Poland did it again. For the second time they blocked the attempt to silently adopt EU Council's agreement on software patents, this time in the Fisheries Council of 24 January 2005. The government of Poland had already requested the item to be deleted from the agenda of the Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 21 December 2004.
On the Friday preceding the Fishery minister's meeting the Polish European Committee of the Council of Ministers, presumedly acting on the initiative of the country's Ministry for Science and Technology, requested not to include the Directive on the Patentability of computer-implemented inventions on the agenda of that Council meeting, because "the work on the final position of Poland on the issue has not yet been completed". A statement published on the Polish Office of the Committee for European Integration, as translated by the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, goes on to announce that "if the Luxembourg Presidency includes the draft of the aforementioned Directive in the agenda, Poland will request its withdrawal and postponement until the end of the necessary analyses being conducted by Poland". These analyses concern the possibly disastrous impact of the patentability of software on Poland's emerging computer industries.
The Council's difficulties in finding an agreement on the Patents Directive give new impetus to an initiative by 61 MEPs to re-start the European Parliament's legislative process on the Directive. The initiative, based on Rule 55 of the Rules of Procedure of the Parliament, also has the support of most of the MEPS who have been fighting software patents for the last three years. They argue that the Council has not sufficiently taken the Parliament's position into account, which amounts in essence to a new draft. The election of a new Parliament in the meantime would alone be sufficient to justify a new first reading, if the Parliament's Conference of Presidents considers it desirable. A new first reading would give the Parliament more rights. They can table amendments covering a wider area of topics. The four-month time limitation in second reading would not apply and votes of Parliament members who are not present would not be counted as being pro-Council, as is the case in second reading. Last but not least, MEPs from the new Member States would get a chance to cast their vote without the limitations implied by the rules on second reading.
FFII: Patents taken off Fishery Agenda at Poland's Request Once More
http://kwiki.ffii.org/Fish050124En
Out-law.com: Poland stalls Patent Directive again
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=polandstallspatent11066544...
FFII: Lobbying Guide for a re-newed referral to the European Parliament
http://kwiki.ffii.org/RestartGuide0501En
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, EDRI EU Affairs Director)
The European Parliament's rapporteur on the retention of traffic data resulting from all kinds of electronic communications, Alexander Alvaro (Liberal, Germany) has asked the Parliament's legal service to look into the legal foundation for this report. His doubts are founded on the fact that the report contains obligations addressed to civil parties, which is a strong indication that it ought to be in co-decision. As Mr. Alvaro told EDRI-gram, he proposes to split the draft into two separate reports. The first part would contain the law-enforcement side of data retention and remain in the consultation procedure. The other part, dealing with the industry's obligations, would have to be in the co-decision procedure. Mr. Alvaro also considers going to the European Court of Justice to get a ruling on this.
One of the problems the Parliament is facing is that it is confronted with permanently changing positions on the side of the Council. The parliament is given a strict deadline for their non-binding advice, while the Council itself hasn't decided yet on the nature of the data to be stored or even on the duration of the storage.
Mr. Alvaro will present his working document, which is quite critical of the Council's proposal, on 31 January 2005. A first draft of his report will be presented to the EP Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) mid-March 2005. The vote in Plenary should then take place in May - unless Alvaro's proposal to split the draft is accepted. In that case the agenda would inevitably be delayed.
Latest public extended version of the draft framework decision (20.12.2004)
http://register.consilium.eu.int/pdf/en/04/st08/st08958-ex01.en04.pdf
Check for updates in the Council register
http://tinyurl.com/3ks8a
European Parliament Legislative observatory procedure view
http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/oeil/oeil_ViewDNL.ProcedureView?lang=2&am...
(Contribution by Andreas Dietl, EDRI EU Affairs Director)
The German national library (Deutsche Bibliothek) has negiotated a license with rightholders to legally circumvent copy protection mechanisms on CD-roms, videos, software and E-books. It seems this is the first library in Europe to have managed a voluntary agreement on the strict new anti-circumvention rules prescribed by the EU copyright directive of 2001 (2001/29/EC). Article 6 of the EUCD prohibits acts of circumvention, as well as the distribution of tools and technologies used for circumvention of access control or copy protection measures. Member States could choose between penal or civil sanctions for infringement. Germany has chosen penal sanctions, with large fines or a 3 year prison sentence for circumvention for a commercial purpose.
Article 6.4 of the EUCD calls on governments to take appropriate measures should voluntary agreements between rightsholders and 'beneficiaries of exceptions or limitations' fail. One of these permitted exceptions, that can be introduced by Member States, is Article 5.2c: "in respect of specific acts of reproduction made by publicly accessible libraries, educational establishments or museums, or by archives, which are not for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage."
