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There's no shortage of critics of massive trade agreements like TPP and
TAFTA/TTIP, but today saw strong condemnation from a very unexpected
quarter: the Holy See, often, if erroneously, equated with the Vatican. Whatever the jurisdictional differences, the statement
delivered by His Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi, Apostolic
Nuncio, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations and
Other International Organizations in Geneva at the 9th Session of the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization
presumably comes with the full approval of Pope Francis himself. We can
assume that because of the extremely controversial statements it
contains, which would have required approval at the highest level.
Things like this:
On
Techdirt.
Hashtags like #techdirt are not only an indispensable part of Twitter,
but are also increasingly to be found elsewhere as a handy way of
flagging up key topics in a compact and recognizable way. Given the
monopoly-mad world we inhabit, it's something of a miracle that they
weren't patented. Business Insider points out that Chris Messina, the
former Google employee who came up with the idea in the first place, has
explained precisely why he didn't try to patent them. The first reason is practical:
On
Techdirt.
Insofar as we know what's in them, both TPP and TAFTA/TTIP appear to
have deep, thorough-going problems, which are unlikely to be addressed
by the current approach being used to draw them up. However, a justified
criticism of that view might be that anybody can carp, but what should
we put in their place? Rising to that challenge is an alliance of some
50 civil society groups, who over four years have put together what they
call The Alternative Trade Mandate (pdf), which is specifically designed to present a radically different emphasis for European trade negotiations:
On
Techdirt.
One of the key problems with TAFTA/TTIP is the same one that plagued ACTA and has recently been highlighted with TPP:
the complete lack of any meaningful transparency. However much the
negotiators may claim that transparency is important to them, there's no
evidence to support that view. Or perhaps the politicians think the
existence of conferences like one being held in Brussels next January
provide enough opportunities for anyone who wants to convey their views
to the EU's Chief Negotiator, say. He'll be attending, along with
several other senior European Commission officials, according to the
program.
On
Techdirt.
In their obsessive war on piracy, the copyright industries have tried
various approaches. For a while, the "three strikes and out" was
popular, until it became clear that it was completely ineffectual.
At the moment, the preferred method is to try to force ISPs to block
access to sites holding material that infringes on copyright. The UK led the way, and has now made the whole process pretty routine, as a recent post on the TechnoLlama blog explains:
On
Techdirt.
An increasing number of online services use location information. This
places suppliers like Google, with its Google Maps, in a strong
position, since creating such geodata for entire countries -- or the
world -- is something that can only be undertaken by large, well-funded
companies. At least, that was true in the past, but increasingly the
free, crowd-sourced alternative, OpenStreetMap, is gaining both contributors and commercial users:
On
Techdirt.
The problems with DRM for videos, music, ebooks and games are well
known. Despite those issues for the purchasers of digital goods,
companies love DRM because it gives them control over how their products
are used -- something that has been much harder to achieve in the
analog world. The risk is that as digital technologies begin to permeate
traditional physical products, they will bring with them new forms of DRM, as this post by Karsten Gerloff about Zoe, one of Renault's electric cars, makes clear:
On
Techdirt.
Despite the growing evidence
that corporate sovereignty clauses in international treaties pose
considerable risks to nations that sign them, such "investor-state
dispute settlement" (ISDS) mechanisms are present in both TPP and
TAFTA/TTIP -- at least as far as we know: it's hard to be sure given the
obsessive secrecy surrounding them.
On
Techdirt.
Back in June, Mike wrote about the important Myriad Genetics judgment
from the Supreme Court, which said that naturally-occuring genetic
material could not
be patented. However, because of some hedging from the judges, there
were concerns about how much this would block gene patents in practice.
Last week we had an indication that the impact is indeed likely to be significant, as VentureBeat reports:
On
Techdirt.
We noted last week that Japan was bringing in severe new punishments designed to discourage
whistleblowing. That might suggest that following Snowden's leaks,
there will now be a period of repression where potential whistleblowers
lie low to avoid bringing down the wrath of governments on their heads.
One person with a better idea than most about what is really going on
here is Jesselyn Radack. She's employed by the General Accountability
Project (GAP), a leading US whistleblower protection and advocacy
organization. Here's part of her biography on the GAP site:
On
Techdirt.
Earlier this year we wrote about how AbbVie, the pharma company spun out of Abbott Laboratories, had gone to court to stop
the European Medicines Agency (EMA) from releasing clinical trials
information about one of its drugs. Despite what AbbVie claimed, this
was not commercially sensitive in any way, but simply basic data about
safety and efficacy.
On
Techdirt.
It's always heartening to come across new ideas for ways to make
creations more widely available to the public while allowing artists to
benefit. Here's one from the German film director Fred Breinersdorfer, probably best known for his film "Sophie Scholl". In an article that appeared recently on the newspaper site Süddeutsche.de (original in German),
he complains about the fact that searching online for his film throws
up plenty of unauthorized versions, but precious few authorized ones.
On
Techdirt.
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