Technorama

Notification for every transfer:

* Date of transfer
* Named recipient and department, full postal address, phone and email of transfer
* Named person doing the transfer, department, full postal address, phone and email.

* Category for reason of transfer
* Detailed description about why the transfer is taking place.
* Unique transfer reference
* Reuse category: Indicating if "once-only", "more-than-once", "transfer to other parties"
* List of parties passed on to has to be communicated back up the chain to go with the personal data report held at the first location (or defined other location in the chain, as explained and understood by the person who's personal data it is)

Labels: DataProtection, DigitalRights

The EU has woken up. Good!

Labels: DataProtection, DigitalRights

In the UK we have an Information Commissioner Office (ICO) which covers all aspects of online technology. Bizarrely, today I saw that the ICO website in breach of Electronic Communications Regulations 2011

ICO website assigns me a unique cookie when visiting their website.

Ironically, when visiting the Electronic Communications Regulations 2011 page itself!

This isn't the first time the ICO office has made a balls up. The big question is, does this mean they are in breach of the Electronic Communications Regulations they are the guardian off!?

Name: ASP.NET_SessionId
Content: lenzwunililmr2rcnwrexy55

After ICO site assigning me, it gives me a question:

The ICO would like to use cookies to store information on your computer, to improve our website. One of the cookies we use is essential for parts of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but parts of the site will not work. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, see our privacy notice.

[ ] Tick box, which of cause I did not tick. However, because they already assigned me the cookie, they have asked the question too late!

Labels: DataProtection, DigitalRights, ICO

M&S are running a Christmas marketing scam, so beware if you too considered buying from their "Christmas & New Year Food To Order".

The small print on the order form explains they will use your personal info for:
* marketing of products, services, marketing research.
* anything else listed in online privacy policy.
* only possible to opt back out is to write to them, and allow 3 months for them to try and take your details of their lists.

Reminds me of the Phishing scam emails I get. Workaround is to cross through those terms before signing.

Southern Water are just as bad, last month to register for water at my new pad, they ask for my National Insurance number!

This is definitely something the UK should legislate against. Also something that M&S's Stewart Rose should have never let happen. Probably ORG would be good at lobbying for a change here.

Labels: DataProtection, DigitalRights, UK

Just got one of those magazine subscription leaflets fall out of my paper, nothing new there. What was surprising was that their freepost piece of card asked for so much personal information, which would then be all plane to read as it made it through the postal system:

Name, Address, Daytime Tel, Mobile (aren't they the same?), email, year of birth, bank account, branch, signature.

If you must take up one of these offers, send it back in a brown envelope!

Labels: DataProtection, DigitalRights, UK

I guess I am fortunate that my BSc Computer Science degree included a module on Computing in Society. I was able to watch the Data Protection Act 1998 come into force (replacing the 1984 act). then in 2003 we received the the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations thanks to the EC!

Both of these laws prevent companies adding our personal information to marketing databases without our express consent and knowledge. There cannot be a default "opt-in" too. The Information Commissioner (formally the Data Protection Commissioner) deals with any requests for assessments when an individual needs to involve his office because the Data Controller in an organisation is not resolving an issue. Companies also need to register their use of our personal data, and provide a way to unsubscribe at the bottom of each marketing email etc.

Also register with the MPS to take away another excuse for companies sending direct marketing!

If any company breaks the rules, take them to task and get them to delete your personal details, ask for compensation if it's wasted some of your time too!

Labels: DataProtection, DigitalRights

ORG is officially Two years old today, congratulations! For those not already members, please consider supporting any way you can ;)

Labels: DigitalRights, Future, ORG, UK

Accessibility and Availability issues have cropped up again with the launch of the BBC Creative Archive. This entry on my site clarifies the issues to avoid the FUD taking over the actual content provision issues. There are two key areas to consider when talking about content provision:

• Availability
• Accessibility

Availability of Content: Over the last few years we have seen that the prominence of (CC) has been rising. Now the BBC have embraced the idea of this model in a modified fashion as part of their BBC Creative Archive project. The BBC's approach does not address all issues, but does progress in the right direction and make content available at least.

