Information World Review covered Network Neutrality a fair bit in 2006. It was a time when congress was thinking of reworking the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement (COPE) Act 2006. Over a million Americans wrote to Congress demanding that net neutrality be enshrined into the new laws. That was the last thing that major telco and cable companies wanted. They hankered after a two-speed internet: fast for them and slow for everyone else.

What happened? Nothing. No-one won except, of course, the status quo was maintained. Oh, and as far as the FTC was concerned, the market could sort itself out.

A couple of days ago senators Ed Markey (Democrat) and Chip Pickering (Republican) reignited the debate by introducing their Internet Freedom Preservation Act 2008. According to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge, this will "ensure that open, free and accessible Internet we have known for years will continue to be open to innovation, free from the control of telephone and cable companies and accessible to everyone."

Brace yourself for a bumpy ride as the various special interest groups restart their lobbying activities.

Thus far Congress has not prostrated itself before the communications giants. What would happen, I wonder, if these proposals were put in front of the UK government? We might get a clue soon as the DCMS unveils its green paper on internet piracy. It wants ISPs to monitor traffic and take action against anyone downloading copyright material.

Hmmm. To do that successfully, wouldn't they happen to need exactly the same packet sniffing capabilities that could act as the basis for a multi-tiered internet? As I say, it must be a coincidence. What isn't a coincidence is that the drivers for this initiative are large media and entertainment corporations.

Isn't it interesting that the US bill is for the people and will be attacked by the corporations with vested interests. But in the UK it is exactly the other way round. Quite regardless of this fundamental distinction, it will be interesting to watch the progress of the two proposals through their respective administrations.

Civil servants are reeling in the wake of the horrific news that CDs containing the records of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) database have been lost, and the futher news of DVLA data being lost. The full cost to tax paying members of the public may not be fully realised for years to come.

This debacle is not only an example of incredibly poor information management, but also a sign of a wider problem in the UK, that you get what you pay for. Or in this case you don't get what you pay for. 

Information management is, or rather was, at the heart of British life. Travel to former colonies like India or Australia and they'll gladly inform you of the regimented behaviour towards information that led to government structures that have served the sub-continent and prison colony well to date. Yet, those standards have dropped.

An IWR reporter remarked as we debated the issue, how come information of this value was so easy to simply download and burn to a CD?  Technology preventing such blunders is not new and is a basic function of many information management systems.

Revelations of the missing information came a day after a report on the BBC's Today programme that the Driving Standards Agency and vehicle licensing body the DVLA employees take on average three weeks sick leave a year. Missing information and low staff moral are examples of a civil service that is poorly funded and poorly managed.

It is too easy to wag the finger of blame at civil servants, when in truth a much wider debate needs to take place.  As tax payers and child benefit recipients we are angry and worried, as information professionals we are dumbfounded that such lapses could have occurred.  What of our role as citizens?  Since the 1980s we've wanted a John Lewis service, but only paid Tesco value brand prices.  If you want John Lewis quality, you pay John Lewis prices.  On the high street this modus operandi fits well with the public, as they choose when they want quality and when they want to increase their spending. So why is it that we expect our state services to manage high level information on a low level budget?

This needs to be a debate about our society and its values, literally, as well as an improvement in information management.

The IWR American Psychological Association Information Professional of the Year award has been announced and went, deservedly to Brian Kelly, UK Web Focus for the UKOLN organisation.

The award is judged by a panel of previous winners and the IWR editorial team. As editor of IWR when I judge the award I look for an individual who is pushing the limits of information, technology and making the role of the information professional as far as possible and making it an exciting role.  When looking through the final results I could see that the other judges felt the same way and Brian was an excellent choice.

Brian's role is a national Web co-ordinator, an advisory post funded by the educational body JISC and the Museums, Library and Archives Council (MLA).

In this role Brian is looking at the web as central resource for learning and research in higher education and is looking at ways to make the web a successful resource, which is a challenging role, because the web is still very young and is constantly changing. This can be seen with the recent changes dubbed Web 2.0, therefore Brian is going to be pretty busy for some time to come.

Based at the University of Bath, I know from information professionals I have dealt with in the academic sector that he is very well respected and his thoughts are often the basis for great debate within the industry. Linked to this is his blog, which is one of the most popular blogs in the sector.

I hope all IWR readers will join me in congratulating Brian for an award very much well deserved. 

Jimmy Wales, chairman of Wikipedia was the keynote speech of Online Information 2007 with a presentation Web 2.0 in action: Free culture & community on the move.

Starts with Britannica editor Charles van Doren 1962, who said the encyclopaedia should be radical, but Wales claims they have been anything but.

Small showing of hands for those that have edited, although Wales believes it’s a good showing, "but not as many as college kids".

I consider us to be the Red Cross of information, he says as he describes its charitable status. Have 10 full time staff and will spend about $2 to 3 million this year, which is tiny compared to the major publishers. Vast majority of the money is from small donations, which he likes because its grass routes and not dependent on advertisers.

Wales talks about the desire to extend the languages that are in use on Wikipedia, including Hindi and Afrikaans.

Wiki is free in the sense of GNU, its free to copy, modify and distribute.

