In a recent short story, Cory Doctorow imagined a world in which Google powers the US border and immigration services. That world conjured up a new term: Scroogled. As nightmarish as the prospect of any fictitious world that can be conjured up by a bastardized compound of the words “Google”, “scrutinized”, “screwed”, it’s not quite as bad as the reality I came across over the last two weeks.

I recently realized I needed to fill out some paperwork to maintain my US permanent resident card. I found the form online, filled it out, and then realized I might actually need to still be in the US in order to submit the form. Something about the US government wanting my bodily fluids I think, and not in a good way.

I was pretty sure the US government already had every scrap of biometrics on me that it could possibly ever need, but rather than blindly submitting the form, I went to the US consulate in Vancouver to see if I could get a definitive answer. Except, apparently, customer service isn’t what a consulate provides, even if you are a legal US resident. The guards at the consulate gave me a 1-900 number to call for information.

Wait…the US government uses 1-900 numbers? Aren’t those those reserved for televangelists and phone sex lines?

Apparently not. For the low-low price of $1.89 a minute, the US government will answer your questions about the absurdly complicated world they created. Hooray! It’s like being stuck in the movie Brazil, but without a British accent to make those whole experience appear polite. But the results were just as comical:

Me: Hi, I’m trying to find out if I need to be in the US to file my I-131? Does that apply if I’ve already got a permanent resident card?

Customs: An I-131? What is that?

Me: It’s a re-entry permit.

Customs: Oh, sorry – we only handle visas on this phone number…

Me: I guess it’s a type of visa…it lets me get back into the country.

Customs: …yeah, we don’t handle that type of visa at this number. Have you tried the US consulate?

Me: Yes. They gave me your number.

Customs: Hmm…well, you know what you might try? Why don’t you Google it?

Google it? Two bucks a minute to be told the answer is on the Internet? What. The. Hell.

At least the guy gave me two other phone numbers to call - one at Vancouver Airport, and the other at the Niagara Falls border crossing. No one picked up the phone at Vancouver Airport, but at the Niagara Falls crossing, I had an eerily familiar experience:

Me: <same as above>

Customs: Hmm, I don’t really know about the I-131.

Me: Well, I’ve tried the US consulate, they gave me a number, and the guy there gave me your number. Any other ideas where I can find out about this I-131?

Customs: Well, why don’t you try the Interne–

Me: <click>

Last month, The Atlantic posed the question: is Google making us stupid? I think we have our answer. Rather than turning the US into a pseudo surveillance state as Cory Doctorow envisioned, perhaps the reality is worse: a government that is so inefficient and ill-informed that it relies on a search engine to provide its citizens with access to their own government.

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) had a problem last week - a group of students were prepared to deliver a presentation at Defcon, a high-profile security conference, on vulnerabilities they had identified in the transit card system employed by the MBTA. In a vain attempt to suppress this information, the MBTA filed an injunction filed to stop the presentation. In doing so, the MBTA filed this document in their court documents, and provided far better disclosure of the vulnerabilities (see Exhibit 1) than would have been provided by any such presentation.

While I disagree with the actions of the MBTA, if they really wanted to quash the disclosure they could have at least tried to do it right. There can only be one of two possible conclusions: they didn’t really want to quash the disclosure but had to appear to do so for political reasons, or they’re incompetent. Does no one on the MBTA legal team realize that filed court documents are public records? And readily available on the Internet? No? OK then, you’re fired.

On a related note, I learned a new term: the Streisand Effect.

(Incidentally, I don’t see what the big deal is about this vulnerability. When I was in university, we were cloning our university the pre-paid printer stored value cards using only blank audio tape and a piece of Scotch tape. It’s not rocket science.)

It appears the April update of Flash Player’s security policies have some implications for Amazon’s web services. Per the release information, it appears that is is no longer sufficient to have a crossdomain.xml file that contains <allow-access-from domain="*"/>:

In order for a SWF to send a header anywhere other than its own host, the origin domain of the SWF must have explicit permission from the host to which the header is being sent, in the form of a policy file. The existing policy file model will apply, with the same file locations and ActionScript APIs, but a new syntax will be required. To specify header-sending rights, use this new tag: <allow-http-request-headers-from>.

Without such an entry, whenever you use the WebService tag in MXML to access an Amazon web service, you’ll get the “security error accessing url” message. I currently have this problem with the following use of WebService tag:

<mx:WebService
id="AmazonSearch"
wsdl="{'http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/AWSECommerceService.wsdl'}"
showBusyCursor="true"
fault="Alert.show(event.fault.faultString)"
load="startScanning(event);">
...
</mx:WebService>

This code functioned without issue until I updated to Flash Player 9,0,124,0. I’ve started a thread on the Amazon Web Services Developer Connection, so hopefully someone at Amazon add the appropriate <allow-http-request-headers-from domain="*"/> entry into the crossdomain.xml file at webservices.amazon.com to address this problem.

Hopefully this post saves some people a few hours of beating their heads against a wall. Unless I’m totally mistaken, and there’s a workaround that doesn’t involve using a proxy?

