' new homes. Why have you not followed the advice of Tim Berners-Lee (1996, URI Axioms) and other web experts (for example, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for June 14, 1998: Fighting Linkrot) and set up redirects? 3. When browsing the site, I sometimes get an ASP.Net error page with a stack trace telling me that I haven't got permission to use the site. If I wait a minute and reload the page, it usually appears. What is the problem and why aren't you using customised error pages? It looks like the site could be quite an improvement, but it currently doesn't get the basics right for us old visitors. Also, why is this comment textbox so small? It's barely 10 letters wide for me. I await your reply with interest. MJR Postscript for blog only: I didn't even start on the more general problems with the navigation, attempts to make page links look like adverts, abuse of query strings, or all other others. I think the site is still an improvement, especially if you use View->Page Style->No Style.

I wrote

"If you want collaborative editing, then try Emacs's File -> New Frame on Display"

in three tips. Philip Kern replied:

"Seriously, this feature is quite dependent on X, right? ... you'll probably run into trouble despite Emacs being ported to all of those platforms like OS X and Windows."

Last I tried, OS X had X with it, while it's a quick download for Windows. It was simple enough and is probably useful for other things, unlike installing a special editor that uses horrible horrible GTK+2. I'm pretty sure it would be possible to make emacs highlight differently depending on the frame doing the input, but isn't collaborative editing meant to help break the "this is mine" ego? (Not that I can find any references about why collaborative editing works now I want them... anyone got some? Replace 2005-2.html# with tb.cgi/ and send trackbacks, or just email me via the top of the page.)

Like Jibbering, I also got the BABY BBC spam from Mentorn. As advised, I didn't reply to the spam by email. It had the phone number 0141 204 6620 in it, so I called it and they said they'll reply within a week to say why they thought they had a consenting email list.

Last week, I read that the bird flu drugs problem is partly caused by our governments (after pressure from big pharmaceutical developers), Xerox DocuColor printers put tracking codes on all printouts, an Australian farmer is being sued after GMOs infected his crop, there's an amazing claim that XML is patent infingement and ATM fraud nearly killed British banking. More amusingly, Granada's annoying copyright screens had the opposite effect on Rob Myers:

"I've never wanted to copy a DVD before. But if there was an easy way of copying this particular DVD to strip this amateurish mood-breaker off of the beginning I'd be sorely tempted."