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• Neutral net or neutered

  4 juin 2013, par Mans — Law and liberty

  In recent weeks, a number of high-profile events, in the UK and elsewhere, have been quickly seized upon to promote a variety of schemes for monitoring or filtering Internet access. These proposals, despite their good intentions of protecting children or fighting terrorism, pose a serious threat to fundamental liberties. Although at a glance the ideas may seem like a reasonable price to pay for the prevention of some truly hideous crimes, there is more than first meets the eye. Internet regulation in any form whatsoever is the thin end of a wedge at whose other end we find severely restricted freedom of expression of the kind usually associated with oppressive dictatorships. Where the Internet was once a novelty, it now forms an integrated part of modern society ; regulating the Internet means regulating our lives.

  Terrorism

  Following the brutal murder of British soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich, attempts were made in the UK to revive the controversial Communications Data Bill, also dubbed the snooper’s charter. The bill would give police and security services unfettered access to details (excluding content) of all digital communication in the UK without needing so much as a warrant.

  The powers afforded by the snooper’s charter would, the argument goes, enable police to prevent crimes such as the one witnessed in Woolwich. True or not, the proposal would, if implemented, also bring about infrastructure for snooping on anyone at any time for any purpose. Once available, the temptation may become strong to extend, little by little, the legal use of these abilities to cover ever more everyday activities, all in the name of crime prevention, of course.

  In the emotional aftermath of a gruesome act, anything with the promise of preventing it happening again may seem like a good idea. At times like these it is important, more than ever, to remain rational and carefully consider all the potential consequences of legislation, not only the intended ones.

  Hate speech

  Hand in hand with terrorism goes hate speech, preachings designed to inspire violence against people of some singled-out nation, race, or other group. Naturally, hate speech is often to be found on the Internet, where it can reach large audiences while the author remains relatively protected. Naturally, we would prefer for it not to exist.

  To fulfil the utopian desire of a clean Internet, some advocate mandatory filtering by Internet service providers and search engines to remove this unwanted content. Exactly how such censoring might be implemented is however rarely dwelt upon, much less the consequences inadvertent blocking of innocent material might have.

  Pornography

  Another common target of calls for filtering is pornography. While few object to the blocking of child pornography, at least in principle, the debate runs hotter when it comes to the legal variety. Pornography, it is claimed, promotes violence towards women and is immoral or generally offensive. As such it ought to be blocked in the name of the greater good.

  The conviction last week of paedophile Mark Bridger for the abduction and murder of five-year-old April Jones renewed the debate about filtering of pornography in the UK ; his laptop was found to contain child pornography. John Carr of the UK government’s Council on Child Internet Safety went so far as suggesting a default blocking of all pornography, access being granted to an Internet user only once he or she had registered with some unspecified entity. Registering people wishing only to access perfectly legal material is not something we do in a democracy.

  The reality is that Google and other major search engines already remove illegal images from search results and report them to the appropriate authorities. In the UK, the Internet Watch Foundation, a non-government organisation, maintains a blacklist of what it deems ‘potentially criminal’ content, and many Internet service providers block access based on this list.

  While well-intentioned, the IWF and its blacklist should raise some concerns. Firstly, a vigilante organisation operating in secret and with no government oversight acting as the nation’s morality police has serious implications for freedom of speech. Secondly, the blocks imposed are sometimes more far-reaching than intended. In one incident, an attempt to block the cover image of the Scorpions album Virgin Killer hosted by Wikipedia (in itself a dubious decision) rendered the entire related article inaccessible as well as interfered with editing.

  Net neutrality

  Content filtering, or more precisely the lack thereof, is central to the concept of net neutrality. Usually discussed in the context of Internet service providers, this is the principle that the user should have equal, unfiltered access to all content. As a consequence, ISPs should not be held responsible for the content they deliver. Compare this to how the postal system works.

  The current debate shows that the principle of net neutrality is important not only at the ISP level, but should also include providers of essential services on the Internet. This means search engines should not be responsible for or be required to filter results, email hosts should not be required to scan users’ messages, and so on. No mandatory censoring can be effective without infringing the essential liberties of freedom of speech and press.

  Social networks operate in a less well-defined space. They are clearly not part of the essential Internet infrastructure, and they require that users sign up and agree to their terms and conditions. Because of this, they can include restrictions that would be unacceptable for the Internet as a whole. At the same time, social networks are growing in importance as means of communication between people, and as such they have a moral obligation to act fairly and apply their rules in a transparent manner.

