Posted on March 15, 2010 by Simon Phipps
§ There was an article on Boing Boing over the weekend that includes a leaked copy of an e-mail sent by Richard Mollett, head of BPI (that’s the UK’s version of RIAA). He provides his key constituents with a round-up on news on the Digital Economy Bill, the legislative omnibus for all that’s bad in ACTA and the UK’s equivalent of the DMCA. Apparently, Mollet believes there is no groundswell of opposition for the Digital Economy Bill and that MPs will just wave it through for lack of popular concern. Continue reading →
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Filed under: Digital Economy Bill | Tagged: Activism, Debill, Digital Economy Bill, Politics, UK | 3 Comments »
Posted on March 12, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Responding to the request for action, Open Source for America has published a strong refutation of the position IIPA has taken on open source. “Open Source for America (OSFA) believes the IIPA’s request to be both irresponsible and misleading in its characterization of OSS. OSFA strongly urges the USTR, and all government agencies, to firmly reject such unfounded pressure to blacklist or penalize any country for policies allowing or encouraging the use of OSS.”
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We desperately need some well-funded lobbyists who are working for, rather than against citizen rights and digital liberty like the shameless, customer-hating BPI. ORG is making a reasonable try but they are no EFF. Freedom needs a posse.
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Nothing very radical here, apart from the appearance of ™ on the logo and the appendage of Oracle ownership of that mark.
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“A remarkable example is the London Underground mosquito. It is believed to have evolved from an above-ground species which moved into tunnels being excavated to construct the London underground rail system in the 1850s.”
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: Brand, Digital Economy Bill, Evolution, IIPA, Marketing, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, OSFA, Science | Comments Off on ☞ Lobbying, Marketing and Evolution
Posted on March 9, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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European Parliament Written Declaration 12/2010 is now ready for signature. The Declaration establishes principles by which ACTA will be judged when it finally uncloaks and we discover how it is in fact armed. It’s time to use your preferred means to contact your MEPs and ask them to sign it.
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Maybe if they do a good job Oracle would consider retiring CDDL and using this instead?
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Paul Carr with a relatively fair and balanced view of the Digital Economy Bill – seductively so. But I don’t agree with his conclusions.
While the social contract behind copyright has merit (creating a protected ‘space’ where a copyright creation can be monetised in exchange for its dedication to the public domain), the digital age has driven a switch from a control-centric (‘hub-and-spoke’) society to an emergiunbg peer-to-peer society. There are no ‘fixes’ we can do to copyright to make it work right; we need to start again and invent a copyright for the digitial age.
The Digital Economy Bill is well intentioned, but there are no fixes available to make analogue copyright law work for a digital society and I fear the Bill will just make things worse, unleashing a “sorcerer’s apprentice” effect of unintended consequences the way the US DMCA has done. The Bill has to be stopped, not patched.
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A great potted history from Dries Buytaert, timeline-style.
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: ACTA, Digital Economy Bill, Mozilla | Comments Off on ☞ Maintenance required
Posted on March 5, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Official statement from OSI denouncing the IIPA’s warped view of the world that says developing nations should not be mandating open source while the US states and federal agencies get right along with the same thing. Very welcome statement that I know we’ll see Open Source For America reacting to – I hope other countries will also flag the issue with their US diplomatic contacts.
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Excellent paper from the EFF provides us with the lessons of history as the UK considers implementing similar bad legislation. It’s not so much the primary objectives of the law that are the problem (although those are pretty obnoxious). It’s the fact that, through careless drafting (or rather drafting with the assistance of the wrong lobbyists), a whole range of loopholes are created which lead to unintended consequences like censorship, anticompetitive litigation and early monopolisation. This really is a document I want my representatives to read.
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“Imagine that, in the Summer of last year, you had been following the MP’s expenses scandal and heard that The Telegraph was publishing a rather less redacted version that MP’s were prepared to give us. Interested, you navigated your way to
http://www.telegraph.co.uk only to find it was not responding. After some searching around and asking friends you discover that the website has been blocked by most major UK ISP’s. It seems a junior official in Parliament had asked them to block The Telegraph for copyright violation.”
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Wading into the “Special 301 list” debate I explored at great length last weekend, this posting introduces the great analogy of asking if the same complaints would apply if they related to an own vs rent model on cars instead of software: “But one argument that doesn’t make sense is to say that government would be ‘distorting the market’ if it decided to buy cars rather than leasing them.”
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If you’re a Carly Simon fan then this free track is a great gift from Amazon, assuming you have a US account with them.
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: Digital Economy Bill, DMCA, IIPA, Open Source, OSI | 3 Comments »
Posted on March 3, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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The finest possible visual aid for why we can't rely on automatic means to "filter" content. Lessig, as the world's leading authority on "fair use", is assumed guilty until he declares – and perhaps proves – himself innocent.
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The bill has its own home page – a fine reference, both for the content and for the process.
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I'm not a huge fan of 7Digital after some early customer experience of them, but the pressure on them to lean up their act on formats and DRM will be welcome. Does the world really need yet another music store though?
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This looks very do-able and it's the perfect solution for a group of people gathered to discuss a document together and all running different platforms and software tools.
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: Collaboration, Copyright, Digital Economy Bill, DMCA, Etherpad, Fair Use, Lessig, Music, Ubuntu, UbuntuOne, YouTube | 2 Comments »
Posted on March 2, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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Some very serious stuff in here, including insight into the degree to which European Commission bureaucrats are selling out European citizens rights. It’s a big document and I expect the analysis over the next week to reveal some matters of the greatest concern.
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More analysis of the UK’s Digital Economy Bill reveals even more badness. The Bill will effectively eliminate photographers copyrights to photographs without formal registration, and give anyone the right to block photography in public places in the UK. The fact this bill is characterised by the government as “no problem” is outrageous. Both measures can be made to sound citizen-friendly but actually open out enormous loopholes that will reduce citizen rights dramatically.
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Answer: yes, it is. That software you are using – like Final Cut Pro – does NOT include a license to distribute your end product and you need to separately pay fees to MPEG LA for anything you make with it. Very bad, very greedy.
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: ACTA, Digital Economy Bill, H.264, Photography | Comments Off on ☞ An Assault On Digital Freedoms
Posted on February 28, 2010 by Simon Phipps
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At a recent debate in the House of Lords on the Digital Economy Bill, a number of amendments designed to ensure citizen rights (as opposed to most terms of the DEB that limit citizen rights in defence on corporate rights) were rejected by the UK government on the basis they would upset the delicate balance of UK law.
Yet here we see the very same Bill seriously disrupting the delicate balance of rights voters already enjoy. You’ll no longer be able to offer your guests easy wifi access, ruining evolving and desirable modes of work and interaction in order to shore up the 20th century monopolies of Lord Mandelson’s media friends.
I’ve not heard nearly enough from the opposition parties on this stuff, making me fear they will just do more of the same – not a surprise, it’s advance preparation for ACTA ratification. It’s election time; we need to make sure the politicians know we care about this stuff.
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UK citizens can sign this petition to the UK government calling for transparency.
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Useful summary from Michael Geist – worth asking your representatives why your government hates transparency if you’re in one of the countries opposing it.
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Peter Tribble documents some of the comments made by Oracle’s representative in theOpenSolaris annual meeting. Net: Oracle intends to keep going with OpenSolaris.
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Filed under: Links | Tagged: ACTA, Digital Economy Bill, OpenSolaris, Oracle, Petition, Transparency, UK, Wi Fi | Comments Off on ☞ Imbalanced
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