Monthly Archive for November, 2005

Everything you blog is false!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/11/2005
in Blogging, Community Interest, Podcast and Technology
. 3 Comments

Today’s podcast is an interview I did with TJ McIntyre - TJ is Chairman of Digital Rights Ireland, and is a lecturer in Law in UCD.

The interview was fascinating, and should be compulsory listening for any Irish blogger. TJ informed me that everything published on a blog is automatically considered defamatory in the eyes of the law, if reported as such (guilty until proven innocent anyone?), until the blogger can satisfactorily prove to a jury that it is indeed true!

TJ also spoke about how copying music from legally purchased CDs is against the law, the pointlessness of national ID cards in terms of national security, and the governments position on data retention.

See below a list of the questions I asked TJ and the times in the interview that I asked them:

  • What is DRI - what is its raison d’etre? - 0:21
  • Why is there such a difference between our rights in the offline and online world? - 0:56
  • What sparked you to start this up Digital Rights Ireland? - 1:36
  • Digital Rights Ireland isn’t formally launched yet? 2:18
  • Who do you represent/speaking on behalf of? - 2:39
  • If you copy songs from legally purchased CDs onto your iPod or mp3 player, are you breaking the law? - 4:03
  • In terms of blogging and podcasting, where do you see DRI fitting in? - 5:58
  • What’s the function of the Press Council going to be? - 7:06
  • As a blogger, who do I need protection from? - 7:35
  • If I make a post about XYZ co. claiming dodgy practices on their behalf, what is the mechanism of action? - 9:17
  • So, they can either try to drag you to court or they can take your site offline? - 10:25
  • Of course, if you have a backup, you can get your site up on another host…? - 12:35
  • Could you just get a summons without a cease and desist? - 13:29
  • If you get a summons, can you put your hands up at that point? - 14:14
  • And it doesn’t matter that what you wrote is true? - 14:29
  • So, even if you have copied the article from a reputable news source, they will go after you because you are the ‘low hanging fruit’? - 15:16
  • In a defamation case, if it goes your way, are the costs always awarded against you? - 16:01
  • Is free legal aid available to bloggers? - 17:06
  • Is there such a thing as anti-defamation insurance? - 17:53
  • It seems that in defamation cases it is the person with the bigger resources who calls the tune… - 19:08
  • Why is that? - 20:14
  • Why are defamation cases heard by jury? - 21:09
  • Why isn’t it the case that the plaintiff must prove that they have been defamed? 21:59
  • I assume this is the same for podcasting also? - 23:26
  • Does DRI have a position on the passing of data by EU airlines to the US government? - 24:30
  • In three years time the government will know where I was today even if I can’t remember because of mobile phone data retention laws? - 26:05
  • So, call centre operatives for mobile operators will have access to three years of my data? - 28:53
  • Do DRI have a position on biometric passports? - 29:21
  • Is it a valid argument that national ID cards give greater security? - 30:28
  • Why do governments want to introduce compulsory ID cards then? - 32:02
  • What other things are coming down the line that we should be aware of? - 33:30
  • When is the launch of Digital Rights Ireland? - 36:09
  • Whats the website of Digital Rights Ireland? - 36:29

You can download the full interview here 8.4mb mp3.

How to make your website more indexable by search engines

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/11/2005
in Technology and Web Standards
. 2 Comments

I see Michael Arrington has a post on TechCrunch today about Dipsie dCloak - this is a product which is supposed to help websites make their content more indexable by search engines.

That sounds laudable enough I hear you say - but wait a minute, I know two words which can help you do that without the aid of any product - the words? Web Standards. Build a site which is web standards compliant and search engines will have no problems indexing your site - also, you site will load faster, will be cross browser compatible and will work predictably on most mobile browsers!

Don’t know if your site is web standards compliant - check it out using the free validator on the W3C site.

Michael Arrington interview

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 24/11/2005
in Interviews
. 5 Comments

I was talking to Michele Neylon last night and he was in great form noting that the number of subscribers to his site had passed the 100 hundred mark - I’m afraid I punctured his balloon when I mentioned I had just been interviewing Michael Arrington - Michael only set up his TechCrunch blog reviewing Web 2.0 products last June and he already has over 15,000 subscribers! That’s right, 15,000 subscribers in less than 6 months!

