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One of the great divides in the digital world is between those who
believe that people who share files online are selfish, thieving pirates
who just want something for nothing, and those who see them simply as
ordinary people who want to swap cool stuff with the world. The first
group views them as a canker eating at the heart of the music industry,
while the second sees them as providing free marketing to the artists
concerned. What evidence we have supports the latter view -- not least because the music industry is thriving, not dying as you might expect if piracy were a problem.
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt often writes about the benefits of openness and sharing.
One area that is increasingly coming to the fore is open data -- for
example, for some time both the US and UK
have had major projects aimed at opening up the stores of data held by
their respective governments, and other countries are rapidly joining
the club. But amidst all the enthusiasm for such projects, it's easy to
get swept away, and to accept the idea of open data uncritically.
That's what makes this fascinating blog post entitled "Seeing Like a
Geek" from Tom Slee so valuable, because he calls out what he sees as a serious problem with open data initiatives:
On
Techdirt.
As expected,
Russia has passed a law that will allow Web sites to be blacklisted,
ostensibly to "protect children". According to this AFP report, the very vague "harmful information" category has been narrowed somewhat, but future threats remain:
On
Techdirt.
A common feature of democracies is that new laws are scrutinized and
debated by representatives of the people before they are passed -- the
hope being that bad proposals can be amended or discarded. Laws giving
governments the power to change other laws with only minimal oversight
are therefore generally regarded as a Bad Thing. But that's exactly what the UK government plans to introduce, as this article on the Out-Law.com site explains:
On
Techdirt.
Music collection societies often figure in Techdirt thanks to their
attempts to wring licensing payments from people on absurd grounds, like
trying to make them pay for playing music to horses, or for singing old folk songs.
But in Europe, there's another issue. Because each country has its
own music collection society, digital music startups wishing to operate
across Europe must negotiate not one, but dozens of separate licenses – a
major obstacle to overcome.
On
Techdirt.
Net neutrality arguments are often couched in rather theoretical
terms, and many people can't really see what all the fuss is about. A
recent decision in South Korea gives a handy example of what the loss of net neutrality means in practice:
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt has noted,
the main threat to artists is not piracy, but obscurity -- the fact
that few know they are creating interesting stuff. As passive consumers
increasingly become creators
themselves, and the competition increases, that's even more of an
issue. For writers, there's a double problem: not only do people need
to hear about a work, they also have to find the time to explore it once
acquired, and that's often a challenge in our over-filled, stressed-out
lives -- unless we're talking about haiku. Here's an unusual approach to encouraging people to find that time to read books:
On
Techdirt.
A few years back, Techdirt noted
that India had 16,000 licensed drug manufacturers in the 1990s, and
became a net exporter of pharmaceutical products. Things changed
somewhat when India joined the WTO, which forced it to recognize
pharmaceutical patents, but more recently it has started moving back
towards generics, notably with the compulsory licensing of a kidney and liver cancer drug that was being sold by Bayer in the country for around $70,000 a year.
On
Techdirt.
The UK government's communications review is likely to have a big
impact on the digital world. As part of that investigation, the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DMCS) is organising five seminars to canvas people's views on various aspects of communications. These are:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
In the arguments over ACTA, one criticism seemed widely accepted:
that it tries to bundle together two quite different challenges --
tackling counterfeit goods, like fake medicines, and dealing with
unauthorized file sharing. One popular suggestion was that ACTA should
be split in two in order to handle those separately – for example, David
Martin, the politician who played a key role in convincing the European
Parliament to reject ACTA this week, supports this approach.
On
Techdirt.
Even in the face of a resounding rejection of ACTA by the European
Parliament last week, the European Commission seems determined to keep
pushing for its eventual adoption. Techdirt noted some ways in which it might try to do that, but an important article by Michael Geist lays out what seems to be an alternative approach that is already close to fruition:
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote
about the danger that the Unitary Patent would usher in software
patents to Europe. The proposal was supposed to be voted upon last week
in the European Parliament's plenary session, but was postponed, thanks to our very own David Cameron.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Normally, we think of the US as the champion of patenting "anything under the sun that is made by man," while the UK is generally more reticent. So it's rather surprising to find the roles reversed in the following story about a new standard for the GPS navigation system:
On
Techdirt.
One of the most important moments in the rise of a radical idea is
when the fightback begins, because it signals an acceptance by the
establishment that the challenger is a real threat. That moment has
certainly arrived for open access, most obviously through moves like the
Research Works Act, which would have cut off open access to research funded by the US government. That attack soon stalled, but the sniping at open access and its underlying model of free distribution has continued.
On
Techdirt.
Orphan works (or maybe that should be "hostage works")
have become a really hot area in the copyright debate. That's because
increasing numbers of people have realized how insane the current
situation is whereby millions of older works, that are out of print and
have no obvious owners, remain locked away because of copyright. This
has led to various proposals around the world to liberate them, while
still protecting the copyright holders if they later appear and assert
ownership.
On
Techdirt.
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.
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:
On
Techdirt.
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.
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?
On
Techdirt.
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.
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.
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.
On
Techdirt.
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.
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.
On
Techdirt.
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.
On
Techdirt.
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