The Barefoot Technologist

EU: Research funders signal support for open access publishing
In another win for public access to publicly-funded research, Nature reports on a new policy recommendation by the European Commission that all research emerging from its €80 billion Horizon 2020 research funding pot should either be published open access or deposited in the Commission’s open access repository OpenAIRE six months from publication. European Commission vice-President Neelie Kroes has endorsed the policy, while the Guardian reports a 2% drop in the value of academic publisher Reed-Elsevier’s stock following on from the announcement. The Economist places events in the context of wider developments in academic publishing. Meanwhile, Nature also reports that Research Councils UK, which represents seven UK research funding organizations with a total annual research budget of £2.8 billion, have announced that from next April any papers emerging from work they fund must be made free to access within six months of publication. An infographic, produced by Nature, shows existing trends in open access publishing across disciplines in the UK.
Nature (EU) | Neelie Kroes | Guardian | Economist | Nature (UK) | Infographic

UK: Privacy International threatens legal action against government
Privacy International has written to the UK Business Secretary Vince Cable asking why the government has been unable to halt the export of British-made surveillance technology to repressive regimes. The groups says that if Cable does not respond within 21 days, they “will file for judicial review and if appropriate seek an urgent injunction preventing British companies from maintaining and updating systems already previously sold to repressive regimes, and stopping any new exports in their tracks”.

Tajikistan: Government to create web monitoring agency
Global Voices details an announcement made by the government of Tajikistan that it will create a new agency to monitor online publications for “insulting” and “slanderous” content.

US: Nearly 2 million quit Facebook
The Register reports that nearly 2 million US Facebook users have quit the social networking site in the past 6 months, with user numbers in Europe also dropping. The news has continued the slide in Facebook’s share value.

Iceland: Court orders Valitor to process WikiLeaks donations
Bloomberg report that an Icelandic court have ordered payment processing intermediary Valitor hf, the Icelandic partner of Visa and Mastercard, to process donations to WikiLeaks or face fines of over $6,000 a day. The company has indicated it will appeal the ruling.

UK: US pursuing a middleman in copyright infringement case
The New York Times’ reports on the extradition proceedings against UK citizen Richard O’Dwyer being brought by the US on criminal charges of copyright infringement. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has taken up the Briton’s cause.

Stepping out of the system
This feature for the BBC details a new project by Frontline SMS founder Ken Banks called Means of Exchange: “a ‘toolbox’ of web-based and mobile apps that will make it easier for people to engage in things like bartering, swapping and alternative currencies”.

The moral cases for – and against – drones
A short piece for the New York Times outlines the ethical arguments being marshaled in favor of drone use by the US military. John Kaags and Sarah Keeps take issue with the piece in the same paper’s opinion section, arguing that “expediency is not necessarily a virtue”.
For | Against

The threat of secret surveillance orders
The New York Times details a new paper produced by a US judge that investigates the nature of surveillance orders being generated in US courts and highlights the need to reform the law in order to prevent the trend in orders so secret “they might as well be “written in invisible ink”.

The challenges facing Wikipedia
The Washington Post profiles Wikipedia on the occasion of its annual Wikimania conference, highlighting struggles to encourage new members into its community of editors, and soul-searching about its increasing role as an advocate for online freedoms.

The Dark Matter around Open Data
David Eaves’ keynote at the recent World Bank/Data.gov International Open Government Data Conference urges delegates to move on from discussing the technicalities of open data and concentrate instead on scalability and impact.

Russia: Web blackout in protest at censorship law
The New York Times details online protests that took place on the Russian web this week, against a law that would grant the Russian government new powers to censor online content. Wikipedia blocked access to its Russian-language site, while the Russian search engine Yandex, the Russian blogging platform Live Journal and the Russian social networking site VKontakte also joined the protests.

US: mobile phone operators responded to millions of requests for users’ data from law enforcement in 2011
The New York Times reports on revelations that in 2011 mobile phone operators in the United States responded to 1.3 million requests for user data for law enforcement agencies, such as user location or text message content. “The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands that they considered legally questionable or unjustified”.