The German transposition of the EUCD, entered into force in September 2003, did not explicitly acknowledge this limitation, but allows users to circumvent technical measures for private, non-commercial archiving purposes. This exception indirectly also applies to libraries and archives, but depends on permission from the rightsholders. In the explanatory memorandum of the second 'basket' of copyright legislation, proposed in September 2004, the legislator only introduces a specific exception for libraries to make works available online, at the library, but declines any further clarification on the archiving issue.
The German Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the German Booksellers and Publishers Association have agreed to allow the library to fulfil its legal obligation to collect and make available material for long-term archiving purposes. The agreement also allows the library to break digital locks on books and music for scientific purposes of users, for collections for school or educational purposes, for instruction and research as well as on works that are out of print. These duplications are subjected to a fee and possibly a digital watermark. Rightholders may either supply a lock-free copy of a work, but if not, the library may circumvent the protection.
Joint press release library and rightsholders (English, January 2005)
http://www.sub.uni-goettingen.de/frankfurtgroup/drms/drms.html
German Library Allowed To Crack Copy Protection
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/19/0021255
EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC (22.05.2001)
http://europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Seek-Deliver&S...
German copyright legislation (first basket, 10.09.2003)
http://bundesrecht.juris.de/bundesrecht/urhg/index.html
Think twice before buying a ticket to the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. You can only apply for tickets online, and in order to obtain a ticket you will have to answer a questionnaire demanding a lot of personal data. This profile will be linked to a mini spy chip (RFID) on the ticket. Rena Tangens from the German privacy-organisation FoeBuD is calling on all fans to boycott the World Championship because "the World Cup is being abused by sponsors and the surveillance industry to introduce snooping-technology and to spy on the fans."
Tickets will be sold from 1 February onwards. The questionnaire demands date of birth, passport number, telephone and fax number, e-mail, bank or credit-card data, as well as team and club preferences. Fans are not only to hand over their own data but also those of others in whose name they want to order tickets. These data will not just be used for the application but shared with the sponsors and other countries which are participating in the World Cup. And this procedure is not limited to the lucky few who will actually gain entrance to the stadiums but applies to everyone who tries to apply for one of the tickets.
FoeBuD is upset about the RFID-tag on the ticket, because the personal data can be secretly read by hidden readers, and will reveal all the movements of visitors. RFID-readers at the stadium cannot just be placed at the entrance, but also at the gates to the individual blocks, at the fan-merchandising shop and at the toilets. The spy chips are presented as a miracle cure against terrorists, hooligans and black marketers. But FoeBuD wonders how the chips could ever prevent brawls, scuffles, assaults or outbursts of fury.
The soccer fan initiative BAFF ('Buendnis aktiver Fussball Fans') is also taking action against this new dimension of surveillance. The DFB (German Soccer Association) meanwhile has made some changes to the questionaire, but remains very vague in their statements. The German Federal privacy commissioner Peter Schaar has expressed concern about the use of the personal ID number and has asked the Minister of the Interior for comment.
FoeBuD press release (in German, 21.01.2005)
http://www.foebud.org/rfid/pe-wm2006-21-01-2005
FoeBuD press release (in English, 26.01.2005)
http://www.foebud.org/rfid/pe-wm2006-21-01-2005/en
Press release of Active Soccer Fans
http://www.aktive-fans.de/01a9d793eb0025619/502764947d0ebab0a/50146095...
More information on RFID applications
http://www.stoprfid.de
There is a renewed rumour that the European Central Bank is going to add spy chips (RFIDs) to Euro banknotes. 'Czerwensky intern', a German newsletter providing bank and insurance background reports, says the ECB might have already signed contracts with Hitachi, and is ready to introduce the spy-notes this year. Allegedly, the contract requires such a high volume of RFIDs that Hitachi can't deliver all chips itself, but has to rely on subcontractors.
Earlier rumours (dating back to 2001) about plans to track and trace all Euro notes with the help of RFIDs were strongly denied by the ECB. On 4 June 2003 EDRI-gram reported about a press release from Hitachi announcing negotiations about the contract to Japanese investors. The RFIDs in euro banknotes could help against counterfeiting and make it possible to detect money hidden in suitcases at airports. But the technology would also enable a mugger to check if a victim has given all of his money. If RFIDs are embedded in banknotes, governments and law enforcement agencies can literally 'follow the money' in every transaction. The anonymity that cash affords in consumer transactions would be eliminated.
According to the biannual report from the ECB on the counterfeiting of the euro, released on 13 January 2005, the amount of counterfeited euro banknotes is still very low. It has risen 8% compared to 2003, "but the recent trend has been downwards."
