As per the meme, here are my 20 points on Gov Camp UK.

Sign up early.

I dawdled and so was only able to get a ticket for Saturday. I feel like I missed out on a lot of interesting conversations.

BarCamps should be recorded for posterity.

It’s a point I’ve made before. Cameras and disk space are so cheap, we should record what we say and do at BarCamps by default. Now, that may inhibit some of the conversations and reduce the “Chatham House” aspect – but individuals can decide whether or not they’re happy for their sessions to be recorded.

Take business cards.

Take lots of business cards. So many serendipitous meetings that it’s hard to remember who’s who. Make sure that your business card carries your Twitter name.

Don’t take a laptop (or, at the very least, use it rarely).

As I sat down in one session, a woman said to me “Gosh! You can tell it’s a techie event; every one is using their laptops and no one is talking to each other.” She was absolutely right. The day is mostly about communication and – while Twitter is great for that – nothing beats turning to the person sitting next to you and having a natter.

Present.

I think it’s an immutable law of BarCamp that everyone has to present. Even if it’s just standing up and saying who you are.

Guaging interest is hard.

I ran two sessions, one only filled up about a fifth of the cavernous space I booked – which was pretty embarrassing. The other was so full it had people sitting on the floor. Don’t be afraid of moving rooms – but make sure you let everyone know where you are going.

WordPress is really popular.

I was surprised by how many attendees were WordPress aficionados. It’s good to see that Government isn’t entirely tied up in proprietary crap.

QR codes generate a lot of interest.

The session I ran on QR was well attended and produced lots of positive feedback. Some people are just starting out with QR and there were loads of great ideas on how they could be used.

The police have an odd sense of humour.

One was wearing a shirt which read “Keep Calm and Carry Baton Rounds” the other, in his introduction, said “I work for the police, previously I was at Rentokill. It’s basically the same job!” While I appreciate near the knuckle humour and value free expression, I found the two incidents made me really uncomfortable. Had I turned up wearing a “Burn down the Government” t-shirt, I doubt I would have received a positive welcome. Still, I’d rather people felt free to express themselves at a BarCamp than not.

HMRC will happily let you take the piss out of them.

They’re very good sports and lovely people in real life.

Government needs more freedom to innovate.

That was a moan that I heard from several people. They wanted to do amazing things with the knowledge they’d gleaned – but getting sign off in a risk adverse, budget conscious department is tricky.

Building should mean building.

The second day was meant to be about getting people to build, create, or make stuff. In my WordPress session, I asked for volunteers to upgrade their blog to WordPress Mobile Pack live on stage. Amazingly, three did! Now, none of them where major Government sites(!) but it showed people were willing to take a risk and build things.

Perhaps the grid needs curating?

There were too many sessions in the first timeslot, and empty rooms later in the afternoon. There’s no way of judging how popular a slot will be, so many sessions were in an room that didn’t suit the attendees.

There’s no such thing as a silly question.

As a presenter, it’s really important not to dismiss a question. If someone hasn’t understood something basic, it’s more likely to be the presenter at fault than the person asking the question.

Government needs to celebrate their successes more loudly.

I saw some amazing websites, prototypes, and service – none of which I’d heard about. I think it’s entirely appropriate for people to make some noise about things they’ve done well.

Gender Balance.

For a technology conference – there were more than 3 women! A lot more! It’s a common moan in IT that the industry has trouble attracting women. Perhaps they all work in local government?

Not Many Female Presenters.

Perhaps it was the sessions I went to, or perhaps they all presented on day one – but there didn’t seem to be many women presenting. I wonder if this is something which needs to be addressed?

Big Business Isn’t Much different

Everyone goes on about how inefficient Government is and how they’re usless at getting anything done. All the complaints I heard from Government people were the same as those that I’ve heard while working at big businesses. And start-ups. Every organisation has inefficiencies.

Take Photos

I was too busy chatting to snap anything. Luckily there’s a rather good set on flickr.

Overall

A great day, thought provoking, useful. I hope I convinced some people about why mobile is important and how awesome QR codes are.

Because of Greg Barker MP’s idiotic decision to scrap the Feed In Tariff with only six weeks’ notice – we’ve had to get this done in rather a rush.

