Crimperman.org

Drawing by Ryan P Cartwright (c) 2013 CC:By-SA

I’ve been meaning to write this since my own Twitter hiatus and a recent conversation on there reminded me. This is happening a lot lately – perhaps I should make a list

Social media (by which let’s be honest most people mean Facebook and Twitter) can be a remarkable place to hang out,have conversations, enagage and laugh (sometimes) at pictures of cats. But some time ago I noticed a trend. A lot of the people I connected with in either Twitter or Facebook (disclaimer: I do mostly use the former) were going away. There was a general pattern to this as well:

• make or read a statement which though honest is a little contentious at best (or which could be taken two ways)
• get involved in a “discussion” about that which continues for some time (sometimes this can get heated)
• rinse, repeat

That’s not typical of every case, sometimes people will only be witnesses to the above. Sometimes there’s a particular topic swamping the sites and you just can’t seem to get away from it.

I noticed this a fair bit and then it happened to me. Over a short space of time I found my mood was dropping whenever I came off Twitter and/or Facebook. A common reaction at this point is to walk away and decry social media as – at best – unhelpful or at worst downright evil. The temptation to close my accounts, walk away and not come back was strong but I didn’t want to do that because I knew first-hand of the good parts of Twitter and Facebook. I knew how just one quick post could raise comfort and prayer for a situation I was going through. I knew the laughter I had experienced (not about cats). Social media was great. Social media sucked. Neither statement was false and both were true simultaneously.

Instead of closing my twitter account, I kept it open. I did walk away for a short time. It did me the power of good

So instead of closing my account I kept it open. I did walk away for a short time. It did me the power of good and while I was away I did a lot of thinking about social media and whether I should return and if so under what form. I came up with a plan which I have no called a social media survival kit.

The Social Media Survival Kit

1. Walk away – if only for short periods

You don’t need to close your account, just walk away from social media for a short while. Try a week. And be ruthless. For me I knew I would automatically check if I could and so I removed the icons from my ‘phone homepage. I deliberately made it harder for me to get onto Twitter and Facebook.

Don’t make a big song and dance about leaving. There really is no need to post dramatic statements about it

Also don’t make a big song and dance about leaving. There really is no need to post dramatic statements about it. When people do that I am reminded of the dramatic exits my children sometimes make (and I made when I was their age) when things don’t go their way. (Stomp, stomp, stomp…slam….door opens…”I AM GOING UPSTAIRS!” – just in case nobody heard the stomping). I’m sure not everyone is like that but I have seen a fair number of that ilk. Then again, if you don’t say something people will worry. So what I did was post a brief “I will be off here for a while, don’t worry. be back in near future.”

2. Stop listening – filter your stream/new feed

Sometimes it’s not a discussion you are in which brings you down, it’s just the seeming flood of inane and banal stuff on a particular subject. So filter those things out of your strea,m/news feed. For Twitter use a client (I use Plume on my Android phone but there are a few which do it) which allows you to filter out or mute tweets containing certain hashtags or words. I did this recently for a certain politcal story over here in the UK and I’m pretty certain it saved me from a lot of angst.

Sometimes what you really need is not a way to remove them from your life but to just a way to turn them down a little

Filtering out people is a little harder because often – and particularly on Facebook – they will know if you block or unfriend/follow them. They don’t get tiold but they do notice after a while. And sometimes what you really need is not a way to remove them from your life but to just a way to turn them down a little. On Twitter you can use the filtering/muting service of certain clients to mute certain users. Then after a while you can go back and unmute them. Right now I imagine people reading this are wondering if I have muted them . On Facebook you can hide their status updates from your News feed. Click through to see their profile. Click the Friends button just at the bottom of their profile header and from the menu that appears deselect “Show in news feed”. You can do the same with pages you “like” as well. It’s one thing to show support for a cause or company but another to be inundated with posts from them.

3. Wean yourself off – schedule regular time away

Schedule a time in your week (or day if it’s that bad) when you do not check your social media feeds. This can vary it length but for me it’s about two hours at any one time. During this time I do other stuff – you’d be surprised how much time you have. Oh and I am not talking about times when you are supposed to be doing other stuff here. I am talking about time when you would normally be “okay” to use Twitter or Facebook.

Try to get out of the habit of jumping straight on Twitter or Facebook when you have “five minutes”

In addition try to get out of the habit of jumping straight on Twitter or Facebook when you have “five minutes”. These will be the times when you are “bored” or waiting for something. Try to give yourself some of that “free” time away from social media. Me? I’ve started reading a bit more, I’m also looking to do a bit more sketching, writing and – steady now – thinking. None of these times are very long and neither should they be but it will help your social media mood if it is part of a balanced diet .

4. Be ruthless – regularly cull those you follow

This is not those who follow you, this is those you follow. I’ve mentioned muting people above but sometimes you’ll find people who are at the edges of your circles and yet can cause you no end of bad moods. The reasons you follow these people will be varied and may be very good but trust me if they or things they say are causing you grief you need to give yourself a break from them. Yes I know all the stuff about how reading views that are contrary to your own is good for you and how you should not only surround yourself with views that match your own. I subscribe to that theory. I also agree that sometimes you can be a good influence on those around even if they disagree with you. But. But, but but. But if you follow someone purely for those reasons then I’d suggest you unfollow them because you may find they unfairly shift the up/down balance of your newsfeed or stream.

Also be prepared to cull people you follow just because you like their films/books/music/TV shows

Also be prepared to cull people you follow just because you like their films/books/music/TV shows. I have found that the greatest pleasure I get from social media is not from being able to follow a “celebrity” with a gazillion other followers but through interaction with other people – even celebrities. If someone I am following allows me to interact and interacts with me ( I don’t require them to follow me) then I will find that relationship (for want of a better term) healthier for me than one where one person broadcasts and I listen. Never forget this is called social media for a reason.

That’s it

I am sure that you will have many other useful techniques in surviving Twitter or Facebook. For some of you that will be walking away permanently but if you are considering that, ask yourself what you take away from that platform when you leave? I am sure the people who follow you (unless they have “I_FOLLOW_BACK” in their username) are interested in your posts for a reason. So if you are consieering closing your account – wait. Try step 1 above for a week or two and then consider the others if/when you return.

