Harry Metcalfe

My letter to Jeremy Corbyn MP

Today, the Government has scheduled the Digital Economy Bill’s committee, report and third reading stages. To take place this afternoon. In two hours. A process which normally takes days — 40 or 50 hours of debate, consideration and amendment.

You need to write to your MP, and ring them up, and ask them to attend the house to vote against this bill. Go. Do it. Now!

Dear Mr Corbyn,

I’ve just called and left a message, but I thought it would be good to follow up by email.

This afternoon, the Digital Economy Bill will receive its committee, report and third reading stages, all in two hours.

Some of the most damaging parts of the bill — clauses 10-17 — remain unopposed by the Conservatives, and are still supported by the Government.

These clauses have not been properly scrutinised by the Commons, may be very costly and damaging to the digital economy and to the digital civil liberties of your constituents and should not be passed without full and proper consideration.

I hope that you will attend the house this afternoon to vote against this bill at third reading. It can easily be reintroduced after the election, and given proper consideration, if the new Government so wishes.

Online copyright infringement has been rife for over a decade. It can wait for three more months. The sky will not fall down.

Yours Sincerely,

Harry Metcalfe

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Support the Open Knowledge Foundation

The Open Knowledge Foundation are responsible for marvellous things like this, and CKAN (the data package management system that powers data.gov.uk). They do splendid work.

They put a pledge on Pledgebank a while ago, seeking regular donations from supporters so that they can go on doing more splendid things. Unfortunately, the pledge failed — but I don’t think that really matters. I’ve signed up anyway. They deserve your support — can you spare them £5 a month?

Donate to the OKF

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Letter to Harriet Harman

I just sent this to Harriet Harman using 38degrees’s tool:

Dear Ms Harman,

I am writing to you as Leader of the House of Commons.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the Digital Economy Bill is shortly to be discussed in the Commons, and I am very concerned that it is not going to receive the scrutiny from MPs that such a complex bill demands.

This bill is complicated, and could have significant (possible unintended) affects if passed as drafted. Much of the bill is clearly drafted for the benefit of commercial entities, in ignorance of technological realities and contempt of the public interest. Recent revelations from Dispatches seem to confirm that the ability of wealthy special interests to influence our legislative process is alive and well.

In any situation such as this — where commercial and public interests are competing, over a complex and nuanced problem — it is vital for proposed legislation to be scrutinised diligently and comprehensively. To attempt to rush such a bill through in the last weeks of a Parliament is deeply inappropriate.

In its current form, the Bill strips away human rights to due process, establishes collective punishments and establishes an infrastructure for state censorship of the web.

All in the name of protecting an industry whose history is both littered with attempts to secure protectionist policies when threatened by technological developments, and success stories of growth, adaptation and increased profitability when those attempts fail.

This is a complex problem with no simple solution. I urge you to give it sufficient Commons time for a full and proper debate, or to allow the bill to fall and bring it before a new Parliament after the election.

Yours Sincerely,

Harry Metcalfe

Feel free to crib bits. Please do send her a letter — and why not send it to your MP too?

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British culture and entrepreneurs

I have to say, this has not been my experience (so far) at all.

I’ve found people to be generally excited, understanding and supportive. We’ve got a lot done on good will alone, and I hope we’ve given enough back.

That said, some of the things the article says certainly resonate — especially people being suspicious of success — and we’ve never had to seek VC. So perhaps my experience isn’t representative.

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Letter to Jeremy Corbyn MP

I’m embarrassed to say that I haven’t yet written to my MP about the Digital Economy Bill. But amendment 120 (which would establish a system in the UK for take-down and blocking of websites) and today’s news that it was drafted, in its entirety, by the BPI — has finally prompted me to action. So I’ve sent the following to my MP. Feel free to crib bits if they look useful:

Sir,

I have been watching the movement of the Digital Economy Bill through the House of Lords with some concern. Most notable among its faults are the proposals to disconnect entire households from the internet for the alleged infringements of individuals living there — a collective punishment — and the ability for ministers to arbitrarily amend the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act by statutory instrument.

