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Deutsch: Europa-Parlament muss SWIFT ablehnen
After the Civil Liberties committee in the European Parliament (EP) rejected on 5 February 2010 the interim nine-month SWIFT deal between the EU and US, now it will be up to the plenary of the EP to confirm the decision on 11 February 2010.
The interim controversial deal which provisionally came in force on 1 February was negotiated to order to provide US with a legal background, following new architechture of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) which does not longer mirror EU transactions in the United States since 1 January. However, the deal needs EP's approval to become legally binding. Under the new Lisbon Treaty, which came into force in December, EP obtained extended legislative powers and has to approve any new European law.
The main argument of the EP Civil Liberties committee to scrap the deal is the lack of proper data privacy safeguards. The opponents of the agreement also emphasized that by rejecting the interim deal now would give the EU the upper hand for the final agreement, as only 60-70% of the Parliament's recommendations on data protection have been considered in the present text.
However, the US officials are pressing EU for a final agreement on bank data access. On 6 February, during the Munich security conference, US national security advisor James Jones restated the need for EP to allow American investigators to access EU banking data in order to trace terrorism funding.
US foreign policy chief Hillary Clinton had phone conversations with EP President Jerzy Buzek, and Catherine Ashton, her EU counterpart and, together with US treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, wrote a letter to Buzek in which they expressed the hope that the EP vote would be positive for the agreement.
EDRi has also explained in an FAQ on SWIFT sent to some MEPs that the current interim framework does not meet EU data protection and privacy standards and that "in effect, the agreement would violate established EU and national law in this field, including the European Convention on Human Rights and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights."
EDRi is also pointing on the fact that a lot of data will in fact be shared with the US because of the technical set-up of SWIFT. Thus the company can not limit data searches to specific individuals. "In effect, it will have to (and has in the past) transfer data about all transactions from a certain country on a certain date. There have been reports that the U.S. Treasury has received up to 25% of all SWIFT transactions. This is beyond any proportionality and also puts the EU at risk of wide-scale economic espionage."
The debate on this topic will take place today, 10 February 2010 at 15 00 CET and can be followed live on the European Parliament website. The vote will follow on 11 February 2010 at 12 00 CET.
EDRi makes a public call to all EU citizens interested in privacy issues to call their MEPs before Thursday, 11 February 2010 to tell them to vote against the SWIFT treaty.
EDRi public letter to MEPs - FAQ - Why should the "SWIFT" Interim Agreement
be rejected by the Parliament? (9.02.2010)
http://www.edri.org/files/SWIFT-FAQ-2010-02-09.pdf
In German
http://www.edri.org/files/SWIFT-FAQ_2010-02-10-DE.pdf
In Italian
http://www.edri.org/files/SWIFT-FAQ_2010-02-10-IT.pdf
In French
http://www.edri.org/files/SWIFT-FAQ_2010-02-10-FR.pdf
In Finnish
http://www.effi.org/uutiset/100209-swift-faq-sopimus.html
Live Coverage of the SWIFT debates in the European Parliament - 10.02.2010
starting with 15:00 CET
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/wps-europarl-internet/frd/live/live-vide...
US links EU security partnership to bank data deal (8.02.2010)
http://euobserver.com/9/29427/?rk=1
Clinton calls parliament chief over bank data deal (4.02.2010)
http://euobserver.com/?aid=29411
Euro MPs shun bank data deal with US (5.02.2010)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8500132.stm
EU lawmakers slam bank data deal with US (1.02.2010)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5200854,00.html
EDRi-gram: Bank data deal under heavy fire from EU Parliamentarians
(27.01.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.2/swift-deal-european-parliament
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Deutsch: Gewinner des Europäischen Datenschutzpreises 2010: FakeFriends.me
And the winner is... PER.SONN.ES (in French) / FAKEFRIENDS.ME (in English)
AEDH (European Association for the Defense of Human rights) and EDRi (European Digital Rights) are pleased to announce that the winner of the first edition of the European Civil Society Data Protection Award (ECSDPA) is PER.SONN.ES / FAKEFRIENDS.ME.
Launched in July 2009, Per.sonn.es / Fakefriends.me, is an art project developed by Philippe Rivière, a French webmaster and journalist, aiming at creating the first fake social network on the internet.
