Monthly Archives: October 2006

On Security at Stansted

Posted on by
Reply

To Glasgow, then, and a weekend visit to my Mum. The kids and I caught the train to Stansted on Friday afternoon, to find the security theatre in full force. Although we made EasyJet’s last checkin time with a good ten minutes to spare, I really thought we would miss our flight when we joined the back of one of two or three giant, slow-moving queue. Especially so when, after a few minutes, we realised that we were in fact at the back of a queue for another checkin desk. We weren’t alone in this error, though: the queues mingled, and quite a few others had made the same mistake.

But in the end it wasn’t that bad. The queue began moving fairly quickly — or smoothly, at least — and while it was frustrating, it was bearable, as long as you didn’t let yourself get frustrated. The passport/boarding-pass-control desk looked a right mess, though, covered as it was by abandoned bottles, cosmetics containers and what have you.

To be honest, I’m not actually sure why the queues were so long. The only things that have changed in security terms compared with a few months ago are the prohibited items in hand baggage, and the enforcement of the “only one item” rule (I’m sure this has been the rule for decades, but it just wasn’t strictly enforced). Both of those issues should be dealt with at checkin, so when you get to the security gates you should be ready. Every bag and coat is x-rayed, as before: but there should be fewer bags; everyone goes through a metal detector, just as they always did. There was a “please take off your shoes” section after the metal detectors, but as we paused at it, one security guy called, “Not everybody, not everybody,” and waved us on. I suppose people were randomly chosen, and incidentally, everyone I saw taking their shoes off was white. This may, of course, just mean that people who look like terrorists (whatever that may mean) are not travelling, from fear of being hassled.

I conclude that the only reason for the giant queues must be stupidity: there must be people who, even though they are asked about prohibited items at checkin, and even though this stuff has been in the news for weeks, still have drinks in their hand luggage, and then have to stop to abandon them at security. Or who try to take more than one item on, even though they’ve been told not to. And yet, I didn’t see much of that happening. I really don’t understand why the queues got so big. There were plenty of security staff on duty, too.

Coming back, things were much less fraught at Glasgow Airport, as they generally are at smaller airports, in my experience.

Throughout, I have to say, all the security staff we encountered were cheerful, polite, and helpful, while doing a largely thankless, probably quite dull, job, filled with seemingly-arbitrary rule changes handed down from above. I can’t really fault them, no matter how daft some of the things they have to enforce may be.

A last thought: we are being conditioned to accept travelling with photo ID, even within the country. It was strange to see everyone queuing up to get onto a flight to Scotland, with their passports ready. Now I’d be quite happy to see EU passports issued by the Republic of Scotland (as long as it was a republic), but for now, it was still a journey within the UK.

And the strange thing is, it seems to be the airlines that are driving this, not the authorities. I have had to show photo ID on RyanAir and EasyJet, but a few months ago — this year, certainly — I flew to Scotland with BMI Baby, and not only did they not ask for ID, but I didn’t even have to see a human to check in: hand baggage, a credit card, and a self-checkin machine, and there I was. That was before all the recent fuss, true, but RyanAir (and possibly EasyJet) have been asking for ID for years. Are they secretly being used byt the government to get us used to carrying ID cards? And if so, why is it only some airlines?

Or am I being unreasonably paranoid? ‘Cos I only want to be reasonably paranoid, you know.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Copyright Matters – Pass It On

Posted on by
4

So here I am, all ready to write about my day for the History Matters – Pass It On site’s One Day in History project, which has been much hyped of late. But before I started writing I took a look at the terms and conditions, where I found this little thought:

You agree, by submitting such material, to grant the Partners jointly and severally a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, sub-licensable right and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, play, make available to the public,

That’s fair enough, right? You’re granting them a non-exclusive licence to use the material. But it goes on to say:

and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to, your material worldwide and/or to incorporate your material in other works in any media now known or later developed for the full term of any rights that may exist in your material.

Umm, “exercise all copyright”? Now I’m not so sure. Let’s see what else there is.

you waive any moral rights to your material for the purposes of its submission to and publication on the Site or for the general purposes specified above.

Ouch. I don’t like the sound of that. Now the thing that got me looking at this was this, which is not in the Ts&Cs, but right on the submission page:

The History Matters partners own the copyright of any materials that you submit and be free to use them in any History Matter related materials such as any media stories, published books etc.

Not just overbearingly copywrong, but ungrammatical, too. Ouchy, ouchy, ouch, ouch!

Then, as if to add stupidity to a lack of concern for people’s work, there is a section entitled, “Links to this Website. It includes the following paragraph:

The Partners reserve the right at their discretion to prohibit any link from another Internet site or equivalent entity to materials or information on the Site.

Ok, so they’re not banning deep links, they’re just warning you that they might do so.

Furthermore, no page or pages from this website may be framed by or with any third party content or otherwise made available to the public in conjunction with any third party content without the prior written consent of the Partners

So it’s all right to take thousands of random contributors’ work away from them, but we can’t in turn reproduce or reuse your work (or that of the random contributors)?

C’mon, guys, this is the web: linking is what it’s all about.

And as to copyright: The History Matters project is founded, according to its FAQ, by:

National Trust, English Heritage, The National Heritage Memorial Fund and Heritage Lottery Fund, the Historic Houses Association, Heritage Link, the Civic Trust, the Council for British Archaeology and Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings

All publicly-funded and/or charitable bodies, if I’m not very much mistaken.

