The Closing the European Internet

Openness lies at the heart of the Internet, at every level. Indeed, the success of the Internet, and of the open services that run on top of it, was one of the first - and remains one of the most important - demonstrations of the benefits of adopting open architectures. Unfortunately, it's an openness that is fairly subtle for non-technical people; above all, it's not at all obvious to politicians, who seem to assume that apparently minor tweaks won't change things much....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Absolutely Criminal

This is turning into a complete disaster:

Nicola Zingaretti, the EU parliament's rapporteur for the EU directive on the planned penal regulations for the enforcement of intellectual property rights, has proposed that the mere "acceptance" of such violations be made a crime. The Italian Social-Democrat proposed that this vague term be included as part of amendments orally proposed as a "compromise" at the last minute to the Committee on Legal Affairs, which will be voting on the matter today. The FFII, a German organization for free information infrastructure, has called this proposed amendment a "broad concept of secondary liability" for "intentional" violations of copyright, patent, and trademarks. The FFII says that the proposal goes far beyond the much criticized original proposal made by the EU Commission to criminalize "inciting, aiding and abetting" legal violations.

To see why this legislation should be dropped completely, try replacing "enforcement of intellectual property rights" by "enforcement of intellectual monopolies": doesn't sound so good, eh?

Commons Sense from the EU Parliament

There's a lot wrong with EU Parliament (the small matter of expenses, for a start), but it does seem to have its heart in the right place (next to its wallet, perhaps...).

For example, the spectrum dividend produced by switching terrestial television from analogue to digital means that there's a whole load of yummy electromagnetic spectrum coming up for grabs. Some people (broadcasters etc.) just want to the whole lot auctioned off, but since this spectrum is a commons, and so belongs to you and me, wouldn't it be nice if we got to use through unlicensed frequencies?

And lo and behold, that's just what the EU Parliament is recommending:

The European Parliament,

– having regard to the Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions entitled 'A market-based approach to spectrum management in the European Union',

etc.

etc.

etc.

(Via openspectrum.info.)

EU Parliament Gets a Touch of the Opens

Blige, serious goings-on in the EU parliament. In a text recently adopted, it

18. Takes note of the Commissions' view that the EU must acquire a cost-effective, legally watertight and user-friendly system of intellectual property protection so as to attract technologically advanced companies; considers that the protection of intellectual property must not interfere with open access to public goods and public knowledge; urges the Commission to promote a socially inclusive knowledge-based society by supporting, for example, free and open source software and licensing concepts like the General Public License (GPL) and the Public Documentation Licence (PDL);

This is a gauntlet thrown down to the European Commission, particularly Microsoft's friend, Mr McCreevy. I wonder what will happen next. (Via Heise Online.)

Vote, Vote, Vote for the EU Parliament

After voting out software patents, the EU Parliament has proved its worth again. It asked the European Court of Justice to block an agreement between the European Commission, EU governments and the US whereby European airline passenger data is meekly handed over to the US authorities, and the wise old court has agreed.

This could get very interesting.