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Net neutrality is one of those areas that most people are vaguely in
favour of, without giving it much thought. Governments take advantage
of this to make sympathetic noises while doing precisely nothing to
preserve it. For example, following a UK consultation on net neutrality two years ago, Ofcom came out with a very wishy-washy statement that basically said we think net neutrality is a jolly good idea but we won't actually do anything to protect it.
On
Computerworld UK.
One of the defining characteristics of the digital world -- and one
of the problems for copyright law, which was conceived in an analog age
-- is the importance of being able to build on the work of others not
just indirectly, but directly, through mashups or the re-use of existing
material. Stig Rudeholm points us to a fascinating feature in the Guardian about "sweded movies":
home-made tributes to Hollywood titles that adopt precisely this
approach of creative re-interpretation. The name apparently comes from
the film "Be Kind Rewind", where DIY imitations of studio favorites are
passed off as Swedish editions.
On
Techdirt.
Last month we wrote about a new copyright law in Japan whose punishments seemed so disproportionate
it was hard to take it seriously. For example, downloading
unauthorized copies or backing up content from a DVD were both subject
to criminal penalties. According to this story from Daily Yomiuri
Online, it looks like it's no joke:
On
Techdirt.
They say that a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has
got its boots on, and the same seems to be true about Internet policy:
the bad ideas spread like wildfire, while the good ones languish in
obscurity. Snooping on the Net activity of an entire population is the
latest example: now Australia wants to join the club that currently
consists of the US and UK, with Canada waiting in the wings. Here's part of the EFF's excellent summary of what the Australian government is proposing:
On
Techdirt.
Recently, Techdirt reported
on the ruling by a German court on the issue of filtering -- whether
Internet sites have a responsibility to block files continually if they
have been notified about infringing materials once, sometimes called
"Notice and Stay Down". The German court basically said they do, but
the highest French court has taken a different view (French original.)
On
Techdirt.
As I and many others noted at the time, the Digital Economy Act was
one of the most disgraceful abuses of the parliamentary process in
recent years. It was a badly-drafted bill, with lots of glaring
problems, but it was pushed through a near-deserted House of Commons in
the dying hours of the previous government. Despite its incorrect
premises, shoddy framing and outright final stupidities, it is still
hauling its unlovely carcass through the implementation process after
several legal challenges failed to put it out of its misery.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Openness is really beginning to sweep through the European Union at
all levels. Yesterday we wrote about the European Commission's
ambitious plans to make the results of publicly-funded research freely
available as open access; now comes news of a major opening up in the world of pharmaceutical data:
On
Techdirt.
I've written elsewhere
about how open access - the idea that academic research paid for by the
public should be freely available online - was directly inspired by open
source. So it's great to see open access making huge strides recently,
including the following:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Yesterday, Techdirt reported
on the UK government's plans to make publicly-funded scientific
research freely available as open access. One concern was that its
approach required funds to be diverted from research to pay for the
article processing charges levied by so-called "gold" open access
titles. One figure being bandied around was about $80 million per year,
but a new report in the Guardian suggests this is a huge over-estimate,
and that the true cost will be more like a fifth of that figure.
On
Techdirt.
There is a natural tendency to concentrate on what is happening
locally, and so most of the stories here on Open Enterprise are about
what's happening in the UK, or developments
that affect it directly. But it's important to remember that open
source is a global development, and that things are bubbling away
everywhere, all the time.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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.
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