Software patent bill thrown out

According to BBC online, European politicians have thrown out a controversial bill that could have led to software being patented.

The European Parliament voted 648 to 14 to reject the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive.

The bill was reportedly rejected because, politicians said, it pleased no-one in its current form. Responding to the rejection the European Commission said it would not draw up or submit any more versions of the original proposal.

Yippee!

Ouch!

Apropos my prediction that terrorism in London would lead to “mass cancellation of vacation bookings by Americans, who despite the gung-ho militarism of their society, seem pathologically nervous as individuals”, an American friend writes:

It is not, Sire, that we are “pathologically nervous as individuals”, but rather that we have already celebrated our July 4th and need no further pyrotechnics. Further, the London weather was clearly obvious to even the most dull American TV couch-potato news watcher, and we do have sunshine in closer locations.

Also, cheaper. . . .

Ouch! In my defence, I should say that we did see such mass cancellations in the past every time there was an IRA bombing campaign on the UK mainland.

The networked world

Mary Kaldor, writing in openDemocracy

There is something perverse about globalisation. I live and work in the area of London targeted in the four explosions on Thursday 7 July. None of our phones worked for several hours and I couldn’t reach my family and close friends. Yet even before I quite realised what was happening, I was receiving emails from India, America, Azerbaijan, Kosovo and even Baghdad.

Plumbing the depths

It’s almost enough to make one feel sorry for Windows users. MessageLabs is reporting that it has intercepted

copies of an email posing as a video news clip of yesterday’s terrorist attack in London which instead contains a Trojan designed to compromise the recipient’s computer. The email containing this Trojan has been crafted to appear as a CNN Newsletter which asks recipients to ‘See attachments for unique amateur video shots’.

When executed the attachment copies itself to %Windir%\winlog.exe and modifies the Windows registry key ‘HKLM/Software/microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run’ so that it runs automatically on system start-up. The Trojan then attempts to obtain a list of the SMTP servers that the victims machine is configured to use and starts to use these servers to send large volumes of unsolicited mail.

The Economist gets it right

The Supreme Court tried to steer a middle path between these claims [of the content and technology industries], and did a reasonable job. But the outcome of the case is nevertheless unsatisfactory. That’s not the court’s fault. It was struggling to apply a copyright law which has grown worse than anachronistic in the digital age. That’s something Congress needs to remedy.

In America, the length of copyright protection has increased enormously over the past century, from around 28 years to as much as 95 years. The same trend can be seen in other countries. In June Britain signalled that it may extend its copyright term from 50 years to around 90 years.

This makes no sense. Copyright was originally intended to encourage publication by granting publishers a temporary monopoly on works so they could earn a return on their investment. But the internet and new digital technologies have made the publication and distribution of works much easier and cheaper. Publishers should therefore need fewer, not more, property rights to protect their investment. Technology has tipped the balance in favour of the public domain.

A first, useful step would be a drastic reduction of copyright back to its original terms—14 years, renewable once. This should provide media firms plenty of chance to earn profits, and consumers plenty of opportunity to rip, mix, burn their back catalogues without breaking the law. The Supreme Court has somewhat reluctantly clipped the wings of copyright pirates; it is time for Congress to do the same to the copyright incumbents.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. Full text here.

BitTorrent incorporated in Opera browser

According to The Register,

Opera has released a version of its web browser with the BitTorrent client built in. Users clicking on a Torrent file will see the file load in Opera’s traditional Transfer window, so for most file transfers, there’s no need to install a third-party BitTorrent client. To Opera, it’s simply another MIME type, like Gopher and Usenet before it.

Quote of the day

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential. They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

London’s Mayor, Ken Livingstone.

The Piccadilly line

An observant friend, having read my musings on the bombings, writes:

You might note two minor things.

1. Piccadilly line going East has lots of Heathrow people on (ie lots of luggage). [So an abandoned package would not be noticed as quickly.] My guess is that bomber got off at Holborn (Russell Square has a very deep lift, as does Covent Garden) having activated the device.

2. Death toll higher than Edgware Road or Liverpool Street as blast more lethal in confined space.