A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out how a decision in Norway involving cash registers emphasised one of the advantages of open source - its natural auditability. Here's another interesting situation that points out a further reason for choosing openness.
Last year we wrote about the German police using malware to spy on members of the public. Now ASIO, Australia's national secret service, has come up with a new variant on the idea:
In the wake of the suicide of Aaron Swartz, there have been many fine tributes to the man and his work. Another growing class of posts that have flowed from this unhappy event are people reflecting on the important lessons he taught them. Here, for instance, is Jeff Jarvis recounting his journey from a fairly traditional position on copyright to one that recognized how the Internet had reshaped that landscape.
One of the striking features of the drug world is how pharma companies become noticeably more inventive immediately before their patents are due to run out and their drugs are about to enter the public domain. That's because they need to find a way to differentiate themselves from the generic manufacturers that are then able to offer the same medicines for often vastly lower prices.
Back in February last year, Techdirt wrote about the rather pathetic attempts of the Portuguese Society of Authors (SPA) to drum up some support among its members for a new copyright levy on storage devices in the face of a public outcry at the extra costs this would impose on consumer and professional products. This was a dismal failure, and so it's probably no surprise that the Portuguese government didn't move forward with the original plans.
I have a lot of time for Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for the Digital Agenda. She's easily the most tech-savvy of the European Commissioners - although cynics would point out that's setting a low bar. Sometimes, she's downright radical, as in this speech about copyright, delivered back in 2011:
There are so many parts to the institutions running the European Union that it's easy to lose sight of them all and their varied activities. For example, one of the lesser-known European Parliament bodies is the Directorate-General for Internal Policies. You might expect the studies that it commissions to be deadly dull, but some turn out to be not just highly interesting but hugely important.
Smartphones have some big advantages: they offer considerable computing power in a highly-portable form, and are available at prices that allow a broad spectrum of users to get online easily. But as we reported last year, there's a big downside, too, one that's all-the-more dangerous for being invisible to most people: overblocking of sites caused by opt-out "child protection filters" applied by some mobile operators to their Internet feed.
The Beatles remain the iconic pop group, so news on VVN/Music that their very first single has now entered the public domain is something of a landmark moment in music:
As you may have noticed, this weekend the online world has been filled with news of and responses to the suicide of the young American activist Aaron Swartz. Many excellent personal tributes have been written about the man and his achievements, but here I want to concentrate on the just one aspect: the incident that led to his arrest and probably to his suicide too. Here's how Techdirt explained the situation:
The Norwegian Ministry of Finance seems to be taking a bit of stick at the moment. It wants all the existing cash registers in the country thrown out and replaced with new ones, as the Norwegian site E24 reports (via Thomas Steen and Google Translate)
As happened for last year, 2013 will doubtless see plenty of battles in the domains of open standards, copyright and software patents, but there will also be a new theme: data protection. That's a consequence of an announcement made by the European Commission almost exactly a year ago:
One of the themes of this blog has been the wider influence of open source. Everyone knows about open content projects like Wikipedia, but one open endeavour that still hasn't made the big breakthrough into the public's consciousness is OpenStreetMap. Here's how it describes itself:
Back in June last year, Techdirt reported on the warning from the World Health Organization's Director-General that we risked entering a "post-antibiotic era". That was in part because the current patent system was not encouraging the right kind of research by pharma companies in order to develop the new antibiotics that we desperately need.
One of the extraordinary aspects of the "three strikes" approach to copyright enforcement is its blind vindictiveness. After three or so alleged acts of infringing on copyright, it's not one individual that's punished, but the entire household that depends on the family Internet connection in question, irrespective of the personal situation of those affected. This kind of collective punishment is something that is regarded as abhorrent in other contexts, but the power of the copyright industries is such that several governments around the world followed the French lead and introduced precisely this kind of scheme, and to hell with the damage it might cause to innocent and vulnerable people caught up in it.
Even against a background of repeated attempts to censor the Net, it's still possible to become a little complacent about some of the actions being taken by the copyright industries. For example, many people probably feel that blocking a site like The Pirate Bay isn't really a problem because, after all, it's just one site, right?
Against a background of the UK government teetering on the brink of imposing an opt-out Web filter "for the children", here's yet another example of how automatic categorization of sites for blacklists gets it wrong, as recounted by the UK's Open Rights Group (ORG):
Although China is often glibly dismissed as little more than an imitator of others, yet another story about copying paradoxically shows it leading the way. That's because what's being cloned is an entire building complex that's still under construction:
As we know, the Internet works by breaking digital information up into IP packets which are then routed independently over the network, and then re-assembled at their destination. Anything made up of 0s and 1s can be sent anywhere with an Internet connection in this way, but that isn't much good for physical objects.
