Dutch Libraries Go To Court To Make Sure They Can Lend Ebooks

As we've noted before, many publishers have the crazy attitude that ebooks shouldn't be lent by libraries, and that it should be made harder for people to access literature in these places if it's in a digital form. Over in the Netherlands, public libraries have had enough of this, and are taking legal action over the issue, as an article in Future of Copyright reports: 

On Techdirt.

Merck 'Evergreens' Off-Patent Lipitor By Creating Combination Drug With No Additional Benefit

Big pharma often gets a rather rough ride here on Techdirt, what with its attempts to stop governments granting licenses for life-saving and low-cost generics in emerging countries, engaging in legal action to prevent drug safety information being released, and paying kickbacks to doctors. But sometimes you get the impression that drug companies really go out of their way to be disliked, as this great post by Josh Bloom on the Medical Progress Today site, pointed out to us by John Wilbanks, demonstrates

On Techdirt.

Controversial EU Data Protection Regulation May Be Negotiated In Secret In Breach Of Parliamentary Process

Today, the European Parliament held a three-hour long debate on PRISM, Tempora and what the EU response should be. Many wanted TAFTA/TTIP put on hold; others didn't. But one theme cropped up again and again: the need for strong data protection laws that would offer at least some legal protection against massive and unregulated transfer of Europeans' personal data to the US. 

On Techdirt.

Turkish Police Shoot Down Surveillance Drone During Istanbul Protests

As the growing number of Techdirt stories on the subject testify, drones are becoming a more familiar part of modern life. But their presence can add a new element to situations. An obvious example is during demonstrations, where drones can be used to monitor those taking part -- but also the authorities' reaction. As with cases where members of the public have used smartphones to capture police abuse, so drones offer the possibility of revealing questionable police activity that might in the past have gone unrecorded. 

On Techdirt.

Iran's President-Elect: Net Filtering Doesn't Work... Oh, And By The Way, Human Rights Are Universal

In the past, Iran has provided plenty of light relief here on Techdirt, whether because of plans to build its own Internet, or thanks to weird stuff like this. But it looks like those days are over following the election of a surprisingly-moderate President, Hassan Rouhani. Here, for example, are his thoughts on Net filters, as reported by The Guardian: 

On Techdirt.

Bolivian President's Jet Rerouted On Suspicions Snowden Could Be On Board; Multi-Country Outrage Ensues

The Snowden saga continues to deliver surprising twists and turns that may well have important geopolitical knock-on effects. The latest involves the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, whose country is rumored to be willing to offer political asylum to Snowden. Here's what happened, as reported by The Guardian: 

On Techdirt.

Germans Want To Give Snowden A Medal, French Want To Give Him Asylum -- And To Call Off TAFTA/TTIP

Although nobody seems to know what Edward Snowden is up to at the moment, there have been plenty of reactions from others to the earlier revelations about US spying in Europe. Alongside the outrage, there is also a certain gratitude towards Snowden in some quarters for providing information about what has been going on. For example, one of the local wings of the German Pirate Party has suggested that he should be awarded a Federal Order of Merit (original in German.) In France, a surprisingly broad spectrum of politicians are calling for him to be offered political asylum according to this report from France 24 : 

On Techdirt.

EU Open Standards: We Want Actions, Not Words

Open standards has been a recurring theme here on Open Enterprise. It's also been the occasion of one of the most disgraceful U-turns by the European Commission. That took place in the wake of the European Interoperability Framework v1, which called for any claimed patents to be licensed irrevocably on a royalty-free basis. But when EIF v2 came out, we found the following:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Turning the Sow's Ear of Surveillance into a Silk Purse

On Wednesday I wrote about the Houses of Parliament deciding to use cloud computing solutions, despite the fact that we now know - not just surmise - that this is like handing your documents to the NSA. As I noted, that may not be problematic if your documents were going to be in the public domain anyway. But of course, that's only the case for a tiny fraction of most companies' documents. And for those, it is clearly the height of irresponsibility to place them with cloud-based systems that are wide open to demands from the US government for any and all data to be handed over, decrypted where possible.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Clear Thinking Needed in a Cloudy World