The Department of Homeland Security has revealed its laptop search policy. According to the Washington Post:

Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I totally saw this coming once the Ninth Circuit ruled border searches of luggage legal – and the Canadian Border is following the DHS’ lead. It was only a matter of time, as I predicted, before they argue that they need the capability to copy or retain data.

This should scare the bejeezus out of Canadians and Americans alike. The border services are notoriously incompetent, and it is inevitable that laptops and data will be lost. As a result, sensitive corporate or customer data will be compromised, identities will be stolen, competitive advantage will be lost, and a host of other consequences will be incurred.

What I find mind-boggling is that Senator Feinstein “intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches”. In other words, to re-affirm that the fourth amendment of the US Constitution does apply at the borders. Talk about cat and mouse.

There’s one additional implication for Canadian companies now that this policy has been clarified. Under PIPEDA, companies must safeguard Canadians’ personal data. This has lead to many services, such as those storing Canadians’ health data, to be moved off of US servers due to the wide-sweeping powers of investigation granted under the US Patriot Act. The implication of this new laptop policy is clear: companies operating in Canada must not carry Canadian customer or employee data on laptops to the US.

Holy Hogwart’s, Dumbledore! Amazon.com is now accepting pre-orders for the latest J.K. Rowling yarn, “The Tales of Beedle the Bard”, due out December 4th.

In 2007, Amazon had purchased one of only seven handmade copies created by J.K. Rowling to benefit the Children’s Voice campaign for a whopping £1.95M. I, like many others, worried that I’d never get to read the storybook of the same name mentioned in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the last book of the Harry Potter series.

And now Amazon.com is bringing it to the public in both a standard edition, and a drool-inducing collector’s edition that mimics the look of the original hand-illustrated storybook.

Lest you think this is Amazon.com cashing in on the rampant Harry Potter withdrawal (in play until the new movie comes out in November, and then again until Tales of Beedle the Bard comes out December 4th) to make a quick buck, it should be noted that the net proceeds from these editions will support the Children’s High Level Group, a charity co-founded in 2005 by J.K. Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP to make life better for vulnerable children.

I came across a ridiculous piece of news via the ever-amusing condohype blog: Yaletown is being dubbed the “sexiest neighbourhood” in Canada. Really? I can think of at least five reasons that this isn’t the case (and yes, I’m channeling Nick Horby’s Rob Gordon here):

1. Pretentious: Tiny dogs, overpriced restaurants, snotty attitudes, and waiters and hairdressers who seem to think they’re &*%$ing James Bond (where I’m using “&*%$ing” as both an adjective and a verb). Turned on yet?
2. Costly: Given the cost per square foot of housing in Yaletown, you might end up doing it in the street. But maybe that’s “up your alley”, so to speak.
3. Smelly: Garbage dumpsters in the street. Mmm. Sexy.
4. Annoying: 1 way streets, no parking. This has no connection to sex - it’s just a bloody pain in the ass.
5. Cramped: When all else fails and you can’t get laid, there’s always the Internet. Except your wireless router keeps cutting out due to interference from your eight adjacent neighbours’ own wifi networks. Guess you’ll have to exercise your imagination (and no, that’s not a euphenism).

Have I missed any? Shall we try for a Top Ten? Add yours in the comments.

Now, in the interest of disclosure, I have to say that I lived in Yaletown for three years - not because I was sexy, but rather because I was lazy. The location allowed me at one point to walk across the street to work. I have since recovered, and now live in Cambie Village.

Ashley got a letter from Hedy Fry, MP for Vancouver Centre, in response to a petition she signed in opposition to C-61 (note the weird sentence structure & punctuation is verbatim from the letter):

Dear Ms. Richards:

Thank you for your correspondence concerning Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Copyright Act.

As you are aware the previous Liberal government had tabled a Bill on this issue but it did not come to debate because of the election. The current Conservative Bill has been eagerly awaited since they announced their intentions in December 2007.

Canada has signed two World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaties, but has not yet ratified them. The last time the Canadian Copyright Act was amended was in 1997 but these amendments did not address the WIPO treaty agreements. In the interim, communications technology has expanded rapidly. Everyone is in agreement that the Copyright Act has to be amended to reflect the impact of digital technology.

Bill C-61 should strike a balance between the right of creators to be reimbursed for their creative, intellectual property and the desire for consumers to have access to these creative works.

Indeed digital technology serves both the creator and the consumer well. It increases the reach and distribution of creative works as never imagined, before; which is precisely what creators need and it gives consumers easy access to creative works that can entertain, enrich, and educate.

This Bill does not serve either consumer or creator well. It prescribes narrow, punitive solutions to a complex problem. In fact the Bill could very well have the effect of curbing the use of digital technology, to the extent that it becomes useless. This would be a pity! As well implementation of the measures in the Bill would be nearly impossible, unless one abandons all privacy rights or imposes locks on the digital technology that severely limits its application. How to monetize digital technology to reward the creator and allow free and open use by the consumer is challenging.

As Liberals we believe that there should have been extensive consultations with legal experts, creators, distributors, and conventional and digital media industries to find the right balance of solutions. It is typical of the Harper government that they do not consult but impose.

