27 December 2013

TAFTA/TTIP: European Commission Tells Us to "Get the Facts"; Here They Are

Readers with long memories may recall in the dim and distant past that at one time "Get the Facts" was a favourite war-cry of Microsoft when attacking GNU/Linux and free software.  Of course the "facts" were anything but, and I spent quite some time debunking them.  Significantly, once the claims had been debunked often enough, and by enough people, the campaign went away, and was never heard of again.

Rather interestingly, the European Commission now seems intent on recapitulating that saga and its fate.  I've noticed several times recently it has invoked the "facts", and I've tried to show why its idea of facts leaves much to be desired.  So far, most of my columns about TAFTA/TTIP have been over on Computerworld UK, under the rubric "TTIP Update."  There also a fair few on Techdirt.  Here I'd like to address a rather interesting addition to the "Get the Facts" collection that doesn't really sit well in either publication, since it's in German.

It comes in response to an epetition from campact.de, that is currently storming away (at the time of writing it has nearly 300,000 signatures.)  Evidently worried by that momentum, the European Commission has issued another of its point-by-point commentaries.  I will repay the compliment by rebutting its rebuttals.  I'll use the original German, but you can use a Google Translate version if you wish.

Campact behauptet, dass TTIP es ausländischen Unternehmen zukünftig ermögliche, Gesetze in Europa auszuhöhlen. Falsch

Ein bereits bestehendes Gesetz kann nicht durch ein Handelsabkommen "ausgehöhlt" werden. So kann beispielsweise ein bestehendes Verbot von Fracking oder von Chlorhühnerfleisch nicht in Frage gestellt werden. Das einzige, was das Abkommen unterstreicht – und das ist auch im Interesse der EU – ist ein Diskriminierungsverbot. Das heißt: Was für Inländer gilt, muss auch für Ausländer gelten. Dies ist besonders wichtig bei Investitionen, die entscheidend für wirtschaftliche Entwicklung und die Schaffung von Arbeitsplätzen sind. Hier brauchen wir Stabilität und Sicherheit, auch für europäischen Investitionen im Ausland. Allerdings heißt Investitionsschutz nicht, den Unternehmen unbegrenzte Rechte einzugestehen, oder die Möglichkeit zu geben, jedwede nationale Gesetzgebung in Frage zu stellen. Investitionsschutzklauseln dürfen nur in sehr begrenzten Bereichen eingesetzt werden, z.B. wenn gegenüber inländischen Firmen diskriminiert wird oder wenn eine Firma im Ausland ohne Entschädigung enteignet wird.

Well, it's true that a trade agreement can't change laws directly.  But it can have a chilling effect, as occurred in Canada.  When NAFTA was brought in, practically every proposed law to protect the environment was dropped when threats were received from US companies that they would use investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), available under NAFTA, to sue the Canadian government.  That's a real hollowing out of laws not just in the future, but also in the present, since governments will be unwilling to run the risk of getting sued if they apply them rigorously.

The Commission also claims that ISDS is particularly important for investment; but here's what its own site says on the subject:

Total US investment in the EU is three times higher than in all of Asia.

EU investment in the US is around eight times the amount of EU investment in India and China together.

EU and US investments are the real driver of the transatlantic relationship, contributing to growth and jobs on both sidesof the Atlantic. It is estimated that a third of the trade across the Atlantic actually consists of intra-company transfers.

That's all without ISDS: so why bring it in?


Campact behauptet, dass TTIP zu Privatisierungen im Bereich Wasserversorgung, Gesundheit und Bildung führe. Falsch.

Das TTIP-Abkommen hat nichts mit verordneten Privatisierungen zu tun – das wird von den Regierungen alleine beschlossen. Kein Freihandelsabkommen verpflichtet Mitgliedsstaaten zur Liberalisierung oder Privatisierung der Wasserversorgung oder anderer öffentlicher Dienstleistungen, z.B. des öffentlichen Gesundheitswesens, des öffentlichen Verkehrswesens oder des Bildungswesens.

Again, that misses the point, probably wilfully.  This is not about formally forcing these privatisations: but that will be the effect of ISDS, since governments will find themselves sued for billions of Euros if they don't allow commons to be privatised, since that would reduce expectations of future profits - a big no-no under ISDS.

Campact behauptet, dass TTIP die Tore für Fracking, Chlorhühnchen oder Genfood öffne. Falsch.

Fracking, Chlorhühnchen und Genfood sind in der EU verboten oder streng reguliert. Das wird auch ein Freihandelsabkommen nicht ändern. Nur Regierungen oder Parlamente können entscheiden, Gesetzgebung zu ändern. Die Europäische Union wird unsere hohen EU-Standards nicht zur Verhandlung stellen

Even if that's true - and since the negotiations are completely secret, we have no way of telling until it's too late - it's already become clear how cholorinated chickens and GMOs will be brought to Europe: the institution of a transatlantic Regulatory Council.  As I've already discussed at length elsewhere, this body will not only be able to veto new regulations unless they favour transatlantic trade, but they will be able to suggest to both EU and US lawmakers *directly* what new laws should be brought in - for example, those mandating that EU supermarkets must accept chickens washed in chlorine, or beef pumped up with growth hormones.

Campact behauptet, dass TTIP die Rechte von Internetnutzern einschränken werde. Falsch.

Sowohl die EU als auch die USA verfügen bereits über effiziente Vorschriften zum Schutz des Rechts des geistigen Eigentums, wenn auch der Weg zum Ziel gelegentlich unterschiedlich ist. TTIP soll den Handel zwischen der EU und den USA vereinfachen, ohne diese Vorschriften aufzuweichen. „ACTA durch die Hintertür“ wird es mit TTIP nicht geben.
Well, the protection of intellectual monopolies may be efficient, but that didn't stop the US and EU trying to ram through ACTA, did it? So what's to stop that now?  Claims that TAFTA/TTIP won't be ACTA through the backdoor ring a little hollow thanks to a recent leak that reveals what one of the EU's chief negotiators has to say on the subject of a "Christmas list of items" that lobbyists want in this area:

According to the negotiator, the most repeated request on the Christmas list was in "enforcement". Concerning this, companies had made requests to "improve and formalize" as well as for the authorities to "make statements". The Commission negotiator said that although joint 'enforcement statements' do not constitute "classical trade agreement language" -- a euphemism for things that do not belong in trade agreements -- the Commission still looks forward to "working in this area".