Shows a video of his travels to India and how he learnt that the local communities want to use the English version, as the English language is a route out of poverty. His organisation has been out to South Africa teaching students how to edit Wikipedia. "One of the things we have learnt is that if you can get five to 10 editors working together, it can make a great difference." These groups make progress and then they look towards outreach and who they can include. Hence the organisation has set up an academy to find the founding editors. It has begun in India, with 10-20,000 articles a month being put together by academy organisations.

Wikia is his next subject, a separate organisation with 66 languages, including a 67th, Klingon. Wales goes on to demonstrate using Google search results for Muppets and how the top result is the official site, but the rest of the results are from web based conversation, ie Wikipedia pages, forums and fan sites. He demonstrates an article on the Ford motor company and how on Muppet Wiki site, there is an article on Muppet Ford ads and how this demonstrates this level of information would never have been available before.

The search engine is a political statement, in a small P sense, Wales says. The proprietary software of the main players is a mystery in that people have no control of the accountability. The Wikia search will publish its algorithm.

Wales believes that the trust of social networks and setting up trusted networks can be utilised in search. .

On the role of collaboration, he asks the audience to imagine that they are designing a restaurants, discussing the idea that we trust the people around us, we don't put people in cages in restaurants because they will be using knives.
The wiki philosophy is to allow people to do good.

I was meant to be going to the House of Lords tonight. No I haven't spent the missing IWR marketing budget on a Labour party donation and offer of a peerage from Tony Blair. Tonight's rare opportunity to entered the hallowed chambers of the Lords was for the launch of Information Matters, a guide to good information management practise.

Obviously this has become a bit of a hot potato subject for the powers of Whitehall and I was not totally surprised to hear that the event has been "postponed", I am though disappointed, now I really will have donate money to some political party that will change its policies from day to day to suit its sponsors!

But cynical disbelief in political parties aside, the debacle at HMRC is not an opportunity to clobber the current Labour government, they can do that on their own. This now needs to be a debate about the quality of service we desire. The mistakes that took place at HMRC happened because of poor policy and in all likelihood, a demotivated and under appreciated and underpaid staff. These factors in any organisation will lead to a disaster.

Sadly as a nation we are demanding a John Lewis service, yet only prepared to pay a Tesco budget brand price for it. Our government and political parties fear spending public money, or worse, the public and the Daily Mail discovering that public money has been spent. Yet cuts in budgets and over stretched departments have led to this scenario and could lead to more.

It is ridiculous that a country as rich as the UK that is experiencing unparallelled levels of growth is trying to run its infrastructure, which after all is what our civil service is, on a shoestring. We have politicians tempting us with tax cuts, yet clearly they cannot balance the books with the revenue they have, how will public information be well managed and secured in a state that has even less revenue coming in?

The awful mess at the HMRC needs to spark a debate about how we want our nation to operate. Groups and parts of the media are quick to call for changes to immigration levels, but lets have a debate about the quality of our services, all of them, whether its schools and hospitals to departments looking after taxation or defence. We cannot lower taxes when our troops are being put at risk in Iraq to secure oil in ill equipped vehicles and our civil service is making basic mistakes with valuable data.

It may not be a popular move, but as a European nation that expects its authorities to provide child benefit, shouldn't we at least pay a proper level of taxation to meet those expectations?

René Olivieri, chief operating officer at Wiley-Blackwell, the academic book and journals publisher has resigned, reports The Bookseller.

Olivieri was ceo of Blackwell when the company merged with Wiley in a surprise move last November. Since the merger Olivieri has been heading up the transition team as chief operating officer, a role he has held since May.

He has had a long and illustrious career at the Oxford based publisher, starting out as a publisher in the 1980s, before becoming an editorial direct, deputy md, and managing director. The Bookseller reports he became ceo of Blackwell Science in 2000 and stepped into the role of Blackwell Publishing ceo a year later.

At a major international publishing event like the Frankfurt Book Fair the bright lights of trade publishing and all its household star names could easily drown out the academic and scientific publishers. But this has not been the case.

Talk at the event, in all circles, is about books and technology, in particular search and eBook readers. On both subjects the specialist publishers are leading the way and the trade publishers salute them.

Amazon and Sony were expected to steal the show with their eBook readers, they are instead conspiquous in their absence, but that has not stopped publishers and technology providers from talking about the devices and their potential.

I was particularly interested in a conversation I had with sceintific, technical and medical publishers WIley where they hinted that they and other specialists may get involved in driving the adoption of eBook readers. Could we see the eBook reader adopt a similar model to the mobile phone where users sign up to a subscription service, content of a particular kind in this case, and in return they get a sleek and sexy device? Its certainly worked for the mobile industry, which now resembled the car world with its emphasis on styling and marketing.

But such a move could also be a blind alley, as one expert said to me, these devices don't support the interlinking and interactivity that content users are currently enjoying with the web.

During the fair Google, Ingram Digital Group and Amazon have all used the scientific and academic publishers as case study beacons for just what can be done with books on the web.

Geographically the Far East is the leading adopter as its markets radically develop according to Mark Carden, Ingram senior vp.

Perhaps Amazon spread rumours of a possible launch to see if there was real interest, well if the level of conversation we've heard is anything to go by, the eBook reader is in demand.