Something came up in my twitter feed today which I had solved a while ago and – because the solution doesn’t fit very well into 140 characters – I thought I’d share it here.

WordPress allows for indented paragraphs within it’s usual editor but not for a single line. Well you can use the “Preformatted” formatting option in the visual editor but that will change the font and appearance of your text as well. I’m presuming this is not what you want. Within the visual editor there is no easy way to have a single line indent. Thus you can have this:

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin, ball tip ham bresaola chuck short loin venison corned beef filet mignon bacon. Meatball cow corned beef meatloaf. Shankle jerky andouille strip steak. Swine shoulder rump spare ribs corned beef, short loin andouille tri-tip jowl leberkas hamburger drumstick.

But not this:

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.
Ball tip ham bresaola chuck short loin venison corned beef filet mignon bacon.
Meatball cow corned beef meatloaf. Shankle jerky andouille strip steak.
Swine shoulder rump spare ribs corned beef, short loin andouille tri-tip jowl leberkas hamburger drumstick.

Wait..what?”

“Hang on?” I hear you say, I just said you can’t do that and yet I have – er – done it. Okay you can achieve it in WordPress but not with the standard editor in visual mode. The trick is to wrap a small bit of html code around the line you want to indent. In this case the first line in the above paragraph actually looks like this…

<span style=”padding-left: 1em;”>Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.</span>

The “padding-left:  1em;” bit is where you set the width of the indent. I have used an “em” measurement which is a printers term equivalent to the width of the “m” character is the current typeface/font. You can also specify the indent in “px” (pixels) or “pt” (points). Don’t forget the quotes though. Oh and you must put the editor into HTML mode to add the styling code. To do this simply edit your post and click the HTML tab at the top left. Here’s some examples of using different units of measurement..

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin. 10px
Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin. 2em
Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin. 5pt

Keeping it consistent

Now it’s quite possible that you will always want the indent the same size when you come to use it. That’s where stylesheets come in. Instead of specifying the indent width each time you can just refer to a “class” which is defined in your theme’s stylesheet. That way if you ever need to change the indent across all the instances where it is specified in your blog, you can just change your stylesheet and voila!

To do this you use the following code where you want an indent..

<span class=”myindent”>Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.</span>

Now we add the class to the stylesheet. In your WordPress dashboard, click Appearance->Editor. It should open your stylesheet(css) for editing but if not just click the relevant css file from the right hand list. Now add the following to the bottom of the file and click Update.

.myindent { padding-left: 1em; }

Note the fullstop at the beginning of that line. Again you can alter the padding specified as before. In my theme this gives you …

Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet pastrami beef ribs boudin.

Hope this helps.

By the way if you are wondering where all the meaty references came from. It’s from the excellent [Bacom ipsum](http://baconipsum.com/).

Figure 1 – click for full size image (c) Ryan P Cartwright CC:By-SA

Recently I bought a new mobile phone^{* see here}. It was an Android 4 phone running on dual-core processor and with dual-SIM capabaility with a 4.3″ HD screen. I love it and I raved about it on Twitter. Because of interest from some of my followers I did a review on Twitter and also did one on Amazon – where you can buy the ‘phone. As a result of those several people bought either the same or a similar handset from the Chinese manufacturer I got mine from (DracoTek). This had two effects:

• I felt a bit nervous because people were buying phones on my recommendation
• People started to ask me questions or mostly make generic statements on Twitter about setting the ‘phone up.

One of the upsides of getting a phone like this is that it is not “locked” to a particular mobile network. This means you a) own the ‘phone outright from the beginning (no contract) and b) don’t get a ‘phone cluttered with all ther “added value” the mobile networks put on handsets they provide. For the most part this is an advantage but the only downside is that the phone will not usually be supplied set up for the UK. It’s something that’s easy to remedy but it can at first seem overwheleming.

As I feel partly responsible for people buying these phones and because I want people to have the best experience they can, I am writing this post which I hope will provide some tips and guidance on how to get your nice shiny ‘phone acting how you want after it first arrives. The tips here apply to any Android 4 phone by the way but they are particularly relevant to a phone you have bought outright rather than as part of a contract. It’s by no means an exhaustive list but it does include the most commonly requested items.

This post does not explain how to unlock a phone or how to “root” one. Sorry.

Which phone did I buy?

If you are interested I bought this phone from these people. It’s also available through Amazon but I didn’t get it from any of the sellers currently offering it there. I did however write a review of the phone on Amazon which you can see here. I am not affiliated with the seller or manufacturer.

Update January 2013: I’ve had the phone for about six months now and it is still performing as good as when I first got it. The battery is great and the only slight thing I mis sis an LED to tell me when there’s a missed call. I solved that one by install the NoLed app from Google play though.

I also teamed this up with a SIM from GiffGaff who are a SIM only network based on O2. I use one of their bundles which gives me enough minutes and texts plus a huge wodge of mmobile internet to use. There’s no contract and you can switch between a bundle or PAYG whenever you feel like it. I’ve not had any issues with the service but that may be because of my location. I do know some parts of the country have had problems at times. The link to GiffGaff I’ve given there is an affiliate link – this means if you click it and then order a SIM (which is free) I get some credit as a thank you. So I do benefit from your ordering a SIM but I would recommend them even if I didn’t.

Setting your location and language

When the ‘phone first arrives it is likely to have been set up for the country it originated in. In my case this was China and whilst the language was set to English (US) so was the keyboard. Note that the ‘phone will probably get the time and timezone from the network of your SIM though and this is fine.

• You need to go to the Settings app. If you can’t see an icon for this on your homepage tap the apps drawer using the icon highlighted in Figure1
• Scroll down to Personal->Language & input
• Tap the settings icon next to “Android keyboard”
• Tap “Input languages”
• Select your chosen language – in my case this is “English (UK)”
• Tap the Home key to return to your homepage

**Update – November 2012 ** : It seems that on some handsets the English(UK) language is not available to pick. This will be becuase the supplier has only installed a stock set of languages and not all of them (probably to save room). You can fix this by installing locale-selector apps. One I have found good is Set Locale and Language by brucedior (link goes to Google Play Store). You can install it, set the language and then uninstall it if you need spaxce or if (like me) you find it conflicts with Touchpal keyboard app.

