German Government Wants Google To Pay To Show News Snippets

Some bad ideas just keep on coming back, despite the fact that they are manifestly stupid. Trying to get Google and others to pay for the privilege of sending more traffic to newspapers by including short snippets from their stories is one of them. Of course, logic would dictate that the newspapers should be paying Google for the marketing it provides, but unfortunately not everyone sees it that way. 

On Techdirt.

Hacktivist Judo: Musician Exploits New Spanish Law To Overwhelm System With Legitimate Infringement Complaints

As Techdirt reported earlier this year, Spain's Sinde Law, designed to combat file sharing by blocking sites with allegedly infringing material, has an extremely complex history. It finally went into effect on 1 March, and was immediately met with a clever denial of service attack from a Spanish group with the self-explanatory name "Hackivistas". As TorrentFreak explains: 

On Techdirt.

UK Government Pressuring Search Engines To Censor Results In Favor Of Copyright Industries

One of the most insidious aspects of recent Internet policy-making is that much of it is taking place behind closed doors, with little or no consultation -- think of SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and TPP. But there's another dangerous trend: the rise of "informal" agreements between the copyright industries and Internet service providers. 

On Techdirt.

Time To Go: Why EU Commissioner De Gucht Has Disqualified Himself From Handling ACTA

Even though the European Commission has referred ACTA to the European Court of Justice, the European Parliament continues to examine the treaty in its various committees. Earlier this week, the one dealing with International Trade met for a preliminary discussion. One of the key speakers was the Commissioner responsible for ACTA, Karel De Gucht, who naturally tried to make light of the many problems that have been raised in recent weeks. 

On Techdirt.

EC Defends Interoperability, but Misses Bigger Picture

Here's an interesting move from the European Commission:

On Open Enterprise blog.

'We, The Web Kids': Manifesto For An Anti-ACTA Generation

One of the striking features of the demonstrations against ACTA that took place across Europe over the last few weeks was the youth of the participants. That's not to say that only young people are concerned about ACTA, but it's an indication that they take its assault on the Internet very personally -- unlike, perhaps, older and more dispassionate critics. 

On Techdirt.

Does Guernsey Really Want To Become Famous -- And Ostracized -- For Introducing Image Rights?

Just as the original term of copyright has been constantly extended from the original 14 years in the Statute of Anne, so the the scope of intellectual monopolies has been widened by the introduction of new ways in which people assert ownership of abstractions. Here's the latest idea: a right to protect your image. 

On Techdirt.

Dutch Research Reveals Wide Scope For Copyright Flexibilities In EU Laws

A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt wrote about a surprising initiative by the Netherlands to introduce new flexibilities into its copyright law. Given that leadership from the Dutch government, it's probably no surprise that a few days later, the Dutch Parliament also showed itself in the political vanguard by voting not to ratify ACTA for the time being. 

On Techdirt.

EU Censorship Plan With A Cheesy Name: The Clean IT Project

A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt reported on UK politicians calling for ISPs to "take down" terrorist content. Now it seems that the idea has not only spread to other European countries, but even acquired a cheesy name: "the Clean IT Project". 

On Techdirt.

The Struggle Between Copyright and the Internet

January 18, 2012 may well go down as a pivotal date in the history of the Internet – and of copyright.  For on that day, the English-language Wikipedia and thousands of other websites were blacked out or modified to protest against two bills passing through the US legislative system that were designed to fight copyright infringement.  To understand why that unprecedented action took place, and what it means for the future of the Net, it’s necessary to review the history of copyright briefly. 

On Stir to Action.

UK Open Standards Consultation Submission

Somewhat belatedly (apologies), here is the second part of my analysis of the UK government's Open Standards consultation. As well as a quick look at the remaining two chapters, I include my responses to individual questions at the end.

On Open Enterprise blog.

WURFL: a cautionary tale

A few months ago, I wrote about the library management program Koha, and how the irruption of money into the previously tranquil world of open source led to some painful arguments. Sadly, that's not a unique example, as the recent case of WURFL demonstrates.

On The H Open.

UK Labour Party: Let's Just Get On With Kicking People Offline Over Copyright Infringement

As Techdirt reported at the time, the UK's Digital Economy Bill was rammed through Parliament, without proper scrutiny or even much democratic process, in the dying hours of the previous government. Since then, the implementation of the Digital Economy Act has moved forward relatively slowly. That's partly because there have been a series of legal challenges from ISPs concerned about its legality (and likely cost for them). In addition, it made sense for the current UK government to wait for the completion of the Hargreaves report on copyright in the digital age before proceeding. 

On Techdirt.

Why Ebook Portal Library.nu Differed From Other Filesharing Sites

A couple of weeks ago the popular ebook portal Library.nu was shut down, apparently voluntarily, after a coalition of book publishers obtained an injunction against it and a similar site. As an excellent post on the kNOw Future Inc. blog points out, Library.nu was significant in a number of ways: 

On Techdirt.

