The Cat Signal: it's launch day!

A new lobby group, the Internet Defense League, is launching today to fight so-called copyright crackdown legislation. Members include Mozilla, WordPress and Reddit, who join together in "Protecting Free Internet Since 2012".

The group "takes the tactic that killed SOPA & PIPA and turns it into a permanent force for defending the internet, and making it better. Think of it like the internet's Emergency Broadcast System, or its bat signal!"

How does it intend to do this? By offering a code that can be embedded in members' websites. The League says that "When the internet's in danger and we need millions of people to act, the League will ask its members to broadcast an action. (Say, a prominent message asking everyone to call their elected leaders.) With the combined reach of our websites and social networks, we can be massively more effective than any one organization"

Look out today for the group's "cat signal" which is being blasted all over the internet, and tonight for the image being projected into the sky, Batman-style (on the opening night of The Dark Knight),  in London, San Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Ulaanbaatar.

Copyright is high on the political agenda in North America and in Europe, so this is undoubtedly the right time to lobby. The law is evolving in an attempt to catch up with technology and both rightsholders and users need to take action to ensure that the changes decided on are not to their detriment.

The Internet Defence League's coordinated approach is helpful: a united voice will hold much more sway than each company could on its own. However members of the group do choose on a case-by-case basis whether to participate in alerts, and the views in alerts are not always endorsed by all members. It will be interesting to see how this pans out in practice.

The League says: "We are very happy to be sharing a launch date with Batman. Everyone who took part in defeating SOPA, PIPA and ACTA this year are legitimate real-life superheroes. Sure, the film's parent company probably has bats$%&# crazy plans for our internet (and yes, they gave a role in the movie to a pro-PIPA Senator). But Batman? He's awesome."

EU rejects ACTA

This will probably come as no surprise to those of you who have followed this story, but the European Parliament has voted against the much maligned Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. And they voted against it in some numbers with just 39 in favour, 165 abstained and 478 were against - interesting given that all but 5 of the EU's 27 member states have already signed up to the Treaty. That said, two of the missing signatories were Germany and the Netherlands.

There was plenty of comment from both sides of the argument: Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group told told reporters: "This is a tremendous victory for the movement, for democracy and for every European citizen that has demanded that their rights be respected. ACTA must be abandoned. The Commission must drop its calls to try again. ORG would like to thank the thousands of activists from the UK that helped persuade MEPs to stand up for democracy" whilst Anne Bergman-Tahon of the Federation Of European Publishers told reporters: "ACTA is an important tool for promoting European jobs and intellectual property. Unfortunately the treaty got off on the wrong foot in the Parliament, and the real and significant merits of the treaty did not prevail" and Frances Moore for the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry said: "We now await the ruling of the Court Of Justice of the EU, and urge the European Parliament to make effective intellectual property rights enforcement a top priority in our external trade policy".

More here http://ipkitten.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/eu-parliament-rejects-acta.html and here http://www.thepharmaletter.com/file/114678/eu-parliament-rejects-acta-by-massive-478-vote-from-meps.html

ACTA, SOPA and PIPA back in the news

Last week the European Parliament's influential International Trade Committee recommended that members of the Parliament vote against adopting the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) but the recommendation has prompted an angry backlash from trade groups representing the content industries including the record labels international body the IFPI who said in statement "The recommendation by the European Parliament's International Trade Committee that the Parliament should reject ACTA is a disappointment to Europe's creative, innovative and manufacturing sectors, which employ over 120 million people across Europe and depend on intellectual property to support and grow their businesses" and added "More than 130 organisations representing the breadth of European industry have urged the European Parliament to wait for the opinion of the Court Of Justice of the European Union before taking a final decision on the treaty. A vote to follow the INTA recommendation and to reject ACTA now would be to ignore the voices of industry, unions, employees, the Commission, the Council and Member States. ACTA should be given careful and responsible consideration before a decision that will have significant effects on the EU's trade relationships and economy". Nineteen MEPs on the Trade Committee voted against adopting ACTA, with twelve in favour. 


