New EDRIgram out

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The new EDRIgram is out. As usual, it gives you an overview of the past month’s most important events in the European digital policy scene.  Contents are:

1. Telecom data to be retained for one year in France
2. Internet under attack on election day in Belarus
3. Slovenia : Draft Police act endangers privacy
4. Creative Commons license upheld in Dutch and Spanish courts
5. New anti-terror bill proposed in Denmark
6. Update on French EUCD Transposition
7. Damages on online defamatory statements in UK
8. Swedish Foreign Minister resigned following pressure on website
9. TACD debate on the politics and ideology of intellectual property
10. Commission progress report on electronic signatures

“I hate DRM” website

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Now, why didn’t someone think of this earlier? Finally, a website fully and exclusively dedicated to hating Digital Restrictions Management. Two cheers.

Welcome to the "official" I Hate DRM site. Over the last couple of
years and especially over the last couple of months, the DRM issue has
really received a lot of press. I created this site because, as a
consumer, I am fed up. I feel like all of the entertainment that I
love it slowly being eroded away by overly greedy companies. This
website is meant to be a platform to capture how DRM is changing the
way paying customers are receiving content. I want to hear your
complaints, your horror stories, your whatever…even your good stories
if you have one.

via BoingBoing

Michael Crichton on ever-expanding patents

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Though I saw this a bit late, it’s still a great text. In the New York Times, Michael Crichton (of Jurassic Park – fame) writes about how absurd patents in the US have become.

 He uses the case of a mere natural fact being patented for a well-done, very readable show of what’s wrong with the system. Go read it.

Where does all this lead? It means that if a real estate agent lists a house for sale, he can be sued because an existing patent for selling houses includes item No. 7, "List the house." It means that Kobe Bryant may serve as an inspiration but not a model, because nobody can imitate him without fines. It means nobody can write a dinosaur story because my patent includes 257 items covering all aspects of behavior, like item No. 13, "Dinosaurs attack humans and other dinosaurs."

 

Wikipedia study flawed, says Britannica

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After the science journal Nature conducted a study comparing Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica, the flagship of dead-tree-based knowledge is up in arms. This is because the study found that Wikipedia was just as good as its time-honored printed ancestor.

As the BBC reports, a "scholarly slamming match" is in full swing. While Britannica finds the study "fatally flawed", Nature defends (.pdf) the investigation.

 Isn’t it nice that Encyclopedia Britannica is standing up selflessly to defend all of us from cheap, crappy online knowledge? I’ll sell my worldly belongings and buy the latest edition right away.

Cato Institute flames DMCA, DRM

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The strictly libertarian Cato Institute (in the US, of course) has spoken out last week against the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and – even better – DRM. Its main criticism is that the DMCA is "circumventing competition":

The DMCA is anti-competitive. It gives copyright holders—and the technology
companies that distribute their content—the legal power to create closed technology
platforms and exclude competitors from interoperating with them. Worst of all, DRM
technologies are clumsy and ineffective; they inconvenience legitimate users but do
little to stop pirates.

While this isn’t world revolution quite yet, the fact that a think tank so fixated on the overriding sanctity of private property would say such a thing shows that there is brain activity in unexpected quarters.

WIMPO, or the case for downsizing UN organisations. Plus, people and shareholders

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The first panel of the afternoon – “New political paradigms” – was a rather visionary affair. Predictably, it has the conservative minority steaming.

Declan McCullagh of Politech, whose presentation this morning centered exclusively on the US (how Hollywood has bought the Democrats), was rattled by the suggestion of Tunisian professor Mohamed Ben Ahmed, who said that the system of intellectual monopoly powers should focus on people, not on shareholders.

Declan countered this outrageous argument by mentioning that (in this order) a) half of the US population are shareholders, and b), that shareholders are people too.

Until that time, Declan had made on me the impression of an intelligent person. But this creative use of logic does not further his ratings with me. If there are some people who are shareholders, and unless animals or plants take to buying shares, that means all shareholders are people.

