Right2Remix: A Campaign For European Copyright Reform

Back in February we reported on a welcome move by the Dutch government to modify its copyright law so that creative remixes are permitted. A new initiative called right2remix.org wants to make that a Europe-wide change: 

On Techdirt.

Desperate To Sew Up TPP Negotiations At Any Cost, Politicians Agree All Future Meetings Will Be Completely Secret

We've been reporting for several years about the extraordinary levels of secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations, where little information was released about what was going on, and there were few opportunities for representatives of civic and other groups to meet with negotiators to present their point of view. More recently, there have been some indications that this lack of transparency is fuelling increasing discontent among some of the participating nations. 

On Techdirt.

Kim Dotcom Forming New Political Party In New Zealand

Whatever your views about Kim Dotcom, you have to admire his dogged fight against extradition from New Zealand, not least because it has revealed some serious abuses of power against dozens of people. Now it seems he is taking things a stage further, if this recent tweet is any indication: 

On Techdirt.

UK Record Companies Want To Bring In 'Three Strikes' Using A 'Voluntary Code' For Punishing Alleged Illegal File Sharers

As we reported a few months back, the UK's misbegotten Digital Economy Act continues to go nowhere fast, with warning letters for alleged illegal filesharing unlikely to go out until 2016, if ever. As you can imagine, the UK recording and film industries aren't exactly overjoyed by this prospect, and have come up with Plan B, as reported by The Guardian: 

On Techdirt.

The Joy Of Monopolies: Orphan Drug Price Increasing By Nearly 40% Each Year

A couple of years ago, Techdirt carried an article by Andy Kessler about the difference between entrepreneurs who create value, and those who lock it up. The former tend to drive prices down constantly, innovating all the while in order to make a profit; the latter, by contrast, typically enjoy monopolies that allow them to push up prices without offering anything more in return. 

On Techdirt.

The Deeper Meaning Of Miranda's Detention And The Destruction Of The Guardian's Hard Drives

As many have already observed, the detention of David Miranda comes across as an act of blatant intimidation, as does the farcical destruction of the Guardian's hard drives. But something doesn't ring true about these episodes: spooks may be cynical and ruthless, but they are not generally clueless idiots. 

On Techdirt.

Net Neutrality under Threat in Europe - Unnecessarily

As long-suffering readers of this column will know, I've been following for a while the winding road leading to the European Commission's proposals regarding net neutrality in Europe. Along the way, there have been many twists and turns, with hints of first one direction, then another. But today, the Commission has finally released its plans - not just for this area, but for the whole telecoms market in Europe:

On Open Enterprise blog.

NSA's Crypto Betrayal: Good News for Open Source?

Revelations from documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that GCHQ essentially downloads the entire Internet as it enters and leaves the UK, and stores big chunks of it, was bad enough. But last week we learned that the NSA has intentionally weakened just about every aspect of online encryption:

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Gov: Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger...Opener.

One of the recurrent themes on this blog has been the UK government's use - or failure to use - open source and open data. To be fair, on the open data side, things are going pretty well. Open source was previously conspicuous by its absence, and that is finally changing, albeit rather slower than many of us would wish.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft + Nokia = Dog

When Stephen Elop moved from Microsoft to run Nokia, many saw this as part of a cunning plan to prepare the latter for purchase by the former. There's no real evidence for that, although soon after joining, Nokia did place the Windows Phone platform at the heart of its future strategy, despite the many drawbacks of doing so, effectively betting the company on the success of Windows as the third mobile platform alongside Android and Apple.

On Open Enterprise blog.

How Network Neutrality Promotes Innovation

As I've pointed out many times in previous posts, one of the key benefits of mandating network neutrality is that it promotes innovation by creating a level playing field. Such statements are all very well, but where's the evidence? An important new study entitled "The innovation-enhancing effects of network neutrality" [.pdf], commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs from the independent SEO Economic Research unit provides perhaps the best survey and analysis of why indeed network neutrality is so beneficial:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Linus on Linux, 22 - and 5 - Years Later

In case you weren't aware, Linus is on Google+. Here's a recent post:

On Open Enterprise blog.

A New Chapter for Open Source?

