Archive for the 'Community Interest' Category

Charity gig in the Spailpín Fánach

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 14/3/2007
in Community Interest
. 0 Comments

Donal has a post up about a gig in the Spailpín Fánach tonight to benefit the ISPCC. From Donal’s post:

Performers on the night include The Fuchsia Band, back from their travels and who always put on an energetic and entertaining show; Cork singer Ger Wolfe singing some of his distinctively Cork ballads; Dan O’Callaghan, a piper from Cork who has travelled around the world playing music; Tommie Cunniffe on accordion, who is currently recording his debut album; and, last but not least, John Mitchell on flute accompanying Donal O Caoimh on the uilleann pipes.

So, if you are based in or around Cork and can spare some time for some great music, drop along to the Spailpín Fánach. The doors open at 8:30pm.

Simon says

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/7/2006
in Community Interest and Technology
. 5 Comments

The Irish national elections are coming up sometime in the next twelve months (note to self - check I’m on the register since we moved!).

By 2007 the current coalition government will have been in government for 17 of the last 20 years. Simon McGarr has written an empassioned post listing some of their many failures and calling for change in Ireland.

It kind of reminds me of Sidney Lumet’s movie Network and Peter Finch’s character, news anchor Howard Beale imploring his viewers:

You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, Goddamnit! My life has VALUE!’ So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell - ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it:

[screaming at the top of his lungs] “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

Well, possibly Simon wasn’t quite that impassioned, but then again maybe he should have been!

Charlie Haughey dead?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 13/6/2006
in Community Interest
. 3 Comments

Both the BBC and the Irish Examiner are reporting that Charlie Haughey has died.

For any who are unaware of Charlie Haughey, he is a former Taoiseach (prime minister) of Ireland - one of the most controversial figures in Irish politics since the foundation of the state.

The end of an era.

Everything you blog is false!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/11/2005
in Blogging, Community Interest, Podcast and Technology
. 9 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.

Publish and be damned (or possibly lose your house!)

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 9/11/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging and Community Interest
. 21 Comments

I attended the presentation by Digital Rights Ireland at TechCamp Ireland recently and while I was impressed by the presenters and what they had to say, I honestly felt a lot of it was scaremongering to get support.

In a one-to-one after the presentation, TJ McIntyre told me that simply by publishing an article, you can lose your house. “It doesn’t matter if the article is defamatory or not - if someone decides to take a case against you, the cost of solicitors and barristers will run into the tens of thousands. Very few bloggers can afford that.” And if you have no house or tangible assets? I asked. Then, the courts can make an arrangement to have the amount deducted from your salary until it is paid off, TJ informed me. They are very flexible like that. He’s just trying to scare-up a few more clients, I thought!

Then, a friend contacted me - we’ll call him John for the sake of this post - but he’s really a reasonably well known blogger in Ireland. John told me he had received a cease and desist letter from a Dublin law firm, regarding some posts he had made earlier this year about a company we’ll call XYZ co. XYZ co. seemingly treated their employees badly, a few court cases were taken, reports were published in the media and questions were even asked in the Dáil (the Irish parliament). In all this, John simply published what was happening (often re-printing articles from the mainstream media) on his blog.

The cease and desist letter was followed by a summons to the Four Courts.

Now John was really worried. On legal advice he pulled any posts pertaining to XYZ co. from his blog. When I asked him on IM what happens next he said:

17:15:00 John: then i send the lawyers a nice letter saying well i am not really interested in entering into legal proceedings regarding this matter, and the “offending” content has been removed. then sit tight and see what their next move is
17:16:46 trftry: And if anyone on the blogosphere notices the posts’ removal and asks where they have gone?
17:17:27 John: well becuase otherwise i will be in the dock, and to be honest without any support from people, I can not afford to be a test case.
17:17:54 trftry: I understand that
17:18:14 trftry: But how will you react to people’s questions when they arise?
17:18:23 John: i will tell them the truth
17:20:11 trftry: On your blog?
17:20:20 John: if asked, yes.
17:22:01 John: there is no other option for me tom. without the free assistance of lawyers, and some method of insurance for myself in teh event of a negative outcome, i would be pretty mad to continue. i would have expected the law to be a little more progressive in the matter, but from what i am being told, it doesn’t seem to be
.
.
.
17:23:19 John: i would be a very just person, but without support, my hands are tied.
17:24:06 John: of course people will be interested in why the posts are gone. and i will tell them. i owe it to myself and others to give reasons why, but at the end of the day, since the law is stacked _against_ me, i will not win.
17:24:29 John: of course it is wrong, and unjust, and i hate it, but what other options are there for me?
17:24:49 trftry: I have no idea John

Before John took down the posts, I went through them. I felt John had been very careful in his posts to make sure he didn’t defame anyone and yet he had to remove them on threat of legal proceedings and he’s still not confident that that will be the end of it.

The law on defamation in Ireland is stacked against bloggers (against all publishers really but bloggers for the most part don’t have the means at their disposal that mainstream publications would have). I suspect Ireland is not alone in this.

This raises a couple of issues;

  1. Bloggers are blissfully publishing articles completely unaware of the potential legal consequences and financial implications and
  2. There are no guidelines for bloggers in this regard - on two fronts i) what constitutes a defamatory post and more importantly ii) what to do in the event you are accused of publishing one.

What can be done? In the immediate term, I think bloggers will have to rigourously self-censor or face the very real risk being brought before the courts (with all the expenses that implies). In the longer term, we need to agitate for a reality check in our laws on libel and defamation. The best way to do this, I imagine, is through supporting the work of Digital Rights Ireland - hopefully, they will have some suggestions for us on this matter in the very near future.

UPDATE:
Digital Rights Ireland have a very useful libel pamphlet on their site with advice for bloggers and web hosts on defamation in blog posts and blog post comments (something we often forget about).

Link Cosmos

Is clean, cheap energy in the pipeline?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 6/11/2005
in Community Interest and Technology
. 1 Comment

A report in Friday’s Guardian tells of a new form of clean, cheap energy production - which has academics fighting over quantum theory!

Basically, the new form of energy production, called hydrino energy, breaks the rules of long accepted quantum theory and so while it might work in practice, it doesn’t appear to work in theory! Hydrino energy was invented by Dr. Randell Mills, who claims to have built a prototype power source that generates up to 1,000 times more heat than conventional fuel and Dr Mills says that his company, Blacklight Power, has tens of millions of dollars in investment lined up to bring the idea to market.

Andreas Rathke of the European Space Agency has been one of the most vocal critics of the idea behind hydrino energy:

In a damning critique published recently in the New Journal of Physics, he argued that Dr Mills’s theory was the result of mathematical mistakes.

Now another theorist has joined the debate: Jan Naudts of the University of Antwerp in Belgium argues that the Klein-Gordon equation of relativistic quantum mechanics does indeed permit the existence of a low-energy hydrino state! Via.

If the academics can put their arguments aside and allow this new energy source to be developed, hydrino energy has the potential to yield enormous benefits globally. In the first place, it doesn’t produce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, so it would benefit the environment and secondly, it has been calculated that hydrino energy would cost around 1.2 cents (0.7p) per kilowatt hour. This compares to an average of 5 cents per kWh for coal and 6 cents for the next cheapest large scale energy source - nuclear energy.

There are still many unanswered questions with respect to hydrino energy - can it be scaled up? Is it viable? and not least of which is how does it work?

Oil companies stand to lose big time if these questions can be answered positively. With oil reserves dwindling, and their reputations lower than ever, perhaps the oil companies would do well to invest heavily in this technology!

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