Wireless and mobile Internet

Wireless

You can connect your phone to a wireless network (provided you have the password etc.) quite simply. The ‘phone will remember the details and will connect to the network whenever it is is range.

• Go to the settings app (see above)
• Tap Wifi
• If your network is not listed Tap “SCAN”
• Tap your network when it appears and enter the password.

When you are out and about you may find some places offer free wireless. Often to connect to this you must give your email address or inside leg measurement. In this case you should connect to the network as listed above but then go to the web browser and go to your usual homepage. You will probably be presented with a web-form for your email address. Follow the instructions on there.

Mobile internet – GiffGaff

For most SIM you will find the mobile internet is available as soon as you put the SIM in and power up the ‘phone. If you are using the GiffGaff network (in the UK) however you need to change a few settings. Under Android 3 this used to be done for you by GiffGaff but Android 4 prohibits apps from altering your ‘phone mobile internet settings (for security reasons). This means you’ll have to do it manually. It can be tricky but there is some really good help available.

I want to repeat this is ONLY for GiffGaff users.

• Download the GiffGaffAPN app – you may beed to add your Google account first in order to use Google Play (see below)
• Run the GiffGaffAPN app and follow the instructions.

The app works by posting a notification for each step showing the settings you have to use. Copy the setting and add it to the appropriate APN step.

I’m using a lot of odd words and terms here but in essence this is very simple process. Download the app and run it, it tells you exactly what to do for the rest of it. Just make sure you read it and follow the advice given. I did this and had my mobile network up in under 5 minutes.

Adding your accounts

If you want to download apps from Google play or browse your gMail you’ll need to add your Google account. In addition you can have the “eMail” app download and view your non-gMail email.

Google account

• Open the settings app (see above)
• Tap”Accounts & Sync”
• Tap “Add Account” at the bottom of the screen.
• Tap “Google”
• If you have a Google account, tap “Existing”, otherwise tap “New”
• Enter the relevant account details when requested.

Other eMail

• Open the app drawer as shown in Figure1
• Find and open the eMail app
• You will be asked to set up an account. Use the settings given to you by your regular ISP/IT people for your desktop eMail.

Make sure you leave the account so it leaves the eMail on the server. In addition you may find you have to enter a username and password for sending eMail. Many ISPs insist upon this unless you are connected to their network (e.g. via wireless at home). Some do not permit you to send via any other network. Check with your ISP about this and if that is the case you may have to set the outgoing email (SMTP) server to your mobile provider one. Check with them for details about this.

Set your web browser homepage and bookmarks

You may find the web browser initially is set to Google.cn or similar. You may also find a bunch of bookmarks the manufacturer added to test the unit before shipping. You can set these to your own choices.

Set Google as your homepage

• go to the browser app
• tap in the address bar and type www.google.commonly- tap “Go”
• If you are connected to a network (wireless or mobile – see above), Google will load for your location (e.g. Google.co.uk)
• Tap the menu key (see figure 1)
• Tap Settings->General->Set homepage
• Tap Current page

Bookmarking a page

• Go to the webpage you want to bookmark (e.g. Twitter.com)
• Tap the menu key
• Tap Save to bookmarks

Managing bookmarks

• Tap the menu key
• Tap Bookmarks/history
• To delete a bookmark hold the icon for it and select Delete
• Rinse/repeat

Notification bar and area

One feature many new Android 4 users don’t seem to notice is the improved notification area. This is near the top of the screen (see figure 1). You can drag this down to see more of the notifications and also quickly change phone settings. (See figure 2). See those icons at the top? There are three screens of those. Slide your finger left and right across them to see more. Tapping one will switch it on or off accordingly.

Battery life

In my experience the batteries on these unbranded phones work really well but it’s always nice to make your battery last as long as possible. The best way to do this is to disable some of the more power hungry apps and features such as GPS, Wireless and screen brightness. Most of these can be done through the Notification icons (see above) but sometimes you want to do it without all the dragging. Enter the Power widget. This is a bar -type widget which you can add to a homepage (see below) and which has icons for the common power saving things I just mentioned. Drop it onto your homepage somewhere and you can quickly toggle the screen brightness or GPS and save your battery even more. It’s handy for things like disabling your wifi when you are on the road and unlikely to encounter a wifi hotspot.

Adding apps and widgets to your hoempage

Adding icons and widgets to your homepage is very easy but not always as obvious as you may think.

• Open the app drawer
• Tap and hold and icon
• The homepage screen appears with spaces marked out for icons. Drop your icon into the appropriate one.

The app drawer as two tabs – apps and widgets. Go to the widget one for more interactive bits n bobs on your homepage. You add them to the homepage in the same way as icons.

Handy apps to install

Everyone has their favourite apps and flame wars are possible on which ones are best. These are not required ones but they are the ones I find useful and you might like to look into them. I am no affiliated with this in any way.

• My backup pro – backs up your contacts SMS, pictures, apps and other data on a scheduled basis to either an online storage areaa or (my favourite) the SD card in your phone.
• Advanced Task Killer – handy to see what is running and kill any apps you don’t want using up your juice
• Digital Clock – my phone came with an analogue clock widget. I like analogue clocks but not on my homepage.
• Touchpal keyboard – this is a more powerful “swipe” keyboard which I find makes typing much easier. It’s a personal preference though.
• Twitter – there are loads of these but chances are your phone didn’t come with one. Browse Google play and get one if you like to tweet.
• Facebook – ditto to the above really. Chances are you rphone didn’t come with one. Install one of these and you can “like” things as much as you er like.

That’s it!

I hope this all helps. Feel free to add comments here if there’s stuff I’ve missed or you have any tips of your own.

If you want to reproduce the KJV text in the UK you have to ask the Queen.

I’ve probably written a lot on the subject of freedom in licencing already but a recent “news” story and the reaction to it has made me pick up my keyboard again.

