Public Well-Being Must Be 'Primary Measurement' Of US-EU Trade Agreement

Now that the US and EU have officially announced the start of talks on a new bilateral free trade agreement -- sorry, a "trade and investment partnership" -- groups in both regions are trying to work out what this will mean for them and their constituents. Arguably the most important constituency of all is the public, and yet it is also the one that until now has been systematically shut out of previous negotiations for things like ACTA or TPP. One representative of that huge group -- though not, obviously, the only one -- is the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), which describes itself as follows: 

On Techdirt.

EU Officials Propose Internet Cops On Patrol, No Anonymity & No Obscure Languages (Because Terrorism!)

Back in February we wrote about the ominously-named "Clean IT" project in Europe, designed to combat the use of the Internet by terrorists. At that time, we suspected that this would produce some seriously bad ideas, but a leaked document obtained by EDRI shows that these are actually much worse than feared (pdf), amounting to a system of continuous surveillance, extrajudicial removal of content and some new proposals that can only be described as deranged. 

On Techdirt.

ACTA Update II

Although ACTA is billed as a global treaty, there are only two participants that really matter: the US and the European Union. If either of those dropped out, it would be completely ineffectual. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

ACTA as the (Fool's) "Gold Standard"

I've noted before that at the heart of the ACTA negotiations there is a con-trick being played upon the world: insofar as the mighty ones deign to pass down any crumbs of information to us little people, it is framed in terms of the dangers of counterfeit medicines and the like, and how we are being "protected". But, then, strangely, those counterfeit medicines morph into digital copies of songs - where there is obviously no danger whatsoever - but the same extreme measures are called for.

Unfortunately, the European Union has now joined in the parroting this lie, and is now pushing even harder for ACTA to be implemented:

The European Union appears to be preparing for adoption of the “gold standard” of enforcement, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), as intellectual property law expert Annette Kur from the Max Planck Institute of Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law said it is now called.

At a conference of the Swedish EU Presidency on “Enforcement of Intellectual Property with a Special Focus on Trademarks and Patents” on 15-16 December in Stockholm, representatives from EU bodies, member states and industry supported a quick enforcement of ACTA, according to participants. A representative of the Justice, Freedom and Security Directorate General of the European Commission, presented a plan for a quick restart of a legislative process in the EU to harmonise criminal law sanctions in the Community.

Worryingly:

Only two members of Parliament attended the conference in Stockholm, which despite its high-level panels was not much publicised by the Swedish presidency. Not even an agenda had been published beforehand

That is, the inner circle of the EU, represented by the EU Presidency, was clearly trying to minimise scrutiny by the European Parliament, which has historically taken a more balanced view of intellectual monopolies and their enforcement. That matters, because:

Under the Lisbon Treaty, the European Parliament would be kept informed of the negotiation process in a manner similar to the Council, a Commission expert said. Furthermore, the ACTA text would be approved both by the Parliament and the Council.

In other words, the European Parliament now has powers that allow it to block things like ACTA, should it so desire. That's obviously a problem for those European politicians used to getting their way without such tiresome democratic obstacles.

Despite this shameful attempt to keep everything behind closed doors, the presentations show that even among those with access to the inner circle there are doubts about ACTA's "gold standard". Here's what the academic Annette Kur said in her presentation [.pdf]:

Using the public concern about serious crimes like fabrication of fake and noxious medicaments as an argument pushing for stronger legislation on IP infringement in general is inappropriate and dangerous

It is dangerous because it obscures the fact that to combat risks for public health is not primarily an IP issue

It is inappropriate because it will typically tend to encourage imbalanced legislation

Similarly Kostas Rossoglou from BEUC, the European Consumers’ Organisation, was deeply worried by the following aspects [.pdf]:

Counterfeiting used as a general term to describe all IPR Infringements and beyond!!!

Broad scope of IPRED Directive – all IPR infringements are presumed to be equally serious!!!

