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The BitTorrent protocol is an extremely efficient way of moving files
around the Internet, especially big ones. That makes it highly popular
with those seeking to download unauthorized copies of music and films,
for example. But the clever approach that enables BitTorrent to do
that, which involves downloading fragments of a file from a shifting
swarm of fellow peers holding some or all of it, is also a weakness from
these users' point of view: it means that downloads take place in
public, rather than as a private transaction from a client to a server
(as with cyber lockers.)
On
Techdirt.
Nathan Myhrvold is trying to rustle up a little positive PR for Intellectual Ventures (IV) by appointing a VP of Global Good
(although it's hard to see how anyone lumbered with such a daft job
title is going to be taken seriously anywhere.) You can gauge just how
touchy Myhrvold is on this topic by his rather waspish response to some
commentary on that move.
On
Techdirt.
This year saw two huge victories for digital activism: against SOPA
in the US, and against ACTA in the EU. The big question is now: what
will be the next moves of those behind SOPA and ACTA as they seek to
regain the initiative? For SOPA, we've had a clue in the call for a "Son of SOPA" from the US Chamber of Commerce. But what about the European Commission?
On
Techdirt.
Even after ACTA was rejected
by the European Parliament on 4 July this year, the European Commission
was still refusing to admit that the treaty was misguided and
dangerous. To this day, it's not clear what it is planning in terms of
trying to bring it back in another form, or by negotiating some kind of ACTA Lite with the other signatories.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As part of the seemingly endless round of consultations (I'm not
complaining - this is how it should be done), the UK government is
asking about parental internet controls:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The reaction to the jury's decision in the US patent infringement
case between Apple and Samsung has been rather remarkable. I've seen it
called all kinds of turning and inflection points for the
computing/mobile world, as if we are entering some strange new era whose
landscape is weird and unknown to us. This is utter nonsense. I don't
think Apple's "stunning" or "total" victory - all phrases I've seen
bandied about - is particularly stunning, or even a victory.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As promised, here is my submission to the Joint Parliamentary
Committee considering the UK government's Draft Communications Bill:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The Draft Communications Bill [.pdf]
is one of the most controversial pieces of UK legislation proposed in
recent years - not least because it represents a betrayal of election
promises by the coalition to roll back state surveillance in the UK.
As usual, the government is attempting to claim that current plans are
"different" because the databases are distributed, not centralised; but
the fact that searches will be possible across all the decentralised
holdings means that there is no practical difference. This is quite
simply another example of politicians promising one thing to get
elected, and then doing its opposite.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the most important messages in the history of free software – and computing – was posted 21 years ago, on 25 August 1991:
On
The H Open.
It seems a long while ago now, but June was a pretty hectic month in this neck of the woods, since it saw the final push to get ACTA rejected
in the European Parliament. But of course, plenty of other things were
happening then, and one in particular that I wanted to cover was the
release of this UK Open Data White Paper entitled "Unleashing the Potential".
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Although the following is a little outside the mainstream of Open
Enterprise, it does have a very clear moral with direct relevance to
this blog's readers. It concerns the proprietary program Sibelius,
which describes
itself as "the world’s best-selling music notation software". It only
runs on Windows and Macintosh, and comes with an oppressive DRM that
places it about as far away from free software as is possible.
Nonetheless, it seems widely-loved by most of its users, presumably
because it does what they want it to.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As I noted recently, net neutrality is back in the spotlight, so I
thought it would be useful - and maybe entertaining - to look at an
anti-net neutrality article for the insights it gives us about how the
other side views things. It's called "Pick Up On One and Let The Other
One Ride", and appears in the Huffington Post. Here's how it frames the discussion:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As the old joke goes, standards are wonderful things, that's why we
have so many of them. But who would have thought that ETSI, the
European Telecommunications Standards Institute, has already produced a
draft standard on how European governments can snoop on cloud-based
services like Facebook and Gmail -- even when encrypted connections are
used?
On
Techdirt.
