TTIP Update VII

In my last TTIP update, I wrote about a fascinating document that revealed the European Commission's PR strategy for handling TAFTA/TTIP. It was already possible to detect there a growing sense of panic among the Commission - a fear that they were losing control of the "narrative", and that remedial action was needed.

On Open Enterprise blog.

TTIP Updates - The Glyn Moody blogs

At the start of 2012 I began a series of posts about the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement - ACTA. These took the form of updates on how ACTA was developing. I did this because I had a sense of how quickly things were moving, and how complicated the issues were, and I wanted to try to track those as they happened.

To make that easier, Computerworld UK brought those updates together on a single page. It turned out to be an extremely exciting ride as opposition to ACTA grew across Europe, culminating in the rejection by the European Parliament on 4 July last year.

However, one thing we have learned is that those behind unbalanced laws like SOPA and treaties like ACTA, never give up. If they fail with one, they just try again with another. And so it turns out in the wake of ACTA's demise. We are now witnessing exactly the same secretive approach being applied to TTIP - the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - originally known as TAFTA, the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement.

Although TTIP only began a few months ago, it is becoming increasingly controversial as more people begin to realise what is at stake. As I explain in several updates below, one of the key problems is the presence of "investor-state dispute settlement" - ISDS - which I predict will prove to be the most contentious part of TTIP.

Indeed, I think it is likely that ISDS will generate so much resistance among the European public that ultimately it will be removed from TTIP completely in order to give other parts more chance of being passed by the European Parliament, which must approve the agreement once it has been negotiated. What follows is my attempt to track the twists and turns of the journey to that final, fateful vote.

On Open Enterprise blog.

De-fanging Software Patents For GNU GPL'd Code

A theme that has re-appeared on this blog many times over the years is that of software patents. As I've noted before, they are perhaps the biggest single threat to free software, especially since the decline of Microsoft. Indeed, it's not hard to see software patent lawsuits being filed by Microsoft in the last, desperate stage of that decline in order to inflict the maximum damage on open source.

On Open Enterprise blog.

European Commissioner Claims 'Nothing Secret' About TAFTA/TTIP, Tries To Defend Corporate Sovereignty

After lurking in the shadows for a few months, the mega transatlantic trade deal TAFTA/TTIP is starting to hit the mainstream media. Here, for example, is an excellent article by George Monbiot in the Guardian, which rightly singles out corporate sovereignty as a key threat: 

On Techdirt.

Bloomberg News Pays Reporters More If They Move Markets

It's become quite common to pay online writers more if their stories cause surges in traffic for the site. It has recently emerged that Bloomberg News has taken this idea much further, as reported by Business Insider: 

On Techdirt.

Why Tribunals Imposing Corporate Sovereignty Are Even More Dangerous Than We Thought

Back in October, we introduced the term "corporate sovereignty" as an alternative to the standard but misleading phrase "investor-state dispute settlement" (ISDS) that is generally used. We noted that perhaps the worst manifestation of corporate sovereignty so far can be seen in Ecuador, where one of the secret tribunals used in these cases had ordered the Ecuadorean government to place Chevron above the country's constitution. 

On Techdirt.

Copyright Strikes Again: No Online Access To UK Internet Archive

Last week we wrote about how Norway had come up with a way to provide online access to all books in Norwegian, including the most recent ones, available to anyone in the country. Here, by contrast, is how not to do it, courtesy of publishers in the UK: 

On Techdirt.

CERN Announces Nearly All High-Energy Physics Articles Will Switch To Open Access -- The Largest-Ever OA Initiative

One of the key insights driving open access is that if all the money currently paid by libraries and other institutions for subscriptions to academic journals was instead used to pay processing charges -- effectively, the cost of publishing -- all articles could be made freely available online to everyone. Unfortunately, getting from one system to the other has proved hard, since it requires many libraries to drop subscriptions and pool their resources so that enough top-quality journals can be published on an open-access basis. That's what makes this news from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, such a milestone: 

On Techdirt.

59 Bootleg Beatles Tracks Released Officially -- For All The Wrong Reasons

Back in January, Sony released the 'Bob Dylan Copyright Collection Volume'. As its name shamelessly proclaims, that was purely to take advantage of an EU law to extend the copyright term on recordings from 50 to 70 years there. Copyright is supposed to offer an incentive to create new works, so extending it after they are written is clearly nonsensical. Similarly, the idea that musicians will suddenly be inspired to write more new songs because of the extra 20 years of protection that only kicks in 50 years from when the song is recorded is just silly. 

On Techdirt.

New Creative Commons Licenses Released For Intergovernmental Organizations

Even though Creative Commons licenses have only been in existence for just over a decade, it's now hard to imagine the online world without them. The ability they offer to modify or even cancel copyright's monopoly has led to all kinds of innovation, and given that success (as well as one or two failures), you might think there's no need for any more CC licenses. Creative Commons begs to differ: 

On Techdirt.

As Yet Another Free Trade Agreement Fails To Deliver, Why Should People Believe USTR's Claims About TPP's Huge Benefits?

As the US applies more and more pressure to the other nations taking part in the secret TPP negotiations in an attempt to get them to accept its demands, one issue that is starting to be raised is the central one of benefits. Given the sacrifices the USTR is demanding from other countries in order to strike a deal, people in affected countries are rightly questioning what exactly they will get in return. The growing doubts about the value of TPP are presumably why at this late stage the USTR has just released a document touting its "economic benefits". There are two things worth noting about this. 

On Techdirt.

