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Why the ICC Report Makes Me Ick
,----[ Quote ]
| I have restrained myself from writing much
| about the ICC's "Building a Digital Economy"
| report, because I knew it would make me too
| cross. Fortunately, someone who is rather
| calmer me than me has done a better job than
| I would with some careful, rigorous analysis.
`----
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2010/03/why-icc-report-makes-me-ick.html
About that Internet piracy studyâ
,----[ Quote ]
| Yesterday, Richard Wray wrote up a piece in
| the Guardian on a study which has been backed
| by the TUC and claims that by 2015, losses
| from piracy will reach Â218bn and put 1.2
| million jobs in peril.
|
| [...]
|
| What the BPI does publish (repeatedly on its
| site) is the figure of âsome 7.3 million
| people engaged in unlawful filesharingâ,
| according to Jupiter Research. Assuming these
| two figures â the number of people sharing
| and the amount of infringement taking place â
| are supposed to be consistent with one
| another, this leaves us with a few problems.
|
| That 7.3m figure was investigated by BBC
| Radio 4âs âMore or Lessâ programme, and the
| results were written up by Ars Technica.
|
| [...]
|
| The bottom line here is that the 7.3m figure
| is essentially meaningless; itâs based on a
| survey of just over a thousand households and
| then multiplied up in the same way that the
| BASCAP report does in its predictions. If â
| and thereâs potentially some wiggle-room here
| â this (still publicised today) 7.3m figure
| is related to the 1.1bn âinfringementsâ
| figure, then it renders the UK music part of
| the BASCAP report as worthless as an educated
| guess by a journalist. If this is the quality
| of the data across the board, then the entire
| report has little merit at all from a
| analytics perspective.
`----
http://nevali.net/post/457207314/about-that-internet-piracy-study
Is the music industry trying to write the digital economy bill?
,----[ Quote ]
| Two weeks is a lifetime in politics â
| especially in the political life of the
| backwards digital economy bill, Labour's gift
| to the incumbent entertainment industries
| that government is bent on ramming into law
| before the election.
|
| In my last column, I bore the bizarre news
| that the LibDem front-bench Lords had
| introduced an amendment to the bill that
| would create a Great Firewall of Britain.
| This would be a national censorwall to which
| the record industry could add its least
| favourite sites, rendering them invisible to
| Britons (except for those with the nous of a
| 13-year-old evading her school's censorware).
| Over the following days, the story got
| weirder: the LibDem amendment got amended, to
| add a figleaf of due process to the untenable
| proposal.
|
| And then it got weirder still: a leaked memo
| from the BPI (the UK record industry lobby)
| showed that the "LibDem amendment" had in
| fact been written â with minor variances â by
| the BPI. And the BPI continued to leak:
| someone sent me the weekly internal status
| update prepared by Richard Mollet, BPI
| Director of Public Affairs for the core group
| of plotters behind the bill (someone should
| teach Mr Mollet about BCC).
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/18/digital-economy-bill-calculated-loss
New ACTA leak: It's a screwjob for the world's poor countries
,----[ Quote ]
| Translation for non-wonks: Historically,
| developing countries have asked the UN's
| World Intellectual Property Organization for
| "technical assistance" with their copyright
| laws. This has usually amounted to "Create
| copyright laws that will make it easier for
| rich countries to get richer," but in the
| past several of years, WIPO has found itself
| with a large cadre of public interest
| activists and now, WIPO is working on a
| treaty on its "Development Agenda" to figure
| out a copyright system that serves
| humanitarian goals, too (for example, by
| making it legal for archivists and educators
| to work together to translated and adapt
| works that have different copyright rules in
| different countries).
|
| We've all known that ACTA is a way of writing
| copyright treaties without having to let poor
| countries and human rights advocates into the
| room. We've suspected that poor countries --
| who aren't invited to the negotiations --
| will be strong-armed into signing onto the
| treate afterwards.
`----
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/19/new-acta-leak-its-a.html
UK IP Minister Lammy Backs EU Release Of ACTA Text
,----[ Quote ]
| David Lammy, United Kingdom Minister for
| Intellectual Property, today said the UK
| supports the European Unionâs position that
| the text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade
| Agreement (ACTA) should be made public.