Recently we wrote about how copyright rules designed for an analog
age were causing problems when transposed without modification to the
digital world. Here's another example, this time from Australia, where
the Brisbane Times' site reports on an increasingly difficult situation in education as a result of outdated copyright approaches:
On
Techdirt.
At the end of last year, I wrote about the great service Barnes & Noble had performed by drawing back the curtain on one of Microsoft's patent lawsuits.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
When the UK Hargreaves Review of intellectual monopolies in the digital age came out last year, Techdirt noted
that one of its innovations was an emphasis on basing policy on
evidence. The fact that this was even notable shows how parlous the
state of policy-making has become. One important way to gather evidence
is through public consultations, and in the wake of the Hargreaves
Review, the UK government conducted a major exercise in gathering views and information in this field.
On
Techdirt.
I have been writing about the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, ICANN, since its birth in 1998 (see the ICANN entry
on Wikipedia for a good summary of how that came about, and the
evolution of the organisation since then.) That move was contentious at
the time, since it saw the running of the Internet's basic
infrastructure taken out of the hands of the geeks, personified by Jon Postel,
and put in the hands of the business world. As a fully intended
side-effect of that move, it also placed the system fully under the
control of the US, rather than allowing a more distributed, global approach to evolve.
On
Techdirt.
Last year Techdirt wrote about the almost unbelievable Meltwater
decision in the UK, where the courts said that viewing a Web page
without the owner's permission was copyright infringement. In November last year, leave was granted to Meltwater to make an appeal against the ruling to the UK's Supreme Court.
However, that still leaves the inconvenient matter of the infringement
by tens of millions of UK Web users hundreds of times every day in the
meantime.
On
Techdirt.
I've written a couple of articles
recently about Ofcom's consultation on the implementation of the
Digital Economy Act. That consultation has closed now (it was only open
for a month), but I'm conscious that in those posts I was making quite a
lot of technical claims about Internet security, an area in which I am
certainly no expert.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
It's something of a truism that the courts take time to catch up with
technology, especially in the fast-moving world of the Internet, but Thomas Steen
points us to a recent court decision in Norway where the gulf between
law and life is particularly wide. The case concerns a blogger called
Eivind Berge who was arrested recently on account of some statements on
his blog that allegedly "glorified and encouraged the killing of policemen" as a report on the Dagbladet newspaper site puts it (Norwegian original.) Moreover:
On
Techdirt.
Yesterday I wrote that I hoped to post here my submission to the
important EU consultation on net neutrality that is currently open.
However, there have been some important developments in this area that
need to be covered first.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The implicit justification for various new copyright enforcement
laws, such as the "three strikes" approach, is that they will encourage
people to buy more authorized digital goods and thus support artists and
their works. Naturally, those in favor of this logic like to produce
figures that purport to show that it is working.
On
Techdirt.
Last week I wrote
about the extremely short consultation period for aspects of
implementing the Digital Economy Act. Time is running out - the
consultation closes tomorrow at 5pm, so I urge you to submit something soon. It doesn't have to be very long. Here, for example, is what I am sending - short, but maybe not so sweet....
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the recurrent themes here on Techdirt is the increasing lack
of balance in copyright, which is now heavily weighted in favor of
creators and their proxies, and against the public. That bias has come
about thanks to the rise of the Internet, which has turned the
traditionally rather specialist area of copyright law and enforcement
into a matter of everyday concern: it affects practically everything we
do online, and can criminalize even the most trivial of activities
there.
On
Techdirt.
Last week, the British policeman Simon Harwood was acquitted of
killing a man during the 2009 G20 protests in London -- a controversial
verdict given the video footage of the incident. In order not to prejudice their views, the jury was not informed that Harwood had been investigated a number of times previously for alleged violence and misconduct.
On
Techdirt.
Net neutrality is one of those areas that most people are vaguely in
favour of, without giving it much thought. Governments take advantage
of this to make sympathetic noises while doing precisely nothing to
preserve it. For example, following a UK consultation on net neutrality two years ago, Ofcom came out with a very wishy-washy statement that basically said we think net neutrality is a jolly good idea but we won't actually do anything to protect it.
