Notes from a Small Island/DomainPulp!

In England, a number of journalists and media industry figures broke the law.

They hacked cellphones and computers. They bribed police officers for stories.

Their behaviour was so egregious that a number of people have already been convicted and jailed, and there are charges still pending against others.

That was wrong. But that conduct was always illegal.

The British Government asked Lord Leveson for a solution to the excesses of journalists.

He said he wanted to regulate print media.He proposed that judges  be allowed to award exemplary damages and full costs against unregulated publishers.

Regulation of the press takes us some way back towards the Star Chamber. What is are proposed are stringent and controversial measures, but even their architecht only envisaged them applying to large and powerful publishers. Not websites (unless they belonged to print publishers).

Last weekend, the proposals were agreed in a rush, without public consultation, and with scant attention to detail.

The result is that they apply to any size of publication.

If there’s more than one author, the content is edited and there’s a business involved, then you must join up to be regulated. Even trade commentators such as DOMAININCITE.COM, for example, would appear to fall under this.

Most blogs aren’t powerful publishing houses. But the would need to be regulated, or face punitive measures if it ended up in court.

The threat of websites being regulated like this was never the purpose of Lord Leveson’s recommendations.

Websites weren’t involved in phone hacking.

There is no evidence that they need to be forced into self-regulation like this.

It is a serious infringement of the right of free-expression that fails the test of necessity and proportionality to make it legal.

If this is not corrected now, some English or Scottish blogger will find him or herself in the middle of an expensive and messy court proceeding that has the likelihood of going all the way to Strasbourg.

Take a few minutes and email Nick Clegg, Harriet Harman, and David Cameron to ask them to back off and leave the Internet out of Leveson.

Fadi Chehadé’s new broom at ICANN continues to sweep the house, according to reports just in from Singapore.

Apparently  his X-wing fighter has scored a direct hit on the ICANN LA office (affectionately known to some as ‘the Death Star’, after ICANN’s logo) and it is to be broken up. This is in an aim to make ICANN less US-centric. 

A new term: ‘service hubs’ are to be established in Singapore, Istanbul, and LA. A number of people in LA office will be asked to relocate move to the other hubs. This should prove a real career opportunity for the right people, while, inevitably, I expect this means some familiar faces among the staff will take the opportunity to move on

Not content, with that, ICANN is to cease asking ccTLD registries to contribute to ICANN’s chest — which currently bloated with doubloons and pieces of eight from newTLD application fees.

What effect this will have on ccNSO funding mechanisms or gTLD perceptions is yet unclear but should be interesting to watch.

Those who know me well know that I have an intense interest of the English language, often annoyingly so.

The Board of ICANN (the non-profit corporation that co-ordinates the internet’s naming system,) like most companies in the English speaking world, records its decisions by way of written Resolutions.

In my own company, we do something similar.  — It’s needed to documents important decisions taken by the ‘corporate mind’. For example: “The Board resolved to open a bank account with the London branch of Bloggs Bank’.

But for some reason, ICANN peppers its Board resolutions with arcane and archaic rehearsals of fact before getting to the meat of the decision recorded.

“WHEREAS it is recognised that blah blah blah”

For all we Brits look to the USA as being modernistic and at the forefront of new things, American English  — which., in the study of linguistics is regarded as a quite separate language to BBC English, Scots or Irish English —  yet has so many archaisms which survive into everyday use and are redolent of pre-Revolutionary 18th century English.

For example, Americans are always surprised that we don’t have felons any more. (This is because European society has evolved and moved on from the view that someone who commits certain criminal offences cannot ever be rehabilitated, and therefore after serving their sentence must continue to be punished in pettifogging ways like being ineligible to vote forever — we think this promotes recidivism).

Other words, like ‘beverage’ are mutually understandable, but seem quaint, and almost never used in England in common speech. So, no one in England would ask: “Would you like a beverage” (except in a deliberately affected manner for humorous effect ( usually when the beverage concerned was alcoholic) in nature.  The word ‘bevvy’ on the other hand, deriving from the same root, WAS a very common dialect word in my home country, and it invariably meant beer. (Clue: my father taught at the school atttended by John Lennon and Paul McCartney).

Anyway, back to ‘Whereas’.  Really, I don’t see the point. Wherefore the nub, in fact!.

(The word  ‘wherefore‘, contrary to the common misapprehension does not relate to location, but means ‘why?‘. Juliet was not inquiring where her paramour was hiding as is usually believed, but was bemoaning the fact that she was a Hatfield and he was a McCoy).

But always assuming that it is helpful to rehearse factual background before recording Board Decisions decision, Plain English must be preferable, surely?

Kieren McCarthy, CEO of dot-nxt has started a campaign to reform the wording used by ICANN’s boarrd resolutions. It’s a laudable goal, and I support it.

But for myself, I think I’ll suggest replacing it with ‘the Humble Petition of the gNSO sheweth that ..’

