Category: Digital Rights

The Digital Consequences of Death (or Disability) — Slaw

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| Digital Rights

What happens when people with a presence in cyberspace (really) die? Does the presence become an absence? What do their survivors do about their activities in cyberspace? How do they deal with online assets, or even discover real-world assets that may be locatable only online? How do estate trustees and executors carry out their legal duties with respect to these assets, and the liabilities as well? Many people get most of their bills in electronic form. How can an executor see to paying the debts of the deceased? …

Slaw has dealt with these matters before, in November 2009 and in February 2010. The questions are worth another review.

via slaw.ca
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Is internet access a human right?

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| Cyberlaw, Digital Rights

A recent United Nations Human Rights Council report examined the important question of whether internet access is a human right.  

Whilst the Special Rapporteur’s conclusions are nuanced in respect of blocking sites or providing limited access, he is clear that restricting access completely will always be a breach of article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to freedom of expression.

But not everyone agrees with the United Nations’ conclusion. Vinton Cerf, a so-called “father of the internet” and a Vice-President at Google, argued in a New York Times editorial that internet access is not a human right:

 The best way to characterize human rights is to identify the outcomes that we are trying to ensure. These include critical freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of access to information — and those are not necessarily bound to any particular technology at any particular time. Indeed, even the United Nations report, which was widely hailed as declaring Internet access a human right, acknowledged that the Internet was valuable as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

via ukhumanrightsblog.com

See also the excellent post by Paul Barnal:

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I didn’t like the headline, which stated baldly and boldly that ‘Internet Access is not a Human Right’.

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Fair Use: Be careful what you wish for!

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Defamation, Digital Rights, Fair use

Google image, via GoogleA little later than promised, here are some thoughts that occurred to me at the recent seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy (which I blogged here and here). In the same way that browsers have a constant battle between features and speed, so the modern law of copyright is faced with a similar dilemma between encouraging and rewarding innovation. It is becoming increasingly clear that it has not solved this dilemma in a particularly satisfactory way. More than that, the most popular emerging solution – the introduction of a fair use defence to EU law – may not be sufficient for current needs, let alone for future developments.

At the seminar, Johnny Ryan argued that with the rise of the internet, where everything is in perpetual beta, we are in effect are reverting back to the pre-Gutenberg plasticity of information. In historical terms, this is the norm. It is the post-Gutenberg era of fixed information which is the anomaly. Copyright is a feature of this period: in the 1500s, it developed to protect the publishers; in the second half of the 1600s it came under increasing pressure to protect authors, and this was codified in the Statute of Anne, 1710; thereafter, the statutory protections were slowly expanded to other creators of other original works.…

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I am Spartacus

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| Digital Rights, Freedom of Expression

The 1960 movie Spartacus (imdb | wikipedia) (dir: Stanley Kubrick; screenplay: Dalton Trumbo) tells the story of a slave rebellion against ancient Rome led by the title character, a Thracian gladiator, played by Kirk Douglas. When the rebellion is eventually crushed by an army led by the Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus, played by Laurence Olivier, the recaptured slaves are told that they will be spared crucifixion if they identify Spartacus. Instead, one after another, they each proclaim “I am Spartacus“. It is a famous scene of solidarity – all the more so since screenwriter Dalton Trumbo was one of the blacklisted Hollywood 10, and he was the first blacklisted writer to write a screenplay his own name again when he wrote the screenplay for Spartacus, based on the novel by another blacklisted writer, Howard Fast. Wikipedia reports that the “documentary Trumbo suggests that this scene was meant to dramatize the solidarity of those accused of being Communist sympathizers during the McCarthy Era who refused to implicate others, and thus were blacklisted”.

The phrase has been in the news recently because it has been taken up on twitter #IamSpartacus in solidarity with Paul Chambers (Guardian | Telegraph).…

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Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy – II – the liability of intermediaries

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Defamation, Defamation Act 2009, Digital Rights, Fair use

Google image, via GoogleAs I said my first post yesterday, last Friday morning I attended a seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy, hosted by Google Ireland, co-sponsored by the Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA), and chaired by TJ McIntyre. In that post, I summarized the presentations by Johnny Ryan (the internet has created a hinge in history when information is plastic and copyright law is a block upon total commerce) and Niall O’Riordan (for Google, a fair use doctrine in Ireland and Europe is an idea whose time has come). In this post, I’ll look at last Friday’s other presentations; and in tomorrow’s post, I’ll add a few comments of my own on some of the issues raised by the seminar.

