End of an era …… Kodachrome finally bowing out after 75 years

Every so often you come across something outside of the normal run of the blog and its focus on privacy, data retention and Internet regulation. One of those moments came today with the announcement from Eastman Kodak that it is to cease production of the iconic Kodachrome film stock. Kodak will not be producing any more Kodachrome stock and estimates that current stocks will last until late autumn 2009.

Kodachrome is 74 years old - it first appeared in 1935 and has survived through to 2009 as a result of its unparalled near achival stability and its minimal grain - you really could project a Kodachrome image across the side of a building and still not see the grain. Through the 1960s Kodachrome was the film of choice for many families - with processing included in the price you shot the film, loaded it into the yellow mailer and popped it in the post. A few days later a yellow box arrived with the mounted slides ready for viewing. Quality was superb, in good sunlight the colour rendition was outstanding.

Kodachrome was a difficult film to produce and required processing that was quite different to the ’standard’ E6 slide and C41 colour negative stocks. But this was the key to its longevity - Kodachrome film did not contain the colour dye couplers that were required to create the colour dyes in the 3 layer subtractive matrix. The colour dye couplers were introduced as part of the processing and were removed in that processing before final drying and mounting. It is the colour dye couplers that are particularly sensitive to oxidation and it is their presence in other film stocks, both before exposure and after processing, that has caused substantial problems, reducing stock shelf life and promoting subsequent image fade over time. Ektachrome and other similar stock shots from the 1970s and 80s are often now unusable whereas Kodachrome remain fresh and vibrant.

There will be many images that are remembered - but one will be Steve McCurry’s Afghan girl that stared out of the cover of National Geographic on countless bookstalls in 1985. Set to music, Paul Simon wrote:

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

In the UK, Kodachrome K-14 processing was carried out by Kodak at their Hemel Hempstead plant. That closed some years ago exposed film sent for processing in Europe. Today their is just one remaining Kodachrome processing plant in the world - Dwaynes Photos of Parsons, Kansas, USA - Dwaynes have confirmed that they will continue processing Kodachrome until the end of 2010. Just check out the processing steps with its multi stage re-exposure with specific colours to carry out the reversal process perhaps to realise the complexity and cost in the modern age.

Visit the Kodak web site for the company release and stunning examples of the output - there is an online slideshow and further discussion at A thousand words -a tribute to Kodachrome and at The Kodachrome Project.

Undoubtedly the demise of Kodachrome is partly the result of the wholesale switch to digital imaging. Digital is fast, clean and effective - but there remains more than a sentimental memory of a film stock that recorded so much of the 20th century - and remains to display in vibrant colours.

RIP Kodachrome - I suspect we will still see your images in another 75 years time.

IMP - an overview

A significant paper from the LSE provides an overview and substantial critique of the Government plans for review of the interception of communications traffic data - currently under consultation.

The paper, which can be downloaded here provides a review of UK intercept law, changes in communications and the technological limitations of the proposals for high levels of deep packet inspection (DPI). This is a paper that is informative and a useful contribution to the debate. It notes that there are significant privacy issues although these are for others to discuss. What it does do is to point out the limitations of the core technology concepts behind the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) and ‘Mastering the Internet’, the GCHQ programme aimed at collecting and analysing data within the UK’s Internet traffic.

Every MP and member of the House of Lords should read this - and should then be made to sit an examination on its contents with passage to permission to debate only granted on being able to demonstrate a satisfactory understanding of the content. Well, pigs might fly!

The Home Office Consultation, ‘Protecting the Public in a Changing Communications Environment’ can be downloaded here.

A week of Digital Reports ……

It has been a week of digital reports. On Tuesday the Digital Britain report was launched - introduced in the House of Commons at 15.30 and then a little later in the Lords. Lord Carter’s report has been much reported and commented elsewhere so the major points will be well known - particularly the proposal for a 50p per month levy (or tax!) on all landline telephone circuits to help to fund next generation networks and high speed broadband (fibre to the cabinet etc.) by 2017 and proposals for industry action agains file sharers.

