Chem4Word is Open Source!

I’m happy to report that the code for the “Chemistry Add-In for Word” (from the Chem4Word project) has been released under an Open Source license.

At the start of Chem4Word the agreement was that the non Word-specific bits of the project would be released OS, and that the rest of the add-in would be made freely available, but not OS. Even then, though, Microsoft (and especially Microsoft Research) had evidently started a remarkable reorientation with respect to Open Source licenses, and I’m proud that Chem4Word is one of the first fruits of that.

Congratulations to everyone involved in the programming of this great software (especially to Joe), and thanks to Alex Wade, Oscar Naim and Lee Dirks at Microsoft Research for pushing the opening of C4W forward.

An Ever-So-Slightly-Cynical Thought on Manifestos

I really like the Vote for Policies website. I wasn’t too surprised that when I took the survey I came out with a pretty good fit against the Green manifesto and the Conservative manifesto as well a better fit with the Lib Dems.

Evidently #iagreewithnick, but not all the time.

Chatting with a friend over the weekend, I mentioned the site, and she replied that she couldn’t be bothered: “They never do what they say anyway”. It’s a fair point, and it got me thinking about how you could add a healthy level of cynicism to a policy-based voting model, without giving up on it entirely. In my model, I assume that a political party, once elected, will implement about 30% of the manifesto items I like, and 100% of the manifesto items I dislike. Unless something either wonderful or dreadful happens, I don’t have time to code it up though. Any takers?

What do SE Cambs parliamentary candidates think about the DE Bill?

Warning: this is a longish post. If you care about the DE Act it will probably be interesting. If you kind-of care about the DE Act, and live in SE Cambs, you might want to skip to the summary.

I’ve been agitated about the Digital Economy Bill. I e-mailed my MP (James Paice, Con) a few of weeks ago asking him to vote against it going into the pre-election wash-up, and again a day before the bill went through, asking him whether he went to hear the second reading and asking him to vote against the bill at the 3rd. He hadn’t turned up for either reading, and didn’t vote either way. He did reply to my e-mail (after the bill passed) though: –

Dear Mr Downing,
Thank you for your further email about the Digital Economy Bill which has now become law. My Party took the decision to seek to remove those clauses of the Bill that we did not support or feel received proper legislative scrutiny, while supporting the Bill as a whole. Rejecting the Bill would have been an unacceptable set-back for the important measures it contains.
You may still be concerned about Clause 18 which attempts to tackle online copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. I want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual property framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses and so I support the efforts of the Bill to do this.
The measures in the Bill aimed at tackling online copyright infringement received robust scrutiny in the House of Lords. My Party was concerned about the lack of parliamentary oversight of the original clauses and as such the Bill now has a super-affirmative resolution in it. This means Parliament will debate any order that the Secretary of State lays that would allow people to be disconnected. These measures can also not be introduced for 12 months after the Bill becomes law. This means that we are by no means rushing in to these decisions and that the next Parliament will be able to consider them beforehand.
The measures in the Bill designed to tackle illegal peer to peer file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not, as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up to another ISP immediately without penalty.
While I have no doubt that these measures could have been improved if the Government had allocated time for this Bill to be debated in Committee, blocking these measures in their entirety would have risked hundreds of thousands of jobs in the TV, film, music and sports industries and was therefore not something we were willing to do.
Yours sincerely,

James Paice MP

Well, a partyperson’s entitled to their views. I’m really not entirely sure what to read into this and would welcome any explanation or expansion. It seems to me that it doesn’t answer why we need a due process outside the courts. It also seems protectionist, which I’m not keen on, and it implicitly includes the BPI in a list that starts with “innovators”, which isn’t somewhere I’d put them. I’m also mystified by this ability of the disconnected to immediately reconnect with a different provider. Won’t that will just lead to more customer churn and higher ISP charges for everyone? I’m also unconvinced that the creative industry, which employs an estimated 1M people, is in imminent danger of >10% contraction without the DE Act (if it is, in fact, in any danger at all).

So that’s the Tory view, what about the rest?

Since we in the UK have a rare opportunity to feign democracy next month, and this issue is an important one to me, I thought I’d do a bit of inverse canvassing, and find out what all of the potential election candidates for SE Cambs thought of the DE bill. I’m publishing it here because it’s quite probably an important issue for others too (a large proportion of the “silicon fen” workers live and vote in SE Cambs).

