otta love Google’s daily commemorative graphic.  The Google logo ends up being decorated on days the company has chosen to celebrate certain special occasions.  Today’s theme: the birthday of Samuel Morse – inventor of the Morse code, which of course was responsible for the popularization of electronically-transmitted information.

“Morse code uses a standardized sequence of short and long elements to represent the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a given message...The speed of Morse code is measured in words per minute (WPM) or characters per minute, while fixed-length data forms of telecommunication transmission are usually measured in baud or bps. Originally created for Samuel F. B. Morse's electric telegraph in the early 1840s, Morse code was also extensively used for early radio communication beginning in the 1890s. For the first half of the twentieth century, the majority of high-speed international communication was conducted in Morse code, using telegraph lines, undersea cables, and radio circuits. However, the variable length of the Morse characters made it hard to adapt to automated circuits, so for most electronic communication it has been replaced by machine readable formats, such as Baudot code and ASCII. “

          — Source: Wikipedia.org

Lotsa familiar terms in that article, for those of us who work in the information technology field.  Baudot and ASCII, in particular.  Although the article doesn’t explicitly say so, I’ve long-suspected the term “baud”, used to refer to a modem’s speed (i.e. “baud rate”) was a direct reference to Baudot code.

So maybe Google has it right – and there should be a special day set aside for a man who influenced the world so radically.

Janet Napolitano, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security; sees a history of terrorists entering the United States from Canada, despite any substantial evidence. (Photo source: Wikipedia Commons)

although Barack Obama has, himself, been extremely popular; his genuine charm and charisma has carried his approval ratings to historic highs, the folks he’s choosing to serve in his cabinet are certainly not winning any popularity  contests.  Former lawyers for the MPAA and RIAA have been appointed to serve the new administration over recent weeks which is raising concerns about the future for individual privacy rights and the extension of copyright law on the Internet.  And now – of particular concern to Canadians – the protectionist, anti-Canadian mood of the United States Congress (and, increasingly, a noticeable constituency within the Democratic Party) has found a yet another champion for its agenda: the new Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

• Canada-U.S. border should remain tight: Homeland Security chief

Napolitano gave a short interview on the CBC News channel (called CBC Newsworld) tonight during tonight’s airing of The National.  During the segment, Napolitano couldn’t seem to keep her facts straight, remarking that there’d been problems with terrorists entering the United States across the border from Canada – including the 9/11 terrorists and alluding to other cases, despite there only having been 1 publicly-known case, in which Canadian authorities made U.S. authorities aware of the individual in question (an incident culminating in the suspect’s eventual arrest).  When the reporter (Neil Macdonald) raised these points, she responded saying she might not be aware of every individual case, but that she was sure cases of terrorists entering the U.S. from Canada did exist and the U.S. Congress had made a decision to treat Canada’s border exactly the same as Mexico’s.

“The law doesn’t differentiate….Canada is not Mexico,” she conceded. “Nonetheless to the extent terrorists have come into our country – it has been the Canadian border – [and] again, every country is entitled to have a border…  It’s part of sovereignty.”

MacDonald raised the little problem concerning the story about terrorists coming into the U.S. from Canada being a myth, and Napolitano seemed caught completely off-guard.  It was as-if she’d become so used to repeating the same fiction being exchanged on Capitol Hill with protectionist senators and being directly contradicted like this make her ill-prepared to stand by her comment, because she’d never really thought to challenge the myth!

“Well, again, I’m not privileged to say everything that has occurred.  I can’t talk about that.  I can talk about the future.  The borders are going to be equipped with greater technology…it’s not going to be back and forth across the border as if there’s no border anymore.”

          — Janet Napolitano, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, in an interview with CBC News.

“[The Canada/US friendship] could be coming to an end because of these measures.  Ironically, it’s not a victory for those who want to secure the U.S. against terrorism – the cited rationale.  It’s a victory for al-Qaeda…directly because these measures are one of the consequences of 9/11.”

