Fergus Cassidy

THE Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is taking up an invitation by the Department of Foreign Affairs to observe the general election.

The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), a monitoring arm of OSCE, visited Ireland in late March 2007 to "assess the pre-electoral environment and preparations for elections, in line with OSCE commitments".

On 16 April, the ODIHR produced a report and recommended the "deployment of an election assessment mission" for the general election.

Among the particular interests of the mission, is "the decision not to use electronic voting during these elections".

The same body monitored the parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, held last November, and also issued its findings.

In a section on electronic voting, which 90% of the electorate used to vote, the ODIHR stated:

"In order to enhance public confidence in DRE [direct recording electronic] voting machines, and to provide for meaningful audits and recounts, legislation regulating use of such systems should include provisions for a Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail [my emphasis] or an equivalent verification procedure. Software dependent vote recording mechanisms which do not permit an independent check on their operation should be phased out."

The section concluded:

"Voting system standards should not permit the use of systems which depend for their security on the secrecy of any part of their technical specifications. Reliance on proprietary systems should be reduced, where neither citizens, nor electoral officials, nor observers can determine how they operate".

That should make the Taoiseach chew a bit harder on his pencil. If he had one.

*****

My previous writing on electronic voting in Ireland:

Power Mad (9 May 2004)
Goodbye e (29 February 2004)
Last Preference (14 December 2003) 

THE Joyce copyright case rumbles on. Following the settlement agreed last month between Carol Shloss (below), Stanford professor and author, and the Estate of James Joyce, Shloss filed a motion before the US District Court for "award of attorneys' fees and costs".

The US Copyright Act, unlike most other legislation, provides that the court "…may award a reasonable attorney's fee to the prevailing party as part of the costs". 

The new motion declares that since Shloss has established her right to publish the material at issue free from copyright liability, the lawsuits which she took "furthered the purposes of not just the Copyright Act, but scholarship and free speech itself".

Therefore, the "Court should award Shloss costs and reasonable attorneys’ fees in an amount according to proof".

Among several arguments put forward by the Shloss legal team is that the Estate of James Joyce have "misused their copyrights for years, have improperly sought to vindicate privacy interests by use of copyrights, have sought to cut off inquiry into literary and historically significant events by the misuse of their copyrights…".
 
The motion concludes that "the best way to deter the Estate of James Joyce's repeated and unrepentant bad actions is to award attorney’s fees to Shloss".  

AT 2.45am today, I read the following in the online edition of the Irish Times:

"Irish literary buffs have been blocked from viewing dozens of previously unpublished excerpts from James Joyce's notebook writings and family correspondence, which went online at the weekend, the Joyce estate has confirmed.

"The estate insisted that all non-US computers be blocked from accessing the material online, following a settlement of a bitter legal dispute between the Joyce estate and a Californian English professor."

In less than five minutes,  I was able to access the excerpts and secured a screen grab souvenir (below) of my travels. As a bonus, I've proved that I'm not a literary buff!

http://www.lucia-the-authors-cut.info/

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