"As an art project, Per.sonn.es/Fakefriends.me offers no specific informational section, and bears no other purpose than leading the average user of search engine to experience some discomfort about the too common practice of casually spying on any- and everyone. One can imagine what happens in the mind of search engine users suddenly confronted to fake information matching their request", says Philippe Rivière.
The ECSDPA 2010 jury is rewarding Per.sonn.es / Fakefriends.me as an original and positive initiative contributing to the visibility and effectiveness of the right to privacy by raising awareness and helping to build conscious critical thinking.
The ECSDPA winner will benefit from a one week lobbying training in Brussels, travel expenses and lodging being fully covered. The ECSDPA initiative, the first of its kind, has been made possible thanks to the support of The Law Science Technology & Society Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (LSTS/VUB) and The Flemish-Dutch House deBuren.
AEDH, EDRi, LSTS/VUB and deBuren congratulate the winner Philippe Rivière and thank the 2010 Jury members: Pierre Barge (AEDH), Emilie Barrau (BEUC), Aleksejs Dimitrovs (AEDH), Serge Gutwirth (LSTS/VUB), Paul de Hert (LSTS/VUB), Andreas Krisch (EDRI), Meryem Marzouki (EDRI), Yves Poullet (CRID), Daniel Retureau (EESC).
European Civil Society Data Protection Award
http://www.ecsdpa.org
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Deutsch: ACTA: Umstrittenes Urheberrechts-Abkommen im Nebel
The secrecy on the closed international agreement on Intellectual Property issues - ACTA - is making everyone suspicious on the content of the new treaty, which could contain dangerous legislation for digital civil rights.
After the end of talks on ACTA in Mexico, there was little information on the actual topics discussed and issues to be adopted. Some countries just qualified the discussions as "productive", while others such as New Zealand and Sweden left more information out, such as the fact that the talks included debates on anti-circumvention legislation or that the Europeans are pushing for an extension to patents of ACTA, besides copyright and trademark that are already covered.
In the meantime, the number of concerned voices within the European Parliament continues to grow. MEP Alex Voss (DE, PPE) from Germany asked on the ACTA impact on Amendment 138 as it was adopted in the Telecom package, a topic reiterated by MEP Christian Engstrom (SWE, Greens).
Other MEPs are also using their websites in order to express their concerns on the new international treaty. The French MEP Francoise Castex is asking why the European Commission does not share the text of the ACTA with the European Parliament and what would be the role of ISPs in the new treaty. And the Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala is raising a similar point, explaining that after the new Lisbon treaty the European Parliament needs to be informed in all stages about all the international treaty that the European Union is negotiating.
The European Commission (EC) is trying to minimize the concerns. In a declaration to EurActiv, an EC official, that declined to be named due to a non-disclosure agreement, considered "media reports were oversimplifying the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)".
In an answer to one of the MEPs question, EC also declined any infringement of human rights through the present treaty: "The Commission can inform the Honourable Member that the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) will be in line with the body of EU legislation, which fully respects fundamental rights and freedoms and civil liberties, such as the protection of personal data. This includes the Intellectual Property Rights' relevant aspects of the Telecoms package.
ACTA should not contain measures restricting end-users' access to the internet that would not be appropriate, proportionate and necessary within a democratic society and without a prior, fair and impartial procedure."
According to official information, the next meeting would be hosted by New Zealand in April 2010 and the treaty could be concluded by the end of 2010, but leaked information from Australia lead to the impression that the negotiations could be continued also in 2011.
Michael Geist on ACTA
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_tags&task=view&...
Answer given by Mrs Ferrero-Waldner on behalf of the Commission (4.2.2010)
http://bit.ly/bylROI
What Really Happened At the ACTA Talks in Mexico? (2.02.2010)
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4755/125/
Pressure mounts on EU to come clean on ACTA (5.02.2010)
http://www.iptegrity.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&am...
Brussels denies rumours of secret anti-piracy treaty (4.02.2010)
http://www.euractiv.com/en/infosociety/brussels-denies-rumours-secret-...
ACTA negotiations surrounded by secrecy (only in Finnish, 15.01.2010)
http://www.vihreat.fi/node/4770
ACTA : Françoise Castex asks the Commission (only in French, 5.02.2010)
http://www.francoisecastex.org/2010/02/acta-francoise-castex-demande-d...
