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A recurrent theme here on Techdirt is the lack of transparency when
international agreements and treaties are being drawn up. That's
increasingly recognized not just as problematic, but simply unacceptable
in an age when the Internet makes it easy to provide both access to
draft documents and a way for the public to offer comments on them.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of days ago Techdirt wrote about how Murong Xuecun, a
well-known user of the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo with over a million
followers, had his account closed down suddenly. Murong has now written a fine article about the background to what happened:
he points out that the deletion of his account looks to be part of a
larger clampdown on the use of microblogging services by well-known
figures who are critical of the Chinese government. The problem for the
latter is that these services are becoming a real channel for free
expression and less-than-perfectly-censored information:
On
Techdirt.
Although New Zealand's decision not to allow patents for programs "as such"
was welcome, other moves there have been more problematic. For
example, after it became clear that the New Zealand intelligence
service, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), illegally
wiretapped and spied on Kim Dotcom, the New Zealand government
announced that it would change the law so as to make it legal in the
future to snoop
on New Zealanders as well as on foreigners. Judging by a major new
bill that has been unveiled, that was just the start of a thoroughgoing
plan to put in place the capability to spy on every New Zealander's
Internet activity at any moment.
Here's an excellent analysis of what the bill proposes, from Thomas Beagle, co-founder of the New Zealand digital rights organization Tech Liberty:
On
Techdirt.
The UK's new orphan works legislation allows works to be classed as
orphans only after a "diligent search" has been conducted to find the
owner. The fear expressed by some is that this "diligent" search won't
be very diligent, allowing publishers to use materials that aren't
orphans. That's actually wrong
for a number of reasons, as Techdirt explained recently, but the
continuing furor from photographers in particular has been such that the
UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) felt compelled to issue a
document entitled "The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 –Your photos and you" (pdf) explaining how the system would work, and why the fears were unjustified.
On
Techdirt.
If there's one clear trend that has emerged in recent years, it's that
those who download and share unauthorized copies of files the most also
tend to be the most avid purchasers of similar material. This
completely negates the copyright industry's rhetoric that people who
share files are just a bunch of freeloaders, suggesting instead that
it's more a matter of sampling materials before going on to buy. It also
implies that instead of seeking to punish such downloaders, the
copyright companies should actually try to nurture them as potentially
their best customers.
On
Techdirt.
If you wanted an indication of just how much copyright has moved on from
being a dry and boring topic of interest only to a few specialist
lawyers to an exciting area full of surprising twists and turns worthy
of a soap opera, you could do worse than look at what's been happening
in Colombia recently.
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about the growing importance of investor-state dispute resolution
in so-called free trade agreements (FTAs). One of the most troubling
aspects is how potentially it can be used to undo the hard-won gains for
important areas like access to medicines. The US law professor Brook K.
Baker, whose work we discussed last year, has written an excellent exploration of this under-appreciated risk. After an introduction running through the recent wins in the field of access to medicines -- a topic
that we've covered extensively here on Techdirt -- he explains how big
pharma could employ investor-state dispute resolution to thwart these
and similar moves to protect health:
On
Techdirt.
Few patent sagas have been as fraught as New Zealand's attempt to revise its laws to exclude software. Techdirt first wrote about this move in March 2010, and again
in June 2010, when it seemed that lobbyists had convinced the New
Zealand government to reverse its position and allow software patents.
Then, a month after that, word was that software would indeed be unpatentable. Things went quiet for a while, until a new version of the proposed law was unveiled by New Zealand's Commerce Minister Craig Foss, apparently weakening the bill once more:
On
Techdirt.
There's a worrying trend around the world for governments to extend
online surveillance capabilities to encompass all citizens -- often
justified with the usual excuse of combatting terrorism and/or child
pornography. The latest to join this unhappy club is India, which has
put in place what sounds like a massively intrusive system, as this article from The Times of India makes clear:
On
Techdirt.
Nearly three years ago, I wrote an article exploring why at that time
there were no billion-dollar companies (since then, Red Hat has finally
broken through this barrier). Here's the key point:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Last week I reported on the reply I received from Jean Bergevin of the European Commission on the subject of the IPRED consultation,
and my own response to that. I wondered whether I would receive a
reply, suspecting that I might not. I was wrong: not only did a reply
turn up, it turned up almost by return of post. Here's what Mr Bergevin
wrote:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Readers of this blog don't need to be told about Windows' awful
security record, or how, when news outlets talk glibly of "viruses",
they actually nearly always mean Windows malware. But sometimes there
are stories from this weird world that make even seasoned
Windows-watchers like me shake my head in disbelief.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Seeds might seem far from the world of high tech and free software, but they have much in common. Seeds contain DNA, which is a (quaternary) digital code
much like a binary program. Just as there is free software that anyone
may use and share, there are free seeds - those that are part of the
ancient seeds commons, created over thousands of years, available for
use by anyone. And just as free software is threatened by software
patents, so seeds are equally endangered by seed patents.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Remember the bad old days when the UK government forced people to use
Microsoft software in order to interact with it online? Remember how
we thought the UK government had finally moved on, recognising that it
should use truly open standards allowing citizens the freedom to adopt
whatever software they wanted, not least through the fine, open
standards-based Gov.uk site? We were wrong, as Tim Jeffries pointed out on Twitter earlier today.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Back in November 2011, we wrote about the Belgian music royalty
collection agency SABAM's demand for 3.4% of Internet subscriber fees as
"compensation" for online piracy in Belgium. As Tim Cushing explained
back then, this was ridiculous
on just about every level. But SABAM doesn't let little things like
that get in the way of its desperate attempt to avoid moving with the
times and coming up with new business models. So after failing dismally
to convince Europe's highest court that it could force ISPs to spy on their customers, SABAM has now moved on to suing ISPs instead, as TorrentFreak reports:
On
Techdirt.
Here on Techdirt we often talk about the copyright ratchet
-- the fact that for three hundred years changes to copyright have
always been in one direction: longer, wider and stronger. But there's a
group of countries where the copyright ratchet isn't in place yet.
These are the so-called LDCs -- the Least Developed Countries -- where
many of the world's poorest citizens live. That's because the main
Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights,
better known as TRIPS, explicitly allows LDCs a transitional period of ten years,
during which time they are not required to meet all the stringent
requirements laid down there for granting intellectual monopolies.
Moreover, the TRIPS agreement specifies:
On
Techdirt.
Unless we are farmers, we tend to take seeds for granted. But
civilisation is built on seeds: it was the rise of large-scale
agriculture, based in part on the skilful breeding of ever-better seeds,
that eventually allowed towns and then cities to form; and with them,
the trades, arts and sciences that were possible once enough food could
be produced by just a fraction of the population. That makes national
seed policies -- how governments regulate the production and sale of
plant varieties -- a crucial if neglected aspect of our urban lives.
On
Techdirt.
As Africa continues to develop rapidly, Western countries and companies
are increasingly interested in bringing it into existing international
legal and commercial frameworks, but always on terms that maintain their
dominance. One way of doing that is through intellectual monopolies:
last year we wrote about proposals for a Pan-Africa Intellectual
Property Organization (PAIPO), whose benefits for Africa seem dubious.
Meanwhile, here's another plan that is being presented as a vital part
of Africa's modernization process, and yet oddly enough seems to benefit giant Western companies most, as AllAfrica reports:
On
Techdirt.
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