Registration of mobile phones in Ireland

The government wants all mobile phones to be registered. According to the Programme for Government, ageed last month:

The government will … require all mobile phones to be registered with name, address and proof of identity in order to stop drug-pushers using untraceable, unregistered phones.

But I got the following email from the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources in January this year:

The idea for a Register of mobile phones was extensively reviewed by officials in the Department. There were many complex legal, technical, data protection and practical issues to be considered. In theory, a Register of mobile phones might seem like a good idea. However, having looked at the situation in other administrations, considered the ease with which an unregistered foreign or stolen SIM card can be used and the difficulties that would be posed in verifying identity in the
absence of a national identification card system, and having consulted with the Office of the Attorney General and other interested parties, it was concluded that the proposal would be of limited benefit, in that it would not solve the illegal and inappropriate use of pre-paid mobile
phones and was not practical.

A soul for Europe – Wim Wenders on growing up European

There was this interview (mp3) with Wim Wenders on the 11th Hour on RTE on Monday this week. Basically what it covers is why his European identity was so important. For him, Europe is not just an economic entity, and I think that casting Europe in citizens’ minds as a social, cultural entity of vast diversity is important to the success of the European project, and the future of everyone living in Europe. He talks about Ireland being at the cultural heart of Europe, although maybe he is flattering the interviewer a little. I think the cultural aspects of Europe will soon be as important as the legal and economic work that is been done.

Read the rest of this entry »

NSAI invites comments on OOXML/OpenXML standard

NSAI (the Irish national standards body) has posted an invitation for comments on its site regarding the proposed new Office Open XML standard (ISO/IEC DIS 29500). NSAI has established an ad hoc committee to consider the matter, and I am a member of that committee, together with a number of far more important and qualified people.

Anyway, we are anxious to hear from anyone who has a view on what way NSAI should vote on this standard when it reaches committee. If you can provide links to any relevant articles, that would also be very helpful. If you have time, please review the documents and leave your comments either here or send them to the committee.

A film that can teach you about terror

The Battle of Algiers, showing in the Irish Film Institute today, is essential viewing if you want to understand the hows and whys of terror, and how governments deal with it. Most of the film is said to be quite true to what happened – Algerian women dressed themselves like cosmopolitan French girls to get access to the fashionable lunch spots of the city, and left timed bombs behind -. The whole terror organization was organized in groups of only three people in order to preserve secrecy and make the whole movement resistant to torture. Some of the people who were actually involved in the action act in the film.

The personal touch – Apple watermarks DRM-free music

Listening Post reports that Apple are watermarking tracks with the purchaser’s email address. Not really surprising that, at least to me. I’ve been doing some thinking about this area for the last while

What I find a bit objectionable is that Apple apparently didn’t bother to tell its customers that it was doing this. I can’t see why they wouldn’t.

I think it’s a good idea though. It makes tracks usable and sharable but puts some sort of limit on the extent to which they will be shared.

You could still scrub the watermark off the tracks without too much hassle, but why would the average consumer bother?

RTE wants to sell us something we’ve already paid for

Eoin O’Dell’s request to have the Irish election debate made freely available has been turned down. Everybody in the debate studio will have been paid by the taxpayer. Yet us taxpayers won’t have the right to make non-commercial copies of the debate.

I recently tried to get a licence to show some RTE news footage on Votetube. I filled in all the forms on their website to make the request over a week ago. I have heard nothing back. As a result, viewers have been deprived of relevant footage and RTE has been deprived of revenue.
RTE just doesn’t get what the Internet is doing to media.

Political debates should be available for free.

Read Eoin’s blog post and sign the petition to get state broadcaster RTE to release the complete footage of the debate between Irish political party leaders to the Irish people on the Internet. (After all, they’re our politicians, and it’s our TV station, right.)

How can the music industry do itself a favour?

Someone recently asked me how the music industry can deal with piracy and make money out of online downloads. I had a few ideas about it (mainly centred around the idea that you just can’t lock down music copying completely). Revenues are falling in the industry, from around $38 bn to less than $30 billion in  a few years and that’s without taking inflation into account. But I thought I’d throw it out there -

• what concrete steps can the music industry take to stop, or at least slow down piracy?
• how can the music industry make money from peer-to-peer and music downloads?
• how could they trial this?

The Irish postal service is getting worse.

According to this report from the communications regulator, the Irish postal service isn’t getting any better. In fact, fewer letters are being delivered the next day after posting than ever before.
ComReg0728.pdf (application/pdf Object)

The story never changes with this. There are continuous problems, and there is no sign of any improvement coming down the tracks. The government has done absolutely nothing to sort this out. The postal service is a critical national resource. Letter post may be less important than it used to be, but parcel and packet delivery is more important than it ever was.
The only way the regulator has of dealing with this issue at the moment is to sanction an increase in the price of postage. It’s been tried several times, but it doesn’t seem to work. Maybe it is time to try something different? At this stage, consideration has to be given to privatizing some of the work of the postal service once again (parts of the service were privately operated until the 1980s)

Airline start up guide

Boeing has this handy guide to starting your own budget airline.