William Heath’s blog

38 Degrees did a good job of marshalling opposition to the Digital Economy (”record industry wants a man waving a red flag in front of the Internet”) Bill/Act which my former near neighbour Richard Mollett and others whose talents should be put to better use lobbied for so hard. But now I’m unsubscribing from 38 degrees, and here’s why:

I valued your DEAct campaign but you seem to have lost your way. You lapse into anti-Tory “stand up and fight the cuts” rhetoric which alienates me. Directing mass campaigns is a big responsibility. Fine if you focus on clear-cut issues of justice and human rights. Not fine if you resist change with what appears to be a partisan reflex.

I shd have added “and appear to offer no constructive alternative”. Interested to know what others feel.

Radio4 Today is a programme I find it hard to listen to because of all the posturing and trenchant interrupting. For listening, I prefer programmes that practise measured self-expression and deep respectful listening: the Most Revd and Rt Hon Rowan “Beardie” Williams FRSL FBA is my ideal and favourite presenter.

But if the phone rings one evening and Sarah says “it’s Sarah from Radio4 Today” you just drop everything, have a sleepless night (hassled by a giant moth in my case), scribble endless notes, rise early and head on into the local studio on a tidal surge of coffee, don’t you?

Well, that’s what I did today, anyway, to mark the switching off at midday of the ill-conceived state database of 12m children ContactPoint. I sat in a cheerfully empty BBC Surrey studio in Guildford, discarded 90% of my notes and did the last four minutes of Today’s show today (starts 2hrs 56 mins in). There was no time to introduce my new Wagnerian word of the day Databankendämmerung – the twilight of the databases, or to practise a John Harvey-Jones “Troubleshooter” belly laugh which the present state of informatio logistics so richly deserves.

I just about introduced the new big ideas I’m now mainly working on (with Mydex and Ctrl-Shift, not that one would mention them on air) in time for John Humphreys to say “sounds intriguing…that’s all we’ve got time for…”

It was fun to get supportive Tweets while it was going on – cheers Twitterverse. I wish it could have carried on forever. Or at least for the 15 minutes Andy Warhol promised us all…

More over at IdealGov of what today’s cancellation means, why ContactPoint was a bad idea, and what happens next.

UPDATE: There’s a transcript over on the Mydex blog (because that was the capacity in which I did it). I want a “I was on R4 Today and John Humphreys didn’t interrupt me” badge.

Here’s a comment I tried and failed to post on a second-rate article on ZDNet, a normally half-decent group of trade publications. The article by David Gewirtz was support of calls for the aggressive prosecution of WIkileaks. Since their sign-in procedures were a pain I’ll just post it here.

If you are going to decide the right course of action in diplomatic/military/foreign affairs, as in any other walk of life, you have first to seek the truth.

Wikileaks performs an invaluable service. The main damage it does is to national and corporate self-delusion and spin. It’s an inconvenience and an irritation, of course. It exposes hypocrisy, which is uncomfortable. And it carries a great responsibility.

But it cant make sound judgements on 90,000 cases given the meagre the resources it has. It’s most unlikely to be hacking into US systems as some allege. It also looks as if the US gov has been inept in how it engages or fails to engage with Wikileaks.

Your argument here strikes me as shallow as well as, as you acknowledge, highly US-centric. I think Wikileaks is a good antidote: it helps us see things for what they really are, not for how governments and other powerful entities would have us see them.

Wikileaks brings a series of wake-up calls. Nothing needs a more resounding “reveille” than the complacent self-perception of a dominant US military establishment.

Update: here’s a much better article in Harpers magazine.

…and photos from Benjamin (thanks for the wifi!) and from Caalie (I loved our céilidh!) Paul’s photos are here. Christian’s set is here. Harry’s are here. Julian’s are here. It’s hard to find the right words for anything this morning but there are some terrific photographers in our midst. Thanks one and all!

Highlight of what may be my final Vann Fest, “el Gordo” 2010, with 280-odd people in the field to the south of my landady’s house, was a hot-air balloon tethered to a tree and two cars. Here’s a link to Karl’s photos (thanks Karl!)

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”:

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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 »