Sounds like ACTA through the back door to me...

Campact behauptet, dass TTIP undemokratisch sei und gewählte Politiker keine Einflussmöglichkeit hätten. Falsch.

Regierungen der Mitgliedstaaten, um sie vor, während und nach den Verhandlungsrunden „live“ über den Verhandlungsstand aufzuklären und deren Positionen zu einzubeziehen. Das Europäische Parlament wird ebenfalls regelmäßig über den Verhandlungsstand informiert, damit die Standpunkte und Interessen der demokratisch gewählten europäischen Abgeordneten in die Verhandlungen einfließen können. Am Ende sind es die EU-Mitgliedstaaten und das Europäische Parlament, die das letzte Wort über TTIP haben. 

So let's look at those claims.  It may well be that the Member States are kept informed - since they never pass on anything to their electorate, that hardly helps the public, say, who remain in the dark.  The European Parliament as a whole certainly isn't kept informed, even if one or two selected individuals are given information under embargo that they also cannot pass on.  And that "last word" that the European Parliament has over TTIP is all or nothing: as with ACTA, either it accepts the whole package, or it rejects the whole package.  That means it will be unable to remove the bad bits and keep the good bits.  By using emotional blackmail about the good bits, the European Commission will doubtless try to force through things like ISDS even though the European Parliament is increasingly alarmed about its dangers.

Worum soll es dann in diesem Handelsabkommen gehen?

Meistens verfolgen unsere Behörden auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks im Grunde das gleiche Ziel, wenn sie Standards und Zulassungsverfahren festlegen: Sie wollen Menschen vor Risiken für ihre Gesundheit schützen, für Sicherheit etwa am Arbeitsplatz sorgen, die Umwelt schützen oder die finanzielle Sicherheit einer Firma garantieren. Um dies zu erreichen, haben wir auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks aber häufig unterschiedliche regulatorische Strukturen und Traditionen. Daraus entstehen, obwohl das oft gar nicht beabsichtig ist, unterschiedliche Regelungen, die den Zugang zum anderen Markt oftmals erheblich erschweren. Schätzungen zufolge entsprechen aber allein diese bürokratischen Handelshürden einem Zoll von 10-20 Prozent.
Well, the aim may be the same, but the results are very different.  Here in Europe, we have the Precautionary Principle: that's not only absent in the US, but US industries have said many times that one of their *demands* for TAFTA/TTIP is that the Precautionary Principle should be dismantled.  Similarly, here in Europe we have the very strict REACH - Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals.  Again, US industries haves aid they want to get rid of this "barrier" to their profits.

Equally, nobody would suggest that social, employment or environmental standards in the US are anywhere near as stringent as those in the EU: the idea that they are somehow "equivalent" is ridiculous, and shows that the true intent of the European Commission is to water down EU standards to US levels.

Warum das alles? Die transatlantische Handels- und Investitionspartnerschaft könnte wie ein Konjunkturpaket wirken: Das Abkommen könnte der EU einen Wachstumsschub von 0,5 Prozent des Bruttoinlandsprodukts erbringen, das sind rund 120 Milliarden Euro, oder 500 Euro pro Haushalt – denn letztendlich bedeuten Kosteneinsparungen für Unternehmen auch preiswertere Produkte, mehr Qualität und Auswahl.

What that fails to mention is that the 119 billion euro GDP uplift would only come in 2027, and is the *most optimistic* scenario, which assumes massive deregulation.  So it would not produce more quality, but US-style chlorine-washed chickens, hormone-injected beef and GMOs.

And the idea that every household would somehow magically receive 500 euros, as if from some TAFTA/TTIP Father Christmas, is just dishonest: even if this impossibly ambitiously deregulation were achieved, most of the GDP boost would go to the giant international companies, which would then doubtless offshore their profits, so you can forget about any "trickle-down" effect either.

Meanwhile, to pay for those boosted bottom lines, and billions in bonuses for corporate fat-cats, ordinary people would find their jobs disappearing overseas, their food quality lowered, and broader environmental degradation caused by widespread fracking and extractive industries indifferent to the damage they cause.  If anyone needs to get the facts, it's the European Commission.


24 November 2013

Towards a Post-H.264 World

In my post yesterday about Cisco making the code for its H264 codec available, I noted that the really important news was that Mozilla was working on Daala, a fully open next generation codec. One of the key people on the team doing that is Monty Montgomery, and he's written a really interesting blog post about the announcement and its background, which I recommend thoroughly (the discussion in the comments is also very illuminating):

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Cisco Open-Sourcing its Code - or Openwashing?

You know that open source has won when everybody wants to wrap themselves in a little bit of openness in order to enjoy the glow. That's good news - provided it represents a move to true open source and not fauxpen source. Which brings me to the following news:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Of Surveillance Debates and Open Clinical Data

Revelations about the staggering levels of online surveillance that are now routine in this country have been met with a stunning silence from the UK government. There's an important meeting tomorrow where three MPs from the main parties are trying to get some kind of debate going on this crucial issue. It would be helpful if you could ask your MP to participate. Here's what I've written:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Clinical Trials: Please Write to Health Minister

I first wrote about the importance of open clinical trials two years ago. More recently, I urged people to contact their MEPs for a crucial vote that was taking place in one of the committees in the European Parliament. The AllTrials site, which is coordinating the fight to obtain access to this vital public health information, now asks for help during another stage in the battle for open data:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Brazil Grapples with the Problem of Software Patents

Software patents have figured quite frequently on this blog, usually in terms of their deep problems, especially for free software. Although I've tended to write about what's happening in Europe and the US, the rest of the world is also beginning to experience the same issues as computers enter ever-more deeply into daily life there, and is similarly seeking to come up with solutions.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Mozilla on the Bridge of Khazad - or on the Fence?

