Karsten on Free Software

WIPO held its General Assembly for two weeks from Sept. 23 or so. In this exciting round of paper-shuffling, things made the usual slow progress. As I was unable to attend, I am still having a hard time sifting through the countless texts that emerged from that meeting. The most urgent seem to be:

Future of Development Agenda Discussion

The major sticking point of the first three intersessional intergovernmental meetings has found a temporary solution. The discussion on a Development Agenda for WIPO will move to a “provisional committee”, which will meet twice for a week each time and report to the next General Assembly, due Sept. 2006.
The drawbacks? For one, noone knows what status a “provisional committee” actually has. A WIPO Research and Evaluation Office and a high-level committee would have been much better. But then, this is the way compromises go.

Broadcast Treaty

The Assembly decided that WIPO should attempt to convene a diplomatic conference to finalize the Broadcast Treaty in late 2006 or early 2007. This puts a sort of deadline on the ever-fuzzy subject of a broadcasting treaty.

Just as a reminder: The idea behind this treaty is to give copyright to someone who broadcasts something over any medium, including the internet. Yes, copyright on content they did nothing to create (the creative part is covered by copyright already). Say, if I quote something from the BBC website on this blog, I am (sort of) broadcasting it. Under the proposed broadcast treaty, I would have copyright on the quote. As would the BBC. Confusing? You bet.

As with software patents, this is a field where the guy with the biggest law department wins. FSF Europe has made a statement to the Assembly on the subject.

Boing Boing reports:

The Finnish culture minister who enacted a copyright act that bans importing personal knockoff goods into
Finland, she’s attended an intergovernmental meeting in Slovenia carrying a counterfeit Prada bag. When confronted
about this, she complained that the bag had cost too much (“If the
bag really is a copy, I paid way too much for it”).

The interesting thing is that said law punishes the importer of illegally branded goods, not the producer. The minister bought the offending bag abroad (in Italy, IIRC) – this makes her liable:

Karpela comments: “Oh my.. The purse was sold as genuine to me in Italy. If it is not real I was ripped off.” She
continues: “It is impossible for avarage tourist to know what is real and what is not. The responsibility lies
with the distributor.” No! Tanja according to the new copyright
law (56a §) you pushed through the system, it lies with the person who imports such article into Finland. You are
the one that is responsible. Double time!

I don’t need to comment on this, do I?

(via BoingBoing and CopyFraud)

In the wonderful world of US business process patents, cereal bar chain Cereality added the last drop of milk that made the bowl overflow. It has no fewer than six patent applications pending for the highly secret business methods behind running a breakfast cereal bar. With these applications, Cereality is threatening a rival chain of bars, trying to stop them from serving cereal with milk on it to their customers.

In response, FreeCulture has started a campaign against the business process patent nonsense. Their take:

“Cereality would have a complete monopoly on cereal bar business–just for being the first to put together the
legalese necessary to describe mixing breakfast cereal.”

“It’s about whether or not people should be able to claim an exclusive right on mundane ideas that any
eight-year-old could think of. And it’s about the future of American enterpreneurship.”

(via BoingBoing)

Back again, and finally all the urgent work that had piled up while I was on holiday is gone. I can now start seriously dodging what should be my primary occupation.

When asked about my level of computer literacy, I often find myself in a pickle: On the one hand, I am not freaked out if someone tells me to do a number of things on the command line. On the other, I frequently feel completely out of place when hackers talk about their latest C++ routines, since not too long ago I assumed C++ to be some sort of liquid for cleaning one’s bathroom.

But now, I have finally come across a solution. This short test provided me with the answer: I am a “low-ranking computer geek”. And I only lied moderatly on the test.

These are exciting weeks for the fields I’m working in: The third preparatory conference for the World Summit on the Information Society is under way in Geneva, WIPO is holding its general assembly, and the EU Parliament speaks out against data retention.

This means that in theory, I would have a lot of blogging to do. But as it turns out, the time for my first real vacation in years has come. So please forgive me if I prefer hanging out at a mediterranean beach for a while to reading through endless diplomatic papers. Let others will keep you updated.

