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A little while back we wrote about Nathan Myhrvold's sniffy
comment that if you're not doing anything to help people suffering from
malaria, you have no right to criticize his patent troll operation,
Intellectual Ventures. As we also noted, this argument is rather
undermined by the fact that his research involves such deeply impractical solutions as "photonic fences" and using magnets to make mosquitoes explode.
On
Techdirt.
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson,
is something of an institution in the UK, famous for his blond mop of
hair and outrageous opinions. He's also been a journalist on and off
for two decades, and is close to Rupert Murdoch, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that he's penned a characteristically witty defense of British newspapers. They're currently under threat of having governmental regulation imposed upon them in the wake of the UK's Leveson Inquiry, written in response to years of journalists breaking the law in search of hot stories, as Johnson acknowledges:
On
Techdirt.
Recently, we noted that copyright levies in Europe are looking more and more anachronistic for the high-tech world. It seems that Nigeria has not noticed this, since Afro-IP points out to us that the Copyright (Levy of Materials) Order 2012 has been approved there, which will bring them in for a very wide range of goods:
On
Techdirt.
Mike wrote how both Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee were concerned
about the outcome of the WCIT talks currently taking place in Dubai.
Those aren't the only important voices being raised. Here, for example,
is the Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the Firefox browser and many other free software projects:
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt has reported over the last year, the Indian government is becoming increasingly keen
on using cheaper, generic versions of important drugs to treat
diseases, rather than paying Western-level prices its people can ill
afford. Intellectual Property Watch reports on another instance of the
Indian authorities easing the way for low-cost versions by striking down a patent granted to Roche for the treatment of Hepatitis C. As the article explains, it's notable for at least two reasons:
On
Techdirt.
As I mentioned
back in October, the Joint Parliamentary Committee that has been
considering the Draft Communications Data Bill, aka Snooper's Charter,
seemed to be doing a rather splendid job. It asked witnesses extremely
perceptive questions, and seemed unwilling simply to accept the UK
government's line that we needed these draconian powers because
"terrorism"...
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Today, the European Parliament votes on the Unitary Patent. As I explained
yesterday, what is being presented is something of a botch, lashed up
at the last moment in a desperate attempt to push this through after
years of discussion. This is not the right way to pass good laws, and
certainly not acceptable for something that will have a dramatic effect
on business in Europe.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
I've been writing about the attempt to craft a Unitary Patent in
Europe for some years. The idea in itself is not bad: a patent that is
valid across all of Europe. That would simplify filings and save costs,
both of which are to be welcomed. But the devil is in the details, and
it looks like those details are increasingly devilish.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
A couple of months back, Mike wrote about how Psy's relaxed attitude to people infringing
on his copyright helped turn Gangnam Style into one of the most
successful cultural phenomena in recent years, and that includes
becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube ever
Ah yes, the maximalists will retort, this free-and-easy, laid-back
approach is all very nice, but it doesn't put food on his table, does
it? If you want to make a living from this stuff, you've got to enforce copyright to stop all those freeloaders ruining your business. Well, maybe not:
On
Techdirt.
France's Hadopi graduated response approach, also known as "three
strikes", occupies a special place in the annals of copyright
enforcement. It pioneered the idea of punishing users accused of
sharing unauthorized copies of files, largely thanks to pressure from
the previous French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who seems to have hated
most aspects of this new-fangled Internet thing. Sadly, other
countries took up the idea, including the UK with its awful Digital
Economy Act, New Zealand, Spain and, more recently, the US.
On
Techdirt.
One of the more extraordinary transformations in the last couple of
decades has been copyright's evolution from a rather dry and dusty
subject of interest only to a specialised class of lawyers to something
that affects everyone every second of their lives online. Indeed,
copyright is now arguably among the most important laws around today,
and is having a major impact on a wide range of issues - the defeat of ACTA, nominally a treaty about trade, is perhaps the most dramatic example of this.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
It's fairly widely accepted that the key digital device in the future
will be the mobile phone, not the desktop computer that has had such an
impact on Western society for the last few decades. That's partly a
question of cost -- if devices are to reach even the poorest in emerging
economies, they must be very cheap. But there are also other factors,
such as the mobile phone's small size and portability; its rugged design
and ability to cope with intermittent power supplies; and the built-in
Net connectivity that more or less comes as standard.
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt has run a number of articles about the ITU's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT)
currently taking place in Dubai. One of the concerns is that decisions
taken there may make the Internet less a medium that can be used to
enhance personal freedom than a tool for state surveillance and
oppression.
On
Techdirt.
Last week Techdirt wrote about the perverse
attitude of the UK recording industry, which seems obsessed with
"stamping out piracy" rather than making more money. Here's a story
from TorrentFreak that looks to be another example of attacking first and thinking afterwards:
On
Techdirt.
Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will be well aware
of some of the key problems with copyright in the Internet age. For
example, the desire to stop people sharing unauthorised digital files
online has led to more and more extreme legislation, culminating in the
recent ACTA and TPP.
In fact, it is impossible to stop people sharing such files unless you
institute total surveillance to check on everything that is uploaded and
downloaded. By an interesting coincidence, that is precisely where we
are heading thanks to legislation like the Draft Communications Data Bill...
On
Open Enterprise blog.
A couple of months ago, Ben Zevenbergen explained
how the Dutch Supreme Court was finding it difficult to reconcile
different aspects of Europe's copyright rules. At the heart of the
problem is the copyright levy system, effectively a tax on blank media
that is supposed to compensate copyright holders for a supposed "loss"
from copies made for personal use.
On
Techdirt.
For a while, Techdirt has been tracking Iran's continuing efforts to
throttle its citizens' access to troublesome materials online. These
have included blocking all audio and video files, and even shutting down Gmail, albeit temporarily.
But stopping people accessing sites in this way is not the only approach. Here's another, from a report by Der Spiegel (original in German):
On
Techdirt.
A natural response to the increasingly harsh enforcement of laws
against unauthorized sharing of copyright files is to move to encrypted
connections. It seems like a perfect solution: nobody can eavesdrop,
and so nobody can find out what you are sharing. But as TorrentFreak
reports, a German court has just dealt a blow to this approach.
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt wrote about how the UK's Twitter Joke conviction dragged its slow way through the various appeals before finally being resolved with the defendant's acquittal.
As you will recall, the issue was somebody making an ill-advised joke
about blowing up an airport if he couldn't fly out of it:
On
Techdirt.
As I noted
at the time, perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the Hargreaves
Review of copyright in the digital age was simply the idea that
copyright policy should be based on evidence. Of course, the fact that
until now it has been determined purely by dogma, and drawing on bogus
statistics put out by the copyright industries, is incredibly damning.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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