Rights wrangles dog online plans

16 September 2011 Last updated at 11:51 GMT Published in 1911, Frolic Farm is one of many works for which a rights holder cannot be traced. The cultural life of Europe will suffer unless more effort is made to clarify what libraries can do with so-called orphan works, says a study.

The British Library looked into ways to speed up the digitisation of books, journals and other printed materials held by Europe's libraries.

It considered 10 works from every decade between 1870 and 2010.

About 43% of the sample were orphan works suggesting a large part of Europe's media may never go online.

"The law does not allow us to use any copyrighted material if we cannot find the rights holders," said Ben White, head of intellectual property at the British Library. Such works where rights holders cannot be found are known as orphan works.

That meant, he said, that across Europe enormous amounts of material would have to be left on the shelf as nations push on with mass digitisation projects.

The study considered a wide variety of printed works including illustrated children's book from the 1920s, travel guides, political pamphlets from the 1960s and 1970s and early "fan fiction" from the 1980s.

Many of the orphan works uncovered in the study were published more than 50 years ago but a surprising number came from more recent times.

For instance, the 1980s produced more than half of all the in-copyright orphan works considered by the study.

The potential legal problems involved with publishing orphan works that are subsequently found to have a rights owner, has led libraries to concentrate their digitisation efforts on older and historical works they are sure are out of copyright.

The study was carried out in support of the European Arrow project which wants to automate the process of finding who owns the rights to a work.

Automation is going to be essential if Europe is to meet its targets for putting books and other printed materials online, suggests the study.

"The costs around the time it manually takes to look for rights holders could be much much higher than actual cost of the digitisation projects," he said.

Manual clearing of rights takes on average about four hours for each text, found the study.

By contrast, an automatic system like Arrow which links together rights databases can reduce the search time to five minutes.

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Mexico Twitter case breaches civil rights: lawyer

MEXICO CITY — Mexico has breached an international human rights charter by bringing terror charges against two social media users who wrongly reported an armed attack on a local school, a lawyer for the accused said.

The man and the woman face the threat of as much as 30 years in prison because they posted messages online and via Twitter late last month, warning that gunmen had stormed a primary school in the eastern coastal state of Veracruz.

"They took five children, an armed group," Gilberto Martinez, 48, a math teacher, wrote on his Twitter account on Aug. 25 as fear spread that gunmen had besieged the school.

Police allege that Maria de Jesus Bravo, 57, a local radio host, authored similar posts that sowed panic as parents rushed to save children from the reported attack.

The rumors spread quickly after witnesses spotted a burning car near the school, said Fidel Ordonez, an attorney for the accused, and prompted a crackdown by authorities on social media users which resulted in the arrests.

The two face terrorism charges that could get them 30 years in jail, Ordonez said, but their defense team says the case violates two articles of the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Mexico signed.

"You cannot regard us as terrorists or saboteurs," the pair said in court documents filed by their lawyers on Monday, adding that they were simply exercising their right to free speech. In the Martinez Twitter posts, the teacher says that he is just relaying information from other sources.

Article 19 of the charter states "everyone shall have the right to ... seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice."

The Veracruz prosecutor's office did not immediately answer a request for comment on Tuesday. Local media quoted him as saying that the pair would be prosecuted under state laws banning acts which cause alarm or terror among the population.

International pressure should help to get the pair released in the next few weeks, Ordonez told Reuters by telephone.

"I have a very strong feeling that they will be released because this is truly an attack on civil rights," he added.

The pair are still being held in jail and likely to remain there until the next hearing which could come late this month or in early October, Ordonez said.

Mexico's efforts to combat drug smugglers have left more than 42,000 dead since President Felipe Calderon sent the army to confront traffickers less than five years ago.

However, the failure of Mexico's flawed justice system to convict suspects for serious crimes has sent authorities scrambling to find other ways to make charges stick.

President Felipe Calderon last week labeled as 'terrorists' suspected drug gang members accused of a deadly arson attack in the industrial northern city of Monterrey.

Veracruz, an oil-rich state on the Gulf of Mexico, has avoided the worst of the violence.

However, several attacks in recent months have had citizens turning to social media for unfiltered news, said Rupert Knox of Amnesty International. He said that the detained Mexican pair had been made to suffer for the overall lawlessness.

"This is an insecure environment where people turn to social media to try and keep themselves safe," he said. "These people are being scapegoated for the panic that ensued but the case should not stand up to scrutiny."

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

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Hackers' bragging rights at stake at RankMyHack.com

Screenshot of RankMyHack.com home page

Is hacking cool if you have to advertise you're doing it? Isn't the whole point to be on the DL? Well, some are throwing out that notion and going for the glory on RankMyHack.com, "the world's first elite hacker ranking system."

On this site, hackers are obliged to "submit proof" of their website hacks in exchange for "Ranking Points" that can earn them "a place on the leaderboard of legends. The bigger the site, the bigger the points." The sites, times and dates for hacks are listed under each username.

Feeding off the gamer part of hackers, the site then allows them to use those points to "duel" with others on the site "and protect your legacy in one on one digital combat."

The New York Times reported that the site has already taken in evidence of more than 1,200 hacks. The Times' Riva Richmond gives us some more behind-the-scenes insights:

The site was created by a hacker nicknamed Solar to bring a little accountability to the online forums and chat rooms where hackers gather to learn tricks of the trade, buy and sell contraband and form alliances. There, eBay-style ratings systems meant to establish reputations are routinely abused, morality tends to be fluid and anonymous young people often talk big while carrying a small stick.

