OK I lied: this is the last robot post..

I was trying to remember for the last five days, the saddest most anthromoporphic [NOTE: canomorphic??] piece of robot culture I'd ever seen...

Social networks, 2010 vn

As someone whose last book used the original,wonderful xkcd cartoon as its cover, it seems only right to bring you the updated version! (NB NOT by Randall Munroe, though glad to see they acknowledge him.)

ps but shouldn't that be "sunken island of Google Buzz?"

Security theatre FTW

I must try this en route to the RUSI CyberSecurity Conference I'm speaking at on Thursday:)

The Unbearable Cynicism of Being

One strange side effect of Law and the Internet 3rd edn coming out has been that the geeks have noticed a law book has an XKCD cartoon on the cover. I was pretty pleased when a friend of that persuasion passed me a link to Reddit.com where someone had kindly started a thread called "Probably the best front cover for a law book you wil ever see.. xkcd!"

I was less pleased though when reading down I found a bunch of people had independently assumed we had stolen the cover, ie used it without permission from Randall Munroe, the creator of XKCD. It seemed the joy of imagining a law book containing chapters on copyright on the Internet had pointedly ripped off an actual IP creator, outweighed the inherent utter unlikeliness of such a tactic. The fact that I'd written here in easily Googleable form about how delighted I was that we'd been given permission also didn't stop some doubters (though to be fair, a minority).

So when I posted to say that yes, actually we had permssion, and Randall had given us it for free, what a sweetheart! I thought everyone would be relieved. No, that merely provoked A`N Other geek, no doubt pissed off a losing sight of an easy target, to post under my own name, ("theRealLilian Edwards") saying I'd lied about this in public. Meanwhile someone else posted, after I had made my correction, asserting that the legality was still in doubt. (EDIT: now amended, ta.)

It's this sort of thing writ large that gives geekdom and the blogosphere the bad reputation it has with people as diverse as the Daily Mail and my mum. I know on the scale of things this hardly compares to being pursued by dubious paparazzi making up lies about one's love life, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. I am, as I usually say, at least part-geek myself, and this cover was in a way my gift to myself and the geek community. It has thrilled me to use it. I was hurt people could think we could be so stupid and malevolent as to use it without consent.

Andres Guadamuz spoke eloquently about technophobia at GikII Amsterdam , one of his prevailing themes. The usual reasons that get cited as to why people react to a technological society badly are a combination of ignorance, fear of change and media manipulation. To these I would add that geek culture - and much of web 2.0 culture - is a product to a large extent of the Asperger's spectrum and leans towards the tactless, rude and pointlessly combative. This is fun when you're in your teens and twenties, less later on when life is already too full of the stresses of work, mortgages and parking fines to want to get a blast out of a right-on hardcore flame war in your leisure time. Politeness and forethought become the new anti-authoritarianism.

Matthias Klang says on Twitter he's writing a chapter on web 2.0 and integrity. I'm beginning to be tempted to write something on web 2.0 and social dysfunction myself..

Blogs are what happen when....

I long to debate the exciting things that are happening: the Google Library settlement, the Telecoms Framework latest Commission compromise position, the French passing 3 Strikes and You're Out, data retention , Internet libel cases in the UK courts, and how to deal with regulating the security of wi fi - but too busy actually doing things that relate to these to have time. Ag! I seem to have made a F austian bargain of my own - surrounded by a panoply of interesting legal developmnets, but noooo time to chat about them. Sigh.

Things wot I have done instead:

helped (a bit ) with the ORG response to the BERR filesharing consultaion;

helped (a bit more) with the ORG response to the UK consultation on implementing the Internet data part of the Data Retention Directive (link to follow)

supervised the preparation of an excellent brief by Simon Bradshaw on how the Telecoms Framework , having now been through the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers and the Commission report stages, still contains provisions which may well enable and legalise a France style "3 strikes" regime throughout Europe. We (Simon, ORG and myself) hope to publish this brief in the next few days. Thanks also to Monica Horten for invaluable assistance on this project.



So instead, meanwhile here's the latest XKCD cartoon, which as usual is superb :-)

E-harmony??

A week or so back I mentioned an interesting report from Bill Dutton and associates at the Oxford Internet Institute on married couples who met online and how they behaved online towards each other. The report was sponsored by e-harmony.com, a dating site who promote making better marriages on line.

I just wonder what they think of this :)

OK back to the dissertation salt mines.

Aha! One last insight into the glories of Pangloss's work life - thanks to the good offices of Cory Doctorow I have now received permission from the godlike Randall Munroe of XKCD so that this - my favourite web cartoon evah - will be the cover of the 3rd edition of Law and Internet, coming to you in autumn 08 :) I am very very pleased :) Thanks to both Randall and Cory!