Lillly Evans' Notes

Notes from Lilly Evans

RAL Unconference 1st May

• Cameron Neylon: practicing research scientist , biologists, ording research, involvement in Open Access movement
  • Issues re Rights mngmt
  • Potential for what happens when society is well connected
  • How self*org mtgs work

• Lucy Power: how life scientists use internet for research* doing PhD @ Oxford
  • Oxford Open Institute
  • Add to discussion

• David Humphrews: el.eng., AI, seen development of internet through its infancy
  • Interested as user self & children as they grew up
  • Left AI industry and went back to oil industry with s/w & networking
  • Came to this via LE & Twitter

• Nava Whiteford: Cameron was his his supervisor, peer to peer networks, CS area
  • Universal access interest
  • How policies are formed

• Howard Morrie: came through Twitter
  • All experience via automotive & finance industries
  • Looking at how different economy is now: was masculine and moved much more to feminine* big business does not understand it but has to learn
  • Works with medium size*business re business development: need for access in communities and towns is clear so broadband has to work well (low speed is a current problem in Cotswolds)
  • Universal access

• Andrew McKensey: teaching in IT
  • Copyright & IP in new media
  • Right to Reply comment to Digital Britain involvement
  • Unconferences happening because of the medium

• Lilly Evans: Org change, IT, education
  • experience with using internet from 1973 ARPA net,
  • involvement in Alvey directorate work
  • organizational change
  • control systems engineer and modeler
  • complex adaptive systems applications

What do we do here:

• Infrastructure requirements
• Where should public spending go: early stage to late life
• Education system
• Access principle: what are minimum conditions of satisfaction?
• Policy document: how to encourage decent infrastructure
  • Not sure market will solve it
  • User is receiver of the system
  • We need the symmetric system: user can download & upload at the same speeds = Equal Rights for users and providers
• Transport analogy
• Current document trying to do too much in one place:
  • Need to structure discussion
• Building scalable infrastructure
• Schools availability of technology:
• Principles:
  • Net neutrality enshrined:
    • Deals done by providers
• Who can inspect what and why
• No neutrality in research environment: hidden in deep web & not searchable
• CURRENT REPORT IS ANTI NEUTRALITY
  • Equality of providers and users: rights
• Upload/ download speeds
  • Web growth: with less money and more people we changed the game
• Impulse for control to be curbed
  • Transparency
  • Mega*community
  • Lobbying on behalf of current players seems to have been prevalent
  • Who controls broadcasting
  • Rights issues:
    • Control impulse is the same for individuals as for companies:
    • People do not get that sharing is powerful
  • Change fear impact

LUNCH

• Expected OutcomesExpected outcomes:
  • Areas to address:
  • No acknowledgement of existing business model
  • Privacy mentioned only 3 x = it is a principle that has to be fleshed out
  • Net neutrality statement: important for delivering on economic impact
  • This is what will deliver economic growth in the future
  • Place for emerging business models
  • New businesses need equal playing field (SME’s access)
  • We are doing this in the framework of the wider digital world
• What is China, India, Japan, France etc doing
  • Legal impact
  • Impact of the EU telecoms access legislation
  • Trying to maintain the model of British Broadcasting while the rest of the world does not work like that any more
• Reaching the audience
• How does it work
  • We could all be broadcasters:
    • needs physical and social infrastructure to enable and exploit it
    • Infrastructure: Universal access (with reasonable speeds) with scalability built in
    • Britain to be magnet for new industries wrt of availability in the world without borders
  • We believe that as the report stands at the moment speeds stated are meaningless:
  • Net neutrality: wireless providers are already blocking some of the content
  • Simple licensing system for government data (Tom Watson, MP), cf Ordonance survey data being locked

Lucy left

• The only sensible thing to do for data* when you want to re-use it –is to make them freely available
  • Examples collected by Duke University of economic benefit being much higher from open data
  • Example of private Genome data being freed up
  • Symmetry of the rights of content producers* users as well as those who are broadcasters
  • Same principle to apply to infrastructure
  • Legislative protection required: for individuals, globally for businesses
• Evidence is that copying is damaging has been refuted by data
  • Report needs to capture that internet will destroy value and models in some ways but create opportunities in others
  • Rather than creating rights for what other people can do report should encourage ways for people to consider
    • Copyright etc are all ‘red lighting’
    • ‘green lighting’ like sharing etc are what we want to encourage
• Report packaging should reflect the digital world* multimedia and hyperlinks at least
  • Wikipedia model for input with peer review produces informed debate
  • Universal provisions to be ensured by inspection that is independent from specific leading commercial interests
• Numbers given have to be fleshed out in the policy document since as they stand they are meaningless: contention ratios, upload speeds plus line speed = level of service to users
• Symmetric rights are here shown to be related
  • Principle of looking at the issues as interconnected and systemic
• Enabling people to contribute where people are is essential => upload more important or at least equal to download
  • It is not the business of the government to interfere in the rights issues of licence holders
  • We have a legal and social problem, where government can speak up to rules of behaviour
  • Public money going into this would require the report to provide more reliable data that is accessible to users (transparency)
  • There is a whole class of applications of and on internet over and above the entertainment in the report:
  • SMEs and Micro-enterprises
  • Health applications and elderly monitoring require high upload speeds
  • Education: cf School of Everything or School of Life
• Need to capture passion and interest to enable people’s engagement

END