Back in April, I wrote about in interesting new venture from the Linux Foundation called the OpenDaylight Project. As I pointed out then, what made this significant was that it showed how the Linux Foundation was beginning to move beyond its historical origins of supporting the Linux ecosystem, towards the broader application of the important lessons it has learnt about open source collaboration in the process. Following that step, we now have this:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Windows 8+TPM: Germany Warns of 'Loss of Control'

Last year, I wrote about some serious issues with Microsoft's Secure Boot Technology in Windows 8. It seems that the German government has started to wake up to problems with Windows 8, as this headline in Die Zeit attests:

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Canary in the Coal Mine: Groklaw Shuts Down

If you follow me on Twitter or elsewhere, you'll have noticed that I've been tweeting rather extensively about the NSA's spying, the most recent attacks on Glenn Greenwald and now the Guardian. If you were still wondering what any of this has to do with open source, this latest news might clarify things a little:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source in the UK: Sharing the Fire

As even a cursory glance at articles on Open Enterprise over the last few years will indicate, open source is a massive success in practically every market. Except, unfortunately, on the desktop (famously) and more, generally, for consumers. And as Aral Balkan points out in an important post from a few weeks ago, that's a real problem:

On Open Enterprise blog.

TTIP Update II

As I noted in my first TTIP Update about the current negotiations between the EU and US over a massive trade agreement that is far from being only about trade, it is probably true that it will not include many of the more outrageous ideas found in ACTA last year. But that is not to say that TTIP does not threaten many key aspects of the Internet - just that the attack is much more subtle.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Did You Know that Mozilla is Hijacking the Internet?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the incredible spectacle of the European arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) attacking Mozilla on the grounds that the latter had "lost its values" because it insisted on defending the users' rights to control how cookies were used on their systems. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Apache the Most Important Open Source Project?

Back in the mists of time - I'm talking about 2000 here - when free software was still viewed by many as a rather exotic idea, I published a book detailing its history up to that point. Naturally, I wrote about Apache (the Web server, not the foundation) there, since even in those early days it was already the sectoral leader. As I pointed out:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is This Finally the Year of Open Source...in China?

One of the long-running jokes in the free software world is that this year will finally be the year of open source on the desktop - just like it was last year, and the year before that. Thanks to the astounding rise of Android, people now realise that the desktop is last decade's platform, and that mobile - smartphones and tablets - are the future. But I'd argue that there is something even more important these, and that is the widespread deployment of open source in China.

On Open Enterprise blog.

When Transparency Is A Matter Of Life And Death

Against a background of the leaks about NSA spying, transparency -- or lack of it -- is a hot topic at the moment. But there are situations where it can be even more important than just a matter of enhancing confidence in government actions and acting as a check on them, as this Wired story about Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) makes clear: 

On Techdirt.

European Commission Report Says Open Access At 'Tipping Point'

Techdirt has been reporting for some time on the growing number of moves towards making academic work freely available to the public -- for example this recent major boost from the University of California. But what about the bigger picture? How is open access doing overall? The European Commission has just published a new report trying to answer those questions, which offers an extremely upbeat assessment:

On Techdirt.

Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'

Some stories, you just couldn't make up. Like this one, reported on the UK site Reprieve, about a failed attempt to pass some reading material to one of the people detained at Guantanamo Bay. Something unsuitable you might guess, perhaps advocating terrorist ways? Well, not exactly:

On Techdirt:

Did New Zealand Spooks Tap Into PRISM To Spy On Dotcom?

As Techdirt has reported, the attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand to the US have turned into one of the most catastrophically bungled legal cases in a long while. One of the biggest scandals to emerge was that New Zealand citizens had been wiretapped in an effort to gain evidence against Dotcom, since domestic spying was forbidden there just as it is in the US (oh, wait...). Unfortunately, rather than rapping knuckles and telling the local spooks not to do it again, the New Zealand government has instead just brought in new legislation to make it legal in the future.

On Techdirt.

Russia Prepares To Block Tor And Anonymizing Proxies

As more and more countries start introducing Web blocks, some people console themselves with the "at least there's always Tor" argument. Politicians may be slow, but they are not all completely stupid, and they are beginning to get the message that Tor and other anonymous services potentially render their Web blocks moot. It's then not a huge leap for them to move on to the next stage -- banning or blocking Tor -- as Russia now seems to be contemplating, according to this article on Russia Today: 

On Techdirt.