Urgent: Please Write to your MEPs about Amendment 138

Sorry, it's time to get those virtual quills out, and to write to your MEPs. There's a crucial vote coming up in the next couple of days that may see net neutrality killed in Europe thanks to the British and French governments. La Quadrature du Net has the details; here's my letter:

I am writing to ask you to urge your colleagues, particularly those on the ITRE committee, to vote in favour of amendment 138/46 to the Telecoms Package, and not to allow it to be deleted or watered down in any way – for example, by making it an indicative recital instead of an article.

As a journalist who has been writing about the Internet since 1994, I know how important it is that the connection is provided without any technical restrictions. This is the only way that innovations can emerge – indeed, the British inventor of the Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has said that if restrictions of the kind that the striking of amendment 138/46 will allow were in place back in 1989, the Web would never have taken off. This means that if the amendment is dropped or weakened, Europe may well miss out on the next Internet revolution – hardly what the European Union is seeking to do with its wider support for innovation.

To its great credit, the European Parliament has consistently fought to retain this protection for users, and I urge you and your colleagues to continue to stand up for European citizens who are being sidelined by the proposal from some governments to drop amendment 138/46.

Please send your own variation before tomorrow evening. Remember: it's *your* Internet they want to ruin.

More Feedback from Number 10

Those e-petition replies just keep on coming.

In response to the following:

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to not force internet service providers to act as legal representatives for the RIAA and be treated like a common courier.”

That nice Mr Brown says:

The Government recently published a consultation document on unlawful Peer-to-Peer (P2P) filesharing, which intends to gather views on proposals for a co-operative approach between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and rights holders to address the issue of P2P file-sharing technology, used for the illegal exchange of copyright material.

Unfortunately, much of the media reports around this issue have been incorrect. There are no proposals to make ISPs liable for the content that travels across their networks. Nor are there proposals for ISPs to monitor customer activity for illegal downloading, or to enforce a “3 strikes” policy.

Instead, we are focusing on an approach that:

· educates consumers and citizens about the importance of recognising and rewarding content and the dangers of unlawful downloading;
· encourages the content and telecoms industries to concentrate on ensuring that content is made available to consumers in a variety of attractive packages; and
· takes action to ensure that where file sharing still happens people are made aware of the unlawful nature of their actions and effective mechanisms for dealing with repeat offenders are identified.

The consultation closes on 30th October 2008 and anyone with an interest in these issues is welcome to respond. The consultation can be found at: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page47141.html

I'll be writing more about the consultation in due course.

Can You Feel the Tension?

There's an important conference taking place in Brussels next week: "Tensions between Intellectual Property Rights and the ICT standardisation process: reasons and remedies - 22 November 2010". It's important because it has a clear bearing on key documents like the forthcoming European Interoperability Framework v2.

It all sounds jolly reasonable:

Key ICT standards are perceived by many as critical technology platforms with a strong public interest dimension. However, concerns are voiced that Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) and their exclusivity potential, may hinder or prevent standardisation.

The European Commission and the European Patent Office (EPO) are organising a conference to address some specific issues on patents and ICT standards: are today’s IPR features still compatible with fast moving markets and the very complex requirements of ICT standardisation in a global knowledge economy environment? Where are problems that we can we fix?

Unfortunately, I can't go - actually, better make that *fortunately* I can't go, because upon closer inspection the agenda [.pdf] shows that this is a conference with a clear, er, agenda: that is, the outcome has already been decided.

You can tell just by its framing: this is "a conference to address some specific issues on patents and ICT standards". ICT is mostly about software, and yet software cannot be patented "as such". So, in a sense, this ought to be a trivial conference lasting about five minutes. The fact that it isn't shows where things are going to head: towards accepting and promoting patents in European standards, including those for software.

That's not really surprising, given who are organising it - the European Commission and the European Patent Office (EPO). The European Commission has always been a big fan of software patents; and the EPO is hardly likely to be involved with a conference that says: "you know, we *really* don't need all these patents in our standards."

Of course, the opposite result - that patents are so indescribably yummy that we need to have as many as possible in our European ICT standards - must emerge naturally and organically. And so to ensure that natural and organic result, we have a few randomly-selected companies taking part.

