EU's Unconvincing ACTA Act

The EU has made an official statement [.pdf] on ACTA. As you might expect, it is as wriggly a wriggly thing as a wriggly thing can. Here it is, with a few annotations:

The Commission can inform the Honourable Member that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be in line with the body of EU legislation, which fully respects fundamental rights and freedoms and civil liberties, such as the protection of personal data. This includes the Intellectual Property Rights' relevant aspects of the Telecoms package.

As for being in line with "EU legislation", this *already* allows ACTA-like provisions, so that's cold comfort.

ACTA should not contain measures restricting end-users’ access to the internet that would not be appropriate, proportionate and necessary within a democratic society and without a prior, fair and impartial procedure.

These are the same weasel words used in the Telecoms Package, and have no real weight whatsoever without judicial oversight: no protection there.

It is the Commission's view that ACTA is about tackling large scale illegal activity, often pursued by criminal organisations, that is causing a devastating impact on growth and employment in Europe and may have serious risks to the health and safety of consumers. It is not about limiting civil liberties or harassing consumers.

That may well be; but the great ACTA bait and switch means that civil liberties *would* be limited, and consumers *would* be harassed.

So, "no points - nul points - keine Pünkte", I'm afraid, for that attempt at mollification.

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Beyond Open Access: Open Publishing

Another splendid piece from Cameron Neylon calling into question the value of traditional peer review:

Whatever value it might have we largely throw away. Few journals make referee’s reports available, virtually none track the changes made in response to referee’s comments enabling a reader to make their own judgement as to whether a paper was improved or made worse. Referees get no public credit for good work, and no public opprobrium for poor or even malicious work. And in most cases a paper rejected from one journal starts completely afresh when submitted to a new journal, the work of the previous referees simply thrown out of the window.

Much of the commentary around the open letter has suggested that the peer review process should be made public. But only for published papers. This goes nowhere near far enough. One of the key points where we lose value is in the transfer from one journal to another. The authors lose out because they’ve lost their priority date (in the worse case giving the malicious referees the chance to get their paper in first). The referees miss out because their work is rendered worthless. Even the journals are losing an opportunity to demonstrate the high standards they apply in terms of quality and rigor – and indeed the high expectations they have of their referees.

What Neylon has exposed here is that scientific publishing - even the kind that wears its open access badge with pride - simply isn't open in any deep way. We need to be able to see the whole process, for the reasons he mentions. Open access isn't enough, not even with open data: we need *open publishing*.

And yes, that's going to be a huge shift, and painful for many. But if that's the price of producing better scientific papers - and hence better science - surely it's a price worth paying. (Via Nat Torkington.)

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Microsoft's Sulphurous Cloud Computing Offer

I've written before about Microsoft's attempts to break into the world of academic computing, currently dominated by GNU/Linux, by offering all sorts of super-duper deals on HPC systems. Well, now it's trying the same trick with cloud computing:

Microsoft and the National Science Foundation have announced an agreement that will provide free access to advanced cloud computing resources for select NSF-funded researchers for the next three years.

It is our shared hope that the storage and computational power of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, and access to easy-to-use client and cloud tools will enable researchers to accelerate scientific breakthroughs in vital yet highly complex areas of inquiry, ranging from climate change to genetics.

So, basically, you sell your digital soul by using Windows instead of GNU/Linux and get three years' cloud computing in return: I don't think even Faust would have gone for that one.

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Crowdsourcing + Open Source: the Perfect Combination for Startups?

Crowdsourcing represents an interesting attempt to generalise the open source methodology to non-technical areas. The basic idea is to tap into the the vast store of knowledge and wisdom among the general population by providing a mechanism to funnel the best ideas to those who can build on them. Recently there have been some interesting examples in very different domains that suggest crowdsourcing is beginning to enter the mainstream.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Tragedy of the Antibiotics Commons

Here's an interesting - and frightening - story that opened my eyes to something:

Studies in China show a "frightening" increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as staphylococcus aureus bacteria, also know as MRSA . There are warnings that new strains of antibiotic-resistant bugs will spread quickly through international air travel and internation food sourcing.