Easy, right? It’s the second step which Declan doesn’t get. The fact that all shareholders are people does not mean that all people are shareholders. You’d think it’s not too hard a concept to grasp.

Good thing there were some more refreshing opinions. Tom Faunce of the Australian National University made a truly visionary suggestion.

Why not save tons of money by downsizing UN organisations, and merging some of them? Why not put together WTO and WHO, and sell the WHO building? Why not fusion WIPO and the Human Rights Council. How’s that for saving money?

Tom consistently (and inspiringly) refused to use the term “intellectual property”, saying “intellectual monopoly powers” (IMPs) instead. The panel he was speaking on was chaired by WIPO’s Anthony Taubman, who dared to take a peek into a brigher future:

“I am looking forward to working for WIMPO.”

Now there’s a name I like. Forgive me that my entries are increasingly swaying off topic. I’m tired. Luckily, now there’s a coffee break.

Britney Spears at TACD conference

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Just before lunch, we enjoyed a panel about “The politics of new technologies”. Or rather, most of it. Kenneth Cukier, a journalist with The Economist gave a presentation about… nothing in particular.

By no means do I mean to offend Kenneth, who, I am sure, is a fine journalist. But that profession’s innate generalism did not at all serve his talk well. This way, he gave a fine example of how using the term “intellectual property” fudges things up.

After having started with a test of faith, asking his audience about their beliefs with regard to “intellectual property”, he launched into happily mixing up copyright, patents and all other sorts of monopoly powers, which rendered his otherwise interesting examples rather useless.

His manner of speaking was excellent and entertaining. Yet, the talk left many people I talked to feeling somewhat short-changed. It was like listening to a song by Britney Spears: Pretty in the first moment, mind-numbing from then on.

Much the same goes for many other presentations, especially most of those from the conservative camp. The patterns are familiar and recurring: You are either “pro-IP” or “anti-IP”; you either want to keep or abolish the system of intellectual monopoly powers, which is usually an introduction to lengthy panoramas of the anarchy which would then supposedly ensue.

I know that I don’t always abstain from focusing the nitty-gritty of the debate into a decisive point. But this sort of over-generalisation certainly does not contribute much to the discussion.

TACD Brussels conference: prepare for copyright extension

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The second day of TACD‘s conference is in full swing. There have been several interesting presentations, and I can’t possibly keep up with all of them. So I’ll just raise the points that seemed most interesting to me. Forgive my liberal omissions.

Mark Cooper of Stanford University gave a passionate presentation, talking about how digital technology, especially networks, enables collaborative production – and how inadequate monopoly powers stifle innovation. In a digitally networked environment, "less property gives me more innovation." He called into doubt the view that the current system of copyrights and patents is absolute: "We write and re-write the rules of property throughout history to fit the way in which we live."

The dense presentation summed up two of Mark’s papers, to be found here and here.

On the morning’s first panel, Leonardo Cervera Navas of the European Commission’s DG Internal Market dedicated part of his talks to the way in which his departement considers the impact of the directives and policies they implement. An example was the the evaluation report for the Database directive, which creates a sui generis monopoly power over databases in the EU.

The evaluation report said that the directive had been basically useless, which led Jamie Boyle to describe it as "faith-based intellectual property policy". Navas and his departement, though, seem in no special hurry to do anything about this irrational measure which is hurting the European economy: They’re considering all options, from keeping the directive as it is to abolishing it. My guess is that abolishment is not high on their agenda.

An interesting note is that he also talked about an upcoming discussion about extending the term of copyright protection. This is urgently needed, since the current 70 years after the author’s death certainly do not suffice to guarantee the revenue of the rightsholders. Mind you that "rightsholder" and "creator" are rarely identical today.

Thus, an extension of the copyright term would benefit rightsholders, but hurt creators by reducing their access to the existing works they need to build upon. I asked Navas if the discussion in his departement would also include the possibility of a shortening of the term. He answered that such a thing is politically unthinkable.