Countries express concern over South African secrecy law
This short report for TechPresident details concerns raised by Sweden, the Czech Republic, the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Switzerland and the US over South Africa’s proposed new state secrecy law, observing that the law is seemingly incompatible with commitments South Africa has made as part of its membership of the Open Government Partnership.

mySociety release MapIt Global
mySociety have released a new piece of software that relates points on a map to administrative boundaries around the world. The release represents a huge time-saving for organizations like mySociety who want to build websites that help people engage with their local, regional and national governments (so-called “civic hackers”): “As a general user this sort of thing might seem a bit obscure, but you’ve probably indirectly used such a service many times”.

“Leader of 99%” new villain in popular computer game
Game Ranx reports that the next edition of popular military-themed first-person shooter game “Call of Duty” will have as its arch-villain a character called Raul Menendez, whom the game-makers describe as an “idolized Messiah of the 99%” and whom the reporters describe as “a Julian Assange-like character who’s old, experienced, and hell bent on starting a global insurrection against the status quo”.

DeadUshahidi
DeadUshahidi, a self-styled “Ushahidi cemetery”, is a map of maps created using the Ushahidi platform that have since fallen into disuse. The project was started ostensibly to help people make more considered decisions when thinking about deploying crowd-mapping technology themselves. Former Ushahidi staffer Patrick Meier reacts broadly positively to its creation in a post on his iRevolution blog, while David Eaves of TechPresident weighs in with his thoughts.
DeadUshahidi | iRevolution | TechPresident

Are open educational resources the key to global economic growth?
This short op-ed written by UNESCO’s former assistant director-general for education and the US ambassador to UNESCO explains UNESCO’s recent commitment to Open Educational Resources in economic terms: “As policymakers struggle to apply traditional fiscal and monetary tools to mend world markets restrained by weak purchasing power, accelerated learning based on OERs could do more to stimulate global economic demand and growth than all the world’s tax holidays combined”.

Your e-Book is reading you
This Wall Street Journal feature examines the privacy implications of the move to digital reading, and details the “arms race among digital start-ups seeking to cash in on the massive pool of data collected by e-reading devices”.

Putting transparency into practice in Slovakia: What we can learn
In this interview for the soros.org blog, Gabriel Šípoš from Transparency International Slovakia explains why it’s a great time to be a transparency activist and provides tips on gaining the most from transparency projects.

Watching how China censors
This short feature for the Wall Street Journal details a social media observatory project in the US that tracks how China’s social media is being censored, and asks whether such software could help predict China’s policy moves.

Future of journalism: “Transfer of Value”
This essay for the Monday Note explores the tricks used by new players in online news to overtake their traditional rivals, detailing in one section the Huffington Post’s use of search engine optimization algorithms to re-write the headlines of pieces originally published by traditional media, and gain the lion’s share of the readership.

In defence of Open Data
John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation responds to criticisms recently leveled at the open data movement by pointing out that transparency is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for empowered knowledge: “We also know that disclosure’s effectiveness needs an informed public in order to succeed”.

The New Inquiry: Game of Drones
This special edition of the New Inquiry features a selection of essays on drones, examining their use in assassinations, and in border policing, and drawing on the history of computing to predict their future.

Audio: Remembering Elinor Ostrom
This Radio Berkman podcast is dedicated to discussion of the work of recently deceased Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, whose economic research into common pool resources challenged the idea of the “tragedy of the commons”. Featuring contributions from Benjamin Mako Hill, Judith Donath, Mayo Fuster Morell and Oliver Goodenough.

European Parliament rejects ACTA
Members of the European Parliament have voted by a huge majority to reject the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secretive treaty that threatened to take intellectual property enforcement measures beyond internationally established norms. As European Digital Rights (EDRi) and La Quadrature du Net report, the vote follows citizen protests against the treaty of an unprecedented scale. In a blog post entitled “The Impossible becomes possible”, Michael Geist provides background and analysis: “ACTA is not yet dead – it may still eke out the necessary six ratifications in a year or two for it to take effect – but it is badly damaged and will seemingly never achieve the goals of its supporters as a model for other countries to adopt and to emerge as a new global standard for IP enforcement”.
EDRi | La Quadrature du Net | Geist

UK: Mass of government data on public services to be published
The Guardian reports on the UK government’s announcement that it will publish hundreds of data sets that can be shared and reused by the public about the performance of public services. In related news, the United States’ Sunlight Foundation has have released a set of guidelines for such government-mandated open data policies.
Government announcement | Sunlight Foundation Guidelines