Last week I explored at some length the curious reasons that Sir Tim Berners-Lee gave for supporting the proposal to add hooks for DRM into HTML5. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Linux Foundation Celebrates with a Quadruple Scotch

My last two posts about the Linux Foundation have been about how it is broadening its scope to embrace open projects well beyond the Linux kernel. For example, there was the OpenDaylight Project, and then the OpenBEL. Now we have this:

On Open Enterprise blog.

ISDS: ACTA by the Back Door?

As I noted in my last TTIP update, things are beginning to get moving again on this front. One reflection of the growing interesting in this important trade and investment agreement was the public discussion entitled "Internet, Trade and Democracy: Transatlantic Relations under the Shadow of Surveillance", held in Berlin, and organised by Internet & Society Collaboratory and the blogger project FutureChallenges.org of the Bertelsmann Stiftung.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Tim Berners-Lee on Why HTML5 "Needs" DRM

A couple of week ago, I discussed the awful idea of adding DRM to the official HTML5 standard, and where that would lead us. More recently, Tim Berners-Lee wrote a piece about openness that included the following comment:

On Open Enterprise blog.

TTIP Update III

It's been fairly quiet on the TAFTA/TTIP front recently. That's largely because Europe shuts down for its summer hols during August, and has only just got going again. Unfortunately (for TAFTA/TTIP), the next round of negotiations has just been cancelled because the US administration was busy being, er, not busy. But as a consolation prize, we have a couple of documents from the European Commission on the subject of Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), which by a happy coincidence was the subject of my previous TTIP Update.

On Open Enterprise blog.

US Free Trade Agreements Are Bad Not Just For The Economy, But For The Environment, Too

A couple of months ago, we reported on some interesting research into the reality of US trade agreements, in contrast to the rosy pictures always painted when they are being sold to the public by politicians. In particular, it turned out that far from boosting US exports and creating more jobs, both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and KORUS, the free trade agreement with South Korea, actually did the opposite -- increasing the US trade deficit with those countries, and destroying hundreds of thousands of American jobs. 

On Techdirt.

Dutch Telcos Used Customer Metadata, Retained To Fight Terrorism, For Everyday Marketing Purposes

One of the ironies of European outrage over the global surveillance conducted by the NSA and GCHQ is that in the EU, communications metadata must be kept by law anyway, although not many people there realize it. That's a consequence of the Data Retention Directive, passed in 2006, which: 

On Techdirt.

DRM In HTML5: What Is Tim Berners-Lee Thinking?

Back in January, we reported on a truly stupid idea: making DRM an official aspect of HTML5. Things then went quiet, until a couple of weeks ago a post on a W3C mailing announced that the work was "in scope". An excellent post on the EFF's blog explains: 

On Techdirt.

Russia Plans To Launch Sputnik Again -- This Time As A Search Engine

Techdirt has been reporting for a while the efforts of the Russian government to bring the Internet there under control. It now seems that it is taking a new approach: as well as banning or criminalizing activities it doesn't like, it wants to compete with them directly. Specifically, it plans to fund a new Russian search engine, called "Sputnik", named after the first artificial satellite, put into space by the Russians in 1957. According to an article in the news magazine "Der Spiegel" (original in German), this is designed to address two problems at once. 

On Techdirt.

Key Internet Institutions Ditch US Leadership; Brazil To Host Global Summit To Draw Up New Governance Model

Here's a hugely important story that brings together three major threads. First, the continuing wrangling over the form that Internet governance should take. Second, the fact that NSA's massive surveillance operations around the world have included economic espionage. And third, Brazil's increasingly angry reaction to that spying. As a post from the Internet Governance Project explains

On Techdirt.

The Difference Between Plagiarism And Copyright Infringement

Plagiarism is a complex and emotive issue, as previous Techdirt posts on the subject have shown. Perhaps because of that complexity, people often seem confused about the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement. The palaeontologist Mike Taylor has put together a short post with this handy explanation of how it works in an academic context

On Techdirt.

Canadian-Based Company Sues Canada Under NAFTA, Saying That Fracking Ban Takes Away Its Expected Profits

We've written several posts about a growing awareness of the dangers of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), which lets foreign companies sue entire countries for the alleged loss of future profits. One of the most egregious examples of ISDS concerns Canada, which is being sued by Eli Lilly & Co for $500 million after refusing to grant it a couple of pharma patents. Now The Huffington Post has details about another ISDS case involving Canada

On Techdirt.

Universities Struggle To License Their Patents, In Desperation Team Up With Patent Trolls

A few months back, we wrote about the University of California's plan to lock up even more knowledge in the form of patents, in the hope that this would bring in lots of cash. But as Techdirt has reported time and again over the years, patenting research does not bring in more money to fund further research, in fact it probably doesn't bring in any money at all, once you allow for the costs of running tech transfer offices. Moreover, there's evidence that making the results of research freely available is much better for the wider economy than trying to turn them into intellectual monopolies. 

On Techdirt.

Fighting To Free Knowledge Paid For By Taxpayers -- And Winning

One of the pioneers of open access is Michael Eisen, who helped found what has become the leading open access publisher, Public Library of Science, back in 2000. Since then, he's been a pugnacious defender of the public's right to read the research it has paid for, so perhaps it's no surprise that he decided to take direct action in the following case involving NASA

On Techdirt.

