Slashdot Mirror

With my colleagues from Irish Free Software Organisation:
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/fsfe-ie/2011-April/002981.html

===========
Dear Mr. Crowley,

Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO) opposes the extension of copyright
which may be put to a vote in JURI today or tomorrow, and we ask that you do
the same. Further, we ask for your support in requesting a new first
reading for this proposed directive.

Software companies with dominant market positions are increasingly using the
copyright of cultural works as a barrier to block other software developers.
Due to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), music lovers can be required
to use the software of a small group of "approved" large software companies,
or be blocked from listening to DRM'd music.

A few large companies are protected from competition, and the majority of
software developers are locked out - including all the "small artists" of
the software field.

For people who object to DRM, or who don't find any acceptable software
among the "approved" group, there is still public domain works. Extending
copyright impoverishes the public domain and our cultural heritage.

Below is a selection of links to independent studies highlighting the harms
of copyright extension.

Yours sincerely,
CiarÃn O'Riordan, +32 487 64 17 54
Irish Free Software Organisation
http://ifso.ie/

  1. 8 Universities and policy centres issued this 2-page
        statement about how the proposal would harm Europe's culture
        and economy:
        http://www.cippm.org.uk/downloads/Press%20Release%20Copyright%20Extension.pdf

  2. UK government's "Gower's review", which concluded that:

        "The European Commission should retain the length of
          protection on sound recordings and performersâ(TM) rights at 50
          years." (page "56" - which is the 60th page of the PDF document)

        http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr06_gowers_report_755.pdf

  3. Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam:
        "Never Forever: Why Extending the Term of Protection for Sound
        Recordings is a Bad Idea"

        http://www.ivir.nl/publications/helberger/EIPR_2008_5.pdf
===========

I gather the forthcoming Whole of Government Accounts will be broadly similar. Most importantly, they will be using International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and hopefully understandable if you're comfortable enough with the consolidated accounts of a major UK company (and yes even the US is crawling towards adopting IFRS). I'm not sure what the score is here, I thought these were meant to be done for 2006/07 but apparently 2009/10 will be the first set, I think they spent a few years just moving in this direction.

Publication of this Coins data is something different but is a major disclosure. It's almost certainly not going to be of any direct use to the taxpaying public, but for journalists and anybody wanting details on something specific then wow.

I am a little hesitant however. Not many people understand financial information and even fewer are able of putting it in the context of an organisation so massive as the UK government, and UK newspapers and other interested bodies are well versed in manipulating ignorance to their own ends. Even with the best of intentions, the volume of detail here is such that not even a team of researchers has much chance of putting it into context.

The Erbium Doped Fibre Amplifier was invented at Southampton University in the UK. Due to issues getting the patent, they have lost quite a serious amount of cash:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/B/C/university_of_southampton_341_15kb.pdf
(page 3)

These guys and their department (although i'm fairly sure they aren't short of cash) would probably have done a lot of good things with the royalties that they should have received.

I highly recommend skimming through the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 study on IP that seems to be the basis for this new law.

It seems to be a truly balanced study, full of interesting insights and recommendations. Some bits I liked:

• Page 34, Models of Innovation - a nice explanation of 'open' and 'closed' innovation
• Page 35, Cost of licensing spending - where I learned that in 1999, 90% of companies spent less than 10% of their R&D budget on licensing, but by 2009, that figure had dropped to only 10% of companies spending less than 10% on licensing. Wow.
• Page 49, IP "performance" scorecard - a frame for judging the cost/benefit of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and designs.
• Page 56, Revenue Distribution of Songs - where I learned that even the credit card companies make more on downloaded songs than the artist does (!). That's just sad.
• Page 58, Sales of fiction by year of publication - proof that an extremely small number of works makes any money beyond just a few years after publication

And I could go on with the remedies suggested by the study, but I'll stop here. If the world were to adopt the recommendations in this Study, I do think it would be a huge step forward.