A report from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) in the USA shows that fair use of copyrighted material is beneficial to the national economy. According to the CCIA industries that can use material under the terms of fair use earned  $4.5 trillion, which adds more weight to the arguments of the Free Our Data campaign from newspaper The Guardian.

Free Our Data wants information held by the government, and therefore paid for by tax payers, to be made freely available so that organisations can use it.

Amongst the organisations using fair use terms that have benefited the US national economy are media organisations, education sector and software developers. 

Industries bound by copyright control with no fair use aspect contributed just $1.3 trillion to the US economy.

Fair use under US copyright law is described as being the use and copying of copyright protected material to comment upon, criticise or parody. Examples include summaries and quotes from medical articles for news, use of media content for teaching or the use of copyright protected material as evidence in a court case.

The Guardian Free Our Data campaign, run by its Technology supplement argues, rightly, that information collected by the Highways Agency, the UK Hydrographic Office and Ordnance Survey should be made available to organisations in the UK without being encumbered by clunky copyright restrictions. Although designated as trading funds, these three organisations receive almost 50% of their income from the public sector, which means taxpayers pay for it. Access to this data is charged for and as a result, organisations are turning to Google Maps for mapping information rather than using information they have already paid for through their business rates.

IWR supports the Free Our Data campaign because we are passionate about online information and want to see the UK remain a leader in information provision and we want to see British information professionals continuing to manipulate information in innovate ways that is beneficial to their user community.

Earlier this week PaidContent.org launched its UK and European information service at a swanky Scottish bar in, err, London.  IWR went along and once underneath the deer antler chandelier it was as if a time and space wormhole had opened up and we were transported back to 1999 and they heady dot com boom.

The zeitgeist was unmistakable, young trendy professionals in Chris Evans glasses, sharp suits, bright shirts and an excitable level of conversation about "content" and "funding". It was uncanny. The headache's from the launch parties of Boo.com, Handbag.com and anything you like .com have only just cleared at the IWR Editor's desk and all of a sudden I get the feeling that it is all about to happen again.

The last web boom rapidly replaced CD-Rom in the professional information space and for those of us commentating on it for the traditional information sector, we were regularly told our days were numbered and the geeks would inherit the earth. In many ways everything has changed, yet also, nothing has changed.  Jimmy Wales and Wikipedia are significant changes, but despite falling ad revenues, the stalwarts of information still remain kings of the jungle.

Interestingly at this party, fund toting entrepreneurs didn't make the same mistake of predicting the demise of traditional information providers; instead I heard many conversations about partnerships, relationships and hosts. Kewego, just one of the bright (complete with lime green logo) Web 2.0 start ups present talked of the importance of the "content owners" and rattled off the names of respected information providers. The general feeling I left with is that if we are about to start partying again, but the difference is not that the new players think they have all the answers and will replace our libraries, publishing houses and research departments, instead they see themselves as a component and supplier.

Widgets is a term used widely in the blog world and already newspaper groups are adding widgets to their online portfolios. The next information wave appears to be about a wealth of new ("funded" and partying) companies offering to add their widget to your information. For information professionals this means understanding what a widget is, what it offers your users and negotiating a good deal for all parties involved.

From this month onwards the Blogosphere print title page will be dedicated to information professionals who are shaping the blogosphere. Each month, one of your peers will explain why they blog and what benefits it provides, and reveal which bloggers they trust, or just plain enjoy.

Q Who are you?
A James Mullan, 32. It’s hard to have hobbies when you have a two-year-old child, but my ultimate goal is to catch up on sleep. I also enjoy going to the gym; in particular running. I’ve participated in a number of 10k races for charity. I also enjoy reading (not just RSS feeds), blogging (obviously), film and TV, and travelling. I’m currently Information Officer at CMS Cameron McKenna, where I have responsibility for the Library Management System, Internal Portal Pages, the production of statistics and several other applications.

Q Where can we find your blog?
A http://ligissues.blogspot.com

Q Describe your blog?
A It’s a bit of a mish-mash really, but I’m particularly interested in Web 2.0 and the impact it has on law libraries. I have posted about Facebook, Delicious, Second Life, lawyers use of online databases, Librarian 2.0, social media and social networking. Where possible I will post about how legal publishers are using Web 2.0, as I see this as a developing area for legal publishers, but one whose benefits are not fully understood.

Q How long have you been blogging?
A Eight months externally, three months internally

Q What started you blogging?
A I’m the chair of a British and Irish Association of Law Librarians (BIALL) Committee, which works closely with publishers. One of the concerns myself and another member had is that we weren’t advertising the work we did and thought a blog might be the ideal solution as it would allow members to view posts just on issues relating to particular publishers. As it turned out, the blog became much more personal. To supplement this, we launched the BIALL Blog in May 2007 – the official BIALL Blog – which myself and a number of other BIALL committee chairs administer.

Q Do you comment on other blogs?
A I try to comment wherever possible on posts I find interesting. The problem with commenting is that there are a number of blogging platforms available, some of which ask you to log in while others don’t, so immediately there is a barrier to commenting. Blogs that have comment moderation enabled can also be frustrating because blogging is so immediate you want to see your comment immediately. Unfortunately, because of spam this isn’t possible. Commenting is important because blogging shouldn’t be done in isolation. Building this ‘collaborative community’ is one reason why I try to comment on other blogs. Having said that, I don’t see any value in commenting for the sake of it.

