Exemption to Prohibtion of Circumvention of Technological Protection Measures

The US Library of Congress's Copyright Office approved its Exemption to Prohibition on Circumvention of Copyright Protection Systems for Access Control Technologies, which provided with six exemptions, the most this Office has ever granted, being them focused on different groups of users. Previously, the Copyright Office took an all-or-nothing approach, making exemptions difficult to justify. The new rules take effect on 27 November 2006 and expire in three years.

The exemptions, as published by the office, are as follows:

Persons making noninfringing uses of the following six classes of works will not be subject to the prohibition against circumventing access controls (17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)) during the next three years.

1. Audiovisual works included in the educational library of a college or university’s film or media studies department, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of making compilations of portions of those works for educational use in the classroom by media studies or film professors.

2. Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and that require the original media or hardware as a condition of access, when circumvention is accomplished for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

3. Computer programs protected by dongles that prevent access due to malfunction or damage and which are obsolete. A dongle shall be considered obsolete if it is no longer manufactured or if a replacement or repair is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace.

4. Literary works distributed in ebook format when all existing ebook editions of the work (including digital text editions made available by authorized entities) contain access controls that prevent the enabling either of the book’s read-aloud function or of screen readers that render the text into a specialized format.

5. Computer programs in the form of firmware that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network.

6. Sound recordings, and audiovisual works associated with those sound recordings, distributed in compact disc format and protected by technological protection measures that control access to lawfully purchased works and create or exploit security flaws or vulnerabilities that compromise the security of personal computers, when circumvention is accomplished solely for the purpose of good faith testing, investigating, or correcting such security flaws or vulnerabilities.

So, it seems that some rationality is coming back to the IP Rights arena.

