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A couple of months back, Techdirt wrote about Australia's proposals to shift from the current fair dealing approach to fair use
as part of wide-ranging reform of copyright there. When something
similar was mooted in the UK as part of what became the Hargreaves
Review, it was shouted down by the copyright maximalists on the grounds
that it would lead to widespread litigation.
As Mike pointed out at the time, that's nonsense: the existence of a
large body of US case law dealing with this area makes it much easier to
bring in fair use without the need for its contours to be defined in
the courts.
On
Techdirt.
One of the key flaws with the data retention schemes being proposed by
the UK and elsewhere, supposedly to catch terrorists and serious
criminals, is that they won't work. It is trivially easy to avoid
surveillance by using encrypted connections, for example those provided
by The Onion Router (Tor). This means that the only people who are likely to end up being spied on are innocent members of the public.
On
Techdirt.
There have been many posts on Techdirt about the copyright industry's
hatred for new technologies that eventually turned out to be important
sources of additional revenue -- the VCR being perhaps the most famous
example. Here's a splendid column from Adam Turner in the Sydney
Morning Herald about the same thing happening again in Australia.
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt has been writing for a while about China's policy of providing incentives to file patents -- regardless of whether those patents have any worth. That's led to a naïve celebration of the large numbers now being granted, as if more patents corresponded to more innovation.
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt stories regularly report, governments around the world,
including those in the West, are greatly increasing their surveillance
of the Internet. Alongside a loss of the private sphere, this also
represents a clear danger to basic civil liberties. The good news is
that we already have the solution: encrypting communications makes it
very hard, if not entirely impossible, for others to eavesdrop on our
conversations. The bad news is that crypto is largely ignored by the
general public, partly because they don't know about it, and partly
because even if they do, it seems too much trouble to implement.
On
Techdirt.
Despite the absence of credible studies supporting the idea, part of
the copyright maximalist dogma is that the wider the reach of copyright,
and the stricter the application, the better. As a corollary,
copyright exceptions are anathema, which is why the US and EU are still
shamefully resisting
an international treaty that would enable more books covered by
copyright to be produced in versions suitable for the visually impaired,
since it would create a minor exception to help make that happen.
On
Techdirt.
Last month Techdirt wrote
about yet more secret meetings between the copyright and internet
industries, this time in Australia, where the federal government there
was "encouraging" them to come up with ways of tackling online copyright
infringement.
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt revealed
a couple of days ago, one reason why the European Commission decided to
refer ACTA to the European Court of Justice was a fear that another
SOPA disaster was in the offing. It's a little too early to be sure,
but we may be seeing the first signs that the equally problematic TPP
agreement is also running into problems because of heightened
sensitivity to key issues in the wake of the Net-based revolt against
SOPA.
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt noted
recently, policy-making behind closed doors is no longer acceptable.
Until the end of the 20th century, it was hard for the general public to
make their views heard, and so governments didn't really bother asking
them. But that's no longer the case: the Internet has blown government
wide open, and there is now no excuse for not consulting as widely as
possible -- including the public -- before passing legislation or
signing treaties.
On
Techdirt.
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