Also included in this point is the charge made for the available content. In the case of the UK there is a TV licence fee (£126.50 per year, effectively £10.50 per month) covers provision national television and radio channels. Other businesses provide content for an alternative charging method, such as Cable or Ch4 Broadband service. There are a wide variety of content sources, both no-charge and paid for sources. This is less of an issue when
considering provision of these services.

Accessibility of Content: If content is to be made available it needs to be in an accessible form. Content in an in-accessible proprietary format may as well not be available, because if it cannot be used without expensive patent license for a proprietary format (or software decoder) it is useless. Content can also be in-accessible because the format is impeded by software patents, often patent holders submarine launch their codec formats and then later (when the format is in common use) announce that now that everyone is locked into use of the format they will only
permit use of the format once a patent licence has been purchased (Remember the Unisys LZW [GIF] patent?, or the Fraunhofer / Thompson MP3 patents?).

Codec Open format? Free Software implementation? Score out of 10
Theora Yes. (5) Yes: http://theora.org/. (5) 10
Vorbis Yes. (5) Yes: http://vorbis.com/. (5) 10
MPEG-4 No. Costly MPEG-LA. (0) Yes, from http://xvid.org/. (4) 4
MPEG-2 No. A costly patent licence is required from
MPEG-LA. (0) Yes, from libmpeg2. (4 points) 4
MPEG-1 No. A costly patent licence is required from
MPEG-LA. (0 points) Yes, from libmpeg2. (4 points) 4
Microsoft Windows Media No. Costly MS licence*.(0 points) Partly, ffmpeg. (3) 3
Apple QuickTime No. Costly MS/* Apple licence. (0 points) Partly, ffmpeg. (3) 3

10 is highest score, 0 is poorest score. (Openness is valued higher than practical implementations, because the later is nearly useless without the former.)

* (Requires the user to agree to Microsoft licensing terms and pay them £149.98 [dabs.com price of MS WinXP] for a copy of their OS)

Some people choose to ignore or the important issue of accessibility, (for the reasons outlined above) this is the not the best point of view to have. It is essential that the accessibility of available content us planned hand in hand together.

To use the example of the BBC's Creative Archive (if you can ignore the proprietary
Macromedia content embedded into the front page) there are several partners providing content under this licence. If we take for the example, the BFI's [Looks very jolly, doesn't it?]. This video is available in three proprietary formats:

• MPEG-1


• Microsoft Windows Media


• Apple QuickTime

As you can see from the table above, these are all proprietary formats which require licence fees to use. As the BFI is promoting these formats instead of open formats, users will be obliged to pay licence fees to be able to view the available content. An unfortunate choice by the BFI/BBC Creative Archive. Is this going to be a recurring problem with the BFI/BBC provisions?

The three proprietary provisions are actually a step back from what Paula LeDieu (co-director of the BBC Creative Archive) stated was the Creative Archive plan in the Q & A session on
1 November 2004. Why was the open format you planned dropped Paula? Why the shift away from an open strategy?

Transcript of Paula LeDieu response in Q & A (Starts 05:33 in) Questioner: "Is there any word on which file formats you are going to use, or is there going to be.. Ok, first of all, File Formats."Paula LeDieu: Yep, ok, file formats. I think that the file formats that we will go out with will are probably 2-3 proprietary and 1 open. But, I always caveat the whole conversation about file formats. We are saying that there will never be a definitive file format for Creative Archive. File formats shift, they are highly fashionable things, and I was talking with the guy that runs archive.org, a guy called Bruce [not audible]. He deals with this all the time, and he says he has got the fashion cycle down to about two years. About every two years he has to rethink and reformat all of the material in the archive. As I said, we will probably go out with 3 proprietary and 1 open, I think depends what the fashion is like by the time we get there. But what I would say is that we will be constantly looking at the marketplace, and constantly looking at what is the most appropriate for the people that are using it. And we will be constantly re-evaluating what format we use.

(Audio was quite muffled, transcript is as good as is possible with the source)

An example of the BBC getting the Accessibility and Availability right is their fresh Backstage project. Take for example their OPML News feed summary. The quality of available + accessible content is a completely separate debate which I will not focus on today.

Labels: ContentFormats, DigitalRights