No distinction between commercial piracy and unauthorised use of copyright-protected content by individuals

No clear definition of the notion of “commercial scale”

Things are moving fast on the ACTA front in Europe, with a clear attempt to steamroller this through without scrutiny. This makes it even more vital that we call out those European politicians who try to justify their actions by equating counterfeiting and copyright infringement, and that we continue to demand a more reasoned and balanced approach that takes into account end-users as well as the holders of intellectual monopolies.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

The Pain in Spain Falls Mainly in the Plan

in January 2010, Spain will take over the Presidency of the European Community. Spanish Government has already announced that one of their flagships will be reinforcing the control of the Internet and criminalizing the sharing culture in the digital environment. The consequences of those decisions will be noticed in the rest of the world.

This is the first I've heard of this: bad news if true. Anyone have any more details?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter and identi.ca.

"Written Declaration" on Open Source in the EU

I've written before how worthwhile it is contacting your MEPs about open source and related matters. Well, here's another opportunity. Some enlightened MEPs have crafted “Written Declaration 0046/2008” urging the European Union to step up its support of free software....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft, Browsers and Bundling

It's déjà vu all over again:

Opera Software has filed an antitrust suit against Microsoft in the European Union, accusing it of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer web browser to Windows.

The complaint, which was filed by the Norwegian firm with the European Commission yesterday, says Microsoft is abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows, and hindering interoperability by not following accepted standards with IE.

Opera is asking the Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to force Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows, or include other browsers as a standard part of its operating system. It also wants it to require Microsoft to adhere to industry standards with its Web browser.

It didn't do any good last time, but this is the EU rather than the US, so it will be interesting compare and contrast the outcomes. Still, I have to say that the real solution is not to file this kind of anti-trust suit, but to deploy Firefox. Obviously, that's not an option for Opera, which may explain why they've taken this route.

Copying Patent Stupidity

I thought patents were supposed to stop copying, and yet here we have the European Union trying to copy an American idea that has led almost total meltdown of the US patent system:

The core of the proposal is the creation of an European Judge Academy and a specialized Patent Court under the pillar of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Brigitte Zypries, the German minister of Justice, wants this court not to be lead by regularly appointed judges, but by so-called technical experts. She promises better examination of the technical substance of the patents in corresponding processes. These technical experts are basically just another name for Patent Agents who have passed the Judge Academy.

Essentially, this makes the same people who decide what patents should be granted the ones who decide whether that was the correct decision. Oh yeah, that's a good idea.

Communia Communes with the Commons

Hopeful sign, here:

The COMMUNIA Thematic Network wants to place itself as the European point of reference for theoretical analysis and strategic policy discussion of existing and emerging issues to the public domain in the digital environment - as well as related topics including, but not limited, alternative forms of licensing for creative material; open access to scientific publications and research results; management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works). The network will cover the whole geographical territory of the European Union as well as neighbouring and accessing countries; it will also build strategic relationships with third countries such as the United States, Brazil, etc, where similar policy discussion on the above topics ongoing.

The COMMUNIA project will base its 3-years long activity on a tight schedule of thematic workshops and conference (respectively, 3 and 1 per year) with the goal to maintain a strong link between all the participants and use face-to-face meetings as a source of material for the analytical and practical work of the project, including the production of a book; an academic journal; a "best practices" guide for European research and reference centres on the topics covered by COMMUNIA; a final strategic report containing policy guidelines that will help all the stakeholders - public and private, from the local to the European level - tacking the issues that the existence of a digital public domain have raised and will undoubtedly continue to raise.

The price? A million European bendy ones - and cheap at the price. (Via Creative Commons.)

Of Open and Closed Geography

Talking of the price we pay for idiotically closed geographical data:

The United States has benefitted in many ways from having public data sets that are freely used by scholars, commercial firms, consultants, and the public. An example of this is the TIGER system (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger/) Many countries do not, and one British geospatial expert estimated that the closed nature of their system has cost them one billion pounds in lost business.

(Via Open Access News.)

A Public Enquiry into the Public Domain

The public domain is a vastly underappreciated resource - which probably explains why there have been so many successful assaults on it in recent years through copyright, patent and trademark extensions. But now, it seems, people are starting to wake up to its central importance for the digital world:

The new tools of the information society make that public domain material has a considerable potential for re-use - by citizens or for new creative expressions (e.g. documentaries, services for tourism, learning material). It contains published works, such as literary or artistic works, music and audiovisual material for which copyright has expired, material that has been assigned to the public domain by the right holders or by law, mathematical methods, algorithms, methods of presenting information and raw data, such as facts and numbers. A rich public domain has, logically, the potential to stimulate the further development of the information society. It would provide creators – e.g. documentary makers, musicians, multimedia producers, but also schoolchildren doing a Web project – with raw material that they can build on and experiment with, without high transaction or other costs. This is particularly important in the digital context, where the integration of existing material has become much easier.