Techdirt has noted before the hypocrisy of Disney in refusing to allow others to draw on its creativity in the same way that it has drawn on the art and ideas of the past. Here's another example, but this time it's an opera that's had difficulties:
The acrimonious debate and serious lobbying that developed around California's Proposition 37, which would have required the labelling of genetically-modified ingredients in food products had it passed, is an indication that the subject inspires extreme views and involves big money. But an interesting post in Slate argues that GM labelling is really a minor issue compared to the main problem -- gene patents:
Daft trademarking stories are common enough, but it's always fun to come across new variations on the theme. Netzpolitik points us to this story from Denmark, where a Spanish-owned property site called HomelifeSpain.com ran into trouble because the word "home" was trademarked in Denmark by the Danish property site home.dk. This resulted in the rather incredible remedy of the website itself being banned entirely. As Netzpolitik notes, this is classic function creep: such web blocks were introduced to fight -- you guessed it -- child pornography, and yet here they are being applied in the rather less serious matter of trademark infringement.
It's not often that trade agreements make it to the front page of the newspapers, but that's what happened on New Year's Day:
As we reported a few months back, Keir Starmer, the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions, made the remarkable suggestion that "the time has come for an informed debate about the boundaries of free speech in an age of social media." That debate has now arrived in the form of a UK consultation on "prosecutions involving social media communications," which takes as its starting point a series of interim guidelines for UK prosecutors when they are grappling with the freedom of speech issues raised by such cases. Here's how Starmer describes the initiative:
Although there has been some sniping about the quality of Wikipedia's entries from time to time, we generally take it for granted that when key articles are missing they will get written, and that if they are unbalanced, they will gradually get better -- all thanks to the open, collaborative editing process that sorts out such problems. But an interesting post on registan.net notes that these dynamics may not apply to some versions of Wikipedia -- for example, the one written in the Kazakh language:
One of the most depressing developments in recent years has been the gradual adoption of legal approaches to tackling copyright infringement that a few years ago would have been regarded as totally unacceptable, and the hallmarks of a tinpot republic run by some ridiculous dictator. Here's another example, this time from Israel, involving secret courts and inscrutable judgments, as Jonathan Klinger explains:
If ACTA was the biggest global story of 2012, more locally there's no doubt that the UK government's consultation on open standards was the key event. As readers will remember, this was the final stage in a long-running saga with many twists and turns, mostly brought about by some uncricket-like behaviour by proprietary software companies who dread a truly level playing-field for government software procurement.
One of the striking -- and depressing -- features of the Internet today is the almost universal desire of governments around the world to rein it in through new laws. We wrote about one such attempt in the Philippines a couple of months ago, where the government is trying to bring in some particularly wide-ranging and troubling legislation. Although the Philippine Supreme Court put a temporary restraining order on the law, the Philippine government is not softening its stance, and has asked the court to lift the order. Its arguments are pretty worrying:
Despite increasing competition around the world, China remains the leader when it comes to finding ways to censor the online world. A few months ago, the site Tech in Asia listed no less than eight ways in which users of Sina Weibo, China's hugely-popular homegrown microblog service, can be penalized for "inappropriate" tweets. Now it seems it has come up with a ninth:
Techdirt has been covering the UK's long-running saga of attempted copyright reform for some years. Most recently, we wondered whether even the Hargreaves Review's moderate suggestions would survive in the face of the usual frenzied lobbying from the copyright industry. Rather remarkably, they have, and the UK government has published a list of the legislative changes it proposes to make (pdf).
Back in April 2011, we wrote about the Czech Constitutional Court ruling that the country's data retention plans were illegal. As we noted then, many other EU countries had also run into similar problems trying to implement the European Data Retention Directive. In one of them, Austria, the issue was referred to the country's Constitutional Court, which has now commented on the case, as this story in PC Advisor explains:
Alongside globe-spanning treaties like ACTA and TPP, there are more subtle efforts to limit the power of national governments, through the use of free trade agreements (FTAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs). There are now so many of these that it's hard to keep up, although the dedicated site bilaterals.org is a great help here. The confusing multiplicity only adds to their attractiveness for those negotiating them behind close doors, keen as they are to avoid transparency as much as possible.
As Techdirt readers well know, one of the problems with measures brought in for "exceptional situations" -- be it fighting terrorism or tackling child pornography -- is that once in place, they have a habit of being applied more generally. A case in point is the blocking of Newzbin2 by BT in the UK. That was possible because BT had already installed its "Cleanfeed" system to block child pornography: once in place, this "specialized" censorship system could easily be deployed to block quite different sites.
As readers of this blog well know, copyright reform has been desperately needed in this country for many years. The earlier Gowers Review was almost totally ignored by the government that commissioned it, and there was always the fear that the more recent Hargreaves Review might suffer the same fate. Miraculously, that seems not to be the case. Just before Christmas, the UK government published its response to the consultation on copyright exceptions and clarifying copyright law with details of how it intends to proceed (.pdf), and they are really pretty good.