Dear Ms May,

Thank you for your letter of 19 March to John Hutton on behalf of your constituent, Simian Road, about the 'peer to peer' network users. I am replying as this matter falls within my portfolio.

Mr Road's concerns may have been prompted by recent press reports on this issue, some of which, I'm afraid, were inaccurate. The correct position is as follows:

In December 2005, the then Chancellor asked Andrew Gowers to undertake an independent review of the UK intellectual property framework. The Review was published in December 2006 (and can be found at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_index.cfm). The Government welcomed the findings of the Review, and committed to taking forward those recommendations for which it is responsible, to ensure that the UK Intellectual Property (IP) regime is fit for the digital age.

The following recommendation concerned "peer-to-peer" (P2P) data-sharing - in effect the un-authorised copying of data files (typically music or films) between individuals: "Recommendation 39: Observe the industry agreement of protocols for sharing data between ISPs and rights holders to remove and disbar users engaged in 'piracy'. If this has not proved operationally successful by the end of 2007, Government should consider whether to legislate".

The issue is a complex one and has implications for data protection, e-commerce, consumers, the network infrastructure competition, and copyright protection. To date, industry has been unable to develop a voluntary solution and, in view of this, we have decided to start looking at possible legislative solutions. As stated in the Creative Britain strategy paper published on 22 February: "We will consult on legislation that would require internet service providers and rights holders to co-operate in taking action on illegal file sharing - with a view to implementing legislation by April 2009".

The consultation paper, which we are developing in discussion with stakeholders, will seek to identify a number of possible legislative options, including technological solutions.

"Yes, we do. Don't project your own ignorance onto others."

"Then please, give me facts that can prove that we are 100% responsible for climate change..."

To be more specific, in some situations the supplier must comply with the Money Laundering Regulations. These specify that the customer's identity must be verfied 'on the basis of documents, data or information obtained from a reliable and independent source'. It's up to the supplier to decide what documents they want to use as evidence.

Many suppliers demand not only evidence of identity but also of current address (which is why they want utility bills in addition to a passport). AIUI, there's nothing in the MLR 2007 requiring them to establish address, only identity. I assume they just want to make sure they can sue me conveniently.

Namgge

It won't be free, but nothing in life is.

...but not enough broad and trivial software and business method patents:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Yahoo&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXThttp://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=Yahoo&FIELD1=ASNM&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=PTXT

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/E/D/yahoo_144_70kb.pdf

This was the second of four reports. They are:
Working Group I "The Physical Science Basis" (Released 2 February)
Working Group II "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" (The one just out -- 4 April)
Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change" (Due 3 May)
The Synthesis Report (SYR) (Due 16 November)

See http://www.ipcc.ch/

The economics of making as early a start as possible are looked at quite closely at:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/Independent_Reviews/ stern_review_economics_climate_change/sternreview_ index.cfm

Industry will certain play some role in getting things moving. A good example would be "CEOs Ask Bush for Mandatory Emissions Caps" at:
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/55321.html.

The insurance companies are certainly seeing this as important:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international /2007/04/06/78536.htm
There's a link from the above to a PDF hosted at Lloyds:
http://www.lloyds.com/NR/rdonlyres/FCA144E6-24D5-4 25E-B058-3A64E020E18F/0/360_RapidClimateChangeRepo rt.pdf

That's a 31 page PDF titled _Rapid Climate Change_. Major topic coverage:
    Rapid sea level rise
    By Professor David Smith

    Destabilisation of parts of the Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheet
    By Dr Stephan Harrison

    Increased frequency and intensity of floods
    By Dr Matt Wilson

    Climate variability and changes in global drought intensity and frequency
    By Dr Richard Washington

Any changes that could be made in the USA, Canada, and Western Europe (and Oz and Japan) would pale in comparison to the large increases coming from China and India. And short-sighted, when you consider that capping CO2 emissions will force a quarter-after-quarter recession on all involved nations.

So - what is the point here? That any cuts you americans (19.4839 *) make is unneccesary as long as those insidous indians (0.933086 *) and the vily chinese (2.65908 *) are polluting like there is no tomorrow?