Q How does your organisation benefit from your presence in the blogosphere?
A In several ways. One of the benefits is that I am now considered a ‘subject matter expert’ on blogging to the extent that I work closely with a number of other groups developing blogs. The other benefit is exposure to information. I ‘unofficially’ monitor blogs for anything that may be of interest to my colleagues; for instance, where CMS Cameron McKenna may have been posted about.

Q Which blogs do you trust?
A Information Overlord and Binary Law – I consider these the most trustworthy. Trust is an interesting concept within blogging. I guess it comes down to whether you can rely on what the blogger has posted about.

Q How does it benefit your career?
A My blog has exposed me to many individuals and organisations. I’m writing for Information World Review for a start! Blogging can be hugely beneficial in terms of
exposure, but it is time-consuming.

Q What good things have come about because of your blogging?
A I’ve met a lot of people I would never have met otherwise. I’ve also spoken at a Knowledge Management Conference on Blogs, Wikis and Social Media, which I would have never imagined doing pre-blogging.

Q Which blogs do you read for fun?
A Police Camera Action – for insight into the work of the police. http://policecamerapaperwork.blogspot.com
Lifehacker – because there is no way you can’t. http://lifehacker.com
The Dilbert Blog – for my daily laugh http://dilbertblog.typepad.com

Q What bloggers do you watch and link to?
A Enquiring minds want to know http://enquiring-minds.blogspot.com
Lore Librarian http://lorelibrarian.blogspot.com
Lo-Fi Librarian www.lo-fi-librarian.co.uk
Library Etc http://neilstewart.wordpress.com
Jennie Law http://jennielaw.blogspot.com
Information Overlord www.informationoverlord.co.uk

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned Facebook users to be careful and for employers not to sack workers for using the social networking tool in work time.

The TUC has written a guide on acceptable Facebook usage in the workplace in response to growing unease from organisations that Facebook is reducing productivity in the workplace. Facebook has become popular for social and professional networking.

Staff across the UK have already faced discipline or sackings because of the overuse of Facebook at work. Daily newspaper The Guardian reports that employees of Kent county council have been sacked.

With 3.5 million registered users in the UK the TUC describes Facebook as an accident waiting to happen. "Simply cracking down on the use of new web tools like Facebook is not a sensible solution to a problem, which in only going to get bigger," said Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC. Instead he advises, "It is better to invest a little time in working out sensible conduct guidelines, so that there don't need to be any nasty surprises for staff and employees."

These are a set of good suggestions, so far IWR has not come across any figures which show how much work time and productivity has been lost to Facebook, but we have heard anecdotal evidence of sales being lost and workers spending considerable amounts of work time within social networks.

Policing social networks will be hard. IWR and many titles have promoted them as useful tools in the information landscape. Unlike games or even YouTube, it is difficult to see where using Facebook is purely for pleasure and where is a useful corporate tool. Add into the confusion the fact that many managers are using these tools to communicate with their teams both about corporate and social issues and the blur gets even fuzzier.

Ultimately, it will have to come from the top down within the organisation. Managers should be involved with these tools in order to garner the best from them, but they should also set the parameters for staff's usage and enforce it, before UK Plc is ground to halt by a winter of disreputable content.

IWR has been keeping an eye on the Free Our Data campaign which the Technology supplement of daily newspaper The Guardian has been running. We've been watching it and supporting it. Now Charles Arthur, editor of the Technology Guardian supplement, has asked IWR and its readers to join the campaign.

"The more people and organisations we have on board, the better our chances of success," he said. The campaign seeks to make data which the public has paid for freely available, which will then stimulate new information resources for information professionals and the public alike to use.

The campaign uses a blog as its central repository and communications point, so its easy for all of us to add more information to the cause. So if you know of examples of government information costing you or your organisation, despite having already paid for it once through your taxes, let the campaign know. "If everyone joins, it would be sort of hard for the government to ignore," Arthur adds.

The campaign, which has been running since 2006 ,has highlighted some interesting disparities in

Whitehall

's information policies. Ordnance Survey (OS), known for its maps has been revealed to charging British citizens repeatedly for geographic information that is already funded by the public purse. It has been revealed that local authorities pay the OS for map information during the planning application process, planning authorities also pay separately for the same map information. During the campaign it has been revealed that a total of eight separate payments arrive at the OS as part of a planning application.

There are bound to be many more cases like this and it would be great if Information World Review and its readers can be part of a campaign to make the information we already own more easily available.

Catherine Draycott, chair of British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies (BAPLA) and the Wellcome Trust discusses how difficult it can be for image libraries within an organisation, including museums because there is often a need to generate a profit. She wants the industry and BAPLA to consider new models where there is an exchange between the academic community and the image provider, whether it is partnership or digitisation benefits or other ways of sharing revenue.

Wellcome now makes its images available under Creative Commons and a large percentage of the royalties goes to the creators. They have gone to the attribution model, because it is in line with the Wellcome's OA policies and the policy applies to the images on the Wellcome trust. If the images are for teaching, academic research and non-commercial publication the fee is waived.

