William Heath’s blog

Here we are at the first ORGCon. Prof Jimmy Boyle (@thepublicdomain) is a legend: sharp, really funny and a great motivator. Can’t wait for @tom_watson to get him in front of the DCMS Select Cttee.

Many mentions of my near neighbour the BPI lobbyist Richard Mollett (whose undoubted talents we’d all love to see put to better use) and of my local MP the DCMS Minister. We all want to see @jeremy_hunt come out for radical and effective copyright reform to make it fit for the digital age. He’s not scared, for better or worse, to cut the Arts Council down to size. Let him be fearless and energetic in making copyright work for everyone, including artists and consumers of culture, in the digital age.

Interesting factoid for me: until 1978 (c) term in the US was 28 years, renewable for another 28. Yet only 15% of writers chose to renew the term. It just wasn’t worth it. So 85% of works went into the public domain after just 28 years, and the rest 28 years later. Jimmy Boyle also made the point that we could lobby for an absurd new (c) law:

that big artists born in odd years henceforth get double royalties and big artists born in even years get triple royalties, and everything else goes straight into the public domain

This plainly unjust and daft suggestion would be a great deal better than what we have to today with copyright and #DEAct, let alone what we may get with #ACTA.

Dear Jeremy Hunt MP, Minister for culture media and sport: your country needs your help on this!

Here are meanwhile below some notes for what I [del "may say" insert "just said"] in the 1730 session on “the future of privacy”:

Read the rest of this entry »

Just what every family holiday needs:

Here’s my letter to my GP after two annoying leaflets appeared in the post:

NHS Summary Care record

Dear Dr W.

I’ve just had two leaflets from DoH about “Care record guarantee” and “Your health information”.

I said to you when you first took me on a a patient I do not consent to my health record, or indeed any of my personal data, being uploaded to a central NHS system. My work with computer scientists and lawyers leaves me in no doubt this is an ill-conceived project doomed to security breaches. I also understand that making my personal data in this way accessible to people who have no direct role in my care is under applicable European law illegal without my explicit and informed consent.

For the avoidance of any doubt: I do not give my consent. Nor does my partner give consent for the uploading of her pesonal data, and we do not give consent for the uploading of our daughter’spersonal data.

We regard our health records as safe in our GPs hands, and shared in confidence with you and beyond that only with NHS medical staff directly concerned with our care.

We look forward to making best possible use of electronic patient records when the NHS supports properly designed patient-centric records.

I’d be grateful if you could confirm again that our records have not been and wont be uploaded.

Once you’re on one US mail list it’s impossible to get off; the mail just replicates. I once signed something for the Obama campaign, and now I get all sortf of mail from liberal US causes. The latest is from teh David Plouff maillist gathering support for criticising the Republican who appeared to say sorry to BP.

I’m a big Obama fan, a BP shareholder, but above all a lover of New Orleans music and soft-shelled crab. So I have to get this off my chest.

This accident is a disaster.

But please let’s not be hypocrites. While we still use oil for heating or transport we can hardly demonise those who do the difficult and dangerous job of extracting it. Plainly some or several things have gone badly wrong here, to disastrous effect for many people but in law let’s hold people innocent until proven guilty. I feel we’re piling blame on to one man while we still dont know how to stop this thing or what really happened.

Unlike those responsible for previous corporate disasters in Bhopal and the Niger delta BP has at least said it will take responsibility and make substantial payments fast. Plouff and US politicians: you should acknowledge this.

If this man Hayward is trying to lead the effort to stop further damage and make what amends are possible perhaps it would help if you could all take your foot off his throat. He may or may not end up in jail; he’s not having an easy time of it; he may not always have the most fortunate turn of phrase. But he has an important job to do. Opportunistic political grandstanding won’t stop the flow or undo any damage; let’s not tolerate it.

(That said my partner says I’m a jerk and big oil is evil.)

Dave Birch asked me to talk in a panel about “Identity and the Consumer” at the Digital Identity summit on 9 June. I kicked off with yet another introduction to buyer-centric commerce, customer-managed relationships or vendor-relationship management (VRM)… Read the rest of this entry »

Attention conservation notice: this is a write-up I said I’d do for an informal Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) session on “engaging with the political process” today.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’d never been to San Francisco and had one free evening. What better way to spend it than at an EFF benefit with author Cory Doctorow, followed by Thai seafood dinner with Kevin Marks and EFF co-founder Bart Nagel? Wish I’d been less tired and more coherent: there was lots I wanted to say to Bart…

Thanks for the photos Alex!

Amnesty says the FT refuses to carry this ad, which reflects badly in a small way on the FT, and in a very big way on Shell:

Let’s get the election out of the way so we can get on with the Four Lions launch. I’ll be at the Barbican this Friday, and in York Saturday.

This felt like a great way to spend a Friday night, in a local place I didn’t know, among many people I didn’t know (and hald a dozen I did) all trying to work out for whom to vote at the next election. Read the rest of this entry »