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Creative Commons

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Everyone and their dog is blogging about Creative Commons. A (primarly, for the time being) build-your-licence website sponsored by a whole bunch of interesting people. I really like the slogan, « legal code »

In a way, it reminds me of P3P, as it is a way to standardize contract terms. P3P aimed to allow people to act on standardized terms for the management of personal info. This does it for copyrightable content, without the automation and integration dreamed of by P3P. Most people have a fairly good idea of the rights granted by the GPL. Now well have different, if less concisely named, nuances of standard licenses.

Under what license is the content of this site provided? I worry more about my use of other people’s content that other people’s use of my stuff. No jokes about the value/originality/creativity of said stuff please. I would lean towards the Attribution-ShareAlike License.

I wonder what license are the licenses released under. Can I modify them slightly? Translate them? I’m sure the answer is on the website but I couldn’t find it. Given the recent fuss over the copyright on court papers, it’s a valid question.

QoS

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Quality of Service is unnecessary? Is throwing more bandwidth at the issue really a solution?

I care because QoS is a form of technological norm that is very potent. It does have the capacity to shape the environment and influence the actions of people (or their effects). I can’t wait for my ISP, who is owned by a content provider, to throttle competitors, err… ensure proper QoS, to selected resources.

On the other hand, I find reasonable that there could be the Internet equivalent of a emergency siren for certain packets.

Would « official » and public implementation of QoS make it harder for people who control the infrastructure to implement opportunistic QoS-like schemes? Should Internet connectivity declared a public service and regulated as such from a competition point of view? In that last hypothesis, could QoS be implemented in a more productive way?

I find it hard to believe that bigger pipes will solve all QoS issues, but is it a good enough solution to reduce the annoyance level low enough that people won’t bother to elaborate on the issue?

[via… damn… can’t find it anymore… NetNewWire really needs a « find » function]

Update: Well… this issue made a few people react. Should I be surprised that it seems it was all started by Lessig?

La CAI frappe encore

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Monsieur le Ministre,
La Commission d’acès à l’information du Québec a entrepris une étude concernant le projet de loi sur l’accès légal au Canada, plus précisément axée sous l’angle de la protection des renseignements personnels.

En voici la lettre introductive. Le rapport est ici. Il y a aussi le communiqué de presse pour gens pressés.

Ah oui, pour ceux qui en douteraient, ce n’est pas très positif. Il semble que certaines dispositions découleraient d’obligations auxquels nous nous sommes engagés par traités, la Convention sur la cybercriminalité (utilisation de cyber, -1) du conseil de l’Europe. J’imagine que si ce n’est pas harmonisable avec la tentaculaire Directive Européenne sur la vie privée, ca se serait su, non? Alors qui a fait du zèle?