Of course, the facts don’t support this “perception”, but Napolitano doesn’t seem the sort to let the facts get in the way of raising an iron curtain between itself and its ranking ally both in this hemisphere and the world.  This woman hasn’t a clue what the situation is on the Canada / U.S. border, yet appears to have been making it her business to inconvenience millions of people who traverse the border annually by implementing all kinds of new policies.  Policies which have, I believe, a political agenda – one related to punishing Canadian trade, which southern American states have historically regarded as competitive.  Northern American states have been resisting these policies since many rely on trade with Canada; but there’s not enough support at the moment to stop these ill-advised moves.  Indeed, it seems it won’t be long before the formerly largest undefended border in the world is redecorated with barb-wire fencing, concrete watch-towers bristling with spotlights and packs of guard dogs to net all those squads al-Qaeda operatives sneaking into the land of the free and the brave nightly.

Obama could be planting the needs of conflict with Canada, which may be thanks in part to a remarkably stupid move by agents of Canada’s Conservative Party during the U.S. presidential race.  If that’s even part of the reason for the new anti-Canada element within the administration, it' truly is unfortunate.  The friendship Canada and the United States of America have enjoyed for nearly two centuries – a friendship that has been described as “unlike any other in the world” - could be coming to an end with these measures.  Ironically, it’s not a victory for those who want to secure the U.S. against terrorism – the cited rationale.  It’s a victory for al-Qaeda; since it means that U.S. trusts Canada less (or at least its border with Canada less, which is much the same thing) directly because these measures are one of the consequences of 9/11.

What a shame!  And what a shame that few in the U.S. are going to notice — at least not right away….

ell, the outcome was expected – not that it makes swallowing this bitter pill any easier.  The Swedish court capitulated entirely to pressure from special interests and found in favour of the cabal of media gangsters, bolstering its quest to erode privacy rights and ignore even the pretence that people on the Internet have a right to exchange data using whatever protocol they choose.

• Pirate Bay defendants found guilty | Digital Media - CNET News

Of course, the ruling has not had the impact of shutting down thepiratebay.org – not yet.  And its operators who are all away from Sweden at the moment claim they will appeal and eventually prevail in their litigations.  Of course, it remains to be seen what strategy they have in mind that will achieve this seemingly daunting goal.  The number of avenues available to these so-called pirates are fewer every day as the RIAA and MPAA continue to press their well-funded lobbying and litigation advantage.

Stay tuned – more to come on this story today, I’m sure….

+

“…the most sophisticated, comprehensive solution for Facebook API development that exists…– Visual Studio blows it and anything else that anyone would develop under the heading of freeware out of the water!”

’ve known about the express editions of both VB.NET and C# for a while now, but I hadn’t realized Microsoft was using them to advance the cause of its software development product line by partnering them with Facebook (FB).  No longer are these junior versions of Visual Studio 2008 Team System merely the try-and-buy freebies aimed at acquainting otherwise reluctant but professional programmers to adopt Microsoft or lures for student developers.  Microsoft is trying to create a solution that lets programmers of any stripe use their tools for free to develop Facebook tools.  And make no mistake – this is likely the most sophisticated, comprehensive solution for Facebook API development that exists.  And forget downloading that dinky editor you heard about on CNet Downloads – Visual Studio blows it and anything else that anyone would develop under the heading of freeware out of the water!

But why?

Well, obviously hooking students and youth in general on Microsoft products would be one obvious angle.  When these folks grow up and get jobs and need to consider or make decisions about technology, Microsoft will be familiar territory.  And then there’s that other reason – Microsoft could be feeling out Facebook for eventual partnership and alliance; boosting its overall inventory of web properties considerably by having the largest and most successful social networking site in existence in their pocket (and pocketbook too, whenever FB starts making money).

