The RIAA are worried

The RIAA are worried. Worried that someone, somewhere might still not hate them, after they’ve treated music fans and musicians alike with contempt for years. To rectify this, they’re trying to pass a law that would allow them to seize people’s houses (in the USA, at least) if they’re caught with unauthorised music:

I was just alerted that the House of Reps has passed HR 4279, with the lovely name, PRO-IP (Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008). Like the doublespeak PATRIOT Act and Peacekeeper missiles, PRO-IP puts local law enforcement in a position to demand the forfeiture in criminal proceedings of stuff used to violate copyright. Which means that instead of the RIAA simply trying to collect fines, they can also incite local authorities to collect all the computers and related gear that was used to pirate.

If this bill is passed in its present form by the Senate and signed, that means there’s no more pro forma RIAA lawsuit payoffs, because if you wind up settling with the RIAA, you could still lose all your stuff in addition to any fee you paid them.

In fact, you could lose your house even if you haven’t pirated music:

This is particularly irksome in light of the MSN Music shutdown, about which the EFF has written a strong and powerful letter. It is increasingly likely a normal person could have purchased music legally from an online site, burned it to an ordinary audio CD, and in the right set of circumstances be branded a pirate because the original “granting” authority no longer exists to prove that the consumer was a legitimate purchasers.

If this law passes, I’m sure a few well-publicised cases will turn everybody against the RIAA and their increasingly desperate tactics, not just in the USA but in other developed countries. And then the backlash will begin: politicians will find they can’t get re-elected unless they stop sucking up to the RIAA, and they’ll start enacting sensible copyright laws, ones that recognize that the Internet, with it’s ability to instantly, effortlessly copy and transmit information, isn’t going away.

Mr Eugenides on psychics

This is good:

Was there ever a more transparently fraudulent money-making scheme than the “psychic industry”? Most of the psychics I am [dimly] aware of operate out of tiny fleapits in run-down shopping arcades, or do guest readings in the upstairs rooms of Edinburgh pubs between 1pm and 4pm on weekday afternoons. If I had the gift of second sight, you can be fucking sure I wouldn’t be reading people’s palms in the Felcher and Firkin for a fiver a time; I’d be making thousands of pounds an hour on Betfair from the balcony of my villa in the Seychelles, watching a naked girl try to mix a pina colada with her free hand. No, wait; two naked girls.

I guess I won’t be flying with that airline, then

I won’t be flying with any airline that takes up this idea:

Force everyone to wear a bracelet that, when remotely activated, gives the person a debilitating shock.

No, really. A company is trying to commercialize this idea.

I wonder what happens when the computer controlling this fails, and gives everybody a shock? Or when someone is shocked who has a medical condition which is made worse, or they die? Somehow I don’t think this has been fully thought through.

War on Civil Liberties Suffers Setback

The government’s War on Civil Liberties suffered a setback today, as five men who had been convicted of the thoughtcrime offence of reading extremist literature were freed by the Court of Appeal:

The convictions of five young Muslim men jailed over extremist literature have been quashed by the Appeal Court.

Freeing the men, the Lord Chief Justice said there was no proof of terrorist intent. The lawyer for one said they had been jailed for a “thought crime”. A jury convicted the students in 2007 after hearing the men, of Bradford and Ilford, east London, became obsessed with jihadi websites and literature.

Is stabbing doctors legal?

This report kind of implies that stabbing doctors is legal in Scotland:

Plans to improve protection for GPs and community midwives are to be considered by MSPs.

The measures were prompted by an attack on Dr Helen Jackson, 56, who was stabbed at her surgery in Hyndland Road, Glasgow, in August. Ambulance workers, doctors, nurses and midwives working in a hospital or responding to an emergency are currently protected by the law. GPs, nurses and midwives on non-urgent calls in the community are not covered. An extension to the Scottish Government’s Emergency Workers Act has been laid before the Scottish Parliament.

Evidently the generic laws on assault, malicious wounding, ABH, etc, don’t apply to doctors. Of maybe they do apply to doctors, but not when they are at their surgeries. Or maybe it’s only doctors with the owrds “Helen” and “Jackson” in their name who it’s legal to stab.

Anyway, the government are on the case, and determined to do something about it:

Public Health Minister Shona Robison said: “We owe our NHS staff a huge debt of gratitude for the work they do on a daily basis sometimes in challenging circumstances”. She added that the Emergency Workers Act, which was passed by the Scottish Parliament in 2005, did not go far enough.

However if you read to the end of the report it appears that stabbing GPs is in fact already illegal, because they’ve caught the guy that did it and put him before a court:

A man has appeared in court in connection with the incident at the GP’s surgery.

So why the need for a new law? Are we to believe that there is a significant number of criminals who would stab someone contrary to the law against stabbing people, but wouldn’t stab them if there was a specific law against stabbing doctors? Or maybe Shona Robison knows damn well that her proposal will have no effect, doesn’t care, and just wants to be seen to be doing something, even if it is an utterly pointless activity.

The Charter Mark

Blogging magistrate Bystander on the Charter Mark:

Her Majesty’s Courts’ Service has decided to direct its energies and much of its management’s time and effort to obtaining the Charter Mark. The Charter Mark is a relic of the John Major years and was born of the same desperate mindset as the Cones Hotline. It struck me then as a tired gimmick and I have not changed my view since. Its principal function is to enhance the career progression of the managers involved and to add gloss to their CVs.

This nonsense will soak up management resources as well as many thousands of pounds of hard cash that is desperately needed elsewhere in the service. Staff are already being encouraged to hang on to any ‘evidence’ that some court user, somewhere, has been pleased with the service he has received. New noticeboards are appearing on which morale-boosting Charter Mark stuff will be posted, stuff that will be greeted with the weary cynicism that usually greets whizzy new ideas from HMCS.

