Information doesn't want to be free

Back to work, with only a touch of jet lag. Spent the morning in interviews using an interesting interactive panel discussion between the candidates and stakeholders. Then this afternoon we had a visitor from another University interested in our ideas on organisational change. Always a pleasure talking to visitors, and we learn a lot from each other. Also had the opportunity to show him our Helpdesk operates, which of course he was very impressed with, and around the Information Commons.

This evening I went to a meeting of the Open Rights Group, an organisation set up to protect and promote our rights in this digital age. We were privileged to hear Cory Doctorow, a founder member of ORG and all round good internet guy and sci-fi writer, talk to us about "Information doesn't want to be Free". He covered many topics including  Digital Rights Management, monitoring, copyright and how important free and universal access to the internet is. Always interesting and entertaining, sometimes scary.

He suggested that everything we do today involves the internet. Everything we do in the future will require the internet. It is the nervous system of the 21st century. He explained how DRM does not stop people making copies of work (as he put it, most DRM systems can be broken by a bored Norwegian teenager in an afternoon), but they do make it very difficult to get your content back from a publisher as you lose all negotiating rights. Interesting case in the news at the moment illustrating this between Hatchette and Amazon.

He also talked about competition between indie channels and the big publishers, and the laws preventing you revealing flaws in software and devices, because they could lead to DRM being compromised. I was pleased he covered our own awful Digital economy Act, ruched through in the "wash up" before the last parliament was dissolved which gives the potential for a whole family's access to the internet to be removed if someone in their household has infringed copyright. Or as he put it - we can take away a family's access to free speech, information and public services just because someone has entertained themselves in the wrong way.

Great talk as always.

Student Union unveiled for graduation

It's graduation week again, with 9 degree ceremonies taking place. I always love this time of year - makes me realise why we're all here. It's great to see so many students with their parents, friends and supporters celebrating a successful completion of their degree. The Octagon Centre looked great - it even had a blue carpet down for the occasion.

This year it was really good to see the hoarding finally come off our new student union building. It's a bit quirky, but I think it's great, lots of angles, gold cladding and very interesting spaces inside. Another good capital project nearing completion, and the campus is looking great. Even the Arts Tower is starting to emerge from its plastic wrapping to show off its new cladding.

As well as attending degree ceremonies this week I've been involved in lots of financial and budget discussions, in between fitting in lots of meetings before going on annual leave next week.

And for those interested in the Digital Economy Act, UCISA has just responded to the latest Ofcom consultation. A recurring theme in all our reponses to the Act has been a lack of clarity in some of the definitions used - especially ISP and subscriber. Despite some attempt to provide clarification in the Initial Obligations Code, we still can't say with certainty what a University would be classified as.

Off to Oxford again tomorrow for the UCISA User Support Conference where I'm giving yet another plenary session - hope not too many people have been at my last couple or they might be getting a bit fed up of seeing the same slides...

Pan galactic gargle blasters anyone?

After the excitement of IWMW10 yesterday, today I had a very good meeting with our Professor of Internet Law Lilian Edwards. Lots to talk about including our response to the current consultation on the Digital Economy Act. I also learned about Gikii - the legal workshop equivalent of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. The programme looks fantastic - wonder if they'd welcome some real geeks? The interaction between technology and the law is a fascinating subject and one which I look forward to discussing further.

Then it was on a train to Oxford for a UCISA meeting with the Chair of AUDE - the Association of University Directors of Estates. This came about because one of the things I wanted to do during my period of office as Chair of UCISA was to build up relationships with other organisations. Estates is an area where there is a huge amount of overlap with IT - from designing and installing the network infrastructure in new and refurbished buildings, to the provision of teaching and learning space including the technologies and timetabling. There's also the whole sustainibility agenda - power, data centres, etc. One of the topics we discussed at length was Business Continuity - as two of the main infrastructure providers we are often the departments turned to to get services back to normal. We're also the departments that are most likely to be mentioned in other depts business continuity plans as being able to solve the impossible! A system which integrated all data which might be needed to manage a serious incident was also something we discussed - buildings, occupancy, hazards, contact details, scheduled events.

It was a very profitable meeting and we agreed that there's a real need to understand each other better. I'm sure some joint projects, events and case studies will result.

Reducing costs and repealing acts

UCISA Executive meeting in London last Thursday. I'm getting used to the early morning trains to London now, but I still find the lack of connectivity frustrating - even the phone signal isn't enough to have a reasonable conversation for any length of time. Not that I usually want to in public of course, but getting and sending the odd email would be nice!

As a membership organisation, UCISA has a responsibility to help its members, and one of the main things we discussed was how we could help in these times of financial constraint. All of our organisations are reporting it as their main concern, but it isn't up to us to tell IT departments how to save money or manage themselves. What we can do however is give advice and share good ideas and best practice. A recent UCISA seminar on How to reduce Your Infrastructure Costs for example had presentations from a number of organisations, including how Westminster University estimate they have saved £1m by outsourcing their email, personal storage and productivity apps to Google, savings to be gained on printing, and a keynote from a Gartner analyst. All of the presentations are on the web site.

