Ti Point Tork

Open the DOC Preliminary Reports

March 29, 2009 – 2:13 pm
I sent this to Minister Worth (in his Internal Affairs role) and Laurence Millar (as Government CIO) today because they both have a desire to see more open government information. Posted FYI, and I'll update with any responses I get. Department of Conservation do a good thing by putting preliminary reports online. However, there's no mention of license and when poked, everything's under Crown Copyright and permission must be sought for use. A critical element of putting things online is clarifying the use that can be made of them and a critical element of open government information is removing the permission request cycle. A contractor to DOC, who writes reports on research, has asked for his report to be released under a Creative Commons license. The DOC lawyers replied, talking about royalties/license fees which are red herrings. DOC does not make money from site fidelity of NZ sea ...

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Nat at Govis, May 2009

March 16, 2009 – 5:01 pm
I'm excited, I'm going to be at the 2009 GOVIS conference on Government and IT. I'm closing the event out on Friday May 22, but also running two workshops before it opens: Work With The Web, Not Against It and Planning for 2012. The conference happens in Wellington, 20-22 May. Ever seen a web site with absolutely hideous URLs? You know the ones I mean--they can't be read by humans, they're longer than one line in email, they have ? in them and so on. These URLs make it hard for people to bookmark, share, and cite your web site. Why would you do that? Work With The Web, Not Against It covers these kind of epic fails in web sites. Five-step registration, miserable mobile experiences, failures building communities, .... I got a million of 'em, and I'll be sharing them at this workshop. In ...

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

From Barbie to Renoir: Intellectual Property and Culture

March 8, 2009 – 10:04 am
This talk looks to be interesting: Since intellectual property law's beginning competing interests have stretched the law. Barbie now has more protection against rip-offs than Renoir could have imagined. A mishmash of justifications, including encouraging creativity and developing culture, has shaped the law. Does protection unduly restrict other cultural values? Susy Frankel will discuss the use and misuse of justifications in the law’s development. Susy is current chair of the Copyright Tribunal and professor of law at Victoria University of Wellington. Wellington's going to be quite the place to be on Tuesday, with Shelley Bernstein's lecture just before Susy's. Perhaps someone's heard my wish for intelligent NZ public lectures on copyright.

Posted in New Zealand | No Comments »

Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

February 25, 2009 – 9:39 pm
The New York Public Library and Wired Magazine have collaborated to bring a set of evening lectures on how new technology is changing the economics of art with speakers Lawrence Lessig, Stephen Johnson, and the dude who did the Obama poster. I'd love to see something similar in New Zealand: Christchurch, Auckland, Wellington, all with a few tech-literate artists, academics, journalists, etc. telling it how it is.

Posted in Business, New Zealand, Technology | No Comments »

Teaching Kids to Program

February 15, 2009 – 9:39 pm
My OSCON talk on teaching kids to program is now available as an audio podcast on the ITC Conversations Network.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

Radio NZ National: Transparency

February 15, 2009 – 9:20 pm
I'm going to be appearing regularly on Nine to Noon on National Radio Radio New Zealand National. I'm every other week, alternating with Colin Jackson. After the show airs, I'll post my notes and a link to the audio. Here's last week's: I'm going to talk about a few groups and websites working on keeping the government honest and useful. I'll talk about: "Rouge Archivist" Carl Malamud and his website http://public.resource.org. He was featured in Wired recently. MySociety and their projects, particularly They Work For You which has a NZ version, Fix My Street and What Do They Know. TWFY aims to make parliamentary record more useful. FMS lets you report potholes, graffiti, etc. WDTK lets people who make Freedom of Information Act requests share what they learn. The Economist article about these transparency projects which specifically singles out the local government portal of Missouri and the ...

Posted in Radio, Technology | No Comments »

NZ Broadband

January 30, 2009 – 5:18 pm
There hasn't been a lot of action from the new Government on broadband (or anything, really, yet) but this Economist article is food for thought about spending priorities: When it comes to promoting economic activity, it is easy to see why having broadband is better than not having it, but most benefits are likely to come from wiring people up in the first place rather than making existing connections hum faster. In Japan and South Korea over 40% of households have fibre links capable of blazing speeds, but that does not seem to have resulted in more rapid economic growth, or the emergence of new applications unavailable to consumers with ordinary broadband. This argues for something like the Broadband Investment Fund, which is frozen but not dead (political cryogenics), aimed at getting broadband to places that don't already have it. I still think NZ needs faster broadband to the home (I ...

Posted in Business, New Zealand, Technology | 3 Comments »

S92A: Interim Repeat Infringer Termination Policy

December 21, 2008 – 5:29 pm
The Telecommunications Carriers Forum have released a note to ISPs saying that while they're working on a policy that will comply with S92A of the Copyright Act ("An Internet Service Provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer"), it's not clear that the policy will be finished 28 days before the 28 Feb 2009 deadline when the law takes effect. As such, ISPs should formulate their own interim policy, just in case. TCF had hoped to have the policy out for wide review before Christmas (I've seen an early draft, which was good, and made comments) but the note says that it may be "mid- to late-January" before it goes out. This delay isn't bad news--we got this crappy law because of arrogant buffoons who didn't run a good consultation. ...

Posted in New Zealand | 1 Comment »

Submission on NZ IP law and a free trade agreement with USA

December 7, 2008 – 11:20 pm
SUBMISSION ON THE TRANSPACIFIC STRATEGIC ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENT NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES To: Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade Introduction This Submission is from Nathan Torkington, an author, musician, and software professional whose address is [...]. Summary I strongly oppose any proposals to extend the term of copyright, entrench digital rights management, assign investigation or enforcement powers to rights holders beyond those already in law, or otherwise use copyright law against consumers and artists. I also strongly oppose any interference with parallel importing. Submission New Zealand technology companies and New Zealand artists are all creative professionals attempting to sell their work in the world’s marketplace. To be successful these creative industries need: Open and ready access to markets overseas. Open and ready access to the commons of production. As little regulation and interference in possible in their production and distribution activities. I support extending the P4 agreement to other nations. The more markets we can freely compete ...

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NZ Healthcare

December 1, 2008 – 6:08 pm
At the New Zealand Open Source Awards, David Cunliffe (the then Minister of Health as well as of IT) literally tapped me on the shoulder and asked whether I'd be interested in serving on HISAC, the Health Information Strategy Advisory Committee. The health system in NZ, he said, might benefit from some of the open source and collaboration work that I do (he had been to Foo Camp the previous year and I think he pictures me as surrounded by a cadre of buzzing connected technophiles who do amazing things). "Sure," I said, and that's how I found myself in Wellington last week, attending the inaugural HISAC meeting. What followed was a day and a half of intensive high-speed learning. I've never worked in the healthcare industry, so I was scrambling to learn the acronyms and history. My fellow committee members are all experts in their field ...

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