Thanks to Angi and Philip at Sunny Future Solar, we were able to get our system installed before the deadline. Yesterday, we received confirmation that panels were installed and working and had generated their first 15W of electricity!

Total cost of installation: £12,000. Ouch!

How Making Money From Solar Works

Once solar panels are installed, there are three main income streams.

1. Reduced electricity bills – when the sun is shining, your toaster and computer are powered by Earth’s yellow sun.
2. Any electricity you generate but don’t use is sold back to the grid* at 3p / kW.
3. For every kW the panels generate, you are paid 43.3p.

*Rather than actually measuring this, it’s assumed that you only use half the electricity generated.

All the prices are index linked (so they should rise with inflation) and guaranteed for 25 years. Any money generated is tax-free.

The Economic Reality

There are two main sites which will tell you how much energy you are likely to generate over the year. The calculations are based on where the property is, which direction it faces, inclination of the roof, etc.
The Energy Saving Trust Solar Power calculator estimated around 2,500 kWh per year
The Europa Solar Calculator estimated around 2,700 kWh per year.

Even at the lower estimate, that’s ~£1,100 per year from generating the electricity – and a further ~£40 from selling electricity back.

We’re in a slightly unusual situation in that we’ve installed the panels on our rental property. So our tenants will be getting the benefit of reduced electricity bills.

At the moment, that’s only around one hundred pounds per year. But if there’s another energy crisis, the amount saved would be higher.

So as greedy landlords, could we charge a premium for a property with cheap electricity bills? Say…. ooooh… £50 per month? Well, probably not that much – and we try not to be evil bastard landlords. Especially as we’ve been on the receiving end of scummy landlords in the past.

The idea is that the property is more attractive and so isn’t left vacant for so long between tenants.

Even if we were making a full £1,200 (tax free) from these solar panels, is that an unreasonable subsidy as the government claim? Let’s do the maths.

Total earnings (excluding money saved on bills) = £1,140.
The solar panels are meant to degrade by a maximum of 1% each year. Assuming they do so, that’s a total of £25,000 after 25 years.

So, 25k on an investment of 12k. That’s pretty good, right?

No. Not really. That’s about a 3% rate of interest. Even if we were really lucky with the weather and the panels didn’t degrade, we’d be looking at a return of 30k – which works out as a 4% interest rate.

Hardly the deal of the century! To give you a comparison, the government predicts a 7% interest rate if you stick your money in a pension.

Now, it is guaranteed – assuming the government doesn’t renege on its promises and we don’t enter a period of nuclear winter – and it is tax free, but is it really a generous subsidy which needs trimming?

And, even if it is; how can giving just 6 weeks’ notice be remotely fair?

A Better Way of Subsidising Solar

Barker has announced huge cuts to the solar subsidy. Whereas before the cut, the FIT would have paid off the capital cost of the panels in 10 year, after the cut, it will be more like 20 years. And that’s assuming you haven’t taken a loan out to pay for the panels.

Personally, I don’t understand why the government doesn’t just pay for the damned things themselves. It seems bureaucratically perverse to agree to pay a subsidy, via energy providers, to people who have paid installers, who have purchased the panels.

Surely just simpler to buy the panels and give them to anyone willing to pay for installation. That way there would be vastly less paperwork, no worrying about how to keep track of who needs to be paid what, etc.

Even if you ignore the environmental impact, energy security is one of this countries most pressing problems. We cannot depend on volatile foreign sources of energy.

Surely finding a sane and simple way to subsidise should be one of this government’s priorities?

On this mater which has dominated the news and the blogosphere, they received only 503 formal responses. Seriously, if the blogosphere wants to change the world, it needs to direct people to respond to those who make the descisions. You don’t even need to lift your arse off a chair and find a stamp! I emailed in this quickly written response:

If a person is not found guilty or never charged, their DNA and Fingerprints should be removed and destroyed from any Government database as soon as practically possible.

The only possible exception to this is if their biometric information can be safely encrypted and stored as a “one way hash”.

At the moment it is trivially easy to forge fingerprints.  In the future it will be just as easy to forge DNA evidence.  With direct access to raw fingerprint and DNA sample I believe that the temptation to “reuse” the evidence will be too strong.