We discussed what other things we could do, other events we might organise for example, including tips on renegotiating contracts, showing the value of IT, outsourcing and outhosting options. As I've said before, the government is very keen on shared services at the moment and one of the areas we touched on is IT as a shared service within the institution. Many of us who run relatively centralised IT departments are still aware of the many IT support staff out there in departments, file servers lurking in corners, IT staff re-inventing the wheel as they write their own systems for doing things instead of using centrally provided ones. Surely, we need to look at IT spend across the institution, and look for efficiencies in how we provide it, which will mean bringing distributed staff into bigger teams, physically located still in departments but with a much closer relationship with the central IT department.

We touched on a number of other topics, including a forthcoming meeting with the Chair of AUDE (Association of University Directors of Estates), where we're going to discuss a number of areas of overlap between IT departments and estates departments - more next week after the meeting.

We also were brought up to date on the Digital Economy Act and the effect on us. The more I look at this, the more of a mess it is, and the more I think we should be using the Government's web site to vote to repeal it! Peter Tinson wrote a good blog post back in May about the next steps for the Act. basically, the consultation on the cost of implementing the measures in the Act has now finished - both JANET and UCISA responded, and now the consultation is on Ofcom's code of practice. This initially focuses on ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers. There is still no clarity on what an ISP is, and whether University's (or even JANET), are ISPs. So, watch this space - I'll post on news on this Act as I get it.

Digital Economy Act, part 2

So within hours of me posting my last criticism of the Digital Economy Act, Ofcom publish its draft code of conduct to deal with copyright infringement. It contains good news and bad news! The good news is that initially, the code will only apply to ISPs with over 400,000 subscribers - so even if a University is defined as an ISP, we won't be covered by it. Of course, if our internet provider, JANET were to be defined as an ISP, that would be a different story. The bad news is that this is only the initial implementation of it - the code includes provision for more ISPs to be added later, and still doesn't really clarify the definitions of ISP and subscriber.

I've been away for the weekend and haven't had time to study it in detail yet, but Andrew Cormack from JANET has posted a very good summary on his blog here.

With my professional hat on, I'm concerned about the effect of this Act on those of us who provide IT Services to Universities, but with a more personal hat on, I am concerned about the path we are being led down of monitoring the use of the internet - particularly for the next generation - our children, and grandchildren. This is being done to protect the interests of a few large entertainment companies who we are told are losing millions of dollars because of illegal downloading. Personally I don't believe those figures - people who download content also buy it. And they will continue to download, finding harder to detect ways to do it. The current copyright laws are wrong - written to protect the printed word - they are not appropriate in this day and age. I've said this before, but listen to Larry Lessig's talk at last year's EDUCAUSE for a great summary of the situation (go to about 27 mins in for the start).


EDIT: since posting this I've been reminded of an excellent TED talk on this topic by Lessig.

You couldn't make it up, (aka The Digital Economy Act)

Yesterday I was in London for a UCISA Executive meeting. One of the main items we discussed was the implications of the Digital Economy Act on Universities. Regular readers of this blog will know that I am not particularly enamoured by it, and I'm afraid my opinion of it is not getting any better!

Despite the LibDems intention to repeal it, that doesn't seem to have made it into the ConDems manifesto, so it looks as though we are stuck with it. It is intended that the bulk of the measures in the Act are up and running by January 2011. Given that the measures to deal with copyright infringements will need both European and parliamentary approval (estimated to take 5 months), that doesn't leave a lot of time for consultation. There has already been some consultation on the costs associated with its implementation, and both JANET and UCISA have responded. The JANET response contains a link to the original consultation document.

The main challenge we face is that is not clear what the Act defines as an ISP, or as a subscriber. Universities could fall under either category. The process laid out in the Act is that every rights holder will have to lodge a sum of money with Ofcom for every ISP that they expect to make a complaint with, based on the number of complaints they expect to make. This sum of money will be called off every time a complaint it made. With me so far? That's every rights holder, with every ISP. As the Act does not clearly define an ISP - that could be many, many orgainisations. If every University is classed as an ISP for example, that means that every rights holder will have to work out how many complaints they expect to make against each University and lodge that sum of money with Ofcom. And then there's libraries, hospitals, prisons, small businesses...... You couldn't make it up could you?

UCISA have responded to the effect that this will place an unacceptable administrative burden on Universities, when we already have effective mechanisms in place.

So, might it be better if we're classed as a subscriber? Well no, because if that's the case, and we get a number of complaints we could be cut off from the the internet entirely!

So, our plan at the moment is to try and persuade Ofcom to agree a code of conduct with Universities outside of this scheme, which mirrors the situation we have at the moment - if we get a complaint, we investigate and deal with it. Our track record is quite good and we get few repeat offenders. So, watch this space....