According to Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, soon you will have to pay royalties if you want to utilise a reproduction of a pharaonic site such as the Great Pyramid at Giza or the Sphinx. Egyptian MPs are expected to pass a bill into law which would effectively claim copyright for the design of these ancient constructions. Zahi Hawass, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities stated that this law “will be applied in all countries of the world so that we can protect our interests”.

Now, it appears that the media have taken AFP’s lead and just looked at how (if given credence) this law would affect people who already use the likeness of the pyramids. What they perhaps should have done is investigate whether this law could actually be enforced in any way outside of Egypt. What the Egyptians are essentially trying to do is two things. Firstly, they are trying to extend the term of copyright to ~4,000 years and secondly, they are assuming the right to hold the copyright which would have originally been held (had copyright law existed then) with the pharaohs themselves.

For a start, the law probably isn’t going to hold any water with countries who are not signatories to the Berne convention. Secondly, in countries that are signatories, the rule of the shorter term usually applies:

Berne Convention Article 7 (8)

In any case, the term shall be governed by the legislation of the country where protection is claimed; however, unless the legislation of that country otherwise provides, the term shall not exceed the term fixed in the country of origin of the work.

This means that when the protection of copyright is claimed or utilised in legal action by the author, the legislation of the country where the claim or infringement occurs will be in force. So, if somebody in England made a copy of the Great Sphinx, UK law would be in force and if the Sphinx were categorised as an ‘artistic work’, it’s copyright would have lapsed 70 years after the death of it’s author or creator. Upon it’s lapse, the copyright of the Sphinx would transfer into the public domain in the UK. Now, we estimate that the Great Sphinx is around 4,500 years old and it’s creator (presumably a pharaoh or similar) would not have lived into modern times*. We can’t be certain of the actual date but we do know that the Sphinx was first depicted in a photograph around 1867 [pictured] and the copyright of this private work is now lapsed too.

It would appear that the Egyptian MPs are either unaware of how copyright law works or are perhaps being supremely arrogant by assuming that Egyptian law can be enforced throughout the world. It is also possible, of course, that the media have misconstrued a story that did not come out well in translation.

*It did cross my mind that they might be trying to claim copyright due to the pharaohs having ‘eternal life’ as gods but I don’t think that will wash with most Berne Convention countries.

Header Photo: Ricardo Liberato cc-by-sa-2.0
Article Photo: Przemyslaw Idzkiewicz cc-by-sa-2.5

Tags: berne convention, copyright, egypt, law, pyramids, sphinx

…the UK’s Energy Policy is full of wind.

Labour MP John Hutton stated on the BBC Politics Show that it is the UK government’s intention to build 7,000 or so new wind turbines for electricity generation around the UK. In a slightly inflammatory fashion, the BBC has pointed out that would be one turbine for every two miles of coastline but they fail to note that it would only be the case if they were set equidistantly around the coast. They will, of course, be arranged in ‘batteries’ to allow for easier installation, maintenance and shorter cable runs. The placement, however, is very far from the problem.

The real problem seems to be minister’s lack of basic understanding when it come to how the electricity grid is operated.

Mr Hutton said:

“There is the potential, we believe, out there, using the resources that there are around the UK to generate maybe all of the electricity that households need … from offshore wind sources,”

Certainly there is. When the wind is blowing.

7,000 wind turbines would be rather less than useful for electricity generation when there is no wind and they are all idling. This is why wind turbines will never be anything other than supplementary generators. We have to have base-load generation and that is only available from sources which are not dependent on uncontrollable external factors like wind. That limits the options for base load generation to hydroelectric, hydrocarbon (coal, gas, oil) and nuclear. Then we need load-following generation (the generation that takes up any difference between base and peak load), once again, this has to be provided by the controllable sources of hydroelectric, hydrocarbon and nuclear.