US: Federal judge deals blow to patent wranglers
Judge Richard Posner has thrown out a case in which Apple and Google had accused each other of infringing software patents contained in their mobile phone technologies. Writing about the decision in the Guardian, technology columnist John Naughton calls the move “striking a blow for common sense in what [has] become a madhouse”.
Report | Naughton

“Declaration of Internet Freedom” launched
The Register reports on the launch of the “Declaration of Internet Freedom”, a short statement of principles aimed at preserving a free and open internet, which has been launched by a group of organizations and individuals to time with the anniversary this week of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776: “So far, its main goal seems to be to open a public dialogue on the issues.”
Report | Declaration

World Bank wins SPARC innovator award
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) have named the World Bank a “SPARC Innovator” in recognition of the institution’s commitment to Open Access, most recently demonstrated in a new Open Access policy covering all its research outputs: “When an organization as large as the World Bank wholeheartedly embraces openness, many hope the impact will not just be a ripple but a wave”.

Seeing Like a Geek
In this essay for Crooked Timber, open data skeptic Tom Slee warns that the rise of open data will trigger a concurrent rise in the market for complementary data services, a market that will be characterized by “a few, big firms, each with significant market power”. The piece forms part of a series of essays on open data being published by Crooked Timber in the coming weeks.
Slee | Series

3D printing and social change
This paper for First Monday by Matt Ratto and Robert Ree charts the history of 3D printing, looking at its position in the industrial process as well as in hacker subculture, and argues that more sustained attention should be paid to the ways in which 3D printing is entering into creative environments.

Creative Commons licensing in the world of philanthropy
Andrew Blanco blogs about his project to produce best practice guidelines for grant-makers wishing to encourage their grantees to use Creative Commons licenses.

Reports from the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2012
The Global Voices Summit, which was held in Nairobi, Kenya this week, brought together bloggers, activists and technologists from around the world to take part in conversations and workshops about the rise of online citizen media. Reports and videos from the summit have been collected on its blog.

EU: Final committee joins chorus recommending rejection of ACTA; full vote next week
IPWatch reports that the EU Committee on International Trade has recommended that members of the European Parliament (MEPs) reject the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) when they vote on the issue in next week’s plenary session. The committee vote represents a key victory for citizens, who have been contacting their elected representatives en masse to express their concerns that ACTA – a treaty negotiated in secret, which introduces intellectual property enforcement measures that go beyond norms established by the World Trade Organization – threatens fundamental rights like free expression, privacy, and the right to due process. La Quadrature du Net, who have spearheaded the campaign against ACTA, urges citizens to maintain pressure on their MEPs ahead of next week’s plenary vote. European Digital Rights (EDRi) publishes a translation of an interview with pro-ACTA MEP Marielle Gallo, in which she characterizes the upswell of public protest against the treaty as “a soft form of terrorism”.
IPWatch | La Quadrature du Net | EDRi

Google launches endangered languages project
Ars Technica reports on the launch of new website designed for people to find and share information about endangered languages. The project, developed by Google in partnership with the Alliance for Language Diversity, aims to track and document the over 3,000 endangered languages that may well be extinct by the turn of the century.
Report | Website

UK: Regulator moves forward with “three strikes” plan
IPWatch reports that the UK telecommunications regulator OfCom has published a draft code requiring internet service providers to notify customers suspected of using their accounts to infringe copyright, and to cooperate with copyright owners in order to allow them to focus legal action on the most persistent infringers.

UNESCO releases declaration on Open Educational Resources
Last week the UNESCO OER Congress in Paris adopted the Paris Declaration on Open Educational Resources (OER), which encourages public access to publicly funded educational materials.

UK: Report on academic publishing does not go far enough
The UK research community have offered a cautious welcome to last week’s publication of the Finch report, an independent report into scholarly publishing commissioned by the UK government, praising its broad support of public access to publicly-funded research, but expressing disappointment its recommendations did not go further. Cameron Neylon of the Science and Technology Facilities Council calls it “maddeningly vague” on key issues like the role of digital repositories, while scientist and blogger Stephen Curry highlights the various concessions the report makes to traditional academic publishers and concludes that it is the result of a committee “wily enough to read the runes and push just hard enough at a door that is opening”.
Report | Neylon | Curry

The four pillars of security in grant-making
Elizabeth Eagen shares the knowledge she has gained from her work protecting human rights organizations from physical – and digital – security threats, and argues that grant-makers need to take a central role in ensuring the security of the organizations they support.