Yours truly will be back at the keyboard around mid-October. See you then!

One of the next big things being mulled at WIPO is a “Webcasting Treaty”. It took me a while to understand what this is, as it is not intuitive: The legal situation of webcasting seemed rather clear to me. The works being broadcasted via the web are protected by copyright, just like any other work. So why another treaty? Surely, noone in his or her right mind would think of giving copyright to someone for simply broadcasting a work?

As an open letter to the US Copyright Office by CP Tech explains, it turns out that this is precisely what is behind the proposed treaty. Yahoo! and similar companies want it, because it would give them a source of income without having to create anything. Simply for setting up e.g. a stream, they would get 50 years of copyright in what they broadcast:

“The treaty language proposed for a “webcasting”right would create a new layer of property rights, lasting at least 50 years, for materials that are transmitted by web servers over the Internet and other networks. Unlike copyright, the new webcaster right is not based upon a creative contribution. Any material, including material in the public domain, or licensed for public dissemination under a creative commons type license, would be burdened with this new layer of rights, which accompany any “public transmission” of any combination or representations of sounds and or images.”

Besides those who would benefit financially, noone wants such a treaty. It would create another layer of copyright that would further restrict Access to Knowledge and make everyone’s life harder. It would make broadcasting more expensive, as collection societies would ask for their share of the earnings.

Cui bono? In the short run, some broadcasters. Until they discover that they are caught up in a thicket of rights that’s near impossible to untangle. This is where the second, and permanent, beneficiaries come in: Copyright lawyers, who will grow fat from looking for paths through the mess the broadcasters have made for everyone.

All other groups will only suffer from such a treaty. It is useless, and should best put to rest among humanities’ other bad ideas.

In the struggle for the rights of online journalists, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has seen a small victory in the Apple vs. Does case it is working on.

Despite claims that the documents were a trade secret, Apple was ordered by the court to let the defendant’s lawyers look at information about Apple’s internal investigation about insiders who leaked information about new products.

This is a crucial issue in the case, which will be heard by the California Court of Appeal, because the First Amendment and the California Constitution require that Apple exhaust all other alternatives before trying to subpoena journalists.

The EFF considers that in this case, the freedom of online journalists is at stake: Should they enjoy the same privileges as newspaper and TV journalists?

Fortune magazine has a feature on how careless handling of patent laws in the US has hurt innovation in biology and medicine.

“Twenty-five years ago a law known as Bayh-Dole spawned the biotech industry. It made lots of university scientists fabulously rich. It was also supposed to usher in a new era of innovation. So why are medical miracles in such short supply?”

Because something alarming has been happening over the past 25 years: Universities have evolved from public trusts into something closer to venture capital firms. What used to be a scientific community of free and open debate now often seems like a litigious scrum of data-hoarding and suspicion. And what’s more, Americans are paying for it through the nose.”

“The problem is, once it became clear that individuals could own little parcels of biology or chemistry, the common domain of scientific exchange—that dynamic place where theories are introduced, then challenged, and ultimately improved—begins to shrink.”

This can rightly be called a “Tragedy of the Anticommons.”

In case you read German: There is a nice evaluation of online music stores on netzpolitik.org:

Passend zur Popkomm haben wir uns nochmal genauer die ganzen tollen neuen Downloadshops angesehen, welche in den kommenden Tagen in den höchsten Tönen gepriesen werden. Als Verbraucher interessierte uns, welche Datenformate verwendet werden können, welche Informationen angeboten werden und ob wir überhaupt als Konsumenten in Frage kommen.

Great work, guys! But having read it, I think I’ll keep buying CDs, thank you very much.

Confused by the myriad of positions WIPO member states have adopted towards the Development Agenda? The EFF is there to help you. They have sifted through mountains of paper (or, more likely, pdf files) and come up with a table listing the positions of key WIPO members. An explanatory text is here, together with some suggestions on what action you can take.

Great work, Gwen and Ren (and anyone else involved)! I’m impressed.