EDRi-gram: New round of negotiations on ACTA: EU position (27.01.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.2/acta-new-round-eu-position
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Deutsch: UK führt Ganzkörperscanner am Flughafen Heathrow ein
As announced in January 2010, UK has begun developing a programme of introducing full-body scanners in airports, starting with Terminal 4 of Heathrow airport and Manchester airport.
BAA, the biggest UK airport operator, said its staff had been trained in behavioural profiling to spot out unusual attitudes in the passengers such as nervousness or agitation as going through the terminal. The passengers could also be flagged up to security staff by the information on their boarding cards stated BAA which took this opportunity to emphasize that sensitive intelligence data were necessary in airports in order to support such security measures.
Thus, certain passengers would be subject to further checks, including full-body scanning or further questioning. Heathrow's Terminal 4 has been chosen because it is used by a number of transatlantic airlines.
UK government intends to create a no-fly list similar to that in the US including terror suspects that would be prohibited from entering the UK as well as a list with airline passengers who should be subjected to further security screening before boarding UK-bound flights.
The airport group is using two different technologies, one that employs "back-scatter" technology exposing travellers to low-level x-rays already in use at Manchester airport and a second one that bounces radio waves off the human body to form a 3D image.
Although both types of technology raise serious privacy concerns, BAA assures that there is software obscuring certain elements of the images and that the images obtained by the scanners are immediately deleted and cannot be transferred, saved or printed.
Lord Adonis, UK Transport Secretary, said a code of practice would prevent selecting people on the basis of race, gender or age. Also the passengers would be given the right to be inspected by a person of the same sex, the inspector seeing the screened images will not see the passengers and the images would be destroyed right after the screening.
During a meeting on 27 January on the matter, MEPs in two committees, Civil Liberties and Transport, discussed different aspects on the issue.
British Member Brian Simpson, chair of the transport committee said: "we want to make travel as safe as humanly possible but people who believe that body scanners are the answer, live in cloud cuckoo land".
Many doubts were expressed related to privacy issues, the efficiency of the technology as well as the costs and changes involved. Concerns were expressed on whether materials with a low density, such as powder, liquid or thin plastic could be revealed by the millimetre waves.
A German TV program demonstrated that full body scanners may be able to reveal a personal cell phone, a knife and intimate details such as breast implants, but may fail to detect objects that can be used to build a bomb.
The issue is being discussed by MEPs with the European Council and Commission during the European Parliament Strasbourg plenary session and the European Commission is presently working on proposed EU-wide legislation and will issue an impact evaluation report in the next weeks.
MEPs voice doubts on body scanners (28.01.2010)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/public/story_page/031-67880-025-01-...
Full-body scanners already in use at Heathrow airport, says BAA (2.02.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/feb/02/full-body-scanners-heathrow-b...
Passengers who refuse scanner face flying ban (1.02.2010)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7129835/Passengers-who-re...
Full Body Scanner FAILS To Detect Bomb Parts During Demonstration
(24.01.2010)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/23/full-body-scanner-fails-t_n_4...
EDRi-gram: EU considers full body screening in airports (13.01.2010)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.1/airport-body-scanners-europe
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Deutsch: Bits of Freedom startet Kampagne für Benachrichtigungspflicht bei Dat...
The Dutch digital rights organisation Bits of Freedom started a campaign for the introduction of a data breach notification law in The Netherlands.
A data breach notification obligation on telecom providers is already to be implemented on the basis of the ePrivacy Directive, but Bits of Freedom insisted that this obligation should be extended also to other corporations and organisations. It drafted an extensive position paper, including a concrete proposal for amending the Dutch Data Protection Act. Simultaneously, it announced the launch of a "black paper" keeping track of all data breaches in The Netherlands.
The Dutch Minister of Justice announced on 3 February 2010 during a review of the Dutch Data Protection Act, that a proposal for a data breach notification will be introduced in Parliament this year.