Canadian Scientists Call Countrywide Protests Against Government Censorship, Found Advocacy Group

Back in April, we noted that the Canadian government has been trying to muzzle various groups in the country, including librarians and scientists. It now seems that some scientists have had enough, as the Guardian reports: 

On Techdirt.

Misleading Figures Used To Puff Up Importance Of Intellectual Monopolies In Europe

We've noted before attempts to inflate the importance of copyright, patents and trademarks by including a bunch of other sectors that are only tangentially related to them when it comes to totting up their economic impact. For example, last year Mike wrote about a joint Department of Commerce/US Patent and Trademark Office "study" that included 2.5 million grocery store jobs in its definition of "IP-intensive" industries. 

On Techdirt.

Peruvian Congress Finalizes And Approves New Computer Crime Law In Secret Session, With No Public Discussion

Like many countries, Peru has been working on a law to deal with various kinds of crimes that involve computers and the Internet in some way. But as Access Now reports, this process has just been concluded in a pretty outrageous fashion, displaying deep contempt for the Peruvian people: 

On Techdirt.

China Sends Mixed Signals On Censorship

Last week we wrote about China's worrying new censorship approach, which threatens up to three years in prison for those spreading "false information" if their posts are viewed 5000 times, or forwarded 500 times. Improbable though that law is in its exactitude, it seems it has already been applied

On Techdirt.

New Encrypted Email Services Coming From Kim Dotcom's Mega And Newzbin

A month ago, we wrote about Kim Dotcom's plans to form his own political party in New Zealand. But that's not the only way that Dotcom is going on the attack against the system. Here's Vikram Kumar, the Chief Executive of Dotcom's "privacy company" Mega, on another bold move

On Techdirt.

Europe's Largest Internet Exchange Decides To Open US Office, Risks Making Itself Subject To NSA Demands

The Internet may be a series of tubes, but those tubes have to be joined together. That takes place at Internet exchanges (IXs), where different ISPs can pass on and receive data. One of the largest and most important such IXs is AMS-IX, which is based in the capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam. Techdirt reader Dirk Poot points out that AMS-IX has just made the following move

On Techdirt.

23 November 2013

US Ambassador To The UN Says WIPO Too Biased Against IP Holders

Back in 2010, Techdirt reported on a fairly remarkable comment from the US ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Betty E. King, who said at a press conference: 

On Techdirt.

UK Government Study Tries To Gloss Over TAFTA/TTIP's Problems With Impossibly Precise Figures

As Europe gets back down to business after its traditional summer break, the second round of the negotiations for the proposed TAFTA/TTIP treaty is beginning. And so is the pro-treaty propaganda. Here, for example, is a 70-page document entitled "TTIP and the Fifty States: Jobs and Growth from Coast to Coast" (pdf). It comes from the British government, and is aimed at convincing the US states that TAFTA/TTIP will be good for their economies and citizens. 

On Techdirt.

Nigeria Closer To Bringing In Comprehensive Internet And Phone Spying System, Probably Complete With Third-Party Backdoors

One of the unfortunate consequences of the revelations about NSA spying on just about everyone is that it creates a false impression that such activities are really quite normal these days, and nothing much to worry about. This probably encourages nations that don't carry out such comprehensive snooping on their populations to think about doing so. In Nigeria, for example, a proposal is making its way through the legislative process that would grant the Nigerian government wide-ranging surveillance powers, as reported here by Premium Times: 

On Techdirt.

Turkish Government Aims To Create 6000-Strong Social Media Propaganda Squad

In the recent demonstrations in Istanbul, the Turkish government may have had superior police and security forces on the streets, but one area where it lost the battle was on social networks, which anti-government protesters used adroitly to get their viewpoint out to the world. It seems the Turkish government has learned its lesson, and has decided to fight back according to this report in the Wall Street Journal: 

On Techdirt.

Brazilian President Blasts NSA Spying In Front Of World Leaders -- Including Obama -- At UN

It was expected that the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, would raise the issue of NSA spying when she addressed the opening session of the UN General Assembly in New York this week. But few would have predicted that her speech would be quite so excoriating (pdf), especially since it was given in the presence of President Obama, who spoke immediately after her. 

On Techdirt.

Surprise: Paywalls Cause Massive Falls In Number Of Visitors - And Boost Competitors

As Techdirt has been pointing out for years, newspaper paywalls make no sense. By stopping people from reading your stories unless they have a subscription, you diminish your influence in the media world, drastically reduce the number of readers and thus make it much harder to generate revenue from them. Paywalls are also a gift to your competitors, as this story in the Guardian indicates: 

On Techdirt.

The Start of the Counter-Attack Against Hargreaves?

As I noted a couple of years ago, one of the most important legacies of the Hargreaves review of copyright in the digital age was its insistence that policy must be based on evidence, not dogma. There were some heartening signs that the UK government was indeed following through on that, notably in terms of a series of reports from Ofcom that explore in detail many aspects of the online use of copyright materials - something that was simply unavailable before.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Time to Fight Against a DRM'd Web - by Forking It

At the beginning of the year, I wrote abut a shameful move by the BBC to support adding DRM to HTML to control the playback of video content. This scheme has now moved on, and the news is astonishingly bad:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Richard Stallman on the Painful Birth of GNU

Earlier this week I posted Richard Stallman's recollections of the AI Lab at MIT, where he first encountered and came to love the hacker world and its spirit. That idyllic period came to an end as a result of the commercialisation of the AI Labs' computer system, called the Lisp Machine, which led to the destruction of the unique environment that created it in the first place, and to its re-birth as the GNU project.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Richard Stallman on the Hacker Spirit at MIT

Last week I noted that the GNU project was celebrating its 30th anniversary. I thought it might be interesting to hear what Richard Stallman had to say about the environment in which he came up with the idea for GNU. What follows is part of a long interview I conducted with him in 1999, when I was carrying out research for "Rebel Code". Most of this is unpublished, and offers what I hope is some insights into the hacker culture at MIT, where Stallman was working.