"We have a lot of data from Chinese hospitals and it shows a very frightening picture of high-level antibiotic resistance," said Dr Andreas Heddini of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control.

"Doctors are daily finding there is nothing they can do, even third and fourth-line antibiotics are not working.

"There is a real risk that globally we will return to a pre-antibiotic era of medicine, where we face a situation where a number of medical treatment options would no longer be there. What happens in China matters for the rest of the world."

What this emphasises is that antibiotics form a kind of global commons - a resource whose benefits we all share. But if one party overexploits that commons - in this case, by recklessly handing out antibiotics as the article suggests - then the commons is ruined for *all* of us.

This development is yet another reason to get commons-based thinking into wider circulation - especially amongst the people making decisions, so that they can appreciate the massive global consequences that can flow from their apparently minor local actions.

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Opening Our Eyes to the Tilted Playing-Field

One of the subtlest ways of gaming the system is to hack the system before you even play - for example, by building in a bias that means your particular approach is given a natural advantage. That this goes on, is nothing new; that it's happened at the heart of the European Union is profoundly disturbing. Here's the summary of what's now been discovered:

These findings suggest that BAT [British American Tobacco] and its corporate allies have fundamentally altered the way in which EU policy is made by ensuring that all significant EU policy decisions have to be assessed using a business-orientated IA [Impact assessment]. As the authors note, this situation increases the likelihood that the EU will produce policies that favor big business rather than the health of its citizens. Furthermore, these findings suggest that by establishing a network of other industries to help in lobbying for EU Treaty changes, BAT was able to distance itself from the push to establish a business-orientated IA to the extent that Commission officials were unaware of the involvement of the tobacco industry in campaigns for IA. Thus, in future, to safeguard public health, policymakers and public-health groups must pay more attention to corporate efforts to shape decision-making processes. In addition, public-health groups must take account of the ways in which IA can be used to undermine as well as support effective public-health policies and they must collaborate more closely in their efforts to ensure effective national and international policy.

A number of lessons need to be learned from this.

First, that if you want a system to produce fair results, you need to ensure that its framing is fair. Secondly, full transparency is imperative, especially about the relationships between those who are lobbying for changes to a system. Basically, you just can't have too much openness when it comes to setting key policy like Impact assessment.

This is an incredibly important - and impressive - paper, with huge implications for many areas. One that springs to mind is that of environmental protection. Given that the framing of Impact assessments is biased in favour of business and financial issues, it's not hard to see that other viewpoints - for example of examining the implications for animal and plant life, or of the various commons impacted - will receive pretty short shrift. It's also an argument for the economics of externalities to be developed more so that they can be brought into the equation when such one-side reviews are being conducted.

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Oh, What a Lovely Standards War

You know something big must be afoot when people start to get worked up over video compression standards. Basically, the issue is whether the current de facto standard, H.264, will continue to dominate this field, and if not, what might take over.

On Open Enterprise blog.

China (Hearts) Royalty-Free Standards?

This sounds great news for free software (and the world):

China recently circulated a draft regulation regarding the use of patents in Chinese national standards. The regulation demands that for patents to be eligible for incorporation in standards, they must be made irrevocably available royalty free or for a nominal fee. This will have dramatic consequences for foreign and domestic innovators.

The royalty-free option is exactly what free software needs, and what patent holders have been fighting against so hard in the West (nominal fee is still problematic, though).

The interesting thing is that as China becomes the world's biggest market, what happens there will inevitably affect elsewhere. So this is by no means a parochial issue. (Via @zoobab.)

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ACTA Goes on the Charm Offensive sans Charm

Sorry to rattle on about ACTA, but it seems there's something of a concerted campaign to "counter" all the noise we little people are making. Here's a line that might sound familiar, this time from Stanford McCoy, "Assistant United States Trade Representative for Intellectual Property and Innovation":

Intellectual property protection is critical to jobs and exports that depend on innovation and creativity. Trade in counterfeit and pirated products undermines those jobs and exports, exposes consumers to dangerous knock-offs from toothpaste to car parts, and helps fund organised crime.

