15-02-05 (Photo credit: jaqian)”]

Dublin Landmarks _10b [The Four Courts

Tomorrow there’s going to be a public debate about copyright in the Science Gallery. I was contacted the week before last about participating, but I declined and put the organiser in contact with Paul Durrant from ISPAI instead.

(While I have very strong feelings about online copyright and related topics I thought that someone like Paul would be a better person to talk about it.)

Earlier today Simon McGarr published a piece on Broadsheet.ie claiming that Minister Sean Sherlock had threatened to withdraw from the event tomorrow if Simon attended.

Since I’ve been in touch with Minister Sherlock on a semi-regular basis since this debacle began I asked him what actually happened and what was actually said.

So he sent me over the below and I have his permission to publish it:

I don’t know Simon McGarr personally. I have never met him and I don’t know even what he looks like. Sean Nicholls and I have been in touch for some time to organise an open event on Copyright. This will take place tomorrow (Tues). At no stage did I say that if Mr. McGarr was to attend that I would cancel or that a “diary clash” would arise. That is just not true.

 I had stated to Sean Nicholls (organiser) that I wanted some balance on the podium. Mr. Murphy (boards.ie), Paul Durant (ISPAI) would act as panellists and John Kennedy (Silicon Republic) would moderate. McGarr’s name was also suggested as a panellist. I stated that I did not want to share a podium with someone who generated an online campaign that falsely compared the Statutory Instrument to the US SOPA legislation. I stated to Sean that I had an issue with sharing a podium with Mr McGarr and I would not attend if he was on the podium. I wish to make it clear that I expressly stated that I had no issue with Mr McGarr attending the event and I would be happy for him to do so.

 I stated that I wanted to engage with people on this issue and that I was happy that Sean was doing his best to organise the event. I stated that SOPA was completely unrelated to the SI. I stated that Mr McGarr was responsible for causing some reputational damage to this country by deliberately misinterpreting the SI as SOPA.

 I felt strongly that, as Research Minister, I was responsible for funding Clarity and Deri and that we do more to attract inward investment from corporates and companies  which are based online than any other country in Europe,

 I felt strongly that this Government is working every day with start-up companies and that any person that started a campaign that deliberately misinterpreted that legislation should take responsibility for their actions in damaging this country’s reputation. In that sense I reserved my right not to share a platform with any body who was acting solely in their own interests and not those of the wider online community who we meet and assist every day.

Have strong feelings on copyright? Then make them heard!

UPDATE 2100

Minister Sherlock has had a change of heart and has said he’d be happy to see Simon McGarr on the panel tomorrow:

Change of heart. Happy to have simon mcgarr on panel amarach. If he’ll accept. Time to make amends. @Tupp_Ed @sean_nicholls @naoisen

— Seán Sherlock (@seansherlocktd) April 2, 2012

Related articles

• Calm Reasoned Dialogue Helps (blacknight.com)
• Irish Copyright Consultation Open (technology.ie)

Related Posts:

• 9/11
• Google’s Pharmacy Faux Pas Results In Lawsuit
• ICANN Really Needs A Clue
• Irish Political Party Plagiarise BBC But Think They’re Cool
• Music Labels vs ISPs

Ireland is a wonderful country in many respects.

One of its weaknesses, however, is that its electoral system has some flaws.

If you are not physically in Ireland at the time of an election you cannot vote. So if you are overseas, like so many Irish citizens are, then you have no say in any Irish election.

Other countries have systems and processes that ensure that citizens get to vote.

BallotBox.ie was setup to solve this problem and allows Irish citizens overseas to cast their vote in the 2011 general election.

If you’re Irish and overseas you can cast your vote online before next Tuesday

Related Posts:

• Why Do Some Hotels Charge So Much For Internet Access?
• Irish Political Parties Talk About Knowledge Economy Yet Host Overseas?
• UK Food Exports Are Spammers
• Quick Reflections on the Leaving Cert
• USI Whinging

Politicians and political parties love to throw around buzzwords.

In Ireland we have got used to terms like:

“digital economy”

“knowledge economy”

and, of course, “celtic tiger”.

Labour have released a document with the rather pretentious title of “Plan for Digital Ireland”. Download it. Read it and try not to spill too much coffee all over yourself.

Their headline:

Next-generation broadband is an essential component of our economic recovery. The availability of high speed broadband is crucial for business and job creation, as well as being key to attracting outside investment.

Um .. really? Ok, it would be nice if higher speeds were available everywhere, but the reality is that companies are offering faster speeds in most of the population centres. UPC, for example, have a 30 meg product which is available all over the country as far as I know.

Do we really need to spend 20 thousand euro per household on broadband?

Seriously?

And for a document that purports to be a roadmap for Ireland’s digital future, why isn’t there a single mention of IPv6 in there? It’s not mentioned once. There’s no mention of security in the entire document either.