Open Letter to D Scott Davis, CEO of UPS

Dear Mr Davis

I have just given instructions that your company be removed from the list of courier companies that we use.

In addition, as far as we are practically able to do so, we shall, henceforth, avoid placing any orders with companies if they propose to use you for delivery.

Why have I taken this Draconian step? The answer is that we do not deal with companies that mislead.

Specifically in your case,  by recording parcels as having been delivered whilst they are still en route.

Please see the extract from the Proof of Delivery shown below.

I have the original screen print of this (as I expect it may change, and you can see for yourself what the current realtime status at gg.gg/17pp including the green bar and “Delivered” tick mark.

Tracking Detail

Updated: 21/01/2013 8:45 Eastern Time
1Z92R13F0440029102
Shipping Information
Delivered

To: GUERNSEY, GG
Delivered On: Monday, 21/01/2013 at 9:24
Shipped By
Request Status Updates »
Signed By: FWD TO ALDERNEY

As you will seen, it clearly showed today that the package concerned, given over to you in England on the 17th, was delivered 09:24 this morning.

But you will note, that instead of a signature, the signature field appears to contain routing information.

Needless to say the package has not been delivered, and now that you are no longer tracking it and seemingly are not able to locate its whereabouts, from past experience, I have no expectation that it will be delivered anytime soon.

In fact, it’s my belief that it will not be delivered before Friday or Monday of next week, despite the timescale you agreed in your contract with our supplier (which calls for delivery by today). I do however, hope to be proved wrong.

But I’m less than concerned about exactly when it gets here. Unlike some shipments, this one is not terribly time critical, although I’d be disappointed if it didn’t turn up before the 24th.

What bothers me is the misleading ‘Delivered’ status on the tracking.
Your colleagues on the phone attempted to persuade me that black was white, and that “Delivered” in a Delivery Report should not be construed as as “Delivered to customer” but sometimes means “delivered to the next delivery stage”

Of course, if that were true, why just not put  “Delivered” on the tracking system as soon as the sender delivers into your custody on despatch? That way you will get a 100% on-time, same-day rating. Job done!

As you can imagine, this is neither the service, nor care and custody we expect from UPS.

I do expect you to track packages at every stage in their journey.

I do not expect that you will always deliver on time.  There might, for example, be adverse weather at Guernsey and/or Alderney airports.

I never expect your company to record something as Delivered (and stop the clock) when it has not yet, in fact been delivered.

Should your office wish to contact us about this issue, I’d be delighted if you (or someone with sufficient nous to understand what it is that has exercised me) should email to discuss further.

Nigel Roberts, CEO Island Networks
http://www.channelisles.net/about-us/contact-us/telephone/

Over the last few weeks, the largest ISPs in the UK have been required by a court order to block your internet feed in such a way as to prevent you from accessing certain websites – the most well-known one of course, being ‘Pirate Bay’ ostensibly operated from Sweden. (At least it now uses a Swedish domain name, and when I last looked at where IP packets were going to, it was Stockholm, but of course when you read this article it may physically be anywhere in the world.)

The details of how the block is being implemented have emerged, and it seems it is a combination of fiddling with lookups at the DNS level, and imposing the use of transparent proxy servers for every web access. (There are other things the ISPs can do, and maybe either they already are, or may do so in the future.)

It seems to me that the ISPs are simply following the letter of the Court Order. So is there any valid ground for criticism?

I’ve taken the time to read the court judgment, and its interesting.

Unlike other attempts at dealing with unlawful file sharing (particularly the idea of three allegations of copyright infringement and your whole family loses its internet connection) the Court Order appears to me to be compatible with the internet user’s fundamental rights.

The law requires a balance to be drawn between competing interests; the right to free expression on the one hand, and the right to property on the other, and to make sure that any action taken is reasonable in scope.

So don’t beat up the ISPs, as some commentators have. They are just following the law. And it seems that they are doing exactly what they’ve been required to do, and nothing else.

Now there are a number of websites within the UK which have started to offer Pirate Bay access as a service. In a followup article, I’ll explain why it is it may not be a very smart of moves to use them, but how is is almost certainly a very dumb move on their part of the site owners to run them, particularly in the UK

But the UK courts haven’t (yer) ruled that it’s illegal in itself to visit www.thepiratebay.se

It has ruled that its unlawful to use it (and, in fact, by analogy any similar site) to enable copyright infringement, and that because that appears to be the site’s principal purpose, it would be proportionate to require the defendants to take steps to prevent user access.

But the odd thing about the Order, however, is that it applies specifically to half a dozen companies, including BT.

This means that any company that was not named in the order (or relies on the services of a company named in the order to deliver web browsing to its users) is not (yet) legally required to block TPB.

s. So of course, they don’t. I’ve read reports of TPB being readily available on certain mobile phone network

So all you need to do to get around the Pirate Bay block, if it affects you, is change ISPs.