[p2p-research] Imagining something better (was Re: Europe only goes half-way ...)

[Paul D. Fernhout]

I comment on the ACTA treaty they mention at the end here:
"[p2p-research] Slashdot | Secret Copyright Treaty Leaks. It's Bad. Very Bad."
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005557.html

Maybe a little over the top there, but let me try again. :-)

Let's try to imagine something better than all this.

Here is a mashup of George Bush singing John Lennon's Imagine, likely with
clips taken from news sources:
"George Bush - "Imagine" (Bush is gone, let it go, people!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n41bRHlr76Y

"Fair use" exists in the USA, including an exemption for satire and parody,
so it *may* be legal to make that video, store it, and view it in the USA.
But looking at it may well make many people outside the USA criminals under
the terms of either the Telecoms Package or ACTA in places without fair use,
since they would be violating the copyrights of news broadcasting companies
without "fair use".
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Influence_internationally

How much does it take to violate a copyright? One digital bit copied? Two
bits? One hundred bits? One thousand bits? One million bits?

Music can be deemed to infringe on other music if it has only a few similiar
notes:
http://www.alankorn.com/articles/copyright_infringe.html
"One of the more famous U.S music infringement cases involved ex-Beatle
George Harrison, who was found by a jury to have "unconsciously" copied the
Shirelle's composition "He's So Fine" in his 1971 hit "My Sweet Lord."
Although George Harrison's hit was found to be strikingly similar to the
Shirelle's song, it is even possible to infringe another song if only just a
few notes are "borrowed." Because the most memorable part of a song may be
quite brief, infringement of a musical composition may be found even where
only a small portion of a song was copied. ... There is no simple rule
concerning how much of a work may be taken before it rises to the level of
infringement. Obviously, the more a work is copied, the easier it is to show
substantial similarity. Ultimately the test for infringement turns on the
issue of quality, rather than quantity. For instance, in determining whether
one song infringes on another, it is common for courts to look to whether
the "heart" of the song was taken. The heart of a song may be a memorable
melody, or an identifiable 2-chord guitar riff or just a few words taken
from the chorus. As a result, there is NO truth to the rumor that sampling
less than 4 bars is OK. "

So, let's say, anyway, despite that, that a couple complex bars was a ten
note sequence, each represented by a 32-bit number in a computer, or about
320 bits. So, while interpreting infringement remains subjective, we can
thing that in most situations, it starts at copying about 300 bits or so.
That would also be about twenty textual Unicode characters or so, or four or
five words, as maybe the typical minimum to start creating copyright
problems, barring really special cases (trademark issues, very unusual
works, etc.).

See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_prime
"An illegal prime is a prime number that represents information forbidden to
possess or distribute. One of the first illegal primes was discovered in
2001. When interpreted a particular way, it describes a computer program
which bypasses copyright protection schemes. Distribution of such a program
in the United States is illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Illegal primes are a subset of illegal numbers."

And:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number
"An illegal number is a number that represents information which is illegal
to possess, utter or propagate. Any information that can be represented in
binary format is, ipso facto, representable as a number, and therefore if
the information itself is illegal in some way, the pure number itself may be
illegal.[1][2][3] To date, the idea of a number being illegal has not been
tested in the courts.[citation needed]"

Without "fair use", people would also risk being criminals for accepting any
email which contains any unauthorized copyrighted material, even very short
sequences of bits on the order of 1000 bits or less (a Kilobit, or about one
tenth of a Kilobyte of eight bit bites). So, basically, email (especially
mailing lists) would be too dangerous to use if these laws continue to
tighten things.

Receive just one email containing less than 100 bytes of some copyrighted
text from a news service or copied from a web site, and you are a criminal
(you made a copy to receive it, you make a copy to view it, it may be stored
on your hard drive, and so on). The only issue is, will your criminal act be
acted on by others in legal authority? So, we will have "selective
enforcement" used against those deemed a risk to the state. And all it takes
to make you a felon is someone sending you 100 of the wrong bytes. Now,
broadband speeds are up to several megabytes (millions of bytes) per second
in many places, and even way faster than that in a few places. Every new
phone may be able to receive data that fast soon. If receiving just 100 bad
bytes, one of these illegal numbers, makes you a criminal, subject to years
in prison if you have made multiple copies, then we have a world where, in
the words of one protest song:
"Everyone's a criminal unless you got the money, honey".