One More Copyright Infringement, And HADOPI Must Disconnect Itself From The Net

The governmental body that oversees France's "three-strikes" law, HADOPI, has already been caught once infringing on the copyright of others -- by using a logo designed with unlicensed fonts. Now it's been spotted using photographs without respecting the so-called "moral rights" of the photographer, which include the right to attribution (French original), absent on HADOPI's site. Such moral rights are taken very seriously in France, where they are automatic, perpetual and cannot be waived (unlike in some other jurisdictions, such as the United Kingdom.) 

On Techdirt.

Trademark Lobby Wants To Help European Court of Justice Forget About EU Citizens' Rights

It was only yesterday that the European Commissioner Karel de Gucht made the surprise announcement that the European Commission would be referring ACTA to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) "to assess whether ACTA is incompatible -- in any way -- with the EU's fundamental rights and freedoms." Just a few hours after that, there are already signs of panic among ACTA's supporters that the treaty may indeed be incompatible -- and thus dead in the water as far as the European Union is concerned. 

On Techdirt.

Do You Need Permission To Take A Photo With A Chair In It? You Might In France...

The British Journal of Photography (BJP) brings us yet another story of aggressive assertion of copyright wreaking harm on artists -- the very people it allegedly empowers. It concerns some photos in Getty Images' stock library that have chairs in them. Because a few of those chairs are "famous" in the sense that they were produced by a couple of designers that worked with the architect Le Corbusier, the heirs of those designers, together with the Le Corbusier Foundation, have sued Getty Images in France for copyright infringement -- and won: 

On Techdirt.

European Commission Suggests ACTA's Opponents Don't Have 'Democratic Intentions'

Last week, we had a story about the IFPI (the international equivalent of the RIAA) saying that the ACTA protests were trying to "silence the democratic process". You might have thought that was bad enough, but here's worse. 

On Techdirt.

ACTA Update VII

One of the widely-recognised problems with ACTA is the lack of transparency surrounding its negotiation. Since I have addressed this issue at length elsewhere, I won't repeat myself here. But it occurred to me that there is another way of looking at transparency, and that is in terms of consultation. In a sense, it's the flip side of transparency.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Twitter Suspends Four Accounts Critical of Sarkozy: Is This What He Meant By 'Civilizing' The Net?

Nicolas Sarkozy, who hopes to be re-elected as French President this year, seems to have little love for the Internet. At best, he regards it as a "Wild West" that needs taming. Despite that, Sarkozy joined Twitter last week -- you can follow him @NicolasSarkozy. Posts are mainly written by his re-election team, although there seem to be a handful of personal tweets (marked "NS"). But at least he's finally engaging with the new medium on its own terms. 

On Techdirt.

Open Season on Open Standards

The increasingly heated debates about the traditionally dull area of computer standards is testimony to the rise of open source. For the latter absolutely requires standards to be truly open - that is, freely implementable, without any restrictions - whereas in the past standards were pretty much anything that enough powerful companies agreed upon, regardless of how restrictive they were.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Shining Light On ACTA's Lack Of Transparency

One of the key problems with ACTA is the lack of transparency during its negotiation. That this is becoming a big issue in Europe is shown by the fact that the European Commission has tried to dispose of the question twice -- first in its "10 myths about ACTA", which I discussed recently on Techdirt, and now with a page entitled "Transparency of ACTA negotiations": 

On Techdirt.

Australian Government Holds Secret Anti-Piracy Meetings; The Public Is Not Invited

As Techdirt noted recently, policy-making behind closed doors is no longer acceptable. Until the end of the 20th century, it was hard for the general public to make their views heard, and so governments didn't really bother asking them. But that's no longer the case: the Internet has blown government wide open, and there is now no excuse for not consulting as widely as possible -- including the public -- before passing legislation or signing treaties. 

On Techdirt.

DMCA Takedown Service Tells Copyright Companies: 'Adapt Your Business To The New Digital World'

Although DMCA takedown notices figure quite frequently here on Techdirt -- especially abusive ones that use the system to remove material covered by fair use or even in the public domain -- the industry that has grown up around them remains somewhat in the shadows. That's what makes the site with the self-explanatory name "Takedown Piracy", found via the 1709 Blog, so fascinating: it offers a glimpse of the world of DMCA takedowns as seen from the other side. 

On Techdirt.

SOCA's Frightening New Approach to Music Piracy

Yesterday I wrote about the unusual aspects of the Serious Organised Crime Agency's take-down of the music site RnBXclusive. As I noted then, there are still lots of questions to be answered here, but another piece of the puzzle has been given to us in the form of the following statement on SOCA's Web site:

On Open Enterprise blog.