• Facebook Development Kit

But as a programmer myself, I’m intrigued with the tools Microsoft’s created.  Almost as interesting; Visual Studio Express isn’t all you need – there’s an extra download you need to get from Microsoft’s open source software (OSS) website, called CodePlex.  Because it’s OSS, you, competitors and anyone else who can download Facebook.NET (as it’s called) can look “under the hood” to see how it all works.  Oh, and naturally, Facebook.NET will work with the full, commercial versions of Visual Studio 2008.

e can’t do this by ourselves. In fact, we probably can stay there only as long as the Americans are willing.  But I’ve decided Canada needs to stay in Afghanistan past 2011 – and possibly for an indefinite period.  My rationale?  Well, today’s story concerning the execution of a newly-wed couple sort of tells us all we need to know about the disposition of the Taliban.  The Taliban are a group:

Belligerents' Strength (Current Conflict, 2001-Present) United States 54,515   Taliban 8,500 United Kingdom 8,300   al-Qaeda 2,000 Germany 3,465   Haqani Militia 1,000 France 2,780   Hezbi Islami 1,000 Canada 2,830   Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) 7,500 Afghanistan 82,780   Meshud Militia 30,000 NATO & Other Alliance Nations 14,800           TOTALS: 169,470       50,000

• willing to commit acts of aggression and terrorism at home and abroad in the name of imposing their own narrow view of how people should live, in the name of God (this includes killing in the name of God, which is as definitively hypocritical as one can get),
• which has committed atrocities, violating virtually every article of the UN Charter of Human Rights, including enlisting child soldiers, murdering humanitarian aid workers (including those identified as UN-affiliated), complete disregard for international conventions of warfare (including the Geneva convention) and giving official sanction to rape, and
• whose nations of justice are a tragic farce, include imposing Sharia law and brutal penalties for convicted felons – including dismemberment of one sort or another and, everyone’s favourite: decapitation.

I think most of us want peace - even so-called "hawks" like me. The debate has been over what the best route to take to get there. As I’ve stated before - the Taliban have pretty much closed the book on meaningful negotiation. It's their way or suicide bombings. I mean; if you've got a supply of drones brainwashed into thinking God is really going to reward them with eternal bliss and paradise if they kill themselves and take as many infidels with 'em as they can, what possible incentive could you offer such a regime to negotiate?

Even worse, winning in Afghanistan isn't enough (for the Taliban). Since it was the base for the 9/11 attacks, apparently if the Taliban win, they'll continue sponsoring such terrorism to pursue their own twisted, evil form of manifest destiny without end!  Their philosophy appears to be that of we’re wrong, they’re right and they’ll continue to attack and kill us until either we’re all dead or they are, period.
If pulling our troops out only results in the conflict spreading all over the world to the point where civil liberties in the free nations of the world are gradually eroded to boost security by well-meaning neocons until our own aspirations of liberty and happiness are reduced to a dim memory amid the clamour of terrorist attacks, I can’t see how the argument favouring our bringing our troops home can make any sense.  It seems clear all this will achieve is an escalating death toll somewhat higher than the 117 lost in the 4 or so years we've been in Afghanistan.  Except the war won’t be in Afghanistan anymore, it’ll be in Europe, in North America – and even here in Canada.

Canadians, indeed everyone outside of Afghanistan needs to remember, the superficial effect of withdrawing troops ending the conflict could quite easily be little more than a short-lived fantasy.  Basically, I’m arguing for a just war – it’s a tough pill to swallow.  But, to me, it really is starting to look as if it’s either that or living in a nightmarish dystopia with indentured, veiled, chronically-victimized females who’d sooner live in  Margaret Atwood’s fictional Gilead than the misogynistic theocracy envisioned by the Taliban as God’s will.

But I’ll ever try to remain an “enlightened” hawk – and remain vigilant for signs I’m happily wrong.  I can say with unrestrained candour that I’m not interested in having our troops deployed into a combat zone indefinitely.  The basic goals of the allies in Afghanistan – helping to establish a regime that both respects basic justice and some form of democracy while maintaining a military that yields to a constitutional authority – is, I think, the right idea.  And I still argue, as I have for as long as I can remember, that there are certain rights human beings have which if systemically threatened or disrespected, justify the intervention of other nations representing the interests of humanity – regardless of what other interests may compete for consideration in a conflict (which there always are).

oticed a decent article posted on the CBC News website this past weekend concerning the ongoing litigation in Sweden between the MPAA and The Pirate Bay torrent file sharing service.  After reading the article, I decided to write the following comment and cross-post it here:

• Can Sweden make the charges stick against The Pirate Bay?