Liberals intend to begin these consultations over the course of the summer so that when the Bill comes to the House we can propose appropriate amendments. Moreover we believe that the Bill should be further subject to public scrutiny if it ever gets to committee stage. It could be that after we consult with the expert groups they believe that Bill C-61 is unsalvageable, in which case one would have to vote against the Bill and rewrite a new one.

These are exciting and challenging times in media communications technology that can broaden the consumption of arts and cultural products, in a manner unheard of since the invention of the printing press. The challenges seemed impossible then but solutions were found that led to a Renaissance of art and culture. We are at a similar point in history, now. We must not use a sledge hammer.

Once again, thank you for writing. Please feel free to contact my office if I may be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Hon. Hedy Fry, M.P.

Vancouver Centre

While I’ve never been a big fan of Hedy Fry, it’s encouraging to see that she’s on the right side on this issue.

Have you contacted your MP about why Bill C-61 should be defeated?

I had a nice little chat with the PR representative from TeleToon (the Canadian equivalent of Cartoon Network) the other week. She had contacted me for some help contacting TechVibes, and so I took the opportunity to ask when the new season of The Venture Brothers would be airing in Canada. She stated they were working to get it on the air sometime in the new year.

This is, in a word, suicide.

At this point, Cartoon Network had already broadcast half the season in the US already. I pointed out to the PR representative that because the show’s demographic skews heavily toward the geek-set, many of their viewers know how to obtain the show easily, albeit illegally, online using tools such as Miro and sites like tvRSS.net. By the time TeleToon airs the show in the new year, no one will care. She acknowledged this was probably true, and that they were trying to turn around shows faster.

I had a similar conversation at the Bridging Media conference when I talked with Gary Marcuse, a programming executive with the CBC. I asked him when the latest season of Doctor Who and Torchwood would be coming to Canada. Again, the latest seasons were already being broadcast in the UK but nowhere to be found in Canada, despite the fact that both shows are co-produced by the CBC and the BBC. Gary didn’t know the details of arrangement with the BBC, but guessed that the delay was likely due to either licensing legalities, or the terms of the co-production deal.

While iTunes has solved the problem of distributing US programming, the same isn’t true for international programming. While British classics such as Peep Show and the IT Crowd have been running for years, they haven’t made it onto iTunes, despite the sales success of other BBC shows distributed there. You can’t even buy the DVDs of these shows in North America. Your only option to get these programs currently is to buy the non-North American DVDs and a region-free DVD player - a solution which will become illegal if C-61 (”the Canadian DMCA”) becomes law.

I can’t believe that this is problem of manpower - after all, how hard is it to upload a file to the iTunes servers? Or outsource pressing of DVDs to a third party? Not very hard at all. In all likelihood the real culprit here is the nuances of licensing and international law. I imagine there’s a lot of guys spending a lot of time in dimly-lit rooms arguing over fine print for each and every country. No wonder they’re not in a hurry to do this. It sounds horrible.

The incremental approach to media distribution is what’s undermining consumers’ patience. This is why people pirate media - because it’s just damn easier and faster than waiting. In the meantime, media companies are leaving a lot of money on the table by not leveraging their assets to the fullest possible extent.

As consumers have altered their media consumption habits over the past decade, Big Media has tried every trick in the book to maintain the status quo: suing their customers into submission, deploying technological countermeasures, and lobbying for legislation to protect and perpetuate their crumbling business model. But they’ve ignored the obvious solution - we’re willing to pay, but we’re not willing to wait.

We want the good stuff, and we want it now.

It’s been six months or so since I received the Sony PRS 505 E-Reader from my last employer as a generous going away present, and I forgot that I hadn’t posted my thoughts on the device yet. After six months, I can safely say I’ve been relatively pleased with the device.

For those that haven’t seen or played with the device, the Sony PRS 505 is an electronic book, one of the first commercial application of “electronic ink”, a passive display technology from E Ink Corporation. Unlike a traditional LCD screen, such as those in laptops and computer monitors, electronic ink is a passive diaply technology. It uses no power to display the image, and does not feature a backlight to illuminate the screen. Instead, the display uses reflected light just like a regular book. The result is a remarkably crisp display that is easy on the eyes, and uses miniscule amounts of power to “turn the page”.

At first, I was a bit sceptical about the Sony device. When it first appeared, the device was well over $300 and was a bit bulky. The PRS 505 is the second generation of the device, and features a slimmer design and similarly slimmer cost (on the order of $280). Yet despite the lower price, I’m not sure I would have bought this device on my own; it was something I wanted, but not so badly that I was about to lay out cash for it.

In retrospect, that was a mistake that I’m grateful was corrected when I received the device as a gift.

The device itself is on par with the weight of a medium-sized hardback book. The battery is only required when turning the page, a feature which easily allows the user to read a handful of books between recharges. The ergonomic design of the device is quite clever - the circular button at the bottom left moves the book between pages, and sits naturally under the thumb when resting the book in your hand with the cover (not shown) held open by your thumb. Similarly, the two navigation buttons on the right side mimic the place where you might normally place your thumb when flipping through a normal paperback book.

Reading is fairly natural, although the time the screen takes to change between “pages” is noticeable and can sometimes interrupt the action on the page. You can scale up the text, a feature that’s sure to be appreciated by older readers with failing eyesite – in fact, this device may eventually find a good following with older readers for this feature alone (doubly true if you believe Steve Jobs’ assertion that nobody reads anymore really just applies to the Millennials).