I'm not making this up for the USA, the issue is just that it is not "enforced":
"FEDERAL PROSECUTION OF VIOLATIONS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS"
http://www.cybercrime.gov/CFAleghist.htm
"""
     The purpose of S. 893 is to harmonize the current felony provisions for
copyright infringement and to provide an effective deterrence to the piracy
of motion pictures, sound recordings, computer programs, and other original
works of authorship. Piracy of copyrighted works costs U.S. industries
millions of dollars a year, resulting in losses of jobs and diminution in
the number of works created. Effective criminal penalties will aid in
preventing Such losses. [This ignores the multi-trillion dollars worth of
free content in circulation, or other issues such as in the free book here:
http://www.thepublicdomain.org/] ...
      Under civil copyright infringement, an intent to infringe is not
required, since copyright is a strict liability tort. [FN13] For an
infringement to be deemed a criminal violation, however, a specific mens rea
must be proved. Even if civil liability has been established, without the
requisite mens rea it does not matter how many unauthorized copies or
phonorecords have been made or distributed: No criminal violation has occurred.
     Under section 506(a) of title 17, United States Code, unamended by the
substitute, the mens rea is described as infringement done "willfully and
for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." The term
"willfully," although used in copyright statutes since 1897 for criminal
violations, has never been defined. The substitute to S. 893 does not
provide a definition either, since it is the Committee's intention that the
standard as construed by the courts continue to be applied. [FN14]
     The mens rea requirement serves to leave outside the reach of the
criminal law losing parties in ordinary business disputes such as those
involving reverse engineering of computer programs [FN15] or contract
disputes over the scope of licenses. [FN16] Felony liability is not the
result of every unauthorized reproduction or distribution of at least 10
copies or phonorecords having a retail value of more than $2,500 within a
180-day period. First, infringement must be established. Next, the
Government must prove that the infringement was done with the requisite mens
rea. Unless both these requirements are met, no criminal
liability-misdemeanor or felony-will lie, regardless of the number of
unauthorized copies or phonorecords that have been reproduced or
distributed. In cases where civil liability is unclear-whether because the
law is unsettled, or because a legitimate business dispute exists- the
Committee does not intend to establish criminal liability.
"""

But some of this is subjective. If you are on a mailing list, and you do not
have state approved filtering in place, does this show "intent"? And in any
case, that is for criminal sanctions. The economic sanctions may be enough
of a deterrent.
"Students Dropping Out of School to Pay RIAA Legal Fees"
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/9843/students_dropping_out_of_school_to_pay_riaa_legal_fees/

So, if everyone is a copyright criminal (if only from getting email that
contains quotes from news articles, or from watching youtube clips, deemed
as "personal gain"), or could easily be made to look like one (if the were
emailed song files), then where does that leave us as a society?

