So We Won on ACTA Yesterday: Now What?

Well, we did it: ACTA was resoundingly defeated in the European Parliament yesterday by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions. That's largely because so many of us contacted our MEPs, wrote emails and even took to the streets. Leaving aside the victory in itself, that's important too because people across Europe have worked together on a massive scale in the defence of the Internet and its freedom. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Pensioner Could Face Arrest For Atheist Poster

Along with ridiculous libel cases, the UK is also infamous for laws that are designed to stop people hurting the feelings of others. Maybe that's a laudable aim, but the end-result is that they can cast a chill over freedom of speech. Here's a classic case from the English town of Boston in Lincolnshire: 

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ECJ Decision: You *Do* Own Software That You Buy

Although all eyes have been on the European Parliament this week, that doesn't mean things have stopped elsewhere in the EU machine. In particular, the European Court of Justice, the highest in the EU, has just delivered a stunning and really quite unexpected judgment that could have major implications for the digital world.

On Open Enterprise blog.

European Parliament Declares Its Independence From The European Commission With A Massive Rejection Of ACTA. Now What?

In a plenary vote today, the European Parliament has rejected ACTA by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions. That followed a failed attempt by the right-of-center EPP Group to call for a postponement. Although the final result was not totally unexpected, since the signs had been pointing this way for a time, it nonetheless represents a huge victory for campaigners who had more or less given up hope of stopping ACTA in Europe even a few months ago. So the question now becomes: what are the ramifications? 

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ACTA: Last-Minute Appeal to EPP Group

If you watched the stream of the plenary session in the European Parliament yesterday, you will know that what we saw was an incredible parade of politicians from all parties denouncing ACTA - with one exception. The centre-right EPP Group is asking for a decision on ACTA to be postponed until after the European Court of Justice hands down its judgement on the compatibility of the treaty with EU law. That's likely to take a year or two, and amounts to a massive delaying tactic, as I've explained before.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Defeating ACTA: Now or Never

Well, never a dull moment in the world of ACTA. After I wrote yesterday's column summing up what I thought was the final state of play, things got very interesting in Strasbourg. Rumours swirled that the right-of-centre EPP Group would be trying to use the agenda meeting last night to call for ACTA to be postponed. After a flurry of excitement, nothing happened then. But a little later, this tweet was posted on the EPP Group account:

On Open Enterprise blog.

ACTA Supporters In Europe Fighting To The Bitter End

As Techdirt has reported over the last few months, the passage of ACTA through the European Union's approval process has been little short of extraordinary. At the end of last year, ACTA seemed almost certain to be approved without difficulty. Then, inspired by the Internet community's success in stopping SOPA, European citizens woke up to ACTA's problems and took to the streets in huge numbers. 

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ACTA Update XX: The Final Act

So, here we are: the final decisive week that is likely to determine the fate not just of ACTA, but also the course of digital copyright law in the world for the next few years (for the full background to how we got here, and what has happened along the way, see previous ACTA Updates.) That's because ACTA is not a law as such, but a treaty that sets the context for future laws of its signatories. It's why ACTA is so dangerous: it effectively neuters the sovereign power of nations - and hence of their citizens.

On Open Enterprise blog.

James Watson, Co-Discoverer Of DNA's Structure, Says 'Patenting Human Genes Was Lunacy'

Techdirt has been covering the important Myriad Genetics case for a while. Although the CAFC decided that isolated genes could be patented, the Supreme Court has asked the appeals court to review the case in light of the former's rejection of medical diagnostic patents. 

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UK's 3-Strikes Plan Continues To Grind Through The System; Still Not In Force, Still Awful

As Techdirt reported in 2010, the passage of the Digital Economy Act was one of the most disgraceful travesties of the UK parliamentary process in recent times; it was badly drafted, hardly revised and then pushed through with almost no debate in the dying moments of the previous government. Since then, two UK ISPs -- BT and TalkTalk -- have challenged the Act in the courts, but lost earlier this year. 

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How Extending Patent Protection For Antibiotics Creates Perverse Incentives To Render Them Useless

We take antibiotics and their ability to kill practically all bacteria for granted. But scientists are increasingly warning that we may be about to leave what might come to be seen as a golden age for anti-bacterial drugs, and enter a post-antibiotic era. As the World Health Organization’s Director-General said, quoted in an article on the Citizen Vox site: 

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Intellectual Ventures Loses Its Shine: Will Its Business Model Ever Work?

Techdirt has always been sceptical about Nathan Myhrvold's business plan for Intellectual Ventures (IV) -- build up a huge portfolio of patents, simply so that it can then license them to those that will, and sue those that won't. Others, however, have been dazzled by Myhrvold's pedigree as an extremely wealthy ex-Microsoft manager, and by the fact that patents have undeniably become a central concern for the tech industries in recent years, which suggests that there is plenty of money to be made from them. 

