Until recently there has been an unchallenged assumption that the more copyright, the better. Although people have begun to realize that's not the case – and that extending copyright diminishes the public domain because we must all wait longer for works to enter it -- governments around the world continue to make copyright longer, stronger and broader.
A few months ago we wrote about a really bad idea that was being floated in Germany: making companies like Google pay for the use of news snippets in services such as Google News. Unfortunately, that idea has now been turned into a concrete proposal for a new law; remarkably, it is even worse than the original plans.
When the history of modern Brazil comes to be written, a special place will be reserved for the soybean, the powerful farmers that grow it -- and the deforestation it is driving. And at the center of that tale will be Monsanto, with its patented "Roundup Ready" crop, so called because it has been genetically modified to withstand the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as Roundup.
So, we arrive at the penultimate stage of the battle to stop ACTA in Europe. Before the final plenary vote in the European Parliament in July, there is a vote in the International Trade committee (INTA) this Thursday. As its home page explains:
Performing rights societies probably don't have the best reputations here on Techdirt, but just when you think they can't get any more outrageous in their demands, they do. Here are two stories from the Slovak Republic, both involving SOZA, the Slovak Performing and Mechanical Rights Society:
Net Neutrality has suddenly become a hot topic again. Partly, that's thanks to some awful ideas about regulating the Internet coming from the International Telecommunication Union, notably those proposed by the ETNO -- the European Telecommunications Network Operators Association -- discussed recently on Techdirt. New information from WCITLeaksWikileaks(found via the Net neutrality in Europe site) provides us with the following details (pdf):
We knew it was coming, and here it is: the Communications Data Bill (.pdf.). First the good news:
As expected, the UK government has published its Draft Communications Bill (pdf) -- better known as the "snooper's charter," since it requires ISPs to record key information about every email sent and Web site visited by UK citizens, and mobile phone companies to log all their calls (landline information is already recorded).
The Belgian EU Commissioner Karel De Gucht is the driving force behind ACTA, and is apparently really keen to combat crimes like counterfeiting and piracy. It also seems he has a slight problem with the tax authorities:
In recent months, Techdirt has reported on an important development in the world of medicine, as both India and Brazil have allowed local companies to produce cheap generic versions of drugs covered by patents. In an even bigger blow to Western pharmaceutical companies, it looks like China is following suit:
Since my last ACTA update, quite a lot of good stuff has happened. For a start, all four European Parliament committees have recommended that ACTA should be rejected when the plenary vote takes place at the beginning of July. That just leaves one more committee - that for International Trade, or INTA - to make its recommendation, which should take place next week. I'll be writing more about this vote soon.
Recently, an interesting report entitled "The legacy of the BBC Micro" appeared (freely available online). For those of you too young to remember this trail-blazing UK computing project from the dawn of microcomputers, here's some background from the report:
Recently, Techdirt wrote about the increasing number of Web sites that were dumping Google Maps and turning to OpenStreetMap (OSM) instead. But that's only one aspect of the increasingly important digital mapping sector: another is for use with in-car satnav systems. So an obvious question is: how is OpenStreetMap doing here?
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how the ever-increasing storage capacity of portable hard drives made it unlikely that the sharing of music could ever be stopped. That was a somewhat theoretical piece based on general trends in technology; but here's some supporting data from a rather unusual source: North Korea (aka the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" - DPRK).
Too often we read that the Internet is making us stupid or fat, or destroying the "fabric of society." Indeed, judging by the all the digital jeremiads it's a wonder that anybody dares to use it at all, since it's clearly irredeemably bad in every way. So it's refreshing to come across an upbeat piece from Lauren Weinstein with the inspiring title "How the Internet Can Save the World." His basic point is this:
Techflaws alerts us to an announcement by ZPÜ, the organization responsible for setting the levy on storage media in Germany, that fees will rise rather significantly (German original). For a USB stick with a capacity greater than 4 Gbytes, the tax would increase from 8 eurocents (about 10 cents) to 1.56 euros (about $1.93), a rise of 1850%; for a memory card bigger than 4 Gbytes, the fee would go up from 8 eurocents to 1.95 euros (about $2.42), an increase of 2338%.
Since today is a Bank Holidayin the UK, I hope that a few of you might take the opportunity to make a submission to the UK consultation on open standards. This closes at 11.59pm this evening (BST), so you still have time to answer the online questionnaires for chapter 1, chapter 2 and chapter 3. Alternatively (or additionally), you can also submit something directly to openstandards@digital.cabinet-office.gov.uk.
