Making The Most Of File Sharing: Free Market Research & A Captive Target Audience

The demonization of file sharing by copyright maximalists blinds many companies to the fact that it is marketing in its purest form. That's because people naturally only share stuff they think is good, and thus everything on file sharing networks comes with an implicit recommendation from someone. Not only that, but those works that appear on file sharing networks the most are, again by definition, those that are regarded mostly highly by the filesharing public as a whole, many of whom are young people, a key target demographic for most media companies. 

On Techdirt.

EU Surveillance Team: We Need More Surveillance To Justify More Surveillance

Whether or not you believe that CCTV surveillance makes the world a safer place, there's a big problem with deploying it more widely: you still need someone to look at that footage and pick out the things of interest, and it's much harder adding new personnel than adding new cameras. 

On Techdirt.

Is The EU's New Directive On Clinical Trials Moving In The Wrong Direction?

It's a cliché that we live in a world increasingly awash with digital data. Even though it all comes down to 1s and 0s, not all data is equally important or valuable. Data about clinical trials, for example, is literally a matter of life and death, since it is used to determine whether new drugs should be approved and how they should be used. That gives clinical data a critical role in the approval process: results that support the use of a new drug can lead to big profits, while negative results can mean years of expensive research and development have to be discarded. 

On Techdirt.

UN Assault on the Open Internet and Privacy

As you may recall, terrorism was one of the primary justifications for bringing in the disproportionate Draft Communications Data Bill:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Indian Politician Plans To Install Surveillance Cameras In His Ministers' Homes And Offices

Recently, Tim noted that, for some strange reason, politicians don't like having the same level of surveillance applied to them as they wish to inflict on the public. Here's a nice case from the state of Uttar Pradesh in northern India, found via Evgeny Morozov, where politicians aren't being given any choice: 

On Techdirt.

Costa Rican Students Fight For The Right To Photocopy Textbooks

One of the most important pieces of research to emerge last year was "Media Piracy in Emerging Economies". A central theme was that much unauthorized copying around the world is driven by attempts to impose Western-level prices everywhere, resulting in media goods that are simply beyond the reach of most people in countries whose economies are still developing. 

On Techdirt.

Is Amazon Playing Fair?

In the online world, it's hard to remember a time before Amazon. Today, it dominates the ecommerce space, and is rapidly becoming equally dominant in the ebook world. Against that background, a story that broke yesterday is rather worrying.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Amazon Wipes Customer's Account, Locks All Ebooks, Says 'Find A New Retailer' When She Asks Why

Techdirt has been warning people for several years that they don't really own the ebooks they have on their Amazon Kindles. The most famous demonstration of this was the sudden disappearance of ebook versions of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm (you can't make this stuff up.) But that's nothing compared to what an Amazon customer in Norway now claims the company has done: shut down her Amazon account permanently and locked her Kindle -- all without explanation. 

On Techdirt.

30 Years Of The CD, Of Digital Piracy, And Of Music Industry Cluelessness

A post on The Next Web reminds us that the CD is thirty years old this month. As the history there explains, work began back in the 1970s at both Philips and Sony on an optical recording medium for music, which culminated in a joint standard launched in 1982. The key attribute of the compact disc was not so much its small size -- although that was the most obvious difference from earlier vinyl -- but that fact that it stored music in a digital, rather than analog format. 

On Techdirt.

Does CETA Spell ACTA?

Last month I wrote about the "clean and open Internet" consultation being carried out by the European Commission, and pointed out that many of the E-commerce Directive's measures mapped quite neatly onto some of the worst ideas of ACTA. Maybe it won't turn out to be as bad as it looks, but it's hard not to get the impression that the European Commission is determined to push through similar measures, by hook or by crook, not least when there things like this crawl out of the woodwork:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Free Software Foundation Certifies 3D Printer -- And Why That Matters

Last week Mike wrote about a new patent from Intellectual Ventures that seeks to assert ownership of the idea of DRM for 3D printing. The article in Technology Review that Techdirt linked to explains how things would work: 

On Techdirt.

Dutch Propose Powers For Police To Break Into Computers, Install Spyware And Destroy Data -- Anywhere In The World

Techdirt readers with long memories may recall a fantasy proposal from Orrin Hatch that would have seen technological means deployed to destroy the computers of those who downloaded unauthorized copies of files. Of course, the idea was so ridiculous it went nowhere. Now, nine years later, a similar idea has turned up, but with a rather better chance of being implemented, since it comes from a national government: 

On Techdirt.

After India, Now Indonesia Introduces Patent Licenses For Generic Versions Of Drugs

As we noted a couple of weeks ago, when we wrote about India's moves to issue compulsory licences for the production of generic versions of expensive, patented drugs, the big fear for Western pharmaceutical companies was that other countries might follow suit. It looks like that's happening in Indonesia, where the country's president has signed a decree authorizing low-cost versions of key HIV drugs: 

On Techdirt.

Ubuntu Users To Get To Vote With Their Wallets In Support Of New Features

Free software is famously close to its users, drawing on them for warnings about bugs (and sometimes fixes), as well as ideas and suggestions for future developments. But I don't think any project has previously gone so far as to encourage ordinary users to make financial contributions directly in support of new features they want. That's precisely what Canonical, the company that oversees the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, plans to do: 

On Techdirt.

Could Co-operatives Save Newspapers -- And Investigative Journalism?