Recent reports suggested the actor Bruce Willis was unhappy about the fact that he could not bequeath his iTunes collection. The Apple licencing agreement (that you agree to when you create an iTunes account) says that the content you “buy” and “download” is (in the words of one commentator) “simply loaned” to you. That is you do not own it.

It’s not your music collection

Firstly let’s get one thing out of the way, with few exceptions you have never owned any recorded music or video that you have “bought”. Most of those CDs, DVDs, videos and records that you have on your shelves or in your loft are not yours. Well they are. You own the media (the disc) and the paper the artwork is printed on, you own the plastic case and the ink used in printing. You do not own the music or film on the disc or video. You do not own the images on the paper or the words printed with the ink. You licence those things. This is the way it has been ever since copyright law was created.

You have never legally been able to take a DVD of, say, Die Hard 2, copy it, remix the film and give it to your friends. Actually in some jurisdictions that might be legal but here in the UK we don’t have a “fair usage” definition. Of course this has not stopped people doing such things – witness the rise of music sampling in the 70s and 80s. But don’t kid yourself that you have ever owned the music on those CDs. Remember those lovely “Hope taping is killing live music” stickers on cars in the 1980s? If you owned the music on the records in your record box that campaign would have had no backing (regardless of its lack of merit).

WTF?

Okay you may not have used those exact words but you get the idea. Many people react with shock when they find out they do not own the music they bought in Our Price in 1987 (yes I know I’m showing my age) but in truth you don’t. The person who wrote the songs probably doesn’t own it either, nor the one who recorded it. Chances are it is “owned” by a media company which has acquired the “rights” to the music you listen to.

Myth-busting

One of the articles I have read on this matter (I won’t link to it because I am not trying to attack anyone here – just debunk a few myths) went on to make these statements:

“Apple apparently have the right to freeze an iTunes account if someone has died and they believe someone else is accessing their files”

No they do not have the “right” – as in a legal statute, they have an agreement which you (the user) agreed to and which gives them permission to do that.

“I think if we pay for music or books – and they are not insubstantially priced – we should have the right to pass these on. It seems no different than leaving a loved one the keys to our house, if we own it.”

I’ve explained above that you don’t own the music. Whilst you can pass on physical CDs (because you own the media), you agreed not to do this for your digital content when you opened an iTunes account.

“I can’t physically carry lots of heavy books or stacks of CDs with me. So digital is the route I have to take.”

Yes it is but that doesn’t mean you have to buy restricted digital content. There is a wealth of digital content out there under free[dom] licences. Try some of that. Also you could try buying a CD and ripping it. That’s a while new legal grey area but most commentators say that it would be difficult to prosecute you unless you were distributing digital copies of your CD rather than listening to a single copy in place of the CD on your shelf.

Finally a question appeared on the same piece which asked:

“Does the reality that we only ‘loan’ in our digital ownership, make pirate file sharing more likely?”

As said I am not trying to have a go a anyone, rather debunk some myths. The myth here is that the alternative to “buying digital content” is piracy. It’s a myth the content owners love to perpetuate as it guilt-trips the consumer into paying up when they don’t have to. The realistic alternative of iTunes et al is NOT “piracy”, it’s freedom. Creative Commons and others have long led the way when it comes to freedom in creative works. The problem is not Apple’s licence agreement – others such as Amazon offer greater freedom in theirs. The problem is the illusion they perpetuate that you own what you buy from them. Even if Apple said you were permitted to bequeath your digital music collection to your grandkids the real problem would still be there.

That is the problem of what you can and cannot do with the works you have on your device. You cannot make additional copies for example. You cannot play the tune or video in your church without paying a (some might say protection racket) fee to CCLI first. You cannot print that poem in your church newsletter without breaking the law. You cannot give copies of the music to your worship band to help them learn it without first obtaining a different CCLI licence.

But, but, but

If you are now thinking “But how else would musicians and writers earn their crust” because of the last few remarks I’ve made, I would respond with the fact that the very same argument is used to defend the Apple iTunes agreement which says your kids have to buy their own copies.

The answer

The answer is, as you might expect me to say, to release creative works from the restrictive shackles of the copyright “industry”. Copyright, patents and “Intellectual property” all sound a wonderful way for the poor musician to get paid for their work. The reality is that it is an ever tightening web of restrictions which, if allowed to continue unchecked, will choke the life out of the very creativity and innovation it claims to protect.

If the music Bruce Willis had bought was released under licencing with freedom built in (Creative Commons for example), Apple would most certainly have no right to tell him who he could give copies to – even before his death.

Much of this is a reworking of an earlier blog post. I have rewritten it to address the proposed law change following the campaign I referred to earlier.

A parent will always be the best protection for a child on the Internet. Image CC:By-NC-SA OllieBray

The government is holding a consultation for a proposed new law which it says will protect children while using the internet. This proposal follows a campaign which I first came across in February 2012. It is called “SafetyNet” and is being run by Premier Christian Media and SaferMedia. The campaign and now the consultation is about requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to “[block] pornography and other content at network level whilst giving adults a choice to ‘opt-in’ to this content”.

The campaign website and FAQ document are full of statistics which – as with any statistic – cannot really be argued with. These range from the percentage of UK households with internet access to how many children regularly access explicit images on their home computer. There are also a bunch of sound bite quotes to join the dots between these facts and the aims of the campaign.

The consultation is fairly loaded and appears based upon the “facts” purported by the campaign. As far as I am concerned facts are facts. If a USA survey i(take a single school by the way) says “1 in 3 10 year olds have accessed pornography online”, I’m not going to argue. I’m not altogether sure why 73% of UK households having internet access adds to the problem but I don’t doubt the figure is correct. What concerns me are the conclusions drawn and the way they are presented in the consultation document.

Perhaps I should introduce why I feel I can write about this. I am a UK Christian parent (so therefore fit neatly in the target demographic for the campaign), my children are between 5 and 9 years old and thus are well within the group the proposed law seeks to “protect”. I am also someone who works with and understands the “network level” Internet this consultation talks about. I have been building hosting webservers and websites since the mid 1990s and I still do. So I am fairly and squarley intarget demographic for the campaign, consultation and the proposed law. I would add I am also one of the people who understands the technology involved and by the sound of it I understand it better than those running the campaign or making the proposal.