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London Police Want To Crowdsource Guilt-Free Surveillance

One of the earliest proposals for mass surveillance was the Panopticon: 

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Stop Software Patents in Europe [Updated]

As I wrote yesterday, one of the most pressing problems the open source community faces in the near future is the Unitary Patent proposal, which is likely to bring in software patents to Europe. Here's the background, and what we can do about it.

On Techdirt.

Student Fined For Providing Free Film And TV Subtitles; Yet Another Business Opportunity Thrown Away By Copyright Industries

Mike recently reminded us that for some people, bizarrely, stopping "piracy" is more important than making money. Here's another example, this time from Norway: 

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EU Parlamentarian Gallo: ACTA Dissent 'A Soft Form Of Terrorism'

Marielle Gallo is probably best known for the Gallo Report, which Techdirt described back in 2010 as a "similarly draconian intellectual property enforcement" to ACTA, with which it has much in common. So it's no surprise that Gallo has been one of the few vocal supporters of ACTA, and it was widely expected that the EU's Legal Affairs (JURI) committee she chairs would support her draft opinion calling for ACTA to be ratified. As we now know, that didn't happen, and JURI formed one of five committees that all recommended that ACTA should be rejected. 

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Greenpeace Parody Site Censored Using Copyright Infringement Claim

One of the the reasons why legislation like SOPA and treaties like ACTA are so dangerous is that their loose definitions allow measures intended to deal with copyright infringement to be used to censor inconvenient opinions. Unfortunately, that's not just a theoretical problem with future legislation, but one that is already happening, as this post from Rick Falkvinge makes clear: 

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Four Big Battles for EU Openness Happening Now

Something seems to be going on in the European Union. Over the next few weeks a range of really important debates and votes are taking place, all connected with openness in some way. Quite why everything is happening at once is not entirely clear - unless politicians are trying to get everything out of the way before their summer hols, perhaps....

On Open Enterprise blog.

EU Commissioner Reveals He Will Simply Ignore Any Rejection Of ACTA By European Parliament Next Week

The day before the EU's International Trade committee (INTA) recommended that the European Parliament should reject ACTA, the EU commissioner with responsibility for the treaty, Karel De Gucht, had given a speech to its members, trying to win them over. Although it was short, it turns out to be highly revealing about the European Commission's future ACTA strategy. Here's what he said: 

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Japan Criminalizes Unauthorized Downloads, Making DVD Backups -- And Maybe Watching YouTube

There's a fairly constant pattern in the world of copyright enforcement. The media companies claim that piracy is "destroying" their industries, although they never offer any independent evidence to back this up. They "demand" that governments "do something" -- by which they mean introduce harsher penalties for unauthorized downloads. Because of the hypnotic effect that musicians and artists seem to have on politicians, governments happily oblige, even though there is no evidence that such laws will help artists. After the laws come in to force, online sharing may dip for a while, but soon returns to previous levels, so the media companies start whining again, and demand yet tougher penalties. 

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Why Basic Company Data Must Be Open

Last year I wrote about the OpenCorporates project, which describes itself as follows:

On Open Enterprise blog.

ACTA Update XIX

Once more, there's good news on the ACTA front. Today, the important European Parliament committee responsible for handling international trade issues, INTA, voted to recommend that the European Parliament reject ACTA when it comes to a plenary vote on 4 July. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Fifth EU Committee Recommends Rejection Of ACTA By European Parliament

Another major milestone has been achieved in the push to get ACTA rejected by the EU: a fifth parliamentary committee has recommended that the European Parliament should refuse to ratify it when it is put to the vote on July 4th, effectively killing it in Europe. The other committees – on legal affairs, civil liberties, industry and international development – recommended rejection a few weeks ago, but today's vote by the international trade committee (INTA) was seen as the most important. 

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Your Genome, Your Data

The computing revolution is not the only one driven by constant scaling of technologies: the field of genomics -- the study of DNA sequences -- has also enjoyed rapid falls in basic costs over the last decade and a half. This means that whereas the first human genome cost around $3 billion to sequence, we are fast approaching the point where it will cost first a few thousand, and then a few hundred dollars to sequence anyone's complete DNA. An interesting post on the Health Affairs Blog points out that neither the law nor society is ready for this. 

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ACTA Update XVIII

On the not-very-scientific basis of several calls to MEPs yesterday, the impression I get is that the right-of-centre ECR group on the INTA committee will be pushing for delay until after the ECR has delivered its judgement. That could be in more than a year's time, and would be a big problem in terms of getting ACTA rejected, since all of the momentum that has built up over the last six months would be lost.

On Open Enterprise blog.