By this, I mean police taking a copy of the raw DNA evidence and planting it in order to secure a (unsafe) conviction.

If the evidence is stored as the function of a one-way-hash, there is a reduced possibility that this can be misused.

If the proposals to indefinitely store biometric information goes ahead, I would like to see it store the biometric information of all Members of Parliament, Senior Police Officers and those likely to come in to contact with the database.  The only way to secure this information is if those in charge of it have a vested interest in keeping it secure.

I do not know how you propose to record responses to this consultation – but I would like this message to be counted in the “against retention of innocents’ data” column.

On the 11th of November, they wrote back:

Thank you for taking the time to respond to the consultation paper titled “Keeping the Right People on the Database: Science and Public Protection” that closed on the 7th August 2009. The consultation intended to promote public debate on how long we should retain fingerprints and DNA setting out the benefits of DNA and fingerprints in detecting offenders and helping to bring them to justice.The summary of responses to the consultation paper is published today and is available on the Home Office website www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2009-dna-database/. The paper also sets out the Governments proposals for implemeting [sic] the judgment [sic] of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of S and Marper and for improving the governance and accountability around biometric data.

The response is certainly a step forward.  I would have like to have seen a substantial reduction in the length of time DNA is stored.  I wonder what response they would have published if everyone who blogged and twittered about the consultation had taken 15 minutes to write a note?

This is my response to your consultation “Consultation on Legislation to Address Illicit P2P File-Sharing“. I believe that the paper “GOVERNMENT STATEMENT ON THE PROPOSED P2P FILE-SHARING LEGISLATION” is dangerously flawed.

In this response, I shall outline four general areas of concern. Practical, Philosophical, Technical and Cultural. I also will provide a series of solutions which I believe will have a positive impact for the creative industries of the UK.

Practical

There are several aspects of this proposed legislation which need to be considered carefully if they are to make any impact.

Justice

In this country we believe that the accused should be able to see the evidence presented against her and be able to challenge it. As it stands, your proposed legislation enables an alleged copyright holder to accuse an alleged sharer without giving the alleged sharer the ability to see or challenge the accusation.

I say “alleged copyright holder” because your proposal contains no method to verify whether the complaint originates from the correct copyright holder.

Proof

What standard of proof will a copyright holder have to produce? In conversation with your department you indicated that the proof presented to an ISP would be to the same standard as would be presented in court. This raises some very important questions:

1. How is an ISP to judge if a complaint made against one of its customers is valid? Are ISPs expected to interpret legal documents and make judgements in law?
2. If a copyright holder believes that they have proof which would stand up in court – why don’t they go to court?
3. How will an ISP or their customer be able to verify that the complaint has come from the genuine copyright holder?

Mistakes

Inevitably, there will be mistakes in this process. What redress does a user have if falsely accused?

What punishment will there be for those who accuse falsely – knowingly or unknowingly? The way the proposal is written, it would only take three complaints from Political Party X to knock a competing Parliamentary candidate off the Internet. A handful of bogus requests would be enough to cripple any business.

Without a strong disincentive against false or malicious accusations, this proposal could result in large scale problems for honest citizens, businesses and organisations.

Will a false accusation be considered libellous? What options will a customer have against an ISP who responds to a bogus request?

Responsibility

Many people make their wireless Internet connections (WiFi) freely available to anyone who passes. I see sharing my WiFi as a civic duty as do many others. Are WiFi sharers expected to police everyone who uses their connection? If so, how would this work given that WiFi networks are very difficult to secure? Will a WiFi sharer be liable if they do not know that their Internet connection is being used illicitly?

If a user is kicked off from an ISP, the proposals are unclear as to whether they will have to pay for the remainder of their contract. If the user is not required to pay for the remainder of their contract, who will compensate the ISP for lack of custom? Given that ISPs subsidise their hardware and connection fees – will we see British businesses forced to close because they are forced to cut off their paying customers?

Mobile

(In the interests of fairness, I should point out that I work for, and own shares in, Vodafone Group. These views are my own and do not represent those of my employer)

All mobile telephone networks now offer 3G data across the country. 3G networks currently offer speeds of up to 14Mbps – much faster than the 2Mbps minimum mandated by the Digital Britain report.