The one major failing of the device, sadly, is Sony’s eBook Store and the associates client software used to purchase books from the store and place them on the device. Sony’s software is notoriously poor (I speak from experience), and the PRS 505 client software is no expection. It’s slow to load the application, slow to access the store, offers incomprehensible representations of what books are on the device currently versus what books are on your computer locally, and takes an inexplicable amount of time to move a book onto the device. In the end, I’ve found it easier and faster to simply download the electronic books from the store to my hard drive, mount the device as a USB drive, and copy the files over myself manually.

That said, the selection of the store is pretty decent. Besides the latest best-sellers, there’s a fairly extension library of the classics. When I received the device, I also received a voucher for $50 worth of electronic books, plus 100 credits to use on purchasing any of the Sony Classics (likely pulled down from Project Gutenberg). I have yet to purchase any more books beyond these amounts (still working my way through the pile).

The device also handles text, RTF, and PDF files, allowing you to use the device to read any existing documents you may in those formats. In reality, the rendering of these formats on the device leaves something to be desired: page breaks are often inconsistent, rendering the reading experience somewhat degraded. There are, however, many freely available resources for downloading appropriately formatted versions of Project Gutenberg books, such as manybooks.net.

Many will wonder how this device compares to the Amazon Kindle device, which I was lucky enough to try out while in California (one of my friends at work bought one). The devices uses the same screen technology as the Sony PRS 505, and shares many similarities. The two major feature differences are the industrial design of the Kindle, which I found to be far less elegant than the Sony device, and the wireless capabilities of the Kindle. The Kindle features a built-in wireless modem that allows the user to download books from Amazon.com directly. There is no cost for this feature, as this device effectively enables Amazon.com to sell books anywhere. The Kindle is a fair bit more expensive, however, costing about $350.

Overall, I’m pretty pleased with the Sony device and continue to use it. It’s especially useful when I’m travelling to tote a couple books in my backpack without crippling myself. However, at $280 the device is still too expensive for most users, in my opinion. This device is something to stick on the Christmas or birthday list and hope someone’s feeling generous.

Rogers has unveiled its pricing structure for the iPhone 3G in Canada, and it can be summarized in one syllable. Unfortunately, this is a family-oriented website, so I’ll have to use a different syllable:

Ouch.

First off: there’s absolutely no unlimited data plan. Rogers may claim they have tried to make the plans slightly less ridiculous, but they failed bigtime - it’s business as usual, continuing the time-honoured tradition of having Canadians pay through the nose for meager amounts of mobile data. The cost of data plans range from $60 for 400MB of data transfer to $115 for 2GB of data transfer. This stands in stark contrast to the simple, affordable AT&T iPhone plans in the US, which feature unlimited data, Visual Voicemail, 200 SMS text messages, roll-over minutes and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calling for every plan - and the cheapest plan is $59.99.

The differences are staggering. The cheapest Rogers plan only include 75 text messages, versus 200 for the AT&T plan. To match the capabilities of the AT&T plan, you’d have to spring for the $100 a month plan with Rogers. For $60 with Rogers, you get 150 minutes of talk time, versus the 450 minutes you get with AT&T for $59.99. That’s right - 3 times the talk time, and it’s 1 cent cheaper.

But wait! There’s less!

Rogers “Value Packs” are required for things like Caller Display, additional text messages, and Call Forwarding (which appears to be billed on a per minute basis, which strikes me is really odd). All of these “Value Packs” are noted with “Wireless Essentials Included” - really? I have no idea what that means, but if they’re included, why the hell are they an extra charge on top of the main plans?

By all appearances, the Rogers iPhone 3G  plans are optimized for complexity and designed to milk the consumer dry. Way to go Rogers, you’ve exceeded my expectations, but not in a good way.

Boing Boing pointed me to Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno’s “Unthinkable Futures” list, which included a disaster scenario that fired some neurons (it’s Saturday morning before ten, this is unusual):

People begin leaving the U.S. Many arrivals to the US keep resident status but choose not to adopt citizenship. The world sees more people without allegiance.

Whenever people ask me “where are you from?” I’ve always had difficulty answering the question. I was born in Australia, grew up in Canada, and hold Irish citizenship and US Permanent Residence status. Technically, I’m from somewhere around 30 countries.

I’ve always viewed multi-citizenship as an imperitive in an increasingly interconnected world. The ability to easily move and work in another country has always struck me as a logical complement to my highly transportable skill set as an engineer. While international treaties, such as NAFTA, typically simplify the process of moving between countries for highly-skilled workers, citizenship reduces the complexity even further.

In fact, one might even view citizenship as a new asset class. Not only is it an easily transportable asset, but it also can be passed on to descendants in most cases. When Ashley and I have kids, they could have as many as four citizenships: Canadian, Irish, Australian, and US.

That said, I, as many others, are wary of US citizenship. The primary reason for this fear is the draconian US tax law, which demands its citizens file taxes on their world income regardless of whether they are in the country or not. The US always wants its share in exchange for the benefit of citizenship. Other countries, in contrast, generally don’t require you to file taxes unless you’re actually in the country for a significant portion of the year.