There are, of course, plenty of nice fluffy words that are going to make some journalists’ mouths water..

Of course if an Irish political party were to actually make a statement about technology that actually made any sense I’d probably die of shock!

Related Posts:

• Irish Politics Needs To Be Less About The Party And More About The Country
• Who I Would Vote For
• ThePirateBay Eircom and IRMA
• An Odd Amount of Media Coverage
• IPv6 In Ireland

Irish politicians love to coo about our “knowledge economy” and how they see Ireland as some form of “digital hub”.

It probably used to help with votes. I wonder does it still?

Of course, as we all know all too well, the track record of Irish politicians and the digital world is far from stellar.

Fine Gael got their site hacked, The Greens spammed loads of bloggers and made some “interesting” statements via their Twitter account.

So now the Irish Data Protection Commissioner has felt the need to send a pre-emptive warning to all the Irish political parties (unfortunately he’ll have missed the independents!):

The Irish Examiner reports that the Data Protection Commissioner has written to political parties to warn them about texting and emailing people in the run-up to the general election. Commissioner Billy Hawkes has warned parties against using information from third parties to contact voters. The office said it had received numerous complaints during previous campaigns. According to the office of the DPC, “in many cases, the individual had no previous contact with the political party or candidate and was concerned at the manner in which their details were sourced. Subsequent investigations revealed that contact details were obtained from sources such as sports clubs, friends, colleagues and schools.”

Yeah – Irish political parties can be really trusted with email and the internet .. NOT!

Related Posts:

• Kantar Media Spamming Social Media Award Nominees
• Irish Political Party Plagiarise BBC But Think They’re Cool
• Irish Green Party Are Spamming Idiots
• Visualising Social Via Intel
• Mellow Birds

Apart from their issues with their site getting defaced, Fine Gael have made some very odd decisions about their new domain.

To start with, why on earth are they dropping their .ie domain name in favour of a .com?

Does this mean that Fine Gael isn’t happy being Irish?

(not that using a com means that, but you’d have to wonder)

But more importantly, why on earth are they using a whois privacy service to hide the domain name registration details?

Have a look at the whois output here:

Registrant:
   Domains by Proxy, Inc.
   DomainsByProxy.com
   15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
   Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
   United States

   Registered through: ElectionMall Technologies Inc
   Domain Name: FINEGAEL2011.COM
      Created on: 08-Dec-10
      Expires on: 08-Dec-11
      Last Updated on: 08-Dec-10

   Administrative Contact:
      Private, Registration  FINEGAEL2011.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
      Domains by Proxy, Inc.
      DomainsByProxy.com
      15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
      Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
      United States
      (480) 624-2599      Fax — (480) 624-2598

   Technical Contact:
      Private, Registration  FINEGAEL2011.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
      Domains by Proxy, Inc.
      DomainsByProxy.com
      15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
      Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
      United States
      (480) 624-2599      Fax — (480) 624-2598

   Domain servers in listed order:
      DNS1.STABLETRANSIT.COM
      DNS2.STABLETRANSIT.COM

Is it even legal for an Irish political party to obfuscate their domain’s details like that?
Even if it is legal it hardly sends a positive message about “transparency”, does it?
 

Related Posts:

• Fine Gael New Website Defaced
• Irish Political Parties Talk About Knowledge Economy Yet Host Overseas?
• Yet Another Address Change – Meet Michele.me!
• Green Party Take Online Idiocy To A New Level
• Irish Politics Needs To Be Less About The Party And More About The Country

There’s probably going to be an election in Ireland in early 2011

Since I don’t trust any of our politicians or have confidence in their skills I’ll probably be opting for “alternative” candidates .. such as Squishy:

Related Posts:

• Irish Politics Needs To Be Less About The Party And More About The Country
• Labour Overlook A Basic Issue
• An Odd Amount of Media Coverage
• Irish Political Parties Talk About Knowledge Economy Yet Host Overseas?
• Green Party Take Online Idiocy To A New Level

The Irish Green Party have now deleted the tweet I mentioned the other day:

“Eamon Ryan will be on Morning Ireland to discuss, amongst other things, the Bill Cullen tweet. It’s gone now, as the tone was inappropriate.” (source Twitter)

If it was inappropriate and you recognise it as such, why was it put out there in the first place?

Or is it more a case of throwing inane comments out into cyberspace in the hope that nobody will call you on them?

And of course the tweet isn’t “gone”, as you can easily find it via twitter search:

Expect much fumbling vagueness from Eamon Ryan on RTE’s Morning Ireland. Or maybe they’ll actually surprise us all?

Related Posts:

• Green Party Take Online Idiocy To A New Level
• Visualising Social Via Intel
• Buffer App Makes Scheduling Tweets Easy
• Museum Of Me Visualisation
• Crowdbooster Quick Review