Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: legal

  • Who owns a smartcar’s smarts?

    Who owns a smartcar’s smarts?

    Automakers Say You Don’t Really Own Your Car states the Electronic Frontiers Foundation.

    In their campaign to amend the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act to give vehicle owners the right to access and modify their automobiles’ software the EFF raises an important point.

    Should the software licensing model be applied to these devices then purchasers don’t really own them but rather have a license to use them until the vendor deems overwise.

    Cars, of course, are not the only devices where this problem arises. The core of the entire Internet of Things lies in the software running intelligent equipment, not the hardware. If that software is proprietary and closed then no purchaser of a smart device truly owns it.

    Locking down the smarthome

    This raises problems in smarthomes, offices and businesses where the devices people come to depend upon are ‘black boxes’ that they aren’t allowed to peer into. It’s not hard to see how in industrial or agricultural applications that arrangement will often be at best unworkable.

    Four years ago tech industry leader Marc Andreessen pointed out how software is eating the world; that most of the value in an information rich economy lies in the computer programs that processes the data, not the hardware which collects and distributes it.

    That shift was flagged decades ago when the initial fights over software patents occurred in the 1980s and 90s and today we’re facing the consequences of poorly thought out laws, court decisions and patent approvals that now challenge the concepts of ownership as we know it.

    Is ownership outdated?

    However it may well be that ‘ownership’ itself is an outdated concept. We could be entering a period where most of our possessions are leased rather than owned.

    If we are in a period where ownership is an antiquated concept then does it matter that our cars, fitness bands, kettles, smoke alarms and phones are in effect owned by a corporation incorporated in Delaware that pays most of its tax in the Dutch Antilles?

    Who owns the smartcar’s data?

    The next question of course is if the software in our smart devices is secret and untouchable then who owns the data they generate?

    Ownership of a smartcar’s data could well be the biggest issue of all in the internet of things and the collection of Big Data. That promises to be a substantial battle.

    In the meantime, it may not be a good idea to tinker too much with your car’s software or the data it generates.

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  • Driverless cars outrun the law

    Driverless cars outrun the law

    Tesla founder Elon Musk believes there will be driverless cars on US roads by the summer, the New York Times reports.

    One of the key factors in whether Musk’s prediction comes to and driverless cars are on the road by the middle of the year is the law with most people assuming autonomous vehicles are currently illegal.

    Some experts however believe current laws don’t prevent driverless cars, with the New York Times quoting one industry leader who suggests there’s no legal barrier to autonomous vehicles taking to the road.

    Tesla is not alone in pushing the envelope. Chris Urmson, director of self-driving cars at Google, raised eyebrows at a January event in Detroit when he said Google did not believe there was currently a “regulatory block” that would prohibit self-driving cars, provided the vehicles themselves met crash-test and other safety standards.

    This view raises an interesting legal argument, who is the recognised driver of an autonomous vehicle? In the event of an accident or dispute does liability rest with the owner, the manufacturer or the passengers?

    What this debate over driverless vehicles illustrates is how laws specific to today’s society aren’t always applicable to tomorrow’s technologies; certainly many of the laws designed for the horse and buggy era became redundant as the motor car took over a hundred years ago.

    Another consequence of autonomous vehicles are the changes to occupations supporting the motor industry; it’s obvious that panel beaters and insurance lawyers may have their jobs at risk but Jay Zagorsky in The Conversation suggests nearly half of US police numbers would be redundant if there are no more car drivers.

    Given how the funds local and state governments raise from traffic offences, a shift to driverless technologies could even have an effect on city budgets.

    The motor car was the most far reaching technology of the Twentieth Century in the way it changed the economy and society over those years, it’s hardly surprising that we are only just beginning to comprehend how a shift to driverless vehicles may change our lives this century.

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  • Conglomerates fall out of fashion

    Conglomerates fall out of fashion

    After the announcement earlier this week that HP will split into two, now Bloomberg reports Symantec is considering splitting, this comes after the news that PayPal is being carved off eBay and that Yum foods is looking at divesting some  of its Chinese assets.

    It looks like we’re moving into a period where conglomorates are out of fashion; that’s good news for lawyers and consultants advising the companies however it will be worth watching to see what this means for customers, employees and shareholders.

    That HP is reportedly shedding 55,000 jobs says some of these conglomerates were chronically overstaffed so it might be good news for the stockholders of the split companies.

    Either way, it’s always worth remembering that conglomerates come in and out of fashion in the business world.

     

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  • Metadata and privacy on ABC overnights

    Metadata and privacy on ABC overnights

    In the early hours of this morning I spoke with Rod Quinn on ABC Overnights about what exactly is metadata in light of current Australian government plans to mandate a data retention law for internet service providers.

    Part of the problem in the debate is defining exactly what metadata is, something I’ve attempted to do previously.

    The attempt to bring clarity to the discussion isn’t being helped by the confusing explanations of politicians as shown in this interview with Malcolm Turnbull, the communications minister, shows.

    One of the things that kept coming up in the conversation, which we hope to have available shortly, was people who have nothing to hide should have nothing to fear.

    These two videos — Don’t Talk To Cops Parts I and II — feature a law professor and police prosecutor speaking about how innocent people can be caught out by the law.

    First the law professor;

    Then the police prosecutor;

    A question the law professor asks, “did you know it’s a Federal offence to posses a lobster?” The answer is ‘yes’ and in every country there’s almost no way any individual can be confident they haven’t committed a crime under some obscure or archaic law.

    This is why an adult discussion on laws that change the burden of proof and how government agencies conduct themselves is important.

    Another key point from this morning’s conversation is how we need to reconsider the boundaries of privacy and personal information.

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  • Facebook’s experiment with the limits of public trust

    Facebook’s experiment with the limits of public trust

    The revelation that a Facebook research team lead by Alan Kramer experimented with users’ emotional states is a disturbing story on many levels, the immediate consequence is a further erosion in the public trust of social media services.

    Facebook, like many social media services, has received a lot of criticism in recent times as the company tries to make enough money to justify its $160 billion valuation.

    Most of that criticism has been around the re-arranging of users’ feeds with Facebook’s algorithm deciding what information should be displayed based upon a user’s history with a liberal sprinkling of advertising thrown in.

    The Kramer research though takes Facebook’s manipulation of users’ information to another level, along with raising a range of ethical issues.

    One of the most concerning issues is the claim that the experiment’s subjects had given informed consent by agreeing to Facebook’s Terms of Service. This is dangerous ground.

    The dangerous ground, apart from the gross overreach of customer terms of service this behaviour risks losing the market’s trust; once Facebook or other social media and cloud computing services are viewed as untrustworthy, they are doomed.

    For Facebook it might be that the abuse of user trust is the biggest social experiment of all: How far can the company push the public?

    We may soon find out.

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