Example:
"Overly-broad copyright law has made USA a "nation of infringers""
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2007/11/overly-broad-copyright-law-has-made-us-a-nation-of-infringers.ars
"""
   How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single
day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates
in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability (PDF) over the
course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what
social norms permit is so great now that "we are, technically speaking, a
nation of infringers."
   Tehranian's paper points out just how pervasive copyright has become in
our lives. Simply checking one's e-mail and including the full text in
response could be a violation of copyright. So could a tattoo on Tehranian's
shoulder of Captain Caveman—and potential damages escalate when Tehranian
takes off his shirt at the university pool and engages in public performance
of an unauthorized copyrighted work.
   Singing "Happy Birthday" at a restaurant (unauthorized public
performance) and capturing the event on a video camera (unauthorized
reproduction) could increase his liability, and that's to say nothing of the
copyrighted artwork hanging on the wall behind the dinner table (also
captured without authorization by the camera). Tehranian calculates his
yearly liability at $4.5 billion.
   And all of this infringement could easily be done without even engaging
in "wrong" behaviors like P2P file-sharing. Tehranian wants to make clear
how such copyright issues don't simply affect those operating in the grey or
black zones of the law; they affect plenty of ordinary people who aren't
doing anything that they consider to be illegal, immoral, or even a little
bit naughty.
   The "vast disparity between copyright law and copyright norms" simply
highlights the need for effective copyright reform. Since the 1976 Copyright
Act, when all creative works automatically gained copyright protection
without the need for registration, our lives have been awash in the
copyrighted materials of other people. The advent of digital technology
means not only that such works are simpler to use and to share, but that
content owners for the first time have a realistic shot at enforcing their
maximum rights.
"""

By the way, technically, anyone reading the above in another country is
probably a criminal, since I don't have permission from arstechnica to
reproduce it. At the bottom of the page it says: "Ars Technica © 2009 Condé
Nast Digital. All rights reserved. The material on this site may not be
reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with
the prior written permission of Condé Nast Digital."
I rely on "fair use" in the context of "scholarly discussion",
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use
but that exemption does not apply elsewhere, and is also only a defense
after being sued, it does not prevent lawsuits. Still, I have made a
*social* judgment that it is unlikely to get me or anyone here sued or
imprisoned to quote it, or that, if I was sued, the net result after all the
stress would be positive publicity about this issue (given the irony). But,
is is still a judgment, one stressful to make, and I may be wrong in that
instance or any of many others. It's only a matter of time...

From:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement
"Historically, selective enforcement is recognized as a sign of tyranny, and
an abuse of power, because it violates Rule of Law, allowing men to apply
justice only when they choose. Aside from this being inherently unjust, it
almost inevitably must lead to favoritism and extortion, with those
empowered to choose being able to help their friends, take bribes, and
threaten those they desire favors from."

So, what is being set up here is a form of tyranny based on selective
enforcement of copyright, similar in some ways to marijuana laws, because,
if much of the population is doing something to little ill effect (two US
presidents have admitted to using marijuana), and maybe even with medical
benefits (those on chemotherapy, for example) then who goes to jail over a
law becomes a matter of selective enforcement.
   http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/vlr/vlr8.htm
"""
At the same time that the police have abandoned full enforcement for
concentration on dealers, enforcement of the laws has remained necessarily
haphazard and somewhat selective. Since marijuana use has become so common,
there are certain student and hippy communities in which the police could
arrest nearly everyone. Here the problem of selective enforcement
necessarily arises-the police arrest those they dislike for other reasons,
either political disagreement or suspicion of use of other drugs. This
inevitable practice, although perhaps not consciously planned, has brought
outcry from some victimized communities.27 This policy-if not a policy by
the police at least a perception by the hippies-of selective enforcement has
provided them increased impetus toward the anti-establishment life style
they have adopted. Their attitude is aggravated when the police engage in
particularly aggressive tactics, such as use of informers, to trap the
offenders. 28
"""

Another social judgment again, to quote that, that I and people here will
not be sued for my quoting that, given no easy facility for Xanadu-like
"transclusion".

And, *intent* to violate copyright might be shown by the fact people used
p2p email and did not have in place state-approved filtering and censoring
systems to prevent that. Such software exists in some places to some degree.
It might certainly be profitable to offer it by some companies, something
where a machine reads all your email first and decides what items can safely
go through. We already have in place such services for spam protection, so
it is not that much of a stretch to see them used for protecting us against
potential copyright violations.

