Notes:

This bill makes amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1861)  that was amended in 2008, and which is mentioned in the artwork Operation Privacy Invasion. There has been critique of these laws stating that sit in a grey area in terms of the Fourth Amendment. Data that sits on a server that is technically owned by another company is used to nullify privacy protections protected by law. It seems that log files from the phone company shouldn’t be kept, and this could be part of  privacy services for communication, that may or may not already exist. OTR messaging seems like a good solution for restoring our privacy.

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Notes:

Many patent reform proposals to ban software patents include keeping patents for software that is non-general purpose. This German Bundestag proposal calls upon the German government to keep patents for computer programs that serve as a replaceable equivalent for a mechanical or electro-mechanical component. The New Zealand proposal is similar in that it excludes software as an invention in terms of patent law except when the software is deeply connected with non-general purpose hardware.

Operating systems that do less and are more focused on groupings of tasks could be useful for reducing modal errors from switching contexts. These types of innovations would thrive without software patents prohibiting the diversity of distribution. This would enable a wave of human focused computer interfaces. As computing devices become smaller and more affordable it becomes reasonable to have multiple devices dedicated to different tasks. Computer security guides recommend only to run one service for a server so that if the system is compromised other services are not affected. I believe there are similar benefits for a human-computer user interface that would enable greater freedom for creativity.

Both the German and New Zealand proposals to ban software patents use examples of a washing machine as non-general purpose hardware; software used to operate the wash cycles is deeply connected with the hardware and thus would still be considered a patentable invention. The patents around video codecs I believe serve another good example. Mozilla developers have pointed out that the H.264 video decoding can be implement in hardware on mobile devices for increased performance, and it can also be implemented in software. A ban on software patents wouldn’t prevent the patents of H.264, it would only ban the software implementation of the patents of H.264. I believe that the laws for copyright and patents should distinguish infringement based upon hardware and software distribution.

Still after more that twenty years of personal computing a significant proportion of people do not understand the importance of everyone being able to publish an operating system, even if a small portion of society uses that freedom, we all benefit. I ask you, will patents on software ever end, or will each revision of an operating system implement new patents that extend the length of time of expiration another 20 years, and so on indefinitely?

This bill passed the House with 96% consensus on April 16th, it authorizes the National Science Foundation $119 million to award grants for each of the following three years of 2014, 2015, and 2016 as defined in the Cyber Security Research and Development Act. It also expands areas for research for grants to include “identity management”.

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Notes:

This bill became public law in 2002, 15 U.S.C 7403, and permitted the director of National Science Foundation to award $60,000,000 (in 2007) worth of grants for basic research on innovative approaches to the structure of computer and network hardware and software that are aimed at enhancing computer security.

Sec 4. (a)(1)(I) includes “piracy” and “intellectual property” could be clarified to mean detecting and correcting for copyright misattribution and other abuses, as would still be required for works licensed under the terms of a free culture license. Software could also be useful to easily license other types of copyrighted works for commercial or derivative use.

The bill permits the director of the National Science Foundation to award $20,000,000 (in 2007) worth of grants to institutions and higher education to improve programs in computer and network security. And $1,250,000 (in 2007) for grants under the Scienfific and Advanced Technology Act of 1992.

The bill also added grants for institutions to establish traineeship programs for graduate students to use $25,000 per year for a trainee on tuition.

Sec 12 of the bill asks the director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology to enter into an arrangement with the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study of the vulnerabilities of the Nation’s network infrastructure and make recommendations for appropriate improvements.

Sec 17 requires there to be a report to make sure that the grants are being awarded.

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Notes:

This bill was introduced on May 15th to make it more difficult to use shell companies to litigate with patents. This bill has the Director of the PTO prescribe by regulation the form and manner in which ownership disclosures are to be made, this can include the ‘ultimate parent entity’ that is not controlled by any other entity.

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Notes:

This bill passed the House with complete concensus on May 14th, and affirms that it is the policy of the United States to preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet, and includes mostly Congressional findings.