Intelligent Television a documentary company that looks to make educational material more widely available, chief exec Peter Kaufman begins talking about screen based visual material, which is what a TV producer considers and so do information professionals. Gartner believe that paid search is a $15bn industry. The JISC digitisation strategy doesn't talk about free  and open access and focuses on business models and public private partnership and Peter Kaufman thinks that is a practical approach.

In the Q&A Draycott describes an idea of using the same metric as PR companies use to quantify the value of media coverage compared to the cost of an advertisement, to the re-use of images from an image library and how that may be useful for archive holders, especially as they are subsidising commercial organisations by providing the images.

Chris Batt, chief exec of MLA has a hard hitting presentation.

Libraries contain the raw material of the future, Batt says, and describes knowledge as being about learning, cultural identity, social development, and it has to be available to everyone.

"Understanding builds empowerment and cohesion and Batt considers this his aspiration. Our mission is to help people to take learning journeys, whether it’s the time of the next bus out of

Cardiff

or genetics. Being motivated will encourage people to carry on learning.

The only successful technology are the ones that are invisible, no one worries about how the TV or telephone works. Batt points out that presentation is the most important thing to the user and he shows and criticises examples of an archive page and the 24 Hour Museum page, both of which he states do not demonstrate to the user what they can do there.

Museums, libraries and archives have collections and customers, there role is to be the connections between the two. Collections are cared for by cultural heritage, education and research and they are passionate about it. Batt believes users though "don't give a toss" about whether these things are cultural heritage, education or research, they just want stuff they need.

Public Catalogues Foundation, could be a fantastic digital resource, it’s a collection of images of the publicly owned oil paintings in Great Britiain, county by country in the

UK

.

Batt ends on the statement, compared with fighting a war, the costs are minute and the benefits infinite. He believes the strategic e-Content

Alliance

is very important. Content in a networked environment is more important than institutes. An image of a little girl at a library hit home as Batt reminds every one that what they do now is important for her future. He wants knowledge as a utility, as trusted and as accessible and invisible as pure running water.

IWR is in the Welsh capital Cardiff for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Digitisation Conference, which has been opened by Carwyn Jones of the Welsh Assembly.

The event is the launch pad for the digitisation strategy from the education group; and will also show case the work that has already been carried out and to analyse the role of JISC as the conduit to academic digitisation and what lessons the organisation  and academia have learnt so far.

Based at the St David's Hotel on the regenerated Cardiff Bay area, this gleaming white tower is an example of the new Wales and the new Cardiff, a country at the forefront of technology and the cultural landscape, whether its the location for Dr Who or ground breaking broadband and content strategies.

The conference has launched a blog for the event and is asking attendees and members of the information community to contribute to the debate.

The event has attracted leading members of the information community from universities in Manchester and Oxford as well as the Open University.

Daily newspaper The Guardian is still pursuing its worthy campaign Free our Data, which highlights how much information the government creates and then either never makes available to information professionals and consumers or does so at restrictively high prices.

Today's issue of the newspaper rather timely reveals how the Environment Agency forced an online information provider to remove flood information from its service which the company had gained from the Environment Agency. It did this as large parts of Yorkshire look more like Bangladesh as climate change wrought terrible rain and flooding on the region.

OnOneMap.com uses Google maps to offer a mash-up service that over lays information onto the maps such as properties for sale and let, the location of schools, supermarkets and mobile phones. To improve its service further, OnOneMap carried out a data scrape of the Environment Agency and collated together a layer of flood information, which, with no surprise created massive interest.

Just days before the heavens opened and flooded large parts of the UK, the Environment Agency demanded that the data be removed because of an infringement of "database copyright".

Guardian journalist Charles Arthur describes the need for this service and its use public information as an opportunity to save public money as there is a reduced need to use emergency services if houses in high flood risk areas are, effectively abandoned, especially when this information has been left out of the new Home Information Packs.

It’s a compelling story and The Guardian should be saluted for continuing this campaign, read the full story here:

Users of Apple Macintosh computers and open source operating systems may be prevented from using BBC information and content once the public broadcaster's iPlayer is launched later this year. The Open Source Consortium (OSC) is threatening to take its complaint to the European Commission.

OSC believes that by developing the iPlayer with computing giants Microsoft the BBC is forcing people to use Bill Gates' operating system. The iPlayer will allow searchers to download and watch BBC content on their own computers for up to 30 days after it was first broadcast. 

A statement from the BBC in response to the OSC complaint said, "The BBC aims to make its content as widely available as possible and has always taken a platform agnostic approach to its internet services". OSC though believes the iPlayer will only work on computers that use the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The BBC has opted to work with Microsoft because of the digital rights management (DRM) technology it has to offer which allows BBC information to be downloaded, but cannot be copied to a DVD and will automatically delete after 30 days.

OSC has taken its complaint to the BBC Trust, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and Ofcom, the telecoms and broadcasting  regulator. It said its next step is to take the complaint to Europe.

Microsoft is also a key partner for the British Library.

Local newspaper the Eastern Daily Press has been told by the newly formed Ministry of Justice that it is seeking more time to respond to a Freedom of Information (FoI) request from the East Anglian newspaper.  If the amendments proposed to the FoI go through, it is likely this sort of obfuscation will become, once again, commonplace.