Position paper Bits of Freedom (only in Dutch, 01.2010)
https://www.bof.nl/live/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/datalekken-def.pdf
Black paper on data breaches (only in Dutch)
https://www.bof.nl/ons-werk/prive-gegevens/zwartboekdatalekken/
(contribution by Ot van Daalen - EDRi-member Bits of Freedom - Netherlands)
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Deutsch: Belgien: Neues zur Umsetzung der Vorratsdatenspeicherung
The transposition of the Data Retention Directive in Belgium has remained stagnant for a long time. Following a public consultation in May 2008 on a first draft law proposal and draft royal decree to transpose this Directive into Belgian law, a broad group of organisations voiced a strong position against the Data Retention Directive and the way in which the Belgian government wanted to transpose this into the national law.
Not only did the government choose for a maximal transposition (e.g. a retention period of 24 months), but the Belgian government also chose to extend the data retention scheme provided by the European Directive (e.g. demanding more data to be retained, such as banking data, and allowing access and use of these data beyond 'serious' crime). Even the Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA) delivered at that time, and for the first time ever, a completely negative advice on the draft law proposal and royal decree.
Together with the public campaign on the website bewaarjeprivacy.be, all the above had an impact on some political parties taking part in the federal government, especially the French speaking ones, which made it hard - given the more general mistrust in the Belgian federal government between Dutch speaking and French speaking parties - to find a political agreement on the matter and for the responsible cabinets to proceed without adjustments.
Behind the scenes, the responsible cabinets continued negotiating with representatives from telecom operators, internet service providers and law enforcement agencies. In close cooperation with law enforcement agencies, especially the Federal Computer Crime Unit, the responsible cabinets also presented a rather extensive document to the Belgian DPA in response to their prior negative advice to justify a maximal transposition. The document made some minor changes based on some of the remarks made following the public consultation in May 2008, but did not address the more fundamental issues. In general, the draft law proposal and royal decree remained the same and the justification for this set out in the annex was insufficient because of the arbitrary and incomplete nature of the evidence presented.
Nevertheless, the Belgian DPA changed its advice from negative on the whole to positive provided that some changes were made (e.g. a retention period of 12 months; a restriction of the data retention obligation to providers of "publicly" available electronic communications services or of a "public" communications network; a clear definition of "exceptional circumstances" under which the maximum retention period can be extended).
The responsible cabinets adapted the draft law proposal and royal decree according to most of the remarks made by the Belgian DPA and recently pressured the united commissions of Justice in the Chamber and Senate into holding a debate on data retention.
First the Minister of Justice himself came to the Parliament on 20 January 2010 to convince the Parliament of the urgent need for a Belgian data retention scheme and to cautiously check whether a political majority could be found in Parliament to agree on a data retention law before June 2010. Hardly two weeks later, on 2 February 2010, a hearing was organized with representatives of many stakeholders, but it was clear that everything had to take place within a tight period of time, leaving hardly any room for a sincere debate.
The reason behind this strategy is the upcoming Belgian presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2010 and the eagerness of the government to prove their ability to lead the evaluation of the Data Retention Directive at the European level. The Minister of Justice indicated that the Data Retention Directive had provoked a lot of consternation throughout European Member States, but didn't draw any conclusions for a national approach on the transposition of this Directive. On the contrary, the minister argues for a swift transposition with an final deadline in June 2010. The reason for this deadline is clear, since the Belgian government will take over the presidency of the European Union as of 1 July 2010 and it wants to prevent looking silly for not having transposed the Directive yet while having to lead its evaluation at the European level.
Belgium rightly considers the Data Retention Directive and its evaluation as a very important dossier since there are many opposing views throughout the European Union with some wanting it annulled or at least restricted and others, among which the Belgian government, wanting it to be extended (e.g. concerning the list of data to be retained and the retention period). Nevertheless, it is a weak argument to ignore human rights especially since the absolute necessity of data retention has never been proven, nor at the European level nor at the Belgian level.
At the moment, it is unclear how and when the responsible cabinets will proceed with their plans for a Belgian data retention scheme. No formal decisions were taken at the recent hearing but given the urgency with which the Minister of Justice is treating this dossier, one can only expect to find a formal law proposal to be introduced in Chamber or Senate very soon. However, some of the representatives of the Chamber and Senate that attended the hearing (and of whom some are important representatives of the same political parties that make up the government) were very critical of data retention in general and the presented draft law proposal and royal decree in particular. One of their demands was to wait for the final verdict of the German Constitutional Court before starting legislative work on transposing the Data Retention Directive.