“Although I've written prolifically on this subject - both on my personal blog (http://ross613.spaces.live.com) and elsewhere, I've never said what I believe lies at the root of the 'ethical pirate's' motives for downloading stuff online: it's simply that movie & record companies have stubbornly refused to make content available to us the way we want it; which is online.

And what do I mean by 'ethical pirate'? That's the name I give someone who copies copyrighted material, principally for their own use but patently not for profit or material gain, for themselves or any other entity be it personal or corporate. Such an individual is concerned and even supports the principal behind copyright, but takes issue when the same laws that are supposed to protect owners of intellectual property (because it injects value into ideas and ensures credit is given where it's due) are instead twisted into a hammer to beat down college students living on a shoestring budget so media aristocracy can preserve the outdated business model that made them stinking rich.

It's not that copyright isn't being infringed upon (although to say by whom will certainly start a lively debate of its own), and that this isn't wrong at some level. But only a fool would try to argue that there's some greater justice being realized by the MPAA, RIAA et al pursing these lawsuits when they could have avoided digging themselves into this mess by choosing just one among the many alternatives which existed to leverage new technology in bringing music and movies to a public clamoring for entertainment in the 1990s. And why should the public pay for a mistake THEY made (as the historical record accounts)?

Is the 'ethical pirate' really to blame? The case can & is being made to the contrary!”

     — Article comments, CBC News “In-Depth”

s mentioned here earlier, I’ve left (more nudged, really) my last job working for Microsoft (and Cactus Commerce) and am now employed by a very stable, successful Gatineau-based consulting firm and will be working for the Government of Canada for the foreseeable future.  Notwithstanding any other previous mention specifically indicating the nature of my current work, I’ve decided to not discuss specific projects I’m working on in my blog any more.  This is because I’m bound by a couple of agreements, both of which I take extremely seriously: the standard non-disclosure agreement (NDA) I signed for the consulting firm, and an oath I signed back in 2002, which resulted in my being assigned clearances under the Government of Canada Security Policy.  The primary purpose of these agreements is to ensure the privacy of individuals and corporate entities, to safeguard trade secrets and technologies and business processes which have commercial value, and to protect Canada’s security interests.  These are, of course, reasonable measures and it’s perfectly fair and necessary to have secrecy agreements for employees and government contractors.  But my change in employment made me reflect on my experiences with NDAs and other secrecy agreements in both government and private industry.  And there seems to be an almost obfuscated secondary effect: secrecy can breed inefficiency or cover up poor quality.

So the question needs to be asked, are such blanket agreements the way to go or would a different scheme serve the public better?  While NDAs are very effective at protecting corporations, there is often a term which extends well beyond the last day of employment that prevents the former employee form disclosing the designs of technologies developed by him/her to a new employer, or from starting and/or engaging in commercial activity in the same industry for the duration of the agreement.  Since a contracting programmer’s livelihood depends on leveraging relevant experience, preventing him/her form essentially re-using a block of code on a similar software project for, say a competitor might make it difficult for that programmer to find a job – were the prevailing practice to throw away any knowledge gained on one project in favour of innovating a different approach to achieve the same functionality.  Imagine how much more expensive software would be if cut-and-pasting code from the Internet were suddenly impractical!

“Secrecy can breed inefficiency or cover up poor quality.”

Luckily, the nature of NDAs and contract law generally means that programmers pretty much always get away with re-using old code since the process of compilation obfuscates code, making it virtually impossible for a covetous former employer to prove an NDA has been violated.  That’s not to say NDAs are completely useless; the NDA I signed with Cactus would give either Cactus or Microsoft legal recourse if I were to take the knowledge I acquired helping to write Commerce Server 2009 and applied to create my own very similar retail web e-commerce server application.  So NDAs do help prevent such technology “poaching”. But is that fair to the programmer – particularly when the practical impediments are in themselves plenty disincentive for such a venture being pursued.

