Digital Archives and the Right To Be Forgotten

Oh dear, I find that the opportunity to “blog” might turn me in to a loud-mouthed small-brained speaker standing on a soap-box, screaming at the passers-by.

I am a fan of a few web-sites. One of which is the www.theregister.co.uk a web-site that carries “news” articles and some editorial comments.

Well today it reported on 3 things that immediately got me thinking.

1) One was about an organisation that maintains an archive of the Internet and that by doing so might prevent the creation of “Memory Holes”.

Basically, I think, they take snapshots of many Internet web-sites and commit the snapshot to a “read-only” storage.

2) Another article that the www.theregister.co.uk  had was about Google and the European Court of Justice and the “right to be forgotten”. I do not have a broad enough understanding of the legal, or even moral issues, to form an informed opinion.  I sort of feel a bit “iffy” because a printed document (e.g. magazine, book, newspaper…) makes a statement and that statement is archived for ever. So I ask myself why the Internet should be different. The obvious difference is the ease of access to online information, so an incorrect statement once in the Internet is (sort of) forever, but then so is a printed report. The “right to be forgotten” seems to focus on a number of issues:

  • Removing factual incorrect statements that cause damage to the involved people.
  • Removing factual correct statements that the involved people do not want others to know. This in turn breaks down in to:
    • Facts that were legitimately put in the public domain, but never-the-less the involved people want to “hush-up”.
    • Facts that have been placed in the public domain by some-one who has no right to do so.

I have no problem with the idea of “the right to be forgotten” with the first and the last bullets, but the “hush-up” bullet is a real problem.

Anyway, what I find interesting is how the “the right to be forgotten” relates to the archived Internet which (if I understood it correctly) specifically wants to ensure that the “hush-up” bullet does not get hushed-up!

And then, just beause of the way I tick, I reflected back on my blog “Hyde Park Speakers Corner and Digital Dinosaurs Footprint” and wondered about the moral implications of the science fiction story I mentioned.

Without any further thought or analysis, if there is a “right to be forgotten” is there a right to “publish for perpetuity”

3) as I have said in an earlier blog, I am in the telecommunciations industry (since 1979) and have quite a few “hobby horses”. One of my “hobby horses” is about laws and regulations.

I have no, absolutely no, training in law! But my belief is that a law should be an unambigous statement of behaviour/activity that is not permitted.

(I wonder how true that is, there are laws such as “you shall not kill”, but no law “you shall be nice to people”. Laws seem to be, and I am not complaining, proscriptive in nature.)

So a law that says that you are not allowed to drive a automobile on a public highway, without having a valid licence, is okay with me.

Also okay with me is a law that says that providers of telecommunications services can be required to provide metadata and media streams to legally entitled authorities (lawful interception).  Haa, a law that says you shall rather than you shall not, I have just been hoisted by my own petard!

But, it all depends on “what is a telecommuncations service?”.  If I invest in creating a piece of software that enables users to send media streams between themselves, and I create a central databank that lets users see which other users are “online” and where they are (IP address), then I might be supporting telecommunications but I am not providing a telecommunications service. Please no NOT go on about providing addressing information to users is a telecommunications service. It is not, a public library might make copies of the telephone directories available. That tells us under what “address /(telephone number)” a user can be reached. But that is not not not a telecommunications service. Just because some companies provide such informational services “online” does not make their service a telecommunications service.

According to the report on the web-site  www.theregister.co.uk , if I have understood it correctly, it seems that a Belgian court and Microsoft / Skype are in discussion over whether the Skype service is a telecommunications service.

Hmm, as I said, I am not an authority on legal issues, but I must ask the question: On what basis is Skype a telecommunications service?

I am 100% convinced that it is a telecommunications service IF it physically receives users’ media streams and passes them on, which I think Skype does when at least one of the users is identified by a E.164 public telephone number.

But between Skype to Skype users, identified by a Skype identity, I thought (please correct me if I am wrong) that the media leaves the user’s premises and is carried, without intervention by any Skype infrastructure, to the destination user’s premises. In my (non) humble opinion whatever service Skype provides in that specific situation, it is not a telecommunications service.

Telecommunications is not Communications, or am I getting OTT

Some things annoy me. One thing that really annoys me is when people use the word communications, when they mean telecommunications.

In my (not) humble opinion, telecommunications is about the transport of a set of well defined “inputs”, from a user selected input point, to a user defined output point, to an agreed quality of service.

