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Back in January, I wrote about what I called the "Trans-Atlantic Partnership Agreement", by analogy with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, TPP, whose negotiations have already dragged on for several years. The formal announcement
of what is now variously called the Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement
(TAFTA) or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), took
place just over a month ago, but already Mexico has stated that it wishes to join, and there are rumours Canada might tag along too.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Over the last few years, Techdirt has been reporting on a steady stream
of victories for open access. Along the way publishers have tried various counter-attacks,
which all proved dismal failures. But there are signs that they have
changed tack, and come up with a more subtle -- and increasingly
successful -- approach.
On
Techdirt.
If you were online late last night - and especially if you were on
Twitter - you may have noted an enormous wave of pain and anger sweeping
across the network. Here's what caused it:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Most sane human beings have stopped trying to keep up with the interwined legal actions arising out of the smartphone patent wars
between Apple, Google, Motorola, Nokia, Microsoft and all the rest.
The cases, though, are still grinding through the courts, which
periodically throw out their verdicts. According to Florian Mueller, one such decision in Germany is imminent:
On
Techdirt.
Now that the US and EU have officially announced the start of talks on a new bilateral free trade agreement
-- sorry, a "trade and investment partnership" -- groups in both
regions are trying to work out what this will mean for them and their
constituents. Arguably the most important constituency of all is the
public, and yet it is also the one that until now has been
systematically shut out of previous negotiations for things like ACTA or
TPP. One representative of that huge group -- though not, obviously,
the only one -- is the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), which describes itself as follows:
On
Techdirt.
I've been writing quite a lot about the current Data Protection
regulation that is being considered in the European Parliament. As I've
noted, this has led to an unprecedented level of lobbying from US
companies, who are keen not to have to follow strict EU rules when it
comes to our privacy. So far, I've not singled out any particular
company in this context, but having read somewhat belatedly this post by the privacy expert Simon Davies, I feel a need to talk about one that is clearly right at the heart of this battle: Google.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
There is an extremely dangerous trend to remove proper judicial review
from cases involving alleged copyright infringement. Sometimes that
means "voluntary" actions by ISPs -- the SOPA and ACTA approach.
Sometimes, it means appearances before tribunals by members of the
public without adequate legal representation,
as is happening under New Zealand's "three strikes" law. And sometimes
it might involve a judge, but consist of the latter simply agreeing to
requests from the copyright industry, without anyone challenging the
grounds for doing so.
On
Techdirt.
There have been many posts on Techdirt about the copyright industry's
hatred for new technologies that eventually turned out to be important
sources of additional revenue -- the VCR being perhaps the most famous
example. Here's a splendid column from Adam Turner in the Sydney
Morning Herald about the same thing happening again in Australia.
On
Techdirt.
It began last week, with an article by the Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström, who wrote about a vote that will take place in the European Parliament (possibly tomorrow):
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the core areas that Mozilla is working on is user privacy, and
one important aspect of this is controlling cookies. Most people are
now aware that sites they visit seek to place cookies - small strings of
information - on their systems as a way of tracking when and what they
visit on that site. What many may not know is that so-called
"third-party" cookies are also widely used: these allow people to be
tracked as they move from site to site, and effectively enable a
detailed picture of their use of the Web to be built up.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
In an implicit acknowledgement that the Europe-wide protests against ACTA indicated that there was a problem with copyright in the digital age, the European Commission announced back in December what it called "an orientation debate on content in the digital economy." This is what that meant, apparently:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the richest seams of open data concerns transport. After all, by
their very nature, transport systems generate huge amounts of new data
every day -- times, routes, travel options. Similarly, huge numbers of
people use multiple means of transport, which means there is a big
potential audience for analyses of that data. And it's definitely in
the interest of transport operators to make that information freely
available so that developers can use it in new ways, since that is
likely to make traveling easier, and lead to increased custom.
On
Techdirt.
For a year now, Techdirt has been following the sorry saga of Germany's attempt to make search engines and others pay
for licenses to show even small excerpts from online newspapers. The
main motivation seems to be to take money from Google for being
successful, and to give it to the German publishers that are struggling.
On Techdirt.
As I noted recently in the context of the BBC inexplicably supporting the introduction of DRM into the HTML5 specification,
openness lies at the heart of the Web and the Internet. One of the
problems with true openness is that it has to be at every level: if any
part of a system is closed, it interferes with the openness of the
whole.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
If it is to be true to its name, the World Wide Web ought to reflect the
planet's full cultural and linguistic diversity. Currently, though,
many sites and tools remain optimized for English and its character set,
although that's gradually changing as other countries with different
languages and writing systems come online in greater numbers.
On
Techdirt.
The Internet as a mass medium is still relatively young, so it's no
surprise that its function in society and in our daily lives is still
being defined. One important question concerns the nature of our
actions online: to what extent are they public? Here's one rather
extreme view, expressed by Jürgen Maurer, vice-president of Germany's
Federal Criminal Police Office, as reported by Der Spiegel (original in German):
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt noted last year, France has a regrettable habit of dreaming up really bad ideas
when it comes to the Internet, most famously with the three-strikes
scheme, now known there by the name of the body the oversees it --
Hadopi. Guillaume Champeau points us to a piece in the French newspaper Libération, which contains yet more appalling possibilities (original in French).
On
Techdirt.
Long-time readers will remember the appalling way in which the UK's
Digital Economy Act was brought in - with no research, no debate, and
no democracy. At its heart lies the infamous "three strikes" idea: if
you are alleged - not proved, but merely alleged - to have shared files
online on three occasions you will be subject to some punishment.
Originally that was cutting off your hand, er, your Internet connection,
but as the discussions over implementing this unjust and punitive law
have dragged on, it's become less clear how it will actually work.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
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