I could see this becoming a liability for the US, leading to the outcome that Kevin Kelly and Brian Eno predict. US citizenship is only an asset so long as the US is a highly desirable labour market, and supports a high quality of life. In the absence of those attributes, the asset of citizenship is outweighed by the liability of onerous over-taxation.

Of course, in the long-term this hopefully becomes a non-issue as international borders and nation-states become increasingly irrelevant. Maybe.

With the tabling of Bill C-61 in the Canadian Parliament, I’ve become concerned with the lack of a concise set of “talking points” that summarizes the ramifications of the bill in plain language. This post attempts to capture such a set of talking points for review by the copyfighter community at large. Keep in mind that this document must provide a rational argument against C-61, as a fact-based, non-emotional debate is key to our success in defeating C-61. If you have additional points or comments, please add them in the comments and I’ll integrate them as appropriate.

This document is designed to provide you with a concise set of talking points to use when educating your friends and informing your Member of Parliament of the wide-reaching ramifications of Bill C-61 on consumers’ rights.

What is C-61?

Bill C-61 is a federal bill that has been introduced in the Canadian House of Parliament by Minister of Industry Jim Prentice and Canadian Heritage Minister Josée Verner to reform the Canadian Copyright Act. It is designed to, among other things, “update the rights and protections of copyright owners to better address the Internet, in line with international standards”, “permit certain uses for educational and research purposes of Internet and other digital technologies to facilitate technology-enhanced learning, inter-library loans, the delivery of educational material and access to publicly available material on the Internet”, and “permit certain uses of copyright material for private purposes”.

Why is C-61 bad for Canadians?

The bill faces criticism for several reasons, including the lack of public consultation on the matter by the government, as well as the appearance that the bill is the result of heavy lobbying by the US media industries to replicate the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In particular, the bill replicates provisions making it illegal to circumvent digital rights management (DRM) technologies used to protect copyrighted materials.

The bill is bad for Canadians for a number of reasons:

1. It reduces your rights: Consumers will continue to be able to use copyrighted materials for research, private study, criticism, review or news reporting, but will no longer have the means to exercise those rights when the copyrighted materials are protected by DRM.
2. It reduces the usefulness of your media: Consumers will no longer have the right to take commonly purchased physical media, such as DVDs, or downloaded DRM-protected files, such as digital music, and make copies for their personal use.
3. It forces you to buy media you’ve already purchased: Consumers will be unable to unlock media they’ve legally purchased in the past for use on new devices, and hence will be forced to buy the same content again and again.
4. It makes your devices less useful: Consumers will be able to do less, not more, with new devices they purchase, as many of these device may, at any time, limit the user’s access to media they have a legal right to view, modify, or redistribute.
5. It reduces competition and innovation: Consumers will be unable to influence the market by finding new uses for their existing media and copyrighted materials, limiting the application of ingenuity that can lead to the creation of new applications and markets for Canadians and the world.
6. It makes the public domain works inaccessible: Consumers will have the right to re-use works in the public domain, but in cases where those public domain works are protected by DRM consumers will not have the means to exercise those rights and hence lose access to their own heritage.

What won’t I be able to do under C-61?

The following is a short list of the potential ramifications of C-61 on your rights to use your legally purchased media. Under C-61, you will not have the right to:

• Make backups of your DVDs: Let’s say you’re a parent – don’t you want to be able to make a copy of the DVDs you purchase for your kids so you have a way to easily replace the movie when they get their peanut butter-covered hands all over them? Doing so would require you to break the copyright protection software on those DVDs. Under C-61, it will be illegal to do this – instead, you’ll have to buy a whole new DVD.
• Move your media to other devices: Let’s say you’ve purchased a shiny new digital media gadget for your home entertainment center – wouldn’t you like to be able to fill it with content you already own, such as DVDs, CDs, or music you’ve legally purchased from online services? If that media is protected by DRM, C-61 makes it illegal for you to copy this data – you will only be able to use your media on devices that support the media’s DRM format. If your new device doesn’t support some (or all) of your existing content’s DRM technology, you’ll have to purchase it again.
• Use your media in perpetuity: Let’s say you purchased a movie or a song from an online service – don’t you expect to be able to keep using that movie or song forever, even if the online service goes out of business? If your media is protected by DRM that contacts a server to authorize your access and the service goes out of business, you will no longer be able to access media you legally purchased. Under C-61, it will be illegal for you to break the DRM to access the media you legally purchased.
• Exercise your rights to fair dealing: Let’s say you’re a student doing a documentary and want to use some video in your documentary which falls under Canada’s fair dealing doctrine allowing use of copyrighted materials for research, private study, criticism, review or news reporting. Under C-61, you will not be able to exercise your rights to include the video in your film if the video is protected by DRM. In essence, you have the right use the video, but no way to do so without breaking the law.
• Re-mix DRM-ed public domain materials: Let’s say you’re working on some cool photo montage that takes photos from the public domain and re-uses them in some new and interesting way. If the photos are stored in a DRMed format, you can’t access them without breaking the law under C-61. Again, you have the rights to use the photos, and in fact they’re a part of the public domain and belong to humankind as a whole - you just can’t exercise your rights.
• Unlock your phone: Let’s say you’ve been lusting after a new phone, but it’s only available for another carrier. If that carrier has “locked” the phone to restrict it to their network, you will not have the right to unlock the phone to work with your current carrier. While this is not specifically forbidden under C-61, a carrier could argue that unlocking a phone circumvents of a copyright control, which would be illegal under C-61.
• Use all of your phone’s features: Let’s say you realize your phone has some really cool features that the carrier decided to disable. If you employ software tools to re-enable these features, it could be argued that you are circumventing a copyright control, which would be illegal under C-61. You paid for the device and all its features, you just aren’t allowed to use them.
• Remove DRM software: Let’s say you’ve purchased a CD that has DRM on it and you decide to play it on your computer – isn’t it fair to assume that you have the right to uninstall any software the CD installs on your system? Under C-61, disabling or uninstalling this software may be illegal. Your computer is no longer yours to control.