Kate O’Sullivan (Director of Regulation and Public Policy, UPC Ireland) pointed out that intermediaries (such as Google, Facebook, and ISPs) are caught in the middle between content producers seeking to enforce their rights as against users, and it is not appropriate that ISPs should be judge and jury in such a cause. Section 40(3) of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000 (also here) provides that the mere provision of facilities by an ISP, for example, which enable the making available to the public of copies of a work “shall not of itself constitute an act of making available to the public of copies of the work” and therefore shall not for that reason amount to a copyright infringement.…

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Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy – I

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Copyright, Cyberlaw, Digital Rights, Fair use

Google image, via GoogleLast Friday morning, I attended a seminar on Promoting innovation – Reshaping the Law for the Digital Economy (Irish Times | SiliconRepublic here and here). It was hosted by Google Ireland and co-sponsored the by Institute for International and European Affairs (IIEA); and the morning was very ably chaired by TJ McIntyre (blog | Chair, Digital Rights Ireland | Consultant, Merrion Legal | UCD). There were five presentations; in this post, I’ll deal with the first two; in the next tomorrow’s post, I’ll deal with the remaining three; and in a third post, I’ll add a few comments of my own on some of the issues raised by the seminar.

First up was Johnny Ryan (IIEA | author A History of the Internet and the Digital Future) speaking on “A hinge in history: the conditions of the digital future and the need of rights reform”, and setting the scene for the debates that would follow. (Update: Johnny comments below that video of his presentation is now available). For him, we live in the age of the perpetual beta. Before Gutenberg‘s printing press, hand-transcribed manuscripts made information fluid. By contrast, after Gutenberg, the printed book fixed information in static form.…

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May is the ICCL’s Know Your Rights Month!

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| Digital Rights, Irish Law, Irish Society, Privacy

ICCL Know Your RightsMay 2010 is the ICCL‘s Know Your Rights Month! The ICCL’s Know Your Rights public information project is designed to inform people in clear and accessible language about their rights under various key areas of the law in Ireland. There are two key projects. The first is a series of information packs covering key human rights areas: Criminal Justice and Garda Powers, Privacy and the European Convention on Human Rights. They are written in plain English, and will be updated regularly as the law changes, providing accessible and accurate information. As well as being available for download free of charge, they are also being distributed to libraries and citizens’ information centres nationwide.

The second key project is a series of roadshows to raise awareness of human rights and to help those giving advice on foot of the ICCL information packs. The first of these roadshow events will take place on Wednesday 19 May 2010, from 2:00pm to 4:00pm in the Community and Social Enterprise Centre, 8 North Mall, Cork. Those interested should contact the ICCL’s Joanne Garvey to reserve a place.

I am particularly impressed by the privacy pack, covering the following areas:

This morning‘s Today with Pat Kenny radio show on RTÉ Radio 1 featured a slot on protecting privacy which discussed the ICCL Know Your Rights campaign in general and the privacy pack in particular.…

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Technology, students and universities

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| Digital Rights, Irish Society, Phones in class, Universities

Cover of 'The Tyrrany of Email' via AmazonThere are some – related – articles in today’s Irish Independent on themes which have featured on this blog. A report published yesterday by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) shows that the number of students going to college has hit a record high (the Irish Times ran the same story under the headline that there are more students than farmers in Ireland) and that courses in science and computing are now back in favour.

However, technology is not necessarily an uncritically good thing, as is shown by the headline to another story: I’m so addicted to email, Facebook and Twitter, I have to hide it from my wife …. In that piece, reviewing The tyranny of email by John Freeman, James Delingpole owns up to his own addiction to communications technology. Of course, he is not the only person whose life is being ruined by email. Moreover, a similar addiction drives the use of mobile phones and laptops in class as increasingly popular displacement activities.

Finally, and a little more seriously, the print edition – but not, so far as I can see, the online edition (though it may in time be published in the archives of the Education section or, perhaps, of the Technology sections) – has a really interesting piece on distance learning at third level, discussing the Open University and Hibernia College.…

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