But what about national security and individual privacy?  Surely, we all have a right to expect our Government will do all it can to protect our rights – isn’t a blanket secrecy oath or agreement the minimum measure needed to protect the public?  It might be, yes.  But usually, contractors don’t work in areas of public policy where any experience or any type of information disclosure would be harmful.  If a contractor or government employee, for example, works on data including the Social Insurance Number, date of birth, address or other vitals – clearly the point of main risk is disclosure of that information beyond the work environment.  But the terms of that employee’s security clearance may prevent disclosures of another nature – including being a whistle-blower: about bureaucratic inefficiencies that cost people money or loopholes that might give one group an unfair advantage at the expense of another.  Normally, a government employee might be able to call a journalist anonymously to report about such things – but not if the terms under which their security clearance was issued specifically make such disclosure a criminal act; perhaps classifying such behaviour as treason.

“…at the root of the practice of “blanket secrecy” in both commercial and government organizations is risk mitigation.”

Yet, ironically, the intention of the individual could be completely altruistic.  Of course, there might be nothing that can practically be done concerning such activity effectively ending that person’s job with the Government (nobody wants to work with a whistleblower).  But turning it into a criminal affair, as in the example with the NDA, might be taking things too far.

What could be at the root of the practice of “blanket secrecy” in both commercial and government organizations is risk mitigation.  Good lawyers, like any good programmer or project manager, will make every effort to mitigate risk for their clients.  Microsoft, Cactus, the Government of Canada all have lawyers and H/R budgets to help craft secrecy agreements that ensure no employee – disgruntled or otherwise can get out of respecting professional disclosure.  And few programmers are prepared to spend time and money, not to mention jeapordizing a potential new job, negotiating more favourable terms on a matter like disclosure.  (Particularly, when one can’t know beforehand what isn’t being disclosed.)  Employers need to recognize they aren’t risking anything tailoring NDAs and other secrecy agreements to address the particular points of risk associated with a position.  And the government may need to impose some requirements on employers (including itself) to get the ball rolling, making sure to add new measures to protect whistle-blowers extends to agreements related to security clearances held by government employees.

In particular, such agreements should be improved so that they never protect poor performance within the government, as they now likely do in some cases.  As such, refining rules around disclosure can only help build a better, more efficient and well-run nation.

A Post-Script: Should Whistle-Blowers Be Protected?

I said above “nobody wants to work with a whistle-blower”.  That may be presumptuous – and it’s really just a guess on my part.  But you’d have to think it would be tough to work in a government office alongside colleagues whose own performance evaluations could be negatively impacted by an embarrasing public revelation.  At the very least, colleagues might legitimately question whether you might not ‘snitch’ if you saw them doing something you deemed improper.  Consequently, whistle-blowers are vulnerable to being not well-regarded.

In my view, offering official protections for whistle-blowers probably won’t stop such a person from being completely hamstrung since a critical level of trust would be irrevocably compromised.  The exception to this rule might be a particular kind of whistle-blower who’s acted in counsel with his/her colleagues, perhaps as a last resort in the absence of other options – or where the stakes for the public are high and remedial internal efforts have simply failed.  We’d like to think every workplace in the Government of Canada is ideal and such circumstances never arise, but if they ever do it might be important in such rare cases to at least remove the threat of a criminal record.

Unfortunately, like anything, whistle-blowing protections could be abused by disgrunteled employees or by those seized with other kinds of sociiopathic behaviour.  I’m firmly of the view that all other internal remedies should be pursued before turning to public disclosures having the potential to result in political scandal.  And even then, the public interest would have to be of sufficiently high stakes to make taking an action likely to impact the lives and careers of a portentially large group of people justified.

So if being a whistle-blower is so rarely justified (one would home!), why is it worth having?  It doesn’t seem that vehicles for employee feedback are very accessible in government structures.  This has to do with the division between the bureaucracy and elected officials – a line that doesn’t really have a parallel in the corporate structure.  However, were the risk of whistle-blowers drawing attention to deficiencies in the government present, bringing public officials and the bureaucracy closer together might be the outcome; with better service to the public being the inevitable by-product of both measures.