Campaign against the Data retention in Belgium
http://www.bewaarjeprivacy.be
Consultations on Data retention (17.05.2008 and 18.06.2008)
(only in Dutch)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/27-05-08_...
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/18-06-08_...
(only in French)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/2008.05.2...
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/20080715-...
Draft Law on Data retention (in Dutch and French, 27.08.2009)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/20090827_MvT_...
Belgium Data Protection Authority Opinions (2008)
(only in Dutch)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/Advies_nr...
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/20080903_...
(only in French)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/avis_24_2...
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/www.bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/avis_29_2...
Note of the Minister of Justice (20.01.2010, only in Dutch)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/201001_Debatn...
(only in French)
http://bewaarjeprivacy.be/sites/bewaarjeprivacy.be/files/201001_Note_d...
(Contribution by Maartje De Schutter - Liga voor Mensenrechten, Belgium)
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Deutsch: Italien: The Pirate Bay wieder zensuriert
Following the reversal by the Italian Court of Cassation of the appeal won on 24 September 2008 against the decision of the Italian court of August 2008 that ordered the seizure of The Pirate Bay (TPB) in Italy, TPB was once again censored in Italy.
The Italian Supreme Court has revised the case and has found that Italian ISPs can be obliged to censor their networks and block BitTorrent search sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. The Supreme Court decided that sites offering torrent files linking to copyrighted material are considered as engaged in criminal activity.
At the beginning of February 2010, the case was again reviewed by the Court of Bergamo which decided that all Italian ISPs will have to deny access to The Pirate Bay to their customers.
Pirate Bay lawyers are considering appealing to the Supreme Court as well as bringing the case before the European Court of Justice.
In the meantime, in UK in a similar case, Alan Ellis, the first person to be prosecuted for online music sharing was acquitted by the court. Ellis was accused of making hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Oink website that he operated. The site which was shut down in 2007 had more than 200 000 members and, just like The Pirate Bay, did not illegally host copyrighted material but only enabled its members to find other people that would share files.
The accusations stated that Ellis was making money from users who had to pay a donation in order to be able to ask friends to join, as the membership was based on invitation. However, some users contested this stating that while it was possible to make donations to Oink, invitation rights were granted not for donations but for material contributions to the site. "All I do is really like Google, to really provide a connection between people. None of the music is on my website," said Ellis.
Following the court's decision, on 16 January 2010, 17 representatives from the music, film and television industries as well as sports and union representatives published an open letter supporting Business Secretary Lord Mandelson's controversial plans to give the government extended powers to change copyright law in view of fighting piracy online.
Mandelson's proposals which were included as a clause in the Digital Economy bill presently in progress in the House of Lords have been strongly opposed by privacy campaigners and at the beginning of January, the government submitted a list of amendments to the Digital Economy bill which diluted the respective clause so that the law will be amended in future only if there is a "significant" new threat of infringement. The clause was not entirely scrapped however.
The Pirate Bay To Be Censored in Italy, Again (7.02.2010)
http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-to-be-censored-in-italy-again-1...
Comment on Cassation Court sentence, III session 23.12.2009, no. 49437 (only
in Italian, 21.01.2010)
http://www.diritto.it/docs/28814
Jury clears British 'Pirate Bay' operator of fraud charge (15.01.2010)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/15/file-sharing-oink-web...
PirateBay will be censored (only in Italian, 8.02.2010)
http://blog.tntvillage.scambioetico.org/?p=5292
EDRi-gram: The Pirate Bay may be banned in Italy (7.10.2009)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number7.19/italy-the-pirate-bay-decision
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Deutsch: Frankreich/Dänemark: Sperren für Glücksspielseiten
An amendment to the draft law on the opening of the market of online gambling was introduced to the French Senate Commission for culture and communication, in order to give the administration the power to apply filters to gambling sites without a court order.
While initially, during the examination of the draft law in the National Assembly, the decision was that filtering non-homologated sites would be subject to a court order, the amendment wants to give ARJEL (the authority regulating online games), as it was intended initially, the power to order the blocking measures.
Hopefully, even if adopted by the Senate, the amendment might be rejected by the French Constitutional Court, that had a similar ruling in the HADOPI law.