Have you considered the possibility that emission schemes like the Kyoto Protocol are made specifically to help emission control in poor countries through emissions trading? **

And short-sighted, when you consider that capping CO2 emissions will force a quarter-after-quarter recession on all involved nations. And ain't that a pretty picture to consider?

Have you considered the possibility that not dealing with climate change may be more expensive than not doing anything about it? ***

A bit late but I'm going to reply anyway

I don't disagree with much of your reasoning, just the conclusions that you draw from it.

To be clear I'm not advocating crippling the economies of the developed and developing world - I agree there is a level of economic damage that it is simply not worth taking, especially given that (if you accept the global warming hypothesis), we are already at the point where we will have significent changes to overcome.

I do think that there are measures that can be taken now that will have a significant impact on human CO2 production over the next few decades, primarily carbon trading couple with increasing carbon efficiency and carbon sequestration - I'd point you at the Stern review for more details (obviously this takes anthropomorphic global warming as a starting assumption).

The problem that carbon trading fixes in my understanding is the "market failure" [Stern review] inherent in the current system. It creates a market for technologies, business practices and lifestyle changes which reduce human carbon emissions. Without such a system there is unlikely to be a reason for these to be adopted, even if they are possible - market forces reward carbon emmiters in other words, and this does need to be counterbalanced.

I concede that this system will increase costs, and therefore hurt the economy. But properly implemented such damage can be absorbed. Maybe it's unnecessary. Maybe it's too little too late. But there is enough hope IMO for it to be worthwhile.

I simply can't accept the "wait for more evidence" argument. We are not likely to have a major breakthrough in our understanding any time soon, and if the problem is real we need to act asap.

Here in the U.K. it's still illegal (as far as I'm aware) to format shift.

Yes it is. For example it's technically illegal to use a video recorder or Tivo or to rip a CD that you own into itunes (the apple 'rip, mix, burn' advertising was in fact an incitement to break the law - a crime in itself).

However a law has to be backed up by enforcement to by effective. Nobody has ever tried to jail someone for recording Eastenders for example.. and they would look pretty damned stupid if they did. It's unlikely such a prosecution would succeed anyway.

The a recent report proposed making format shifting legal, and having a specific exception on copyright law for parody (another thing we don't have that the US has).

(btw. it's written for politicians so has cheesy things like a 'what is IP' section.. it does mean it's readable though).

Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up.

Is the result of climate warming bad? NOBODY seems to know, although we managed to live quite successfully at lower tech levels and higher temps at regular periods in our history.

Can the human activity be changed such that the effect is altered, and what is the opportunity cost for doing so? [This is] really [what is] under argument. Environmentalists stamping their sandal-clad feet and crying that "we have to" is unpersuasive. And a report claiming that global warming is going to cost X is (nearly) meaningless unless it's compared to the Y cost of mitigation.

Larger shifts in CO2 and temp have occurred historically, and just as quickly, long before humans showed up.

Is the result of climate warming bad? NOBODY seems to know, although we managed to live quite successfully at lower tech levels and higher temps at regular periods in our history.

Can the human activity be changed such that the effect is altered, and what is the opportunity cost for doing so? [This is] really [what is] under argument. Environmentalists stamping their sandal-clad feet and crying that "we have to" is unpersuasive. And a report claiming that global warming is going to cost X is (nearly) meaningless unless it's compared to the Y cost of mitigation.

Ha, ha. Your post should have received a score 2, funny. Polluting more to enhance global dimming is only a way to alleviate the symptom; it does nothing to solve the problem in the long run. Pollution is also undesirable for other obvious reasons (just look at the situation in China). Cutting back on the large scale use of fossil fuels sooner rather than later is the only solution that makes economic sense.

'The saddest thing about this, is that it's not legal in the UK to rip CDs to MP3.'

