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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.
Well, we did it: ACTA was resoundingly defeated
in the European Parliament yesterday by 478 votes to 39, with 165
abstentions. That's largely because so many of us contacted our MEPs,
wrote emails and even took to the streets. Leaving aside the victory
in itself, that's important too because people across Europe have worked
together on a massive scale in the defence of the Internet and its
freedom.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Along with ridiculous libel cases, the UK is also infamous for laws
that are designed to stop people hurting the feelings of others. Maybe
that's a laudable aim, but the end-result is that they can cast a chill
over freedom of speech. Here's a classic case from the English town of Boston in Lincolnshire:
On
Techdirt.
Although all eyes have been on the European Parliament this week,
that doesn't mean things have stopped elsewhere in the EU machine. In
particular, the European Court of Justice, the highest in the EU, has just delivered a stunning and really quite unexpected judgment that could have major implications for the digital world.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
In a plenary vote today, the European Parliament has rejected ACTA by 478 votes to 39, with 165 abstentions. That followed a failed attempt by the right-of-center EPP Group to call for a postponement. Although the final result was not totally unexpected, since the signs
had been pointing this way for a time, it nonetheless represents a huge
victory for campaigners who had more or less given up hope of stopping
ACTA in Europe even a few months ago. So the question now becomes: what
are the ramifications?
On
Techdirt.
If you watched the stream of the plenary session in the European
Parliament yesterday, you will know that what we saw was an incredible
parade of politicians from all parties denouncing ACTA - with one exception. The centre-right EPP Group is asking for a decision on ACTA to
be postponed until after the European Court of Justice hands down its
judgement on the compatibility of the treaty with EU law. That's likely
to take a year or two, and amounts to a massive delaying tactic, as
I've explained before.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Well, never a dull moment in the world of ACTA.
After I wrote yesterday's column summing up what I thought was the
final state of play, things got very interesting in Strasbourg. Rumours
swirled that the right-of-centre EPP Group would be trying to use the agenda meeting last night to call for ACTA to be postponed. After a flurry of excitement, nothing happened then. But a little later, this tweet was posted on the EPP Group account:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
As Techdirt has reported over the last few months, the passage of
ACTA through the European Union's approval process has been little short
of extraordinary. At the end of last year, ACTA seemed almost certain
to be approved without difficulty. Then, inspired by the Internet
community's success in stopping SOPA, European citizens woke up to
ACTA's problems and took to the streets in huge numbers.
On
Techdirt.
So, here we are: the final decisive week that is likely to determine the fate not just of ACTA, but
also the course of digital copyright law in the world for the next few
years (for the full background to how we got here, and what has happened
along the way, see previous ACTA Updates.) That's because ACTA is not a law as such, but a treaty that sets the context for future laws of its signatories. It's why ACTA is so dangerous: it effectively neuters the sovereign power of nations - and hence of their citizens.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Techdirt has been covering the important Myriad Genetics case for a while. Although the CAFC decided
that isolated genes could be patented, the Supreme Court has asked the
appeals court to review the case in light of the former's rejection of medical diagnostic patents.
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt reported
in 2010, the passage of the Digital Economy Act was one of the most
disgraceful travesties of the UK parliamentary process in recent times;
it was badly drafted, hardly revised and then pushed through with almost
no debate in the dying moments of the previous government. Since then,
two UK ISPs -- BT and TalkTalk -- have challenged the Act in the
courts, but lost earlier this year.
On
Techdirt.
We take antibiotics and their ability to kill practically all
bacteria for granted. But scientists are increasingly warning that we
may be about to leave what might come to be seen as a golden age for
anti-bacterial drugs, and enter a post-antibiotic era. As the World
Health Organization’s Director-General said, quoted in an article on the Citizen Vox site:
On
Techdirt.
Techdirt has always been sceptical about Nathan Myhrvold's business
plan for Intellectual Ventures (IV) -- build up a huge portfolio of
patents, simply so that it can then license them to those that will, and
sue those that won't. Others, however, have been dazzled by Myhrvold's
pedigree as an extremely wealthy ex-Microsoft manager, and by the fact
that patents have undeniably become a central concern for the tech
industries in recent years, which suggests that there is plenty of money
to be made from them.
On
Techdirt.
One of the earliest proposals for mass surveillance was the Panopticon:
On
Techdirt.
As I wrote yesterday, one of the most pressing problems the open
source community faces in the near future is the Unitary Patent
proposal, which is likely to bring in software patents to Europe.
Here's the background, and what we can do about it.
On
Techdirt.
Mike recently reminded us that for some people, bizarrely, stopping "piracy" is more important than making money. Here's another example, this time from Norway:
On
Techdirt.
Marielle Gallo is probably best known for the Gallo Report, which Techdirt described
back in 2010 as a "similarly draconian intellectual property
enforcement" to ACTA, with which it has much in common. So it's no
surprise that Gallo has been one of the few vocal supporters of ACTA,
and it was widely expected that the EU's Legal Affairs (JURI) committee
she chairs would support her draft opinion calling for ACTA to be
ratified. As we now know, that didn't happen, and JURI formed one of five committees that all recommended that ACTA should be rejected.
On
Techdirt.
One of the the reasons why legislation like SOPA and treaties like
ACTA are so dangerous is that their loose definitions allow measures
intended to deal with copyright infringement to be used to censor
inconvenient opinions. Unfortunately, that's not just a theoretical
problem with future legislation, but one that is already happening, as this post from Rick Falkvinge makes clear:
On
Techdirt.
Something seems to be going on in the European Union. Over the next
few weeks a range of really important debates and votes are taking
place, all connected with openness in some way. Quite why everything is
happening at once is not entirely clear - unless politicians are trying
to get everything out of the way before their summer hols, perhaps....
On
Open Enterprise blog.
The day before the EU's International Trade committee (INTA) recommended
that the European Parliament should reject ACTA, the EU commissioner
with responsibility for the treaty, Karel De Gucht, had given a speech
to its members, trying to win them over. Although it was short, it
turns out to be highly revealing about the European Commission's future ACTA strategy. Here's what he said:
On
Techdirt.
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