For example, there's a trio of well-known European companies: Nokia, Ericsson and Microsoft. By an amazing coincidence - as an old BBC story reminds us - all of them were fervent supporters of the European legislation to make software patentable:

Big technology firms, such as Philips, Nokia, Microsoft, Siemens, and telecoms firm Ericsson, continued to voice their support for the original bill.

So, no possible bias there, then.

Then there are a couple of outfits you may have heard of - IBM and Oracle, both noted for loving software patents slightly more than life itself. So maybe a teensy bit of bias there.

But wait, you will say: you are being totally unfair. After all, is there not an *entire* massive one-hour session entitled "Open source, freely available software and standardisation"? (although I do wonder what on earth this "freely available software" could be - obviously nothing so subversive as free-as-in-freedom software.)

And it's true, that session does indeed exist; here's part of the description:

This session will explore potential issues around standardisation and the topic of open source software and free licences. We will look at examples of how standards are successfully implemented in open source. We will also consider licensing issues that may exist regarding the requirement to pay royalties for patents present in standards, as well as other licensing terms and conditions in relation to the community approach common in open source and free software technology development.

But what's the betting that those "examples of how standards are successfully implemented in open source" will include rare and atypical cases where FRAND licences have been crafted into a free software compatible form, and which will then be used to demonstrate that FRAND is the perfect solution for ICT licensing in Europe?

Luckily, we have Karsten Gerloff from the FSFE to fight against the software patent fan club, and tell it as it is. Pity he's on his own on this though - and no, poor Erwin Tenhumberg does not count. He may be "Open Source Programme Manager, SAP", but SAP is one of the fiercest proponents of patenting software in Europe, as I've discussed a couple of times.

So this leaves us with Karsten against the collective might of the European Commission, EPO, Microsoft, Nokia, Ericsson, IBM, Oracle and SAP: clearly they'll be some of that "tension", as the conference title promises, but a fair fight conducted on a level playing-field? Not so much....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Nutting Net Neutrality

If you thought all that anti-net neutrality stuff was just for Yanks, think again: they're trying to sneak it over here, too:

Telcos are lobbying hard for discriminatory practices in network management to be permited, which threaten the neutrality of the Internet. They are opposed by citizens groups who are calling on MEPs to close the loopholes in the Telecoms Package Second Reading.

Liberty Global is the latest telco to throw its hat in the anti-net neutrality ring, with a statement in support of its colleagues at AT&T and Verizon. In a statement to run with its European Parliament seminar today, Liberty Global calls for limitations on regulatory intervention in respect of ‘network management practices'. The AT&T amendments are about trying to stop European regulators taking the kind of action that the FCC was able to take in the Comcast case, where a netwwork operator was restricting lawful services on the Internet and the FCC told it to stop.

Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty (Global)...

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.

Russian Internet Content Monitoring System To Go Live In December

Back in April of this year, the Russian government put out a tender:

Last week, Roskomnadzor, Russian Federal Service for Telecoms Supervision, announced a public tender for developing Internet monitoring system. According to the tender, the budget for such system is 15 million rubles (about $530,000) and the job applications should be submitted by April 15, 2011. The system needs to be developed by August 15, 2011 and the testing period should end on December 15, 2011.

On Techdirt.

Help: EU Net Neutrality Consultation Closes Today

As you may recall, back in September the European Commission finally came out with its proposals for net neutrality, part of its larger "Connected Continent" package designed to complete the telecoms single market. I learned yesterday that the European committee responsible for this area, ITRE (Industry, Research and Energy), has launched something of a stealth consultation on these proposals. Stealth, because neither I nor anyone else that I know covering this area, was aware of them, which is pretty bizarre.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Google's Other Bad Idea: Offering 50 Million Euros To French Newspapers [Updated]

Earlier this week we wrote about a strange move by Google: apparently agreeing to pay the French telecoms company Orange extra to deliver its traffic -- thus abandoning the principle of net neutrality it has championed for so long. And now here's another dubious decision: allegedly offering to pay French publishers 50 million Euros in order to settle the dispute over the display of news snippets in its search results: 

On Techdirt.

UK "Three Strikes": Please Write to Your MP

Yesterday I wrote a quick analysis of the insane U-turn effected by the UK government over "three strikes and you're out". Below I've posted the corresponding letter that I've sent to my MP on the subject. I urge you to do the same if you're a Brit, since it's the only way we have of influencing the situation. I'm not holding my breath waiting for a result, but I feel it's my duty....