Why this won’t work

The campaign calls for ISPs to “block pornography” at “network level”, the consultation expands this into two options. Firstly a universal switch which enables or disables blocking (or “filtering” if you prefer) for the internet connection and secondly an array of questions which apparently will allow the parent to decide which types of content are permitted or not permitted through the same connection. The wording is phrased as if this filtering can be decided on a per user basis rather than a per connection basis but the type of filtering they are describing cannot be managed in that way. In brief the type of filtering they are proposing (regardless of which option is used) is unworkable and dangerous. I’ll focus on pornography here because that is the main thrust of the campaign but the same points can be applied to other content types. Here is why…

How do you define “pornography”?

You can’t (as the campaign does) try to get away with a dictionary definition because we are dealing with parents here who may well have their own idea of what is appropriate for their child to view. Limiting it to just ‘the explicit representation of sexual activity’ may not be enough. As an example if that were all that was being blocked I still would need to check what my 8 year old was stumbling across on Google images at which point the “protection” is not coming from the blocking but from me (as it does now). Additionally who decides what content fits into what categiry and what level of “risk” there is? One parent may consider it perfectly aceptable for their child to see say a scantily clad woman in a provactive pose, another may not and yet both would expect such a filtering service to met their needs. It can’t. There is no part of the proposal which mentions fine tuning or configuration of the filters by the parent and to be honest if it did have such a feature I could not see many taking advatange of it because it would be what a friend of mine refers to a “too much of a faff”.

How do the ISPs determine what gets blocked?

Certain websites will be obvious by their name/domain but is the government really so naive as to expect the site owners to be scrupulous in what they call their websites? Also what of images and content provided through otherwise innocent websites? Google images for example has a safesearch option. Set that to “off” and your child will get a bit of surprise. But as the images are hosted and served by Google, the ISP cannot block them. So using the vaunted “network level” blocking, the explicit images can still be viewed. Other sites will be similar. In the end the only way for an ISP to properly block explicit content is to do it on an image-by-image, video-by-video basis. To do that they’d have to either rely of peer reviews which are inherently slow to react or they’d need to employ people to check and grade the content. Now I’m not an employement law expert but I’m pretty sure that an ISP employing somebody to view possibly illegal, often offensive and probably explicit material every day would be opening themselves up to legal consequences they could do without. Aside from that, given the constantly changing nature of world wide web content, this is something I cannot see any ISP being able to do properly. How long would it take before a parent brings an action against an ISP because their child was exposed to some piece of content which slipped through the filter?

Filtering does not work.

Anyone who uses filtering or blocking software will tell you that things slip through. Don’t believe me: how about your eMail spam filters? How about your anti-virus software? If they are so good why are you still suspicious of links in eMails you weren’t expecting? If you are not suspicious, you should be. Let’s look at Google images again. Google are huge, they dwarf any ISP by comparison and yet they still don’t guarantee that safesearch will hide all explicit or offensive images, they have a “report offensive images” link on their search results. If Google can’t make any guarantees how can I be sure an ISP would block everything?

Network level blocking means blocking sites and images before they get to your house. Such things already exist. I use a free (and very good) service called OpenDNS which – among others things – allows me to have it block websites that either declare themselves as “adult” or have been reported as such by other users of the service. Such sites are blocked before they even get down my phoneline. So this is pretty much what is being proposed here. It doesn’t work. Well that’s not true, it does work just not 100%. Google images is not blocked and other sites which have mixed content are not always blocked. If my daughter searches for “girls bedroom posters” on Google images with safesearch on “moderate” (the default setting by the way) she gets images which are possibly not what she was after. Filters can of course be too aggressive such as the one I heard of recently which blocked access to the Essex Radio website (and presumably Sussex and Middlesex too). Lord knows what it makes of Scunthorpe.

The point again is that even with Google images safesearch on strict and OpenDNS I still have to monitor what my children surf. The main “protection” for my children comes from me not any blocking software or service.

It’s all or nothing

The consultation allows for the fact that adults can request the ISP blocking is switched off either entirely or by specifying types of content. This sounds fine as long as all the adults use one connection and all the children use another. But that’s not how the world is. Those 73% of UK households with Internet access probably have a single main connection for each household. Many of them almost defnitely have a mixed range of ages using the Internet. So if a parent wants the blocking switched off, the child gets it switched off too. ISP blocking at “network level” is by defnition all-or-nothing. Now you may argue that parents should not be watching such content if they have kids. But I’ll wager they do and if they have the blocking turned off, the children the proposed law seeks to protect are no longer protected.

I’m not here to tell other adults what to do and by the sound of it the proposal doesn’t want to either but if an adult wants it turned off (and I doubt this would be something the ISP would want to keep switching on and off on an hourly basis) then it’s off for the kids and again the “protection” that should be provided by the blocking will have to be provided by the parent (as it should be now).

The consultation makes reference to filtering services supplied by mobile operators. The problem with this is that mobile internet connections are supplied to a single device, home internet connections are supplied to a single point (a hub or router) and this distributes it to a range of devices within the home. If you turn off filtering on a mobile device you disable it for that single device. If you disable it (or part of it) for a home Internet connection you do so for all devices and all users. So while it is entirely practical for a child’s phone to have fiiltering but the parent’s one to not have it, this is not practical or possible on an average home Internet connection as proposed here.

It gives a false sense of security to parents

You’ll have gathered by now that this is my main point. The campaign raises concerns which all parents whose children have Internet access should consider. But the solution offered by the proposed law and consultation is poorly thought through. As you have seen above, ISP blocking will still require a parent to monitor what their kids are surfing. This is good and I wholeheartedly agree that a parent/guardian is the best protection for children online. As parents we should be interested in what they are doing whether online or not. But what worries me is that this ISP blocking idea would cause a lot of parents to stop paying attention (or pay less of it) to what their children are doing online. It would give a false sense of security. Lets revisit the anti-virus analogy. Anyone running a Microsoft Windows PC should run anti-virus software, that is a given. But just having it there does not mean you will be “safe” from malware, phishing or other nasties. Ask anyone who supports Windows PCs and they will tell you that you are only as good as your last update and also just because you have software which the manufacturer promises will protect you (no matter how much you pay for it) you still have to be vigilant. It’s the same with blocking or filtering. The model is flawed. It does the best it can under the circumstances but it’s flawed.