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Birth of a GNU Era

Exactly 30 years ago, a hacker posted an unusual message to the net.unix-wizards newsgroup:

On Open Enterprise blog.

European Privacy Lost - and How to Get it Back

At the beginning of this year, I discussed a report written for the European Parliament, which warned that the US legal framework allowed the authorities there to spy on EU data held by any US cloud computing service. I also noted as an interesting fact that the NSA was building a huge new data centre, and that encryption might not offer the protection we thought. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Android and the Tesco Effect

When the first Android smartphones came out, the consensus view among certain "experts" was that Google didn't stand chance. The dogma was that the iPhone was so perfect, and its hold on the market so strong, that there was no way that Android could displace it. I think we can say that hasn't proved to be the case:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Will CyanogenMod Get the Business Blues?

Last week, I wrote an article pointing out that the NSA's assault on cryptography, bad as it was, had a silver lining for open source, which was less vulnerable to being subverted than closed-source applications produced by companies. However, that raises the question: what about the mobile world? 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Linux Foundation on the Foundations of Linux

One of the many valuable things that come out of the Linux Foundation is an annual review of Linux kernel development. It's just released the 2013 edition (freely available upon registration), and the news is resoundingly good. Here are the key points.

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Gov's Latest Move on Copyright: Exactly Wrong

Remember the Digital Economy Act? Surely one of the worst pieces of UK legislation passed - or rather, rammed through - in recent years, as readers may recall. This was inspired (if that's the right word) by the French Hadopi scheme brought in by Nicolas Sarkozy, whereby people were threatened with being disconnected from the Internet if they were accused of unauthorised sharing of digital files. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Twenty-Year-Old Requirement For 'Real-time, Full-time' Eavesdropping On Canadian Mobiles Revealed

Even if it now seems likely that Linus Torvalds wasn't approached to add a backdoor to Linux, there are plenty of others that were asked and acquiesced, as this story from The Globe and Mail in Canada makes clear: 

On Techdirt.

Linus Torvalds Admits He Was Approached By US Government To Insert Backdoor Into Linux -- Or Does He?

Lavabit's Levison Now Avoids Email Altogether, Has Turned Into A 'Political Activist' Thanks To The NSA

A couple of weeks ago, Mike reported on the extraordinary turn of events involving Edward Snowden's email supplier, Lavabit. The company's owner, Ladar Levison, preferred to shut down the service rather than hand over to the US government something that it wanted really badly -- exactly what, we don't know because of a gag order. We then learned that the mere act of shutting Lavabit down threatened to land Levison in big trouble anyway. 

On Techdirt.

More NSA Spying Fallout: Brazilian President Snubs Obama Invitation, May Trigger Internet Balkanization

A couple of weeks ago, Techdirt noted that the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, was angry that the NSA had been reading her private emails and text messages, and that as a result she was contemplating cancelling an imminent high-profile state visit to the US. That was before the recent revelations that the NSA had also engaged in industrial espionage at the biggest Brazilian company, Petrobras, which seems to have been the final straw: Rousseff has now formally "postponed" her trip to the US, according to the Brazilian news site O Globo (original in Portuguese.) 

On Techdirt.

China's New Censorship Plan: Three Years In Prison If You Get 500 Retweets Of A 'Harmful' Post

As we've noted before, the online community is kept on a pretty tight leash in China, with information deemed subversive or just embarrassing disappearing quickly from the networks. But it seems that's not enough. Global Voices is reporting that yet another approach is being tried to discourage "offenders" from posting in the first place

On Techdirt.

Does The 'Three Strikes' Approach Work, In Any Sense? Here's The Evidence

Last week we reported on the suspension of Hadopi's one and only suspension, as France moved away from using Internet disconnection as a punishment. That manifest failure of the scheme that pioneered the three strikes approach makes a new paper from the Australian scholar Rebecca Giblin, called "Evaluating graduated response", particularly timely. As its title suggests, this is a review of the three strikes approach in the light of the experiences in the five countries that have adopted it: France, New Zealand, Taiwan, South Korea and the UK -- even though the latter has still not put it into practice. 

On Techdirt.

Ex-MI6 Deputy Chief: 'Serious Actors' Already Knew About NSA's Techniques Before Snowden

One of the key issues in the debate surrounding Snowden's leaks is whether they might be threatening our security by letting the bad people know what the NSA and GCHQ are up to. Nigel Inkster, former deputy chief of the UK's foreign intelligence agency, MI6, doesn't think so

On Techdirt.

Latest Casualty Of NSA Spying Revelations: Web Advertising Based On Tracking Users

As we've noted before, Edward Snowden's revelations about the globe-spanning spying being conducted by the NSA are have all sorts of interesting knock-on consequences. Here's another: people are starting to worry about being tracked by online advertisers, and taking action to avoid it, as this story in Adweek explains: 

On Techdirt.

Why The NSA Must Be Reined In -- For Democracy's Sake

In the wake of the continuing leaks about the NSA's activities, most commentators are understandably still trying to get to grips with the enormity of what has been happening. But John Naughton, professor of the public understanding of technology at the UK's Open University, tackles a very different question on his blog: what is likely to happen in the future, if things carry on as they are?  

On Techdirt.

French Farce: Hadopi's First And Only Suspension Has Been Suspended

Back in June we wrote about Hadopi's first and only successful disconnection case. As we also noted then, in the wake of its abject failure, Hadopi was being dramatically curtailed. In particular, disconnection is no longer available as a punishment for those alleged to have downloaded files without authorization. 

On Techdirt.

Russia's Latest Idea: An Internet Whitelist For Copyright Materials

Now that Sarkozy has been thrown out of office, France is no longer producing the steady stream of bad proposals for the Internet that it once generated. That has left an opening for some other country to take its place, and it seems that Russia is keen to pick up where Sarkozy left off. We've been reporting on previous worrying developments there, and TorrentFreak has news on another one

On Techdirt.