But, as ever, the interesting bits are always in the details. Stephen Carter’s ‘Digital Britain’ report (you can download a copy here ) contains proposals for legislation to take actions against persistent file sharers. Here again is the three strikes route but there is recognition of the need for judicial review before termination - and there is also some recognition of potential for problems for the smaller ISPs.

But, in the media frenzy that accompanied Lord Carter’s report there seemed to be little attention paid to another digital report published this week, the ‘Digital Manifesto’ published by the Children’s Charities Coalition on Internet Safety. You can download a copy of the Digital Manifesto here. The Digital Manifesto, written by John Carr, Secretary of CHIS and Zoe Hilton of the NSPCC, is a new version of a document originally issued in 2004. Since that timere there have been substantial changes in the provision of high speed services and the availability of new types of content and service. It is apposite that the new Manifesto is now available, particularly in the run-up to the next General Election.

Of particular interest to those with an eye on the regulation of the Internet industry are the recommendations for action in the area of content blocking and filtering of access to child abuse content. Typically the sites containing abuse content are identified by the Internet Watch Foundation who are able to provide subscribing ISPs with a CSV blocklist.

The report suggests: “The Government should prepare a Bill that will compel all internet service providers based in the UK to adopt the Internet Watch Foundation list, or some other technical solution that blocks access to all known child abuse websites and newsgroups. The Bill should also detail or make provisions for a method by which compliance with this policy can be tested and publicly confirmed. If it becomes clear that some ISPs will refuse to implement a blocking solution unless compelled by law to do so, the Government should immediately put the Bill before Parliament.

In the meantime the Government should issue an instruction to all departments forbidding them from purchasing internet services from any ISP that does not deploy a solution that blocks access to all known child abuse websites. The Government should also encourage the remainder of the public sector to follow its lead. The Government should consider the use of tax or other incentives to encourage ISPs and other technology companies to develop and deploy new or speedier ways of tracking, blocking or destroying online child abuse images.

Some background is worth entering here. In 2006, the then Minister of State at the Home Office, Vernon Coaker, announced a Ministerial target for ISPs to introduce content filtering to block access to child abuse sites for all (ie 100%) of consumer broadband accounts by the end of 2007. This followed the trials conducted by BT with their ‘Cleanfeed’ system. It is estimated that now, in 2009, the implementation of content filtering is about 95% with predominantly consumer circuits filtered by the big 6 ISPs. There is now considerable pressure for action to be completed to close the remaining 5% gap - suggested as representing some 700,000 households.

There now appear to be some distinct groupings amongst ISPs. There is a group that have implemented filtering, there is a group that have fundamental philosophical objections to the process; there is a group that claim that they cannot afford the cost and there is a final group that will not take any action unless they are forced by legal mandate.

OK, the last group are clearly targeted by the Manifesto recommendations. The cost issue is a little more of a problem. The initial costs for large scale providers such as BT were not inconsiderable. Although costs have come down they remain potentially high for the smallest providers, particularly those who only have a few hundred, perhaps a thousand end user customers. For these the unit costs can be substantial and potentially more than the margin on circuits in the tight UK market. It is interesting to note a comment amongst the detail (the devil is always in the detail!) in the Manifesto (footnote 60 to be exact) with a suggestion that there should be central Government support for the smaller providers, perhaps included within the provisions of the upcoming Communications Data Bill. ‘The Crusher’ thinks that any such support would help those for whom the costs of filtering represent a disproportionately large element of overall provision and might be targeted at those with fewer than 1000 consumer connections.

‘The Crusher’ is aware of the pressure to close the gap. At the end of April ‘The Crusher’ had a meeting with a Home Office Minister who emphasised the Governments commitment to the 100% target and the need to see self-regulation deliver filtering across all consumer circuits within the next few months. If the self-regulatory model was to fail then there was clear indication that the Government would look to introduce mandatory legislation later in the year, perhaps in October. This would be likely to be seen as a non-contentious Bill that would attract cross-Party and media support.

The CCIS Digital Manifesto is a pointer for action by the ISP community. It is clear that the issue will not go away and that ISPs will need to take actions. There is now a European dimension to the issue with a proposal for a Framework Decision which includes, as Article 18, a clause requiring member states to introduce mandatory blocking of child abuse images.