Prepare for soon having copyrighted works protected well into the 23rd century. Or do something about it. Navas mentioned that stakeholders would have a voice in the process. So let’s get it to them loud and clear: An extension of the copyright terms is counterproductive. Instead of putting Zombie business models on life support, let’s prepare the ground for new kinds of value creation.

If you’ve stuck with me this far, I’ll reward you with two external links: There is an article – spotless, as usual – by IP Watch. Stefan Krempl of Heise is reporting in German.

Interesting facts about software patents

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At TACD’s Brussels conference, we’ve had an interesting panel that recounted the campaing about software patents in Europe. The panel consisted of the liberal EU parliamentarian Sharon Bowles, who is also a patent lawyer; the (not very) covert Microsoft activist Jonathan Zuck; and Florian Müller nosoftwarepatents.com

While there were a lot of the old arguments tossed about, there were some interesting points. Sharon Bowles made a rather daring point when she said that “I never knew a single patent attorney who wanted [american style software patents]”. To her mind, there’s an area that shouldn’t be covered by patents, but as she presumably didn’t feel like it, she couldn’t define that. Defining it would cause great “collateral damage” to the “electronics industry”.

All speakers feigned to be blissfully unaware that software is protected by copyright, and that this does not seem to have harmed the industry so far. Some more far-out claims were that software patents would somehow be an answer to the problem of illicit copying of proprietary software. Mind you, this is not your local coffee-house chat. These people are experts in their field. It’s probably best to see any such mistakes as intentional.

A more interesting argument came from Jonathan Zuck, who says that his organisation represents about 3000 small and medium enterprises (try joining, it’s free and they don’t vote). When I mentioned that software protection happens via copyright, he added that software is also protected by trade secrets. But trade secrets are becoming less feasible due to concerns about interoperability, state sovereignty.

Though minor, this is a point we might want to prepare ourselves to run into more frequently in the future. He didn’t answer to my question about how large a percentage the five largest funders of his organisation contribute.

Sharon was kind enough to give a hint for those aspiring to have something patented. Since it’s already impossible for patent lawyers to do a reasonably good clearance of prior art – i.e. to check that the invention doesn’t already exist – she recommends that you should just apply for a patent and let the reviewers do the checking. According to her, that is the cheapest way to do it.

The ensuing discussion reached a charming conclusion when a German physicist got up and spoke rather passionately about how stupid the idea of patenting software is, since it amounts to patenting mathematic formulae. Though rather new to the debate, he hit the core point: It really *is* a stupid idea to patent mathematic formulae. Period.

For those who read German, Stefan Krempl of heise.de is reporting from this conference. (Thanks, Markus)

Discussion over intellectual monopoly rights at TACD’s Brussels conference

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The consumer group organisation Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) has organised a really interesting conference in Brussels. Today and tomorrow, about 130 participants will listen to panels and discuss among themselves. Most of the attendants come from the reform-oriented side of the debate, but there are some traditionally minded patent and copyright attorneys as well. As they’re asking their usual questions (though usually in a more constructive spirit than at WIPO), this is a nice training ground for debates.

In the opening panel, Peter Drahos (I highly recommend his excellent books gave an excellent presentation about the historical and intellectual background of the system of intellectual monopoly rights.

He explained the concept of negative and positive Commons: In the negative Commons, nothing is owned by anyone, but everyone is allowed to appropriate valuable assets. In the positive Commons, appropriating something requires the consent of all Commoners.

The oft-cited "Tragedy of the Commons", which Drahos criticised as "ahistorical", according to him really only refers to the negative Commons. Positive Commons have historically worked very well. In certain circumstances, they can administer resources much more efficiently than markets or government regulation.

During the morning panels, there were various presentations about the different aspects of the system of intellectual monopoly rights which are causing problems, above all the great power of the rightsholders lobby. Susan Sell of the George Washington University pointedly remarked: Intellectual property has been turned from servant (of public policy goals) into master".

There were many more interesting presentations, too many to summarise here. Philippe Aigrain laudably enough has his online here (.pdf, also as .lyx source). I’ll do my best to keep up throughout the afternoon.