Yes, the old counterfeit = "pirated" equation. And to add insult to injury:

Far from keeping them secret, governments participating in these negotiations have sought public comments, released a summary of issues under discussion, and enhanced public engagement.

Oh dear, I must have blinked and missed all that public discussion and "enhanced" public engagement....

My prediction: there's lot's more where this came from.

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EU Official Caught in the ACTA

As more and more people write about the global scandal that is ACTA, a question naturally forms itself: is it worth it? After all, however many times people ask for more transparency, or attempt to probe what exactly is going on and going into ACTA, all we get are the usual fob-offs: maybe it's time to give up?

I don't think so.

In what seems to be a case of constant dripping wearing away the stone, more and more tiny informational breakthroughs are occurring that together are beginning to reveal the bigger picture. Here's the latest one:

An upcoming global trade agreement on copyright and counterfeiting, known as ACTA, will not rewrite EU rules on the liability of internet service providers, a leading European Commission official told EurActiv, denying media reports that suggest otherwise.

Oh, no? So why have we got the wrong impression?

The leading Commission official said media reports were oversimplifying the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which wrapped up one stage of a series of negotiations in Mexico last week.

Oh, I *see*: those naughty journalists have been "oversimplifying* things. Mind you, that's quite an achievement, since they are essentially "oversimplifying" nothing, which is more or less what the ACTA negotiators have so far deigned to distribute to hoi polloi.

But then we get a little more detail on why ACTA will not "rewrite EU rules" on ISP liability:

A leaked Commission paper on ACTA in October allegedly showed that negotiators at the global talks were attempting to rewrite current EU rules on the liability of internet service providers (ISPs) for pirated content on their networks.

The official denied those allegations and added that under the EU's eCommerce laws, ISPs can already be held liable for content on their network if they do not meet certain requirements.

For example, if an ISP is defined as a "mere conduit," a carrier of content, then it is not responsible for pirated content if it does not "initiate or modify" it and has no say on where it ends up, the official explained.

Ah-ha: what this reveals is that the reason ACTA won't "rewrite" the rules is because the rules are *already there*, according to this interpretation: ACTA will simply foreground them. It's tacitly admitting that there are latent ACTA-like provisions in the eCommerce laws; the big difference is that ACTA will activate them, so to speak.

In which case we need to look carefully at what exactly those laws say to find out whether that "mere conduit" definition is quite so, er, water-tight as the EU official would have us believe. [Added: more specifically, as Rui Seabra points out on Twitter, "ISPs technically initiate [and] modify many connections."]

If this is new information, as it seems to me, it shows the virtue of pressing ACTA officials again and again, because they often let slip what seem to them to be insignificant information that is actually more important than they realise.

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From Open Source to Open Government

Yesterday I had an interesting chat with Paul Clarke, an advisor to government departments on digital strategy, and a man with fingers in many interesting pies, about open government. The central issue we were ruminating upon was how to help those within government who want to open up, given the huge inertial forces operating against them.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The New Face of Open Source: Facebook

Without doubt, one of the most extraordinary developments in recent years has been the rise of Facebook - not just as the most popular social network, but increasingly as a force to reckoned with in the world of computing, perhaps soon on the scale of Microsoft and Google. This makes its relationship to free software something of more than passing interest.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Great Oracle Experiment

So, it finally happened:

We are pleased to announce that Oracle has completed its acquisition of Sun Microsystems and Sun is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Oracle. With this news, we want to reiterate our commitment to deliver complete, open and integrated systems that help our customers improve the performance, reliability and security of their IT infrastructure. We would also like to thank the many customers that have supported us throughout the acquisition process....

On Open Enterprise blog.

LoveMachine: Virtually the Singularity?