It’s been suggested to me that I am not actually the type of parent this is aimed at. It’s a complement to be considered so and I know there are parents out there who do not pay attention to what their children are doing online. The problem is that if that is the target market aren’t they exactly the ones who will presume this filtering alleviates them of any further concern to their child’s online activity? Doesn’t that – in the terms set out by the campaign and consultation – put their children at greater risk? I’m not convinced that inadequate, unpractical and unworkable filtering is a solution. I’m not convinced that filtering is anything other than an assistance and even then if it is not voluntary introduced by the parent it is less likely they will fully understand it or implement it properly.

Oppose it

In the end, as shown above, ISP blocking would still require a parent to monitor/participate/be involved in their child’s online activity. That means the blocking is next to useless. Even if you presume it will help or do some of the job for you, you still run the significant risk that your child will find an image, video or site that you’d rather they didn’t. Sadly pornography is part of our culture and so is the Internet. But the Internet does not work like a TV, radio of a shelf of magazines in the newsagents. It’s different and it needs to be handled differently. As a Christian parent you might expect me to support this campaign but I just can’t. I do believe that my children should not be exposed to certain types of material until such a time as they are ready to understand it but I do not believe this is the way to achieve that.

The SafetyNet campaign might have the safety and protection of children at its heart but its using the wrong tactics. We do not need scaremongering, knee-jerk reactions based on shaky “evidence” and headline-grabbing phrasing. The government may use rhetoric which says it is trying to protect our children but the consultation is loaded and ill-thought out. Such a law, if passed, would not protect children any more than an 18 certificate on a DVD does. Educate parents, get them to speak to their kids, help them. Don’t make laws which would have a worse effect if passed.

Filtering, blocking and other such technologies can help a parent, but in the end, technology cannot protect our children, only we can. Such laws do not prevent children getting access to the filtered content (whether deliberately or by stumbling across it).

What can we do

The Open Rights Group has provided ways to write to your MP on this matter. In addition if you are a parent or business involved in Internet Services you can take part in the government consultation. The closing date for the consultation is 6 September 2012.

Image Copyright (c) 2012 Ryan P Cartwright - released into Public Domain

Some of you will know I’m a bit of a freedom advocate – particularly when it comes to using the Internet/WWW. I’ve already explained why censorship and blocking are non-starters when it comes to the web and spoken out about Internet censorship. During the last governments reign I joined those campaigning against the monitoring of private Internet usage on a national scale. In short we won – the proposed bill to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to keep records of all their customers communications was dropped.

Well now the current government is looking to resurrect that bill as the Communications Data Bill (CDB). This bill would require ISPs to:

• keep a year’s worth of complete records of all the websites you have visited as well as when and how frequently you visit them
• keep a year’s worth of every eMail you send and receive
• keep a year’s worth of every phone call you make to or through them (e.g. through Internet telephony like Skype)
• keep a year’s worth of every letter and fax communication between you and them or sent through them (not sure why an ISP would have records of letters I have sent but this proves the bill is worded as a catch-all).

Of course the Home Secretary says this is for prevention of crime and advocates of the bill are already dropping the key terms “terrorist” and “paedophile” into conversations about this proposed act as often as they can.

But this bill is yet another poorly thought out that attempt to monitor what everybody is doing and thus keep an eye on all of us – innocent or not. “That’s fine” you think, “I’m not breaking any laws. If the government wants a record of my visits to http://www.cakewrecks.com that’s fine with me . This bill won’t affect me.” Except it will.

• ISPs queued up to decry the last bill saying how much overhead storing all this data would add to their business costs. Those costs will be passed onto the customers. That affects you.
• There are and should always be concerns over the security of this data. These records will contain every eMail you send, every visit to your bank’s website, your shopping habits, your credit card details used when you shopped. That is a very tempting target to a lot of people. That affects you.
• Mobile providers are also ISPs now so this new law covers them. All you rmobile phone calls and mobile web browsing kept on record. That affects you.
• The records will also contain details of anything you may have said or did – even in innocence – which could be deemed in breach of somebody’s copyright. That music file you sent to your friend so they could tell if they wanted to buy the album? That clip from Youtube you downloaded and used in a presentation without getting a licence? Imagine if a media firm suspected you of “stealing” their intellectual property. How far a leap is it to imagine that they would ask/demand the ISP hand over your browsing habits regardless of whether there is any proof? An innocent eMail becomes evidence in a private lawsuit. That affects you.
• The records could be used to filter out any dissent against the government and highlight those who disagree with government policy. They could use this to censor things they disagree with. This affects you.

Woah stop. Did I just say the government could use this data to highlight those who oppose it? Surely that kind of censorship wouldn’t happen in a democratic country like the UK?

Except it does.

Enter the neverseconds blog debacle

You’ve heard this one right?

• A 9 year old girl blogs about her school dinners, including photos and rates them for health and nutrition.
• The site proves successful gaining over 2 million visits and “celebrity endorsement”.
• The site also raises thousands of pounds for a charity that aims to feed children in poorer nations.
• The local authority (Argyll & Bute) hear about it and don’t like the fact that this blog occasionally paints a somewhat negative image of the schools meals.
• The local authority instruct the school to stop the girl from blogging or taking photos of her meals saying it puts their staff “at risk”(?).
• There’s a public outcry and show of support for the blog.
• The local authority issue a statement to say they are standing by their actions regardless.

Update: As I published this post the BBC were reporting that Argyll & Bute have climbed down and are no longer banning the neverseconds blog. But they did try to censor and only changed their mind when it went public.