EZB: Die intelligente Euro-Note kommt noch in diesem Jahr (German, 25.01.2005, access restricted)
http://www.czerwensky.de/czerwensky/index.htm?u=0&p=0&k=0&...
EZB 'Intelligente' Euro-Note kommt noch 2005 (German, 25.01.2005)
http://de.biz.yahoo.com/050125/341/4e0aw.html
Hitachi mu-chip
http://www.hitachi.co.jp/Prod/mu-chip/
Biannual information on the counterfeiting of the euro (13.01.2005)
http://www.ecb.int/press/pr/date/2005/html/pr050113_1.en.html
On 22 January 2005, the jury of the French Big Brother Awards needed no less than 7 of the famous negative Big Brother Awards to name and shame projects, people, institutions and companies for destroying privacy and promoting control. The minister of Health, Mr Douste-Blazy received a special Jury Award for promoting a new law that created the 'Dossier Medical Partagé', renamed 'Dossier Medical Personnel' (from 'shared medical record' to 'personal medical record'), that puts the entire medical records of every citizen on the internet, in order to spend less money and 'optimise' French medical care.
The Lifetime Menace Award was presented to the 3 French 'homeland security' ministers Vaillant (left wing), Sarkozy & Perben (right wing), who introduced new DNA-sampling powers, not just for sexual & violent criminals, but for every kind of suspects and for minor offences.
A new Award was invented by the French organisers to honour the creative use of language to hide the real meaning, accurately described in George Orwells 1984 as newspeak. The first Novlang Award was presented to Gixel, a trade association of manufacturers of electronic interconnect systems, components and subsystems. They propose to 'educate' children under 6 (and their parents) about the usefulness of biometric products, helping the government to spread 'security values'.
Other winners include 3 MPs that wish to impose GPS empowered electronic bracelets on sexual offenders, after having served their prison sentence, for a period of 30 years, and 2 city officials in Marne, who ordered social workers to give them detailed records about every citizen they were trying to help.
During the ceremony a positive Voltaire award was presented to members of the humanitarian organisation C-Sur, who were accused of being 'criminals' for helping 'illegal' foreigners, after a new French law put this kind of humanitarian activism under a 'presumption of culpability' regime. Another positive award was given to Charles Hoareau, an unionist who refused to give his DNA sample after having been engaged in a fight with policemen during the illegal expulsion of a foreigner without papers. He told the policemen it was OK to give them his saliva, but only if he could spit on them, rather than being obliged to open his mouth to let them take the sample.
Press release French Big Brother Awards (22.01.2005)
http://www.bigbrotherawards.eu.org/2004/eng.php
List of all 30 BBA nominees (in French)
http://nomines.bigbrotherawards.eu.org/
The European Commission puts nanotechnology high on the political agenda with its Communication 'Towards a European strategy for nanotechnology'. The communication has been discussed at the political level in the European Council under the Irish and Dutch presidencies during the year 2004, and an on-line open consultation on the communication was held between August and October 2004 by Nanoforum, the EU sponsored thematic network on nanotechnology. The Nanoforum received some 750 responses to the consultation. Half of the respondents came from the research community.
The consultation concludes that nanotechnology will have a strong impact on European industry and its citizens within only ten years from now. Nanotechnology will have its strongest impact on chemistry and materials, information and communication technologies, healthcare and security/defence. The participants believe that health, safety and environmental risks should be integrated early into research and that the societal impact of nanotechnology needs to be taken into account from an early stage. An international 'code of good conduct' would be welcomed by the participants.
Nanotechnology as a collective term refers to technological developments on the nanometer scale, usually 0.1-100nm. The technology is believed to produce new materials and devices. Nano-scaled devices will bear strong resemblance to nature's nano-devices: proteins, DNA, membranes etc. One fundamental characteristic of nanotechnology is that nano-devices self-assemble. That is, they build themselves from the bottom up. Critics have warned for the so-called 'grey goo' doom-scenario in which out-of-control self-replicating nano-robots consume all life on Earth while building more of themselves.
The Commission consultation report has little to say on privacy and security related issues. Nanotechnology has the capability of dramatically improving surveillance devices and producing new weapons, thus leading to an increase in incentives for private companies to produce security nanotechnology. Research is being done on swarms of microscopic nano-robots capable of video and audio surveillance.
Critics of nanotechnology have explored how the development of nano-scale devices for surveillance, tracking and monitoring may create a society that functions as a Panopticon, an institutionalised and physical form of surveillance.
Outcome of the Open Consultation on the European Strategy for
Nanotechnology (December 2004)
http://www.nanoforum.org/index.php?action=showcomplete&modul=showp...