I gotta say that I’ve found it hard to get all hyped about April Fool’s Day as it has turned into a day celebrated more by the tech industry than perhaps any other.  Maybe I’m just ill-humoured, but some of the gags have come across as a little obvious or just plain weak.  But this year, the harvest included one “prank” that was particularly clever, I thought.

• Google's 'CADIE' Leaves Behind Message

To this, I can only say “wow”.  I mean – finding an obscure compiler from a language itself built as a joke more than 30 years ago?  Of course – post it on the Internet (and draw enough attention to it), and someone will figure it out….

North Korea launches rocket: reports - Sympatico / MSN Video (click image above to play)

There’s been a nagging question on my mind since childhood: will I ever live to see nuclear weapons used?  When I was very young; between 8 and 10 years of age, I used to have nightmares about nuclear attack.  Of course, this was in the last 1970s and early 1980s, which was the height of the cold war.  Most of my younger friends can’t relate because they just don’t know what it was like growing up with the fear that the Soviet Union could vaporize every major city in North America, including nearby Winnipeg.  The city was a strategic nuclear target thanks to the convergence of the CN and CP railways, being home to Canada’s 17th Air Wing and perhaps the proximity of Fargo, North Dakota a couple hours drive south.  The military base at Fargo houses a number of ICBM launch facilities and was thought to be the target for some of the larger ordinance the Soviets would use in any nuclear exchange.  It may say something about my childhood obsession with nuclear cataclysm that these were all facts I’d become aware of before adolescence.

But all that changed when the Soviet Union suffered its economic collapse and my nightmares went away.  And the thought occurred that maybe, at some point far in the future, we’d have to deal with the possibility of terrorists getting their hands on nukes or other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).  While certainly a legitimate concern, at least there was the consolation of knowing that if a terrorist detonated a small warhead in a large urban centre, the likelihood was it wouldn’t mean the end of the world.  But then during the first Gulf War we started hearing about the possibility that Iraq might have a nuclear arms program.  And suddenly the reality of powers other than the “big 5” on the UN Security Council started to seem a lot closer than I’d expected it to be at that point in time.  At least, I thought to myself, if a smaller country got nukes they’d still be at a disadvantage in any confrontation with the major powers.  A country like Iraq didn’t even have delivery systems capable of reaching North America and if they tried anything, one or more of the “big 5” would surely incinerate any nation that tried to nuke anyone else.  It wouldn’t be mutually-assured destruction (MAD) as it was in the Cold War between NATO and the Warsaw Pact; rather “SAD” – singularly-assured destruction – for the smaller nation.

• North Korea launches rocket

Indeed, any ambitions a small country had toward being on “equal footing” with the U.S. or Russia by getting nukes seemed little more than fantasy.  It would be crazy for any leadership to think getting nukes would gain a strategic advantage on the superpowers of the world.  And then we started hearing from North Korea.  Earlier this decade it even successfully tested its first nuke, effectively joining the nuclear club.  The only thing it’s lacked to start making real trouble for everyone in the region (including itself) are delivery systems capable of reaching the continental United States.

What baffles me is what North Korea hopes to gain here.  It’s already been engaged in talks, gaining concession after concession from the world’s powers while clearly making every effort to create rockets that could attack the United States.  But while it’s enjoyed some success at the bargaining table and has apparently put its nuke program on hold from time to time, it still seems intent on preparing for a war that it couldn’t conceivably win.  It would likely be suicide to even start, because if the game is hurling missiles across the Pacific – the United States will win with breathtaking alacrity.

Even worse for North Korea, the U.S. leads the world in missile intercept technology and in this field is years – perhaps decades – ahead of its nearest competitor.  And Patriot missiles are just the tip of the iceberg, because it goes without saying that there are technologies kept well out of public view which might well be able to knock anything North Korea has out of the sky.  Unfortunately, nothing is fool-proof and with nukes, lets face it, if one gets through countermeasures it’s a pretty big disaster.  But North Korea won’t have a large number of missiles to fire at the United States for quite a while.  So it all seems perfectly crazy to engage in a strategy that has zero chance of working.

