skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Now that the US and EU have officially announced the start of talks on a new bilateral free trade agreement
-- sorry, a "trade and investment partnership" -- groups in both
regions are trying to work out what this will mean for them and their
constituents. Arguably the most important constituency of all is the
public, and yet it is also the one that until now has been
systematically shut out of previous negotiations for things like ACTA or
TPP. One representative of that huge group -- though not, obviously,
the only one -- is the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD), which describes itself as follows:
On
Techdirt.
I've been writing quite a lot about the current Data Protection
regulation that is being considered in the European Parliament. As I've
noted, this has led to an unprecedented level of lobbying from US
companies, who are keen not to have to follow strict EU rules when it
comes to our privacy. So far, I've not singled out any particular
company in this context, but having read somewhat belatedly this post by the privacy expert Simon Davies, I feel a need to talk about one that is clearly right at the heart of this battle: Google.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
There is an extremely dangerous trend to remove proper judicial review
from cases involving alleged copyright infringement. Sometimes that
means "voluntary" actions by ISPs -- the SOPA and ACTA approach.
Sometimes, it means appearances before tribunals by members of the
public without adequate legal representation,
as is happening under New Zealand's "three strikes" law. And sometimes
it might involve a judge, but consist of the latter simply agreeing to
requests from the copyright industry, without anyone challenging the
grounds for doing so.
On
Techdirt.
There have been many posts on Techdirt about the copyright industry's
hatred for new technologies that eventually turned out to be important
sources of additional revenue -- the VCR being perhaps the most famous
example. Here's a splendid column from Adam Turner in the Sydney
Morning Herald about the same thing happening again in Australia.
On
Techdirt.
It began last week, with an article by the Pirate Party MEP Christian Engström, who wrote about a vote that will take place in the European Parliament (possibly tomorrow):
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the core areas that Mozilla is working on is user privacy, and
one important aspect of this is controlling cookies. Most people are
now aware that sites they visit seek to place cookies - small strings of
information - on their systems as a way of tracking when and what they
visit on that site. What many may not know is that so-called
"third-party" cookies are also widely used: these allow people to be
tracked as they move from site to site, and effectively enable a
detailed picture of their use of the Web to be built up.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
In an implicit acknowledgement that the Europe-wide protests against ACTA indicated that there was a problem with copyright in the digital age, the European Commission announced back in December what it called "an orientation debate on content in the digital economy." This is what that meant, apparently:
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the richest seams of open data concerns transport. After all, by
their very nature, transport systems generate huge amounts of new data
every day -- times, routes, travel options. Similarly, huge numbers of
people use multiple means of transport, which means there is a big
potential audience for analyses of that data. And it's definitely in
the interest of transport operators to make that information freely
available so that developers can use it in new ways, since that is
likely to make traveling easier, and lead to increased custom.
On
Techdirt.
For a year now, Techdirt has been following the sorry saga of Germany's attempt to make search engines and others pay
for licenses to show even small excerpts from online newspapers. The
main motivation seems to be to take money from Google for being
successful, and to give it to the German publishers that are struggling.
On Techdirt.
As I noted recently in the context of the BBC inexplicably supporting the introduction of DRM into the HTML5 specification,
openness lies at the heart of the Web and the Internet. One of the
problems with true openness is that it has to be at every level: if any
part of a system is closed, it interferes with the openness of the
whole.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
If it is to be true to its name, the World Wide Web ought to reflect the
planet's full cultural and linguistic diversity. Currently, though,
many sites and tools remain optimized for English and its character set,
although that's gradually changing as other countries with different
languages and writing systems come online in greater numbers.
On
Techdirt.
The Internet as a mass medium is still relatively young, so it's no
surprise that its function in society and in our daily lives is still
being defined. One important question concerns the nature of our
actions online: to what extent are they public? Here's one rather
extreme view, expressed by Jürgen Maurer, vice-president of Germany's
Federal Criminal Police Office, as reported by Der Spiegel (original in German):
On
Techdirt.
As Techdirt noted last year, France has a regrettable habit of dreaming up really bad ideas
when it comes to the Internet, most famously with the three-strikes
scheme, now known there by the name of the body the oversees it --
Hadopi. Guillaume Champeau points us to a piece in the French newspaper Libération, which contains yet more appalling possibilities (original in French).
On
Techdirt.
Long-time readers will remember the appalling way in which the UK's
Digital Economy Act was brought in - with no research, no debate, and
no democracy. At its heart lies the infamous "three strikes" idea: if
you are alleged - not proved, but merely alleged - to have shared files
online on three occasions you will be subject to some punishment.
Originally that was cutting off your hand, er, your Internet connection,
but as the discussions over implementing this unjust and punitive law
have dragged on, it's become less clear how it will actually work.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
Techdirt has been writing for a while about China's policy of providing incentives to file patents -- regardless of whether those patents have any worth. That's led to a naïve celebration of the large numbers now being granted, as if more patents corresponded to more innovation.
On
Techdirt.
I've written a number of posts about Mozilla's rise and fall and
rise: how it went from saving the open Web and open standards in the
face of the stagnation brought about by Internet Explorer 6's long
dominance; to losing its way
somewhat, with the upstart Chrome threatening to supplant its role as
the "other" browser; and finally finding a role once more as it
concentrated on what it called Web apps.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
New Zealand has the unhappy distinction of being in the vanguard of
using the "three strikes" approach of punishment for people accused of
sharing unauthorized copies online. As in France and the UK, this was
brought in without any preparatory research to ascertain its
effectiveness, and without any real thought about the practical
implications. That makes a post by Susan Chalmers on the blog of
InternetNZ, a "non-profit open membership organisation dedicated to
protecting and promoting the Internet in New Zealand", particularly
valuable.
On
Techdirt.
Back in November last year, I wrote
about a particular class of open data - that regarding clinical trials
data. I pointed out that of all open data, it is arguably the most
important, because it can literally save lives - huge numbers of them.
That post was by way of a taster for future columns - like this one -
which touch on this area, since I believe it will become one of the most
important battlegrounds for openness in the next few years.
On
Open Enterprise blog.
One of the reasons Techdirt rails against exaggerated responses to
supposed terrorist threats is that it has caused police forces around
the world to lose all sense of proportion -- literally, in the case of
this UK story from the Daily Mail.
On
Techdirt.
Posts