Should Wikipedia Force All Users To Use HTTPS?

It would be something of an understatement to say that encryption is a hot topic at the moment. But leaving aside deeper issues like the extent to which the Internet's cryptographic systems are compromised, there is a more general question about whether Web sites should be pushing users to connect using HTTPS in the hope that this might improve their security. That might seem a no-brainer, but for the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization that runs Wikipedia and related projects, it's a more complex issue. 

On Techdirt.

India Joins The Super-Snooper's Club (No Legality Required)

One of the many benefits of Edward Snowden's leaks about NSA spying is that it is flushing out similar activity around the world. Tim Cushing wrote recently about Sweden's illegal snooping, and now The Hindu reveals that India is doing something very similar

On Techdirt.

John Gilmore On How The NSA Sabotaged A Key Security Standard

In Bruce Schneier's uplifting call to fix the Internet in the wake of key technologies being subverted by the US government, one of the things he asks engineers to do is to come forward with detailed information about how the NSA did that

On Techdirt.

Latest Leak Shows NSA Engaging In Economic Espionage -- Not Fighting Terrorism

As more and more information about the NSA's global surveillance capabilities emerges through leaks of material obtained by Edward Snowden, the US authorities have been playing the terrorist card heavily. That is, they concede that they have been spying on pretty much everyone, but claim that it was only to fight terrorism, and thus to save lives. In particular, the NSA insists it is not spying on anyone for the purposes of industrial espionage -- here's what it wrote in an email to the Washington Post on the subject just a couple of weeks ago: 

On Techdirt.

Would You Trust Any Organization That Doesn't Trust 4,000 Of Its Employees? What If It's The NSA?

It's becoming increasingly clear that one of the reasons Edward Snowden was able to access so much secret information -- and walk out of the door with it -- is that the NSA is an organizational mess. A fascinating post by David Ignatius in the Washington Post underlines another way in which the NSA is deeply dysfunctional by any normal standard

On Techdirt.

Likely Winner Of Australia's Imminent General Election Sneaks In Last-Minute Plan To Impose UK-Style Opt-Out Censorship -- Then Denies It

Australia goes to the polls this weekend, and the likely winner quietly added Net censorship to its platform, as spotted by ZDNet: 

On Techdirt.

Right2Remix: A Campaign For European Copyright Reform

Back in February we reported on a welcome move by the Dutch government to modify its copyright law so that creative remixes are permitted. A new initiative called right2remix.org wants to make that a Europe-wide change

On Techdirt.

Desperate To Sew Up TPP Negotiations At Any Cost, Politicians Agree All Future Meetings Will Be Completely Secret

We've been reporting for several years about the extraordinary levels of secrecy surrounding the TPP negotiations, where little information was released about what was going on, and there were few opportunities for representatives of civic and other groups to meet with negotiators to present their point of view. More recently, there have been some indications that this lack of transparency is fuelling increasing discontent among some of the participating nations. 

On Techdirt.

Kim Dotcom Forming New Political Party In New Zealand

Whatever your views about Kim Dotcom, you have to admire his dogged fight against extradition from New Zealand, not least because it has revealed some serious abuses of power against dozens of people. Now it seems he is taking things a stage further, if this recent tweet is any indication: 

On Techdirt.

UK Record Companies Want To Bring In 'Three Strikes' Using A 'Voluntary Code' For Punishing Alleged Illegal File Sharers

As we reported a few months back, the UK's misbegotten Digital Economy Act continues to go nowhere fast, with warning letters for alleged illegal filesharing unlikely to go out until 2016, if ever. As you can imagine, the UK recording and film industries aren't exactly overjoyed by this prospect, and have come up with Plan B, as reported by The Guardian: 

On Techdirt.

The Joy Of Monopolies: Orphan Drug Price Increasing By Nearly 40% Each Year

A couple of years ago, Techdirt carried an article by Andy Kessler about the difference between entrepreneurs who create value, and those who lock it up. The former tend to drive prices down constantly, innovating all the while in order to make a profit; the latter, by contrast, typically enjoy monopolies that allow them to push up prices without offering anything more in return. 

On Techdirt.

The Deeper Meaning Of Miranda's Detention And The Destruction Of The Guardian's Hard Drives

As many have already observed, the detention of David Miranda comes across as an act of blatant intimidation, as does the farcical destruction of the Guardian's hard drives. But something doesn't ring true about these episodes: spooks may be cynical and ruthless, but they are not generally clueless idiots. 

On Techdirt.

Net Neutrality under Threat in Europe - Unnecessarily

As long-suffering readers of this column will know, I've been following for a while the winding road leading to the European Commission's proposals regarding net neutrality in Europe. Along the way, there have been many twists and turns, with hints of first one direction, then another. But today, the Commission has finally released its plans - not just for this area, but for the whole telecoms market in Europe:

On Open Enterprise blog.

NSA's Crypto Betrayal: Good News for Open Source?

Revelations from documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden that GCHQ essentially downloads the entire Internet as it enters and leaves the UK, and stores big chunks of it, was bad enough. But last week we learned that the NSA has intentionally weakened just about every aspect of online encryption:

On Open Enterprise blog.

UK Gov: Smaller, Better, Faster, Stronger...Opener.

One of the recurrent themes on this blog has been the UK government's use - or failure to use - open source and open data. To be fair, on the open data side, things are going pretty well. Open source was previously conspicuous by its absence, and that is finally changing, albeit rather slower than many of us would wish.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Microsoft + Nokia = Dog

When Stephen Elop moved from Microsoft to run Nokia, many saw this as part of a cunning plan to prepare the latter for purchase by the former. There's no real evidence for that, although soon after joining, Nokia did place the Windows Phone platform at the heart of its future strategy, despite the many drawbacks of doing so, effectively betting the company on the success of Windows as the third mobile platform alongside Android and Apple.