Last week I wrote about the perils of using proprietary software, where companies regularly hand over zero-day vulnerabilities to the US authorities who then go on to use them to break into foreign systems (and maybe domestic ones, too, but they're not owning up to that, yet....). Of course, cloud-based solutions are even worse, as we've known for some time. There, you are handing over all your data to the keeping of a company that may be on the receiving end of a secret US government order to pass it on to them - perhaps with necessary encryption keys too.

On Open Enterprise blog.

University Of California's Latest Plan: Privatize Knowledge, Take Out Lots Of Patents -- Profit!

At the end of last year, we wrote about an extraordinary attempt by the University of California (UC) to resuscitate the infamous "Eolas" patents that were thrown out earlier by a jury in East Texas. Clearly, the University of California likes patents, and the way that they can be used to extract money from people with very little effort. In fact, it likes them so much it is trying to privatize research produced by taxpayer-funded laboratories so that even more patents can be taken out on the work, and even more money obtained through licensing them. The background to this new approach, implemented via a new entity provisionally entitled "Newco", is described in a fantastic feature by Darwin BondGraham that appears in East Bay Express: 

On Techdirt.

UK Police Routinely Spy On 9000 'Domestic Terrorists' Very Loosely Defined

In the wake of the news that spies at GCHQ -- the UK equivalent of the NSA -- have been tapping into every fiber optic cable that comes into and goes out of the country, downloading and storing phone calls and Internet traffic for up to 30 days, you might think the British authorities have enough information at their disposal, without needing to turn to other sources. But it seems not, according to the latest revelations in The Guardian: 

On Techdirt.

Saudi Arabia Starts Clamping Down On Encrypted VoIP Services; US And UK Strangely Silent On The Moves

Earlier this month, the messaging service Viber was blocked in Saudi Arabia. This was not entirely unexpected, since the authorities had been trying to come to grips with the service and its ability to encrypt messages for a while according to Viber's founder, as a BBC News report explains: 

On Techdirt. 

Jimmy Wales Thinks Snowden Is 'An Innocent Party' And 'A Hero'; Wants To Know If He Ever Edited Wikipedia

A post on Examiner.com points out that Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder, is interested in Edward Snowden:

On Techdirt. 

Clueless Spanish Politicians Want To Join The Government Malware Club

As we've noted before, when it comes to the Internet, governments around the world have an unfortunate habit of copying each other's worst ideas. Thus the punitive three-strikes approach based on accusations, not proof, was pioneered by France, and then spread to the UK, South Korea, New Zealand and finally the US (where, naturally, it became the bigger and better "six strikes" scheme). France appears to be about to abandon this unworkable and ineffective approach, leaving other countries to deal with all the problems it has since discovered. 

On Techdirt.

SOPA Didn't Die, It Just Emigrated

It's hard to believe that the heady times that saw SOPA's rise and fall are only a year and a half ago. Of course, SOPA didn't die, but was merely "delayed". But if you've ever wondered what happened to it, wonder no more; it emigrated to Russia, as TorrentFreak reports: 

On Techdirt.

Australia Drops Snooping Plans -- For Now

Last year, we reported on Australia's plans to bring in comprehensive snooping on its citizens, and more recently how its spies had realized that encrypted services offered an easy way to avoid much of that surveillance. Reuters is now reporting that Australia has put its spying plans on hold -- for the moment: 

On Techdirt.

How Much Would It Cost To Store All US Phone Calls Made In A Year?

An early criticism of Snowden's leak about NSA spying activity was that the $20 million annual cost for PRISM -- whatever that turns out to be -- was simply too low to be credible. One person who knows more about storage costs than practically anyone -- well, outside the NSA, at least -- is Brewster Kahle, who set up the Internet Archive, essentially a backup for the entire Web plus a wonderfully rich store of many other materials. He's carried out a fascinating back-of-the envelope calculation of how much it would cost annually to record every phone call made in the US and store it in the cloud: 

On Techdirt.