This at least may well change quite soon, if the government acts on the Gowers Review:

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/ gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_i ndex.cfm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6214108.s tm

OK, since <obligatory moan> for some reason the eds posted a story about a BBC article and not my version straight from the source</obligatory moan>, let's get a few things cleared up.

We're talking about the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. This was a wide-reaching review, covering a lot more than just copyright, though of course copyright is a major component in our IP framework.

In terms of copyright law, here are some of the major recommendations from the review:

• The EC should not extend the copyright term for sound recordings and performers' rights. Moreover, if any extensions are proposed, they should not be retroactive. (The arguments given for this approach would make most Slashdotters proud, I imagine!)
• The UK should introduce a tightly specified private copying exception, to legalise format-shifting.
• Enforcement needs to be stronger, with tougher penalties and consideration given to a fast track procedure.
• It is too early in the development of DRM to start legislating about it, but it should not be allowed to interfere with legitimate uses of copyright material that are non-infringing. An existing mechanism to report such abuses of DRM is noted, but is so convoluted that no-one has ever used it. The Review recommends making this process much more obvious and easier to use. The Review also recommends taking another look at some of these issues further down the line to investigate whether the system is working fairly.

Personally, I agree with most of the review's conclusions and recommendations. I was, however, disappointed that they felt the need to limit their recommendation for a personal copying exception so much. The Review acknowledged that some personal uses were perceived, incorrectly, to be legal by many people, and that banning such uses by law damages the credibility of copyright as a whole in the public eye. They also acknowledged that some of these uses do not harm the interests of the copyright holder. They have also stressed throughout their process that their review would be evidence-led. I find it intriguing, therefore, that they have completely failed to address other reasonable personal uses mentioned in several of the submissions, such as backing up, recording broadcasts, and making compilations.

Some submissions gave quite reasonable arguments based on existing law in favour of explicitly legitimising these. For example, under blanket UK consumer protection legislation, any article purchased from a shop must be (a) fit for purpose, and (b) capable of lasting for the expected lifetime of the product. Since the expected lifetime for information is indefinite, abusing copyright and/or DRM so that when someone's CD wears out they have to buy a whole new CD because they couldn't take a back-up should be a violation of UK trading laws. (Bizarrely, under the proposed system, you could take a back-up as long as it's in a different format, and if your original copy wore out you could then shift the information back again as you would still have only a single copy in any given format of material you had legitimately obtained.)

On the whole, I give them 8/10 given the huge scale of what they were attempting. At least pretty much everything I've read of the review so far is a reasonable position, and most of it is a clear improvement on where we are now. My complaint, such as it is, is more that they didn't go far enough in some areas than that they went in the wrong direction. But such is progress, perhaps.

I know nobody here even read TFBBCA, but here's the full Gowers report (see PDF under Final Report), with background etc.

Lawrence Lessig blogged about one interesting recommendation -- that copyright term not be altered retrospectively. I think that's British for "retroactively".

Comparing the cost of trying to adapt to a changing climate with the cost of trying to prevent climate change is certainly a worthwhile, especially as global warming based on past actions is already inevitable.

The debate I am hearing is how we better turn power over to the activists and pretend that the economy is unimportant. Well, that is not going to go over very well, is it?

Ask a real climate scientist about the solar influence question - their best answer is that it doesn't seem to be likely that a change 100 years ago can effect weather today. But that is exactly what CO2 will do, right? And the Earth is pretty big, maybe it takes a century or two to fully adjust to a solar input variation.

What is your proposal to completely resolve the problem and avoid the economic and loss of life consequences?

How much will it cost (include high & low estimates) to solve the problem? What is the time scale for the costs?

What confidence level does the solution have in actually solving the problem? Is there a general consensus in the solution, costs, and liklihood of success?

As a last resort... considering this is a global problem and assuming the solutin must be executed on a global level if one country or group of countries refuses to comply with the solution and jeoporadizes the success of the entire solution are military actions acceptable in order to avoid the economic and loss of life consequences?