Strangely, this is actually a bad thing for everyone.  If the leadership is actually as delusional as it appears, they might still cause a great deal of trouble.  They may not be able to get an ICBM all the way to San Francisco, but that doesn’t mean they’re harmless.  They could still attack Japan or perhaps even South Korea.  Whether the current negotiations (which bear a striking resemblance to appeasement) aren’t actually allowing what could be a relatively small problem now to turn into a much bigger one later – is still very much an open question, in my view.

And – in the longer run – I wonder whether nuclear war isn’t inevitably.  If it’s not North Korea, then could it not just be someone else down the road?  I have the feeling the clock is ticking on the question of whether a nuclear conflict will occur – will a crazy totalitarian dictator push the button?  Or maybe a religious extremist?  A terrorist?  We really do need to clean up this world and eliminate starvation and poverty in the next few decades if we’re going to avoid turning my nightmares into reality.  But I’m just not seeing the kind of progress there needs to be, although there seems to be growing acceptance about what needs to be done to turn Earth into the kind of world everyone can be happy in.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) membership, which includes the leading movie production houses in Hollywood, has won a key victory in its battle to erode Internet privacy in the name of reducing media piracy online.  The new law, adopted and now in effect throughout the EU, allows copyright holders (like movie producers) to demand and get access to the network addresses (known as IP addresses) of those determined by a court to have downloaded copyright material.

• CBC News: Sweedish internet traffic sinks on day anti-piracy law comes into effect

Of course, this has lead to an outcry from technology experts and civil liberties advocates – both of whom argue that leaving it up to a court to decide whether the online activities of users can be disclosed to a third party (particularly a corporate entity) without notice or due process beyond an arbitrary finding of suspicious activity gives far too much power to authorities to monitor Internet activity.  Beyond this, the law also requires that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) monitor and characterize traffic, which most in the EU do not currently.

It’s hard to guage what, if any, impact this new law will have outside of the EU – whether it will influence lawmakers in the United States or Canada to take similar measures under pressure from their own entertainment industries.  But it is conceivable that traffic logged in the EU could be invoked in legal precedings in Canada and the U.S. – possibly even to the extent of using such logs as the basis for new lawsuits.

Even so, there are those who actually favour such measures and buy into the arguments forwarded by the MPAA and its membership; that defending copyright is worth sacrificing privacy – particularly when it’s likely to be only the guilty who will be affected.

“I have always suspected extreme exposure to digitization reduced literacy.
Ross613, what part of, "sufficient evidence of illegal activity," is beyond you?
No one, anywhere in this piece, is suggesting torrent modes are banned, or illegal, or even immoral.
Pay for the property of others you wish to use in some way - you'll be fine.”

– dijit44, story comments (responding to my remarks – the first story comment added)

My response:

“Clearly some have difficulty distinguishing suspicion from proof - since I'm both a software developer and prolific writer, this might be among your shortcomings.  And it's exactly that same confusion those making the decision about what constitutes "sufficient evidence" that I'm concerned about.

You see, there's this concept called "due process" which protects people's civil rights and, normally, those accused of a crime get a chance to defend themselves.  What this law apparently does is give the membership of the MPAA the right to demand IP addresses as soon as they present a court with "evidence" of illegal activity.  There no indication what constitutes evidence or any specific detail, but I don't have an opportunity to fight the action to prevent disclosure.  My guilt (i.e. involvement in illegal activity) is assumed without my being able to raise a peep in protest.

The part that's "beyond me" is how a rational person could conceive of this being justified in a free and democratic society.  Are we saying a company's right to defend its intellectual property trumps the privacy rights of the individual?

I for one say it should not!”

Of perhaps even greater concern is a key decision being handed down in a Sweedish court on Friday.  This concerns “The Pirate Bay” torrent sharing website, which is facing legal action from the MPAA concerning whether the site facilitates the theft of movies.  The ruling is expected to favour the MPAA, but the question remains how far the court will go in assigning either damages and/or whether information exchange with the MPAA (disclosing visitor network traffic) will be included in the ruling.