Now you may think that I’m being unreasonably cautious about this. I’m just some guy in London writing about his day. It’s not like they’re stealing what I write, or as if what I write matters that much in the grand scheme of things. And that’s true enough. I have absolutely no problem with them using what I might write. Indeed, all my writing here is Creative-Commons-licensed, so you don’t even have to ask if you want to use it. The problem is this: if you follow the letter of the agreement, then I lose all rights over what I submit to them. That means that if I write a description of my day, submit it to the project, and then post a copy here, on my blog (as I intended to do), then I’ll be in breach of copyright.

And that is madness.

I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt: I’m working on the assumption that this is just carelessness; that the terms and conditions are just poorly thought through, rather than deliberately evil. But really, someone there has a duty to take care. When you’re a public body soliciting material created by the public, you have no moral right to claim the exclusive intellectual rights over that material.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Burning Silver Discs for Gold

Posted on by
Reply

In which I make a CD compilation, and blow whatever vestiges of my credibility remained

I’ve been a bit invisible on here for a while. First I had two weeks camping in France, during which (among much else) I managed to grow a beard (not that I was particularly trying to: it just kind of happened). In the first couple of weeks after getting back I spent much of my free time on preparing a CD for a special occasion.

The occasion was the golden wedding anniversary of my beloved’s parents. They had asked me to provide some music for after the dinner. The brief was to get the grandkids dancing. The theme we chose was to cover all the decades from 1956 to 2006.

Now, strange as it may seem, I’ve never actually made a compilation CD before, despite having had the technology to do so for several years. I was never really very big on making compilation tapes, either. So the first thing to do was to check that the technology worked.

Our CD writer hasn’t written under Windows since we got Dell to replace the whole drive when it broke down. It’s doubtless some kind of driver problem, but I haven’t bothered to try to fix it. I know what you’re thinking: CD writers are as cheap as potatoes these days; but never buy a new one when there’s a way to get the old one working, I say. The logical solution, then, was to use Linux, where the same drive does work; and which is my preferred working environment anyway.

I’m currently using the Kubuntu distribution, and as it is KDE based, the logical CD creation tool seems to be K3B. This is essentially a graphical front end to various command-line tools, which is a fine approach. Unfortunately the GUI is a bit clunky. Still, nothing I couldn’t live with (once I had dowloaded and installed the plugin that allows it to recognise MP3s, at least).

So the next thing was to consider how to get the tracks we wanted. We already had quite a lot, of course, but inevitably there were plenty that we wanted that we didn’t have. I briefly considered the iTunes Music Store, but rejected it because a) I was using Linux, so couldn’t use iTunes; b) my MP3 player is not an iPod, so it (ITMS) would have been little use to me after this project; and c) most importantly of all, I didn’t want to have to struggle with DRM.

I already use eMusic, which is good for relatively recent, independent stuff, but is not really a source of classic tracks. I did get ‘Rock Around the Clock’ from there, though. As well as that, Frances bought a couple of new CDs: a Paul Simon collection and a disco compilation.

But for the rest, and for the maximum flexibility, there was only one solution: I would have to enter the murky grey-area waters of AllOfMP3.com.

If you haven’t come across this site, it’s based in Russia and a legal grey area. The people who run it claim to be following the copyright laws of Russia; and presumably that is true, because the site continues to operate. However, they are able to offer a vast collection of albums for mere pennies per track. And all in a selection of formats, and without DRM.

The grey area is that we may be breaking the law by using their services in other countries, such as the UK.

It’s still running, though, so let’s work on the assumption that it’s OK to use it.

I set up an AllOfMP3 account, and by a daft number of steps of indirection, got some money into it, and downloaded a few tracks.

It’s good stuff: they have a huge selection of tracks, and the prices are so cheap. I think it has something to teach iTunes and the other legal download sites: the less you charge (and the less encumbered the files) the more people will buy.

I don’t think there was a track, or at least an artist, that I couldn’t find on it.

Oh, OK, there were two, but they’re both a tad embarassing. We got a late request for the following tracks: ‘Summer Holiday’; ‘Y Viva España’; and ‘Remember You’re A Womble’.

Yes, I know. But since novelty hits (and songs from kids’ TV shows) were by no means outwith the scope of the project (and since we aleady had both ‘Crazy Frog’ and the Bratz TV theme), I attempted to comply.

Which was harder than you might have expected. AllOfMP3 had the first, but the second was slightly harder. I did find it, though, squirreled away on somebody’s MP3 blog (which seems to mainly consist of tracks ripped from old tapes found in the Dalston branch of Oxfam: the ripper/blogger is practically a neighbour).

Those Wombles, though: they’re hard to find.

There is a strange class of sites out there that list the contents of albums, and appear to allow you to click through and buy the the tracks; but when you do, you get a screen saying, “That track is not available”, or “This album is not available”. Which makes me wonder why they bother to list it on their sites; or at least, why they list it with live links that make it look as if you can buy it.

Anyway, somewhere on the deeper, darker recesses of the net, on the very last page of sites that, as far as Google knew, contained the string, “remember you’re a Womble”, I found it. Or at least part of it: it ends very abruptly. But in the context of the compilation, that didn’t actually seem to matter too much.

The party was a great success. The music went down very well, with only one slight problem: we overran our time in the hotel’s function suite, and never got to play the second disk. Too much eating, not enough dancing, I suppose.

Still, now that I’ve done one, making other compilation CDs should be a doddle.

Oh, and the beard (I mentioned it earlier, you weren’t paying attention) came off before the party. The kids complained, but some things just have to go.

The track listing? Oh all right then: Continue reading →