The report can be found here

The review will not officially be released until tomorrow, so you can't get it yet. There is this webpage which will potentially host the report when it is released, and has intermediary papers and presentations by Stern in the meantime.

The above PDF gives advice to financial institutions on how to submit STR (suspicious transaction report) to the treasury. The interesting thing is that it is not an offence to submit an incorrect tip off (STR). Also, the PDF shows some of the internal workflow for the STR - which would pass through NCIS (National Crime Squads, now SOCA) before reaching other interested parties.

Anyone who has bought a car, boat, house or any expensive item by law has to show valid identification and a transaction form is completed and sent in. When I recently bought my car, I had to take my passport in and the dealer filled in a form and photocopied my ID!

Even the UK version of PayPal has an inbuilt limit at GBP4,100 that will temporarily freeze the PayPal account until the account holder has validated their identity - this is reported and sent in and used for tax collection and STR purposes.

not a new story, move along please.

For our boys and girls in the UK, don't forget that the Gowers review is still accepting responses to their call for evidence, and covers (inter alia) the same sort of questions.

The UK parliament has been redundant for a long time.

Back in the days of Margaret Thatcher, huge parliamentary majorities were won on minority votes thanks to the first past the post, 3 party system. If I remember rightly, Mrs. T held a majority in excess of 300 MPs with only 40% of the electorate voting for her. Tony Blair commanded about 35% of the vote when less than 50% of the electorate turned out.

With a three figure majority and the back-benches filled with career minded sheep, the government can get pretty much anything they want through so the new law is just icing on the cake. What worries me more is the sort of people they hang with. According to the treasury web site, the following are being flown in by Gordon Brown, the next Prime Minister, to give advice on business in New Britain:

Bernard Arnault, Chairman and CEO, LVMH
  Lord Browne, Group Chief Executive, BP
  Dr Jean-Pierre Garnier, CEO, GlaxoSmithKline
  Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Corporation
  Sir Ka-shing Li, Chairman of the Board, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd
  Sir Terry Leahy, CEO, Tesco
  Sir John Rose, CEO, Rolls Royce
  Robert Rubin, Director and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Citigroup Inc
  Lee Scott, President and CEO, Wal-Mart
  Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group
  Meg Whitman, President and CEO, eBay
  James Wolfensohn, Special Envoy for Disengagement and Former President of the World Bank

Yep, that's right. In order to improve the business environment for entrepreneurs and encourage opportunity among the lower classes, Brown is freighting in a convicted monopolist and a horde of bankers and fat-cats some of which are heads of corporations that have been criticised for predatory and/or unfair practises. Hmmmm.. Can't wait 'til the advice starts flowing. "Well everyone, what's the best thing to encourage competition in business"? Patents for everything and tax cuts for the exceptionally rich? Sure thing, no problem now that I can push it through Parliament without a proper debate. Seat in the House of Lords? Two million to you guv but make it untraceable, know what I mean?

Sick country man, a really sick country.

Sadly, the Slashdot eds decided not to run my story about the Gowers Review calling for evidence as of yesterday, so since it's directly relevant I'll mention it here.

For those who don't know, this is a government-ordered review into the current state of intellectual property, and whether it needs amending in light of new technologies, easy distribution over the Internet, etc.

The review is concerned with several quite general questions, quite a few specific issues, and any other comments interested parties care to make. Among the specific issues explicitly mentioned in the call for evidence (available on the web site linked above) are:

• the period for which copyright lasts;
• what sorts of fair use rights might be appropriate in the UK (bearing in mind that we don't have anything directly equivalent to US fair use provisions at present, and a lot of the things mentioned in this discussion -- such as format-shifting for personal use -- are clearly illegal here at present);
• the use of DRM (including several very relevant questions about balancing the right of a copyright holder to protect their work and the right of a consumer to use it reasonably);
• access to orphaned works, for which the legitimate copyright holder can no longer be reached.