EPIC: Privacy Implications of Nanotechnology
http://www.epic.org/privacy/nano/
Wikipedia: Nanotechnology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology
The Little Big Down: A Small Introduction to Nano-scale Technologies (June 2004)
http://www.etcgroup.org/documents/littlebigdown.pdf
The large US provider Verizon (3 million DSL customers and 1 million dial-up customers) is systematically blocking e-mail from Europe, as well as from China and New Zealand. On 22 December 2004 Verizon has installed new central spam-filters that refuse e-mail from many large European providers. Attempts from European ISPs to have their mail-servers white-listed have only been partially successful. Internet users that don't use the mail-servers from their ISP, because they run their own mail-servers, don't stand a chance at all to communicate with Verizon customers. Verizon media relations manager Ells Edwards told Wired that he didn't know when the ISP would lift its blockade. And true to the Verizon telephony roots he added: "If it's really important you might want to make a phone call."
At least 1 Verizon customer didn't take the new policy for granted, e-zine The Register reports. He made the Philadelphia law firm Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C. file a suit. The case seeks class action status: all aggrieved Verizon customers are invited to join and claim damages.
Verizon faces lawsuit over e-mail blocking (21.01.2005)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/21/verizon_class_action/
Verizon's E-Mail Embargo Enrages (10.01.2005)
http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,66226,00.html
The US researcher Benjamin Edelman, famous for his publications about internet filtering in China and in Saudi Arabia, has turned to spyware, and the results of his research are impressive. In November 2004 he did a simple test, to find out how much junk can get installed on a user's PC visiting a single webpage. "In the course of my testing, my test PC was brought to a virtual stand-still -- with at least 16 distinct programs installed. I was not shown licenses or other installation prompts for any of these programs, and I certainly didn't consent to their installation on my PC. (...) Other symptoms of the infection included unwanted toolbars, new desktop icons (including sexually-explicit icons), replacement desktop wallpaper ("warning! you're in danger! all you do with computer is stored forever in your hard disk ... still there and could broke your life!" (s.i.c.)), extra pop-up ads, non-standard error pages upon host-not-found and page-not-found error conditions, unrequested additions to my HOSTS file, a new browser home page, and sites added to my browser's Trusted Sites zone."
Now Edelman has made comprehensive list of 4 of the best-known spyware producers in the US, and their main investors. In total, he tracked over 139 million US Dollar worth of investments by respectable firms.
Benjamin Edelman, Investors Supporting Spyware
http://www.benedelman.org/spyware/investors/
3-4 February 2005, Geneva
A2K Treaty Workshop (invitation only)
http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ip-health/2004-November/007175.ht...
3-4 February 2005, Paris, France - Unesco conference
4-5 February 2005, Oegstgeest, Netherlands - Unesco conference
Two conferences about online freedom of speech, access to information and
privacy. Open to invited participants only.
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=17907&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC...
14-16 February 2005, Geneva, Switzerland
WSIS Working Group on Internet Governance meeting
http://www.wgig.org
http://www.worldsummit2005.org
17-25 February 2005, Geneva, Switzerland - WSIS PrepCom 2
http://www.wsis.org
http://www.worldsummit2005.org
17-18 March 2005, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
First European Creative Commons meeting
http://www.creativecapital.nl
31 March 2005, deadline call for papers on DRM
Special session on Digital Rights Management during the 31st Euromicro
conference on Software Engineering and Advanced Applications (SEAA) 2005
in Porto, Portugal. This special session is open to discuss technical,
legal and business issues with DRM and the social aspects regarding users
understanding and fair use. Papers should be around 6-8 pages (not
exceeding 6000 words) and include an abstract.
http://www.idt.mdh.se/euromicro-2005/
6-8 April 2005, Belfast, Ireland, BILETA 2005
Over-Commoditised; Over-Centralised; Over-Observed: the New Digital Legal World?
http://www.law.qub.ac.uk/bileta2005/callforpapers.html
12-15 April 2005, Seattle, USA, CFP 2005
The program committee of the annual Computer, Freedom, Privacy Conference
is accepting proposals for conference sessions and speakers for CFP2005.
The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2004. The conference will be
held in the Westin Hotel in Seattle, Washington.
http://www.cfp2005.org
14-16 Aprile 2005, Padova, Italy, FLOSS 2005
http://www.floss2005.org/
6-11 June 2005, Benevento (Naples), Italy, DIGITAL COMMUNITIES 2005
http://www.ssc.msu.edu/~espace/DC2005.html
11-15 July 2005, Genova, Italy, OSS 2005
http://oss2005.case.unibz.it/index.html
28-31 July 2005, Den Bosch, The Netherlands
What The Hack, major open air hacker / internet lifestyle event
http://www.whatthehack.org/