Release the Music debate

Yesterday evening, at the Conway Hall in London, took place the debate about Copyright term extension for sound recordings organized by the Open Rights Group, to which I went with students of my The Law and the Media class of the British American College of London.
The debate was preceded by a keynote talk by Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University, who gave a brief introduction about intellectual property rights in general and some insights into copyright in particular. He then, went into analysing certain aspects of copyright term extension and made reference to his participation in the failed Eldred v Ashcroft. In that point Professor Zittrain referred, again, to the requirement imposed by the US Constitution to limit the time of protection for intellectual creations (limited times was the only phrase of Article 1 Section 8 that he highlighted in red), but it can be argued that the argument then and now should be that any intellectual property right extension, both in time and coverage, should first show that promotes “the progress of Science and Useful arts”. The cases and the debates still are lost because the focus is on the wrong place: the burden should be on those proposing the extension to show that such a change will benefit society.
After a brief recess the debate started with four presentations of five minutes each, and the fire was opened by Richard Mollet, Director of Public Affairs of the BPI, who began pointing out that the campaign(s) against copyright term extension for sound recording have much of FUD themselves. He made a fair point about the ending paragraph of the “Release the Music” brief, which read that the referred extension “could sentence our cultural heritage to a commercial vacuum, preventing future artists from accessing, and being inspired by, a golden age of recorded sound”. Richard easily showed that current and future artists will access and be inspired by many songs that are under copyright and that that might always be the case. He went on with putting forward the idea that artists deserved to profits from their recordings at least during their live-times and also, making the point that the current and future knowledge economy was about intellectual property rights, there was a need to harmonize the protection terms with other countries.
His argument had an intrinsic contradiction and during the question time I tried to make that point by asking him what BPI's position really was, but even when I was the first person to raise the hand for questions it seemed that the chair never saw me, so I couldn’t. What Mr Mollet was arguing was untenable; he first kept referring to intellectual property rights as some sort of inherent right that artists had for the sole fact of being artists and that their creations were really property, ignoring that such rights exist only because the stated decided to grant them with a very specific purpose and that the “property” in intellectual property is a legal fiction designed to, by being able to transfer it and profit from it, fulfil the original purpose of benefiting society. So, if, as he said, in the 50s and 60s England lived the golden age of music without having rights to sound recording for more than 50 years, his own evidence showed that such an extension was not necessary to fulfil the social goal of encouraging creativity. If, on the other hand, he was really proposing that copyright should be a human right, well, in that case he would probably get more support, but he would be implying that BPI supports the recognition of moral rights in UK and that all those rights should cease with the dead of the artist (without even going into the impossibility of transferring many of those rights to the companies that are part of BPI). Finally, if he really meant that BPI supports full harmonization of global intellectual property rights, that would be a good news to many developing countries that were waiting to have somebody like BPI adhering to their pleas of having international recognition to an array of indigenous rights and rights over cultural heritage, which are already recognized in some developed countries as New Zealand.
The second speaker was Dave Rowntree, drummer of Blur and owner of Nanomation, who repeated his know stance pro sharing of digital music. He first recalled the series of blunders that had made the music industry not a very liked industry by the public to then correctly point out to the public interest aspects of copyright and that the interest of the recording industry were not necessarily those of the music industry. He also reaffirmed the idea that giving him more rights over the music that he had already recorded would not necessary led him to produce more music. His arguments and presence were important to show what some musicians position was in the matter but it seemed that confronted with people whose full time job were to convince people of the niceties of their companies ideas, like Richard Mollet, he would not convince many unconvinced (yesterday he was preaching to the already converted), which could be one of the reasons that Eldred v Ashcroft was lost (being right is not enough).
The third speaker was Martin Talbot, editor of Music Week, who, after acknowledging the blunders made by the recording industry (some old anti-piracy campaigns, DRM, etc), he explained why his magazine had started the campaign towards copyright extension beyond 50 years through a petition that, later explained was signed by 2000 people or members of the music industry associations (I didn’t get that very clear). His brief exposition also mentioned that it was not true that the extension was been sought only by a handful of big record companies and gave some numbers about the number of small record labels that would benefit from it. He kept referring to the concept of ownership of the creation and the rights that such a ownership should entitle, and gave some examples of people that would benefit from the proposed extension. Still, the main problem was the assumption of a legal title different from the one conferred by law. Even if the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 refers to both property right and ownership, both the courts and the doctrine have agreed that the title deserves certain qualifications, which seemed to be absent from Mr Talbot’s analysis.
The panel was closed by Caroline Wilson, lecturer at the Southampton School of Law, who, as always, delivered a solid argument explaining the lack of relation between extending the term for copyright on sound recording and the fulfilment of the objectives of copyright law, vg benefiting society. She went into some detail (as much as five minutes allowed) on the origins and principles guiding the apportion of intellectual property rights for literary and musical creations, to show why the proposed extension not only would not satisfy the mentioned objectives but it certainly contradict them. During the question time Caroline had the opportunity to rebate some of the economic analysis presented by those in favour of the extension and she ended the night by affirming, as I wanted to do, that if the BPI and the music industry was so concerned about the rights of musicians, they should support the incorporation of moral rights into UK law.
So, in conclusion, the presentations in favour of the extension had the usual sophistic analysis that lead to predetermined conclusions, but those against it still struggled with the fact that being right is not enough to win in the public arena, or in court. However, when trying to emulate the industry’s strategies, those favouring less copyright and more creativity have to be careful to not put forward statements that easily proven incorrect or be shown to be incorrect, because those in the other side are specialists in PR and public engagements, which take us back to Eldred v Ashcroft. Being right was not enough; US Supreme Court litigation needed a strategy and a skill that you cannot learn in the classroom or clerking for a US Supreme Court judge (the example can be found in the advice that the current Chief Justice of United States gave to a gay’s organization group before they appeared in the US Supreme Court).

Microsof to pay music industry per device sold

Microsoft will pay to Universal Music for each sold Zune, the portable device that the Redmond, WA, company is unveiling to compete with Apple’s iPod. The device will be lunched next Tuesday along with Zune Marketplace, a virtual music store that mimics iTunes. Apple, which has almost 80% of the portable devices’ market, pays to the music companies per sold song in iTunes, but Microsoft has agreed to, in addition of that, this payment that resembles the levy that certain devices have to pay in the USA, where the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 introduced Section 1008 of Title 17 of the United States Code, which essentially says that it is legally to record music because a levy has been paid on the recorded media (this would bring into question the limitation for sharing that Zune has embedded.
A completely different thing is whether Zune can compete with Apple’s iPod, but as many times before, Microsoft arrives late, copy not very well at the beginning, but then catches up. One interesting feature that may rise some eyebrows, at least from the law point of view, is the possibility of sharing your music wirelessly with other Zune users...