Elsewhere, Wikipedia founder James (Jimmy) Wales has come out in support of Richard O'Dwer, the 24 year old multimedia student at Sheffield Hallam University who set up TVshack.net, making some £140,000 in the process, and who is now facing extradition from the UK to the USA on copyright infringement charges. Wales has said O'Dwyer is the "human face" of the global battle over the interests of the film, TV and movie industries and the wider public, which led to the public outcry over the proposed PIPA and SOPA (the USA's Protect Intellectual Property and the Stop Online Piracy Acts). The Guardian has a front page story and has dedicated two pages to O'Dwyer's battle in today's newspaper which can be found here (Knock on the door that could lead to 10 years in US jail for film fan). 

Neelie says ACTA is doomed

Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda has said that the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) , signed by almost all EU member states – but not all – is likely to follow the US’s SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) into the dustbin of failed legislation saying “We have recently seen how many thousands of people are willing to protest against rules which they see as constraining the openness and innovation of the internet” adding “there is a strong new political  voice, and as a voice for openness, I welcome it even if I do not always agree with everything it says on every subject … we are now likely to be in a world without SOPA and ACTA”. ACTA is currently awaiting review by the Court of Justice and EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht had urged the EU Parliament to delay any formal ratification of ACTA until that happened, but it now looks like the whole process has stalled as member states (even those who had previously signed up) lose the political will to move the Agreement forward.

In the USA,critics of the U.S. government's antipiracy efforts have new ammunition to support claims that authorities are too eager to do the bidding of copyright owners. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau (ICE) seized Dajaz1.com, a music blog, in November 2010 and then held onto it for more than a year before returning the domain to the owners having repeatedly failed to produce evidence that the site had violated copyright laws. Now the EFF has picked up on the story blogging "The whole story is, in a word, appalling …. U.S. taxpayers and their representatives have an object lesson, if one were needed, in why the government should not be granted new IP enforcement powers and why we need to reconsider the inclusion of copyright infringement as a basis for civil seizure and forfeiture."

http://news.avn.com/articles/EU-Commissioner-Anti-Digital-Piracy-Law-is-All-But-Dead-474878.html

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57428362-93/critics-say-feds-riaa-too-closely-linked-in-music-site-seizure/

2 million oppose ACTA

Having been referred to the ECJ (see previous blog), ACTA is again in the news after digital campaign organisation Avaaz handed the European Parliament a petition with the names of well over two million people who have backed an online call for a rethink of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA has already been signed by a majority of EU member states but not by the EU itself nor some five member states including The Netherlands and Germany.

However, the Treaty has already been denounced by the French MEP, Kader Arif, the rapporteur for ACTA, who was charged with compiling background information on the Treaty and who resigned his position saying "I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement", while the European Parliament's current President, Martin Schulz, said he didn't think ACTA was "good in its current form". Now the Scottish MEP who will oversee the treaty's passage through the European legislature, David Martin, has also said he is concerned that ambiguities in the agreement could have negative consequences telling reporters "I have no interest in criminalising individual consumers. I think you have to distinguish between the consumer and the producer of illegal content. I have no interest in the teenager sitting in his room deciding to download a piece of music for free because he finds there's an internet service, that there's a site providing that music for free".

The chair of the EP's petitions committee, Erminia Mazzoniis, was quoted saying: "The ratification procedure of ACTA in the European Parliament has only just started. It will need to be examined carefully, taking into consideration all concerns, through a reasoned assessment of the facts and trying to combine the freedom of the Internet on the one hand and the fight against counterfeiting on the other. The follow-up of the petition will be decided in the coming weeks by the members of the committee on petitions."

http://the1709blog.blogspot.com/2012/01/signed-sealed-delivered-your-mine.html

EU refers ACTA to the ECJ (enough acronyms already)

The European Commission has issued a press release confirming that it is referring the ACTA Agreement, previously signed by most but not all member states (see here) to the European Court of Justice with Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht saying