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Notes:

This bill passed the House on February 13th, 2013 with complete concensus. It finds that only 3% of the 80,000 dams in the United States generate electricity, and in section 6 has the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission investigate the feasibility of the issuance of a license for hydropower development at nonpowered dams and closed loop pumped storage projects in a 2-year period.

Downloads:

Full Text (PDF) | All Formats (ZIP) | Source at GPO

Source: Northern Imagination

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Notes:

These is great to see, this could be woven into as a part of a distribution, that would go through these as a part of the installation or post-installation process in a graphic user interface for personal use. Furthermore to go to the next step of configuring secure email with PGP.

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Notes:

Patent law has been around 61 years of the total of 237 years since the founding of the United States, patent law hasn’t been around longer than it has, and should be continously questioned as it likely came into law to meet industrial needs that are now harmful when applied to software.

In section §102 (a) it describes that a patent can be granted unless the invention is “in a printed publication” and does not recognize legitimacy of publication on the Internet. The invention of software is best described in well commented source code that is well documented and would not likely be best suited to be published “in a printed publication”.

Prior art seems to need to be published “more than one year prior” as defined in section §102 (b) to be able to prevent a patent from being granted, this seems to be too long, and does not give enough validity to inventions declared publically without a patent application.

Patent laws makes an assumption that the gender of the inventor is male in section §102 (c) and (f) and should be changed to be without gender.

Section §161 describes patents for plants, and are limited to asexual reproduction. With access to the variety, it could be possible to create a nearly identical variation and not be limited by the patent. Similar to software patents, the “source code” and a description of how to create the invention, does not appear to be included. Leading quite possibly to Non Disclosure Agreements becoming a part of agriculture work to prevent the variety from “branching” with limited access to “genetic code”. I question the intent of the law to benefit the public.

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Notes:

This bill clarifies that during an emergency and sudden increase in demand for electricity a temporary connection or exchange of facilities shall not be restricted by any Federal, State, or local environmental law or regulation.

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Notes:

This bill provides 30% of the investment in tax credit for wind power located in the inland navigable waters of the United States, including the Great Lakes, or in the coastal waters of the United States, including the territorial seas of the United States, the exclusive economic zone of United States, and the outer Continental Shelf of the United States.

We are often only given one option for electric power, leaving one company in control in an area, total dominance. While it’s possible to move to different areas to have options, this sort of power control can be insecure is there is a single-point-of-failure. Rural areas are more affected because of insecure power lines that are prone to failure because of weather. If electricity isn’t reliable, any concerns about the monopoloy of software are moot as an operating system does nothing without electricity. All bills that strengthen our diversity, reliability and security of power I see will be important towards the advancement of the state-of-the-art of software and leading to less monopoloy power structure in software as well.

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Notes:

Existing U.S. law exempts medical practitioners from patent infringement and could be model legislation to except software developers from patent infringement, or to exempt software from being considered an infringement of a patent, so long as it wasn’t implemented in hardware.

See Title 35 § 287 (c) Download Full Text (PDF)

Notes:

This bill changes New Zealand Patents Bill to exclude patents for computer programs that are harmful to innovation. It states that if the novel aspect of an invention is the program itself it is not an invention in regards to the Act. However, if software is deeply connected with non-general purpose hardware, they use a washing machine as an example, then it can still be patented.

Download Full Text of SOP 120 & 237 | Source | Parliament

This bill gives public access to electronic court documents at no fee. The PACER website currently requires a physical mailing address to be able to obtain a user account at the website. This bill would, more-or-less, put into law the activity of RECAP and documents archived at the Internet Archive.

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Notes:

This 2012 bill would require a warrent for law enforcement to obtain the location of a mobile device, with the exception of being able to respond to the user’s call for emergency services, with the consent of the owner or user of the electronic device, or in an an emergency envolving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to the owner or user. Note: You can make an emergency call from a charged phone, without a plan, though I have not tried this for myself.

Like the security problems with the HTTP protocol that allow for network sniffing, the design of the mobile phone network is flawed in that the location of every device must be known for the system to function. The location privacy could be a part of the security of the communications system.

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Notes:

California in 2003 has previously recognized the importance of providing Californians with transparency about how their personal information has been shared by businesses by enacting Section 1798.83 of Civil Code into Law. It requires a business to disclose whom it has a relationship with when disclosing information to 3rd parties, upon customer request.

