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As readers of this blog well know, copyright reform has been
desperately needed in this country for many years. The earlier Gowers
Review was almost totally ignored by the government that commissioned
it, and there was always the fear that the more recent Hargreaves Review
might suffer the same fate. Miraculously, that seems not to be the
case. Just before Christmas, the UK government published its response
to the consultation on copyright exceptions and clarifying copyright law
with details of how it intends to proceed (.pdf), and they are really pretty good.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last week I wrote a potted history of the defeat of ACTA in
the last year. I mentioned that in the original talk, whose slides I
embedded in the article, I concluded by trying to draw some wider
lessons about fighting attacks on the Internet and broader freedoms.
Here's a summary of what I said.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Back in 2010, Techdirt reported on Turkey's habit of blocking Google
over certain holdings on its various sites. Mostly these were YouTube
videos it took exception to, but other services were banned too.
An earlier case, from 2009, received less attention at the time, but
has now led to a precedent-setting ruling from the European Court of
Human Rights (ECHR) that could have a big impact on future cases in
Europe, and maybe even beyond.
On
Techdirt.
Rather out of the blue, Business Secretary Vince Cable has made a series of proposals affecting patents, copyright and trade marks:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The European Commission has announced that it is withdrawing its referral of ACTA to
the European Court of Justice. If you had forgotten about that
particular detail, you're probably not alone: so much happened with ACTA in such a short space of time during the last year, that it's easy to lose track.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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.
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