In Denmark also, an agreement supported by the Parliament suggests blocking foreign gambling sites, while bringing a partial liberalization of the gambling market.
According to the Liberal Alliance, this agreement would infringe the freedom of speech and place Denmark at the same level as China from this point of view.
"Usually it's in China and Iran that is blocking people's access to the Internet.I wonder whether we have taken the fundamental discussion of whether these are the methods we want in Denmark" commented professor of European law Søren Friis Hansen.
Filtering online games: senator Dupont wants to risk censorship... of the
law (only in French, 4.02.2010)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/15010-filtrage-des-jeux-en-ligne-le-s...
Chinese conditions in Danish Internet? (only in Danish, 4.02.2010)
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Politik/2010/02/04/140247.htm
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Deutsch: Niederlande: Big Brother Awards 2009
The winners of the Big Brother Awards Netherlands 2009 were announced on 5 February 2010 in Amsterdam.
In the category "Government", the prize was awarded to the creation of a fingerprint database of all Dutch citizens, to be accessed by the police. This database also received a "popular" prize which could be voted on via the internet. In the category "Persons", the prize was awarded to the Dutch Minister of Interior Affairs Guusje ter Horst, for her dangerous statements regarding privacy in relation to security.
In the category "Corporations", the prize was awarded to T-Mobile and Vodafone for sending SMS messages to secret services without a warrant. In the category "Proposals", the prize was awarded to the plans to introduce a mobile body scanner, to be used by the police.
The positive prize, the Winston, went to Dutch MEP Sophie in't Veld (D66), for her continuous efforts to defend privacy and freedom.
The entire event, which was organized by the Dutch digital rights organisation Bits of Freedom, can be reviewed on bigbrotherawards.nl
Big Brother Awards Netherlands (only in Dutch)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.nl
(contribution by Ot van Daalen - EDRi-member Bits of Freedom - Netherlands)
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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Europarat belebt untotes WIPO Abkommen wieder
On January 28 and 29, the Council of Europe held a consultation meeting on the launch of work on a new international instrument that would create neighbouring rights for broadcasting organisations. The purpose of this initiative is to take up the work of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) which, following twelve years of negotiation has been unable to reach any agreement on the objectives and scope of a proposed treaty for the protection of broadcasters and cablecasters. The draft WIPO treaty has been proposed as the basis for negotiations at the Council of Europe.
Negotiations at WIPO have stalled over two issues concerning the scope of the proposed treaty. First, the majority of WIPO's Member States want any treaty to be limited to protecting broadcasters' signals, rather than creating 50 year intellectual property rights to the content carried by those signals, which in most cases, is already protected by copyright. Second, many countries oppose the extension of the treaty to the Internet because that would restrict freedom of expression and the free flow of information on the Internet. Despite this, broadcasters have continued to press for treaty based on IP rights, and want exclusive rights over Internet retransmissions of recorded broadcast and cablecast programming. The current draft WIPO treaty also includes a number of other elements that raise concerns for consumers' existing rights under national copyright laws, competition policy, and innovation, including obligations for legal entrenchment of broadcasters' and cablecasters' technological protection measures and an overbroad ban on decryption devices that would extend to personal computers.
The recent discussions at the Council of Europe were similarly broad. In addition to what is being sought at WIPO, broadcasters also appear to be seeking protection for "catch-up" services and video on demand services.
The basic logic presented by broadcasters is:
- they need protection for their broadcast signals
- therefore they also need protection for intra- and inter-broadcaster
signals before they are broadcast
- to be thorough, they need protection for all pre-broadcast signals, even
if they are not broadcast
- to be future-proof, they need protection that is technologically neutral
- if there is protection for non-broadcast pre-broadcast signals, this
protection should extend to programming when it is made available as an
"add-on" service for online news services;
- as there would be protection for those short-term on-demand signals,
online "catch-up" services should also be protected;
- since catch-up services are to be protected, all on-demand services
should be protected; and
- broadcasters' on-demand services are different from other on demand
services (for reasons not yet articulated), so this protection should be
granted exclusively to broadcasters and cablecasters.
