The blog
Writing & notes
Essays, notes and reflections on technology, law and life.
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pleonasm
noun The use of more words than necessary to describe something. Often tautological. “The two of them are both the same” is a pleonasm, as is “killed dead”. Read more →
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grammatolatry
noun The worship of words or letters. An avid reader, John was as prone to grammatolatry as anyone. Read more →
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parisology
noun the deliberate use of equivocal or ambiguous terms Lawyers are masters of the art of parisology. Read more →
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catachresis
noun strained or paradoxical use of words either in error (as ‘blatant’ to mean ‘flagrant’) or deliberately (as in a mixed metaphor: ‘blind mouths’) Alexander Pope’s Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry: “Masters of this [Catachresis] will say, Mow the beard, Shave the grass, Pin the plank, Nail my sleeve. From whence… Read more →
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French 3 strikes regime sees ISPs inundated with notices
It’s unclear whether the recent Creation and Internet Act 2010 (FR) is having much of an impact on digital piracy. However, according to copyright owners, around 25,000 notices of alleged infringement are being sent to the state-administered digital enforcement body (HADOPI) each day: French labels trade body director general David El Sayegh revealed the 25,000… Read more →
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Botnet hosts strongly clustered around safe haven providers
Interesting survey of the connection between website hosts and botnet ‘command and control’ servers, which are used to direct networks of malware-infected clients: For the first half of 2010, almost a quarter of botnet CnC servers were hosted by service providers in the US, with the top three countries (US – 23.9 per cent, Germany… Read more →
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Government department blocks open government website
Today’s irony award goes to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service, which last week blocked access to Open Australia, a website (modelled on They Work For You) which helps people track what their MPs say in Parliament. In fairness, the blockage occurred because a third party border proxy classified the content as a ‘blog’:… Read more →
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Trespass by Light? Cricket Australia and Big Ben
For a few hours around midnight last Wednesday, Cricket Australia projected an image onto the Big Ben clock tower which contained the message “Don’t forget to pack the urn”, referring to the forthcoming Ashes series in Australia. (It was a clear allusion to the English Cricket Board’s projection in 2008 of a similar image onto… Read more →
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US-Style Fair Use Coming to England?
David Cameron included this cryptic announcement in a speech about establishing a high-tech sector in East London: The second new announcement I can make today is to do with intellectual property. The founders of Google have said they could never have started their company in Britain. The service they provide depends on taking a snapshot… Read more →
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The decline of intermediary immunity under EU law
Out-Law has an interesting op-ed piece about the decline of intermediary safe harbours under the E-Commerce Directive. The basic premise of the article is that a combination of factors — the increasingly broad meaning given to constructive knowledge, liability for repeat uploads, duties to monitor for infringement — means that the notice-and-takedown system is providing… Read more →