RankMyHack offers a way to separate the skilled from the so-called script kiddies by verifying hacks using codes that participants must plant somewhere on sites they have compromised.

So far, the top ranking hacker on the site is a user named Mudkip, who has nearly 4 million points hacking just 16 sites. But one of the sites was huffingtonpost.com, which gave Mudkip 1.6 million points as the site with the highest amount of points possible.

The closest hacker to Mudkip is Rafael, who has 1.7 million points. His biggest hack: stackoverflow.com on August 14, for 1.2 million points.

The site also provides a resources page that gives links to mainstream hacking resources, forums and tutorials. They're not even paint-by-numbers hacks as much as links to sites that alert the average web surfer to dangers that lurk outside and give them tips on how to fortify against it.  

Hacking doesn't mean that these sites have been damaged, only that the hackers have been able to breach defenses. Just because they can, doesn't mean they took advantage of those vulnerabilities.

As Richmond writes, "Solar argued that the hacks would occur regardless, and that the site was positive because hackers did not need to do damage to prove they had infiltrated a site."

There are already some interesting theories about the site itself.

VentureBeat muses, "Of course, it would be really brilliant if RankMyHack.com were a fake site created by law enforcement to entrap criminal hackers." CNET ascribes some kind of money motivator to users: "There also appears to be some sort of monetary compensation for hacking. In the site's membership rules, it says that users who enter hacking competitions will receive 'payouts' from Rank My Hack via PayPal within seven days of a competition's closing date."

What do you think?

More stories:

Check out Technolog on Facebook, and on Twitter, follow Athima Chansanchai, who is also trying to keep her head above water in the Google+ stream.

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New deal for F1 rights announced

Ecclestone on new Formula 1 TV deal

The BBC and Sky Sports will broadcast Formula 1 in the UK between 2012 and 2018 under a new rights deal.

The BBC has been the exclusive broadcaster of F1 in the UK since 2009 but its contract with Formula One Management was due to expire after the 2013 season.

Sky Sports will show every race, qualifying session and practice live.

BBC Sport will broadcast half the races live, as well as the qualifying and practice sessions from those races.

Both companies will broadcast in high definition.

Deal keeps F1 with BBC for longer, says director of sport Barbara Slater

Races screened by the BBC will be live on the BBC Sport website for UK users.

The BBC will have highlights on TV, online and mobile for any race it is not showing live, and all races will be broadcast on BBC Radio 5 live.

Barbara Slater, director of BBC Sport, said: "We are absolutely delighted that F1 will remain on the BBC.

"The sport has never been more popular with TV audiences at a 10-year high and the BBC has always stated its commitment to the big national sporting moments.

"With this new deal not only have we delivered significant savings but we have also ensured that through our live and extended highlights coverage all the action continues to be available to licence-fee payers."

Races shown live on BBC TV will include the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, the Monaco GP and the concluding race of the season.

Barney Francis, managing director of Sky Sports, said: "This is fantastic news for F1 fans and Sky Sports will be the only place to follow every race live and in HD.

"We will give F1 the full Sky Sports treatment with a commitment to each race never seen before on UK television."

Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone told BBC Sport: "It's super for F1. It will mean a lot more coverage for the sport.

"There'll be highlights as well as live coverage on two different networks now, so we get the best of both worlds."

Christian Horner, the team principal of world champions Red Bull, said it would have been a "disaster" if F1 was no longer on the BBC.

"The BBC sets the standard for F1 coverage across the world," Horner said.

"This is an agreement that safeguards the sport on the BBC, albeit reduced from what we are used to. And Sky opens up new avenues. So rather than losing the sport from the BBC, I think this was the most sensible way to move forward."

Reaction to new F1 rights deal

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Rights group: mass displacements in Ivory Coast (AP)

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast – Hundreds of thousands of people are still too terrified to return home more than three months after the end of postelection violence in Ivory Coast, a human rights group reported Wednesday.

Amnesty International says in a new report that traditional hunters allied with President Alassane Ouattara continue to intimidate certain ethnic groups perceived to have supported former president Laurent Gbagbo. As a result, almost 700,000 people refuse to leave the refugee camps and remote villages where they went to flee the fighting.

The report said the group of hunters, known as the Dozos, carried out targeted killings and attacks in the months following Gbagbo's fall from power, together with rebels who are now integrated into the national army.

The rights group called for the demobilization and disarmament of all irregular fighters. Security throughout the country should be established by the national security forces to provide "conditions that will eventually support the safe and durable return of displaced persons and refugees," the report said.

Ouattara named a new army chief this month, but a half-dozen warlords who formed a coalition to bring him to power still each control sections of the country.

Gbagbo was arrested in April after six months of violence sparked by his refusal to accept defeat in a November presidential election. The United Nations and many rights groups have accused both sides of carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity during the ensuing political standoff.

The International Criminal Court has been asked to investigate. The U.N. and the Ivorian government also have ongoing war crimes investigations. Gbagbo remains in detention without charge in the north of the country.

Earlier Wednesday, Ouattara said during a visit to the U.N. that he is unfamiliar with a specific case of politically motivated violence that occurred on the banks of the Cavallay River in western Ivory Coast on May 22, the day after his inauguration.

The Associated Press reported this week that Ouattara loyalists massacred as many as 47 people in that region, known as a stronghold of political opponent Laurent Gbagbo.

"Once we get the report we will be able to say what happened," Ouattara said, referring to his country's national inquiry.

Ouattara met earlier Wednesday with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and was to meet with President Barack Obama in Washington on Friday.

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Associated Press writer Anita Snow contributed to this report from the United Nations.

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