Anyone can buy an unregistered SIM card, plug it into their laptop and have an instant, high speed connection to the Internet. Assuming that your proposed legislation covers mobile ISPs (again this is not clear in the proposals) how do you suggest that a mobile ISP contacts a customer who does not give her address? If the user is cut off with no warning (ignoring the legal and contractual issues resulting from this) what is to stop her buying another SIM from that, or any other, network provider?

Technical

Everyone’s connection to the Internet is assigned an IP (Internet Protocol) Address. This is the globally unique number that defines them on the Internet.

Most ISPs assign Dynamic IP Addresses. This means that a user’s IP Address may change several times a day.

At the point when an accusation is made, an error of a few milliseconds could mean the difference between targetting one user and another. How would it be determined that an IP address was assigned to any particular user? What level of accuracy will be used to make an accusation?

Every item connected to the Internet provides a unique MAC (Media Access Control).

Given that most home computers allow a user to change the hardware’s MAC on demand, how is a copyright holder able to prove that the computer they allege was involved in the possession of a particular user?

It is reasonably easy for any Internet user to pass their traffic through a Proxy. This allows a user to route their entire internet connection via another user’s computer. This Proxy may be located anywhere in the world. How would a copyright holder determine whether the illicit P2P traffic they see is or is not via a proxy. This proposed legislation would only cover the UK – what is to stop a user proxying their traffic through Europe?

Given that the traffic between P2P users can be encrypted, how will a copyright holder be able to intercept and analyse the contents of the traffic? Assuming that they have the ability to break the encryption (which is highly unlikely) would this not be a breach of RIPA?

This legislation specifically discusses P2P traffic. Many forms of downloading copyrighted content do not use P2P protocols. How does this legislation address people who share copyrighted works via Email, FTP, or sneakernet?

Philosophical

I do not believe that downloading a DVD without the copyright holders’ permission is the same as stealing it from a shop.

• Copyright infringement is defined separately from theft. They are very different crimes as their position in statute makes clear.
• In the case of theft, the owner of the goods loses them. Downloading merely makes a copy, it does not destroy or remove the original.
• There is no difference between reading a book in a shop before deciding to purchase it, than there is watching clips on YouTube before deciding whether to purchase a film. Many larger bookshops have coffee shops and other reading spaces specifically to encourage customers to read the material prior to purchase.

There are many activities that millions of citizens do which deprives a copyright holder of potential revenue – yet we don’t criminalise them.

• Lending a book or DVD to an acquaintance. Just because the way we lend now involves computers, does not mean it needs to be treated differently from our traditional methods of sharing culture.
• Selling a second-hand DVD, CD or book. P2P sharing does not have any profit element for the sharers – yet selling second hand does.
• Church fêtes and school jumble sales rely on the donation of copyrighted works in order to raise money. Given the amounts of money these generate without returning anything to the copyright holders – why are they exempt from this proposed legislation while the sharing that does not generate any revenue is so punitively targeted?
• Donating second-hand DVD, CD or book to a charity shop. In this case, the charity shop is given copyrighted work for free and then sells them at an inflated price. Yet charity shops are seen as an important lifeline for those unable to afford retail priced works – not to mention the sums raised for worthy causes.

Cultural

Studies have consistently shown that those who download the most also buy the most. There has been no correlation shown between increasing number of file-sharers and decreasing profits made by the creative industries. What we are seeing is a new way for people to express their enjoyment and involvement with popular culture.

With an estimated 7 million file sharers in the UK, it is obvious to me that there has been a massive failure in the marketplace to provide people with what they want. Businesses are faced with the unenviable task of changing their decades-old business models. Rather than having buggy-whip manufacturers petition the Government to ban Horseless-Carriages, the Government should be assisting businesses to adapt to this new world.

To this end, the Government needs to consider what changes it can bring about to the culture of the country which makes it more attractive to copy than to pay.