The Manifesto recommendation that Govt. should include filtering as a requirement in public sector contracts is interesting - and would follow the inclusion of quality management and environmental management credentials. The forthcoming ISPA Awards will be interesting - and there may well be pressure on winners, particularly in consumer delivery categories to state and, if necessary, to justify their position in relation to the Govt. target and the Digital Manifesto recommendations.

In a week when we saw two digital reports, it may well be that the recommendations of the CCIS Digital Manifesto have a greater chance of becoming law.

Emergency, which service ……..?

Most people are familiar with the process for making an emergency call - whether it is to the Police, Fire Service, Ambulance or Coastguard. Pick up a phone and dial 999 - or 112 as the pan-European common emergency call number.

When the call is answered by the emergency service operator at the telco, the operator will ask you which service you require and will ask you to confirm the number you are calling from. No problems there.

The operator will see the calling line number displayed in front of them and can immediately cross-reference with reverse look up to identify the location. OK, no problems there - but hold on a minute, what happens if you are not using a land-line?

Technology has moved on and there can no longer be an assumption that all users are calling from a fixed land-line. Emergency calls can be made from a mobile number and, increasingly, from a Voice over IP phone (VoIP). Now, these latter two present something of a problem. Mobile numbers are not geographic (they do not have a specific regional location exchange code) and can be made from pretty much anywhere (except in my house where the mobile does not work!). Emergency operators can access data from the mobile providers to locate the cell where the call is being made from - and triangulation from a number of base stations can provide a fairly accurate geographic location of the calling phone. That’s what law enforcement do when they want to track a criminal or suspect target - the mobile phone is a very effective piece of electronic tracking gadgetry sitting in your pocket. You don’t have to make a call, the phone will register itself with the local cell whenever it is switched on and will thereby giveaway its position.

OK, again, no real problems there. Problems arise with VoIP. There may be a number associated with a VoIP call but it may be a geographic number and the geographic number assigned to the call may bear no relevance to the actual geographic location of the VoIP handset or software. This may be connecting through any IP link - perhaps a fixed line broadband circuit or perhaps a WiFi connection in a public place (cafe, pub, airport etc.).

The Ofcom General Conditions of Service require providers to make details of callers available to emergency service operators. For fixed line and for mobile calls that is fine - the provider has all the data and can cross-reference databases. For VoIP there is a problem - the VoIP service is likely to be provided by a different service provider to the underlying IP transport. The VoIP provider may have a record of the geographic number associated with the call and may be able to reference that to a customer - but cannot tell whether or not the customer is at the location they have. The IP address used for the call and included within the packet data will be allocated by the ISP providing the transport layer - there may be no quick look-up between the VoIP provider and the ISP to determine the location and user of the IP address. It is quite possible that the VoIP user could log in from a range of IPs during a single day - particularly if they are connecting using WiFi access points.

The problem can have tragic consequences. A Canadian family called the emergency services using a VoIP service - the trackback from their initial service registration indicated a location in Toronto so that was where the medical team was sent. Unfortunately the family were hundreds of miles away in Calgary and had not updated the location information held by the VoIP provider.

To overcome the problem the emergency services want to be able to make a quick look up request to ISPs to determine the telephone line reference (CBUK record) for the line on which the VoIP call originated. That might seem straightforward but the practicalities are much less so. There is no standard format for ISP customer service records and there is no standard interface that will allow an external agency to access and requues information from those databases. Emergency service developers have suggested that ISPs should install systems that will allow real-time look-up requests from the emergency service operator. The operator would identify the call as a VoIP origin, identify the associated IP address, refer that to a central look-up registry to identify the ISP (RIPE?) and then pass the request to the ISP who would be expected to return the CBUK reference for the line. All this in real-time and in no longer than it has taken you to read this last paragraph.

The implementation of the Data Retention Directive at a European level has meant that there have been developments to create a standardised form of data request - ETSI standards. Implementing these may be fine for the larger operators who have teams of developers and can bear the costs. But for the medium and smaller level ISPs there will be a real problem - substantial development costs and quite likely whole changes to back end and Internet facing systems. It is quite likely that the smaller ISPs will simply not have the resources to be able to comply.