“We are planning to ask Europe’s highest court to assess whether ACTA is incompatible -- in any way -- with the EU's fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or data protection and the right to property in case of intellectual property”

De Gucht explains that by “within the EU institutional process, the European Commission has already passed ACTA to national governments for ratification. The Council has adopted ACTA unanimously in December and authorised Member States to sign it. The Commission has also passed on ACTA to the European Parliament for debate and a future” but adds “That said, I believe the European Commission has a responsibility to provide our parliamentary representatives and the public at large with the most detailed and accurate information … so, a referral will allow for Europe’s top court to independently clarify the legality of this agreement” commenting that the Commissioner understand the tensions in the “Europe-wide debate on ACTA, the freedom of the internet and the importance of protecting Europe’s Intellectual Property for our economies” and that De Gucht shares “people’s concern for these fundamental freedoms. I welcome that people have voiced their concerns so actively – especially over the freedom of the internet. And I also understand that there is uncertainty on what ACTA will really mean for these key issues at the end of the day”


http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=778

ACTA and Sinde in the news

Against a backdrop of Europe wide protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the treaty that aims to harmonise some key elements of intellectual property law around the world, comes news that some EU signatories, including the Czech Republic, are now re-considering their position. Whilst a number of EU countries including Germany have so far not signed the Treaty, the British government remained committed to ACTA with IP Minister Baroness Judith Wilcox telling reporters: "It was important for the UK to be a signatory of ACTA as it will set an international standard for tackling large-scale infringements of [intellectual property rights], through the creation of common enforcement standards and more effective international cooperation. During the negotiations, we continually pushed for greater transparency as we believed that this would have led to a better understanding of the agreement by the public".

We also have news that Spain’s law Sinde - the country's new website blocking law - will be challenged in the country's Supreme Court, who have agreed to hear an appeal from the Association Of Web Users who claim the law is unconstitutional, saying that only a court should be able to force a alleged infringing website offline. The Spanish Supreme Court confirmed it will consider the AOWU's claim, and have stayed moves by the Spanish government to implement the practical aspects of rolling out the new Sind regime pending their hearing.

More on Sinde here and more on ACTA here

Signed, sealed, delivered - you're mine

With PIPA, SOPA and Mega hogging all the news space, the European Union and twenty two of its member states have signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which is designed to ensure a basic system of global intellectual property protection. The signing ceremony went quietly in Tokyo yesterday (although there were some very public protests in Poland) and only five EU countries did not sign up yesterday - Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Cyprus and Slovakia - though they are expected to sign in due course. The EU signature itself must be confirmed by a vote of the European Parliament scheduled for June. The signatories join the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Morocco, who all signed up last October.

While there have been protests, supporters of the Treaty say that it does not commit signatories to any of the more extreme anti-piracy measures some countries have adopted (such as three strikes law in France) some expected or predicted, and supporters in Europe insist the agreement will simply force other participating countries to ensure the basic IP protections that already exist within the EU. But interestingly Kader Arif, the French MEP charged with the task of compiling background information about the Treaty for the European Parliament, quit his role and hit out at the way ACTA has been handled saying "I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society organisations, a lack of transparency from the start of the negotiations, repeated postponing of the signature of the text without an explanation being ever given, and the exclusion of the EU Parliament's demands that were expressed on several occasions in our assembly" adding "As rapporteur of this text, I have faced never before seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands. Everyone knows the ACTA agreement is problematic, whether it is its impact on civil liberties, the way it makes Internet access providers liable, its consequences on generic drugs manufacturing, or how little protection it gives to our geographical indications.”

Arif concluded by saying "This Agreement might have major consequences on citizens' lives, and still, everything is being done to prevent the European Parliament from having its say in this matter. That is why today, as I release this report for which I was in charge, I want to send a strong signal and alert the public opinion about this unacceptable situation. I will not take part in this masquerade".

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2141813/european-parliament-official-resigns-acta

Image - 'V' masked MPs in Poland protest against ACTA