The original "Imagine", which at the time seemed absurd, but now seems more
and more where we are going, and sometime in the next twenty years if we are
to prosper, or even just survive:
   "Imagine - John Lennon"
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7qaSxuZUg
(I think Yoko Ono explicitely said it was OK to have that video up there. Of
course, does she really own all the rights to "Imagine"? How do I know? What
good is her word if I'm not sure she has the right to speak about that? Did
she really say that, in any case? How do I know? Was she misquoted? Do the
gardeners of that site pictured there have copyright in their pruning of the
bushes they walk by? Does the architect of that house have the right to say
his copyright on aspects of that structure is being violated? Does the
person who reformatted the video have a say in this? And so on.)

It took me a while to get the visual meaning of opening up all those windows
and letting all the vitamin D creating sunshine in. :-) Is, metaphorically,
our entire civilization suffering from a lack of sunshine on how these legal
decisions are made to whose benefit or based on what ideological assumption?

Anyway, I do believe in Manuel de Landa's point about a balance of meshworks
and hierarchies. But, it is not clear, at this point, that strong copyright
is helping either hierarchies or meshworks. This was mentioned above in
relation to marijuana. For example, like marijuana laws, copyright laws are
encouraging a disrespect for *legitimate* authority that is sometimes needed
to keep public order (for example, to impose quarantines for public health
reasons, or to prevent pollution, or to regulate the financial industry).
Another law professor on this:
   "Stanford Law Professor compares Copyright Law to Prohibition"
http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2009/07/18/stanford-law-professor-compares-copyright-law-to-prohibition/
"Lawrence Lessig, a professor of Law at Stanford University makes an
interesting case that US-style Copyright Law that makes peer to peer copying
illegal, and imposes ever more extreme criminal sentences, is the new
prohibition, his criticism is not whether the law is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, so
much as unenforceable and resulting in a generation growing up believing
that the law is an ass."

With all that said, working within existing copyright laws in an "Aikido"
like way, here is one proposal I made for how to get rid of the current
system by building on the internet idea of treating copyright as damage and
routing around it, back from 2001 (it has been one driving idea over the
last decade towards an aspect of the Pointrel system's design):
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/browse_thread/thread/df4b4363d544f766/9883d1c03c106f0a?hl=en&q=fernhout+good+bad+ugly#9883d1c03c106f0a
"""
Perhaps I should then refine the question away from technical issues to
focus on the paradigm shift.
   Essentially, is it sensible to shift the debate on Digital Rights
Management from:
"rights management to restrict rights and ensure author royalties"
   to:
"rights management to ensure the right to freely copy and make derived
works"
   as a new paradigm?
Does this sound like a general principle free software and free content
developers could get behind? Or is that concept itself flawed, perhaps
because people think DRM is a fundamentally flawed concept as far as
ensuring personal freedoms?
"""

See also my example there:
http://groups.google.com/group/gnu.misc.discuss/msg/1e499c6db59117a2?hl=en&&q=fernhout+good+bad+ugly
"""
A LICENSE REJECTION PROTOCOL
   Being explicit about licensing (especially in a machine-readable way)
may have great benefits. For one thing, you might decide to set your
email receiver to reject email from most people unless it came with an
acceptable (to you) license. There might be a "license negotiation"
protocol at the start of all transmissions of all works.
   For example:
Sender: PERMISSION TO SEND "Windows NT Source" BY "misguided kiddy";
Receiver: WHAT LICENSE?;
Sender: LICENSE: NO-REDISTRIBUTE-39;
Receiver: REJECT;
   or perhaps instead:
Sender: PERMISSION TO SEND "GNU/Linux kernel mods" BY "Linus Torvalds";
Receiver: WHAT LICENSE?;
Sender: LICENSE: GPL-2;
Receiver: ACCEPT;
   If you ran a peer-to-peer file server, such a protocol might help ensure
only legally redistributeable works were redistributed on it (making it
legally safer to run one). Obviously, people could lie about the license
status of works when they inject them into the system -- but the point
is, it forces such people to explicitly lie, as opposed to just being
careless or neglectful. (Obviously, carelessness and neglect could
affect the system as well if the person injecting the information is
just confused, hopefully other factors like community awareness could
minimize this.) Nonetheless, it might gives users a legal defense from
extreme copyright infringement awards if they screen incoming data. This
in turn might make insurance for such situations affordable. Defenders
of such a file sharing system (in court) could then admit to there being
a few "bad apples" and take efforts to route out such illegally
contributed material in the same way people now use virus scanners or
other filters. This might make it more likely such systems would
prosper, with other attendant benefits for democracy or an open society.
   To be clear: I personally am not for supporting sharing of material that
for legal or copyright reasons can't be shared (it's the law; change the
law peacefully if so desired). I instead want to make sure that it is
easy to share material that it is legal to share, and likewise I want to
ensure it easy to make derived works with clear legal titles from
material it is legal to make derived works from.
"""