• The most common cause for British shows like Doctor Who, Top Gear and Coronation Street being copied from abroad is the fact that they are shown months or years after their UK transmission. The Government should work with British content producers to ensure that they are able to quickly sell their content abroad at a fair price.
• The same is true of television copied in the UK – if fans did not have to wait, they would not have to illicitly copy. The Government can liberalise television market and the available transmission spectrum to allow allow overseas shows to be cheaply and legally broadcast.
• British cinema is enormously popular throughout the world. Delays in distribution encourage people to download rather than wait and pay. The Government should encourage co-production and simultaneous release of British works shown abroad.
• Subsidise the conversion of cinemas to fully digital projection. Digital cinemas are cheaper to run, do not require pollution producing lorries to deliver heavy rolls of quickly degrading film and provide a more pleasant experience for the customer.
• Broadcast TV is giving way to IP television. The Government and Ofcom should ensure that ventures like Project Kangaroo get the backing they need to provide a legal alternative to P2P file sharing.
• If an artist – independent or otherwise – wishes to release their work in Europe, they have to deal with separate licensing bodies. The Internet ignores geographic boundaries. The Government should spearhead the creation of a pan-European licensing body to allow artists and companies to market their works easily and without excessive cost. We live in a large trading block – there is no reason why a digital download should cost more in one EU state than another.
• VAT on cultural products. Books and printed music are exempt from VAT as are cultural performances. Are DVDs and video games any less culturally worthy? Cutting VAT on creative works produced in this country would encourage cheaper prices.
• Live performances. The Government should make it easier for venues to get licences for live music. Many artists and venues have complained about the difficulty of obtaining the permission necessary to stage live music. The experience of live music cannot be replicated via file sharing.
• Encourage the Metropolitan Police to drop Form 696. Barriers to live performances discourage artists and dent the ticket and album sales they need to thrive.
• Encourage the production and manufacturing of creative works in this country. There is a growing sense that businesses are able to outsource their manufacturing to countries with lax labour laws – why then shouldn’t a citizen purchase music from a country with lax copyright laws?
• Increase funding for libraries and extend their remit to cover CDs, DVD and the digital distribution of books.

Finally, if the Government wants to increase the penalties for copyright infringement, it must reduce the length of copyright terms.

The Statute of Anne originally set copyright to a length of 14 years. This has subsequently been increased to the extent that we may never have the same access to the work of The Beatles as we do Beethoven. The popular song “Happy Birthday To You” cannot be sung in public without paying a fee to Warner Chappell Music. This is despite the fact that the music was originally composed in 1893 and the lyrics in 1912.

A short copyright term encourages artists to create new work. With a potentially infinite Government backed monopoly, what incentive is there to create new art? A popular image or song only need be created once to provide a lifetime of revenue – including revenue for the creators’ descendants. What incentive does copyright give to the creation of new art?

A short copyright also allows works to fall into the public domain. Think of the amount of new art which has been created on the basis of Dickens or Shakespeare. Hugely profitable – and copyrightable – derivative works have been created without having to pay anything to their respective estates.

Copyright provides specific protection in return for their eventual return to the public domain. This is an incredibly important part of the copyright equation which is often forgotten. Unless works are eventually placed into the public domain, they are effectively stolen from us. Our culture thrives on sharing stories freely. Laws which prevent us from freely enjoying our culture robs us and future generations of their heritage. Imagine a United Kingdom that forbade people from performing Romeo and Juliet, or from singing Handel’s Messiah.

With copyright being such a poor deal for the public, it’s easy to see why it gets so little respect.

Conclusion

The Internet provides citizens with many opportunities and business with many challenges. It is an enormous, technically complicated organism – perhaps the largest creation humans have ever assembled. The Government should not attempt to regulate the use of this new marketplace without first fully understanding it. From the proposals given, it seems clear that the Government is out of step with technology and with the culture of many of its citizens.

The Prime Minister recently stated that “The internet is as vital as water and gas“. In this context, it’s hard to see what can be gained from cutting off a vital service on the basis of unchallenged accusations.

It has been nearly 10 years since A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. Yet the creative industries have prefered to bury their heads in the sand and refused to innovate while people have grown used to the idea that they can download what they want, when they want it, without having to remunerate the copyright holders.

The Government must help business explore this new frontier and help business find new models which are profitable. It must do this without criminalising customers.

The proposed legislation is the equivalent of gas companies threatening citizens who dare light their homes via electricity. I oppose it and hope you take my response under consideration.