Copyright Exceptions Gaining Ground Around The World -- But Not For The Blind

There finally seems to be a growing recognition in many countries that copyright is not fit for the digital age. In the US, the Copyright Registrar has spoken on this; in the UK, the Hargreaves Review delineated many problems; and more recently, Australia, too, is starting to address the question. As part of the process of implementing Hargreaves' recommendations, the UK government is carrying out a consultation on whether the UK should adopt the full list of copyright exceptions that are laid out in the EU Copyright Directive, which provides the overarching framework for copyright in Europe. It has now published some questionnaires seeking input in this area: 

On Techdirt.

Latest Stupid DRM Idea: Ebooks With Corrupted Texts That Vary By Customer

It is extraordinary how companies have failed to grasp three basic facts about DRM: that DRM only needs to be broken once, and it is broken everywhere, thanks to the Internet; that DRM is always broken at least once; and that once DRM is broken, anything still with that DRM is effectively worth less than zero -- since copies freely available online never have DRM. Despite these inconvenient truths, copyright companies continue to hope that there is some magic technology that will "protect" them from the pirates. Here's the latest forlorn attempt to do that, as reported by paidContent: 

On Techdirt.

Germany's Spies Have NSA Envy: Currently Working To Build Their Own Comprehensive Snooping System

One unfortunate knock-on effect of the revelations about the extent of NSA information gathering seems to be that the spies in other countries are starting to feel under-informed by comparison. Of course, many of them already knew about what was going on: in addition to the British and the Dutch, there are now reports that Germany was also kept informed at the highest levels (original in German.) That would probably explain the revelation by the news magazine Der Spiegel that Germany has been trying to beef up its own snooping capabilities for a while: 

On Techdirt.

Sweden Makes It Illegal To Take Photos In 'Private Environments' Without Permission

Here on Techdirt we've had stories about how the ubiquity of digital cameras is changing the way we look at public events and art. But as has also become clear, the ability to take photos of more or less everything we see brings with it certain problems -- especially if what we see are police. So it was perhaps inevitable that the politicians would start to get involved, in order to "solve" some of those problems. Here's a rather extreme example from Sweden, as reported by TechHive: 

On Techdirt.

Warning Letters Under UK's Three Strikes Plan Unlikely To Be Sent Out Before 2016 -- If Ever

Techdirt readers may recall that over three years ago, the UK's Digital Economy Act was passed in totally disgraceful circumstances. Since then, almost nothing has been heard about it, as British civil servants grapple with the fact that this poorly-drafted law is almost impossible to implement in any sensible way. If you were wondering what is going on behind the scenes, James Firth has put together a fascinating post piecing together the information that he was able to glean. The main point is that the UK's "three-strike" warning letters won't be going out for years: 

On Techdirt.

WIPO: Informal Economy Innovates In The Absence Of Intellectual Monopolies

One of the problems with the debates around copyright and patents is that they too often assume that intellectual monopolies are necessary in order to promote innovation or even basic economic activity. But that overlooks all kinds of domains where that's not true. In the field of technology, free software and the other open movements based on sharing are familiar examples of this kind of thing. Less well known so are the so-called "informal economies" found in many parts of the world. 

On Techdirt.

GCHQ Revelations Destroy Case for Snooper's Charter

So the revelations from Edward Snowden keep on coming, exposing ever-more profound attacks on privacy and democracy in the UK and elsewhere. News that GCHQ is essentially downloading, storing and searching through the entire flow of Internet traffic that comes into and goes out of the UK without any specific warrant to do so is one side of that. That seems to be taking place through an extremely generous interpretation of the out-of-date RIPA law that is supposed to bring some level of accountability to just this sort of thing. The fact that it doesn't shows that we must reform RIPA and make it fit for the Internet age.

On Open Enterprise blog.