So, if you're from the UK and you've ever bitched on Slashdot about the unfairness of DRM, the media cartels gaining ever longer "temporary" protections, the daftness that format-shifting is illegal even when the industry is happy to sell you equipment that all but requires it to be useful, the use of patents to create a barrier to entry for OSS, or any number of other IP-related issues, stop complaining on here and write to the Gowers Review to make your case. You can bet the big businesses all will be.

The fact that you're literally comparing the dollar amounts between defence and social spending is troubling. Defence spending shouldn't even be on the same order of magnitude as social spending. Take a look at Britain's budget, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/91D/93/ACF12D7 .pdf . And Britain isn't exactly what I'd call a pacifist state.

Britain isn't a pacifist state, but it isn't a superpower either. There's a lot of wasteful spending that goes on for defense, but a big reason for why Europe can spend less on its military is that the US spends so much on its own. Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq, the fact that the US does have a powerful military is a big deterrent to dictators who'd like to do various international mischief. China can't invade Taiwan primarily because the US Navy is there. North Korea can't invade its southern neighbor because the US would take action; even though the UN was the official body that countered the north's first attack, the vast majority of non-Korean troops in the UN force came from the US. There are many other similar examples.

In a nutshell, my point is that the military gives teeth to the words of the US and Europe, and in many cases this serves an indirect social purpose in itself. That's not to say there aren't exceptions or waste in the military; I'm just saying that Europe can have a smaller military because the US has a bigger one. Having such a large military requires a lot of money.

As far as social programs go, most of these programs are designed to make up for a lack of financial planning and/or discipline on the part of individuals. For example, if everyone was wise enough to invest their money in a retirement account, Social Security would be unnecessary. Unfortunately, Americans save only 2% of their incomes (compare this with the Chinese, who save 40%), and thus when they reach retirement, they expect the rest of the public to pick up the tab. Entitlement programs cause people to take less care of themselves and expect everyone else to take care of their own problems. Obviously there are some legitimately poor people who ought to be helped, but with excessive social programs you get things like the enormous unemployment in Germany.

In short, we *are* spending huge amounts of money on social programs. Frankly, I find it somewhat ridiculous that we spend half of our tax dollars on taking care of people who could take care of themselves.

So if I'm paying $400 a month for rent, and $350 a month for food, I'm spending "huge amounts of money" on rent?

The fact that you're literally comparing the dollar amounts between defence and social spending is troubling. Defence spending shouldn't even be on the same order of magnitude as social spending. Take a look at Britain's budget, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/91D/93/ACF12D7 .pdf . And Britain isn't exactly what I'd call a pacifist state.

I help run a large dancing club in the UK that regularly deals with PPL and such. Sorry, but the parent post is completely wrong on several counts.

Even to play the original media at public classes and special events requires a licence here if you don't hold the copyright. We submit a form to PPL each year, basically describing the number of hours of music we'll be playing that year, the venues we'll be using, and what the tracks we'll be playing are. (These are necessarily approximations, and FWIW this has never caused us a problem, not that that means much these days.) We then get told how much we have to pay for the rights to play the music as requested. This is not a flat rate, so I have no idea where the figures quoted by others in this discussion have come from.

This is a wholly separate issue to format-shifting, which is illegal by default under UK copyright law. Just because you've bought an MP3 player or your laptop has media playing software doesn't actually give you the right to put any of your CD collection on it, and copying a CD onto tape to play in your old car cassette deck is against the rules. No, I'm not kidding. I haven't read the latest PPL guidelines that apply here yet, but I'm guessing (as in, check it yourself before you rely on it!) that this licence actually covers the format-shifting required to get the material onto the other system. It may or may not cover the same things as the regular PPL licence as well, but I'm guessing not if it's a flat rate or everyone would be doing it (our PPL "contribution" is well over £200 per year).

If you're in the UK and think that charging for a CD, charging for the right to use it in public performances, and charging a significant amount to play the music you've already paid for to an audience you've already paid for, then you might like to consider contributing to the Gowers review of UK IP law when it starts consulting in Febuary 2006.