Should machines have a constitutional right to free speech?
Tim Wu argues against classifying the computer algorithms behind such things as Google search results, Microsoft spellchecks and Amazon book recommendations as “speech”, warning that assigning such algorithms constitutional protections will limit antitrust regulator’s abilities to protect consumers from future monopolistic practices.

A head-scratching look at online privacy and the law
TechPresident uses the recent hearing in the US Congress examining issues of online privacy to explore current thinking around the issue in the United States: “In a world where people share what they had for breakfast on Twitter… one might ask whether such a thing as a ‘reasonable’ expectation of privacy still exists”.

The insidious power of “brand content”
Using examples from France, Frédéric Filloux details for Monday Note how big companies such as the bank BNP-Paribas are becoming adept at producing quality content that mimics traditional editorial content, warning of the risk this trend poses to public trust.

Syllabus: NSA “Center of Academic Excellence” in Cyber Operations
Published on the website of the US National Security Agency (NSA), this syllabus outlines the mandatory and optional program content required from American universities wishing to qualify as “Centers of Academic Excellence” (CAEs) in cyber operations, with modules including “Reverse Engineering” and “Cyber Operations Planning”. According to the NSA website, four universities currently qualify as CAEs. The goal of the NSA CAE program is “broadening the pipeline of skilled workers capable of supporting a cyber-secure nation”.
Syllabus | CAEs

Ethiopia: Government bans VoIP, while deep packet inspection of all internet traffic begins
TechCrunch reports that the government of Ethiopia has criminalised the use of Voice Over IP (VoIP) services such as Skype and Google Talk. The law, passed last month, carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. Meanwhile, the TOR blog reports that the sole telecommunications provider in the country, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, has begun to deploy deep packet inspection of all internet traffic.
Techcrunch | TOR blog

Ukraine: Interior minister wants to “adjust” access to the internet
Ukraine’s interior minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko has spoken of his desire to “adjust” access to information online, following revelations that suspects in April’s bombing in Dnipropetrovsk found out how to make the bombs from sources on the internet.

South Africa: Crunch time for DNA database
The Forensic Genetics Policy Initiative reports on developments towards a proposed new law that would allow for the expansion of South Africa’s forensic DNA database.

Europe: New report shows little access to company data
OpenCorporates.com has released a new report into the availability of company data across EU member states. The reports found that levels of access to basic company information were relatively poor, and, moreover, that several EU directives and initiatives “positively hinder access to company data”.

UNCTAD report sees sustainable African growth in IP flexibilities
IP Watch reports on findings published by the United Nations trade and development agency (UNCTAD) in their Economic Development in Africa report for 2012 “that the region’s sustainable future depends on using flexibilities in intellectual property rights”.

Facebook: 0.038% of users vote on data use policy change
Ars Technica reports on the poor turnout for the user vote on Facebook’s new data privacy policy earlier this month. The low turnout means that the vote will not be binding. The report observes that “Facebook made no material effort to make users aware of the vote beyond posting to its Site Governance page”.

Digital freedoms in international law
This new report authored by Ian Brown and Douwe Korff for the Global Network Initiative makes recommendations for how governments, companies, and other stakeholders can collaborate to protect rights to freedom of expression and privacy online.

You, for sale
The New York Times investigates the “quiet giant” of consumer data mining, the Acxiom Corporation: “Few consumers have ever heard of Acxiom. But analysts say it has amassed the world’s largest commercial database on consumers… Its database now contains information about 500 million active consumers worldwide, with about 1,500 data points per person — and it wants to know much, much more.”

An Eye without an “I”
Ross Andersen charts the rise of automated surveillance and underlines the ethical questions that surround it.

Filesharing and the Greek Crisis
This guest post on the Media Piracy in Emerging Economies blog from Dr. Petros Petridis of Panteio University in Athens details his research into the political and cultural factors at play in Greek filesharing practices, arguing that “P2P networks have played a part in the growth of an alternative public sphere”.

All songs considered
This well-written but one-sided and occasionally inflammatory piece is a quality example of the emotions and arguments that are often levelled at those who campaign against repressive copyright enforcement proposals like ACTA, SOPA and PIPA. The post has attracted a lot of attention online, and it appears that its authors are posting comments mostly by readers who support their views.