Performers right ruling against a supermarket in Argentina

The Civil and Commercial Court of Appeals No 1 of Cordoba, Argentina, confirmed the sentence of first instance dictated by Judge Gonzalez Zamar, who held that the supermarket chain Disco had to pay one million pesos (around U$S 300,000 or £180,000) for publicly performing music in its supermarkets without paying the respective copyright, performers rights and producers rights cannons. Following art 56 of the Intellectual Property Law No 11,723, that establishes that “[t]he performer of a literary or musical work shall be entitled to request remuneration for his performance, broadcast or retransmitted by radiotelephone, television, or recorded or printed on record, film, tape, wire or any other substance or body suitable for sound or visual reproduction”, the suit was brought by the Argentine Chamber of Producers of Phonograms and Videograms (CAPIF). What distinguishes the ruling from previous ones is the fact that is the first time that the amount of damages is calculated taking into account the number of cashiers (paying points) of the supermarket.

Chilean hackers jailed

Codiux, Phnx, SSH-2 and Nettoxic , the "Byond Crew chilean defacers", have been arrested by the “carabineros”, and have been accused of being part of an international group that has broken into thousands of government websites around the world. They are said to be responsible for hacking more than 8,000 sites, including some run by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Turkey, the United States and Venezuela, the NASA’s site being one of them. The four hackers were members of an international group identified as the "Byond" team, a group that has been under investigation for some time with the cooperation of authorities in the United States, Israel and several South American countries. While it is clear that the four members of the Byond Crew have infiltrated thousands of sites, it is also clear that there has no been purpose of profiting but only mischief. The group has also been involved in last year’s tit-for-tat battle between Peruvian and Chilean hackers, where computer hackers brought their two countries' historic rivalries into cyberspace, posting nationalistic claims to ocean territory, seafood and the Pisco grape brandy on government Web pages.

Borat sparks vandalism in Kazakhstan's Wikipedia entry

The editors of the English version of Wikipedia had to limit the possibility of editing the article about Kazakhstan due to the acts of vandalism that it suffered, since the opening of the film Borat's Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. In some of those vandalised editions Borat was described as the president of Kazakhstan. Still, most of Wikipedia’s more than 1,471,000 articles are accurate, but issues of vandalism and inaccuracy always give arguments to those who despise it as not being a serious source of information.

5th Open Conference of GNU/Linux and Software Libre in Argentina

During the 10 and 11 of November 2006, at the Universidad Argentina de la Empresa, will take place the 5th Open Conference of GNU/Linux and Software Libre. The conference is organized by the Federal District Software Libre Users’ Group and it consists of meetings and expositions where experts and users share and debate about an array of issues involving open source software. This year’s main topic is education and within that context the First National Conference of Responsible of Computer Classrooms with Software Libre will also take place in parallel, organized by the NGO Gleducar.

Release the Music!

The Open Rights Group organises a debate about the Copyright Term extension proposed by the content owners and a summary of the invitation is as follows:

The Open Rights Group believes that term extension is such an important issue that it deserves focused and rigourous discussion, so we’ve invited people from number of backgrounds to give us their thoughts and opinions.

We would be delighted if you could join us - the event is free to all, but places are limited so book now!

Schedule:

6.00pm - Registration.
6.30pm - Keynote by Professor Jonathan Zittrain, Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University.
7.30pm - Panel Discussion, moderated by John Howkins, RSA & Adelphi Charter; guests include Caroline Wilson, University of Southampton, Faculty of Law; Martin Talbot, Editor, Music Week; others TBC.
8.30pm - DJ set by The Chaps, playing a pre-1955 public domain set.
10.00pm - Close.

releasethemusic

IGF 2006 Seminario Aspectos Legales

(En castellano para que no se enoje Corina:-)

El taller sobre aspectos legales de la Gobernanza de Internet que tuvo lugar en Atenas como parte del Foro de Gobernanza de Internet 2006 tuvo un gran éxito y resalto el hecho de que, mas allá de los acuerdos y estándares técnicos, la Gobernanza de Internet se lleva a cabo a través de regulaciones, la mayoría de las cuales son implementadas en leyes. El seminario fue co-organizado por David Satola, Senior Counsel en la Vicepresidencia Legal del Banco Mundial, Alfa Redi, el Comité de Derecho del Ciberespacio de la Sección de Derecho de los Negocios de la American Bar Association, la Fundación Diplo, la Global Internet Policy Initiative, la Sociedad de Internet de Bulgaria, y la Sección de Ciencia y Tecnología de la American Bar Association.