I went on to develop another example:
"""
   The Choral Public Domain Library site has "public domain" in the title,
but the main page announces "Much of the music in this archive is in the
public domain and has been newly edited under the terms of the Choral
Public Domain License (CPDL). Under this license, all music here can be
freely downloaded, distributed, reproduced, performed, and recorded.
Modifications can be made to these editions, if certain steps are
followed. A working draft of the CPDL is available on this website
(click here)." This leads to a variant license inspired by the GPL:
   http://cpdl.snaptel.com/license.htm [now: http://www.cpdl.org ]
All of this requires me to think a lot, keep track of information, tell
other people things, and in general, not be able to treat the MIDI file
(from a licensing perspective) as more or less an atomic thing. I can't
just point a tool at the "pal-ecce.mid" file and check what the
licensing conditions are.
   As soon as I have this file on my computer, much of the "meta data"
about licensing is lost, since the meta-data is not all kept in the same
file but is implicit from having the file on the site. If I pass the
file to you, how do you know it is freely redistributeable? Do you take
my word for it? Do you check the site? Am I myself even sure enough what
license it is under when I downloaded it that I can give you assurances
you can use it? Why should you trust me if I do? Did you get the
identical version I downloaded, or did I slip in a change which I might
later use to make a claim against you if you use the file in a work of
your own? If I (not the author) bundle the midi file with a CPDL license
in a zip file, how do you know I had any right to do that? How much time
do you need to take to verify the situation?
   Note: this isn't to put down this particular site. It is a great site
that has given me much enjoyment and represents a lot of painstaking
work to assure compliance with copyright law. The issue isn't specific
to the site or its files. I just use it as an example. Also, this
problem isn't specific to MIDI files. Even if you could put such
information as a text comment in a MIDI file, this doesn't solve the
general issue for all files, or necessarily in a way where license
analysis, filtering, and handling could be automated.
   Note that ultimately, having such meta-data in every file might require
operating system support, or at least very smart tools, like a MIDI
player that ignores the meta-data when actually playing the file. That
in turn might require a more sophisticated repository approach to
storing all file data (at a minimum, perhaps "license forks" like the
Macintosh has "data forks", although this doesn't address the notion of
one license covering multiple files taken as a whole).
"""

The only reason the web works now legally is that there is implied consent
for some copies. For example, if you put up a public web page, you
presumably assume someone will look at it, even without granting an explicit
license. But technically, people viewing your web page is still illegal
under a strict interpretation of copyright law, because they are making a
copy of your web page to view it. Socially, this is absurd at this point,
but technically, a copy is a copy. There is also a sense that there is not
criminal *intent* by people who view your content to rip you off in
interpreting the law that way, but it is still subjective. What if you
talked about the website in an unflattering way on a blog where you had
Google adsense revenue? But, that's all hazy and informal stuff. There are
court cases about it in various places, but it is still emerging and it is
fairly inconsistent and arbitrary (as Alan Kay has pointed out).

The fact is, without an explicit license, everyone getting a copy of any
email, even this one, is violating copyright. It is only by social
convention that it is not considered to be so. But, our laws don't fully
reflect our social conventions. They are written, as best as one could view
them, to be selectively enforced when sociality breaks down. And that social
convention starts to fray when people reply to emails (making derived works)
or forward emails (so, sending copies to other people than the original
recipient). So, everything becomes a continual stressful set of decisions,
will this person sue me? Will that person sue me?