A few years ago I had the good fortune to interview Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life. Now, say what you might about that virtual world, and what it has become, but there's no denying its splendidly metaphysical origins:

There's a book I read ... that we were talking about a lot, which really informed our design, and that's Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. That was one of the most important things because it was in 2001, 2002, that we got into this idea that the way online games worked was just completely inconsistent with what we're trying to do, and that Everquest or online games of the time were what Jane Jacobs was talking about when she said that planned cites all failed.

Then you read Death and Life of Great American Cities, and what that says is that it all has to be random. The randomness gives way to overlapping behaviours where some people are walking to go to the store, some people are walking to their home, some people are walking to go to work. Those people all run into each other, there's a kind of a commons behaviour where they'd like to just double click on their work and get there immediately, but they can't: they have to walk. That means they entertain each other: some of the times you're the one being entertained, and some of the times you're the entertainment, that's kind of what Jane Jacobs said. And we were like, oh yeah, that's exactly what we want. Because if the world is just created by everybody, then you'll have this very haphazard, crazy kind of feel to it, and that'll be incredibly powerful the way New York is.

The Mystery of Capital was like a follow on to that, because it said for people to build that way everybody has to own their own intellectual property - including of course physical real estate - in a very explicit way with alienability and all that stuff.

Rosedale left Linden Lab a while back, and has been working on something memorably called LoveMachine. Now we have the first inkling of what that might entail - and it's suitable big:

Recently, a Second Life veteran named Hikaru Yamamoto told me about the plans she'd heard Philip Rosedale was cooking up for his new company, LoveMachine. He wasn't just building a public version of Linden Lab's employee rating system. Turns out that was just one project. A somewhat more ambitious goal, she told me, was, well, creating a sentient artificial intelligence which existed in a virtual world.

"He wants it to live inside Second Life," as she put it to me. "It will think and dream and everything." Indeed, the company's website now lists as one of its three projects, "The Brain. Can 10,000 computers become a person?"

Never a dull moment with that Mr Rosedale...

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Welcome to the Free Technology Academy

How did I miss this amazing project?

The expansion of Free Software has brought together a continually growing global community of developers, by offering solid quality products which have not gone unnoticed in business, government and academic circles. Big players such as Novell, IBM and SUN have brought Free Software into their business models, and many more SMEs provide professional services around Free Software. The European Commission and many national, regional and local governments have started adopting open standards and show a preference for Free Software to cover their IT needs.

Although there is a growing interest in free technologies (Free Software and Open Standards), still a limited number of IT professionals, teachers and decision makers have sufficient knowledge and expertise in these fields. This is particularly problematic since these are crucial actors in promoting and implementing free technologies.

So where does the Free Technology Academy fit in?

In order to tackle this problem, the Free Technology Academy (FTA) is being set up as a distance learning programme. This distance learning programme consists of specific modules to enable IT professionals, students, teachers and decision makers to upgrade knowledge and acquire relevant skills on free technologies. Those users interested in getting a master degree could complete their study and get a master degree at one of the participating universities.

...

The FTA's main goals are twofold. First, to set up a virtual campus offering course modules on Free Software and Open Standards with teaching staff from the participating institutions; and second, to become a showcase of a virtual campus based on FS, OS and the use of Open Educational Resources, in order to promote its use in other institutions. The programme will acquire its shape through close cooperation between higher education institutions and
social and private organisations.

To this end a virtual campus is created where open educational materials are available and users will be able to follow specific course modules on:

1. the Introduction to Free Software and Open Standards;
2. the GNU/Linux Operating System;
3. Network Technologies;
4. Web Applications development;
5. Economical models;
6. Legal aspects of the Information Society;
7. Software development and
8. Case studies.

Even better:

Educational materials in the FTA will be released under free licenses in line with the philosophy of the free knowledge and open educational resources movement. The educational content necessary to complete the curriculum will be developed using the SELF platform, a tool for the collaborative development of educational materials. These materials will comply with dominant open standards such as SCORM and IMS, thus enabling the seamless exchange with other educational platforms.