Data Retention Directive Incompatible With Fundamental Rights According To EU Court Of Justice's Advocate General

Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about two important cases before Europe's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ). They both involved the European Union's Data Retention Directive, which obliges telecoms companies to retain metadata about their customers -- now an even more contentious issue in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks. One case was from Ireland, brought by Digital Rights Ireland, which needs donations to carry on its great work, and the other from the Austrian digital rights group AKVorrat (which probably also needs support.) 

On Techdirt.

Legal Challenges To Spying Mount In UK

It's taken a while for Europeans to recover from the discovery that they are being spied upon by the NSA (with some help from its friends at GCHQ and elsewhere) pretty much everywhere online and all the time, but finally the legal fightback is beginning to gather pace, at least in the UK. Things got moving in October, with a case filed at the European Court of Human Rights: 

On Techdirt.

Norway To Digitize All Norwegian Books, Allowing Domestic IP Addresses To Read All Of Them, Irrespective Of Copyright Status

Here's a pretty amazing story from Norway: 

On Techdirt.

Bringing Transparency Back To The Patent System With 'Innovation Cartography'

As Techdirt has noted many times, the patent system is broken, and in various ways. One major problem is the way it inhibits innovation, rather than promoting it, as its supporters usually claim. Here's why: 

On Techdirt.

How Not To Deal With Plagiarism

We've had a few posts about plagiarism here on Techdirt, and how it differs from copyright infringement. One important question that needs to be considered is: what's the correct way to acknowledge and correct plagiarism when it is discovered? Probably not like this, in a case pointed out to us by Ivan Oransky via Jonathan Eisen, and reported by Retraction Watch: 

On Techdirt.

South Korean Spy Agency Allegedly Tried To Influence Presidential Vote - By Posting 1.2 Million Tweets

Twitter is still a young medium, and it's interesting to see yet more uses being found for it. Here's a rather dubious one from South Korea: 

On Techdirt.

European Commission Desperately Tries To Justify Inclusion Of Corporate Sovereignty In TAFTA/TTIP; Fails Dismally

Techdirt has been writing about corporate sovereignty (also known as investor-state dispute settlement -- ISDS) for a year now. Back in April, we noted that it was likely to be part of the TAFTA/TTIP negotiations, which were just about to start. Since then, more and more people have woken up to its dangers, and called for corporate sovereignty to be dropped from the negotiations. 

On Techdirt.

UK Court Rules That Software Functionality Is Not Subject To Copyright

Yesterday, Mike wrote about some worrying indications that the US Appeals Court may be considering overturning a ruling that APIs aren't covered by copyright. Happily, over in Europe, there's better news. The long-running battle between SAS and World Programming Limited (WPL) over the more general issue of whether copyright covers software functionality has now been settled by the UK Court of Appeal in favor of WPL. Here's a good report on the judgment from Out-law.com: 

On Techdirt.

Holy See (The Pope) Criticizes TPP And TAFTA/TTIP In WTO Speech

There's no shortage of critics of massive trade agreements like TPP and TAFTA/TTIP, but today saw strong condemnation from a very unexpected quarter: the Holy See, often, if erroneously, equated with the Vatican. Whatever the jurisdictional differences, the statement delivered by His Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and Other International Organizations in Geneva at the 9th Session of the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization presumably comes with the full approval of Pope Francis himself. We can assume that because of the extremely controversial statements it contains, which would have required approval at the highest level. Things like this: 

On Techdirt.

Companies Developing Crowd Analysis Programs To Detect 'Abnormalities' In Behavior And Match Faces Against Giant Databases

One of the reasons that the total surveillance programs of the NSA and GCHQ are possible is that computers continue to become more powerful and cheaper, allowing ever-more complex analyses to be conducted, including those that were simply not feasible before. Here's another example of the kind of large-scale monitoring that is now possible, as reported by Nikkei Asian Review: 

On Techdirt.

Twitter Hashtag Inventor Explains Why Patenting It Would Have Been The Wrong Thing To Do

Hashtags like #techdirt are not only an indispensable part of Twitter, but are also increasingly to be found elsewhere as a handy way of flagging up key topics in a compact and recognizable way. Given the monopoly-mad world we inhabit, it's something of a miracle that they weren't patented. Business Insider points out that Chris Messina, the former Google employee who came up with the idea in the first place, has explained precisely why he didn't try to patent them. The first reason is practical: 

On Techdirt.

TPP And TAFTA/TTIP Done Right: The Alternative Trade Mandate

Insofar as we know what's in them, both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP appear to have deep, thorough-going problems, which are unlikely to be addressed by the current approach being used to draw them up. However, a justified criticism of that view might be that anybody can carp, but what should we put in their place? Rising to that challenge is an alliance of some 50 civil society groups, who over four years have put together what they call The Alternative Trade Mandate (pdf), which is specifically designed to present a radically different emphasis for European trade negotiations: 

On Techdirt.

TAFTA/TTIP: What Price Transparency?

One of the key problems with TAFTA/TTIP is the same one that plagued ACTA and has recently been highlighted with TPP: the complete lack of any meaningful transparency. However much the negotiators may claim that transparency is important to them, there's no evidence to support that view. Or perhaps the politicians think the existence of conferences like one being held in Brussels next January provide enough opportunities for anyone who wants to convey their views to the EU's Chief Negotiator, say. He'll be attending, along with several other senior European Commission officials, according to the program. 

On Techdirt.

Increasing European Moves To Block Access To Websites Accused Of Helping People Infringe Copyrights

In their obsessive war on piracy, the copyright industries have tried various approaches. For a while, the "three strikes and out" was popular, until it became clear that it was completely ineffectual. At the moment, the preferred method is to try to force ISPs to block access to sites holding material that infringes on copyright. The UK led the way, and has now made the whole process pretty routine, as a recent post on the TechnoLlama blog explains: 

On Techdirt.