Russia Takes SOPA-Like Approach In Encouraging ISPs To Spy On Their Users

Something that's proving popular with politicians running out of ideas for tackling unauthorized sharing of copyright materials online is to make ISPs and Web sites responsible for the actions of their users -- even though nobody would think of doing the same for telephone companies. SOPA was one of the best-known examples of this approach, and now it looks like Russia wants to join the club: 

On Techdirt.

EU Rapporteur Deals Major Blow To ACTA: Recommends Rejection By European Parliament

At the end of a morning of discussions about ACTA organized by the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, the Rapporteur for ACTA, David Martin, has recommended that the European Parliament should reject the treaty, saying: 

On Techdirt.

ACTA Update XIII

What an extraordinary ride ACTA is proving.

When I first started this series of ACTA Updates back in February, I didn't hold out much hope that we would be able to stop it simply grinding through the European approval process. But over the last two months I've detailed some amazing events that have had a huge impact on ACTA's chances of being ratified. And yesterday, those amazing events culminated in the following statement from the European Parliament's rapporteur for ACTA:

On Open Enterprise blog.

As Germany Becomes Europe's East Texas, Microsoft Moves Its Distribution Center

Just as companies often try to file their patent lawsuits in East Texas, so Germany is emerging as a favorite forum for patent litigation in Europe -- and for precisely the same reason: 

On Techdirt.

Open Textbook Startup Sued For Allegedly Copying 'Distinctive Selection, Arrangement, and Presentation' Of Facts From Existing Titles

The Boycott Elsevier movement discussed here on Techdirt several times was born of a frustration at the high prices of academic journals. But another area arguably afflicted even more is that of textbooks for higher education: 

On Techdirt.

Another Billion-Dollar Open Source Company: Instagram

Earlier this week I wrote about the first company based on open source to reach a turnover of one billion dollars. But of course, there are lots of multi-billion dollar turnover companies that are based on open source - Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. - it's just that they don't make money off it directly.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Unhappy With Even Minimal Scrutiny, US Removes Last Pretense Of TPP Transparency

One of the central problems of ACTA has been its lack of transparency. TPP has also been negotiated behind closed doors, but unlike ACTA has permitted at least one small opportunity for public groups to engage with the negotiators through the use of stakeholder forums, where organizations and even individuals were permitted to give short presentations about aspects of TPP. This has allowed points of view other than those of industry lobbyists to be heard by negotiators. 

On Techdirt.

Of Microsoft, Netscape, Patents and Open Standards

I still remember well the day in October 1994 when I downloaded the first beta of Netscape's browser. It was instantly obvious that this was a step beyond anything we'd had until then, and that it was the dawn of a new Internet era.

On Open Enterprise blog.

If Piracy Is So Devastating, Why Are We Seeing An Unprecedented Outpouring Of Creativity?

One of the favorite tropes of the anti-piracy crowd is that all this unauthorized sharing is killing culture, pauperizing artists and generally making the world go to hell in a handbasket. The only pieces of evidence adduced in support of that position are the market reports put together for the copyright industries that (a) say the sky is falling and (b) base that analysis on the industries' own unsubstantiated claims. 

On Techdirt.

Red Hat's Billion Dollars And the Power of Free

Recently, there was some justified excitement that Red Hat had finally done it, and turned in annual sales of over $1 billion. A couple of years ago, I wrote a post here on Computerworld UK wondering why there were no companies based around open source that had managed to achieve such billion-dollar turnovers, and suggested that the key reason was one put forward by Red Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Just Because It's Now Cheaper And Easier To Spy On Everyone All The Time, Doesn't Mean Governments Should Do It

Rick Falkvinge has another of his fascinating posts up on his Web site, but this one's slightly different from his usual insights into the dysfunctional nature of copyright and patents. It concerns some little-known (to me, at least) history of how Sweden went from being a beacon of freedom to a country under comprehensive surveillance. 

On Techdirt.

Where TPP Goes Beyond ACTA -- And How It Shows Us The Future Of IP Enforcement

ACTA and TPP have much in common. That's no coincidence, since they are both born of a common desire to move away from multilateral forums like WIPO that are relatively open to scrutiny, to invitation-only groups negotiating behind closed doors. That lack of transparency has allowed all kinds of extreme measures to be proposed without any countervailing arguments being heard about why they are neither fair nor sensible. 

On Techdirt.