So, of the only options for base-load generation:

• Hydroelectric generation is limited in the UK. Once you’ve tapped all the available dams for power, you can’t build any more unless you intend to flood more valley/catchment areas. There is also a concern that non-tidal hydro is adversely affected by droughts. Hydroelectric dams can also load-follow at the risk of depleting the reservoir supply faster.
• Hydrocarbon generation is always the one to take a battering from environmentalists but, once again, that isn’t the real problem. The real issue is that we are running out of hydrocarbon supplies and as such, the price will continue to spiral upwards for this sort of generation
• Nuclear generation, also hated by environmentalists should provide the most effective method of base-load generation. The system itself is clean in operation and if we bought modern French reactors, we could minimise the radioactive waste. It is worth remembering that France generates so much power through it’s 50+ nuclear reactors, they can sell the power on to other nations (including the UK) and boost their economy in the process.

Wind can only supplement these base-load generators. It cannot be a base-load itself and it cannot load-follow reliably. The wind will do as it pleases. We cannot control it.

The people of the UK must ask whether they really want such massive expenditure on a generation system that could see them sat in darkness several days a week.

Photo Credit: André Karwath by-sa-2.5

Tags: base-load, government, uk, wind farms, wind generation

The Telegraph online edition today carries a story describing how the UK Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith believes that British police officers should be issued with 50,000 volt cattle prods.

We are, of course, talking about Taser guns which are already used by the British police firearms teams. The type issued to UK police fires two darts which embed themselves in the target person and provide a conductive path from the gun for an electrical charge to be administered. This charge is meant to incapacitate the target person through a combination of muscle spasms and pain.

In 2005 West Midlands Police firearms unit used the Taser with great skill to apprehend a suspect in relation to the July 21st bombings in London. The fully armed officers made a split second decision to use a Taser unit instead of a firearm in order to take the suspect into custody rather than kill them. Obviously, it’s much easier to question and gain information from a suspect who hasn’t been shot dead.

The West Midlands Police firearms unit is an intensively trained, specialist weapons team. However, the Home Secretary intends that the Taser weapon be issued to every police officer.  Obviously, it will not be possible to offer the same level of intensive training to every British police officer (because the government would never fund it) so we could end up with a situation as seen across the Atlantic where the Taser gun goes from being the ‘weapon of last resort’ to the ‘weapon of least resistance’.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said it was “pretty clear” that the weapons were more effective for subduing suspects and caused less harm than traditional batons.

Of course, they also leave little by the way of visible evidence even when the subject dies after administration. The worry is that a Taser gun could be used in laziness as we have seen in many videos from the US. Between about 70 and 150 people have been estimated to have died after being shocked by a Taser unit used by police in the US.

For the Taser gun to go on general issue in the UK, the police would need a massive continuous weapons training program to ensure the weapons were only used correctly and as a weapon of last resort against genuinely dangerous/violent suspects in all cases. I’m quite sure that this government would provide no adequate funding for such training.

I would consider it reasonable to generally arm many police with firearms too if the police force could be given the funding necessary to be trained to excellence in  every case but I won’t hold my breath waiting for that funding to materialize.

Tags: british police, firearms, home secretary, taser, uk police

It was reported this week that South Crofty tin mine in Corwall is reopening after being closed for a decade. When South Crofty closed, it was no longer viable to extract tin from the ground in Western Europe.

However, since 1997, the price of tin has increased by three and a half times and South Crofty has become viable again. For some reason there is a bit of back-story about Cornwall County Council thinking the mine is unviable and attempting to block the restart but none the less, South Crofty mine is restarting…

…which leads to an interesting problem. In order to restart, they obviously have to recruit miners. Unfortunately, not much mining of any note has been going on in Cornwall for those 10 years since South Crofty closed so the only real option is to recall the original employees who are, of course, advancing a little in years. Quite where you recruit people to work down tin-mines in 2007 is anybody’s guess, perhaps a change in the UK economy could make that viable too.

South Crofty hope to be extracting 2,400 tonnes of tin in 2008. The mine could produce tin for up to 80 years to come.

Tags: cornwall, mining, south crofty, tin mine

If you’ve seen the news in the UK in the last couple of days, you’ll be aware that Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs has managed to lose the digital records of 25 million British citizens in the post and exposed them to potential identity theft.