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that Rupert Murdoch's paywall at the London Times isn't looking like a huge success. That won't come as a surprise to Techdirt readers, but does raise the question: if newspapers can't use paywalls alongside ads to fund journalists, what can they turn to? Here's a revolutionary idea: why not let the people who know and care most about the title -- the readers -- get more closely involved? That's precisely what the Berlin-based newspaper Die Tageszeitung, affectionately known as "Taz", has done. Here's the Guardian's description of how it came about: 

On Techdirt.

GOV.UK "Open" for Business; More to Follow

Back in February I wrote about an exciting project from the Cabinet Office: a complete overhaul of the UK government's "citizen-facing" Web sites. It was exciting in part because it was rather good, which made a nice change for a government computing project, but more particularly because it was open source through and through. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Why This EU Meeting on FRAND in Open Source?

Long-suffering readers may recall that the issue of FRAND licensing in the context of open standards cropped up quite a lot this year. We still don't know what the final outcome of the UK consultation on open standards will be, but whatever happens there, we can be sure that FRAND will remain one of the hot topics.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Bangladesh Seeks To Throttle Independent News Sites And Their Awkward Stories

One of the great things about online news sites is that they are so easy to set up: you don't need a printing press or huge numbers of journalists -- you just start posting interesting stories to the Web and you are away. That is, you do unless you happen to live in Bangladesh, where new regulations will make it much harder to set up news sites, as this story from Access Now explains: 

On Techdirt.

Stop the UK Badger Cull: Letter to My MP

I had been vaguely aware that the proposed cull of badgers in the UK was controversial, but had not fully realised that the evidence against it was so overwhelming.  That was confirmed by this letter in the Observer today, with some of the top scientists in the country coming out against it, and this short video, which usefully explains the issues and why the cull will make things worse.

As a result, I have been moved to send a missive to my MP, using the wonderful WriteToThem service.  Here's what I've written:

I am writing to you to express my deep concern over government plans to cull badgers.

As a Londoner, this is not a topic I normally concern myself with. I naturally have no objection to farmers seeking to minimise losses to their herds from serious diseases such as TB. However, as the letter in today's Observer (at http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2012/oct/14/letters-observer) from 30 leading professors with expertise in this area points out, a badger cull is likely to make the situation worse, not better.

The reasons why are well explained in this video (http://justdosomething.org.uk/badgersmatter), which includes a contribution from Sir David Attenborough among others: shooting badgers will lead to a dispersion of them from their current locations. If any of them are infected with TB, they will carry that with them to new areas. A far better solution would seem to be the use of vaccination of badgers against TB, something that is apparently already efficacious, but which could benefit from funding to refine.

Given the overwhelming – indeed, near-unanimous – view that the badger cull will not only fail to achieve its goals, but will actually exacerbate the situation, I am disturbed that the Government is nonetheless planning to proceed with it. It is crucially important that policy be evidence-based, not the result of pandering to groups that have apparently taken an unscientific view for reasons best known to themselves. I would be grateful if you could convey my concerns to the relevant minister, along with a request that the cull be suspended and more efficient and humane methods deployed instead.

Thank you for your help.

 

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Last Chance: Consultation on Net Neutrality in EU

Back in July, I wrote about a consultation on net neutrality from the EU, entitled On-line public consultation on "specific aspects of transparency, traffic management and switching in an Open Internet". Just to remind you, here's the background:

On Open Enterprise blog.

CryptoParty Like It's 1993

As Techdirt stories regularly report, governments around the world, including those in the West, are greatly increasing their surveillance of the Internet. Alongside a loss of the private sphere, this also represents a clear danger to basic civil liberties. The good news is that we already have the solution: encrypting communications makes it very hard, if not entirely impossible, for others to eavesdrop on our conversations. The bad news is that crypto is largely ignored by the general public, partly because they don't know about it, and partly because even if they do, it seems too much trouble to implement. 

On Techdirt.

UK Continues To Criminalize Bad Taste And Stupidity In Online Postings

In the wake of the Twitter joke trial fiasco, which saw Paul Chambers dragged through the courts for two years before being acquitted, the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions announced that there should be an "informed debate" about the boundaries of free speech for social media. That really can't happen soon enough, as the UK continues to arrest and punish people for the crime of posting stupid and tasteless messages online. Here are some of the latest developments. 

On Techdirt.

Snooper's Charter: 19,000 Emails Against, 0 In Favour

Back in August, I urged people to respond to the consultation on the truly dreadful Draft Communications Bill, aka Snooper's Charter. Obviously, I wasn't alone in doing that: many organisations concerned about the impact on civil liberties in this country have done the same. For example, both 38 Degrees and Open Rights Group (ORG) provided suggested texts and asked people to contact the Joint Parliamentary Committee that has been considering the Bill - and doing rather a good job of it, I must say.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Yes, Network Effects Are a Problem for Open Formats

As we know, lock-in is one of the biggest obstacles to moving from closed, proprietary formats, to open ones. But so far as I know, no one has tried to quantify the extent to which people cling to old formats. That makes the following piece of research useful, at least as a first stab at finding out what is really going on:

On Open Enterprise blog.

The French Pigeons Are Revolting -- And That's Good

One of the reasons the copyright lobby has been able to get so far with Net-hostile legislation like SOPA/PIPA and treaties like ACTA and TPP is that the companies affected adversely -- both big Internet players and smaller startups -- have failed to make their voice heard effectively. That's finally starting to change, as Google ramps up its lobbying efforts, and Net entrepreneurs start to get organised. 

On Techdirt.