In 2003 the law declared:

“For free market forces to have a role in shaping the privacy practices of California businesses and for ‘opt-in’ and ‘opt-out’ remedies to be effective, Californians must be more than vaguely informed that a business might share personal information with third parties. Consumers must, for these reasons and pursuant to Section 1 of Article 1 of the California Constitution, be better informed about what kinds of personal information are purchased by businesses for direct marketing purposes. With these specifics, consumers can knowledgeably choose to opt-in or opt-out or choose among businesses that disclose information to third parties for direct marketing purposes on the basis of how protective the business is of consumers’ privacy.”

This bill changes to include a copy of that information shared upon customer request and names and contact information for all 3rd parties. Careful consideration to identity would need to be taken so that this information couldn’t be fraudulently obtained.

Many companies are now using software to organize personal information to share with 3rd parties, and in addition to what information is being shared, we should be able to know how it’s being shared abstractly. This could be done by being able to read the software source code used to search massive records of personal information. Furthermore, access to source code, is improtant for a free market, so that options exist within a software technology. If we can know how are information is being used in great detail, yet are unable to have an option otherwise, it further emphasises that we’re not free.

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Notes:

This bill aims to make it more expensive for non-practicising parties to file egregious lawsuits by making it more expensive to lose as a plaintiff, and thus would file only ones that they are confident to win. This seems that it could also have benefitial and chilling effect to other types prosecution and uses of the legal system in uncivilized ways.

This bill unfortunately would not make illigitmate all patents surrounding the H.264 video codec, so that web developers would be free to include video on websites and not break cooperation with proprietary browsers. In the meanwhile the best solution to making illigitmate the patents for H.264 is to use Theora, VP8 or VP9.

It would be great to have it a requirement for video be in Theora, VP8 or VP9 for goverment video of congress. Then government agencies would see first hand the unnessary repeated work because of computational idea patents, and would wish to solve the conflict too. Could by apropos with the recent Executive Order by President Obama on Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.

As a web developer for artists in Los Angeles, video is a requirement for websites now, and this conflict between codecs is chilling to the cooperation between hackers and artists.

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Notes:

This bill makes it a requirement for applications to require consent from users before collecting personal information, and requires developers to delete personal data upon request.

The language about securing information from a security breach is vague, “reasonable and appropriate” could be more defined with code review and certification for best practices for encrypting personal data.

I’m concerned that if this bill isn’t coupled with having the freedom to modify and have access to the source code of software this could lead to no better privacy than before as users could be coerced into consenting, which is mostly already the situation. There would be very little options as an alternative with provider “lock-in”, and no means to escape. Furthermore there would be no means to be able-to verify how information is being used if there isn’t a way to inspect source code.

Download Full Text of the Application Privacy, Protection and Security Act of 2013 | Press Release

Notes:

This bill looks to legalize software to circumvent Digital Restrictions Management, so long as the purpose isn’t to violate copyright. While the bill doesn’t go so far as to legalize non-commercial and non-derivative sharing of copyrighted works, for personal use, it looks to be a step in that direction. I would say it would be better to be more clear and completely legalize sharing works over computer networks. It would be great to add to this bill to legalize backwards engineering the software of a device that is owned, to be able to switch providers of software, and not only mobile phone providers.

Download Full Text (PDF) / Unlocking Technology Act | Press Release

Join the Palo Alto Art Center and thousands of Makers from around the Bay Area for a weekend of innovation, inspiration, and fun! Showcasing our innovative studio art programs for adults and children, the Palo Alto Art Center will present a printmaking project that mixes technology with traditional media. Participants will create prints on paper using old computer parts. The project uses white, silver, and gold ink on black paper so that the lines and shapes of the computer parts stand out, casting them in a new light.

Source: Palo Alto Art Center Mailing List and Old Computers Make New Art

Source: Adbusters editor Micah White interviewed at Q. I respect a lot of the work of Micah and Adbusters and is uplifting to hear a voice of passion over the flood of statistics on the web…

Via: Hack a Day

Source: kopimistsamfundet.ca