"The green book" is a phrase you hear a lot in the UK if you have much to do with the government. It means something totally different to UK civil servants.

Apologies for the PDF, but this was the only source I could find quickly that had a figure for the California state budget. It puts it at 110 billion USD, or 60 billion pounds. According to this PDF the UK government spend 488 billion pounds last year, or 900 billion USD.

I'm thinking they would still have vehicles that must consume this valuable commodity.

I'm sorry, I think I should have mentioned this. It's odd that they are talking about 600 GBP grants for conversions, but the tech might costr a bit more there than it currently does here (around $700 to $900, depending on the make of the car.)

The U.S. gets its power from natural gas, coal, and nuclear fuel.

You are right, the US gets only about 5% of it's energy from oil fired generators. The techs you mention are the root cause of the east-coast blackout that we expirienced last summer due to the need for heavy currents being transmitted at high voltage over long distance power lines. Most of the renewable energy technologies that have been proven to be feasable (wind, solar, renewable natural gas) work as efficiently on a micro-generator scale as they do on a centralized generation model. As we consume more and more energy, it will become necessary to move the production of electrical power closer to the consumer.

If it went completely to renewable energy for power generation, it would still need just as much oil.

If the US went to renewable natural gas generation on its livestock farms and at its sewage treatment plants, the cost of natural gas would drop enough that it would be feasible to run our cars on it.Lubricants and other petroleum based products could easily be made from our domestic oil production or manufactured from vegetablesopurces or meat/poultry rendering waste products.

You nearly had me there, Taco. This is just the sort of thing that someone like Microsoft would try to foist on a government that's repeatedly shown itself to be less than clueful about IT matters. As such, I think it's quite a good April Fool - it's only just on the wrong side of being completely plausible.

The Techworld article and the "Lose-IT" website are tantalisingly vague. One suspicious detail is that lose-it.org.uk was registered on 12 March, while the Budget was not made public until 17 March. Either the owner had inside information (not entirely impossible) or he was planning to do something for 1 April.

Our government is trying to grok the internet, so they have various official documents available online. The complete text is here, as a set of 14 PDFs. I haven't read the whole thing (what do you expect on Slashdot?!), but a search through each of them for "computer" and "software" turns up nothing that looks relevant.

Overall, then, nice try, thanks for playing, see you again next year.

• Email the government, check if is real and if it is a plan. The treasury public email address is public.enquiries@hm-treasury.gov.uk. If real, move on to the next step.
• Contact a news source, giving details, URLs, any reply you got from the Treasury, whatever. I recommend The Independent and The Telegraph, they seem less likely to reject something like this.

here is the official hm-treasury budget 2004 website budget

> China does not accept U.S. dollars for their goods. They may very well convert their dollars into Yuan and buy Chinese products. But as I covered elsewhere in this thread, at some point, those dollars are coming home, unless they're being used for decoration.

Chinese exporters convert their dollar profits into Yuan (to pay workers and suppliers). The dollars get deposited at the central bank.
Jul 15, 2003:
Japan's foreign reserves currently total $496 billion, followed by China at $310 billion and Taiwan at US$170 billion, according to figures compiled in April by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Hong Kong, with 7.5 million people, has reserves of $114 billion, nearly seven times the total money in circulation in the territory. Other Asian treasuries are similarly bulging with dollars.

there is no rational reason for such big foreign reserves. unless, of course, you do not care about the value of your accumulated paper reserves, but have other goals, like GDP growth on your mind (transfer of industrial infrastructure). undervalued currency means the population does not buy much of imported goods.

for comparison: The UK Government's net reserves rose by $621 million in December 2003, bringing the end-December total to $17,903 million

since July 2003 the value of the dollar dropped by ca. 10%. so china's central bank lost say, $30 bln. they do not buy anything material with those dollars. they just reinvest them into US-bonds (as good as cash, but gives interest over time).

japan's foreign reserves are even bigger, because they tried hard to keep their economy afloat trough out the nineties. they bet on exports to the US, so they had to have a cheaper currency.