I am writing to express my deep disquiet at the UK government's U-turn over disconnecting those accused of sharing copyright materials on the Internet.

For the eminently sane and well-balanced conclusions of Lord Carter and his Digital Britain team, based on many months of hard work, to be thrown away in this manner is extraordinary. In the place of a carefully-considered view that access to the Internet is a right not to be removed lightly, and that doing so on the say-so of media companies would be an inappropriate response to alleged copyright infringement, we now have a diktat from on high that proposes precisely this punishment.

As the indecent haste clearly demonstrates, this has not been thought through.

First, it is completely disproportionate. Cutting off people's Internet connection for allegedly swapping copyright materials is not just, any more than cutting someone's electricity supply would be for watching the TV without a licence, or cutting someone's water supply off would be for brewing illegal spirits.

Secondly, it represents a fundamental assault on due process in this country. If people can be cut off from the most important communication medium of the 21st century on the whim of media companies, who don't even need to prove their accusations in court, then things have reached a pretty sorry state in this country.

Thirdly, the approach won't work from a technical viewpoint. All it means is that the more tech-savvy will start encrypting their traffic; those who can't take this route will simply buy a few huge external hard discs – ones able to hold a quarter of a million songs cost around £50 these days – and swap files personally when they visit their friends.

Fourthly, the idea is at odds with European legislation. Amendment 138 of the Telecoms Package currently being finalised in Europe forbids the cutting off of users without judicial oversight. And that's even before the ISPs start taking legal advice on other ways in which it breaks relevant laws. Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights would probably have something to say about legislation that allows what Viviane Reding has explicitly called a “fundamental human right” (http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/05/internet-access-is-fundamental-fight.html) to be taken away so easily.

What's particularly bizarre about this move is that those who will suffer the most are likely to be traditional Labour supporters. For it is the poor who cannot afford to pay for high-priced digital downloads, and may therefore look for material on P2P networks. It is the poor who may well share an Internet across several families using a wifi connection in a block of flats, for example. If one user is accused of swapping copyright materials, several families will be severely disadvantaged – hardly something that fits with Labour's historical mission to help precisely these people.

For all these reasons - assuming this truly is a consultation and not just another rubber-stamping – I urge you to join your colleague, Tom Watson (http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2009/08/filesharing-revised-consultation/), in passing on to Lord Mandelson and Stephen Timms the comments of myself and others who may write to you on this subject.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

O Tell Me the Truth about... the Telecoms Package

On Open Enterprise blog.

Latvia Spreads a Little Light on Openness

Ever wondered what those Latvians are up to with free software? Wonder no more:

Latvia's Minister for Electronic Government Affairs Signe Bāliņa says open standards are key to improving efficiency and transparency in government.

Open technology and open standards are fundamental to efficient communication with the government, the minister argued in her opening address at the Latvian Open Technology Conference in Riga on 12 November. She said the government needs to use open IT systems to allow citizens and businesses to communicate easily with the government. "We think it is very important these systems are open and based on open technologies and open standards."

The conference in Riga, organised by the Latvian Open Technology Association (LATA), drew more than 250 participants from the central government, municipalities, IT firms and universities. LATA wanted to update the attendants on open source developments in the country and the region.

Several Latvian businesses and institutions described their use of open source software. The telecoms company Lattelecom for example presented on the use of open source in their data centres and the Latvian University showed how it uses the open source e-learning system Moodle to offer on-line education. The university also employs open source for its data storage and to create grid computing services.

There's also interesting stuff about Russia - somewhere I've long believed is set to emerge as an open source leader:

Marat Guriev, a representative of IBM in Eastern Europe and Asia, gave an overview of developments on open source software and open standards in Russia. He described how the Russian military has been working on its own version of GNU/Linux, parts of which have recently been declassified by the All-Russian Scientific and Research Institute of Control Automation in the Non-Industrial Sphere (Vniins). According to Guriev, many specialised version of GNU/Linux distributions are produced, often in response to requests by local governments. In three Russian regions, most of the PCs in use in about a thousand schools have been switched over to GNU/Linux. Moreover, Russian science institutes are publishing their work on open source systems, he said, for example on the web site Linux Testing.