In general, at least in the lawsuit-prone USA, we are relying on continually
assessing the intent of the originator of information and what will get them
to launch a lawsuit against us, as well as our assets and capabilities in
defending from lawsuits. Thus a big company like Google with lots of lawyers
can do some things, like make copies of in-copyright books and put them on
the web in some form, that most of the rest of us would be afraid to do.

That's one reason I stopped using proprietary software for the most part. I
realized, it is also just about impossible to prove that I had a legal right
to use anything I had paid for (and in the past, I have paid many thousands
of dollars for software and content). The right to read a paper book comes
from having the book in your hands, it seems. But the right to use a piece
of software is not so easy to prove, as SPA raids show, where people have
paid for all the software but can no longer prove it in an acceptable (to
the SPA) way.
"Freeze! This is a Software Raid "
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/news/columns/97-09/e3516034.htm
  What proves you have the right to have a copy of some software? Especially
software you might have purchased ten years ago? A printed receipt? A
holographic sticker? A license key? The original disks and manual? How many
copies can you have, as in are system backups legal? And so on. Essentially,
I realized, even after paying vast amounts of money (one software system I
paid for for a project cost about US$9000 dollars, VisualWorks
Smalltalk+ENVY+Server), my continued right to use any of that stuff still
depended on the willingness of these companies not to sue me. Why should I
give my money to such an enterprise, if I have a choice? Granted, I bought a
Mac last year after running Debian for many years, so, I'm not ideologically
perfect. :-) But I stick almost entirely with free software on top of that.

And RIAA lawsuits even show that, not to endorse illegal music downloading,
but RIAA apparently sues the people who buy the most music:
"Illegal downloaders 'spend the most on music', says poll"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/illegal-downloaders-spend-the-most-on-music-says-poll-1812776.html 


Really, if you "buy" a tune, how can you prove you have a right to access it
year later? How many copies? And so on?

Until we get better copyright laws (where better may mean none at all :-),
that's a reason I like the idea of explicit free licenses managed explicitly:
   "A review of licensing and collaborative development..."
   http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html

That way, we can build a "free world" one email at a time, one song at a
time, and let the old one die on its own.

Similar to how I did on the OM list (assuming the GFDL is no longer important),
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/browse_thread/thread/814b2a47a602cac0/43ec536962e88355?hl=en#43ec536962e88355
I hereby put all my posts on this mailing list under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 unported
license, same as Wikipedia, subject to having included material from other
sources I deemed as "fair use" at the time which may be subject to other
restrictions in other contexts.

But, my making one statement does not solve the convenience issue, does it?
People won't know that looking at my other posts. And it's not clear for the
licensing of replies by others, or the replied to content I may have
included, and so on. So, even with terrible copyright laws, we can still do
much better among ourselves to affirm our intents and make stigmergic
collaboration easier.

Stan raised the issues about what is a good way to use email.
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005520.html
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005553.html

Well, this free licensing issue is another deep problem with email.

It's actually not clear to me what license contributions to this p2p mailing
list are otherwise, or how they legally migrate to the blog, and so on...
Maybe there is some footnote somewhere I missed when you sign up?

For example, If I knew all the content by everyone here was under CC-BY-SA
3.0 (or whatever), then I might treat it differently (like use it as test
input into other systems I wanted to develop). Although, even then, what 
about the copyrights on quoted materials or forwarded materials?

In a blog I made, I have a blurb near the comment button where each comment
author is agreeing, like with Wikipedia, to put their contribution under a
CC-BY-SA license (so far, no comments except spam. :-)

 From there at the bottom: "All content here (including comments, but
excepting items used under "fair use") is submitted under the Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. "

And if you add a comment:
"""
The submitter agrees that any content submitted here is hereby placed under
the CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported License (same as Wikipedia), and also agrees not
to include copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder
unless otherwise covered by "fair use".
"""

But that is not a general solution for email or the web. It just works in 
one place.

