Cybermuseology: conveying culture

Are new technologies useful tools for conveying culture? If you want to find out more about innovative solutions to disseminate knowledge related to collections, then this seminar is for you. Speakers will focus on online interactive applications to show how to convey collections related knowledge to the public. Several technologies will be introduced to illustrate the development of collections-based knowledge through online interactive tools.

Full programme available here.

I got an invite to join Texas Bar Circle from the State Bar of Texas, of which I am a member.
The service is a product of affinitycircles.com The invite states:

The State Bar of Texas is excited to introduce Texas Bar Circle, a new networking tool. Texas Bar Circle is a secure online social and professional network exclusively for licensed Texas attorneys – the first network of its kind by a bar association.

Texas Bar Circle helps you find colleagues with similar interests, hobbies, or professional aspirations and communicate with them in a number of simple, secure, and valuable ways.

Once you log in and join Texas Bar Circle, you can:
Network with other Texas lawyers about career and business opportunities
Re-connect with old classmates and friends
Share photos and blogs in a secure environment
Share information or seek advice by messaging your network
Hear about events going on in your area put on by members you know
Start groups to stay in touch with attorneys in your area
And much, much more!

I guess that the idea is for attorneys to network without having to worry about clients (or potential clients) seeing all of their personal info. I’m not sure what the advantage really is over something like Facebook, which has a ton of privacy settings allowing for a great deal of control over your profile. I joined, and will report about it more in the future.

~ iPods Galore

A year ago, IPac launched the “Your Senator Needs an iPod”
campaign to educate legislators about the value of balanced
information policy (IP). Supporters like you helped raise enough
money to send free culture-laden iPods to over a dozen Senators,
and the effort was covered throughout the print and web media. So
thank you for all of that!

We’ve also got plans for round two. Since some of the Senate
campaigns returned their iPods (despite the clear legality of our
contributions), we’ve got some extra stock hanging out at IPac
HQ. Congress changed hands — and committee chairs — in
November, so we’ll be sending some of those iPods to legislators
on the reconfigured IP-related committees. We’ll be auctioning
Senator John Kerry’s iPod on eBay to raise more money for work on the
next election. And we’ll also be giving some to the winners of a
YouTube video contest that will be announced in the spring.**

You can bid on John Kerry’s IPod — or encourage your iced-out
friends to do so — right here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120104777211

** If you donated to the “iPods for Congress” campaign and *don’t*
want your iPod being used in the contest or the auction, just send
us a note at info@ipaction.org with “iPod Funds” in the subject.

So I’m sure I’m not the first one to suggest this, but in light of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, which had some very favourable bits in it for free culture / open content issues, should we be sending MPs iPods on this side of the pond?

…an open-source toolkit for a laptop computer that enables its user to “liberate” pay-per-use wireless networks and create a free, open node that anyone can connect to for Internet access. [Link].

The idea is that one person pays for use, and then shares that connection with others.

This is an area that I am currently researching for a paper on mesh networks, an early version of which is available on my SSRN page.

As a lawyer, one of the first questions that I think of when seeing something like this, is whether or not sharing WiFi like this violates the law. The next question is, even if it violates the law, how you could actually enforce the law.

As to the first question, there is the issue of the Terms of Service. If the contract that users agree to when they pay for the service states that they are not to share the connection, then using this product would be a breach of contract (assuming contract validity). As to enforcement, I don’t think that there is any good way to police this issue, and so the point may be moot in the specific fact situation of a laptop users at an airport lounge. ToS can be (and has been) used by ISPs to prevent their clients from sharing their connections — more on this related issue in my article.

What about criminal liability? The Texas Penal Code provides that ‘Theft of Service’ is:

Sec. 31.04. THEFT OF SERVICE. (a) A person commits theft of
service if, with intent to avoid payment for service that he knows
is provided only for compensation:

***(2) having control over the disposition of services of another to which he is not entitled, he intentionally or knowingly diverts the other’s services to another not entitled to them; ***

Could there be an argument that use of this device to share a pay-per-use WiFi connection is theft of services? These elements of the crime would probably be relatively straightforward:

• knowledge that the service is ‘provided only for compensation’.
• intentional or knowing diversion of the service to others not entitled to it.
• having control over the disposition of services of another (the provider’s internet connection).

What about the requirement that the second part of this last element, ‘to which he is not entitled’ [in (a)(2)]? This is where the ToS may be important. If the ToS states that the user of the services is not allowed to share them, and they subsequently share them, they have broken the agreement and thus become not entitled to the service.

This leaves the final element: ‘with intent to avoid payment for service…’

This one is a bit trickier than the rest, but I could potentially see an argument based around the service that the accused intended to avoid is the provision of services to multiple users. In this regard, I’m thinking specifically of the parallel situation with computer software licences — you pay for a number of users. In the case of the original (paid for) connection, you could (perhaps) regard this as a one-user contract, with a two-user contract conceivably at a different price point. Thus one could argue that the payment being intentionally avoided is the difference in price between one and two users.

There is a US Federal statute in the area that might be relevant, and I would be interested to know if there are laws in other jurisdictions that could be used in a similar manner. But I’ll leave those discussions for another post.

Sweden is opening up an ‘embassy’ in Second Life. It’s more of a marketing ploy than anything. CNet Link.

EBay decides to ban the sale of virtual goods. IGE, I’m sure, are cracking out the magnums of champagne. Discuss over at Terra Nova. CNet story.

The Norwegian Ombudsman has declared Apple’s DRM illegal. Out-Law.com story.

In net regulation news, the UK is attempting to put regulate advertising by non-EU online gambling companies in order to clamp down on shoddy sites. Out-Law.com story.

Former Austinite and EFF-Austin founder Bruce Sterling will be speaking at Freedom 2 Connect. F2C site.

Speaking of EFF-Austin, my former co-boardmember Silona Bonewald is getting great things off the ground with The League of Technical Voters. Check out their site.

In more wiki news, Wikipedia is being cited by judges back in the states. Even heavyweight Judge Posner weighs in. Out-law.com story.

[Link]