OER and education policy in Poland
This post on the Creative Commons blog gives details of Poland’s new “Digital School” education program, which includes the development of Open Education Resources as a central strategy.

The problems with algorithms: User-generated censorship and non-objective filters
Chris Peterson sets out the case that, as web platforms have deployed tools that incorporate “social” feedback into quality assurance algorithms, users have begun to strategically repurpose these tools in order to silence speech they don’t like. Meanwhile, Jonathan Stray outlines the challenges that face news organisations trying to design meaningful filters in the age of information abundance.
Peterson | Stray

Book: Open access
Peter Suber’s new book for MIT Press, “Open Access” is “a concise introduction to the basics of open access, describing what it is (and isn’t) and showing that it is easy, fast, inexpensive, legal, and beneficial”.

Audio: The art and science of working together
John Palfrey and Urs Gasser discuss the ideas in their new book “Interop: The Promise and Perils of Highly Interconnected Systems” in this Radio Berkman podcast.

UK: Websites to gain libel immunity in exchange for revealing user identities
The BBC reports on new proposals put forward by the UK government that would grant website operators immunity from prosecution if they reveal the identities of users accused of posting defamatory comments. The proposals are part of wider reforms to the UK’s notorious libel laws. Campaigners are worried the measures threaten people’s privacy and will have a chilling effect on free expression.

India: Copyright amendments “bad but could have been much worse”
The Business Standard reports on amendments to India’s copyright law that provide for new rights for disabled people such as the visually impaired to access copyrighted works. Other provisions provide cause for concern.

Tajikistan: leading independent news website blocked
KyivPost reports that internet service providers in Tajikistan have been required by the state Telecommunications agency to block access to the country’s leading local independent news source, Asia-Plus.

UK: Internet surveillance proposals published
The text of a draft law that would mandate draconian levels of internet surveillance in the UK was published this week, the BBC reports. The proposals face significant political opposition.

ITU: Internet Governance Project release analysis of leaked documents
The Internet Governance Project blog publishes an analysis of proposed amendments to the International Telecommunication Regulations, which were leaked last week. The Regulations are an important international treaty governing global telecommunications, which activists fear will be redrafted at December’s meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in order to grant governments greater control of the internet. The analysis concludes that the most worrying of the new proposals would attempt to change international economic arrangements around internet connectivity in a way that “could be damaging to the internet’s status as a relatively open platform for new services”.

New “Cyber Stewards” programme announced
The Canada Centre for Global Security Studies and Citizen Lab have announced a new research programme to support cybersecurity experts in the global South, and are inviting candidates from Central America, the Caribbean, South America, sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Asia to submit project proposals “to articulate a vision of cyber security in which rights and openness are protected”.

Journal offers flat fee for “all you can publish”
Nature reports on the launch of a new open access science-publishing venture, “PeerJ”, which charges a one-off fee for a lifetime “membership” allowing them to publish peer-reviewed research papers without charge. The model was conceived by PLoS ONE’s Peter Binfield and Mendeley’s Jason Hoyt, and is being funded by O’Reilly Alpha­TechVentures.

Keep the library open after graduation
The Washington Post celebrate the success of the 25,000-strong petition to the Obama administration (promoted by the Right to Research Coalition and others) to grant public access to publicly-funded research with this editorial calling for learning to be allowed to flourish beyond the walls of the institution: “Although the bulk of published research is publicly funded, the journals that publish such crucial resources are often prohibitively expensive”. The Hill covers the escalating battle for publicly-funded research in Washington.
WaPost | The Hill

A Downward Spiral for Freedom of Expression in Ethiopia
Katrina Kaiser of the Electronic Frontier Foundation casts the spotlight on increasing online repression in Ethiopia: “While Ethiopian Internet penetration is only about 1%, there is still a vibrant, tightly-knit community of bloggers whose websites, blogs, and Facebook pages have been blocked by the government.”

Creating room on radio spectrum
This New York Times feature outlines innovative responses to spectrum scarcity, which focuses on promoting efficiency.

Obama’s data advantage
Politico carry a long feature outlining the scale of the Obama campaign’s 2012 digital operation, and how it may give them the advantage come election time.

Book review: Tubes
Evgeny Morozov reviews “Tubes”, Andrew Blum’s new book about the physical realities of the internet, told in the style of a travelogue.