Features

net.wars: No rest in 2009

It's been a quiet week, as you'd expect. But 2009 is likely to be a big year in terms of digital rights.

Both the US and the UK are looking to track non-citizens more closely. The UK has begun issuing foreigners with biometric ID cards. The US, which began collecting fingerprints from visiting tourists two years ago says it wants to do the same with green card holders

In other words, you can live in the US for decades, you can pay taxes, you can contribute to the US economy – but you're still not really one of us when you come home.

The ACLU's Barry Steinhardt has pointed out, however, that the original US-VISIT system actually isn't finished: there's supposed to be an exit portion that has yet to be built. The biometric system is therefore like a Roach Motel: people check in but they never leave.

That segues perfectly into the expansion of No2ID's "database state". The UK is proceeding with its plan for a giant shed to store all UK telecommunications traffic data. Building the data shed is a lot like saying we're having trouble finding a few needles in a bunch of haystacks so the answer is to build a lot bigger haystack.

Children in the UK can also look forward to ContactPoint (budget £22.4 million) going live at the end of January, only the first of several. The conservativers apparently have pledged to scrap ContactPoint in favour of a less expensive system that would track only children deemed to be at risk.

If the conservatives don't get their chance to scrap it – probably even if they do – the current generation may be the last that doesn't get to grow up taking for granted that their every move is being tracked. Get 'em young, as the Catholic church used to say, and they're yours for life.

The other half of that is, of course, the National Identity Register. Little has been heard of the ID card in recent months; although the Home Office says 1,000 people have actually requested one. Since these have begun rolling out to foreigners, it's probably best to keep an eye on them

On January 19, look for the EU to vote on copyright term extension in sound recordings. They have now: 50 years. They want: 95 years. The problem: all the independent reviewers agree it's a bad idea economically. Why does this proposal keep dogging us? Especially given that even the UK government accepts that recording contracts mean that little of the royalties will go to the musicians the law is supposedly trying to help, why is the European Parliament even considering it? Write your MEP.

Meanwhile, the economic downturn reaches Cliff Richard; his earliest recordings begin entering the public domain… oh, look – yesterday, January 1, 2009.

Those interested in defending file-sharing technology, the public domain, or any other public interest in intellectual property will find themselves on the receiving end of a pack of new laws and initiatives out to get them.

The RIAA recently announced it would cease suing its customers in the US. It plans to "work with ISPs". Anyone who's been around the UK and France in recent months should smell the three-strikes policy that the Open Rights Group has been fighting against.

ORG's going to find it a tougher battle, now that the govermment is considering a stick and carrot approach: make ISPs liable for their users' copyright infringement, but give them a slice of the action for legal downloads. One has to hope that even the most cash-strapped ISPs have more sense.

Last year's scare over the US's bald statement that customs authorities have the right to search and impound computers and other electronic equipment carried by travellers across the national borders will probably be followed up with lengthy protest over new rules known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and being negotiated by the US, EU, Japan, and other countries. We don't know as much as we'd like about what the proposals actually are, though some information escaped last June. Negotiations are expected to continue in 2009

The EU has said that it has no plans to search individual travellers, which is a relief; in fact, in most cases it would be impossible for a border guard to tell whether files on a computer were copyright violations. Nonetheless, it seems likely that this and other laws will make criminals of most of us; almost everyone who owns an MP3 player has music on it that technically infringes the copyright laws (particularly in the UK, where there is as yet no exemption for personal copying).

Meanwhile, Australia's new $44 million "great firewall" is going ahead despite known flaws in the technology. Nearer home, British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham would like to rate the Web, lest it frighten the children.

It's going to be a long year. But on the bright side, if you want to make some suggestions for the incoming Obama administration, head over to Change.org and add your voice to those assembling under "technology policy".

Happy New Year!