This sounds alarmist – aren’t you over-reacting?

The outcome of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in the United States over the past ten years, coupled with the actions of media corporations, has illustrated the ramifications of overly restrictive copyright law on the rights of consumers. Here are some examples of the egregious behavior that has resulted from the DMCA and the industry’s insistence on the use of DRM technology:

• Consumers unable to access media they purchased legally: A number of online music services have closed up shop, leaving consumers without the right or the means to access they legally purchased. Examples include the closure of the MSN Music store, the closure of the Sony Connect Music service, and the closure of Google’s Video Store. In all cases, the user’s were unable to access their media as-is; in the case of Sony, users had to undertake a number of cumbersome manual steps to maintain access to their music, and in the case of Google, users were refunded their money only after a public outcry.
• Consumers unable to use their devices as intended: Some popular digital video recorders include a “broadcast flag” technology desire to allow the manufacturer to limit how long a user may access programs they record, or prevent them from even recording some programs at all. Most recently, NBC accidentally enabled this technology, preventing users of Microsoft’s Home Media Center from recording an episode of American Gladiators.
• Consumers’ privacy and security risked by faulty DRM solutions: In an effort to prevent users from copying CDs onto their computers, some manufacturers have embedded software that is automatically installed on the user’s computer when they insert the CD. This software not only uses up the user’s computing resources, but also reports on the user’s activities to the manufacturer. The most noteworthy example of this is Sony’s use of a DRM system that illicitly installs software on the user’s machine, is very difficult to remove, and sends information to a third-party about the user’s activities.

What can I do to stop C-61?

1. Contact your Member of Parliament: Use this document to guide you in outlining your concerns to your local MP. Not sure who your local MP is? Find your MP here.
2. Join the Facebook group: Facebook has already been used successfully to thwart anti-consumer bills like this in Canada. Join the Fair Copyright for Canada group.
3. Educate yourself, educate your friends: The only way to defeat this is if a large number of Canadians take action to alert ordinary consumers of the threat to their rights. Michael Geist has written a number of good articles on the topic.

It is with a certain amount of cynicism that the geek hordes sized up Rogers‘ newly unveiled teaser campaign for the forthcoming iPhone 3G. Nothing like a teaser for a product that was just announced to the world at the Apple WWDC on Tuesday.

How tragic. True, Rogers is being handed an effective monopoly (i.e. more than usual) for the world’s hottest mobile device, and has even announced what’s going to be released. But that’s no reason to half-ass the marketing. Jobs must be having an aneurysm.

This is what they should have done instead:

Amateurs.

BoingBoing arranged to capture the running commentary on His Jobness’ WWDC 2008 Keynote on the #boingboing IRC channel. As a greek chorus. The results are hilarious - I even make a couple of appearances (writing as “Rogan”):

JOBS: In extra-dimensional realms beyond your fleshy ken, the gods mellifluously speak through crystalline conches—a far cry from your ‘blogs,’ monkey men. (Contemptuously) Blogs. A strange sheep-like bleating. A bovine cut-and-paste. Oh, I will give you your blogs, filth beasts. I will give you them! BEHOLD! Birthed of my seed in the belly of my own daughter, TYPEPAD… FOR BLOGGING ON THE GO!

CHORUS (Rogan): TypePad on iPhone: Now you can have people ignore posts you write anywhere!

Enjoy!

A friend noted that he was experiencing weird behavior when he surfed my site. Whenever he clicked a link on my site, provided he’d visited FriendFeed previously, he would randomly be redirected to anyresult.net. This is apparently a new exploit of WordPress that has arisen in the past week or so. I’m running WordPress 2.5.0.

The exploit is simple - it registers itself as an active plugin in your WordPress installation. To disguise itself slightly, the PHP code for this plugin is held in an image file. A quick look in the wp_option database should allow you to identify a plugin you don’t recognize. To do this:

1. Login to your instance of MySQL: mysql <database name> -u <username> -p -h <database server>
2. Find the active plugins registered in WordPress: select option_value from wp_options where option_name='active_plugins';
3. Look for a plugin you don’t recognize: You should probably be able to figure out which plugins are which, based on their names - look for a plugin which is an image file.