El tema del taller fue la creación de capacidades en los aspectos legales de la Gobernanza de Internet y la relación entre el derecho internacional y domestico en dicho proceso. Luego de una pequeña introducción por parte de David Satola (aprovechando para felicitarlo y agradecerle de nuevo por la organización del taller), las ponencias empezaron con Jim Dempsey, del Center for Democracy and Technology, quien explico cuales eran las cuestiones legales asociadas con la Gobernanza de Internet y que instituciones se encontraban relacionadas con esas cuestiones a distintos niveles. Su matriz relacionando los distintos niveles de la Gobernanza de Internet, desde lo individual a lo internacional, con el status institucional de los actores fue una herramienta muy útil para entender mejor las exposiciones siguientes. Jim fue seguido por Hanne Sophie Greve, Jueza de la Corte de Apelaciones de Noruega, quien explico los conceptos básicos del derecho internacional y de la legislación europea de derechos humanos, para luego relacionarlos al impacto que tienen en las regulaciones domesticas y a la necesidad de seguir esos principios al referirse tanto a la Gobernanza de Internet como a la creación de capacidades a nivel nacional relacionadas con ella. La tercera expositora fue Kristine Dorrain (National Arbitration Forum) y se refirió a la Política Uniforme de Resolución de Disputas sobre Nombres de Dominios y como impactaba la Gobernanza de Internet al nivel nacional. En su presentación uso ejemplos sobre la utilización de tal proceso y se pregunto acerca de las razones para la adopción y uso del mismo a nivel nacional. La primera parte del panel (debido al numero de expositores fue dividido en dos partes) termino con una explicación clara y concisa por parte de Fred Tipson, de Microsoft, sobre la necesidad de participación multisectorial en los procesos de desarrollo de políticas. Fue particularmente importante porque su exposición pareció hacer énfasis en dicha necesidad pero no solo para asegurar que todas las visiones e intereses estuvieran representadas, sino en el hecho de que la multisectorializacion era vital para el proceso debido a la complementariedad de especializaciones y conocimientos.

La segunda parte del panel fue iniciada por Veni Markovsky, de ISOC Bulgaria, quien explico como, siguiendo el caso de Bulgaria, la relación entre los procesos de Gobernanza de Internet nacionales e internacionales podía ser resuelta resolviendo primero las cuestiones nacionales. Durante las preguntas, Veni repitió que el caso de su país demostraba que era necesario poner primero la casa en orden antes de entablar relaciones con los vecinos y que eso podía ser alcanzado empezando desde las bases. Me toco seguir y, representando a Alfa-Redi, hice una corta presentación sobre la necesidad de incorporar los derechos de propiedad intelectual a la discusión de Gobernanza de Internet porque, aun cuando los avances en conectividad eran importantes, esos avances contrastaban con la propietización del conocimiento que había acompañado a la revolución digital. El problema, argumente, se encontraba en como el derecho internacional había sido usado para imponer cambios en las legislaciones nacionales sobre propiedad intelectual, tendiendo a la concentración de la propiedad de los contenidos, y como parecía que hasta ahora los procesos de creación de capacidades habían sido usados para domesticar a los actores nacionales en lugar de crear capacidades que permitieran diseñar sus propias reglas de acuerdo al derecho internacional (debido a la falta de tiempo, la idea original de presentar eLac 2007 fue abandonada, pero Erick Iriarte lo explico brevemente desde la sala). Siguió Peng Hwa Ang, de la Nanyang Technological University, quien explico que en Singapur, t el proceso de Gobernanza de Internet fue encarado con un enfoque desde la cúpula, lo cual había resultado en un elevado nivel de confianza y podía ser fácilmente relacionado con la alta tasa de penetración que Internet tiene en su país. También se refirió a los problemas generados por legislación hecha en los inicios de Internet y a la necesidad de reformas en ciertas áreas.
Las dos presentaciones finales tuvieron en común el tema de entrenamiento y transferencia de conocimiento como aspecto importante de la creación de capacidades en la Gobernanza de Internet. Pierre Dandjinou, del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo, se refirió al rol de las instituciones nacionales en el desarrollo de marcos regulatorios nacionales y como ciertas limitaciones podían ser superadas con promoción, entrenamiento y conocimiento compartido tanto a nivel nacional como internacional. Finalmente, Jovan Kurbalija de la Fundación Diplos) explico en detalle el proceso de creación de capacidades y como su organización abordaba el tema. Su presentación enfatizo la necesidad de crear capacidades en los distintos actores del proceso de desarrollo de políticas y la necesidad de adaptar los programas a las distintas situaciones, y también se explayo en el tema del multisectorialismo como compartimiento de especialidades mas que como defensa de intereses.