Newspaper the Eastern Daily Press has requested documents using the FoI to discover what improvements have been made to the management of offenders after an earlier investigation by the newspaper discovered that offenders were removing electronic tags. By removing the tags offenders cannot be monitored by the police.

In a response to the newspaper, the Ministry of Justice has asked for more time to decide whether it is in the public interest to release the papers and figures.  Janet Preston of the National Offender Management Scheme's open government unit at the Ministry of Justice said in a reply to the paper, "Although the Freedom of Information Act carries a presumption in favour of disclosure, it provides exemptions which may be used to withhold information in specified circumstances."

Central government departments have to respond to FoI requests within 20 days, but can make requests for an extension to 40 workings days.

In proposals made by the government back in November to reform FoI, including adding the time it takes to consider a request to the overall cost to an individual request. This in turn is likely to put requesters off, especially individuals and local newspapers. The government has been re-considering its proposed reforms and will announce in three months time what changes will be made to the Freedom of Information Act.

The government's Freedom of Information (FoI) Act amendments consultation period closes for submissions today. According to Martin Rosenbaum's BBC FoI blog they now have three months to review the arguments put to it and then announce its response. Gordon Brown will, of course be Prime Minister by this time.

Rosenbaum details that the BBC has argued against, no surprises there really, further restrictions, which would damage its ability to report affectively on the government. Its submission states:

Amending the regulations to restrict access to information has inevitable and important disadvantages – it would prevent valuable FOI disclosures which are in the public interest and it would risk undermining the principles of FOI. This course should only be pursued if there is an even more important need to reduce the administrative burden of FOI. We do not believe that exists. There will always be some inappropriate and burdensome FOI requests, but they do not reach the level which requires a change to the regulations.

Major news organisations like the BBC would be muzzled by the amendments if they came into force because FoI requests would be grouped together and limited, by which organisation they come from. Therefore if BBC Radio 4's Today programme had lodged a series of request and so had a BBC local news programme, they would be grouped together, with one possibly losing out. The upshot of this is that the local news programme may be investigating something of upmost importance to a local community could be kept under wraps because a national news room makes a high number of requests.

Broadsheet newspaper The Daily Telegraph has claimed in an article that Pearson, the corporation which owns the Financial Times, is involved in an "desperate attempt" to buy US business information group Dow Jones. If successful the bid will scupper the plans of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

According to the Telegraph, Pearson has been looking for a partner to counter the £2.5bn bid from the Aussie known as Dirty Digger. Unnamed analysts tell the Telegraph that a combined Pearson and Dow Jones group, which owns news aggregator service Factiva, would be a "formidable force in business journalism". One describes the Dow Jones newswires as another useful arm to the FT. Not only would a combination include two of the world's most famous business newspapers, the FT and Wall Street Journal, as well as Factiva, but would also include leading magazine and market analysis group The Economist.  Pearson owns 50% of The Economist group.

There are global benefits from a link up between Dow Jones and Pearson. The latter has a strong presence in the US with its education division, but the FT has not fared well there, no doubt because of the power of the Wall Street Journal. Equally the Wall Street Journal has not done well in Europe.

According to the Telegraph Pearson is in deep talks with General Electric to construct a joint bid. General Electric owns the CNBC business channel in the US, which competes with Murdoch's Fox business channel. CNBC is supplied by Dow Jones and has close relationships.

There is widespread concern about Murdoch buying the Dow Jones group, the Bancroft family – a majority stakeholder - is concerned about Murdoch's famed reputation for meddling with editorial independence to push his own right wing agenda. The information and media industry is also deeply concerned about Murdoch owning another major slice of the information real estate.

Murdoch has been preparing his bid by wooing the Bancroft family and got shot of his share of weak Australian news group Fairfax to release more funds.

If Pearson and a partner are to be successful, they will need to beat the $60 a share  offer that Murdoch's News Corporation has placed on the table.

Recently I was lucky enough to be part of a discussion panel organised by the City Information Group (CIG). The discussion centred on the future role of research and information professionals in the face of new networking technology, all dubbed Web 2.0, and how this technology will affect the working lives of information professionals.

My  hat  goes off to the information professionals at the event who put their hands in  the air and admitted they didn't fully understand the technology and the issues it presented to their working lives. It's a brave move in a busy room full of your peers. But it is OK to admit you don't understand the full complexity of the Web 2.0 plot. I left the conference feeling that almost everyone, apart from my colleagues Euan Semple and David Tebbutt, is a little shaky on some areas of Web 2.0. I too feel out of touch with RSS and FaceBook.

The problem with Web 2.0 is that there are so many different iterations of this technology, blogging, wiki encyclopaedia, virtual worlds created by users, social computing networks and image systems for sharing videos and photographs.  Is it any wonder that information professionals are, despite their deep natural understanding for information issues, lost in a virtual Sargosso Sea. 

At first I was worried that the attendees didn't fully understand this technology, but as the evening progressed I was re-invigorated to learn that on the whole, information professionals do want to learn and engage with this technology. And that is good news, because if the information community does not, it will lose out, because the next generation of information users will interact with information in a way so radically different from the way we do.

