Technical explanations on HADOPI or a law in agony.

In the context of French bicameralism : ‘Assemblee Nationale’ (members of parliament directly elected by universal poll) + Senate election by representatives (assemblee des sages) 

They are two ways to introduce bills of law: 

• Bill issued by government initiative = ‘projet de loi’
• bill issued by members of parliament or senate = ‘proposition de loi’

In case of rejection of a ‘projet de loi’ or ‘proposition de loi’ initiated by the senate, the text is re-examined by the parliament until the two chambers find an agreement.  This is called the ‘navette parlementaire’. If no agreement is found, a mixed commission of 7 MP and 7 senators is created to find a solution. A new bill is then presented to each chamber. Ultimately the ‘Assemblee Nationale’ will have the last word. 

In some exceptional cases, the government can use the parliament prerogative to create a bill. This is called ‘une ordonnance’. The government will need to seek a special authorization from the parliament ‘une loi d’habilitaion’. This mode has rarely been used and reveal unpopular.

The ‘Conseil Constitutionel’ is the organ of protection of the constitution. Once a bill is voted, the President of each chamber or a groupe of 60 members of either chamber as well as the ‘President de la Republique’ can submit the text for control of constitutionality to the ‘Conseil Constitutionel’.

In the case of the HADOPI, the Conseil Constutitutionel mainly criticized three aspects of the project : 

- on the grounds of a conflict with fundamental human rights –Article 9 Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du citoyen of 1789.  (presumption of innocence) was the basis for objecting to the idea that it should be up to those accused of illegal file-sharing to prove the infringement was the fraud of a third-party. 

- Article 11 declares that the ‘free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious rights of man’. It was the justification for saying that internet access should not be cut off except by a court – attacks on the right to communicate must be ‘necessary, appropriate and proportionate’.

- privacy and data protection was the ultimate concern of the 'Conseil Constitutionel'.

HADOPI 2, has modified the criticized points, passed the Senate vote and will need to be adopted by the ‘Assemblee Nationale’ to pass.

With reference to the excellent article of Me Eolas in 'Journal d'un Avocat' - 

www.maitre-eolas.fr/post/2009/06/11/1447-in-memoriam-hadopi

-Liberation.fr : Pierre-Yves Gaultier 'La propriété intellectuelle, un sous-droit'

http://www.ecrans.fr/La-propriete-intellectuelle-un,7614.html

- [At last ... the 1709 Copyright Blog] Internet rights go on trial

http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2009/07/internet-rights-go-on-trial.html

- In Liberation.fr 'Hadopi, c’est reparti'

http://www.ecrans.fr/Hadopi-c-est-reparti,7675.html

- Le corsaire Sarkozy et les trous dans la coque de l’« HADOPI 2 »

http://www.laquadrature.net/fr/le-corsaire-sarkozy-et-les-trous-dans-la-coque-de-l-hadopi-2

An abuse of power

A fellow Twitterer JANE LAMBERT.
barrister specializing in intellectual property, technology, media and entertainment and competition law.  has brought to my attention a scandalous action against a member of the circuit at Strangeways, Here can be found her blog of the arrest and detention of a senior legal practitioner at http://tinyurl.com/mnqrmq

This case merit complaint of general protest from the Legal profession.

Finger print for 'Catering improvement'

•       As part of an ongoing Catering improvement programme for the 2009 academic year we are planning a few changes. This communication is designed to explain these changes.

•       We currently use swipe cards as the middle and high school lunch payment method, and although this system does have is benefits; it also has its limitations.  Students often forget and/or lose these cards. This can sometimes result in long queues and bottlenecks.

•       To improve efficiency and speed at the tills we are planning to introduce a biometric thumb print recognition for all students in Grade 5 and above.

➢       This means that we will register the students by taking a simple scan of their thumbprint; this will allow them to pass through the pay points quickly, securely and without having to remember cash or a swipe card.
➢       This lunch payment technology is already used successfully in schools across the UK.
➢       We will retain our existing food court tills, the students will simply need to have their thumbs quickly ‘scanned’ to providepayment.

How is this being introduced?

•       We have just completed a successful three - week trail of the system with our dormitory students. The next step will be to register the remaining students. This will be performed by Catering staff at a designated registration help desk in the cafetorium during the week commencing April 27th 2009.

•       Lower School students will not be included in this scheme at this juncture.

•       All NEW 2009/10  Middle & High School students will be registered on the system during the Orientation day in August.

•       A very small percentage of students will have thumbs that are not possible to scan or they may prefer not to have their thumb’s digital signature recorded. These students can be issued swipe cards which also work on the tills as an alternative to the biometric system.

•       ALL EXISTING card users are requested to PLEASE RETAIN YOUR LUNCH CARDS as a back up or alternative.