Sounds a perfect storm of open source, open content, open courseware and open educational resources. Kudos. (Via LWN.net.)

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Britain Loves Wikipedia - And About Time, Too

One of the important roles of museums and galleries is education: helping the public to discover and explore the masterworks in their collections. So you would have thought that they would be only to happy to have images of those works exposed in the greatest online gallery of them all, Wikipedia. And yet there has been a certain resistance to this in some quarters, thanks - of course - to a crazy obsession with "copyright".

That's doubly misguided: we're talking about old works here, so the idea that copyright should be operative on their images, is nuts; but it's also perverse, because it stops people from finding out about what's on offer in museums, which is against their best interests.

Against that rather sad background, I obviously applaud this initiative:

‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ is a month-long competition and series of events to be held in participating museums nationwide from 31 January 2010. People from all ages, backgrounds and communities can take part in the competition, which encourages the public to photograph the treasures of our nation’s museums and galleries, actively involving them in digitally recording the collections. All of the photos entered into the ‘Britain Loves Wikipedia’ competition will be made available under a free license on Wikimedia Commons, and can then be used to illustrate Wikipedia articles.

It's just sad that this hasn't been happening automatically, everywhere.

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EU's Gallo Report: Rubbish Recycled

I've noted several times an increasingly popular trope of the intellectual monopolists: since counterfeiting is often linked with organised crime, and because counterfeiting and copyright infringement are vaguely similar, it follows as surely as night follows day that copyright infringement is linked with organised crime.

Well, that apology of an argument is now being recycled in the draft of the Gallo Report [.pdf], "on enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market," from the Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament:

there are proven connections between various forms of organised crime and IPR infringements, in particular counterfeiting and piracy

Well, maybe between organised crime and counterfeiting, but I challenge anyone to provide evidence that it's linked to infringements of copyright ("piracy").

This is not the only example of a lazy and totally biased reuse of old arguments employed by the content companies. Earlier in the document we find a similar parroting of the inaccurate statements put about by industries dependent on intellectual monopolies:

violations of intellectual property rights (IPR), defined as any violation of any IPR, such as copyright, trade marks, designs or patents, constitute a genuine threat not only to consumer health and safety but also to our economies and societies

*Counterfeiting* can certainly be a threat to consumer health and safety, and needs to be combated vigorously, but the idea that copyright infringement might be is simply risible, and it's an insult to our intelligence even to suggest it.

innovation and creativity have considerable added value for the European economy and, taking account of the economic context, they should be preserved and developed

Well, yes, but they are quite separate from the enforcement of intellectual monopolies, I'm afraid.

the phenomenon of on-line piracy has assumed very alarming proportions, particularly for the creative content industries, and whereas the existing legal framework has proven incapable of effectively protecting rights-holders on the Internet and the balance between all the interests at stake, including those of consumers

There is no balance whatsoever: the original 14-year term of copyright is now life plus 70 years in many jurisdictions: the consumers are *never* considered in any of this. This claim is totally one-sided in favour of the monopolists.

The report even stoops to the level of advocating brainwashing the young, when it

Stresses the need to educate young people to enable them to understand what is at stake in intellectual property and to identify clearly what is legal and what is not, by means of targeted public awareness campaigns, particularly against on-line piracy

What it means, of course, is that it wants to bully them into accepting the lazy, arrogant, monopolists' view that they are entitled to their old business models, that nobody is allowed to innovate around digital content, and that the little people like you and me should learn to shut up.

All-in-all, this is one of the most disgraceful pieces of work I have ever seen from the European Parliament: a true blot on the otherwise laudable record it has of defending the rights of the European public that elected it. If it wants to retain its credibility with the latter it should reject this load of nonsense and start again.

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Uncommonly Good Post on the Commons

Wow: this is the best single post I have ever read on the commons (and I've read a few):

The commons as a common paradigm for social movements and beyond (version 1.0)

We can only promote the commons as a new narrative for the 21st century if they are identified as a common denominator by different social movements and schools of thought. In my point of view, enforcing the commons would be not only possible, but strategically intelligent. Here are 15 reasons why...