Bloggers privacy expectations and attitudes

The number of blog writers and readers has grown enormously in the last few years. Moreover, blogs are permeating most niches of social life, addressing a range of topics from scholarly and political issues to family and children's daily lives.

Blogging has the power to affect not only the lives of bloggers themselves but also of the people, companies, and products that are "blogged." For example, accounts of bloggers hurting friends' feelings or losing their jobs because of materials published on their sites are becoming more frequent. Therefore, it is important to understand how accountability and privacy expectations function in this emergent arena.

What this study is about…?

Karen Mc Cullagh is conducting an online survey to explore the privacy attitudes and expectations of bloggers as part of her PhD research, which is sponsored by the ESRC and Office of the Information Commissioner, UK.

What kinds of questions are asked…?

If you participate you will be asked to answer questions anonymously about your blogging practices and your expectations of privacy when publishing online. The survey focuses on four areas:

1. Blog content
What kind of content do bloggers publish?
Do bloggers seek permission to post photo’s of others or information about other’s lives.

2. Privacy and Identity management
Do bloggers identify themselves on their blogs?
Do bloggers identify others on their blogs?
Is identification dependent on content? (i.e., do bloggers refrain from revealing people's identities when writing about sensitive matters?)

3. Audience and control features
Do authors limit who has access to their blog posts?
Do bloggers know their readers are?

4. Privacy attitudes and expectations – legal implications

What information do people consider to be private?

What types of information do people consider to be sensitive?

Are some types of information too personal/private to publish on a blog?

Are authors getting in trouble—legally or personally—because of materials published on their blogs?

What will happen your answers...?

All answers will be stored and analysed on a confidential basis.

The responses will be used to inform academic and policy discussions on blogging practices and attitudes towards privacy.

Link to the survey:

Please take part in the survey: http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/privacysurvey/

Finally, could you please encourage other bloggers to participate in the study.

It takes less than 5 minutes to complete the survey!

Further information:

For further information on my research please visit

http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/staff/km.htm or, email:

Karen.mccullagh@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

By their very nature, blogs raise a number of privacy issues. On the one hand, they are persistent and cumulative. At the same time, they are easy to produce and disseminate, resulting in large amounts of sometimes personal information being broadcast across the Internet

IGF Workshop on Building Local Legal Capacity on Internet Governance

As explained in the previous post, the workshop on legal aspects of Internet Governance within the Internet Governance Forum Greece 2006 was very successful and it highlighted the fact that regardless technical and standards agreements, Internet Governance takes place through a set of regulations, most of which are implemented by laws. The seminar was jointly organized by David Satola, Senior Counsel at the Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank, Alfa-Redi, the Cyberspace Law Committee at the Business Law Section of American Bar Association, Diplo Foundation, the Global Internet Policy Initiative, the Internet Society of Bulgaria, and the Science and Technology Law Section of the American Bar Association.