•       Please read on to view some of the most frequently asked questions regarding thumb print recognition.


Should you have any further questions or require more information please contact .....Head of Catering using the following email address:

Frequently Asked Questions.

Are you actually taking a finger print of our child?

We will take a digital signature of your child’s thumb, which our software breaks down into data points, similar to reference points on a map. The software then turns these into an alpha-numerical string, which is then stored on a dedicated SQL server. We are NOT taking a picture image as would be used for example in a police station.


So, what prevents this data from being read by someone else to identify our children?

The data is encrypted using 128-bit encryption and represented as an alpha-numerical string and most importantly the data cannot be reverse engineered, or put another way the string of data can never be used as anything other than a string of data.


Is this the same as the police get when they take a fingerprint?

The police keep a picture of a finger print. It is not possible to take our digital capture and turn it into such a picture. It cannot be matched with a fingerprint or used by the police.


Is the database of thumb scans secure?

The digital captures are stored on a dedicated server. No access would be permitted other than as required by the requirements of the Data Protection Act.


How does the software work?

During the thumb print initiation process a digital signature is captured. The data is stored on the site server. The digital image is matched against a thumb on the digital personal scanner with software matching against the users unique issued ID. This process takes less than 0.6 of a second.


 Can a swipe card be used as well?

As the software is matching against a card number if the user also has a card, which can used in lieu of a thumbprint.

Twitter email to clarinette01

Hi clarinette01,

Thanks for your email. Some accounts were recently suspended for phishing investigation; these accounts should now be back to normal. If your account was suspended but is now back to normal, please do not reply to this email.

If you're writing to report spam, just visit our spam profile and send us a direct message with the spammer's user name, here: 
http://twitter.com/spam

If you're writing because your account was suspended, please visit your profile and make sure that your account is actually suspended. If your account is suspended, you'll see a red box when you log in letting you know. If you don't see a notice from Twitter, and you don't see an owl when you visit your profile page, your account is not suspended.

We are currently working on fixing a bug that causes suspended accounts to appear in your followers list. No need for a ticket, we're aware of and working on the problem.

If your account is suspended, please review the Twitter Rules: 
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/18311

to find out why accounts are often suspended, and visit this page to find out what to do to contest suspension: 
http://twitter.zendesk.com/forums/26257/entries/15790

Please do not reply to this email unless you need to contest a current suspension. Double check your profile to ensure that you're actually suspended; if you need to contest suspension, please reply to this email and let us know. If you're having a problem unrelated to suspension, please file a new request, not under Spam.

Thanks! 
Twitter Support

Twitter suspended my account!!!

I am publishing here a comment I have posted on a friends and colleague's blog where he had related an incident with a deleted Facebook account :

The problem you pointed to here is a very real one that is worthy of a serious debate. Did FB change my life? Yes. Having had an international life, I was finally able to find many of my old classmates and friends that I had lost through my expatriations over the years. For the rest, I am more active on Twitter where the issues are very similar to FB. Both are the most popular examples of free networking services that allow great networking opportunities with the past and the present and also for making new contacts for the future. I can tell you with great joy that my 'replies' on Twitter and discussions on Linkedin have led to a few contacts with Headhunters. In this difficult economic climate, I should be pleased with this. Nevertheless, I have recently encountered a similar issue with Twitter in which Twitter's liability is more evident. Last weekend again, Twitter was subject to several spam/fishing attacks (see Phish Twice a Day - The Twitter Diet - http://bit.ly/zsp2n) Maybe this could be related to something that happened to me: on Saturday night my Twitter account was 'suspended' with no prior notice or explanation whatsoever!!! I started using my private/back up account and with the help and support of other Twitterers contesting Twitter's action and asking to

"#putitback", the account was 'liberated' yesterday in the same way as it was suspended, without any explanation from Twitter. What is very regrettable here, and I hope SNSs would admit liability for it, is the damage caused not only because you are cut off from your contacts but also the serious damage to your reputation. The message posted by Twitter when trying to access the account stipulated "Sorry, the account you were headed to has been suspended due to strange activity. Mosey along now, nothing to see here." Is this not enough shame to constitute defamation when untrue, and where the service provider has not notified the account holder in order to allow a defense, nor demonstrated any attempt to verify the allegations? Remember that most SNSs are now indexed and put-up by the Google search engine, which means that any search for the user's name would come out with the above message. This is represents a serious threat to users' integrity, reputation and rights. SNSs give themselves the discretion to act arbitriarily on the basis that the service is offered free of charge!! Users pay the price for access by allowing SNSs to share their private information for the sake of targeted advertisement although in the particular case of Twitter, the business model is kept secret.