The first step along the rocky road to Web 2.0 is admitting what your level of understanding is, and I have nothing but admiration for those information professionals that admitted to a packed room that they were not part of this next generation, because by doing so, the information community can step back and take a look at what is required to fully embrace the technology and the all important information professionals.

The evolving role of the corporate research centre and the impact of technology is under discussion next week at a City Information Group event where the editor of IWR will be asking Web 2.0 guru Euan Semple and Alacra MD Donald Roll.

Under discussion will be ideas such as the Self-Serve model, mobile access, the big box model and Web 3.0. There will be a chance to pose your own questions and to discuss whether new technology is improving corporate research, eroding the role and responsibilities of the information professional; and is it improving business information?

Details of the event are:

Date: Wednesday 12th June 2007
Time: Register from 6pm onwards, starting promptly at 6.30pm
Venue: Balls Brothers at the Minster (downstairs)

Minster Court

Mincing Lane

London

EC3R 7PP

Cost: CiG members £20. Non-members £30

Subscription agents Prenax are sponsoring the food and drink.

In a wide ranging conversation Forum host Euan Semple asks the panellist what their assumptions and predictions are for the future of Web 2.0.

Simon Phipps, chief open source officer of Sun Microsystems begins with the idea that a something starts out as a wild idea and then becomes less contentious as it is discussed through comments, and wiki tools, you get the feeling that he sees this as the concrete that will ensure the foundations of Web 2.0 are strong.

Phipps describes Atom as the thinking man's RSS and he thinks forums, blogs and wikis will have Atom feeds. Semple adds how you have lots of little things that no one pays any attention to within an organisation, but then it builds up. Phipps responds that all of Sun's tools have tagging tools that do just this.

Nick Ward, media analyst with Panmure Gordon & Co, takes on the debate about where will Web 2.0 go as a business. Phipps finds it difficult to believe the profits of these companies will be difficult realise. So far for these companies to be floated on the stock market would be difficult and points to the fact that Last.fm and Friends Reunited were bought by large existing vendors, CBS and ITV respectively.

Thomson-Reuters deal is a sign of businesses having to restructure.  The city is sceptical are worried whether the ad supported model for the likes of Myspace really has legs to it. I simply think the whole issue of the business model for these and the loyalty towards general social media sites will struggle and it’s the more specialist ones that will triumph. There are a lot of B2B businesses that operate through jargon and barriers and they will have a great deal to lose through transparency from Web 2.0, law firms and broker firms are amongst those that could be threatened.

People want the name of a very big bank like UBS in on a deal so that if it goes wrong they can say, "well we had the best people in the world on this," but I would argue there are a few years while the barriers to remain up.

Semple says he would pay to be part of high quality networks, the ad revenue can go, Ward reminds him that subs revenue model is very slow to develop.

Marc Monseau, PR person for drug giants Johnson & Johnson thinks there has to be some guidance, Phipps adds that Sun bloggers all have to go through some training. "I see that as being one of the advantages, you then have a well informed workforce and that has benefits," Monseau said. Ward believes because it is public, it can make people more sensible, it is self regulating. Semple reminds everyone that it is easy to consider Web 2.0 as geeky for teenagers, yet there is an audit trail, which is a corporate thing.

People are using Facebook to create and manage their own identity and it means they cannot be treated as demographics anymore. Phipps agrees, all of the internet's evils is because it doesn't have strong identity mechanisms and is looking forward to strong identity, which he believes will damage spam and other areas.

Sun has a lot of tools being developed for identity management. Ward adds that mass culture is no longer needed to make a profit, discussing the long tail. Instead all of us watch and read block-busters and absorb all its marketing, we can all indulge our individual tastes and there will be greater cultural diversity. He thinks it is already happening. Phipps responds that the long tail is also about monopolising niches, but Ward doesn't believe that its all niche businesses pandering to Rupert Murdoch, because it will be easier to make and distribute products and make a profit from them.

Adriana Lukas believes it is all about focussing on the individual and the organisation will follow.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is closing in on a deal to buy the Dow Jones media and financial information group according to the weekend's news reports. News aggregation service Factiva is part of the Dow Jones group following last year's acquisition of the remaining half from Reuters.

At the centre of Murdoch's bid is the Wall Street Journal newspaper, which "Dirty Digger" as Murdoch is affectionately known, covets. The Financial Times believes Australian Murdoch will raise his bid for the group to the expected $5bn. A series of alternative bidders may also surface, including Thomson-Reuters rival Bloomberg, General Electric, Yahoo and even the FT's parent company Pearson.

A potential stumbling block for Murdoch has been his reputation for meddling in editorial matters. The Bancroft family, which holds 64% of the voting power at Dow Jones has now agreed to meet with Murdoch to discuss these issues and it is reported that Murdoch is minded to offer the family a seat on the News Corp board, his news empire.

The Wall Street Journal is revered for its editorial independence and there is great concern that ownership by Murdoch will erode this.

Unlike News Corp, the Dow Jones group has been very successful at the transition from print to online information delivery, with the Wall Street Journal charging online users, just as it does offline. Murdoch's online attempts have so far not been as successful and he could benefit from an infusion of Wall Street ideas.