The topic of the workshop was capacity building on legal aspects of Internet Governance and the relation between international and domestic law in this process. After a brief introduction by David Satola (another congratulations and big thanks for the organization of the workshop), the presentations were started by Jim Dempsey, from the Center for Democracy and Technology, who explained what the legal issues associated with Internet Governance were and what institutions were dealing with them at different levels. His matrix relating different levels of Internet Governance, from the individual to the international, with the institutional standing of the players was a very useful tool to better understand all the following talks. He was followed by Hanne Sophie Greve, Judge of the Court of Appeal of Norway (very difficult to find public information in Norway's sites, as the Judge's link or biography), who explained the basic concepts of international law and European Human Rights law, to then relate them to their impact on domestic legal regulation and the need of following those principles when addressing both Internet Governance and the domestic capacity building related to it.
The third speaker was Kristine Dorrain (National Arbitration Forum) and she focused on the Uniform Domain-name Dispute-Resolution Policy and how it impacted Internet Governance at domestic level. Her presentation went on to show some examples of the use of that process and questioned the reasons for national level adoption and usage of them. The first part of the panel (due to the number of speakers it was divided in two parts) ended with a clear and concise explanation from Fred Tipson, Microsoft, about the need of multistakeholder participation on the policy development processes. It was important because his presentation seemed to emphasise that need, not only based on the assurance that all the views and interests were protected and taken into account, but also on the fact that “multistakeholderisation” (yes, I just made it up) was vital to the process due to complementarity of expertises and knowledge.
The second phase of the panel was opened by Veni Markovsky, from ISOC Bulgaria, who explained how, following the Bulgarian case, the relation between international and national Internet Governance processes could be solved by solving first the domestic issues. During the questions’ time, Veni repeated that his country’s case showed that it was necessary to first put the house in order before engaging with the neighbours, and that that could be achieved with a bottom-up approach. I, representing Alfa-Redi, followed with a short presentation on the need to incorporate intellectual property rights into the Internet Governance’s discussion because, even the advances in connectivity had been important, those advances contrasted the proprietization of knowledge and information accompanying the digital revolution. The problem, I argued, was located in how international norms had been used to impose changes on intellectual property domestic legislation tending to the concentration of ownership of content and how it seemed that until now capacity building had been used to domesticate domestic actors instead of to build the capacity to create its own set of rules in accordance with international law (due to time constrains, the original idea of introducing eLac 2007 was abandoned, but Erick Iriarte explained briefly about it from the floor). Peng Hwa Ang, from the Nanyang Technological University, followed explaining that in Singapore, the process of Internet Governance was addressed following a top-down approach, which resulted in a high level of trust, what can be easily related to the very high penetration rate that Internet had in his country. He also highlighted the problems of legislation being enacted too early and the need of reforms in some areas.
The two final presentations have in common the issue of coaching and knowledge transfer as important aspect of capacity building in Internet Governance. Pierre Dandjinou, of the United Nations Development Porgramme, referred to the role of national institutions in the development of national legal frameworks and how certain limitations could be overcame with advocacy, coaching and knowledge sharing at both domestic and international level. Finally, Jovan Kurbalija (Diplos Foundation) explained in detail the process of capacity building and how his organization was dealing with it. His presentation emphasised the need of capacity building for different actors of the policy making process and the necessity of tailoring programs for different situations, and expanded in the issue of “multistakeholderism” (another verbal creation) as “expertise-sharing” rather than “interest-protecting”.
As I said yesterday, it can be seen as the beginning of the beginning and I hope that we all have time to put this into paper to have soon a publication on the topic.

IGF 2006 Legal Aspects Seminar

The seminar on legal aspects, organized by David Satola from the Legal Vice Presidency of the World Bank, was more than a great success. The place was literally packed and there were people standing and sitting on the floor. Then, there was also the abundance in quantity and quality of speakers: nine speakers and David as moderator (with me as being the exception in quality that confirms the rule :) It was quite clear that this morning panel's was not and end or the beginning of the end but the begining of the begining (a little misquote of Churchill, but he wouldn't mind).

Following there is a photo of the second part of the panel (and my face, second from your left, does not look swolen, it is swolen due to been bitten by a bug in Paris)

From the IGF in Athens

I am participating in the Internet Governance Forum in Greece, as part of the seminar on legal issues, and tonight I will post a summary of the session.