Censorship (or attempted censorship anyway) here in the UK. Yeah I know it seems daft to jump from a local council in a tizzy about slating school meals (funny how nobody stopped Jamie Oliver – who funnily enough supported this blog) to a national goverment sifting through eMails to find incriminating data on someone they want out of the way. The problem is that Argyll & Bute’s actions show that politicians often act in an ill-informed way which is harmful to the people they are meant to serve. Yes there are a lot of politicians but honestly I have never heard of one who genuinely seems to understand the Internet and associated technologies. Once these records are being kept, broadband costs will rise and it will open the door for the next phase which will be to open this data up to other interested parties.

This is fine if you are happy with the government (or anyone they deem fit) sifting through your communications. But if you are ok with it, can I ask a question: do you use envelopes or do you send everything on a postcard? I’ll presume you use envelopes so then ask your self why? It’s not illegal stuff you are sending. It’s just a birthday card to you best friend. But you use an envelope because 1. you don’t want you friend to see it until their birthday and 2. it’s nobody else’s business what is in that envelope.

I appreciate there will be some purported legitimate reasons for wanting to monitor certain people for particular reasons but there’s a pretty decent chance that anyone who is using the Internet for criminal activity (and copyright infringement is not a crime) will already work around the bits where they leave a trace. You know those “hacking” groups like Anonymous and LolSec? Ever wonder why they rarely get caught? They’re good at hiding. ISP records would not catch them. In fact there’s a good chance they’ll hijack somebody else’s wireless and put the blame on an innocent person.

Write to your MP today

The CDB is not in the public interest, it is poorly conceived and bad for the country. It does affect each of us and if we sit and wait it will be too late for us to stop it. The openrights group have an excellent page which enables you to eMail your MP about this. It takes a few seconds to do and could make a big difference. If you live in the UK I urge you to do so as soon as possible. Let’s stop this before it begins.

Which of us as a child playing with Lego didn’t wish the models we built could actually do what the real thing could? I remember building aircraft out of Lego imagining what it would be like to see those models in the air or racing down the road (of course with Mecanno i didn’t have to imagine that hard becuase it was possible – but that’s a different post).

Well these guys have releasied the dreams of every child who ever buitl a model rocket. They’ve put a Lego Space Shuttle in the air and then some – 35000m (114000ft in old money). To a seasoned Lego builder like me who has now passed that love onto another generation this is quite simply – awesome (particularly from 2:38 onwards)

A parent will always be the best protection for a child on the Internet. Image CC:By-NC-SA OllieBray

In the last few weeks a campaign has come across my screen a few times. It is called “SafetyNet” and is being run by Premier Christian Media and SaferMedia. The campaign aims to gather enough signatures to convince the government to leglislate so that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must “[block] pornography at network level whilst giving adults a choice to ‘opt-in’ to this content”.

The website and FAQ document are full of statistics which – as with any statistic – cannot really be argued with. These range from the percentage of UK households with internet access to how many children regularly access explicit images on their home computer. There are also a bunch of sound bite quotes to join the dots between these facts and the aims of the campaign.

As said, facts are facts. If a USA survey says “1 in 3 10 year olds have accessed pornography online”, I’m not going to argue. I’m not altogether sure why 73% of UK households having internet access adds to the problem this campaign is trying to resolve but I don’t doubt the figure is correct. What concerns me are the conclusions and the way they are trumpeted to convince people to sign the petition.

Perhaps I should introduce why I feel I can write about this. I am a UK Christian parent (so therefore fit neatly in the target demographic for this campaign), my children are between 5 and 9 years old and thus are well within the group this campaign seeks to “protect”. I am also someone who works with and understands the “network level” Internet this campaign talks about. I have been building hosting webservers and websites since the mid 1990s and I still do. So not only am I one of the people this campain targets I am also one of the ones who understands the technology involved – by the sound of it I understand it better than they do.

Why this won’t work

The title of this piece is provacative but I believe it is true. Forcing an ISP to “block pornography” at “network level” is unworkable, unsafe and dangerous. Here is why..

How do you define “pornography”?

You can’t (as the campaign does) try to get away with a dictionary definition because we are dealing with parents here who may well have their own idea of what is appropriate for their child to view. Limiting it to just ‘the explicit representation of sexual activity’ may not be enough. As an example if that were all that was being blocked I still would need to check what my 8 year old was stumbling across on Google images at which point the “protection” is not coming from the blocking but from me (as it does now).

How do the ISPs determine what gets blocked?

Certain websites will be obvious by their name/domain but is the campaign really so naive as to expect the site owners to be scrupulous in what they call their websites? Also what of images provided through otherwise innocent websites? Google images for example has a safesearch option. Set that to “off” and your child will get a bit of surprise. But as the images are hosted and served by Google, the ISP cannot block them. So using the vaunted “network level” blocking, the explicit images can still be viewed. Other sites will be similar. In the end the only way for an ISP to properly block explicit content is to do it on an image-by-image, video-by-video basis. To do that they’d have to employ a lot of people. Given the constantly changing nature of world wide web content, this is something I cannot see any ISP being able to do properly.

Blocking is never 100%

Anyone who uses filtering or blocking software will tell that things slip through. Don’t believe me: how about your eMail spam filters? How about your anti-virus software? If they are so good why are you still supicious of links in eMails you weren’t expecting? If you are not supicious, you should be. Let’s look at Google images again. Google are huge, they dwarf any ISP by comparison and yet they still don’t guarantee that safesearch will hide all explicit or offensive images, they have a “report offensive images” link on their search results. If Google can’t make any guarantees how can I be sure an ISP would block everything?

Network level blocking means blocking sites and images before they get to your house. Such things already exist. I use a free (and very good) service called OpenDNS which – among others things – allows me to have it block websites that either declare themselves as “adult” or have been reported as such by other users of the service. Such sites are blocked before they even get down my phoneline. So this is pretty much what the campaign is asking for. It doesn’t work. Well that’s not true, it does work just not 100%. Google images is not blocked and other sites which have mixed content are not always blocked.

The point again is that even with Google images safesearch on strict and OpenDNS I still have to monitor what my children surf. Again the “protection” for my children comes from me not any blocking.