Freedom of Information campaigner, author and journalist Heather Brooke is, understandably getting hot under the collar regarding the recently tabled changes to the Freedom of Information Act and its latest development, the Trade Secretary claiming the Act is placing "good government at risk".

Alistair Darling, the Labour Trade Secretary has, according to reports in Scottish newspapers written to the Secretary for Constitutional Affairs detailing his concerns. Brooke describes the story in the Scotsman as something she would expect to see in a Kenyan or Nigerian newspaper, but not here in the UK. "Politicians are fighting off demands for the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act," she says of Kenya and Nigeria, although the same can now be said of our own Mother of Parliaments.

The Scotsman quotes Darling's letter as stating, "“If we are to live under constant threat of publication, this will prevent MPs from expressing their views frankly when writing to a minister. We need urgent advice on what the position is.” Brooke responds, "Politicians as delicate creatures frightened to speak in public? As if!"

Juxtaposing the intensive scrutiny that scientific information receives compared to politics, Brooke very cleverly shows what risks society would be placed under if scientific research information was treated in the same way as policy forming is. "Some one could determine (in secret) that his snake oil was the best solution to a problem (treating polio, for example) based on findings that only he and his minions could access. No data would be published so no one could challenge legitimacy."

Brooke states that this is exactly how Parliament works and argues, "It is only by debating the relative facts and merits of an issue that a superior solution can be found."

David Maclean MP has demonstrated the contempt MP hold the public in with his shameful private members bill on Freedom of Information Act restrictions and personal expenses. The bill came closer to reality on Friday night. If the bill becomes an Act then the Hose of Commons and Lords will be exempt from an Act they have foisted on the public and information professionals across the land.

To make this seedy episode that little bit dirtier, the MP pushing the bill was discovered to have spent £3,300 on a quad bike to use at agricultural shows in his Penrith community.

I suggest information professionals let Mr Maclean know their thoughts:

David Maclean a Conservative MP, who tabled the bill suffers from multiple sclerosis and sought approval from the Commons to buy the vehicle on expenses, which they gave. It is just this example of expenditure that will be covered up by his bill.

Now I have a lot of experience of agricultural communities and shows, and I have some experience of MS; as a result I know how large and tiring these shows are and the need for suitable transport if you suffer from MS.

But under Maclean's new bill the public would never know that £3,300 of their money had been spent on Maclean and that when he steps down from Parliament how he'll have a nice asset in his garage thanks to us. Nor would we be able to engage in an educated debate with him on why he doesn't hire these vehicles for the small number of agricultural shows that take place each summer? Nor would we be able to question him about whether he could simply drive around the show in Land Rover, I'm sure show organisers would allow it. No, the public and information gatherers would be on the back foot, we wouldn't be able to challenge Mr Maclean because we would not have the facts to hand and there would be no way of getting to them.

There is no doubt that there are instances when an MP needs to be careful not to disclose details in an FoI response that may put constituent at harm. But the original Act provided methods to gauge when and what information should be released. A blanket restriction creates an environment open to corruption from MPs and prevents a case by case analysis.

Those who voted in favour of this restriction, and especially Maclean put agricultural communities, MS suffers, Parliament and

Great Britain

to shame. It has been a dark weekend for information.

With the ink barely dry on the sale of Thomson Learning, the Thomson Corporation has succeeded, barring regulatory problems, in taking over news provider Reuters. The deal worth £8.7 billion will create the world’s largest news and financial data provider. 

The BBC claims the deal is not popular amongst Reuters reporters and some users because Reuters legendary independence is  now in question.

By merging together Thomson-Reuters, as the new company will be know, has leap forged market dominator Bloomberg, the US provider owned by the mayor of New York. Michael Bloomberg.

Reuters and Thomson believe the tie up will create £250 million in savings, although no specific plans on these savings have  been released yet. A statement did highlight that together Thomson and Reuters will be in a better position to compete with Bloomberg. Niall Fitzgerald, Reuters chairman said in a statement,  “The shared expertise and complementary strengths of these two companies makes for a strategically compelling and financially attractive combination.” 

Reuters, Thomson and rival Bloomberg compete fiercely in the financial terminal information market used by stock exchange traders.

Great Britain

’s Reuters is also famed for its news agency that supplies news coverage to the world’s newspapers and broadcasters. Bloomberg has 33% of the terminal market, according to analysts figures out in April 2007, with Reuters holding 23% and Thomson 11%.

The new company will be listed  on both the

London

and

Toronto

stock exchanges and will have an annual revenue of around $12 billion.

According to the BBC, the merger could damage Reuters standing as an independent source of news information. “For more than 150 years, Reuters has been one of the great independent news organisations. No longer,” said Robert Peston, BBC Business Editor on the Radio 4 Today programme. “Reuters’ independence has been guaranteed by the structure of the business, which prohibits any individual from owning 15% or more of the company.”

He went on to say that Reuters journalists are unhappy with the deal because the “prohibition is being waved for the Thomson family” which will now own 53% of the new larger business.

One clear winner is Tom Glocer who has led Reuters back to health and presided over the sell off of its half of the Factiva business. Glocer will now take over the helm of Thomson-Reuters when Richard Harrington, Thomson president and chief executive retires.