Although there is some evidence of its importance, there has been no systematic attempt to map or measure its social and economic impact. This is a problem when addressing policy issues that build on public domain material (e.g. digital libraries) or that have an impact on the public domain (e.g. discussions on intellectual property instruments) in the digital age.

The European Union aims to remedy this lack with a study:

Call for tender: "Assessment of the Economic and Social impact of the Public Domain in the Information Society" was published today in the Supplement to the Official Journal of the European Union 2007/S 151-187363. The envisaged purpose of the assessment is to analyse the economic and social impact of the public domain and to gauge its potential to contribute for the benefit of the citizens and the economy.

OA vs. Political and Selective Use of Data

Here's a great - and sadly necessary - piece of analysis:

Throughout the first half of 2007, the White House has falsely claimed that the United States is doing better than Europe in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This claim was officially made by the White House on February 7 and has been repeated in various forms by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, Council on Environmental Quality Chairman James Connaughton, and Science Advisor to the President John Marburger, most recently on May 31, 2007.1 The White House is misusing science and data to make this claim, as the Pacific Institute first pointed out on March 8.2 The White House can only back up this claim by looking at a single greenhouse gas over a narrow timeline. Looking at the full range of gases over a longer period, the conclusion reverses completely: the European Union is curbing greenhouse gas emissions more aggressively and successfully than the United States.

And why can they say that? Because of open access to data: the antidote to the political and selective use of data is more data. It's no coincidence that the source of much of that data in the US, the EPA, is effectively being dismantled, and its hitherto open data made effectively inaccessible so that it can't be used in precisely this way. (Via Slashdot.)

EU in SL?

Apparently:

The European Union is looking into entering the virtual world and opening up an office in Second Life - an increasingly popular internet-based virtual world - which the Swedish government and the French presidential candidates have already entered.

Some would say the European Union's grasp of reality is already pretty tenuous.... (Via Bob Sutor's Open Blog.)

Conservation Commons

A little while back I was urging you to sign a petition calling for open access in the European Union (you did sign, didn't you?). Now here's another worthy cause, asking for open access to environmental information - the ultimate, double commons:

Principles of the Conservation Commons

Open Access: The Conservation Commons promotes free and open access to data, information and knowledge for all conservation purposes.

Mutual Benefit: The Conservation Commons welcomes and encourages participants to both use these resources and to contribute data, information and knowledge.

Rights and Responsibilities: Contributors to the Conservation Commons have full right to attribution for any uses of their data, information, or knowledge, and the right to ensure that the original integrity of their contribution to the Commons is preserved. Users of the Conservation Commons are expected to comply, in good faith, with terms of uses specified by contributors.

You can sign up online. See you there. (Via Open Access News.)

Getting it Right on Copyright in Europe

The European Union is commissioning some seriously serious research these days. Yesterday I wrote about the impressively named and indeed impressive "Study on the Economic impact of open source software on innovation and the competitiveness of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector in the EU"; and now here we have one entitled "The Recasting of Copyright & Related Rights for the Knowledge Economy".

I can't pretend to have read all 305 pages of it, but I did spot a couple of sections in the Executive Summary that suggests it has its heart (and head) in the right place:

Holders of neighbouring rights in performances and phonograms have expressed concern that the existing term of protection of 50 years puts them and the European creative industries, in particular the music industry, at a disadvantage, as compared to the longer protection provided for in the United States. Chapter 3 examines these concerns, first by describing and comparing the terms in the EU in the light of the existing international framework and existing terms in countries outside the EU, secondly by examining the rationales underlying related (neighbouring) rights protection and finally by applying economic analysis.

The authors of this study are not convinced by the arguments made in favour of a term extension. The term of protection currently laid down in the Term Directive (50 years from fixation or other triggering event) is already well above the minimum standard of the Rome Convention (20 years), and substantially longer than the terms that previously existed in many Member States. Stakeholders have based their claim mainly on a comparison with the law of the United States, where sound recordings are protected under copyright law for exceptionally long terms (life plus 70 years or, in case of works for hire, 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation). Perceived from an international perspective the American terms are anomalous and cannot serve as a legal justification for extending the terms of related rights in the EU.