Polish Government Funding 'Full Set Of Educational Materials' Available Under CC-BY

One of the fields that is ripe for disruption by open digital technologies and business models based on abundance is education. That's already starting to happening with growing successes in the areas of open access and free textbooks. Now here's a major win for open educational resources in Poland (via Slashdot): 

On Techdirt.

A Copyright First: Bogus Copyright Takedown Leads To Australian Court Awarding $150k Damages

We're so inured to hearing about unjustified claims of copyright infringement going unpunished that's it's good to come across a case where extensive damages were awarded for the harm caused. It concerns a film that the Australian artist Richard Bell made in New York, with the help of an assistant called Tanya Steele: 

On Techdirt.

What Quilting's Legal Battles Can Teach Us About Copyright

Last year Techdirt wrote about Leah Day, who was trying to introduce a free model to quilting -- apparently a bold thing to do. Sadly, it seems that the ownership mentality is nonetheless spreading in her field, as she reports in this really excellent new blog post entitled "Copyright Terrorism": 

On Techdirt.

German Scriptwriters Attack 'Greens, Pirates, Left-wingers And Internet Community' For Daring To Have Different Views On Copyright

The German series "Tatort" ("Crime Scene") has been running since 1970, and remains one of the most popular programs on German television. Given this venerable position, it's perhaps not completely surprising that its scriptwriters -- 51 of them -- have written an open letter complaining about the supposedly negative attitudes of some groups to copyright (German original). But what is noteworthy is the tone and content of the letter. 

On Techdirt.

Our Imminent Summer of Digital Discontent

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...

Urgent: Defend a Balanced UK Approach to Copyright

Copyright consultations seem to be like buses: you wait for years, then several come at once. In the wake of the Hargreaves report, and the follow-up UK government consultation, we have another one, albeit rather different in emphasis.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Standards Licensing: Apple's Key Evidence

As regular readers know, there is a struggle going on between the free software community that needs open standards to be RF (strictly speaking "restriction-free", but usually called "royalty-free") and traditional companies based on proprietary software that are pushing for FRAND - Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory - not least because it will allow licences like the GNU GPL to be excluded. The argument is that RF means that any claimed patents within a standard must be made available at zero cost - and that, the proponents of FRAND insist, is unworkable, since companies will not be prepared to "sacrifice" their patents in this way.

On Open Enterprise blog.

ACTA Update XI

Although I've not written about ACTA here for a few weeks, things are still bubbling away in Brussels. Here's a good summary of what's going on from La Quadrature du Net, probably the best source of information on ACTA:

On Open Enterprise blog.

If ACTA Is So Great, Where Are All The Supporters Extolling Its Virtues?

One of the striking features of the ACTA debate is the deafening silence from those who are in favor of it. Maybe that's down to the SOPA effect: companies and organizations are frightened of being associated with such an unpopular idea. Of course, it could just be that even its most fervent supporters can't really come up with any plausible justifications for it. That's certainly the impression you get reading a rare attempt to raise the ACTA flag from the Institute for Policy Innovation, entitled "Acting Out on ACTA." 

On Techdirt.

UK Publishers Association Outraged It Wasn't Consulted Ahead Of The Public Over Open Access To Publicly-Funded Research

While the global boycott of Elsevier by academics continues to gain momentum and signatures – at the time of writing, the number is approaching 9000 – there's an open access storm in a teacup brewing in the UK. 

On Techdirt.

Should There Be A Right To Copyright Exceptions?

Last month I wrote about how the Netherlands is looking to introduce new flexibilities into its copyright laws, based on some interesting research on copyright exceptions. There must be something in the air, because a wide range of other groups are contemplating exactly the same approach. 

On Techdirt.

Why is Firefox - and Open Source - a Disaster in China?

Like many people, I've been tracking the steady ascent of Google Chrome - and corresponding decline of Microsoft's Internet Explorer - for some time now. Just recently, yet another milestone has been reached, apparently:

On Open Enterprise blog.

ACTA On Hold, But The Protests Continue In Serbia

One reason the European Commission decided to refer ACTA to the European Court of Justice may have been in the hope that people would simply get bored and move on. It's certainly true that the cities of Europe aren't full of protesters as they were a couple of months ago, but that doesn't mean that everything has died down completely. Here, for example, is one country whose population still has strong feelings on the matter: 

On Techdirt.