I've written about the activity in Russian schools before. If you read Russian, you can read Guriev's presentation here - it has plenty of useful detail about free software in his country.

There is no War on...Botnets

After the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror, now, it seems, we are to have a War on Botnets:

Mr Toure said that whatever the solution, the fight against botnets was a "war" that could only be won if all parties - regulators, governments, telecoms firms, computer users and hardware and software makers - worked together.

But it is a truth universally acknowledged, that as soon as you declare "war" on some amorphous entity like "drugs" or "terror" or "botnets", you've already lost, because you shift from the practical to the rhetorical.

This is all about security theatre: talking tough instead of acting intelligently. Sorting out botnets does not require a "war": it's simply a matter of telling Windows users the truth about their bug-infested system, getting them to use a firewall and anti-virus software and - maybe, one day - getting them to understand that downloading or opening unknown software is hugely risky.

A Different Point of View on Software Patents

One of the fears that I and others have voiced is that the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA) - an attempt to set up a unified European judicial system for patent litigation - might be an attempt to get software patents in through back door. Often, though, these concerns are dismissed by supporters of software patents as unwarranted. But here's someone who disagrees:

The industry-based driving force behind the EPLA comes from the pro-software patent group as a way of ensuring that their software or potential software patents are fully enforceable across Europe. The EPO is fully supportive of the EPLA, and some national governments and patent registries have voiced their support.

More whining from the anti-software patent lot? Well, not actually. These words were written by Alison Crofts, who:

provides specialist IP advice and expertise in both litigation and commercial matters. This includes advising on: the creation, protection and exploitation of IP rights, including trade secrets, confidentiality issues, technology transfer agreements and licensing; the enforcement and defence of IP rights, including the conduct of litigation and arbitration proceedings; and IP aspects of joint ventures, co-ownership and transactions. Alison has an engineering background and has particular experience in the semiconductor, oil and gas, hi-tech and telecoms engineering industries.

In other words, she's likely to be for rather than against software patents. Don't say we didn't tell you.... (Via FFII.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Google Decides Smartphone Market Share Is More Important Than Net Neutrality

As a recent post noted, net neutrality is under threat in France, with ISPs like Free asking Google to pay extra for delivery of its traffic. According to this post on the Forbes Web site, Google has already agreed to pay the French telecoms company Orange in precisely this way. As well as damaging the whole principle of net neutrality, something that Google has been championing for many years, this would seem to be a pretty bad business decision. After all, if Orange is now getting paid to carry Google's traffic, why shouldn't every other telecom company out there also receive money for delivering Google's services? 

On Techdirt.

A Study in Stupidity

I am constantly amazed at how many people do not get what net neutrality is about. Cunningly, the telecoms companies frame this in terms of providing "superior" services for certain classes of data traffic - conveniently skating over the fact that creating a first class inevitably demotes everyone else to second class or worse.

The key point about network neutrality is that it ensures a level playing-field - a commons, no less, open to all - and does not attempt to second-guess the intentions of those who will exploit that commons. Those who fight against it forget all the history of the Internet - how none of the services that run across it was planned, but was simply able to take the basic infrastructure for granted.

This is not rocket science; and yet we can still have nominally insightful people writing stuff like this:

there's a huge analytical leap between preventing patently anticompetitive conduct and having the government tell operators how to manage their networks in the name of network neutrality. Unfortunately, as election politics loom large, many in Congress are ignoring this important distinction. They instead are seeking to rush through legislation that would essentially commoditize the Internet into a "stupid" network, without understanding the potential adverse consequences.

A commoditised, stupid network that gets out of the way is precisely what we want, for reasons that this excellent essay explains:

This ability to "just do it" liberates huge amounts of innovative energy. If I have a Stupid Network and I get an idea for a communications application, I just write it. Then I send it to my buddy, and my buddy can install it, too. If we both like it, we can send it to more people. If people really like it, then maybe we can charge for it - or even start our own company. Yahoo!

Or Google, or Amazon or eBay.

There are no "adverse consequences" if that stupidity is implemented in a technical sense. Equally, this is not a question of "having the government tell operators how to manage their networks": all they know - and all they need to know - is that every IP packet must be treated the same. It's a simple engineering-based condition. To say - or indeed ask for - anything else is just, well, stupid.