On Open Enterprise blog.

How Network Neutrality Promotes Innovation

As I've pointed out many times in previous posts, one of the key benefits of mandating network neutrality is that it promotes innovation by creating a level playing field. Such statements are all very well, but where's the evidence? An important new study entitled "The innovation-enhancing effects of network neutrality" [.pdf], commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs from the independent SEO Economic Research unit provides perhaps the best survey and analysis of why indeed network neutrality is so beneficial:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Linus on Linux, 22 - and 5 - Years Later

In case you weren't aware, Linus is on Google+. Here's a recent post:

On Open Enterprise blog.

A New Chapter for Open Source?

Back in April, I wrote about in interesting new venture from the Linux Foundation called the OpenDaylight Project. As I pointed out then, what made this significant was that it showed how the Linux Foundation was beginning to move beyond its historical origins of supporting the Linux ecosystem, towards the broader application of the important lessons it has learnt about open source collaboration in the process. Following that step, we now have this:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Windows 8+TPM: Germany Warns of 'Loss of Control'

Last year, I wrote about some serious issues with Microsoft's Secure Boot Technology in Windows 8. It seems that the German government has started to wake up to problems with Windows 8, as this headline in Die Zeit attests:

On Open Enterprise blog.

The Canary in the Coal Mine: Groklaw Shuts Down

If you follow me on Twitter or elsewhere, you'll have noticed that I've been tweeting rather extensively about the NSA's spying, the most recent attacks on Glenn Greenwald and now the Guardian. If you were still wondering what any of this has to do with open source, this latest news might clarify things a little:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source in the UK: Sharing the Fire

As even a cursory glance at articles on Open Enterprise over the last few years will indicate, open source is a massive success in practically every market. Except, unfortunately, on the desktop (famously) and more, generally, for consumers. And as Aral Balkan points out in an important post from a few weeks ago, that's a real problem:

On Open Enterprise blog.

TTIP Update II

As I noted in my first TTIP Update about the current negotiations between the EU and US over a massive trade agreement that is far from being only about trade, it is probably true that it will not include many of the more outrageous ideas found in ACTA last year. But that is not to say that TTIP does not threaten many key aspects of the Internet - just that the attack is much more subtle.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Did You Know that Mozilla is Hijacking the Internet?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the incredible spectacle of the European arm of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) attacking Mozilla on the grounds that the latter had "lost its values" because it insisted on defending the users' rights to control how cookies were used on their systems. 

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is Apache the Most Important Open Source Project?

Back in the mists of time - I'm talking about 2000 here - when free software was still viewed by many as a rather exotic idea, I published a book detailing its history up to that point. Naturally, I wrote about Apache (the Web server, not the foundation) there, since even in those early days it was already the sectoral leader. As I pointed out:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Is This Finally the Year of Open Source...in China?

One of the long-running jokes in the free software world is that this year will finally be the year of open source on the desktop - just like it was last year, and the year before that. Thanks to the astounding rise of Android, people now realise that the desktop is last decade's platform, and that mobile - smartphones and tablets - are the future. But I'd argue that there is something even more important these, and that is the widespread deployment of open source in China.

On Open Enterprise blog.

27 October 2013

When Transparency Is A Matter Of Life And Death

Against a background of the leaks about NSA spying, transparency -- or lack of it -- is a hot topic at the moment. But there are situations where it can be even more important than just a matter of enhancing confidence in government actions and acting as a check on them, as this Wired story about Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) makes clear: 

On Techdirt.

European Commission Report Says Open Access At 'Tipping Point'

Techdirt has been reporting for some time on the growing number of moves towards making academic work freely available to the public -- for example this recent major boost from the University of California. But what about the bigger picture? How is open access doing overall? The European Commission has just published a new report trying to answer those questions, which offers an extremely upbeat assessment:

On Techdirt.

Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'

Some stories, you just couldn't make up. Like this one, reported on the UK site Reprieve, about a failed attempt to pass some reading material to one of the people detained at Guantanamo Bay. Something unsuitable you might guess, perhaps advocating terrorist ways? Well, not exactly:

On Techdirt:

Did New Zealand Spooks Tap Into PRISM To Spy On Dotcom?

As Techdirt has reported, the attempts to extradite Kim Dotcom from New Zealand to the US have turned into one of the most catastrophically bungled legal cases in a long while. One of the biggest scandals to emerge was that New Zealand citizens had been wiretapped in an effort to gain evidence against Dotcom, since domestic spying was forbidden there just as it is in the US (oh, wait...). Unfortunately, rather than rapping knuckles and telling the local spooks not to do it again, the New Zealand government has instead just brought in new legislation to make it legal in the future.

On Techdirt.

Russia Prepares To Block Tor And Anonymizing Proxies

As more and more countries start introducing Web blocks, some people console themselves with the "at least there's always Tor" argument. Politicians may be slow, but they are not all completely stupid, and they are beginning to get the message that Tor and other anonymous services potentially render their Web blocks moot. It's then not a huge leap for them to move on to the next stage -- banning or blocking Tor -- as Russia now seems to be contemplating, according to this article on Russia Today: 

On Techdirt.

German Supreme Court Confirms RapidShare Must Police The Internet And Restrict Anonymous Use

A post on TorrentFreak updates us on the continuing saga of the file-hosting site RapidShare. The Supreme Court in Germany has apparently confirmed a regional High Court decision that had itself confirmed two earlier verdicts concerning the Swiss company: 

On Techdirt.

Undownloading: Further Proof Those eBooks You Paid For Really Aren't Yours

Over the years Techdirt has run a number of stories that make it abundantly clear that you don't own those ebooks you paid for. But in case you were still clinging to some faint hope to the contrary, here's a cautionary tale from Jim O'Donnell, a classics professor at Georgetown University. He is currently attending the IFLA World Library and Information Congress in Singapore, and naturally wanted to bring along some serious reading material; ebooks on an iPad seemed the perfect way to do that. As O'Donnell explains: 

On Techdirt.

