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"Open source software developers have a powerful set of tools to make distributed authoring of software possible: diff to identify what's changed, patch to apply those changes elsewhere, version control to track changes over time and show provenance. Patch management would be just as important in a collaborative open data project, where users and other researchers might be submitting new or revised data. What would git for data look like? Heck, what would a local branch look like? I have a new attribute, you have a different projection, she has new rows, how does this all tie back together? (I eagerly await claims that RDF will solve this problem and all others) That's just development. The interface between developers and users is the release. State of the art for a lot of government data is the equivalent of source.tar.gz. No version numbers, much the ability to download older versions of the datasets or separate stable and development branches. Why would we want to download the historic version of a dataset? Because a paper used it and we want to test the analysis software that the paper used to ensure we get the same answer. Or because we want to see what our analysis technique would have shown with the knowledge that was available back then. Or simply to be able to track defects. The users of data will have to adapt to the idea of versions, like the users of software have. The maintainers of the dataset might release five different versions of it while you're writing your analysis code, so it can't be a painful process to incorporate the revised data into your project. With software we have shared libraries and dynamic libraries, supported by autotools and such packages. Our code has interfaces and a branch that promises backwards compatibility. What would that look like for data? And what is the data version of the dependency hell that software developers know all-too-well (M 1.5 depends on N 1.7 and P 2.0, but P 2.0 requires N 2.0, and upgrading N to 2.0 br

The strategy contains more than thirty concrete recommendations for improvement, falling into six main categories. First, we will lead by example. Specifically, we will work to ensure that we do not mistakenly purchase or use illegal products. Second, the strategy underscores that this Administration supports transparency. That includes transparency in our development of enforcement policy, information sharing, and reporting of law enforcement activities at home and abroad. Third, we will improve coordination and thereby increase efficiency and effectiveness of law enforcement efforts at the Federal, state and local level, of personnel stationed overseas and of our international training efforts. Fourth, we will work with our trading partners and within international organizations to better enforce American intellectual property rights in the global economy. In that regard, we will initiate a comprehensive review of current efforts in support of U.S. businesses that have difficulty enforcing their intellectual property rights in overseas markets, with a particular focus on China. Fifth, we must secure our supply chain. To achieve this most important goal, we will take a close look at the unique problems posed by foreign-based websites and other entities that provide access to counterfeit or pirated products, and develop a coordinated and comprehensive plan to address them. We will make sure our law enforcement has the authority it needs to secure the supply chain and also encourage industry to work collaboratively to address unlawful activity on the internet, such as illegal downloading and illegal internet pharmacies. Sixth, and finally, we will make sure we spend your money wisely, a process we have already begun. To do that, we have, and will continue to collect and track the amount of money we spend on intellectual property enforcement per year. We will use this information to map out the most effective way to fight this theft.

The Long Tail was a response to an essay by Clay Shirky, a prominent technology writer who also teaches at New York University. Shirky's argument dampened much of the nascent utopianism about blogs, pointing out that the readership of early blogs followed what economists call a Pareto curve, or "power curve": a small number of sites (the "head") attracted a huge number of readers, but most (the "tail") had few or none. This jarred with the utopian notion of the internet as a new kind of democracy. Why bother to participate if our fates were decided for us by a few block votes? So Anderson turned the notion upside down. The blockbuster was over, he proclaimed, and, like a man possessed, he began to see long tails everywhere. It was the Guardian that lauded this logic by comparing Anderson to Copernicus. The implicit message was that the little people would win. Many people were so keen to believe that Web 2.0 would make the world fairer that they rejected any evidence to the contrary. It was only last year, with an exhaustive study of online music sales by the economist Will Page and an experienced digital retailer, Andrew Bud, that a more useful picture of digital markets begin to emerge. Page and Bud found that most of the songs available for purchase had never been downloaded, and that the concentration of hits was more pronounced than ever before. On the file-sharing networks, the same pattern emerged. So, carrying a huge retail inventory, though cheaper than before, was of little or no value. Now, with Free, Anderson has turned to the criticism that the internet destroyed the value of movies, newspapers and music. Firms could, and now should, cross-subsidise this unprofitable activity, he argues. But cross-subsidies aren't new: they have been the subject of decades of observation by economists. Nor are they a panacea. Alan Patrick, co-founder of the Broadsight media and technology consultancy, points out that despite falling marginal costs, th

Founded in January 2005, Mininova quickly became one of the most successful torrent sites. With millions of daily users the site is now listed among the top 100 most frequently visited websites on the entire Internet, and its traffic still continues to grow. When combined, Mininova's visitors have been downloading well over 10 million torrents a day and performing an equal number of searches on the site. These millions of downloads add up quickly and since the birth of the site a massive 8 billion torrents have been downloaded by Mininova users.

"Since then downloads have come to dominate the top 40. About 98% of all single sales are now from downloads, with about 100,000 needed every week to get to the top spot."

"Stephen Fry, a highly respected actor, comedian, writer, presenter and author yesterday admitted to downloading TV shows for free using BitTorrent. Speaking at the iTunes Festival in London last night, Fry told the audience that he's grabbed episodes of 24 and the series finale of House, starring his former comedy partner Hugh Laurie." And he admits that he feels a bit guilty about it, but the reason is that he can't really get that content elsewhere. The fault is with the industry, and yet the gov't is trying to protect that industry, rather than recognize that the real problem is the industry not giving people what it wants. Having the gov't come up with a plan to try to stomp out file sharing misses the point. The problem isn't the file sharing -- it's the industry not responding to the market.

The Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors. (The Microsoft DreamSparkProgram is an initiative by Microsoft where all the students of the VTU would be allowed to download free versions of Microsoft original software and portraying an act of benignity from Microsoft for the student community. Microsoft through this program (with the real intention of suppressing any development of intellectual self reliance of the students), was able to make a deal with the VTU.)

"But what's missing from the whole debate is some data. Just how much unlawful file-sharing is going on in the UK and what effect is it having on the creative industries? It's hard to be sure really - the music industry often says that twenty unauthorised tracks are downloaded for every one that's paid for, but I'm not sure how that figure was worked out. The government, too, seems hazy, unable to say how it will know when file-sharing has been reduced by 70%, the target to be attained by the initial deterrence campaign before stronger measures are contemplated."

China's largest Internet search engine, Baidu, was said to be "responsible for the vast majority of illegal downloading of music in China, deriving significant advertising revenue." But last month China issued an IPR protection plan involving 28 ministries and organizations that had 170 concrete measures to fight copyright infringement. Also, the Supreme People's Court raised compensation for victims from 500,000 yuan ($73,000) to more than 1 million yuan ($146,000). Last year, China closed 192 websites that profited from copyright infringement and uncovered 5719 cases of copyright infringement, Commissioner of the State Intellectual Property Office Tian Lipu said.

Consider three questions. How would one decide if there was too much telecommunications surveillance in the United States, or too little? How would one know if law enforcement was using its surveillance capabilities in the most effective fashion? How would one assess the impact of this collection of information on civil liberties? In answering these questions, a necessary step, the logical first move, would be to examine existing data about governmental surveillance practices and their results. One would also need to examine and understand how the legal system generated these statistics about telecommunications surveillance. Ideally, the information structure would generate data sets that would allow the three questions posed above to be answered. Light might also be shed on other basic issues, such as whether or not the amount of telecommunications surveillance was increasing or decreasing.