so much for the paperless revolution

Lexology had an interesting story that serves as a really good reminder that sometimes, despite all the great things about modern technology, plain old paper may sometimes be the best way to go.

What happened? Well, to make a long story short, the US Federal Trade Commission inadvertently disclosed a large amount of information that was filed with the FTC that should have remained confidential. To wit:

The mistake made by the FTC was basic. In preparing its brief for filing, FTC staff wrongly assumed that the metadata in its word processing file would not migrate upon direct conversion from native format to portable document format (.pdf). In particular, they wrongly assumed that using Microsoft’s “Highlight” (or “Borders and Shading”) tool to black out text actually removed the text from the file’s contents. It does not. It “covers up” the text, but the text itself remains in the file, fully searchable and available for copying. The resulting .pdf appears at first glance to contain only black boxes in place of the redacted content. That content, however, is present in the .pdf file and can be easily revealed either by copying and pasting the blacked-out text into a word-processing file or an e-mail message or by viewing the .pdf file in a reader such as Preview or Xpdf.

Its one of those stories that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. The laughing because its easy enough to think “What kind of idiot would do that?” because the error was (at least for most readers of this blog) rather obvious. The crying because, if you give it some thought, there are instances that this could very well happen to even the most technically sophisticated of you – not just with PDFs, but any number of other forms of digital documents, communications and storage – and in any number of ways. The bottom line is that when things are put into digital form, they are often harder to get rid of. Its something well worth keeping in mind.

silly lawsuit of the week

OK. Short version of the story in InformationWeek: Woman puts up a website. She puts a “webwrap” agreement at the bottom – i.e. basically a contract that says if you use the site then you agree to the contract. Still some question as to whether such a mechanism is binding, but anyway…

So the Internet Archive of course comes along and indexes her site. Which apparently is a violation of the webwrap. So she sues, representing herself, I believe. The court throws out everything on a preliminary motion by IA except for the breach of contract.

InformationWork observes that “Her suit asserts that the Internet Archive’s programmatic visitation of her site constitutes acceptance of her terms, despite the obvious inability of a Web crawler to understand those terms and the absence of a robots.txt file to warn crawlers away.” (my emphasis). They then conclude with this statement:

If a notice such as Shell’s is ultimately construed to represent just such a “meaningful opportunity” to an illiterate computer, the opt-out era on the Net may have to change. Sites that rely on automated content gathering like the Internet Archive, not to mention Google, will have to convince publishers to opt in before indexing or otherwise capturing their content. Either that or they’ll have to teach their Web spiders how to read contracts.

(my emphasis).

They already have – sort of. It’s called robots.txt – the thing referred to above. For those of you who haven’t heard of this, its a little file that you put on the top level of your site and which is the equivalent of a “no soliciation” sign on your door. Its been around for at least a decade (probably longer) and most (if not all) search engines

From the Internet Archive’s FAQ:

How can I remove my site’s pages from the Wayback Machine?

The Internet Archive is not interested in preserving or offering access to Web sites or other Internet documents of persons who do not want their materials in the collection. By placing a simple robots.txt file on your Web server, you can exclude your site from being crawled as well as exclude any historical pages from the Wayback Machine.

Internet Archive uses the exclusion policy intended for use by both academic and non-academic digital repositories and archivists. See our exclusion policy.

You can find exclusion directions at exclude.php. If you cannot place the robots.txt file, opt not to, or have further questions, email us at info at archive dot org.

standardized methods of communications – privacy policies, etc. – more. Question is, will people be required to use it, or simply disregard and act dumb?

from the “another security headache” department

Yes postings have been sparse lately – things getting busy so alas. Anyway, very short (but rather alarming) note from Wired about copiers. Though I knew most copiers now used digital technology of some sort, I had no idea they actually contained full-blown hard drives that store your copies. The exact reason why they need hard drives to copy documents, and why the data needs to remain on the drives, is a bit of a mystery to me, and something the article doesn’t go into. I’d had always just assumed that the image information was stored somewhere temporarily and disappeared when you finished copying. Apparently not. Anyway, here’s a brief excerpt:

most digital copiers manufactured in the past five years have disk drives – the same kind of data-storage mechanism found in computers – to reproduce documents. As a result, the seemingly innocuous machines that are commonly used to spit out copies of tax returns for millions of Americans can retain the data being scanned.