The Crusher can see another problem here. Once an interface system is in place then a remote operator will be able to input an IP address and return a telephone line reference which can be used to determine a location. That is exactly the type of information that typical Section 22 notices issued under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) often require - law enforcement agencies can issue a notice requiring an ISP to provide details of a user. Requests often cite a date, time and IP address - and require the ISP to identify the user. If that can be done automatically by the emergency operator then it will not be long before other parts of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) identify the route as a rapid way to investigative data. Politicians will trot out the tired old lines about importance for public safety, citizens have nothing to fear etc. And will then introduce legislative changes that permit LEAs to process automatic data requests.

Any development for emergency use will have to be developed with extensive safeguards and strict controls. These must ensure that access can only be made in genuine emergency situations and that it is not possible to investigators to access for alternate purposes. Equally, it must not be possible for other organisations to attempt to access data - for example, for rights owners to try to identify end users flagged up as potential copyright infringers.

The emergency request is fairly self-explanatory. The problem is the likelihood and the inevitability of mission creep.

Hadopi - three strikes and …. it’s out!

The French farce continues.

After passage through a singularly empty French assembly, then return to a more populous house, the Hadopi law (Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des droits sur Internet - Higher Authority for the Distribution of Works and the Protection of Copyright on the Internet) has now received a further setback.

The superior court in France, the French Consititutional Court, has now ruled that access to Internet services can only be denied on the authority of a judge. The court has recognised the view in the European Parliament that Internet access is a basis human right - as also now recognied by Ofcom in the UK. The introduction of the bill to create the Hadopi in France was contentious - in France and elsewhere. Supported by President Nicolas Sarkozy the bill would have created a new agency with the power to disconnect users on third notification of file sharing infringement. The agency would also place the users on a blocklist to prevent them from simply migrating to another provider. This cannot now happen - any process to remove a user access must now go before a court and a judge - with the user able to defend his position in court.

The UK Government has already indicated that it does not favour the 3 strikes approach - again echoing the view that broadband access is now seen as a basic human right.

It’s back to the drawing board for the rights owners. Perhaps these actions might just focus their minds to consider some new business models. But then ‘les cochons peuvent voler’ as they might say in France.

Digital Britain - awaiting the outcome ….

Just another week to go before Lord Stephen Carter publishes his Digital Britain report. And with a week to go the various interest groups are positioning themselves ahead of the launch.

There have been numerous ‘trails’ which may turn out to be more positioning than actualities. We won’t really know until the document is in the public domain.

But things that are likely……

There is a recognition that broadband services are an essential part of modern life (recognised in a survey commissioned by Ofcom), as essential as water, gas and electricity. So broadband becomes the 4th service (do I recall the AA advertising themselves as the 4th emergency service?).

Broadband service providers (essentially that means BT) are to be encouraged to ensure a minimum level of service at 2Mbit. Easier said than done and will require some changes to the means of provision. Ofcom has today (11th June) removed the restrictions that prevented Openreach from operating electronic equipment within the network. This removal will pave the way for Openreach to operate fibre to the cabinet and direct ethernet to end users.

Ofcom recognise that there remains a significant group of internet Not users - typically older generation. They estimate that 20% of this group will sign up to broadband services if the cost and service is right. That might have to include some form of top-up education. Of course, 20% takeup leaves a remaining 80% of the group who do not see the need or do not want Internet access. Increasing takeup amongst this group will be difficult.

There have been moves from rights owners to suggest the introduction of a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policy. With the recognition that broadband is now an essential service this is unlikely to be approved by Lord Carter - indeed, other Government Ministers have made it clear that the Government will not force ISPs to block access. There will have to be other ways found. Those might include some form of packet shaping to reduce the performance of the sharers - but not all ISPs will be in a position to do this. Certainly the smaller ISPs will find this difficult and will not have the flexibility of multiple central pipes to transfer heavy users to a specific ‘bad boys’ pipe.

So we wait. 16th June will be an interesting day.