Dear Micro$oft, The Talk is On and Heads Will Fall

One judge Francis told Microsoft on the 25th April 2014 to get its Global Criminal Compliance Team together and obey a warrant issued for its American headquarters. That district court judge could not care less if the data the warrant demanded was not physically stored within the jurisdiction of the Court. He did not even consider the Hague convention or the fact that the data is stored in the equipment of another company, a subsidiary, based within the EU. He did not even give EU legislation, or the Safe Harbor principles, a glimpse. He cited US law and bluntly told the corporation that if its US headquarters do not impose it on its limbs overseas, it shall be penalised.

That is one cheeky judge – question is, will Microsoft call his bluff? More importantly, what are the implications for the country where the data is physically stored, namely Ireland?

Directive 2006/24/EC: Too Quick To Blow Your Horn!

UPDATE 20/04/2014: A demonstration of EU’s affection towards intelligence agencies. Lovely article by Gavin Sullivan on AlJazeera about the future use of secret intelligence intel as evidence by the CJEU. Do you still believe the EU will attempt to restrict their functions?

Since this morning when the ECJ declared the Data Retention Directive invalid, the view that the invalidity extends to the state functions of the member states slowly began to emerge. I do not understand what caused that impression.

The Directive referred to a blanket retention of all public telecommunications for a period from six months up to two years. The EU Commission promptly issued a memo  concluding that a finding of invalidity of the Directive does not cancel the ability for Member States under the e-Privacy Directive (2002/58/EC) to impose the retention of data. This surprisingly seems to dash the hopes of many.

Data retention under the e-Privacy Dir has to be proportionate to the purpose for which it needs to be performed. It also needs to last a specific (preferably short) term. How can these be compared with the blanket retention the 2006 Directive commanded?

Cyberbullying & Harassment: A Recipe for Disaster

As I have argued before, cyberbullying is not a novelty. The problem with our times is that, 20 years later, the World Wide Web  has expanded to all four corners of the Earth with information (including audiovisual content) travelling at the speed of lightning. Anyone, any place, at any point can upload anything with a single click.

The statutory protection against (cyber)bullying in Ireland at the moment is s10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 re harassment, which defines it as:

CSI MANUFACTURING v DUNN & BRADSTREET: Coleman v MGN round II

Mr Coleman was unfortunate enough to have his picture publicized next to an article about hooligans and drunkards by the Daily Mirror in 2003. That picture was also allegedly publicized in the internet edition of the said distribution, open to the worldwide public by subscription – but did that actually result in absolute geographical restriction? (read below). Mr Coleman claimed damages for defamation, damages for breach of contract, negligence, breach of duty and breach of statutory duty. 9 years later, the Supreme Court could not be furnished with evidence of the internet publication by the plaintiff (and obviously hard to ascertain the defendant kept an archive of publications so old for the sake of discovery), and therefore, since both the defendant and the paper’s audience were restricted to the UK, it lacked jurisdiction to decide in favour of the plaintiff.

Koger v O’Donnell, aka ‘Mind Your Code’

The Copyright and Related Acts, 2000 defines a ‘computer program’ as one that is original and its author’s intellectual creation. Ever since the beginning of this millenium, software that is the literal creation of its author(s) is very hard to find. Coders and programmers have, for over a decade, relied on and taken full advantage of application builders; these builders will produce code based on the parameters they are given. If three users set the same parameters, all three will get identical code. Immediately, one would assume that this excludes that code from any copyright (but for that of the third party) and, inevitably, the only thing that is left to be considered the intellectual creation of the author is the combination of the parameters that produced the code, or else, its functionality. But S17(3) of the 2000 Act makes clear that copyright ‘should not extend to the ideas and principles that underlie any element of a work’. Houston, we have a problem!

Big Kids say: Cyberbullying not a novelty

There has been so much commotion over cyberbullying lately, especially after the death of Shane McEntee (God bless his soul). The Oireachtas committee on Transport and Communication is to report to Pat Rabbitte and it is believed by many that legislation can be enacted to effectively combat this ‘new disease’. In my view there is very little the legislator can do to stop cyberbullying, which is not that different to actual bullying but for its broader, public effect – whereas actual bullying is of a more private nature. People need to be informed of how bullying works, that is the greatest ammunition of all.

I belong to the pre-internet generation, I have been a child and a parent as well as a victim of bullying in both childhood and adulthood, therefore I believe that I have formed a – reasonable – opinion overall. Let me start by saying that bullying sees no age, no gender, no culture, it is pretty much blind. It doesn’t source from the victim, but from the bullies themselves; they either have very little to satisfy them (emotionally or physically) or they have some other inclination to pain, usually not their own; or sometimes they are plainly inconsiderate. Whatever the cause for their actions, the target would be in a much better position had they known they are not being bullied out of their own fault – no one tells you that when you are on the weak end, and it is usually too late by the time you find out.

The super-law of the www: a monster in embryonic state?

 

Nobody would like to wake up one morning to the view of  Godzilla smiling through their window; just because we choose to ignore science’s monstrosities though, it doesn’t mean they ‘re not there – I am pretty sure a visit to a genetics lab would thoroughly convince us to spare a thought.

The internet is not very far from those scary test tubes. It is an everyday experiment where millions of brains around the world come up with new ideas, some good, and some evil. These ideas have the same effect on us as Godzilla: we do not feel the need to protect ourselves until we feel the thing breathing down our necks. But we are there, lost in a world of digits and semicolons, unfolding our past, present and future to the unknown. Would we ever walk naked in the street holding a banner that tells our life story for the world to see? I do not think so.