Anyway, my point is, even with the copyright noose around our necks slowly
tightening, we still have some freedom to act and empower ourselves and our
peers to create a free world. And if we do, someday the strongly copyrighted
and proprietary world may cease to be relevant to our lives, like we are
all listening to free music and discussing free news and using free software
on free hardware. Then there won't be many advocates left for strong
copyright and strong patents, and maybe those will eventually dissolve on
their own. Or at least, the free world may have the power to change those
laws back to something sane eventually (perhaps copyright on creative works
lasts three years, or whatever, although I'd prefer no copyright and a basic
income for all. :-)

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/
http://www.beyondajoblessrecovery.org/

Michel Bauwens wrote:
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jérémie ZIMMERMANN - La Quadrature du Net <jz at laquadrature.net>
> Date: Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:21 PM
> Subject: [opennetcoalition] Europe only goes half-way in protecting Internet
> rights.
> To: opennetcoalition at laquadrature.net
> 
> 
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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> 
> La Quadrature du Net - For immediate release
> 
> Permanent link:
> http://www.laquadrature.net/en/Europe-only-goes-half-way-in-protecting-internet-rights
> 
> 
> Europe only goes half-way in protecting Internet rights.
> 
> 
> 
> ***
> Brussels, November 5th, 2009 - An agreement has been reached on the
> Telecoms Package. The new text1 aimed at protecting Internet access
> includes positive elements such as a reference to the right to a "prior
> fair and impartial procedure" as well as the presumption of innocence.
> It also contains ambiguous language and potential loopholes. This rather
> unambitious provision will now be up for interpretation, and it remains
> to be seen whether it will invalidate Net access restrictions such as
> "three strikes" policies. ***
> 
> The European Parliament and the Council of the EU came to an agreement
> on the "Telecoms Package" negotiations. They laid down legal and
> procedural guarantees against restrictions of Internet access. The new
> provision gives2 "effective judicial protection and due process",
> guarantees "the principle of presumption of innocence and the right to
> privacy" and respect the European Convention for the Protection of Human
> Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
> 
> However, the text only speaks of "a prior fair and impartial procedure"
> instead of a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, guaranteed by the
> original "amendment 138", and contains loopholes and ambiguities. The
> invalidation of freedom-killer measures such as "three strikes policies"
> will now depend on interpretation by the European Court of Justice and
> national courts. Moreover, the text only relates to measures taken by
> Member States and thereby fails to bar telecom operators and
> entertainment industries from knocking down the founding principle of
> Net neutrality.
> 
> "Despite its lack of clarity and ambition, this text does provide legal
> ammunition to continue the fight against restrictions of Internet
> access. The agreed text does not meet the challenge of clearly
> preserving a fundamental right of access to the Net. Threats to Internet
> Freedom still loom, with the intense lobbying of the entertainment
> industries to push the ACTA treaty, which endangers Net neutrality and
> seeks to impose the liability of the technical intermediaries."
> concludes Jérémie Zimmemrmann, co-founder of the citizen advocacy
> group La Quadrature du Net.
> 
> 
> * Références *
> 
> 1.
> http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecoms_Package_Amendment138_compromise_20091105
> 2. See the text:
> http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecoms_Package_Amendment138_compromise_20091105
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ** About la Quadrature du Net **
> 
> La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) is citizen group informing about
> legislative projects menacing civil liberties as well as economic and
> social development in the digital age.
> 
> La Quadrature du Net informs citizens, public authorities,
> organizations, corporations.
> 
> It works with everyone to elaborate balanced alternative solutions.
> 
> La Quadrature du Net is supported by French, european and international
> NGOs including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Open Society
> Institute and Privacy International.
> 
> List of supporting organisations :
> http://www.laquadrature.net/en/they-support-squaring-net-la-quadrature-du-net
> 
> 
> 
> ** Press contact and press room **
> 
> Jérémie Zimmermann, jz at laquadrature.net, +33 (0)615 940 675
> 
> http://www.laquadrature.net/en/press-room
> 
> 
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