On
Computerworld UK.
One of the defining characteristics of the digital world -- and one
of the problems for copyright law, which was conceived in an analog age
-- is the importance of being able to build on the work of others not
just indirectly, but directly, through mashups or the re-use of existing
material. Stig Rudeholm points us to a fascinating feature in the Guardian about "sweded movies":
home-made tributes to Hollywood titles that adopt precisely this
approach of creative re-interpretation. The name apparently comes from
the film "Be Kind Rewind", where DIY imitations of studio favorites are
passed off as Swedish editions.
On
Techdirt.
Last month we wrote about a new copyright law in Japan whose punishments seemed so disproportionate
it was hard to take it seriously. For example, downloading
unauthorized copies or backing up content from a DVD were both subject
to criminal penalties. According to this story from Daily Yomiuri
Online, it looks like it's no joke:
On
Techdirt.
They say that a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has
got its boots on, and the same seems to be true about Internet policy:
the bad ideas spread like wildfire, while the good ones languish in
obscurity. Snooping on the Net activity of an entire population is the
latest example: now Australia wants to join the club that currently
consists of the US and UK, with Canada waiting in the wings. Here's part of the EFF's excellent summary of what the Australian government is proposing:
On
Techdirt.
Recently, Techdirt reported
on the ruling by a German court on the issue of filtering -- whether
Internet sites have a responsibility to block files continually if they
have been notified about infringing materials once, sometimes called
"Notice and Stay Down". The German court basically said they do, but
the highest French court has taken a different view (French original.)
On
Techdirt.
As I and many others noted at the time, the Digital Economy Act was
one of the most disgraceful abuses of the parliamentary process in
recent years. It was a badly-drafted bill, with lots of glaring
problems, but it was pushed through a near-deserted House of Commons in
the dying hours of the previous government. Despite its incorrect
premises, shoddy framing and outright final stupidities, it is still
hauling its unlovely carcass through the implementation process after
several legal challenges failed to put it out of its misery.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Openness is really beginning to sweep through the European Union at
all levels. Yesterday we wrote about the European Commission's
ambitious plans to make the results of publicly-funded research freely
available as open access; now comes news of a major opening up in the world of pharmaceutical data:
On
Techdirt.
I've written elsewhere
about how open access - the idea that academic research paid for by the
public should be freely available online - was directly inspired by open
source. So it's great to see open access making huge strides recently,
including the following:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Yesterday, Techdirt reported
on the UK government's plans to make publicly-funded scientific
research freely available as open access. One concern was that its
approach required funds to be diverted from research to pay for the
article processing charges levied by so-called "gold" open access
titles. One figure being bandied around was about $80 million per year,
but a new report in the Guardian suggests this is a huge over-estimate,
and that the true cost will be more like a fifth of that figure.
On
Techdirt.
There is a natural tendency to concentrate on what is happening
locally, and so most of the stories here on Open Enterprise are about
what's happening in the UK, or developments
that affect it directly. But it's important to remember that open
source is a global development, and that things are bubbling away
everywhere, all the time.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the great divides in the digital world is between those who
believe that people who share files online are selfish, thieving pirates
who just want something for nothing, and those who see them simply as
ordinary people who want to swap cool stuff with the world. The first
group views them as a canker eating at the heart of the music industry,
while the second sees them as providing free marketing to the artists
concerned. What evidence we have supports the latter view -- not least because the music industry is thriving, not dying as you might expect if piracy were a problem.
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt often writes about the benefits of openness and sharing.
One area that is increasingly coming to the fore is open data -- for
example, for some time both the US and UK
have had major projects aimed at opening up the stores of data held by
their respective governments, and other countries are rapidly joining
the club. But amidst all the enthusiasm for such projects, it's easy to
get swept away, and to accept the idea of open data uncritically.
That's what makes this fascinating blog post entitled "Seeing Like a
Geek" from Tom Slee so valuable, because he calls out what he sees as a serious problem with open data initiatives:
On
Techdirt.