Some improvements to the bill have been made, including the removal of those Henry 8th powers. However, they have been replaced with a sweeping amendment — bizarrely supported by the Opposition and opposed by the Government — to introduce a system of website take-down and blocking for alleged infringements. This would effectively introduce the infrastructure for a Chinese-style system of censorship of the web, and is a potent and serious threat to our freedom of speech and human rights.

I now discover, via the Open Rights Group, that the entire amendment establishing this system was drafted by the British Phonographic Industry and tabled, unaltered, for consideration by the Lords.

I recognise that the drafting of amendments by third parties is routine, but this surely exceeds what is reasonable: in my experience, amendments drafted by lobby groups are generally probing, and if passed, rarely become part of the bill in their original form.

We now find ourselves opposing a bill drafted in considerable part by the record industry for their gain and to our detriment.

I ask that you raise this concern with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and ask him to respond, and to rigorously oppose this bill when it enters the Commons in the coming weeks.

Yours sincerely,

Harry Metcalfe

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I think HAML is great

Mini post, mostly to pick up on some tweets about HAML that I wanted to respond to. But not in 140 characters.

HAML is fantastic. If you’re writing Rails apps, you should be using it. We’re working on making something similar for PHP.

So, today, I was surprised to see clever people knocking it. I asked what was going on and Markng said:

@harrym my largest objection is that it’s an abstraction over something that doesn’t need abstracting. (link)

@harrym maintainability involves people after you picking up code. People who don’t think learning another html syntax was necessary. (link)

@harrym good html is fine to read. Bad HTML not so much so. Maybe some are using HAML as a discipline mechanism. (link)

@harrym furthermore, the biggest reason for abstraction is when there is more than one output or source. Not the case with HAML. (link)

First of all: it’s not really an abstraction at all. I know that it calls itself one, but it isn’t, really. It’s just an alternative syntax. So let’s rename it to Html Alternative Markup Language and forget about that one!

You’re right that people’s unfamiliarity with HAML is a barrier to maintainability, but that’s true of any new technology. That it’s a barrier isn’t really the point: the more important question is whether it’s a barrier that’s worth breaking through. I say that it is. Once you have learned it (which is hardly difficult) it becomes much easier and quicker to write clean, readable, valid markup. Less stuff to write, less stuff to read, fewer lines than the HTML equivalent. Win.

As for using HAML as a discipline mechanism. That’s partially true. Then again, it’s true of compilers, too, and non-superuser accounts on *nix boxes, and typed languages, and object orientation. All of those are, among other things, discipline mechanisms. What’s bad about that?

If you can enforce discipline while also being easier, quicker and more elegant, haven’t you just made some better technology?

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Homeopath fail

I have nothing but sympathy for this poor woman, and nothing but delight that she’s pulled through her illness, but I’d really like to know how the Beeb consider this argument credible:

1. I had cancer
2. I had conventional treatment
3. Doctors said they’d done everything they could
4. I took a homeopathic remedy
5. I got better
6. Therefore, homeopathy works

You know what? Doctors are people too, and sometimes they’re wrong.

I mean, really.

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Does Directgov Deliver?

Consumer Focus Labs have published an excellent analysis of Directgov. I went along to the read their report today, fulling intending to vent some Directgov-related irritation into their comments.

But I’ve been stymied. I have nothing substantial to add. The analysis is great — it says exactly the right things, and draws the right conclusions. It deserves serious consideration and I hope it’ll get it.

If you haven’t read it yet, do — and spread the word.

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Terror alert raised to severe

I read that the UK’s terror alert level has been raised to “severe”.

We are urged to be vigilant. But there’s no intelligence indicating an imminent attack. And nothing in particular that we’re supposed to do, or not do, depending on the terror alert level. I rather suspect that, if it ever goes back down to “substantial”, we will still be asked to be vigilant.

