machine-envy

were a cat, it would be dead by now.

I had another paper published. Its a brief version of the final chapter of my thesis, which was presented by my supervisor at the integrative bionformatics workshop. The frustrating thing about this is that the reviewers of my thesis considered it the most interesting part. Yet every single peer review it got thought it not worthy of being published. Where it has ended up, it even seems to slip under pubmed’s radar. Yet other less interesting chapters have ended up in more respected publications.

Novelty is a difficult thing to appreciate with out a lot of time (not that I’m claiming this is relativity or anything). The reviewers of the thesis had a much longer chapter than a typical paper referee. Yet they still came in to the viva saying ‘wtf is this?’ After a bit they seemed to get it. Perhaps I’m just bad at explaining myself on paper.

…long live miniature golf.

I was intrigued by this report in today’s Guardian about an article in the NYTimes that had been blocked from the eyes of British users on the NYTimes website and that grounded the entire UK shipment of the paper yesterday.

So when I opened up my inbox to find a good friend had sent me the link to read the story in full, I thought I should share it. However, I haven’t been following the reports in the British press about the alleged terror plot all that closely, so I don’t know what’s so new in this story.

So Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, whose memoir Murder in Samarkand was finally published last week after spending months in legal limbo following claims from the UK government that they damaged the national interest, has attracted fresh legal trouble in the form of copyright takedown notice from none other than the FCO.

Murray alleges that the UK was complicit in the torture of suspected al-Qaida operatives in Uzbekistan, and he’s got the documents to prove it. After the FCO suppressed the publishing of these documents in the memoir, Murray obtained a second set of copies through the Freedom of Information Act (guess it helps when you know where to look) and published them on his website (available here), whereupon the FCO sent him a takedown notice (pdf), compaining the docs were subject to Crown Copyright.

So either the Queen was planning to make a tidy profit later down the line by exposing her good servants’ misdeeds, or this is a classic case of copyright law used directly to suppress free speech, a la Diebold/Swarthmore. But the funny thing is, although the more political UK blogs are picking up the story (cf Blairwatch, the FOIA blog) the international open access/free culture blogs are too busy worrying about the latest moves by the BPI to target UK filesharers to take advantage of this golden opportunity to stop sounding like the music industry took their toys away and get political, despite the fact it’s broken in the UK press.

Finally updated my portfolio. Hooray.

In celebration of World Intellectual Property Day, openDemocracy have published my interview with Cory Doctorow on his experiences lobbying at WIPO.

I’ve written yet another article on Creative Commons in the UK, but this is my favourite so far. It’s over at the O’Reilly Network Policy Dev Center, and it was published on Monday. It was great to be able to write for a tech and IP savvy audience.

In other news, I’ve started blogging for openDemocracy, where I might have to find stuff other than copyright reform to write about. I haven’t done too badly so far.

Conducted a great interview with Cory Doctorow after the third inaugural Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop last Sunday. It’s for an article on democracy and WIPO to be published in oD on World Intellectual Property Day later this month.

The debate accompanying my article for openDemocracy died off in about a week. Along the way, I was accused of mixing up the basic ideas behind copyright and patent law. At the time I sighed a sigh at the naivety of my accusers. But tonight I came across this August 2004 post to a message list, where I’m asking exactly the same question.

Whether I learnt my lesson back then in the Summer shall remain a moot point. What I like about the messages that follow after the first, highly informed response to my question, is how quickly the debate descends into incendiary terminological nit-picking. From this evidence, I would attempt to derive a new Godwin’s law for copyfighting, if someone hadn’t beaten me to it.

Last night at the October Gallery glasses could finally be raised to the launch of the UK Creative Commons licences. As Damien Tambini said, the legal work was done, but the work to gain exposure for the licences within the UK artistic community was just beginning. There is also a gap in funding the project, the plugging of which will be a major focus for the future.

Raising his glass with the usual suspects was John Perry Barlow, ex-Grateful Dead lyricist and founder of the EFF. He gave a speech reminding everyone there that “art is a noun, not a verb” and that “art has rights” (can a verb have rights?). I got a bit silly and star struck when I got to shake his hand - then he started talking about Brownian motion and I just giggled like a school girl until he walked off. Nevermind.

Other stuff to report - I met my first moblogger, a self-styled Nathan Barley and, apparently reader of this site. He should be uploading footage of last night here soon… Plans are afoot for action on World Intellectual Property Day (yes, really) on 26th April.
UPDATE! Alfie the moblogger’s CC launch footage is here, including drunk audio from yours truly… NTK Dave is coordinating action on World Intellectual Property Day, email tips@spesh.com with your ideas…