I had a fascinating chat with Michael - he spoke about his background before TechCrunch, his famous BBQs, and his plans for the future. Michael really impressed me with his breadth of knowledge of what’s hot and more importantly what’s coming down the line - he was easy to talk to and generous with his knowledge and time.

As we are coming up to the American holiday season (Thanksgiving), I am going to hold off on publishing this podcast until next Monday - put it in your calendars! Oh! and for those who thought the previous interviews were a shade long, this one comes in at a shade under 30 minutes.

Upcoming podcasts - get your questions in!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/11/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging and Technology
. 4 Comments

Great news! I have some extremely interesting podcast interviews coming up soon that I am very excited about - in the next few days I plan on recording interviews with:

If you have any questions you’d like me to ask any of these interviewees, feel free to leave your questions in the comments and, as always, I’ll ask them for you during the interview.

Microsoft becoming more open?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/11/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging, Open Source and RSS
. 3 Comments

Microsoft made two major announcements overnight - the first is an announcement by Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie that Microsoft are extending RSS under a Creative Commons licence, and calling the extended RSS, Simple Sharing Extensions or SSE.

Russell Beattie likes it:

Adding in SSE namespace could then in theory allow *any* data contained in an item can be kept in sync. Pretty cool, hey? Sort of a universal data communication spec: Anything that any database can spit out, you can keep track of it, synchronize, and manage changes. Very, very cool.

As does Dave Winer (the inventer of (the current flavour of) RSS):

Microsoft’s new approach to synchronizing RSS and OPML, using methods pioneered in Ozzie’s earlier work, and keeping the “really simple” approach that’s worked so well with networked syndication and outlining, combines the best of our two schools of thought, and this creativity is available for everyone to use. It’s a proud moment for me, I hope for Ray and Jack and the rest of the people at Microsoft, and perhaps for the open development community on the Internet.

There’s a draft spec for SSE and a FAQ, if you’d like to know more.

Then Brian Jones, of the Microsoft Office team, made an announcement about the Office XML formats. Brian said:

We are going to bring the Microsoft Office Open XML formats to a standards body with the intention of eventually making the formats an ISO standard. This should really help everyone feel certain that these formats will always be available and fully accessible. We are going to work with Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Essilor, Intel Corporation, NextPage Inc., Statoil ASA and Toshiba to form a technical committee at ECMA International that will fully document all of our schemas so that anyone can understand how to develop on top of them

This is a huge step forward for Office formats - this will clear the way for the simple creation and sharing (mashing) of Office documents server side.

Even more significantly, Brian went on to say:

we are moving away from our royalty free license, and instead we are going to provide a very simple and general statement that we make an irrevocable commitment not to sue. I’m not a lawyer, but from what I can see, this “covenant not to sue” looks like it should clear the way for GPL development which was a concern for some folks.

This is tremendous news - I was moderating a talk recently at Tech Camp Ireland and I remember making a comment on the fact that Microsoft was opening up their Office format and making it XML by default. I was quickly slapped down from the audience (by Colm MacCarthaigh, if memory serves - apologies Colm if it wasn’t you) because I was told it was going to be proprietory and in any case it would all be tied up in licencing. I didn’t have any ammo with which to defend Microsoft at the time (and frankly, not generally being their greatest fan, I wasn’t too upset by the comment!) however, this announcement changes that.

Make it so Brian!

Who would you like to hear podcast?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/11/2005
in Podcast
. 14 Comments

Ok, I have done a good few podcasts at this stage and I can honestly say I am really enjoying the interview type podcasts and the feedback to them has been overwhelmingly positive (of course, I realise that is far more to do with the interviewees than anything I bring to the table!).

This is a format I will be doing a lot more of and I already have another couple of interviewees lined up. However, before going too much further down this line, is there anyone you’d particularly like to hear interviewed? In all cases, when an interview is coming up, I will allow people to submit questions that I will subsequently put to the interviewee.

So, who would you like to hear interviewed and what would you like me to ask them?

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