I'm tempted to quote the whole thing, but it's long and doing so is unnecessary, since you can simply follow the link above. But it really touches on just about every reason why the commons as an idea is important. However, I can't resist give an indication of its riches by quoting two sections that should strike a chord with people in the world of free software:

The commons strengthens an important core belief about human beings and behaviour. We are not only, not even mainly the „homo oeconomicus“ they made us believe we are. We are much more than selfish creatures looking for our own interest. We need and enjoy being embedded into a social web. “The commons are the web of life”, says Vandana Shiva. We enjoy to contribute, care and share. The commons strengthens the confidence in the creative potential of people and in the idea of inter-relationality, which means: “I need the others and the others need me.” They honour our freedom to contribute and share. This is a different kind of freedom than the market is based on. The more we contribute, more things we have access to. But note: it is not simply „access to everything for free“.

And:

The commons is an alternative mode of production. The problems we are confronted with are not problems of resource-availability. They are problems that arise from the current mode of production. Fortunately, in some areas, we are witnessing a shift from the capitalist mode of production (based on property, command, value exchange via money, resources and labour exploitation, dependent on growth and striving for profit) into a commons mode of production (based on possession, contribution, sharing, self interest and initiative, where the GDP is a negligible indicator and the aim is a „good life“ < bem viver). Many “Common Based Peer Production” projects are developing successfully. This is especially true for the production of knowledge (Wikipedia, Free Software, Open Design). But there is a thrilling discussion going on about how principles of commons based peer production can be transferred to the production of what we eat, wear and move with, at least to a certain extent. I believe that this is possible. Firstly because knowledge makes up the lion’s share of each kind of production. All goods are latent knowledge products. There is no car production or eggproduction without a concept and a design behind (which make the lion’s share of its „market value“). Secondly because there are many kinds of commons sectors (care economy, solidarity economy) which have not been commodified yet and where commons values and rules are deeply rooted. Those sectors are evidence that every day many of the things we need to live are produced outside the market.

Do read the whole thing if you can: it's really worth it.

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Of Art and Copyright

This is going to become a really contentious area:

Many museums and art libraries have digitized their collections of artworks. Digital imaging capabilities represent a significant development in the academic study of art, and they enhance the availability of art images to the public at large. The possible uses of these images are likewise broad. Many of these uses, however, are potentially defined by copyright law or by license agreements imposed by some museums and libraries that attempt to define allowable uses. Often, these terms and conditions will mean that an online image is not truly available for many purposes, including publication in the context of research or simple enjoyment. Not only do these terms and conditions restrict uses, they also have dubious legal standing after the Bridgeman case. This paper examines the legal premises behind claiming copyright in art images and the ability to impose license restrictions on their use.

It would be absurd if the amazing possibilities of digitising museum and art collection holdings were squandered because of a short-sighted and misguided obsession with copyright. We need to nip this in the bud, and get some leading institutions to come out in favour of disseminating their holdings in this way. If we don't we've decades of lock-down in front of us, just when things should be available to all.

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Why Hackers Will Save the World, Part 37828

The ideas in this PhD thesis, which is rather heavy going but has its heart in the right place, may be familiar to readers of this blog:

A critique of post-industrial theories framing Information Society discourse as well as a consideration of the “newness” of information in the digital age provide fertile ground for a discussion of tech activism in contemporary social movements. Using the framework of critical constructivism, I analyze how tech activists consciously design technology that embodies values of equality, freedom and justice. Their creation and appropriation of free software indicates a more general argument for open knowledge production as the basis for a new mode of work, and indeed, a new set of social relations. In reconstructing the internet along a democratic model and through a democratic process, I argue, tech activists are creating a model of social organization that is radically transformative, refusing the reductive limits of the neoliberal world order, and enacting the possibility of a better world now.

Or, in a nutshell, we must all learn how to share.

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setiQuest: Out of this World Free Software

I'm constantly amazed and heartened by the new domains in which free software is turning up. Here's a nice one: setiQuest.