Last week I wrote a potted history of the defeat of ACTA in the last year. I mentioned that in the original talk, whose slides I embedded in the article, I concluded by trying to draw some wider lessons about fighting attacks on the Internet and broader freedoms. Here's a summary of what I said.
Back in 2010, Techdirt reported on Turkey's habit of blocking Google over certain holdings on its various sites. Mostly these were YouTube videos it took exception to, but other services were banned too. An earlier case, from 2009, received less attention at the time, but has now led to a precedent-setting ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that could have a big impact on future cases in Europe, and maybe even beyond.
Rather out of the blue, Business Secretary Vince Cable has made a series of proposals affecting patents, copyright and trade marks:
The European Commission has announced that it is withdrawing its referral of ACTA to the European Court of Justice. If you had forgotten about that particular detail, you're probably not alone: so much happened with ACTA in such a short space of time during the last year, that it's easy to lose track.
A recent issue of The New Yorker had a fine essay by Mike Spies about the joys of discovering and listening to music. But its overall tone is rather melancholic:
This year's winner of the Nobel prize in literature, the Chinese writer Mo Yan, was a controversial choice. Some saw him as too close to the Chinese establishment, and thus insufficiently heroic -- unlike the previous Chinese Nobel prize-winner, the imprisoned dissident Liu Xiaobo.
A little while back we wrote about Nathan Myhrvold's sniffy comment that if you're not doing anything to help people suffering from malaria, you have no right to criticize his patent troll operation, Intellectual Ventures. As we also noted, this argument is rather undermined by the fact that his research involves such deeply impractical solutions as "photonic fences" and using magnets to make mosquitoes explode.
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is something of an institution in the UK, famous for his blond mop of hair and outrageous opinions. He's also been a journalist on and off for two decades, and is close to Rupert Murdoch, so it should perhaps come as no surprise that he's penned a characteristically witty defense of British newspapers. They're currently under threat of having governmental regulation imposed upon them in the wake of the UK's Leveson Inquiry, written in response to years of journalists breaking the law in search of hot stories, as Johnson acknowledges:
Recently, we noted that copyright levies in Europe are looking more and more anachronistic for the high-tech world. It seems that Nigeria has not noticed this, since Afro-IP points out to us that the Copyright (Levy of Materials) Order 2012 has been approved there, which will bring them in for a very wide range of goods:
Mike wrote how both Vint Cerf and Sir Tim Berners-Lee were concerned about the outcome of the WCIT talks currently taking place in Dubai. Those aren't the only important voices being raised. Here, for example, is the Mozilla Foundation, the organization behind the Firefox browser and many other free software projects:
As Techdirt has reported over the last year, the Indian government is becoming increasingly keen on using cheaper, generic versions of important drugs to treat diseases, rather than paying Western-level prices its people can ill afford. Intellectual Property Watch reports on another instance of the Indian authorities easing the way for low-cost versions by striking down a patent granted to Roche for the treatment of Hepatitis C. As the article explains, it's notable for at least two reasons:
As I mentioned back in October, the Joint Parliamentary Committee that has been considering the Draft Communications Data Bill, aka Snooper's Charter, seemed to be doing a rather splendid job. It asked witnesses extremely perceptive questions, and seemed unwilling simply to accept the UK government's line that we needed these draconian powers because "terrorism"...
Today, the European Parliament votes on the Unitary Patent. As I explained yesterday, what is being presented is something of a botch, lashed up at the last moment in a desperate attempt to push this through after years of discussion. This is not the right way to pass good laws, and certainly not acceptable for something that will have a dramatic effect on business in Europe.
I've been writing about the attempt to craft a Unitary Patent in Europe for some years. The idea in itself is not bad: a patent that is valid across all of Europe. That would simplify filings and save costs, both of which are to be welcomed. But the devil is in the details, and it looks like those details are increasingly devilish.
A couple of months back, Mike wrote about how Psy's relaxed attitude to people infringing on his copyright helped turn Gangnam Style into one of the most successful cultural phenomena in recent years, and that includes becoming the most-viewed video on YouTube ever
Ah yes, the maximalists will retort, this free-and-easy, laid-back approach is all very nice, but it doesn't put food on his table, does it? If you want to make a living from this stuff, you've got to enforce copyright to stop all those freeloaders ruining your business. Well, maybe not:
France's Hadopi graduated response approach, also known as "three strikes", occupies a special place in the annals of copyright enforcement. It pioneered the idea of punishing users accused of sharing unauthorized copies of files, largely thanks to pressure from the previous French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, who seems to have hated most aspects of this new-fangled Internet thing. Sadly, other countries took up the idea, including the UK with its awful Digital Economy Act, New Zealand, Spain and, more recently, the US.
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