Where I've Been and Hello I'm Back

For everyone who's written in the last three months to ask where I've gone: the answer was in order:

- recovering from GikII - which was generally judged a huge succes (ahem) and which I now need to think about in terms of what we do next: a mailing list, a book on geek law and a second workshop all seem likely.
- moving job
- moving house
- moving cats (ah if only I had time to do an IPKat like cartoon here of a sad fat tabby hiding doggedly under the bath...)
and then, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the blogging water..
- Blogger sundered me from my very own Pangloss, gave it briefly to Technollama and then refused to give me it back AT ALL. I think I broke Blogger :(

But here I am restored!! (On the third try ..) And overwhelmed with London events, not quite all of which I am or have spoken at..

• I spoke spoke on spam at the very intriguing SCL Workshop on Regulation (patiently organised by my mate Andy Charlesworth of Bristol);

• attended the DTI/KTN workshop on locational data service providers - which was fascinating.

• and spoke on legal and policy aspects of denial of service at the DDOS/DTI Workshop , ably assisted by Chris Marsden of RAND. This gig was beautifully timed: 5 days after the Police and Justice Act 2006 , which amends the Computer Misuse Act 1990 to cover DDOS, had just seen Royal Assent (Thanks to Malcolm Hutty from LINX for this intelligence - altho it's not yet up as a finalised Act on the Web - watch this space).
  
  A proper post to come on the amendments, which combined with the appeal decision in Lennon, appear to me to make it potentially possible to prosecute everything from supplying adware, to spamming, now as violations of s 3, punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Is this a sneaky one by the Information Commissioner to avoid the need to put up the penalties for breaches of the Data Protection Act? Perhaps we shall see.

• I also made it rather late and worse for wear :) to the ORG Release the Music extravaganza, with Jonathan Zittrain, someone from Blur (the drummer, I'm told) and my Soton colleague Caroline Wilson.

• I am also now happy and proud to be part of the ORG Advisory Board - and I'm thinking of going to the mass geek Christmas party (although unlike some I don't expect to find John Barrowman there.)

No rest for the wicked huh?

All this and Law 2.1 rrrepeater to come :)