For centuries humans have looked at the stars and wondered “are we alone?” Now, setiQuest is an opportunity for you to help answer that question. In 1960, Frank Drake conducted the first scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Since then, scientists from many countries have conducted more than 100 projects looking for communication signals from other civilizations. With the spread of the Internet in the 21st century, it is now possible for humans around the globe to participate in a new SETI program.

You can participate as a software developer, signal detection algorithm developer, or a citizen scientist.

Because setiQuest is opening up:

Today's project launch is a first opportunity to get join the setiQuest project yourself. Start by reading the material that's here, mentioning this page on your blog or other social media, and registering your email address with us by clicking on the Stay Informed button in the upper right hand corner above.

If you're a software developer: We plan to start hosting code in the second quarter of 2010. The code will be released gradually in modules rather than all at one time, giving us a chance to provide enough documentation about each module so that the code will be clear to radio-astronomy hobbyists. Staged releases will also allow time for focused online discussion about each module within the setiQuest community, building a searchable archive that further increases everyone's (and the project's) collective understanding. At that point our developers will be doing their daily work on the public code repository and will interact with the public through patch submissions and direct reputation building just like with any other Open Source codebase.

(Via @webmink.)

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Recalibrating Intellectual Monopolies

For the last half-century or so, there has been an implicit acceptance that the more intellectual monopolies we have, the better (even if it's not framed in those terms, but of the cuddlier "intellectual property" lie.) Many of us are rebelling against that framing, and at last there seems to be some shift in perceptions. Here are two recent signs of hope.

First, we have a submission from Brazil to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on the subject of of exceptions and limitations to patent rights, which contains the following remarkable passage:

The naïve assumption that providing IP title holders with stronger rights will, by itself, foster innovation or attract investments is no longer acceptable. The open and global economy has rejected this assumption and severely hit the very essence of the patent system, whereby a country would confer an artificial and temporary “monopoly” for the inventor in exchange of having the invention revealed allegedly benefiting the society. No such thing is currently taking place, with a few countries excepted. What, then, does a Member State get out of being part of WIPO? If contributing to the welfare of the society does not constitute a major aspect of what a country could get out of being part of a member-driven UN Organization such as WIPO, what could it possibly be?

Good question there, Brazil.

Meanwhile, in the world of copyright, we have The Public Domain Manifesto. This is a long and rich document that is worth reading in its entirety. Here's a taster:

The public domain, as we understand it, is the wealth of information that is free from the barriers to access or reuse usually associated with copyright protection, either because it is free from any copyright protection or because the right holders have decided to remove these barriers. It is the basis of our self-understanding as expressed by our shared knowledge and culture. It is the raw material from which new knowledge is derived and new cultural works are created. The Public Domain acts as a protective mechanism that ensures that this raw material is available at its cost of reproduction - close to zero - and that all members of society can build upon it. Having a healthy and thriving Public Domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of our societies. The Public Domain plays a capital role in the fields of education, science, cultural heritage and public sector information. A healthy and thriving Public Domain is one of the prerequisites for ensuring that the principles of Article 27 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ('Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.') can be enjoyed by everyone around the world.

At the heart of the manifesto are the following simple, and yet sadly radical ideas:

1. The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception. Since copyright protection is granted only with respect to original forms of expression, the vast majority of data, information and ideas produced worldwide at any given time belongs to the Public Domain. In addition to information that is not eligible for protection, the Public Domain is enlarged every year by works whose term of protection expires. The combined application of the requirements for protection and the limited duration of the copyright protection contribute to the wealth of the Public Domain so as to ensure access to our shared culture and knowledge.

2. Copyright protection should last only as long as necessary to achieve a reasonable compromise between protecting and rewarding the author for his intellectual labour and safeguarding the public interest in the dissemination of culture and knowledge. From neither the perspective of the author nor the general public do any valid arguments exist (whether historical, economic, social or otherwise) in support of an exceedingly long term of copyright protection. While the author should be able to reap the fruits of his intellectual labour, the general public should not be deprived for an overly long period of time of the benefits of freely using those works.