Although the traditional image of a science laboratory typically consists of a room full of test tubes or microscopes, the reality is that computers now play a central role there, just as they do for business and life in general.
Eben Moglen has been battling to defend key digital rights for the last two decades. A lawyer by training, he helped Phil Zimmerman fight off the US government's attack on the use of the Pretty Good Privacy encryption program in the early 1990s, in what became known as the Crypto Wars. That brought him to the attention of Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project, and together they produced version 3 of the GNU GPL, finally released after 12 years' work in 2006.
In a country where the mainstream media is tightly controlled, Chinese microblogs have provided an invaluable way for millions of people to find and share unofficial information. That's obviously problematic for the Chinese authorities, who have been gradually clamping down on what they term "rumors".
Most people have concentrated on the ITRE, JURI and LIBE committees (as I did in my previous posts this week). But there's a fourth committee that is meeting to decide upon its recommendation to INTA: that of Development. Here's how it describes itself on its home page:
One of the most dishonest aspects of ACTA was its attempt to equate genuinely dangerous products like fake medicines with totally harmless ones like unauthorized digital copies. Fortunately, that's such an absurd equivalence that more and more people have voiced their concerns over it -- including the Liberals and Democrats in the European Parliament, who cited it as one reason why they would be voting against ACTA:
Yesterday I posted my submission to the ITRE committee; today I include my email to the JURI (legal affairs) and LIBE (civial liberties) committees, both of which are voting on what their recommendations should be on May 31. I have lumped them together since both are largely concerned with legal issues. Here's how JURI describes itself:
Last week we reported that videos were currently being uploaded to YouTube at the rate of 72 hours every minute, and asked how anybody could expect Google to pre-screen such a deluge. Techdirt Insider xenomancer has gone a little further by working out how much it would cost to screen that material for potential copyright infringement, doubtless something the media industries would love to see imposed.
This is the first of my posts about the various committees that will be offering their recommendations to the European Parliament through the main INTA (international trade) committee. It concerns ITRE, the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, which will be holding its crucial vote on May 31 - so, no time to lose.
At the end of last year we wrote about the case of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, former Federal Minister of Defense in Germany, who lost both his post and his doctorate when it turned out that he had plagiarized portions of his doctoral thesis. Now the journal Science is reporting another possible case:
I have been writing about ACTA here for what seems several centuries. The good news is that I will stop doing that soon, because the key vote on ACTA will be taking place in the European Parliament at the beginning of July. Contrary to some reports, ACTA is not dead: although there have been some important shifts in the last few months - actually, pretty staggering ones when you consider the situation at the end of last year - votes in the European Parliament are notoriously hard to predict. This means we must assume that the battle is still on, and not become complacent.
Most people will be familiar with Moore's Law, usually stated in the form that processing power doubles every two years (or 18 months in some versions.) But just as important are the equivalent compound gains for storage and connectivity speeds, sometimes known as Kryder's Law and Nielsen's Law respectively.
As you may have heard, Greece is having a spot of bother at the moment. Its economy shrank by 6.2% in the last three months alone, and the austerity measures imposed in return for international loans to keep the country running have contributed to a 40% jump in the suicide rate.
One of the more controversial approaches to the already controversial field of climate change is geoengineering, which Wikipedia defines as "deliberate large-scale engineering and manipulation of the planetary environment to combat or counteract anthropogenic changes in atmospheric chemistry."
Back in March, we wrote about an important development in India, where a compulsory license for Bayer's Nexavar anti-cancer drug was granted. Bayer, of course, is fighting back:
As I've noted before, open data is one area where the UK government shines - unlike open source, where it has yet to deliver the goods. One of its bright ideas was the creation of an Open Data Institute (ODI), which I wrote about at the end of last year. It still doesn't exist yet, but it does have a Web site with some interesting further information about its intentions.
