First postgraduate qualification in information rights

Thanks to Sarah Higgins who brought the Information and Rights Practice LLM course at Northumbria University to my attention.

The course covers the Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 together with the common law duty of confidence and the right to privacy protected by the ECHR.

You can find more details at the university’s website.

The Blawg may be quiet for a while as I’m off on my holidays. Au revoir!

Got 20 minutes? (Taking open data to another level)

I know. Who has? But if you can find it I really recommend watching this video (brought to my attention by Peter Suber on the SPARC Open Data list – thank you!). It’s a very interesting presentation by Hans Rosling where he de-bunks a few myths about the "developing" world. Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute. He is also the founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life.

In the first 15 minutes he provides a fascinating overview of the changes that have occurred in the world over the last 40 years in terms of child survival rates, average number of children per woman, life expectancy at birth, distribution of income, GDP per capita. The graphics he employs to make this understandable and engaging are wonderful. In the last 5 minutes he turns to the issue of the availability and usability of data (digital curation bells!!)

Rosling poses the question “why are we not using the data we have?” and answers:

“The data is hidden down in the databases. And the public is there, and the Internet is there but we have still not used it effectively. All that information we saw changing in the world [in the demonstration] does not include publicly funded statistics. There are some web pages like this …but people put prices on them, stupid passwords and boring statistics. And this won’t work!”

He then asks, "what is needed?" His answer - "linking data to design."

That’s where Gapminder comes in. The website describes its purpose as:

“… filling a gap. There has been a market failure in distributing global data. A lot of people are interested in the data, but don’t get access to it (and if they manage to access the data, they need to be advanced skilled statisticians to analyze it). Gapminder wants to make data more accessible and easier to use for instant visual analysis. We believe decision makers, politicians as well as education at almost all levels lack adequate tools.”

The software is proving popular with many. Ben Hyde has blogged:

"These gapminder charts are just marvelous. They are a exemplar of what we should expect from data presentation going forward. Printed data’s days are numbered."

My main thought here is that better access to the data and greater understanding of what it demonstrates can only be a good thing in terms of international health and development.

But also, the software is not limited to use with international health data. The usefulness of its application to all types of data is ripe for exploration!

See Peter Suber's blog post on this topic

Image by Ilya Eric Lee on Flickr CC-NC-ND

Internet users more powerful than the law?

An interesting news item on out-law.com about a company at the forefront of the user-generated content movement that has chosen to risk legal action that may spell termination for the company, in place of disappointing its users. Digg, a website that ranks news stories according to its readers votes, has received cease and desist letters from entertainment companies after a number of its leading stories this week contained details of a secret code which unlocks the anti-piracy systems of DVDs.

Digg.com originally deleted the stories but after a massive user backlash allowed the stories to be posted In a U-turn that could open them to legal action.

Encryption codes like the one revealed on Digg are covered by the U.S.'s 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a controversial piece of legislation (read the U.S. Copyright office summary here).

Fred von Lohman, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in his blog that sites which carry the code or links to it are unlikely to be able to use a traditional defence of 'safe harbor'.

"While no court has ruled on the issue, AACS (the trade group for Advanced Access Content System Licensing) will almost certainly argue that the DMCA safe harbors do not protect online service providers who host or link to the key."

Read the out-law.com news item here

See more about this story in:

The New York Times

The LA Times

The Guardian

Forbes

Financial Times

Image by Darwin Bell on Flickr CC-BY-NC

World Intellectual Property Day 2007!

Today is World Intellectual Property Day 2007!

This year WIPO celebrates the link between intellectual property and creativity under the theme - Encouraging Creativity.

You can check out what activities are going on around the world to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day 2007 on WIPO’s website. Prize for the person who identifies the funniest one!

Image by Eszter on Flickr CC-BY-NC-SA

Latest issue of FOI Journal out

Just a quickie!

The latest issue of Open Government has just been published. The journal's aim is to publish research and communications related to Freedom of Information (FOI) legislation from the perspective of academics, practitioners and FOI users. At only two years old it is a relatively new jounrnal (for obvious reasons!)

Magazine's archive online

I read an article in Mediabistro.com about Harper’s magazine putting articles from its 157 year archive online. This brings up licensing issues (what use(s) did the authors licence to Harper’s?) and also highlights the time and effort required for rights clearance activities. Harper's VP, public relations Giulia Melucci is reported to have said "In an ideal world we would have contacted all 40,000 writers living and dead." Presumably we can take from this that they didn’t.

Image by Geff Rossi on Flickr CC-BY-NC-ND

User Generated Content - The Copyright Conundrum

This event looks interesting. Thanks to Sean Flynn for flagging it up. I'm afraid I can't make it but hopefully somone else can. Although it's taking place in the States there is a live webcast.

Sean's message was as follows:

Please join us for

User Generated Content: The Copyright Conundrum
April 10th | 4:00 pm — 6:00 pm
Reception to Follow
Washington College of Law | Room 603

4801 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington D.C.

Registration: www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm

The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law and the Center for Social Media at the American University School of Communications, in collaboration with the DC Chapter of the Copyright Society of the USA, present a lively discussion on the implications of copyright law for makers of participatory media and the platforms on which it is displayed. The discussion will emphasize strategies to avoid or minimize risk of copyright liability. Panelists will include:

Sarah B. Deutsch
Vice President & Assoc. General Counsel
Verizon

Alec French
Senior Counsel, Gov’t Relations
NBC Universal, Inc.

Fred von Lohmann
Sr. Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation

Steve Tapia
Sr. Attorney, Law & Corp. Affairs
Microsoft

Mike Remington
Partner
Drinker Biddle & Reath, LLP

This event is open to the public. Your registration is appreciated to help our planning of the public reception following the panel. Registration, however, is not required to attend.

Registration

www.wcl.american.edu/secle/cle_form.cfm

Webcast

www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/webcast.cfm