Many thanks

Terence Eden

This work is licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK: England & Wales

You are free:

• to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
• to make derivative works

Under the following conditions:

• Attribution. You must give the original author credit.
• For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the licence terms of this work.
• Any of these conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
• Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights.

The work to determine how these boundaries should be formed is done by The Boundary Commission.  They have produced a report to show how the boundaries will be set out at the next General Election.  There report – while detailed, thorough and no doubt accurate – is utterly useless.  Well, from a “linked data” perspective.  It’s a 57 MB PDF if you want to see for your self.

I was expecting, along with the rationales, maps and population densities to see something like

Constituency: Woking

Ward: Mount Herman East

Postcodes: GU22 0XX, GU22 0XY, GU22 0XZ …

Or, indeed, anything which would allow one to easily link the data to other sources.  This is what the report contains.

A Detailed Map of Surrey

While the map is pretty detailed, it doesn’t contain any geo-spatial co-ordinates.  It looks like it has just been drawn by hand in ink.  There is no way to extract any information out of this map.

The also produce a list of constituencies and wards.

This is not text - it's a screen shot!

There are three problems with this.

1. It’s a screen shot.  I don’t mean that I’ve taken a screen shot, I mean that they have taken a screenshot of the text and pasted it into the report.  There is no way to copy the text out of there.
2. Even if it were possible, they don’t list the Government standard codes for the wards
3. There are no postcodes or other forms of information which tie the ward to a specific place.

Gah!

So, how can I find this information?  I know! I’ll write to those nice folk at Parliament

Dear Sir or Madam,

I notice that you provide a website which allows Constituency lookup from a postcode (http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/)

Do you have the data for the *new* Constituencies proposed by the Boundary Commission?

The Boundary Commission has maps of the new areas (http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pbc/default.asp) but these don’t have postcodes on them.

I’m happy to make an FoI request if that is your preferred way of releasing the information.

If you do not have the information – would you be able to tell me who does?

Many thanks

A few days later I got back this.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your enquiry asking if we have the post codes for the new Constituencies proposed by the Boundary Commission.

I am afraid, the House of Commons Information Office is unable to give you a list of the post codes for the proposed “new” constituencies Boundaries  .The House purchases a list of postcodes for each Parliamentary constituencies from the Office of National Statistics and the new list will not be purchased until nearer the time of the General Election when the changes in Parliamentary constituencies take effect.

You may like to contact the Office of National Statistic to see if you can purchase a list from them of the new constituencies.

Customer Contact Centre
Office for National Statistics
Room 1.015
Government Buildings
Cardiff Road
Newport
South Wales
NP10 8XG
Telephone – +44 (0) 845 601 3034

I hope this is helpful

So, off to the ONS! I took a look through their website, couldn’t find what I wanted, so I emailed them.

I’m looking for some definitive data on the electoral constituencies and their comprising wards for the next general election.  That is, those incorporating the boundary changes in the Boundary Commission’s Fifth periodical report.

Under “Names and codes for Electoral Geography” your document “Westminster Parliamentary Constituencies” only lists the 647 constituencies from the 2005 election.  Do you have the data for the upcoming election?

Similarly, in “Names and codes for Administrative Geography” I’m not sure if the document “Wards (Eng) Dec 2008 Names and Codes” contains the latest wards.  There also seems to be no schema to link Wards to Constituencies that I can see.

Do you hold such information?

Which sadly got back

Dear Terence,
Thank you for your recent enquiry
Please be advised that this information is currently not available. This is because current wards are split across the new boundaries and a review of these is about to be carried out which makes them subject to change.

If you have any further questions, please let me know.

So, no luck there.

Is this really so hard? All I want is to know that Postcode X is in Ward Y of Constituency Z.  It would appear that this information just isn’t held anywhere. The review has been completed by the Boundary Commission but they either don’t consider linked data or they don’t share it. I just wish they would Set Our Data Free.

Or am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?

They’ve released a document entitled GOVERNMENT STATEMENT ON THE PROPOSED P2P FILE-SHARING LEGISLATION.  It’s only 5 pages long, I really suggest you read it.

Being part of a democracy means you’re allowed to talk to the decision makers, so I called the number at the end of the document and had a very interesting call with Adrian Brazier.

These notes are taken off the hoof – I didn’t record the call.

I asked a range of questions.