  Facebook was recently under fire, accused of not taking sufficient measures to curb ‘hate speech,’ particularly against women. Eventually they pledged to review their policies and methods, and reducing the proliferation of such content will surely make the web a better place. Nevertheless, one must ask how Facebook (or another social network) might react to similar pressure from, say, a religious group demanding removal of ‘blasphemous’ content. What about demands from a foreign government ? Only yesterday, the Turkish prime minister Erdogan branded Twitter ‘a plague’ in a TV interview.

  Rather than impose upon Internet companies the burden of law enforcement, we should provide them the latitude to set their own policies as well as the legal confidence to stand firm in the face of unreasonable demands. The usual market forces will promote those acting responsibly.

  Further reading

  • Tory-Labour pact could save data bill, says Lord Howard
  • Internet companies warn May over ‘snooper’s charter’
  • Snooper’s charter ‘should be replaced by strengthening of existing powers’
  • Exclusive : ‘Snooper’s charter’ would not have prevented Woolwich attack, says MI5
  • Search engines urged to block more online porn sites
  • Why technology must be the solution to child abuse material online
  • Google must take more action to police explicit content, says Vince Cable
  • Facebook bows to campaign groups over ‘hate speech’
  • Facebook sexism campaign attracts thousands online
  • Türkischer Ministerpräsident : Twitter ist eine Plage
  • Valls : « La traque sur Internet doit être une priorité pour nous »
  • La Cnil, futur juge d’Internet
  • “National security matter” : Third agency caught unilaterally blocking web sites

• Piwik 3 Development Update #1 – New UI design, API changes & release date

  1er septembre 2016, par Thomas Steur — Community, Development

  Over the last months, we have been actively working on the Piwik 3 release and we want to introduce you to the changes that we have done so far. They include a new and modern UI redesign, new widgets for your dashboard, and technical improvements under the hood.

  New Piwik 3 UI

  Based on Material Design we have revamped the user interface which is now more responsive, more usable and faster. While the UI is not yet finished, we invite you to check it out already and to let us know what you think.

  

  This new Piwik material design is a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.

  More responsive

  Piwik 3 will look and feel much better on your mobile phone and tablet. Many elements have been improved : the menus, the segment editor and dashboard selector, the widgets, the settings pages and most other pages so you can fully experience and enjoy Piwik on any device !

  

  Improved usability

  We have updated the menu structure, the dashboard selector as well as the footer in reports to make your life easier when using Piwik. We love to keep these complicated things simple. There are also many other tiny improvements that you will appreciate.

  

  The Zen Mode lets you view in full screen your analytics reports and dashboards. Users love this feature and it can now be accessed by pressing “z” key.

  

  Faster

  To make the Piwik interface faster, we have refactored most of our CSS, HTML and JavaScript and moved more and more of our code into the client. As a result, Piwik now needs to reload the page much less often ! For example when you change the date or change the segment, Piwik will now load the reports instantly. To improve performance even further, Piwik will now load multiple reports on a single page in parallel.

  Native fonts

  Over the last months more and more web services have started using system fonts, and so will Piwik 3. System fonts look better, improve language support and give you a more native, familiar feeling.

  For more details and screenshots have a look at the pull request for the Piwik 3 UI update.

  New widgets

  With the “Latest Piwik Plugin Updates” widget you won’t miss any newly added or updated plugin anymore. This will help you learn about and discover the useful plugins and themes available on the Marketplace.

  

  Super users can now see at a glance the current state of the Piwik system, thanks to the new “System Check” and “System Summary” widgets.

  

  API Changes

  Piwik is the leading open analytics platform, highly customisable and extensible thanks to a flexible plugins architecture and a design based on APIs. In this new major Piwik 3 release, we significantly improve the foundation of our open platform and several of its core APIs.

  The new Widgets and Reporting API makes it possible to add reports and widgets to any existing reporting page. In the past, reporting pages had to be created manually which was time consuming and it was hard to maintain a consistent look across different reporting pages. Now reporting pages are generated automatically by the Piwik platform.

  The Plugin Settings API was changed to improve performance and to let plugin developers customize the Websites Manager. This is one step towards our goal to let users not only manage websites but also mobile apps, cars, coffee machines or any other thing.

  To see a full list of changes in the Piwik 3 analytics platform, have a look at the developer changelog.

  Developer docs

  The Piwik Developer Zone is full of guides and API references to help developers understand, integrate and extend Piwik. As some APIs have changed in the Piwik 3 release it is now possible to select the Piwik version in the top right corner of the developer zone.

  

  We are updating guides for Piwik 3 and added a Piwik 2 -> Piwik 3 Migration Guide for plugin developers. Many other guides were updated such as Menus, Custom Report and Widgets.

