skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Not content with giving the world the "three strikes" approach to
copyright enforcement, France has recently shown signs of wanting to
undermine one of the Internet's foundations: net neutrality. This has
come about as a consequence of the French ISP Free's decision to block
ads on its service. As Mike noted,
this was essentially an attempt to persuade Google to pay the ISP an
extra fee to carry its traffic, even though Free's customers already do
that. That was resolved, at least for the moment, when France's Digital Economy minister Fleur Pellerin stepped in and persuaded Free to restore the ads.
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt has been reporting, the idea of providing open access to
publicly-funded research is steadily gaining ground. One of the key
moments occurred almost exactly a year ago, when the British
mathematician Tim Gowers announced that he would no longer have anything
to do with the major academic publisher Elsevier. This then turned
into a full-scale boycott: today, over 13,000 academics have pledged not to work with the company.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out
how a decision in Norway involving cash registers emphasised one of the
advantages of open source - its natural auditability. Here's another
interesting situation that points out a further reason for choosing
openness.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the striking features of the drug world is how pharma
companies become noticeably more inventive immediately before their
patents are due to run out and their drugs are about to enter the public
domain. That's because they need to find a way to differentiate
themselves from the generic manufacturers that are then able to offer
the same medicines for often vastly lower prices.
On
Techdirt.
Back in February last year, Techdirt wrote about the rather pathetic attempts
of the Portuguese Society of Authors (SPA) to drum up some support
among its members for a new copyright levy on storage devices in the
face of a public outcry at the extra costs this would impose on consumer
and professional products. This was a dismal failure, and so it's
probably no surprise that the Portuguese government didn't move forward
with the original plans.
On
Techdirt.
I have a lot of time for Neelie Kroes,
Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for the
Digital Agenda. She's easily the most tech-savvy of the European
Commissioners - although cynics would point out that's setting a low
bar. Sometimes, she's downright radical, as in this speech about copyright, delivered back in 2011:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
There are so many parts to the institutions running the European
Union that it's easy to lose sight of them all and their varied
activities. For example, one of the lesser-known European Parliament
bodies is the Directorate-General for Internal Policies. You might
expect the studies that it commissions to be deadly dull, but some turn
out to be not just highly interesting but hugely important.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Smartphones have some big advantages: they offer considerable
computing power in a highly-portable form, and are available at prices
that allow a broad spectrum of users to get online easily. But as we reported
last year, there's a big downside, too, one that's all-the-more
dangerous for being invisible to most people: overblocking of sites
caused by opt-out "child protection filters" applied by some mobile
operators to their Internet feed.
On
Techdirt.
As you may have noticed, this weekend the online world has been
filled with news of and responses to the suicide of the young American
activist Aaron Swartz. Many excellent personal tributes have been written
about the man and his achievements, but here I want to concentrate on
the just one aspect: the incident that led to his arrest and probably to
his suicide too. Here's how Techdirt explained the situation:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The Norwegian Ministry of Finance seems to be taking a bit of stick
at the moment. It wants all the existing cash registers in the country
thrown out and replaced with new ones, as the Norwegian site E24 reports (via Thomas Steen and Google Translate)
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As happened for last year, 2013 will doubtless see plenty of battles
in the domains of open standards, copyright and software patents, but
there will also be a new theme: data protection. That's a consequence
of an announcement made by the European Commission almost exactly a year ago:
On
Open Enterprise.
One of the themes of this blog has been the wider influence of open
source. Everyone knows about open content projects like Wikipedia, but
one open endeavour that still hasn't made the big breakthrough into the
public's consciousness is OpenStreetMap. Here's how it describes itself:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Back in June last year, Techdirt reported on the warning from the
World Health Organization's Director-General that we risked entering a "post-antibiotic era".
That was in part because the current patent system was not encouraging
the right kind of research by pharma companies in order to develop the
new antibiotics that we desperately need.
On
Techdirt.
One of the extraordinary aspects of the "three strikes" approach to
copyright enforcement is its blind vindictiveness. After three or so
alleged acts of infringing on copyright, it's not one individual that's
punished, but the entire household that depends on the family Internet
connection in question, irrespective of the personal situation of those
affected. This kind of collective punishment is something that is
regarded as abhorrent in other contexts, but the power of the copyright
industries is such that several governments around the world followed
the French lead and introduced precisely this kind of scheme, and to
hell with the damage it might cause to innocent and vulnerable people
caught up in it.
Techdirt.
Even against a background of repeated attempts to censor the Net,
it's still possible to become a little complacent about some of the
actions being taken by the copyright industries. For example, many
people probably feel that blocking a site like The Pirate Bay isn't
really a problem because, after all, it's just one site, right?
On
Techdirt.
As we know, the Internet works by breaking digital information up
into IP packets which are then routed independently over the network,
and then re-assembled at their destination. Anything made up of 0s and
1s can be sent anywhere with an Internet connection in this way, but
that isn't much good for physical objects.
On
Techdirt.
Daft trademarking stories are common enough, but it's always fun to come across new variations on the theme. Netzpolitik points us to this story from Denmark, where a Spanish-owned property site called HomelifeSpain.com ran into trouble because the word "home" was trademarked in Denmark by the Danish property site home.dk.
This resulted in the rather incredible remedy of the website itself
being banned entirely. As Netzpolitik notes, this is classic function
creep: such web blocks were introduced to fight -- you guessed it --
child pornography, and yet here they are being applied in the rather
less serious matter of trademark infringement.
On
Techdirt.
Posts
