A source close to the British Labour Government has just given me reliable information about the most radical copyright proposal I've ever seen.

Secretary of State Peter Mandelson is planning to introduce changes to the Digital Economy Bill now under debate in Parliament. These changes will give the Secretary of State (Mandelson -- or his successor in the next government) the power to make "secondary legislation" (legislation that is passed without debate) to amend the provisions of Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (1988).

What that means is that an unelected official would have the power to do anything without Parliamentary oversight or debate, provided it was done in the name of protecting copyright. Mandelson elaborates on this, giving three reasons for his proposal:

1. The Secretary of State would get the power to create new remedies for online infringements (for example, he could create jail terms for file-sharing, or create a "three-strikes" plan that costs entire families their internet access if any member stands accused of infringement)

2. The Secretary of State would get the power to create procedures to "confer rights" for the purposes of protecting rightsholders from online infringement. (for example, record labels and movie studios can be given investigative and enforcement powers that allow them to compel ISPs, libraries, companies and schools to turn over personal information about Internet users, and to order those companies to disconnect users, remove websites, block URLs, etc)

3. The Secretary of State would get the power to "impose such duties, powers or functions on any person as may be specified in connection with facilitating online infringement" (for example, ISPs could be forced to spy on their users, or to have copyright lawyers examine every piece of user-generated content before it goes live; also, copyright "militias" can be formed with the power to police copyright on the web)

This is a disappointing development. At a time when a light needs to be shone on copyright and licensing, it seems to be an attempt to take the issue out of parliamentary overisght...

As Cory says:

"This is as bad as I've ever seen, folks. It's a declaration of war by the entertainment industry and their captured regulators against the principles of free speech, privacy, freedom of assembly, the presumption of innocence, and competition."

Via @brainpicker at the CreativeCat #crcat conference.

Heart of a City: BioMapping

By Maria Popova

Why skin is the new heart and how your neighbors can change the way your feel about your street.

On the trails of yesterday’s fascinating exploration of cities as living organisms, today we look at another piece of high-concept urban portraiture that harnesses the power of art, sociology and technology to a brilliant end.

Since 2004, Christian Nold has been orchestrating Bio Mapping — a crowdsourced community mapping project, which wires people up to Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) devices, detecting their emotional arousal, and sends them on their merry way around the neighborhood. These states are then mapped onto people’s geographic location, creating a visualization of communal emotion.

This is a mind-spinning, gorgeous project that highlights how ubiquitous social web technology will start to make us think about and experience our urban environments differently.

I've noticed similar effects just with having an iPhone with reliable location and mapping data on you all of the time. I navigate London very differently, especially. The mapping data has changed how I model it in my head.

Same on the South Downs when I'm mountain biking. I "see" trails and ridges and hills via a Google Earth view almost... I'm making sense of an environment that used to be the background to the road and train system around Brighton in my mental model in a different way. Re-wiring how my brain sees it, cross referencing with computer data and trails/comments that others have made, often online, leaving their trails etc. there...

We’re a small team working at lastminute.com in London inventing stuff. What new services and devices will people use to find the best stuff to do? We have no idea. But we’re going to try ideas out and see what happens. You can see some of our projects below.

Just a few years after its July 2006 launch, Twitter has ridden a wave of publicity (and serendipity) that few startups can dream of. A look back at some milestones on the path to social-networking supremacy. — Erik Malinowski
Chart source: Comscore Media Metrix

Part of a very interesting article which looks at the challenges of a company that is driven more by its users than its founders...

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2009 Legatum Prosperity Index

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index^TM is the world's only  global assessment of wealth and wellbeing. The Index finds that the most prosperous nations in the world are not necessarily those that have only a high GDP, but are those that also have happy, healthy, and free citizens. Now in its third year, the Index builds on the previous versions with expanded data and refined analysis and assesses 104 nations covering 90 percent of the world’s population.

The top 10 countries are: 1)  Finland  2) Switzerland  3) Sweden 4) Denmark  5) Norway  6) Australia 7) Canada  8) Netherlands  9) United States  10) New Zealand

The bottom 10 countries are: 95) Kenya  96) Algeria  97) Tanzania  98) Nigeria  99) Pakistan  100) Cameroon  101=) Central African Republic  101=) Yemen   103) Sudan  104) Zimbabwe  

This word is rather strange - what exactly is a network? Obviously, a work or construction reminiscent of a net, but when was the word first used in this form? Although the two component words are from common Germanic stock, the juxtaposition network seems to be a uniquely English coinage, later imitated by the Germans with Netzwerk. However, we must not forget the well-known Latin term opus reticulatum, a type of brickwork with the bricks placed at π/4 to the horizontal, so that the pattern of mortar lines resembles a net. Since this term means literally `net work', perhaps it is the prototype of the English word? The earliest occurrence in print of English network is in the Geneva bible of 1560 (the 1599 edition seems to have changed the spelling to network)