skip to main |
skip to sidebar
In yesterday's post
about Microsoft's lobbying of the Cabinet Office against truly open
standards based on RF licensing, I spent some time examining the first
part of a letter sent by the company on 20 May last year. The second
part concentrates on the issue of open standards for document exchange.
This touches on one of the most brutal episodes in recent computing
history - the submission of Microsoft's OOXML file format to ISO for approval.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As Techdirt reported
a couple of years ago, a hard-fought campaign in New Zealand to prevent
software patents being granted there seemed to have paid off, with a Patents Bill explicitly excluding them that came with the following commentary:
On
Techdirt.
In my last post, I wrote
about my Freedom of Information request to find out how Microsoft had
been lobbying against true open standards that mandated RF licensing.
In fact, I made another at the same time, asking a similar question
about the Business Software Alliance's contacts with the Cabinet Office.
There turned out to be only two meetings, and one email, so clearly
the BSA played less of a role than Microsoft in this area.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last week, the EU Rapporteur on ACTA, David Martin, announced he would recommend that the European Parliament reject the treaty. He has now made good on that promise in his report, available in draft form (pdf):
On
Techdirt.
Light Blue Touchpaper is a blog written by researchers in the
Security Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (don't
miss the explanation
of the blog's rather witty name). It's normally full of deep stuff
about computer security and vulnerabilities, and is well worth reading
for that reason.
On
The H Open.
Regular readers may recall that I was not a little taken aback by an astonishing U-turn performed by the Cabinet Office on the matter of open standards. As I pointed out in a follow-up article, this seemed to bear the hallmarks of a Microsoft intervention, but I didn't have any proof of that.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last week we saw the Socialists and Democrats, the second-largest bloc in the European Parliament, turn against
ACTA. Combined with the stated position of the Green party there, that
means ACTA is closer to being thrown out when the vote for ratification
takes place in Brussels this summer.
On
Techdirt.
Here's an interesting development in the legal battle between Microsoft and Motorola in Germany that we discussed recently. It seems that Microsoft is worried that the German court might award Motorola an injunction against it, and so has asked a US judge to stop Motorola from using it in that case -- and he agreed:
On
Techdirt.
As we recently reported,
ACTA has been dealt a serious blow by the EU Rapporteur's
recommendation that the European Parliament should reject the treaty.
In a fascinating leaked document (pdf) obtained by EDRI, it seems that even the G8 countries have accepted that ACTA is probably dead -- and have started working on a successor.
On
Techdirt.
As a way of fighting unauthorized sharing of digital files, DRM is
particularly stupid. It not only doesn't work -- DRM is always broken,
and DRM-less versions quickly produced -- it also makes the official
versions less valuable than the pirated ones, since they are less
convenient to use in multiple ways. As a result, DRM actually makes
piracy more attractive, which is probably why most of the music industry
eventually decided to drop it.
On
Techdirt.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posts
