As you may have noticed, the weather is
rather confused in the UK at the moment – one moment sweltering,
the next freezing. But I predict this summer is certainly going to
be hot, judging at least by what's going on in the world of digital
rights.
First of all, there's ACTA. In a
surprising but welcome
decision,
the INTA committee recommended that ACTA be voted on in the European
Parliament, rather than referred to the European Court of Human
Justice, as the European Commission is doing:
After an eventful process where a minority of pro-ACTA
MEPs used procedural arguments to delay a decision, the EU
Parliament's "International Trade" committee
refused to refer ACTA to the EU Court of Justice. Such a referral
would have delayed for 18 months the final vote on ACTA.
Respecting the original timetable, the rapporteur David
Martin (S&D, UK) will now present
a draft report to his colleagues on April 25th, 2012. This draft
report will form the basis of the INTA committee's final
recommendation to the rest of the Parliament on whether to consent to
ACTA or to reject it.
The INTA committee, as well as the other committees working on
opinion reports, will also resume their works on this illegitimate
agreement.
That means we will need to contact our
MEPs before the vote to make sure they understand why ACTA is a bad
idea and should be rejected in the vote. Once that happens, the
judgment from the ECJ will be irrelevant: ACTA will be rejected by
Europe. And without Europe, ACTA as a whole is dead – hence the
importance of convincing MEPs.
Still on the European front, there is
the imminent
revision of
the “Intellectual Property Rights” Directive (IPRED).
Although it's a little hard to know how the European Commission will
play this in the light of the turbulence around ACTA, there's no
reason to think that it will moderate its plans, which are pretty
bad. Here's La Quadrature du Net's take
on them:
the EU Commission
released a communication
on the digital single market covering most EU policies related to the
Digital Agenda1.
As this document suggests, the Commission is working on combating
illegal gambling websites, which could take the form of censorship
measures such as those implemented in France and other Member
States2.
Hypocritically, and probably to please the banking industry, the
Commission does not even consider attacking illegal businesses'
financial streams, which would be an effective way to tackle them.
Instead, the Commission paves the way to censorship measures at the
core of the network.
In the area of Copyright, the EU Commission sticks to the
dangerous notion of “illegal content”, which doesn't mean
anything by itself, except that the network will be programmed for
enforcement. It is also pushing for extra-judicial “cooperation”
between Internet actors, payment providers and entertainment
industries, mirroring the very controversial Stop Online Piracy Act
(SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), currently discussed in the US
Congress.
Again, just because SOPA and PIPA are on hold does not mean that
there won't be further pushes to get them or something like them
through the US system. Indeed, just recently the US Copyright Czar
(what a ridiculous job title) has released her annual report on
copyright and its enforcement, and from that it's
clear
the US will be pushing for more SOPA-like laws.
Meanwhile,
back in the EU, we have more bad
ideas: making "the production or sale of devices such
as computer programs designed for cyber-attacks, or which find a
computer password by which an information system can be accessed,
would constitute criminal offences."
That's
daft because, of course, many legitimate security tools can be used
to discover computer passwords, so this would instantly criminalise
those. The obvious solution would have been to allow an exemption
for research, but the people in the European Parliament don't seem to
understand what they are doing (just for a change).
Meanwhile,
back in Blighty, we have even more worrying stuff if this report
from James Firth is to be believed – and unfortunately, his sources
are generally pretty good – about the imminent Communications Bill
Green Paper:
I'm
told ISPs would become responsible for deciding what is and what
isn't copyright infringement on their networks and blocking
infringing content without intervention from a court.
Notice
and takedown would be expanded so that a whole website or domain
could be taken down on a mere allegation from rights holders that the
domain was used "substantially" for copyright
infringement.
And search engines would be asked to police
results, maintaining both a blacklist of whole domains which would
never appear in search results and a whitelist of preferred purveyors
of e-entertainment who would always appear at the top of the search
results.
Again,
this is seriously clueless stuff – breaking the Internet search
engines and allowing arbitrary site blocking at the drop of a hat.
It's really extraordinary how Western governments are happy to
introduce levels of censorship today that a decade or so ago would
have been unthinkable.
Finally,
just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, we have total,
police-state
surveillance being planned for the UK:
The
government will be able to monitor the calls, emails, texts and
website visits of everyone in the UK under new legislation set to be
announced soon.
Internet firms will be required to give intelligence agency GCHQ
access to communications on demand, in real time.
The Home Office says the move is key to tackling crime and
terrorism, but civil liberties groups have criticised it.
….
A new law - which may be
announced in the forthcoming Queen's Speech in May - would not allow
GCHQ to access the content of emails, calls or messages without a
warrant.
But it would enable intelligence officers to identify who an
individual or group is in contact with, how often and for how long.
They would also be able to see which websites someone had
visited.
Clearly,
this is extreme stuff: every communication that we make would be
recorded and accessible by the UK's intelligence services. Or
rather, the supposedly intelligent intelligence services, for this
kind of blanket surveillance is born of incompetence and laziness,
the last resort of people unable to do their job under democratic
conditions.
Instead,
they use the usual cover of "terrorism" to justify these
unprecedented measures, which they used before to introduce blanket
CCTVs around our cities. Weren't they supposed to solve the problem?
They didn't, and mass surveillance of communications won't either,
which will then lead to yet more erosion of civil liberties in this
countries. That's why we must stop this rot before it goes any
further.
The
good news is that the widespread outrage that has greeted this
extreme proposal seems to have caused the coalition to pause in its
plans, if only to regroup, with some mixed signals emerging about
whether there will be a consultation before bringing them back. We
need to be prepared to make cogent submissions to that if it happens,
and to fight for it if it doesn't.
So,
it's looking like it's going to be a long, very hot summer. Get
those knotted handkerchiefs ready...
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