This too was perceptive:

An assessment of the acceptance of copyright by the general public is more difficult to make. For this purpose empirical data on p2p file sharing and software sharing were analysed as ‘indicators by proxy’. These surveys make clear that unauthorised use and distribution is the norm for approximately 50 per cent of the populations concerned. However, a much larger share of the European public does recognise the equitability of and the need for copyright protection.

However, in such circles as student communities as well as the ‘virtual communities’ that are p2p networks, the prevailing ethical norm is not so much one of complying with copyright, but rather one of sharing. It was furthermore found that consumer behaviour is also informed by a weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of file sharing versus legally purchasing copies. If a commercial content provider offers the consumer a ‘bad bargain’ in terms of limited availability, high prices or restrictive use conditions (e.g. portability), then the consumer is not likely to find it unethical to opt for p2p file sharing instead.

Inspired or Not?

This sounds good news:

The European Parliament and Council reached agreement last night on the contents of the proposed INSPIRE Directive, which aims to harmonise spatial information across Europe.

Key points resolved during the final stages of the discussions between the institutions included the principles according to which citizens should be allowed to examine the official maps and other spatial data covered by the directive, and rules for granting authorities access to data held by other authorities.

...

Data search services designed for the public will generally be free of charge, although the directive allows fees to be charged for access to data that has to be updated frequently, such as weather reports.

However, the cynic in me suggests that the devil is in the details. Anybody know?

Update: Michael Cross of the Guardian does: the answer is "not inspired". We've been stitched up by the Ordnance Survey, invoking that perennial favourite, "reasons of national security" for withholding information - just like that nice Mr Bush does. Ever heard of Google Earth or Google Maps, which already give all this information?

EU: Not at All Patent to Me...

Well, I still don't really know what's going on as far as patents in Europe are concerned. But the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), an organisation whose judgement I generally trust in these matters, seems happy enough with the latest vote in the European Parliament:

"We're 80% happy with the result" comments Jonas Maebe, FFII board member. "The main unfortunate artefact left in the adopted resolution is the fact that it promotes accession of the EU to the European Patent Convention, which would delegate most patent-related responsibilities to the civil servants of the Commission and member states. Overall our main concerns are however addressed and we would like to congratulate the many MEPs and assistants who very worked very hard for this result."

Why Microsoft Got Thwacked

If you were wondering what exactly the sticking point was that led to Microsoft getting thumped by the European Union, here's a helpful press release from the Free Software Foundation Europe. The central problem is the company's refusal to make documentation available that would allow GNU/Linux to interoperate perfectly with Windows, thanks to the Samba free software project:

"Microsoft is still as far from allowing competition as it was on the day of the original Commission ruling in 2004. All proposals made by Microsoft were deliberately exclusive of Samba, the major remaining competitor. In that light, the fines do not seem to come early, and they do not seem high," comments Carlo Piana, Milano based lawyer of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) regarding the decision of the European Commission to fine Microsoft 1.5 million Euro per day retroactively from 16. December 2005, totalling 280.5 million Euro. Should Microsoft not come into compliance until the end of July 2006, the daily fines could be doubled.

These fines are a reaction to Microsofts continued lack of compliance with the European Commission decision to make interoperability information available to competitors as a necessary precondition to allow fair competition.

Microsoft's refusal to comply - and its willingness to incur fines amounting to hundreds of millions of Euros - is a measure of just how worried it is about Samba in particular, and open source in general.

The release also points out how risible are Microsoft's claims that it cannot easily supply the requested information:

"If we are to believe Microsofts numbers, it appears that 120.000 person days are not enough to document its own software. This is a task that good software developers do during the development of software, and a hallmark of bad engineering," comments Georg Greve, president of the FSFE. "For users, this should be a shock: Microsoft apparently does not know the software that controls 95% of all desktop computers on this planet. Imagine General Motors releasing a press statement to the extent that even though they had 300 of their best engineers work on this for two years, they cannot provide specifications for the cars they built."