Although negotiations have been under way at WIPO for eleven years, WIPO has undertaken very little empirical analysis of the problems being experienced by broadcasters and cablecasters that might justify the need for a new IP rights based treaty. WIPO commissioned a study last year on the economic and social aspects of neighbouring rights protection for broadcasters, which is expected before the next WIPO Copyright Committee meeting in June.
The Council of Europe has also not yet undertaken any independent research on the nature of the problem which the new instrument purports to solve, nor any analysis of existing legal protections for transmission of digital data over computer networks that may provide some or all of the protection that broadcasters claim to need. The lack of empirical evidence justifying the creation of the new instrument, together with the absence of many stakeholders who would be affected by the proposed instrument (artists, sports organisations, equipment manufacturers, telecommunications operators, Internet access providers, etc) are likely to be barriers to the agreement, as they have been at WIPO.
If WIPO is unable to successfully conclude its treaty negotiations and the EU Council of Ministers provides the Commission with a negotiating mandate, the Council of Europe is likely to establish an ad hoc drafting group in June. Once an initial draft is prepared, it is likely that a consultation will then take place.
However, a core problem remains. The existing IPR regime has so many problems in Europe that countries like France, the United Kingdom and Poland are proposing legislation which puts fundamental freedoms protected by the European Convention on Human Rights under severe threat. Given this, it would seem imprudent for the Council of Europe to begin work on the preparation of another IPR instrument in the complete absence of evidence demonstrating that this is needed.
2004 NGO Declaration on WIPO negotiations
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/broadcasting_treaty/20040608_Draft_J...
EFF Position Paper on WIPO negotiations
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/broadcasting_treaty/EFF_position_pap...
EDRI-gram: The broadcast treaty stalled by WIPO General Assembly
(11.10.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.19/broadcast
EDRi-gram: The broadcasting treaty resuscitated by the Council of Europe
(19.12.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.24/coe-broadcasting-treaty
(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)
This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Mitmachen!
The Commission has launched a public consultation on a future EU-US data protection and information sharing agreement. The consultation aims at gathering the views of stakeholders and the public at large on the basis of a discussion paper as part of the preparatory work for the recommendation to authorise the negotiation of a future EU-US agreement.
Deadline: 12.03.2010
Consultation available at:
http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/consultations/index_en.htm
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Deutsch: Lesestoff
Online as soon as it happens (8.02.2010)
This ENISA report describes the social networking world and the mobile phone
services allowing the users to experience the social networking sites (SNSs)
on their handset, also illustrating the major risks and threats connected to
their use. While many of the privacy issues originating from the web-based
access to SNSs also apply to mobile social networks, there are also a number
of unique risks and threats against mobile social networks. The report aims
to provide a set of recommendations for raising the awareness of social
networks users and in particular of social mobile users of the risks and the
possible consequences related to their improper use.
http://www.enisa.europa.eu/act/ar/deliverables/2010/onlineasithappens
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Deutsch: Agenda
11 February 2010, Bern, Switzerland
Richard Stallman speaking in Bern and protesting against Berne Convention
http://www.digitale-nachhaltigkeit.ch/2010/02/richard-stallman-en/
5 March 2010, Brussels, Belgium
Colloquium 2010: What's left of your privacy in 2010.
Protecting privacy against government and employer
http://www.progresslaw.net/index.php?&lns=2
14-16 April 2010, Berlin, Germany
re:publica'10 - Conference about blogs, social media and the digital society
http://www.re-publica.de/10
24 April 2010, London, United Kingdom
Open Knowledge Conference (OKCon) 2010
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
29-30 April 2010
EuroDIG 2010
http://www.eurodig.org/
6-7 May 2010, Krems, Austria
4th International Conference on eDemocracy 2010
Submission of papers: 1 March 2010
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/en/department/gpa/telematik/veranstaltungen...
26-28 May 2010, Amsterdam, Netherlands
World Congress on Information Technology
http://www.wcit2010.com
9-11 July 2010, Gdansk, Poland
Wikimedia 2010 - the 6th annual Wikimedia Conference
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2010
25-27 June 2010, Cluj, Romania
Networking Democracy?
New Media Innovations in Participatory Politics
http://www.brisc.info/NetDem/
13-17 September 2010, Crete, Greece
Privacy and Security in the Future Internet
3rd Network and Information Security (NIS'10) Summer School
http://www.nis-summer-school.eu