The apparent grace of a Japanese signing ceremony is blasted by the shock resignation of  the  European Parliament's  ACTA rapporteur, Kader Arif .

 The EU signed the Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)  today at a ceremony in  the Japanese Foreign Ministry in Tokyo.  The EU’s signature was penned  by His Excellency, Mr. Hans Dietmar Schweisgut, Ambassador and Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Japan.  Barely was the ink dry, when there was a shock announcement in the European Parliament, which threatens much wider ramifications for the ACTA political process in Europe. The rapporteur for ACTA, Kader Arif, handed back the dossier. This is something which MEPs just don't do unless they are put under political pressure.

Read more...

With ACTA and Bill Gates on the agenda, the DEVE committee meeting promises to be interesting.

Former Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates is to address the Development committee in the European Parliament tomorrow (24 January).  Mr Gates would normally expect to be the star attraction.   By an ironic twist of fate, Mr Gates  - who  is no stranger to anti-piracy measures  - may well find that he is  the warm-up act for the poker- hot politics of the secretly-drafted copyright treaty known as  ACTA (Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement).

Read more...

I find the case of USG v Richard O’Dwyer quite disturbing. It  has hit the British media over the matter of extradition, and a weak agreement between Britain and the US. But having gone carefully through the judgement, I feel this is only part of the story. It looks to me like a cynical manoevre by the US copyright industries, notably the Motion Picture Association, which represents the powerful Hollywood studios. Mr O’Dwyer is a pathetic pawn in a much bigger game  to get a legal precedent in the  EU.  My feeling is that this case could be  leading up to   ACTA (Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement) implementation.

Read more...

The European Commission could ask ISPs to block content, and ask payment providers to withold money on demand from rights-holders, following  a policy announcment released today. The much-awaited announcement sets out EU official policy on the Internet and e-commerce. It follows a review of the E-commerce directive by the Commission.

Read more...

 When I heard yesterday that Richard Hooper had been appointed to run a feasibility study for the proposed Digital Copyright Exchange, I was optimistic that finally someone in authority would bite this poisoned bullet and wreak change on the stifled copyright industries. Regrettably, on examining the Feasibility Study document,  I see little basis for maintaining that optimism. There is an urgent need for a shake-up of copyight licencing in the EU, but sadly this study is unlikely to carry the weight necessary to get it past the mighty copyright industries.

Read more...

Will the next corporate scandal involve the Internet?

 The Financial Times today* suggests that  2012  will be a pivotal year for the media. I think that when we look back in a few years’ time, 2010  will be a tipping  point for the Internet too.  In retrospect, we will know whether those who currently guard the networks had a public or a private interest at heart.

In 2011, we saw  the apparent vindication of the Internet as an enabler of democracy, coupled with  a massive growth in Internet traffic, ending the year with a huge spike on Xmas day as people downloaded apps on their new Smartphones.  The wider context was one of corporate greed and media despotism, the ever-deepening banking crisis and the  exposure of the rottenness in the British media, specifically the Murdoch organisation. Add to that allegations of political corruption, as in Hungary regarding  its consitutional changes and Spain regarding Ley Sinde.

 Why would one bring these apparently unrelated concepts together in a discussion of Internet policy?

Read more...

--- And a  Merry Christmas to all Iptegrity readers!---

They can’t copyright Christmas can they?  The  public debates around  Christmas and commercial profit tend to focus on consumerism and retail sales. What role does copyright and intellectual property  play in it? Scratch the surface and you will find that intellectual property  plays a critical role in making that consumer Christmas happen. Indeed, it is like the cement which binds so many elements that comprise what we now call ‘Christmas’.

Read more...

 Haddock, whiting, hake, Norwegian lobster….  What do these  harmless marine creatures   have to do with Internet copyright?

 The EU Council of Ministers  yesterday gave the go-ahead for the EU to sign the controversial Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA is effectively an international copyright treaty, paving the way for a range of Internet blocking measures against allegedly infringing material online.  The green light was given  - not by the Ministers responsible for copyright – but by those in charge of fishing fleets.

Read more...

In a surprising gesture of pre-Christmas bonhomie, the Council of Ministers has issued directions to European Telecoms regulators, and to the European  Commission to  put in the preliminaries of a net neutrality policy.

Read more...

The Commmissioner for Information Society, Neelie Kroes, has today announced that the European Union will spend money on developing software tools to help political activists in countries such as Syria, to circumvent surveillance technology. At the same time, the Commission is working on ‘self-regulation’ of the European Internet, where ISPs will be asked to prevent the very same circumventions  for the benefit of, among others, the copyright industries.  Upholder of democracy or bureaucratic hypocrisy? It could be both, but  it is odd that the  Commission's   choice of adviser  is   Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. He is the rich  German aristocrat, and former CSU politician, who was found to have  plagiarised chunks of his PhD thesis.

Read more...