It’s all or nothing

The campaign allows for the fact that adults can request the ISP blocking is switched off. This sounds fine as long as all the adults use one connection and all the children use another. But that’s not how the world is. Those 73% of UK households with Internet access probably have a single main connection for each household. Many of them almost defnitely have a mixed range of ages using the Internet. So if a parent wants the blocking switched off, the child gets it switched off too. ISP blocking at “network level” is by defnition all-or-nothing. Now you may argue that parents should not be watching such content if they have kids. But I’ll wager they do and if they have the blocking turned off, the children the campaign seeks to protect are no longer protected.

I’m not here to tell other adults what to do and by the sound of it the campaign doesn’t want to either but if an adult wants it turned off (and I doubt this would be something the ISP would want to keep switching on and off on an hourly basis) then it’s off for the kids and again the “protection” that should be provided by the blocking will have to be provided by the parent (as it is now).

It gives a false sense of security to parents

You’ll have gathered by now that this is my main point. The campaign raises concerns which all parents whose children have Internet access should consider. But the solution offered is poorly thought through. As you have seen above, ISP blocking will still require a parent to monitor what their kids are surfing. This is good and I wholeheartedly agree that a parent/guardian is the best protection for children online. As parents we should be interested in what they are doing whether online or not. But what worries me is that this ISP blocking idea would cause a lot of parents to stop paying attention (or pay less of it) to what their children are doing online. It would give a false sense of security. Lets revisit the anti-virus analogy. Anyone running a Microsoft Windows PC should run anti-virus software, that is a given. But just having it there does not mean you will be “safe” from malware, phishing or other nasties. Ask anyone who supports Windows PCs and they will tell you that you are only as good as your last update and also just because you have software which the manufacturer promises will protect you (no matter how much you pay for it) you still have to be vigilant. It’s the same with blocking or filtering. The model is flawed. It does the best it can under the circumstances but it’s flawed.

Don’t sign it

In the end all of the above shows that ISP blocking would still require a parent to monitor/participate/be involved in their child’s online activity. That means the blocking is next to useless. Even if you presume it will help or do some of the job for you, you still run the significant risk that your child will find an image, video or site that you’d rather they didn’t. Sadly pornography is part of our culture and so is the Internet. But the Internet does not work like a TV, radio of a shelf of magazines in the newsagents. It’s different and it needs to be handled differently.

The SafetyNet campaign might have the safety and protection of children at its heart but its using the wrong tactics. Those tactics will not help vulnerable children any more than an 18 certificate on a DVD will. Educate parents, get them to speak to their kids, help them. Don’t try to scare them into signing up for a law which a) won’t get passed and b) would be worse than good if it was.

Filtering, blocking and other such technologies can help a parent, but in the end, technology cannot protect our children, only we can.

Update – 12 March 2012 I’m not the only one who thinks this campaign is a bad idea. There are also some good points raised here: http://marnanel.dreamwidth.org/237955.html

Below is a guest post by a friend and colleague at Free Software Magazine – Terry Hancock.

Like me, Terry is interested in the subjects of free (as in freedom) software and free culture. With regards the latter (and unlike me) he has got off his backside and started to do something. This post describes Terry’s project to produce a science fiction “TV” series and release it under Creative Commons licences. This is both ambitious and encouraging. As you know I have focussed [my own attempts](http://www.crimperman.org/tag/freedom/] at free culture onto the church and the way “worship” resources are locked down and restricted by archaic copyright and “intellectual property” laws. One obstacle I have come across is that if resource producers do not release the material under free licences then any attempt to bring freedom back into our media and other cultural elements will fail. Terry has encountered this and “Lunatics” is an admirable response.

Right now the issue – as ever – is financial. This project is – by nature – on a much smaller budget than mainstream productions but – like the Blender open movie projects before it – it still requires some cash to get started. Also like the Blender open movies, backers get rewarded for their donation.

You may not like science fiction, you may not like the concept of Lunatics but you may know people who do. If you like the idea of free culture and are fed up with the ever-increasing tide of restrictive actions by media companies – try supporting one of the good guys.

Update

The target funding has now been reached. This is exciting news as it means there is support for such a great venture. You can still find out about the project and catch up with the latest news at the project website lunatics.tv.

Guest post – Terry Hancock

Lunatics - somebody's got to be crazy enough to go first!

Support this project

Lunatics is a story about the first permanent settlement on the Moon. Politics are inevitable, physics is implacable, and the colonists are indomitable fanatics. After all, normal people don’t really colonize new worlds, do they?

“Lunatics” itself is largely based on character comedy, but we take the science and technology very seriously. Much of the technology in planned Lunatics scripts is not only real and relatively new, but also largely ignored in prior science fiction. Perhaps the greatest realism, though, is in the way the characters are presented.

The series and all the original source material will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, and it will be created using (mainly) the free software Blender 3D application on GNU/Linux workstations. It is a free-culture production from end-to-end. We are taking advantage of the massive body of existing free-culture work (music, sound effect, graphics, and so on) to help make all of this possible. And once we get our series up and running (we plan to do 18 episodes a year, of about 30 minutes length each) we will be one of the biggest free culture film projects going!

What makes this possible is a fan-financed business model which has been pioneered by only a handful of free-culture projects. But it’s enough to show that it can be done.

This project will require a lot of innovation on everything from merchandising business models to real-time animation techniques.

Right now, we are trying to raise $2400 through a Kickstarter project to support pre-production work — especially paying artist Daniel Fu a commission for creating character design drawings which will be used to create the 3D characters for the series.

Backers at any level will get early access, and for those who pay just $15 or more, we have a variety of “rewards” — ranging from character art posters to the complete “Character Art Book and Writer’s Guide”.

We also have corporate sponsorship levels if you know someone who’d be interested — for $400, you can get your company logo printed prominently on our pre-production materials, and featured on the website. Needless to say, a couple of such sponsorships would go a long way towards meeting our goal (these are limited to just 4 slots to make sure we have room for your logo).

Like all projects, we have to start small and work our way up. I don’t have a fan-base of thousands to draw on yet, because Lunatics doesn’t exist… yet. But with your help, we can get there!

Thanks!