antoin@eire.com

From the footer of the easyhotel.com confirmation email:

Intellectual Property: The easyGroup of companies has built up a significant reputation in the name “easy” and has a number of trademark applications and registrations in many countries. easyGroup cannot permit others to use the “easy” name without the group’s rights being prejudiced. It follows that no use should be made of the name “easy” (or anything similar to it) without our consent.

That’s easyToUnderstand. They’re definitely not looking for easyMoney. I know it’s easyToForget to capitalize your company name too.

According to this press release, Microsoft welcomes Ireland’s ‘no with comments/conditional approval’ vote and NSAI’s consultative committee unanimously agreed to the conditional acceptance of the Office OpenXML standard.

I am glad that Microsoft welcomes the decision. However, the account above was not what happened at the meeting of ICTSCC last week as I recall it. In my recollection, Microsoft voiced a sustained objection to voting in this way. Microsoft was supported in a call for voting ‘yes’ by representatives from ICTIreland, Intel and CP3. There was nothing unanimous about it.

Also, to clarify, the committee involved, the ‘Information and Computing Technology Standards Consultative Committee’ does not have the final say in voting on standards. Its role is purely consultative, to provide advice to the NSAI in accordance with Section 10 of the National Standards Authority of Ireland Act 1996. The making of a final decision lies with NSAI itself.

According to this story, Irish incumbent telco eircom will obliged by the telecomms regulator Comreg to continue LLU network rollout, in spite of the fact that next-generation networks, where every cabinet will be individually enabled with faster 25 or 50 Mbit broadband. Now this is ridiculous.

LLU, the arrangement whereby competitors are allowed put equipment into eircom exchanges and connect directly to the customer’s line, is dead. There is no point in anybody investing any more money in unbundling local exchanges if a fiber-to-the-cabinet network is to be built. It will simply be impossible for an LLU operator which can offer maximum speeds of 10Mbps to compete with eircom or bitstream competitors who can offer speeds of up to 50 Mbps on the same piece of copper, for the same price. (Unbundling every individual cabinet is possible in principle, but in practice, it would be too expensive for a small operator to do.)
Comreg has to make up its mind now whether it wants to devote its energies to protecting the interests of consumers, who need NGN and need it rolled out economically and fairly, or whether it is going to spend its time protecting the interests of the various unconsolidated bit players in the telecomms marketplace, by tying the whole country into dead technology, slow speeds and an unworkable business model.

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.

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.

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?

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.)

Damien Mulley writes about what you should ask when politicians call.

You should ask your candidate (particularly PD or FF TD’s) where they stand on personal privacy. Ask them whether you think the government has any business recording details of the people you telphone, the web pages you look at or the places you go carry your mobile telephone.

(more…)

Eoin O’Dell writes about the legal risks of sharing wi-fi and about my presentation about FON at Barcamp. I was amazed to hear that a couple of people have been prosecuted for wi-fi sharing in the UK. This might not seem to make much sense, but it makes FON an even better idea.

Bonus link: my presentation from barcamp

EDRI-gram article, or read about it on the Dutch Data Protection Officer’s website. And don’t forget to support Digital Rights Ireland’s challenge to the directive.