Communications is about how one gets an idea from inside one’s head into the head of some-one else. It is about the selection of symbols that, to the originator, convey the idea. Hopefully that selection of symbols conveys the same idea to the receiver.

Picking a font for this web page is a communications issue, deciding whether to write in English, Welsh or German is a communications issue. Such factors affect how well my idea is conveyed to the audience.

Communications is about meaning, content, syntax, semantics and symbols.

Telecommunciations is about moving symbols from A to B, and does not get involved in the meaning, content, syntax, semantics and symbols.

Telecommunications <> Communications.

Gods protect me (see p.s.)  from hearing more people talk about OTT (Over The Top) service providers. OTT is a common expression in the telecommunications service provider world to describe companies such as WhatsApp and Skype: companies that receive a media stream from one user and pass it on to one or more other users.

In some cases companies such as NetFlix and other media providers, who do not “interconnect” users to one another, are also called OTT.

In all cases (WhatsApp, Skype, NetFlix…) the OTT players and the users pay for their Internet access. Never-the-less, the telecommunications service providers (i.e. the people who basically set the prices that the users pay) complain about the OTT players making money off the back of the telecommunications service providers. Hmm, that always was the purpose of telecommunications. The good old VPC equation.

                       V > P > C

The value of a telecommunications service should be higher to the user than the price that he must pay for the service. The price of the service must be higher that the cost of providing that service.

OTT’s are seen by most telecommunications service providers as free-loaders riding on the back of the telecommunications service providers.

Of course, they conveniently forget that the Internet was providing E-Mail and Chat services long before the telecommunications providers introduced SMS’.  Oh my, how we do twist the truth to suit our purposes. Or am I getting a bit OTT myself.

p.s. I am a fan of that dearly missed author, Terry Pratchett. Hence the “Gods“.

Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner and Digital Dinosaurs Footprints

I attended a team meeting at work today, I work for a management and telecommunications consultancy company. Amongst many topics we discussed the role of social media in marketing. This got me thinking about this web-site.

Is running a blog with no followers the same as standing at Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner and mouthing off when no one is listening.  Or is it like keeping a diary which you do not lock away.

I know that I do not care whether this blog is read by anyone, but after 38 years in the telecommunications industry I find it intriguing to think about the psychology of communications, especially communications made possible by digital technology.

In my old, static web-site, I referred to a science fiction story that I read back in the late 70’s. It was about a group of computer science students (set in the future, but it was written in the 50’s so it was quite primitive). These students were sent to a sort of bank that held in its computer “vaults” the electronic diaries of customers. The students job was to browse through the  diaries of customers who had died, and then decide whether the entires could be deleted. Sometimes the Internet makes me think of that story. The idea that web-sites, blogs and social media will create a digital footprint, and that we will leave tracks in the Infoverse that future generations might analysis as part of a reseach project, I find it quite interesting. although I should know better, any such research will be done by computer programs. Ah well! I wonder what they will make of this blog, my own electronic Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner.

I am a digital dinosaur, welcome to my foot prints!

Lighting Guitars

Not everything on this website is going to be video, I will still want some good old static pictures.

 

Knowing how bad I am at playing guitar/bass/ukulele/mandolin then I will definitely not provide videos of me playing, but I would like some good static shots of the instruments. But getting good shots, especially of the shiny / glossy Yamaha is proving difficult.

Fresh Start

After 15 years of running a static website I have decided to add videos and a blog. I have ditched my WYSIWYG HTML editor (also 15 years old), installed WordPress and am desperately trying to be an old dog than learns new tricks.

Samson Meteor USB Microphone . Looks at bit like a Dalek to me (I remember William Hartnel in the original Doctor Who series!)

In the last month I have splashed out on a new webcam (Logitech C922), a green screen background, a set of four video lights, and today a Samson Meteor USB microphone. I even created two YouTube channels one for programming and one for telecommunications. To bring it all together I have installed OBS Studio on my desktop.

I decided against using the C922 microphone because I seemed to be getting too much background noise. But when the Meteor arrived I was almost in tears. The microphone was picking up all sorts of noise. But when I tested it on my laptop it was okay. So I returned to my desktop and tried plugging the Meteor in via a powered USB hub. Even worse. Then I tried via a USB 3.0 socket on a PCIe card. It worked like a dream, and then of course the C922 microphone was fine via the USB 3.0

Now I have no excuses. I will record a video!