If the data on the copier’s disk aren’t protected with encryption or an overwrite mechanism, and if someone with malicious motives gets access to the machine, industry experts say sensitive information from original documents could get into the wrong hands.

I guess someone, somewhere, will be selling add-on kits for copiers relatively shortly…

Fair Use and the DMCA

An article in Wired News with the dramatic title of “Lawmakers Tout DMCA Killer” describes the most recent attempt to: (a) water down the protections afforded to content owners by the DMCA; (b) ensure the preservation of fair use rights on the part of users. As is usual, each side has its own rhetoric to describe what is happening, so in fairness I took the liberty of offering to readers of this blog the two alternative descriptions above. The nub:

The Boucher and Doolittle bill (.pdf), called the Fair Use Act of 2007, would free consumers to circumvent digital locks on media under six special circumstances.

Librarians would be allowed to bypass DRM technology to update or preserve their collections. Journalists, researchers and educators could do the same in pursuit of their work. Everyday consumers would get to “transmit work over a home or personal network” so long as movies, music and other personal media didn’t find their way on to the internet for distribution.

And then of course on the other side:

“The suggestion that fair use and technological innovation is endangered is ignoring reality,” said MPAA spokeswoman Gayle Osterberg. “This is addressing a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Osterberg pointed to a study the U.S. Copyright Office conducts every three years to determine whether fair use is being adversely affected. “The balance that Congress built into the DMCA is working.” The danger, Osterberg said, is in attempting to “enshrine exemptions” to copyright law.

To suggest that content owners have the right to be paid for their work is, for me, a  no-brainer. That being said, I wonder whether the DMCA and increasingly more complex and invasive DRM schemes will ultimately backfire – sure they protect the content, but they sure as heck are a pain in the ass – just my personal take on it. For example, I’d love to buy digital music, but having experienced the controls that iTunes imposes and suddenly having all my tracks disappear, I just don’t bother with it now. Not to mention the incredible hoops one needs to go through to display, say, Blu-ray on a computer – at least in its original, non-downgraded resolution – why bother with all of that at all?

I wonder whether this is, in a way, history repeating itself in a way. I am old enough to remember the early days of software protection – virtually every high-end game or application used fairly sophisticated techniques (like writing non-standard tracks on floppies in between standard tracks) in attempting to prevent piracy. Granted, these have never gone away altogether, particularly for super high end software that needs dongles and and the like, and of course recently there has been a resurgence in the levels of protection that have been layered on in Windows, but after the initial, almost universal lockdown of software long ago, there came a period where it seemed many (if not most) software developers just stopped using such measures.  At least that’s what seemed to happen. I’m not quite sure why, but I wonder if this same pattern will repeat with content rather than software. I suspect not. But hey, you never know.

In the meantime, off I go, reluctantly, in the cold, cold winter, to the nearest record shop to buy music the old fashioned way…


ITAC – First Canadian Municipal Wireless Conference and Exhibition

Wow – lots happening the last week of May. Also forgot to mention previously the First Canadian Municipal Wireless Conference and Exhibition being organized by ITAC at the Direct Energy Conference Centre at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, May 28-30, 2007:

Whether you live or work in a large urban municipality, a small rural town or village, the impact of wireless applications has already or will soon impact the quality of your life and the services you offer your community. If your organization engages in digital electronic services to customers, e.g., taxpayers, suppliers, emergency service providers, other levels of government, non-profit organizations and associations, you need to learn about the latest proven strategies to ensure the success of your wireless programs.

ITAC’s 1st Canadian Municipal Wireless Applications Conference and Exhibition will not only update you on the latest initiatives of Canadian Municipalities, but will provide you with real case study insights, proven strategies, commentary from leading wireless experts and techniques for deploying wireless applications in your communities. If you are currently engaged, or plan to be engaged, in a municipal wireless project, your attendance at this event is essential.