For those not aware, briefly: The National Audit office requested a sample of National Insurance numbers of Child Benefit claimants from HMRC stripped of any other data. HMRC therefore sent the entire record of all British child benefit claimants on apparently unencrypted CD-Rs via unrecorded delivery. Almost inevitably, these disks have been lost in the post. The data contained on the disks includes:

• Name
• Address
• Date of Birth
• National Insurance Number
• Bank details (or, presumably PO accounts)

The details cover 7.25 million families, a total of 25 million records of both the claimants and their children.

Now, HMRC have stated that they do not believe that the disks have fallen into the wrong hands. However, this is based on their being no evidence of fraud being perpetrated using these details as of yet. The fact of the matter seems to be that HMRC and the Police simply have no idea where the disks are.

Furthermore the Chancellor, Darling, mentioned that the records were contained within “password protected” files. I take this to mean that they were in unencrypted ‘password locked’ zipfiles or similar, otherwise the Chancellor would have been telling us all not to worry as the encryption could not be broken. Exactly how hard can it be to use something like Truecrypt to secure files?

The Real Risk

Another red-herring from the Chancellor, Darling, was that banks were now monitoring accounts for suspicious activity. Any even moderately organised criminal worth his or her salt will not be bothering to try to access people’s accounts with this information. They will appreciate that if the information relates to benefit claimant’s details then the likely hood of any given account containing much money at any given time is rather slim.

Instead, they would use the details they have acquired to assume the identity of the person from any given record. This stolen identity would then be used to take out lines of credit in the victim’s name. This is the most common use of identity theft. With the details that have gone missing, it should be trivial, for example, to obtain items like birth certificates to further back up the identity-thief’s operations.

Unfortunatly, when identity theft is used to perpetrate credit fraud, no amount of checking your current account will help you. Only the likes of Experian and Equifax can tell you if someone is taking out credit in your name without your knowledge and their service is both chargeable and reactive (They can only tell you it’s happening after it has happened).

Tags: chancellor, child benefit, darling, data, hmrc

As anyone who lives in the UK will know, our remaining automotive industry is exceptionally thin on the ground. With the loss of Rover in 2005, there is now no major domestic car manufacturer under British ownership.

In the interests of unfounded optimism, I thought I’d have a look at which of the time-served British marques were still owned by British companies and could potentially (although not probably) be used for future British car production. Marked in Red are marques that are still owned by UK companies, in Blue are UK companies still manufacturing cars and in black are names that have been aquired by foreign companies.

• AC Active: Alan Lubinsky (Hal Far, Malta)

• Austin Defunct: Nanjing Automobile Group (China)

• Bristol Active: Tony Crook (UK!)

• BSA Defunct as a manufacture, now parts company UK

• Daimler Active: Ford Motor Company (USA)

• Jaguar Active: TATA Motor Company (India)

• Land Rover Active: TATA Motor Company (India)

• Leyland Defunct: Possibly Volvo or Nanjing

• Lotus Very active UK company. Majority shares probably held by Proton via LGIL

• MG Active: Nanjing Automobile Group (China)

• Mini Active: Formerly a model name, now a marque (capitalised as MINI) BMW (Germany)

• Morgan Active: Charles Morgan (UK!)

• Morris Defunct: Nanjing Automobile Group (China)

• Nuffield Defunct: Possibly now Nanjing Automotive (China)

• Riley Defunct: BMW (Germany)

• Rover Defunct: Ford Motor Company (USA)

• Triumph Defunct as a car manufacturer. Offshoot Triumph Motorcycles is active. BMW owns Triumph cars brand.

• Vauxhall Active: General Motors (USA)

• Wolseley Motor Company Defunct: Nanjing Automobile Group (China)

Out of the remaining names, Lotus is the biggest operation and is still a fairly autonomous company despite much of it’s shares being owned by overseas companies. Morgan are still very British and are experimenting with hydrogen fuel-cell cars and Bristol are still Bristol

Tags: ac, alvis, austin, bmw, bristol, bsa, daimler, ford, gm, jaguar, land rover, leyland, lotus, mg, mini, morgan, nanjing, nuffield, riley, rover, tata, triumph, vauxhall, wolseley