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Caught in the ACTA
,----[ Quote ]
| Politicans remain the ultimate dinosaurs in terms of openness: ideally, the
| rich and powerful would like to make their cosy deals - often aimed at that
| dangerous openness - behind closed doors.
|
| [...]
|
| This secret agreement, drawn up without any public discussion or oversight,
| would basically impose all of the worst aspects of US intellectual monopolies
| on everyone in sight - starting with willing stooges like the UK, and
| progressing to the unwilling but powerless.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2008/05/caught-in-acta.html
Thanks to Wikileaks again, possible corruption is shallow.
Recent:
[ffii] McCreevy wants to legalise Software Patents via a US-EU patent treaty
,----[ Quote ]
| Brussels, 13 May 2008 -- European Commissioner McCreevy is pushing for a
| bilateral patent treaty with the United States. This Tuesday 13 May in
| Brussels, White House and European representatives will try to adopt a
| tight roadmap for the signature of a EU-US patent treaty by the end of
| the year. Parts of the proposed treaty will contain provision on
| software patents, and could legalise them on both sides of the Atlantic.
|
| "TEC talks are the current push for software patents. The US want to
| eliminate the higher standards of the European Patent Convention. The
| bilateral agenda is dictated by multinationals gathered in the
| Transatlantic Economic Business Dialogue (TABD). When you have a look
| who is in the Executive Board of the TABD, you find not a single
| European SME in there", says Benjamin Henrion, a Brussels based patent
| policy specialist.
|
| The Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) which comprises EU and US high
| level representatives put a substantive harmonisation of patent law on
| its agenda. Substantive patent law covers what is patentable or not. The
| attempt to impose the low US standards on Europe via the Substantive
| Patent Law Treaty (SPLT) process utterly failed at the World
| Intellectual Property Organisation. Also progress in the WIPO B+
| subgroup (without development nations) could not be reached.
`----
http://lwn.net/Articles/282000/
The ghost of software patents is back!
,----[ Quote ]
| Life is never easy for an open source evangelist. The OOXML drama came to a
| close on 2nd April 2008 and we were on to our next issue -- software patents.
| The Draft Patent Manual might end up bringing software patents through the
| back door. this would be surprising because the Indian parliament explicitly
| rejected software patents in the Patent Amendment Act 2005. In this blog, I
| am including extracts from a letter that I sent to the Patent Office on 11th
| April 2008. The deadline for comments was 15th April 2008.
`----
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2008/05/ghost-of-software-patents-is-back.html
Related:
Wikileaks Shutdown: Censorship Is Censorship
,----[ Quote ]
| If Wikileaks were a print publication, the injunction that has shut down the
| site would be unthinkable. Back in 1931, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a
| Minnesota law that allowed the closing of any "malicious, scandalous and
| defamatory" periodical. This court, by contrast, has not only barred future
| publication of the documents at issue but elected to put Wikileaks out of
| business.
`----
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/61873.html
Free Speech Advocates Mount Legal Battle to Unchain Wikileaks
,----[ Quote ]
| In Bank Julius Baer & Co., Ltd v. Wikileaks, et al, the plaintiff claims that
| the posting of certain documents to the Wikileaks site violated Swiss and
| Cayman Island bank secrecy laws.
|
| Judge Jeffrey White ordered domain registrar Dynadot to disable Wikileaks.org
| in response to Julius Baer & Co.'s complaint. The groups behind the request
| to lift the injunction claim that it violates the First Amendment.
`----
http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/61876.html
WikiLeaks Under Fire
,----[ Quote ]
| The transparency group WikiLeaks.org currently seems to be under heavy fire.
| The main WikiLeaks.org DNS entry is unavailable, reportedly due to a
| restraining order relating to a series of articles and documents released by
| WikiLeaks about off-shore trust structures in the Cayman Islands. The
| WikiLeaks whistle blower, allegedly former vice president of the Cayman
| Islands branch of swiss bank Julius Baer, states in the WikiLeaks documents
| that the bank supported tax evasion and money laundering by its clients from
| around the world
`----
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/18/043211&from=rss
Swiss bank drops Wikileaks lawsuit
,----[ Quote ]
| The bank argued it was trying to halt "the unlawful dissemination of stolen
| bank records and personal account information of its customers."
`----
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080305/ap_on_hi_te/wikileaks_lawsuit
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