Q1) What are the punishments for copyright holders who make false claims about an Internet user (whether malicious or not

A1) None. Yet.  A good point that they hadn’t thought of.

Q2) What standard of proof will a Copyright Holder have to provide an ISP?

A2) This will be worked out by Ofcom.  It will (probably) be of a similar level of proof as required by law. The standard of proof has not yet been published because it is up to Ofcom to formulate.

Q3) I pointed out that if a Copyright Holder had the standard of proof required for court, why wouldn’t they just go to court?

A3) Save everyone the cost and trauma.  Going to court is an expensive and protracted business for all involved, if a simple letter will stop someone breaking the law, that’s probably better for all involved.

Q4) ISPs are not lawyers and judges – how can they tell if a claim is valid. If the claim is invalid – does their customer have the right to sue them (or the Copyright Holder)?

A4) A good point not yet addressed.  If a user is falsely accused, they should have the power of redress.

I was highly impressed with the thought given to the answers – even if I disagree with their conclusions.  Full credit to Adrian for taking the time to listen to my points.  The above is my interpretation of his answers – any mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Please – if you care about Digital Britain, respond to the consultation. An simple email to adrian.brazier@bis.gsi.gov.uk or mike.klym@bis.gsi.gov.uk will do, you can telephone them on : 020 7215 1295/4165.  If you’re feeling old-skool, write to Communications & Content Industries Unit, BIS, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET.

It only takes a few minutes of your time to ensure that the Government don’t make a massive mistake.  If you are going to phone or email – please remain polite.

His central thesis is that we, the taxpayers, have paid for government research and data – we should be able to access it. Easy, free and unfettered access to raw, unadulterated data will allow us to do wonderful things.

Take a look at his recent TED Talk, it’s inspiring stuff.

I think there’s a fatal flaw in his plan.

Data, in its raw form is hard to come by. Data in databases is, in my experience, a rarity.

Data is usually held in Excel workbooks or Word documents or, more likely, random emails.

Let’s take, as a perfect example, the Post Office.

Tom Taylor wanted to know the location of every postbox in the UK.

This is the sort of information which could be very useful to all sorts of projects. A widget to tell you where the nearest postbox was which hadn’t missed the last pickup. If you were looking for a new place to live, knowing where the postboxes were would be helpful. Perhaps there is a public health implication that none of us are aware of yet.

It’s the sort of small, bespoke manipulation of information which having free access of data makes possible.

So Tom makes a Freedom of Information request to the Post Office.

You can read the whole story yourself, but in synopsis, the Post office doesn’t hold these data!

Local Post offices may do – but it’s probably on scraps of paper, old print outs, a list in an obscure data format on an old PC that’s never backed up.

So, some bright spark creates a database in Microsoft Access. Not only is Access a barely credible alternative to a database but (and here’s the punchline) the database they’ve created doesn’t record post codes properly!

Now, this isn’t a crappily designed products built by EDS or Captia to an ever changing specification – this is a in house design. Probably specced and built by someone with a day’s training in Access. People who only think they know what they’re doing are dangerous.

Because it’s only designed for internal use – and light use at that – the data and its structure are of extremely low quality.

At best, huge tranches of data are held in barely functional, imperfect databases. The rest as flat files on individual computers in multiple inconsistent revisions.

Now, it’s been several years since I’ve worked for a local government, but I can’t believe too much has changed since then. Especially given what I see in day-to-day business. For some of the companies that I do business with, the very idea of having a database is akin to science fiction. Everyone knows that best practice is to keep data centralised location in a well maintained database. But everyone knows that’s it’s easier, in the short term, to keep the data in a spreadsheet on your desktop.

So, the challenge is 3-fold.
1. Convince people that placing information is a good thing to do.
2. Designing databases which are both correct & useful.
3. Freeing the data from their hellish-Excel bondage.

It won’t be easy. However, the end result will be worthwhile.

But it’s up to all of us – whether we’re in public or private service – to make sure the data we’re creating is rational, well formed and accessible.

Raw Data Now.

Edit: 29/06/2009
Tim has posted about Putting Government Data Online.

The chances are quite high that the data your department/agency runs off will be largely in relational databases, often with a large amount in spreadsheets.