There is an ongoing debate as to how important various kinds of intellectual property protection (eg copyright, patents, trade-marks) actually are to foster innovation. Some argue that in many instances IP protection can prevent, rather than encourage, innovation. Also that in many circumstances IP protection is not needed (either absolutely, or to a degree) to protect the interests of the creators/inventors.

Boing Boing has a good post entitled Why knockoffs are good for fashion that points to a New Yorker article. They make a good argument that the lack of protection for fashion has worked well for the entire industry, and for consumers.

Read the Boing boing post

The Canadian and Alberta Privacy Commissioners have released their report on the TJX breach. Its no surprise that they found TJX had breached various privacy principles, and the breach could haev been prevented.

I’ll write something more in depth once I have a chance to review the decision in detail, but for now take a look at:

David Fraser’s post

A CBC News article

For the London Free Press – September 24, 2007

Read this on Canoe

Facebook and similar social network sites will change election campaigns and create new avenues for social movements and political action.

When browsing on Facebook in early September, you could find more than 54 groups dedicated to the re-election of the Ontario Liberal Party, as well as numerous others demanding Dalton McGuinty be removed from office. More and more provincial candidates have official profiles or groups online, where supporters can gather, share opinions and organize information rallies and fundraising events.

This is not just an Ontario election issue. The proliferation of online campaigning has reached a fever pitch in the U.S., where all but one Democratic presidential candidate and four of their Republican counterparts have profiles or groups.

It seems that the youth vote, targeting first-time voters and those in their mid-twenties, would rather the candidate come knocking online, than at their front doors.

Facebook has become the accessible way to reach a large number of potential voters at little or no expense. Once members join a group, they can invite their entire friend list to the group, enabling the candidate, party or their message to reach more people, with little effort from the group creator, or the candidate.

The online forum introduces some dangers as well. It’s difficult to track who is responsible for the site and it is often unclear whether candidates are even aware of a group or page.

The credibility of an online source such as a Facebook group is still relatively low and until more candidates start using the technology, and start writing and contributing to their own pages, it may remain unreliable.

The candidates — or more accurately, their campaign offices — often do make official use, providing pictures and documents with the candidates’ position on issues, and replying to messages from supporters.

Elections Canada specifies the types of “volunteer labour” a candidate can accept, and there is a chance that should a Facebook Group provide commercial value to the candidate, it would have to be reported as an expense.

This has not been confirmed, but as recently as April of this year, Elections Canada announced it would be investigating social network sites, and their impact on advertising, organization of fundraising events and other functions performed by the online community and whether that provided a commercial service, or financial benefit to the candidates.

Social network sites have certainly added a new source of information for voters, and a new outlet for candidates to reach the youth demographic, and reach people in remote areas that may not be on the campaign trail.

It remains to be seen what actual impact the groups and sites have on the results of the election, and whether it will draw more voters.

Regardless of its final impact, it has provided an early opportunity to get the platform and messages out to the masses, and may be a means to focus election debates on those issues that seem most important to group members and those online.

The Evening Standard has an article that casts doubt on the effectiveness of the massive surveillance camera use in London England. It begins by saying:

London has 10,000 crime-fighting CCTV cameras which cost £200 million, figures show today.

In fact, four out of five of the boroughs with the most cameras have a record of solving crime that is below average.

So why bother with the massive expense and privacy intrusion?

Read the Evening Standard article

I attended the London session of this event yesterday. The presentation was well received. I encourage IT managers in cities where these events are yet to be held to attend.

The session started with the concept that the top 25% of IT capable firms grew revenue 68% – correction – 6.8% – (misread my notes – thanks for pointing that out Ruth) faster per year, and realized 23% higher revenue per employee. The discussion centered mostly around new tools for virtualization, security, and system management – all intended to make life easier for IT managers.

For more detail take a look at the ITManagers blog

(Disclosure – I am an occasional guest blogger on Microsoft’s IT Managers blog, and am on Microsoft’ s “trusted advisor” list – but neither is compensated.)

That’s the title of an article in the latest McLean Report, a regular newsletter of the Info-Tech Research Group. The article has some good discussion on the workings of software escrow, and some benefits and pitfalls.

The article starts off with this explanation:

In software escrow, organizations engage an independent escrow agent to store and protect source code and related intellectual assets of a vendor. If a “trigger event” specified in the escrow agreement occurs, organizations can then obtain these assets from the agent.

Escrow generally protects against trigger events like bankruptcy, ceased operations, and competitor takeovers. In these scenarios, the vendor may cease to support applications the customer depends on, so escrow allows the customer access to the source code to facilitate continued use of those applications.