`----
http://www.ip-watch.org/2010/03/17/uk-ip-minister-lammy-backs-eu-release-of-acta-text/
Does ACTA = EU-wide copyright enforcement for the 'Net?
,----[ Quote ]
| The European Commission has now admitted in
| writing what the ACTA negotiations will mean
| for the Internet. In Europe, it will mean a
| 'harmonised' enforcement
`----
http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=489&Itemid=9
Now let's visualise how the digital economy bill has changed..
,----[ Quote ]
| A simple programming tool is helpful in
| understanding what's changed - but we really
| need some proper internet-enabled means of
| viewing bills, as MySociety points out
`----
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/mar/18/digital-economy-bill-parliament-diff
More ACTA Leaks: Would Create Special Organization To Manage Worldwide Copyright Laws
,----[ Quote ]
| The more of ACTA that leaks, the worse it
| seems. KEI has the details on another portion
| of ACTA that had not leaked yet, which
| focuses on setting up new institutions that
| would manage ACTA after it was implemented.
| Basically, it would be an ongoing
| organization tasked with continuing to update
| ACTA's rules -- sort of a parallel
| organization to WIPO, which already exists,
| but which has recently committed the mortal
| sin of actually listening to consumer rights
| groups.
`----
http://techdirt.com/articles/20100319/0420418630.shtml
Recent:
EU proposes ACTA require criminal sanctions for inciting, aiding and abetting infringements
,----[ Quote ]
| KEI has learned that the European Union has
| proposed language in the ACTA negotiations to
| require criminal penalties for "inciting,
| aiding and abetting" certain offenses,
| including "at least in cases of willful
| trademark counterfeiting and copyright or
| related rights piracy on a commercial scale."
`----
http://keionline.org/node/806
Secrecy Around Trade Agreement Causes Stir
,----[ Quote ]
| There's a reason you don't hear much about
| international trade agreements. They are kind
| of dull, and they're usually not very
| controversial. But the Anti-Counterfeiting
| Trade Agreement (ACTA) is different.
|
| "One feels that you're almost in a bit of a
| twilight zone," says Michael Geist, a law
| professor at the University of Ottawa. "I
| mean, we're talking about a copyright treaty.
| And it's being treated as akin to nuclear
| secrets."
|
| For several years, the United States and
| other developed countries have been quietly
| working on ACTA. Geist has been one of the
| loudest critics of the proposed pact. He says
| it's a counterfeiting agreement in name only,
| and he thinks the treaty would actually
| change some of the fundamental rules
| governing the Internet. But what makes Geist
| really angry is the way it's been negotiated.
|
| "Virtually none of it has been open to the
| public," Geist says. "Even the early meetings
| were actually held in secret locations, so no
| one even knew where they were taking place."
`----
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124780647&ft=1&f=1003
ACTA â The NZ Official Information Requests
,----[ Quote ]
| Weâve written about the unhealthy secrecy
| around the ACTA treaty negotiations. As New
| Zealanders we believe we have a right to know
| what our government is doing on our behalf.
|
| We wrote to the Ministry of Economic
| Development and the Ministry of Foreign
| Affairs and Trade to ask them some questions
| about ACTA under the Official Information
| Act. We just got our answers back (scanned
| PDFs of the MED letter â 3MB, MFAT letter â
| 3MB, and cabinet paper â 6MB) and we have to
| admit that we werenât very surprised to see
| more excuses not to release official
| information than we saw information.
`----
http://techliberty.org.nz/acta-the-nz-official-information-requests/
Australia comes clean on ACTA role
,----[ Quote ]
| The Australian Government has no intention of
| changing its domestic laws to harmonise with
| an international treaty on copyright,
| according to a spokesman for the Department
| of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
`----
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/169254,australia-comes-clean-on-acta-role.aspx
[A2k] The truth about acta April 6 program for public meeting (EU Parliament)
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/a2k/2010-March/005397.html
European Parliament about ACTA: Punishing Computer Pirates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otiF5jHIHdc
Michael Geist to keynote PublicACTA - InternetNZ
,----[ Quote ]
| InternetNZ is excited to announce that
| renowned Canadian law professor Michael
| Geist, a world authority on technology law
| issues, will be the keynote speaker at the
| PublicACTA event, being held in Wellington
| on 10 April 2010.
`----
http://blog.internetnz.net.nz/?p=310
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