Another case mentioned to me by Anne Collier, Director of Kids Safety and Net Family, is evoked in Anne's blog http://tinyurl.com/ppbjlf. These cases are not rare and there is serious need of reflexion on how to deal with the ISP's liability issues. As you mentioned, under the section 230 US DMCA , the service provider is exempt of immunity for third party content. The ISP immunity under the EU regulations is not so impermeable and if there is an immunity for ISP acting as mere conduit, passively caching or hosting third party content, the shield of protection of the E-commerce immunity for ISP's turns into a stick with which they can be beaten (to use Gavin Sutter's expression). As soon as the ISP has been notified, it has a duty to react 'expeditiously' to remove or block access to the infringing content. If the ISP does not comply, it becomes liable for content under the knowledge based liability of publisher or editor; see 'Mumsnet settles with Gina Ford but queries libel law' http://www.out-law.com/page... ISP's are also subject to a certain number of good practices, such as including clear, direct and immediate means of contact on their webpage in order to allow users to contact them for any complaints or assistance. see 'ECJ says websites need phone numbers or web forms' http://www.out-law.com/page-9545 and ECJ position http://www.mofo.com/news/updates/files/15088.html Now, all this development is based on the EU regulations and most SNSs are US based, are they subject to the EU regulations when targeting EU users? This is a question of jurisdiction to clarify.

“swine flu” alert Influenza A type H1N1

Letter from school :

"I am writing further to my previous communication of 28th April 2009 to update you on the situation regarding swine flu and the action the School is taking.

The Critical Incident Management Team (CIMT), whose responsibility is to manage critical incidents when they arise, is monitoring the situation on a daily basis to ensure that the school is taking the appropriate actions. Monitoring includes external agencies such as WHO, DCSF, HPA, www.direct.gov.uk/swineflu

and internal sources. Assessments are being undertaken on a daily basis on the key issues such as field trips, school events, hygiene and cleaning. Our response takes into account both external advice and our internal assessments. A summary of the actions currently being undertaken is below:

1. Communications
a. Daily internal communications monitoring the situation remain.
b. Regular updates to Parents advising them of the current situation.
2. Campus Access
a. Students, parents and staff who have visited Mexico should wait 7 days after leaving Mexico before returning to campus. This is the advice from the Health Protection Agency (HPA). After this period, they should return to campus provided they are not showing any of the symptoms listed below.
3. Educational delivery
a. Remains as normal.
b. Any students who are restricted because of visiting Mexico to be contacted by the school and home-based study work provided.
4. Extra-curricular programme
a. Remains as normal except see 2 above.
5. Field Trips / sports events off campus
a. Remains restricted. Risk assessments are undertaken for each trip on an individual basis. Trips off campus will only take place where the risk assessments identify the risk as low.
b. Any changes will be notified as soon as possible.
6. Staff issues
a. See 2 above regarding campus access. Otherwise normal working continues.
b. Staff with any symptoms (see below) are instructed to stay at home, seek medical advice and inform the school.
7. Emergency care
a. School and Departments are publicising the need for and encouraging high levels of hygiene, e.g. thorough hand washing, using tissues if coughing or sneezing and disposing of tissues carefully.
b. School nurses are monitoring the situation at campuses.
8. School transport
a. All bus routes run as normal.
b. See 2 above regarding bus drivers' access to campus.
c. Transport Managers have advised all drivers displaying symptoms below that they should not transport students unless they have received medical clearance.
9. School operations/catering etc.
a. Remains as normal, with added emphasis on hygiene, see 7 above.

• If students, parents and staff show any flu symptoms (see below) they should:

o Inform the school
o Stay at home and seek medical advice.

Advice from medical sources indicate symptoms may include:
o High fever
o Extreme fatigue
o Nausea and vomiting
o Headaches and muscle and/or joint pain
o Respiratory problems
o Diarrhea and dehydration.
o (Note, this list is not exhaustive)

• Everyone should continue to take general hygiene measures including:
o Covering your mouth and nose with a tissue when coughing and sneezing
o Disposing of tissues carefully
o Washing hands regularly and thoroughly with soap and water
o Avoiding touching your eyes, nose and mouth etc.
o Wash surfaces regularly with disinfectant.

A number of additional steps are being taken as precautionary measures in the event that the response level increases in response to a growing pandemic.

• Should the school decide or be asked to close, the school will provide you with early notification through the telephone number you have registered for the clarion call system.
• This will be followed by an email communication providing further details.
• Ongoing regular updates will be provided.
• Additionally, an emergency educational website has been prepared, as a precaution, in the event of school closure, to provide students work assignments remotely for home learning.

The school will continue to provide regular updates to help the community respond to this situation as it develops. Your attention is also drawn to the advice from the UK Government who is currently undertaking a leaflet door-drop to every home. The leaflet is entitled “important information about swine flu”. This leaflet, together with other information can be found at www.direct.gov.uk/swineflu

We will continue to provide regular updates to help the community respond to this situation as it develops.