The McLean Report is only available by paid subscription, but the article is reproduced here with their permission.

Read the article

Go to the Info-Tech web site

For the London Free Press – September 17, 2007

Read this on Canoe

Tired of receiving e-mails offering to help you lose weight, get rich and earn a diploma by simply clicking on a handy link?

You’re not alone.

A recent survey by Symantec found that spam levels remain high, accounting for about 66 per cent of e-mails. Despite efforts to combat junk e-mail, spammers continue to adopt new methods to evade detection by e-mail filters.

One difficulty faced by those working to reduce spam is the speed with which spammers change their tactics.

As recently as six months ago, almost 52 per cent of all spam received was image spam, in which the text of the message is presented as a picture in an image file.

Last month, this form of spam accounted for only eight per cent of all spam.

This is an indication that anti-spam filters are increasingly successful at combating this type of spam.

To fill the gap left by this decline, newer styles of spam are on the rise. In the last month the percentage of spam messages utilizing PDF images rose from three to seven per cent.

While PDF image spam is still nowhere near as popular as image spam was, it’s on the rise.

Two other new styles of spam are emerging. These involve the attachment of Excel and zip files to spam messages.

In the past, spammers pushing stock and pharmaceutical spam were significant users of image spam.

This variety of spam has witnessed a noticeable increase in usage by spammers looking for a replacement outlet.

While generally reliant on staying one step ahead of those combating spam, spammers still depend on some “traditional” methods.

Fake greeting cards remain a spammer favourite. These cards may appear to come from legitimate sources and instruct the user to click on a link to access their “greeting card.”

When the link is clicked a downloader accesses the Internet and downloads a Trojan Horse, a program that installs harmful software onto the computer.

E-mail users should be wary when clicking on such links in e-mails and watch for warning signs.

Examine the link and watch for anything suspicious, such as an exposed IP address which indicates the e-mail is not from a legitimate e-card company.

Changing the type of spam message isn’t the only tactic used by spammers.

The last month witnessed an increase in the percentage of spam messages from URLs using China’s top level domain (TLD), “cn.”

At the same time, the number of messages from URLs using “hk” (Hong Kong) TLDs dropped significantly.

This shift may be due to the enactment of new anti-spam laws in Hong Kong on June 1.

There are other possible explanations for the increase in use of China’s TLD.

In the past, spammers have used various TLDs to register names that reflect the product or service they offer.

Over time, the names become blacklisted, forcing the spammers to find new TLDs.

Switching to new TLDs can also be a way to avoid spam filters.

Unfortunately spam is not likely to go away any time soon. The battle for supremacy between spammers and spam filters will continue.

Further to yesterday’s post about lawful access policy input (or lack thereof), here are 2 examples of why this kind of thing makes us skeptical about the need and concerned about the dangerous privacy implications.

First, there are reports that the US Director of National Intelligence recently testified that its warrantless evesdropping prevented a recent terrorist plot. Turns out it had nothing to do with it.

Read a Boing Boing report about that

Second, Outlaw.com reports on a judicial suggestion in the UK to put the entire population into a DNA database.

Read the Outlaw.com article

Microsoft just announced that they are about to offer higher education students Office 2007 Ultimate for just $60. The Ultimate version includes several different programs, including OneNote. The retail price for Office 2007 Ultimate is over $600.

My guess is that few university and college students use legitimate purchased copies of Microsoft Office. Its simply too expensive for a student struggling to pay for tuition, housing, books, etc. So I suspect most would use either “unlicensed” copies, online ASP options such as Google, or freeware options such as open office.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out. My prediction is that they will sell a significant number of copies at that price – and make far more than they would have from the existing student pricing for a version that does not include as much software. And any move that gets more Microsoft product to the student community is good for Microsoft.

If this works as I suspect it will, the entertainment industry should take note – ie how to reduce piracy and make more money by selling your product for less.

Read the Microsoft announcement

Michael and David are all over this – but its an important enough issue that I want to mention it as well. Public Safety Canada and Industry Canada have begun a consultation on how law enforcement and national security agencies can gain lawful access to customers’ information. In other words, they want to make is easier for law enforcement to get our phone and Internet records without court orders.

While we should not impede what is necessary to fight crime, carte blanch access to our personal info makes it far too intrusive from a privacy perspective. Michael points out that until this consultation process became publicly known, it was just going to be with a few selected participants. Not a great way to instill public confidence in either the consultation process or the overall fairness of the result.

This issue never really goes away – see “lawful access” in my tag cloud for earlier posts.

Read Michael Geist’s original and second comment

Read David Fraser’s comment

UPDATE: David has posted a good article detailing the background behind this issue