As expected,
Russia has passed a law that will allow Web sites to be blacklisted,
ostensibly to "protect children". According to this AFP report, the very vague "harmful information" category has been narrowed somewhat, but future threats remain:
On
Techdirt.
A common feature of democracies is that new laws are scrutinized and
debated by representatives of the people before they are passed -- the
hope being that bad proposals can be amended or discarded. Laws giving
governments the power to change other laws with only minimal oversight
are therefore generally regarded as a Bad Thing. But that's exactly what the UK government plans to introduce, as this article on the Out-Law.com site explains:
On
Techdirt.
Music collection societies often figure in Techdirt thanks to their
attempts to wring licensing payments from people on absurd grounds, like
trying to make them pay for playing music to horses, or for singing old folk songs.
But in Europe, there's another issue. Because each country has its
own music collection society, digital music startups wishing to operate
across Europe must negotiate not one, but dozens of separate licenses – a
major obstacle to overcome.
On
Techdirt.
Net neutrality arguments are often couched in rather theoretical
terms, and many people can't really see what all the fuss is about. A
recent decision in South Korea gives a handy example of what the loss of net neutrality means in practice:
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt has noted,
the main threat to artists is not piracy, but obscurity -- the fact
that few know they are creating interesting stuff. As passive consumers
increasingly become creators
themselves, and the competition increases, that's even more of an
issue. For writers, there's a double problem: not only do people need
to hear about a work, they also have to find the time to explore it once
acquired, and that's often a challenge in our over-filled, stressed-out
lives -- unless we're talking about haiku. Here's an unusual approach to encouraging people to find that time to read books:
On
Techdirt.
A few years back, Techdirt noted
that India had 16,000 licensed drug manufacturers in the 1990s, and
became a net exporter of pharmaceutical products. Things changed
somewhat when India joined the WTO, which forced it to recognize
pharmaceutical patents, but more recently it has started moving back
towards generics, notably with the compulsory licensing of a kidney and liver cancer drug that was being sold by Bayer in the country for around $70,000 a year.
On
Techdirt.
The UK government's communications review is likely to have a big
impact on the digital world. As part of that investigation, the
Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DMCS) is organising five seminars to canvas people's views on various aspects of communications. These are:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
In the arguments over ACTA, one criticism seemed widely accepted:
that it tries to bundle together two quite different challenges --
tackling counterfeit goods, like fake medicines, and dealing with
unauthorized file sharing. One popular suggestion was that ACTA should
be split in two in order to handle those separately – for example, David
Martin, the politician who played a key role in convincing the European
Parliament to reject ACTA this week, supports this approach.
On
Techdirt.
Even in the face of a resounding rejection of ACTA by the European
Parliament last week, the European Commission seems determined to keep
pushing for its eventual adoption. Techdirt noted some ways in which it might try to do that, but an important article by Michael Geist lays out what seems to be an alternative approach that is already close to fruition:
On
Techdirt.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote
about the danger that the Unitary Patent would usher in software
patents to Europe. The proposal was supposed to be voted upon last week
in the European Parliament's plenary session, but was postponed, thanks to our very own David Cameron.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Normally, we think of the US as the champion of patenting "anything under the sun that is made by man," while the UK is generally more reticent. So it's rather surprising to find the roles reversed in the following story about a new standard for the GPS navigation system:
On
Techdirt.
One of the most important moments in the rise of a radical idea is
when the fightback begins, because it signals an acceptance by the
establishment that the challenger is a real threat. That moment has
certainly arrived for open access, most obviously through moves like the
Research Works Act, which would have cut off open access to research funded by the US government. That attack soon stalled, but the sniping at open access and its underlying model of free distribution has continued.
On
Techdirt.
Orphan works (or maybe that should be "hostage works")
have become a really hot area in the copyright debate. That's because
increasing numbers of people have realized how insane the current
situation is whereby millions of older works, that are out of print and
have no obvious owners, remain locked away because of copyright. This
has led to various proposals around the world to liberate them, while
still protecting the copyright holders if they later appear and assert
ownership.
On
Techdirt.
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