3. What is in the Public Domain must remain in the Public Domain. Exclusive control over Public Domain works must not be reestablished by claiming exclusive rights in technical reproductions of the works, or using technical protection measures to limit access to technical reproductions of such works.

4. The lawful user of a digital copy of a Public Domain work should be free to (re-)use, copy and modify such work. The Public Domain status of a work does not necessarily mean that it must be made accessible to the public. The owners of physical works that are in the Public Domain are free to restrict access to such works. However once access to a work has been granted then there ought not be legal restrictions on the re-use, modification or reproduction of these works.

5. Contracts or technical protection measures that restrict access to and re-use of Public Domain works must not be enforced. The Public Domain status of a work guarantees the right to re-use, modify and reproduce. This also includes user prerogatives arising from exceptions and limitations, fair use and fair dealing, ensuring that these cannot be limited by contractual or technological means.

"The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception": sounds like a good encapsulation to me - let's start spreading it.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Major Victory Against Neo-colonial Patents

Patents are bad enough, because they enclose knowledge. But when they steal that knowledge from the lore of traditional medicine, it's a double crime - adding a dash of neo-colonialism to the mix. So here's some good news on that front:

The Opposition Division of the European Patent Office (EPO) has today revoked a patent granted to Dr. Willmar Schwabe (Schwabe) in its entirety. The patent was opposed by the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) from South Africa acting on behalf of a rural community in Alice, in the Eastern Cape, in collaboration with the Swiss anti-biopiracy watchdog, the Berne Declaration.

The patent was in respect of a method for producing extracts of Pelargonium sidoides and Pelargonium reniforme to make Schwabe’s blockbuster cough and colds syrup, Umckaloabo. It was revoked because the Opposition Division found that the patent did not satisfy the requirements of the European Patent Convention dealing with inventiveness.

What's remarkable here is that not only was the patent revoked, but that it was an African organsiation, acting on behalf of a rural community, that achieved it. Let's hope it's the first of many. (Via @GMWatch.)

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

Enter the (Big) Dragon

As part of my continuing service to report on the fascinating developments in the Chinese chip sector, I pass on the following:

It's official: China's next supercomputer, the petascale Dawning 6000, will be constructed exclusively with home-grown microprocessors. Weiwu Hu, chief architect of the Loongson (also known as "Godson") family of CPUs at the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT), a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also confirms that the supercomputer will run Linux. This is a sharp departure from China's last supercomputer, the Dawning 5000a, which debuted at number 11 on the list of the world's fastest supercomputers in 2008, and was built with AMD chips and ran Windows HPC Server.

It won't come as a surprise to readers of this blog that China's new supercomputer will be running Linux - over 80% of the world's big machines do. What's fascinating is that this is being built out of that home-grown Loongson chip - the one that Windows doesn't run on. As the same article explains:

The arrival of Dawning 6000 will be an important landmark for the Loongson processor family, which to date has been used only in inexpensive, low-power netbooks and nettop PCs. When the Dawning 5000a was initially announced, it too was meant to be built with Loongson processors, but the Dawning Information Industry Company, which built the computer, eventually went with AMD chips, citing a lack of support for Windows, and the ICT's failure to deliver a sufficiently powerful chip in time.

That means that as China builds more and more of these, and pushes the technology further and further, it will be Linux that benefits, not Windows, and Linux that spreads...

China + Loonson + Linux: this is one to watch...

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca.

United Against the Digital Economy Bill

As readers of this blog will be well aware, the UK's Digital Economy Bill is currently grinding its way through Parliament. At the moment, it's the Lords that are trying to knock some sense into its senseless provisions; later it will go to the Commons, where there's probably less chance of things being improved, given the current distribution of the parties there. Meanwhile, various groups are coming together in an attempt to rouse the British public from its slumbers on this hugely-important issue.

On Open Enterprise blog.