I sent:

Dear Mr [],
As a voter in SE Cambs, I’m keen to know your stance on the recently passed Digital Economy Bill. Will the bill, and / or IP reform feature in your election manifesto?
Best regards,
jim

Not like for like with my interaction with Mr Paice, I grant you, but I feel it fairly reflects the contrast between the unelecteds’ capacity to make vague promises and the elected’s capacity to disappoint, which is what makes elections so much fun. The responses (in order of my receiving them): –

David (on behalf of Daniel Bell) Christian Peoples Alliance

Dear Jim

From our website you will see that the CPA favours new responsibilities being placed on ISPs over what they ‘allow’ as traffic to peoples’ homes.

Were there are issues you wanted addressed?

Thanks

David
CPA Team

Went to check their website, found stuff about making ISPs responsible for censorship of ‘nasty’ content (e.g. suicide sites) and paedophiles grooming children (in the sense of “stopping”, not “ensuring”…). Not much about copyright materials. Not encouraging, and worth discussing at another time, but let’s stick to our theme. I didn’t particularly want to draw out attitudes to individual issues – I’d really like a representative in parliament who knows what’s important without me having to write to them every verse end. I thought I’d cut the chap some slack though, since the reply had been so prompt.

> From our website you will see that the CPA favours new responsibilities being placed on ISPs over what they ‘allow’ as traffic to peoples’ homes.

Could you send me a link? I can’t find anything that particularly pertains to copyright materials, which is what the contentious parts of the DE bill cover.

> Were there are issues you wanted addressed?

I don’t think so – I’m particularly concerned that the DE bill erodes civil liberties by moving the remedy for a particular civil crime (copyright violation) out of existing process (the courts) and into the hands of some government body. I’m also concerned that the bill represents a protectionist measure and will consequently repress innovation. Furthermore, clause 17 allows the home secretary to extend the scope of bill without due process – hardly democratic!

Came the reply:

Jim

To do with blocking worst aspects of pornography. But what you say about the illiberal measures and the assumption of guilt until the consumer proves innocence are ones we share. We’ll need to look closer. Thanks for pointing this out.

Regards

David

… which is about what I expected.

Jonathan Chatfield, Liberal Democrats

Jim,

Thank you for your email on the Digital Economy Bill.

I believe the Liberal Democrats have the most up-to-date and liberal policy on freedom, creativity and the internet of any of the parties (see our Spring conference emergency motion). That led to our vocal opposition to the web-blocking provisions of the Bill and our MPs voting against the whole Bill at 3rd reading.

Our party’s position is not 100% against everything in the Bill, but we have more concerns than the other parties, and our MPs were the only ones whipped against the Bill at 3rd reading. All the other parties voted for the Bill (even if a few of their rebels did not) and the Lib Dems voted against the Bill.

In my view it is important thing to get as many Lib Dem MPs as possible in the next Parliament because they are web-users’ best safeguard against Labour introducing arbitrary disconnection powers. We are also the only party committed to reforming the voting system and the parliamentary process so that Labour’s railroading of this Bill can never happen again.

With best wishes,
Jonathan

Again, pretty much what I expected.

John Cowan, Labour

Dear Jim,

Thank you for your email.

Many of the measures of the Digital Economy Bill I welcome most of the measures but am concerned that the penalities against file sharers are a heavy handed.

John Cowan

Heavy-handed? This government? Surely some mistake?

Andy Monk, UKIP

I strongly believe that the Bill should not have been rushed through Parliament during the wash up period before Parliamemnt dissolves. There should have been a proper detailed debate about the bill’s consequences on the British public. Piracy is obviously a crime but the bill goes far further than just trying to address this issue, important though it is.

It is another example of central government bowing to the ever more poweful lobbying of the music/film industry. I don’t believe that the british public will realise that they will be personally responsible for protecting their home computer from hackers etc and can have their web access cutoff. It is a very draconian bill that needs much wider media coverage to address the consequences of the bill.

I believe that only around 5% of MP’s were present at its second reading. That is hardly democracy. If I had been an MP at the time I would have ensured wider press coverage and sought to delay the bill so that it could have been properly debated in a democratic way.

Regards

Andy Monk

The rest

I received no reply from the Green PPC. Since I sent these e-mails I’ve become aware of an independent candidate who I’ll e-mail similarly in due course. I’ll update this post as and when any more info arrives.

In summary

Seems to me that if you want to use your vote for someone who will stand against the bits of the DE bill that have resulted from a mixture of lobbying and total technical ignorance, you should vote for Jonathan Chatfield (Liberal) or Andy Monk (UKIP).