For example, in my case an active plugin had been registered that was held in an image file called “rtl_old.jpg”. The result of looking at the active_plugins entry in wp_options:

a:10:{i:0;s:50:”../../backup/wp-content/themes/classic/rtl_old.jpg”;
i:1;s:43:”../themes/k2/app/includes/k2-sbm-loader.php”;
i:2;s:43:”../themes/k2/app/includes/k2-sbm-loader.php”;
i:3;s:17:”add-meta-tags.php”;i:4;s:19:”akismet/akismet.php”;
i:5;s:37:”batch-categories/batch-categories.php”;
i:6;s:41:”calais-auto-tagger/calais_auto_tagger.php”;
i:7;s:21:”no-flash-uploader.php”;
i:8;s:50:”wp-calais-archive-tagger/calais_archive_tagger.php”;
i:9;s:18:”wp-contactform.php”;}

Clever eh? I’m not clear on the mechanics by which this plugin is hidden from the Plugins panel of the WordPress, but nevertheless, the result is that you won’t be able to remove this malicious plugin from the WordPress admin panel. To remove the plugin, you’ll have to manually update the active_plugins entry for option_value.

You’ll need to craft a new value for option_value. Note that the entry encodes the data as an array of sorts (I’m not a big PHP guy, so I don’t know if this is standard practice or not). The “a:” entry specifies the length of the array, and the “i:” entry for each plugin specifies its location in the array. To remove the malicious plugin, I altered my option_value to the following:

a:9:{i:0;s:43:”../themes/k2/app/includes/k2-sbm-loader.php”;
i:1;s:43:”../themes/k2/app/includes/k2-sbm-loader.php”;
i:2;s:17:”add-meta-tags.php”;
i:3;s:19:”akismet/akismet.php”;
i:4;s:37:”batch-categories/batch-categories.php”;
i:5;s:41:”calais-auto-tagger/calais_auto_tagger.php”;
i:6;s:21:”no-flash-uploader.php”;
i:7;s:50:”wp-calais-archive-tagger/calais_archive_tagger.php”;
i:8;s:18:”wp-contactform.php”;}

To effect the necessary change in MySQL:

1. Login to your instance of MySQL: mysql <database name> -u <username> -p -h <database server>
2. Update the option_value entry: UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = '<new value for option_value>' WHERE option_name='active_plugins';

I’m curious about the content of the rtl_old.jpg file, but that can be dissected later. For now, these instructions should get you back on track and remove the malicious plugin.

The web is aflutter with Amazon.com being offline for the better part of several hours - it got me and Boris thinking: just how much is this costing them?

The answer is simple: about $33.96 in revenue per second (or a modest $122,260.27 an hour), based on Amazon.com’s $10.71 billion dollar revenues in 2007. Which translates into a lost profit, based on annual profit figures of $190 million, of $6.02 per second (or $21,689.50 an hour).

I’ve been a longtime Google Reader user, and I recently decided to explore their “Shared items” capability. The idea of “Shared items” is that you can mark posts interest you come across in Google Reader, and share them with your friends; and, vice-versa, you can view items your friends have shared with you. Pick the right friends, and your social network becomes an effective news filter, minimizing the amount of RSS feeds you actually track and read.

It sounds like a great idea, until you try to use the feature. The first step in any social networking-type application is simple: add your friends. If you got no friends, the whole thing doesn’t work. It would seem reasonable, therefore, that the first and most important aspect of such an application would be to make adding friends easy. It is in this regard that Google Reader not only hops on the failcopter, but grabs control of the stick, and jams it into a steep descent. Into the side of a mountain.

To add friends in Google Reader, you have to add friends in…GTalk? It’s hardly an auspicious start to the user experience when using the web application requires the user to navigate to another web application. And of course, to use GTalk, you have to use Gmail. Fine, whatever, I already use Gmail. In fact, I’ve imported about 1000 contacts into my Gmail address book, so the rest should be simple, right?

Wrong. Here’s the UI to add a user to GTalk:

That’s right, you have to add users manually. In addition, there’s no autocomplete capability either, which means you’ll have to type in all of your friends’ complete email addresses. Who thought this was a good idea? It’s like the application needs human suffering to provide sustenance. Does this application thrive on misery?

Seriously, Google, come on. I’ve given you my email contacts. You even have a Google Contacts API that allows third parties to use my Gmail contacts! What the heck is going on here? In fact, this UI shouldn’t even exist - it should be a list of my Gmail contacts, filtered by those that are already using GTalk, that allows me to easy select a number of contacts and make the request. Done.

The lack of integration between different web properties is not unique to Google. If you use Upcoming, you’ll note that adding a user is a painful manual process similar to the Google Reader experience.

It’s like they actually want these applications to fail. If these providers can’t even integrate their own APIs to simplify the exchange of data within their own company, what hope does the DataPortability movement have?

Every New Year’s Day, I take a moment to reflect on the past year. I write my future self a letter to remind me what I achieved that year, the hurdles I faced, and plot my next steps. I’ve also fallen into the habit of doing something similar each birthday on my blog. This year I’m a bit late, but I’ve been busy - but the more I think about it, the more it’s important for me to put this out there.