  Release date

  The first Piwik 3 beta release will be available in the next four weeks. Beta testers automatically receive the update if they are subscribed to the “Latest Beta” release channel. The final Piwik 3 release will be ready before the end of the year. If you want to give it a try, you can either use Piwik from Git and check out the “3.x-dev” branch, or download Piwik 3 from GitHub.

  Closing thoughts

  With faster & more beautiful reports, better APIs and more stability, Piwik 3 is a big step forward for all Piwik users. As our mission is to create, as a community, the leading international open source web analytics platform that gives every user full control of their data, we are very excited to introduce you to this upcoming release.

  We now offer Custom Development services if you like to sponsor a new feature or bug fix, or if you have any custom requirements. And if you use Piwik Analytics to grow your business and need quality help, contact the Piwik analytics experts to get started.

  Until our next Piwik 3 dev update, Happy analysis !

• A *hot* Piwik Community Meetup 2015 !

  10 août 2015, par André Bräkling — Community

  Last weekend I arrived in Germany to attend the Piwik Community Meetup 2015 and now I am in Poland.

  The meetup was HOT in every sense ! Berlin temperatures reached 35 degrees (celsius), as I finally meet in person several long-time, dedicated Piwik community contributors.

  

  Meetup preparation in Berlin, photo by M. Zawadziński, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0

  Pictures from the meetup preparation sessions
  

  In the first leg of my trip I was in Berlin to meet Piwik community members to prepare for the 2015 annual Piwik community meetup. These are my notes taken during the meeting at the request of one of my colleagues. I also relayed live on Framasphère, Twitter and IRC.

  

  Community discussion at the meetup, photo by D.Czajka, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0

  More pictures from the Piwik meetup
  

  This was harder than I expected, as I took notes with my laptop, pictures with my phone, wrote live to social media (using the Android Diaspora Native Web App), and used my laptop to relay on IRC. Going forward this requires better preparation, I was glad I had a few links and pictures ready before hand but it really requires intense focus to achieve this. I am glad presenters were patient when I requested repeating some of the ideas they shared. I am also a bit disappointed not much happened in IRC.

  Two day preparation sessions

  The discussions and session we had during the two days prior to the meetup are available here.

  We gathered in rented apartments in Berlin, this reminded me very much of similar community gatherings and perhaps of BarCamp and, at a much smaller scale, UDS sessions.

  

  Piwik Pizza !, photo by F. Rodríguez, licensed under CC-BY-SA 4.0

  A list of ideas of topics was initially submitted, we then proceeded to have scheduled sessions for open discussion. Several people shared their concern there was no possible remote participation which led to making public the Trello boards used/linked here.

  Note : The Trello links below still have action items and notes that are pending bug report / feature requests filing which should happen over the coming weeks. Most importantly, many action items will need identifying leads for different community team including Translations and Documentation, and better coordination of coming community engagement.

  Monday sessions consisted of the following subjects :

  • What are Piwik values & how to communicate them ? (see below for details)
  • How to encourage and recognize new external contributors ?
  • How could we double the Piwik userbase ?
  • How Community can organise help resources

  On Tuesday we met again to discuss the following subjects :

  • Piwik Long Term support (LTS)
  • How do Piwik.org (project) and Piwik PRO (company) sit together / are organized ? – An important part of this session was about having better communication channels and improving the new team page (bug #8520 and bug #8519, respectively)
  • Improving usability of Piwik e.g. for new users – this last session was not held has we ran out of time and prepared to go to the meetup venue.

  Some more details about individual preparation sessions

  What are Piwik values & how to communicate them ?

  The main subjects in this session were important changes proposed in the project mission and values. This was edited directly on on the wiki page on GitHub, some of the changes can be seen by comparing revisions.

  Piwik mission statement (bug #7376)

  “To create the leading Free and open source analytics platform, and to support global organisations and communities to keep full control over their data.”

  Our values

  • Openness
  • Freedom
  • Transparency
  • Data ownership
  • Privacy
  • Kaizen (改善) : continuous improvement

  This was also presented by Matthieu Aubry at the meetup and is published in the Roadmap page. Bringing more visibility and perhaps having a top page for Mission and Values was also brought up.

  Meetup agenda and notes

  The official agenda is available here.

  Many Piwik PRO employees stayed in Berlin for the meetup, and we had good participation although less than last year in Munich as my colleagues told me. Some were consultants, others staff from public organizations, universities, etc. In retrospect considering the very hot weather and summer holidays the attendance was good. I was very happy to arrive at the beautiful Kulturbrauerei and enter the air-conditioned Soda Club. T-Shirts were waiting for all attendees and free drinks (non-alcohol !) were welcome