Well said.

More on ContactPoint

Some time ago I covered ContactPoint, which is a database of all children in the UK. Then I said that it “won’t contain sensitive information or subjective assessments of children”, just basic identifying information. I got this information from the official website which said:

ContactPoint will not hold assessment or case information, or subjective observations about a child or their parent. It will not contain any details such as birth weight, exam results, medical records, diet or any other detailed personal information about a child or their family.

(I’ve no idea if the website still says that — when I try to access it I get an error message).

I’ve since found out that, while technically correct, the above statement is a deliberate attempt at deception: ContactPoint won’t hold the sensitive data, another database called eCAF, which will be seemlessly linked to ContactPoint, will hold it. Details here:

Hard on the heels of the ContactPoint database comes the announcement that eCAF will also be a national database.

If you don’t know what eCAF is, go and read all about it to understand just how serious this is.

Suddenly ContactPoint looks positively benign. Those 330,000 users will now have access to the full, in-depth assessments of up to 6 million children and their families, all held on an inevitably insecure national database.

I was however right about one thing in my original blog post: the children of MPs and celebrities won’t be on the database. Which tells me everything I need to know about how secure Gordon Brown thinks it will be.

On the attitude of the press

From The ARCH Blog:

In 2003, we had a spate of phone calls from journalists wanting comments on new curfew powers that had come into force. “It’s a bit late to do anything now,” we said, “but you might want to hear about the Sexual Offences Bill that will make kissing between teenagers a criminal offence?” No response.

In 2004, we had a spate of phone calls from journalists to ask if it was true that two teenagers kissing each other was now a criminal offence. “Yes,” we said, “but it’s too late to do anything now. You might want to hear about the plans to create a national database of children, though…” “We’ll ring you back,” they said.

In 2007, we had a spate of phone calls etc “Where were you a couple of months ago, when something could actually have been done?” We asked. “How come 4 years of press releases, reports and phone calls have barely raised a mention? But perhaps you would like to know about the plans to create a second national database that will contain a lot more than names and phone numbers?” It’s gone very quiet suddenly.

Indeed.

Usmanov and Schillings can go fuck themselves

Who’s heard the phrase “when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the fist thing to do is stop digging”? Not Alisher Usmanov, the Russian/Uzbek billionaire who’s been described as a “gangster and racketeer” in the European Parliament. Nor his lawyers, Schillings, who apparently specialise in attempting to gag free speech.

This time Schillings have issued a takedown notice against Indymedia:

Indymedia UK has been issued with a takedown notice [10th of September & 21st of September] from lawyers acting for Alisher Usmanov. The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.

As Obsolete points out:

This only makes Usmanov’s charm offensive this week, involving the flying via private jet of at least 9 British journalists to his offices in Moscow, then putting them up in a five star hotel all the more shallow. He says he’s not a vindictive man and that some of Murray’s allegations are beneath his dignity to respond to, yet his lackey of legal brown-nosing sycophants are still trying to remove all mentions and republishing of Murray’s original post, while still failing to respond either to Murray’s request for them to sue him or to even explain how inaccurate his allegations are, apart from their completely untrue argument that Usmanov was pardoned by Gorbachev.

If either Schillings or Usmanov think we’re going to continue to take their attempts to silence all criticism of this deeply unpleasant man lying down, then they’ve got another thing coming.

Do Schillings and Usmanov really think they can browbeat the entire Internet into submission? Including those parts of it with more sensible libel laws than the UK?

(via Chicken Yoghurt)

Crap science in the Observer

Ben Goldacre reports on a ridiculously silly story in the Observer:

Madeleine McCann is a 4 year old girl who went missing from her parents’ holiday hotel room in Portugal 5 months ago. Danie Krugel is an ex-policeman in South Africa who believes he can pinpoint the location of missing people anywhere in the world.

He does this using his special magic box, which works by something to do with “quantum physics”, “complex and secret science techniques”, a secret energy source which nobody is allowed to know about, and a strand of the missing person’s hair or some other source of DNA. His secret method can miraculously pinpoint the missing person’s location anywhere in the world on a map, using their DNA and international GPS technology, so he says.

This might sound ridiculous to you, but today Krugel is featured in a completely serious news story in the Observer newspaper about the hunt for Madeleine McCann, where they report - in all earnestness - that he has found traces of her body on a beach in Portugal.

Danie Krugel is probably a conman, if this extract from an interview is anything to go by:

Ruda Landman (Carte Blanche presenter): “Can you remember when the fax machines first became part of the office set-up? When the computer replaced the typewriter? The first time you used an auto teller, the first cell phone call you made? It wasn’t all that long ago, yet at the time it was mind boggling.”

Today it is the most common thing to do. You probably don’t even think twice about it.

Ruda: “Now imagine this: A person disappears, you find a few strands of hair left on a brush, you put those hairs into a gadget and that points out on a map where in the world that person may be.”

That’s exactly what a group of Bloemfontein businessmen claim they are able to do.

Steering the project is Danie Krugel, former police superintendent and current Director of Health and Safety at the Central University of Technology of the Free State.

Danie Krugel (Inventor): “If you get a signature sample of something… let’s call it organic or non-organic… a very small sample. I have developed a method to use that small sample and to create data that I use to search for its origin. So you transmit and you receive.”

Ruda: “Is there anything metaphysical involved? Are you psychic?”

Danie: “I‘m a Christian and I put it clearly… this is science, science, science! That is what is so fantastic about it. It is tied to the science we hear but people didn’t realise it… it’s just science. That’s it.”

Given the massive potential of the invention, Danie refuses to divulge exactly how it works. He says the energy source is his most precious secret.

Maybe if there was better science education in Britain there would be less nonsense stories like this.