Who Will Take The Privacy Seppuku Pledge?

When Techdirt wrote recently about yet another secure email provider opting to close down its service rather than acquiesce in some future US government demand to spy on its users, we noted that Cryptocloud has promised something similar for a while -- what it terms "corporate seppuku": 

On Techdirt.

Massive Overblocking Hits Hundreds Of UK Sites

Two years ago, Techdirt reported on a very troubling ruling in the UK courts that BT had to block access to the Usenet service provider Newzbin2. At the time, many feared that this would be the thin end of the wedge, giving copyright companies an easy way to shut down other sites. And with that power, of course, would come the inevitable errors, blocking completely unrelated sites. Just how seriously those mistakes could be is shown by this recent case of massive overblocking, reported here on PC Pro: 

On Techdirt.

The Getty Gets It: 'Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come'

Techdirt has published a number of posts that explore the issue of whether art organizations can stop people sharing images of works in their collections when the latter are indisputably in the public domain. Even if museums might be able to claim copyright in their "official" photographic images, the more important question is whether they ought to. The good news is that some institutions are beginning to realize that using copyright monopolies in this way contradicts their basic reason for existing -- to share the joy of art. Here, for example, is a wonderful statement of that principle from the Getty Museum entitled "Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come": 

On Techdirt.

Extending The Spectrum Of Openness To Include The Moral Right To Share

Prefixing concepts with the epithet "open" has become something of a fashion over the last decade. Beginning with open source, we've had open content, open access, open data, open science, and open government to name but a few. Indeed, things have got to the point where "openwashing" -- the abuse of the term in order to jump on the openness bandwagon -- is a real problem. But a great post by David Eaves points out that the spectrum of openness actually extends well beyond the variants typically encountered in the West

On Techdirt.

Latest 'Think Of The Children' Scaremongering: Pirated Films Might 'Disturb' Them

Just last week we heard how Russia has extended its "think of the children" law to include copyright infringement. That was a classic case of function creep, but here's a more direct invocation of "the children" in order to attack unauthorized downloads of files, this time in the UK: 

On Techdirt.

Copyright Lawyers vs Patent Lawyers Smackdown: And The Winner Is...

You may remember a rather wonderful court case from 2012 that pitted copyright lawyers against patent lawyers over the issue of whether submitting journal articles as part of the patenting process was fair use. Well, we now have the judge's decision, as GigaOm reports: 

On Techdirt.

University Of California Gives Big Boost To Open Access, Still Confused About Sharing Knowledge

Techdirt has been monitoring for a while the inexorable rise of open access in the academic world. But even against a background of major wins, this latest news from the University of California (UC) is still big, not least because it seems to represent a major shift there: 

On Techdirt.

British Library Network Blocks 'Hamlet' For 'Violent Content'

The use of Web blocks -- usually "for the children" -- is becoming depressingly common these days. So much so, that many people have probably come to accept them as a fact of online life. After all, the logic presumably goes, we can't do much about it, and anyway surely it's a good thing to try to filter out the bad stuff? Techdirt readers, of course, know otherwise, but for anyone who still thinks that well-intentioned blocking of "unsuitable" material is unproblematic, the following cautionary tale from the British blogger W.H. Forsyth may prove instructive: 

On Techdirt.

Australian Copyright Industry Says Proposal To Bring In Fair Use Is 'Solution For Problem That Doesn't Exist'

A couple of months back, Techdirt wrote about Australia's proposals to shift from the current fair dealing approach to fair use as part of wide-ranging reform of copyright there. When something similar was mooted in the UK as part of what became the Hargreaves Review, it was shouted down by the copyright maximalists on the grounds that it would lead to widespread litigation. As Mike pointed out at the time, that's nonsense: the existence of a large body of US case law dealing with this area makes it much easier to bring in fair use without the need for its contours to be defined in the courts. 

On Techdirt.

How To Solve Overclassification: Give Government Departments A Limited Annual 'Secrecy Budget'

Recently we noted that "overclassification" of sensitive material actually leads to more secrets being revealed. The New York Times has published an interesting article that picks up on this theme, and gives the following concrete example of how overclassification has been harmful to the US: 

On Techdirt.

US Government War On Hackers Backfires: Now Top Hackers Won't Work With US Government

Techdirt has noted the increasing demonization of hackers (not to be confused with crackers that break into systems for criminal purposes), for example by trying to add an extra layer of punishment on other crimes if they were done "on a computer." High-profile victims of this approach include Bradley Manning, Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown and of course Edward Snowden

On Techdirt.

UK's Ofcom Recognizes That Copyright Can Be A Threat To User Generated Content

One of the central problems of laws that deal with copyright is that they are essentially products of a time when the distinction between creator and audience was clear-cut. The move to digital and the rise of the Internet has changed all that, allowing hundreds of millions of people to become new kinds of creators. They may not write entire symphonies or paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but what they lack in scale and intensity they make up for in frequency and spontaneity. 

On Techdirt.

New Vietnam Decree Says Blogs And Social Media Must Contain Only Personal Information, Not News Reports

Around the world, we have been watching the gradual taming of social media, especially in countries where governments keep mainstream media on a tight leash. But even against that background, this news from the Bangkok Post about Vietnam's latest moves to censor online content is pretty extraordinary: 

On Techdirt.

As Russia Expands Its 'Think Of The Children' Laws To Copyright, Agency In Charge Investigated For Infringement

Last week we wrote about how the Russian equivalent of SOPA had been amended in order to ban swearing online. Although that was worth noting for its entertainment value, probably more important is the fact that the same law -- originally brought in to take down sites about drugs, suicide and child pornography -- has also been widened to include copyright infringement, as TechWeekEurope reports: 

On Techdirt.