As an engineer, I have a predisposition to negative thinking. While many might think of engineering as a creative profession, one embedded in the positive act of generating something from nothing, critical thinking is a significant component of an engineer’s thought process: What could go wrong? What’s wrong with this picture? What assumptions am I making? There’s a logical reason for the critical nature of an engineer’s thought process: if we get it wrong someone else could pay the price. In software, it’s no longer about lives (flashback to university: “…and if you do this wrong, someone could die, and it’ll be your fault!”), but the impact of getting it wrong can be disastrous nonetheless.

This past year, I’ve started trying to hack my brain to reverse this thought process. It’s not that I want to ignore what could go wrong, but rather examine and invite the opportunity for things to go right. One part of this transformation has been due to a partial read-through of “The Power of Positive Thinking“, a book that examines the new field of positive psychiatry. The book’s theme in a nutshell is that the internal dialog you use to dissect problems you face can ultimately undermine not only your health, but your chances of success in the future.

Now I’m not one for pseudoscientific self-help mumbo jumbo, but there’s enough science quoted in the book that it’s a worthwhile read.

A lot of my introspection in the past has been overly negative - why aren’t I doing X, how come I haven’t achieved Y, why did I fail at Z? In the past half year, I’ve stopped doing that. It is in this new vein of positive thinking that I want to chronicle the things I’ve done in these 33 years:

• I got an education: I was quite down on university during my time at both SFU and at UBC. In retrospect, I’ve come to realize that SFU’s Engineering Science program prepared me for the real world in ways that most programs don’t acknowledge as important, such as writing and presentation skills. Besides the formal education that comes with university, my experience in a variety of startups has spared me the experience of being a corporate cog, stuck in a single company for the entirety of my working career.
• I made stuff: I always have felt the need to be busy, to have some project that I’m working on. In retrospect, I now realize I’ve actually done a lot of stuff with my time. I wrote a book, I recorded a CD, I’ve helped release a lot of software, and some of it even made a lot of money.
• I travelled the world: Most people don’t even get to see the world at large, nevermind live in it for any extended period of time. In just over the past decade, I’ve lived in five countries (US, Canada, Britain, Anguilla, Ireland). I’ve toured Europe and the US pretty extensively. I’ve accumulated two citizenships (Canada, Ireland), a US Permanent Resident card, and British Patriality. Although I lost my Australian citizenship when I became a Canadian, I could probably resume it without too much trouble. In short, I’ve gotten around.
• I found a partner in crime: Shortly after leaving university, I married my wife Ashley. She’s been a constant companion on this adventure, patient in the face of my many moods, and always supportive of my decisions to undertake new or risky endeavors. She can read my mind most of the time, and has been a balancing force that keeps me grounded. Most people aren’t so lucky to find the one they want to be with for the rest of their lives. Lucky me!

I once knew a divemaster, Peter, that I met while living in Anguilla. As he took me out to dive sites, I asked him how he had ended up on a small island running a dive shop. It turns out that he’d had a fairly interesting life: he’d been a literary agent in New York for a decade, a mountain guide in the Himalayas for a half dozen years, then a junk-bond trader, and finally a divemaster in the Anguilla dive shop. He’d lived around the world doing weird things, and generally had enjoyed himself doing it. In many ways, it sounded like an ideal way to live.

As I look back on it, I’ve realized that I’ve actually already had a pretty damn interesting life. Here’s to more of the same.

This appeared in today’s Province: New documents have been leaked showing the Canadian federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. They would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellphones for content that “infringes” on copyright laws, such as ripped-off CDs and movies. The guards would determine what infringes copyright.

This is being done under the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - interestingly, federal trade agreements do not require parliamentary approval.

Seriously - are you kidding me? Just how, exactly, is this going to work?

“Sir, do you have your iTunes receipt for this copy of “In Da Club”? No? Then I suspect it’s illegal. Thanks for the free laptop!”

When border guards are incapable of recognizing that a MacBook Air is a real computer (the TSA was stumped by this for a while until they issued new guidance), how can we expect them to correctly judge what is or isn’t “infringing”?

Now that I think about it, why stop here? Why not also have them check everyone for “stolen” articles?

“Sir, do you have your receipt for the pair of Gap jeans you’re wearing? No? I think you stole them. Thanks for the free pants! Now, about that underwear…”

This smacks of bureaucracy that doesn’t actually solve a real problem - but it’s nothing new. A few years ago, the Canadian Copyright Board added a tax to blank media to remunerate artists for lost revenue due to “private copying”. As of 2007, the tax had generated over $100M using this tax - portions of this levy applied to iPod-type devices were struck down, echoing a similar finding in 2004.

We need to see a little public outrage over this.

A brief reminder that I’m running a position on the Board of Directors for the Simon Fraser University Alumni Association.

Election of the Board of Directors occurs during the Annual General Meeting, which will be held as part of SFU’s Open House on May 31st, 2008 at the Burnaby Mountain campus. The Open House last from 12:00pm to 4:30pm, giving you an excellent opportunity to catch up on what’s happening with your old school. So come out, enjoy the activities, and, of course, go to the AGM at 1:00pm and vote for me. Thanks again in advance!