YouTube has announced that 72 hours of video is now being uploaded to its service every minute. Earlier this year, the statistic was that 60 hours of video was uploaded to its service every minute:
A few weeks ago, we noted the UK government was considering plans to bring in an opt-out form of censorship, in what would amount to a kind of porn license, and that such an approach runs the risk of blocking a far wider range of materials. Now the Open Rights Group (ORG) has released a report that shows the "child protection filters" on UK mobile Internet networks are already overblocking sites:
ACTA and TPP have much in common, but the way in which they represents two aspects of the same impulse has never been shown more clearly than here, in this proposal to re-use elements of one in the other:
So, once again, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has come out with its annual report on software piracy around the world, entitled "Shadow Market" [.pdf]. And, once again, it makes all the same methodological mistakes - it's almost as if the BSA hasn't been reading my critiques of last year and the year before....
Recently Techdirt wrote about the heated debate on the subject of whether people should learn to code. We pointed out that some knowledge of that subject could be particularly useful in helping people understand why copyrighting APIs or patenting software is just crazy -- whatever the abstract legal arguments, in practice both make programming much, much harder.
When it comes to ACTA and TPP, China is the elephant in the room -- or maybe that should be the dragon in the room. For without China's participation, these treaties designed to reduce counterfeiting will have little effect. And despite rather desperate optimism on the part of some that China will rush to sign up, itscomments so far suggest otherwise.
As the mobile phone moves closer to the center of daily life in many parts of the world, combining phone, computer, camera, diary, music player, and much else all in one, it becomes a concentrated store of the digital DNA that defines us -- who we talk to, what we search for, who we meet, what we listen to. However convenient that may be for us as users, it's also extremely dangerous if it falls into the wrong hands.
Earlier this year, Poland played a crucial role in igniting street protests that pretty much stopped ACTA in its tracks. That's not the first time it has had a major impact on European tech policy. Half a decade earlier, it derailed a proposed EU software patent directive, which had sought to make software patentable in Europe -- something that Article 52 of the European Patent Convention had appeared to rule out. That led to a later vote in the European Parliament wheresoftware patents were decisively rejected.
On Monday I posted my talk "Before and After SOPA". In it, there's a reference to "country club" treaties (slide 17) that may have intrigued some people. It's a term I came across recently, and I think provides us with a useful way of thinking about ACTA (and TPP).
Even though just about every objective statistic suggests otherwise, the copyright industries still take turns bemoaning the terrible toll that piracy is supposedly taking on their markets. So it's good to come across some official figures that suggest the contrary, particularly because in this case they come from the European Audiovisual Observatory—not a market research company, but a public service body. Here are the latest numbers for the European film industry:
Last week Techdirt wrote about the possible introduction of an "opt-in" license to view porn online in the UK. As we noted then, there is nothing to stop parents from installing their own filters to block access to certain kinds of Web sites now. But it seems that soon, they won't even have to do that:
Ten years ago, people were saying that open source would never be able to best proprietary software. But what they overlooked was the fact that Apache had already beaten Microsoft's IIS Web server offering back in the mid-1990s, and had never lost that leadership once.
Words matter -- just think of the number of times flame wars have broken out in Techdirt's comments over whether you can "steal" music or films. But one phrase that nobody really questions is "orphan work". And yet, as Lydia Pallas Loren points out in a brilliant paper, this is a loaded term with a very particular agenda:
News that Harvard University is the latest to join the growing revolt against the exorbitant pricing of academic journals caused something of a stir recently -- although it has been pointed out that its case would be stronger if it followed its own advice and made the Harvard Business Review open access, or at least cheaper.
A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at the Reykjavik Digital Freedoms Conference with the title "Before and After SOPA". Much of it will be familiar to readers of this blog, since it was reviewing the events around the extraordinary anti-SOPA Internet Blackout Day on January 18, which has now emerged as a turning-point in Net activism, and exploring what might happen now. As usual, I've embedded my slides below, and they may also be viewed online and downloaded.
Over the last few months, Techdirt has been reporting on the amazing rise of the German Pirate Party, with win after win after win. Politicians in the other parties have looked on aghast, powerless to halt the rise of something they clearly can't fathom. Inevitably, the fightback has finally begun, but packaged as an artists' revolt, not simply that of the copyright industries worried about their profit margins.
When discussing ACTA, there's a natural tendency to concentrate on the bigger players -- the US or the EU -- but it's important to remember that there are many other countries involved. One of those is Switzerland, which has just joined the doubters' club by holding off from signing ACTA. Here's why (French original):
The damage that software patents cause to innovation in the computer world is a constant theme here on Techdirt. But as a fascinating new paper by James Boyle explains, the threat to open source, particularly from patent injunctions, is even greater because of the special characteristics of that software development methodology:
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