It’s almost like it’s… pointless?

Edited to add:

@glynwintle just sent me this:

Nails and heads spring to mind!

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Forensic Science Procurement

I just listened to this week’s File on 4 (available till the 15th), which was about the “marketisation” of the forensic science services used by the Police.

It began fairly predictably as critique of the privatisation of the Forensic Science Service, which led to the system we now have — where multiple companies bid for contracts to provide forensic services to the Police. The usual criticisms were trotted out: that markets are amoral, and that everything was rosy before the capitalists came along. But the program fairly swiftly moved on to more interesting and familiar territory: procurement.

It was the same sorry old story. Heavy-weight tendering processes. The granting of long contracts for huge sums. Contracts managed by staff with little specific expertise in forensics. Commoditisation of services where expert analysis is key to success. Bureaucratic intermediation between the staff who need things and the contractors who get things done. Sound familiar?

It seems that many of the problems that beset IT procurement affect forensics as well. I can’t say I’m surprised — the problems are, after all, endemic — but somehow it’s a lot scarier to hear these things said about forensic science.

I wonder how many people have been imprisoned as a result of barmy procurement rules?

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I met Bruce Schneier (way cool)

Being an unabashed Schneier fanboy, I think I’ll just come right out and say it: yesterday was cool.

It was a talk and Q&A with Bruce Schneier, organised by the Open Rights Group and attended by over 100 fellow geeky people. Bruce spoke about the future of privacy, from the current prevalence of data in all forms to the future ubiquity of devices and technologies that could severely reduce the privacy of the individual.

I was familiar with a lot of the things that Bruce was talking about, so there were no major technological surprises or revelatory principles in the talk — but I was struck by how optimistic he was. He said that, though these technologies have serious potential to cause harm, he was confident that lawmakers would get things right within a generation or two.

Central to the talk was the idea that privacy vs security is a false dichotomy, that the real struggle is liberty vs control, and that that’s a problem only good lawmaking will solve.

Among the highlights:

“Data is the industrial pollution of the information age”

“The real dichotomy is liberty vs control, not security vs privacy. Real security is liberty plus privacy”

“I see this era as heralding the death of the ephemeral conversation”

And on the idea that security inevitably erodes privacy — and that the underlying assumption that all security is information security:

“I don’t want to know who the guy sat behind me is, I want to know if he’s going to blow up the plane — if so, I still don’t care who he is”

Which, assuming you’re the airline operator, is very much the case.

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Amusing graph fail from the Government’s draft IT Strategy

The Government’s leaked draft of their new IT strategy is now online, and among its delights is this graph:

Wondering what on earth it could possibly mean, I tweeted for some ideas:

Delightful graph fail from gov IT strat. What, I wonder, is 90% sophistication!?

And, well — people had some excellent ideas:

90% of Brits wear smoking jackets while they browse the web. Exmosis

It’s when your little finger sticks out while typing LilianBarton

Whatever it was, it seems to have stopped in 2007, so maybe we can relax. Or assume we must now be at at least 106.74%. pubstrat

Doesn’t matter – we’re kicking Europe’s ass by a whole 14%!! Yay us!! simond

All my answers are just too smutty to tweet paul_clarke

Got a good one? Add it in the comments…

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Cripplingly, apallingly stupid

Council bans parents from play areas because they don’t have CRB checks.

The mind boggles. I think Henry Porter summed it up nicely:

“This is a fundamental breach of rights, but almost as serious is the offence to common sense”

Who are the people who make this kind of decision, and why are they so paranoid? Wouldn’t it be better if people with these responsibilities assessed the risks that we all face reasonably and rationally?

This kind of petty officiousness deserves no mercy. Mass civil disobedience is called for. I hope that these adventure playgrounds are inundated with an unstoppable horde of parents and grandparents, bearing picnics, toys, and healthy bullshit detectors.

Someone’s got to make sure the kids know that we’re really screwing these things up.

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