The LSM conference has become an institution in France and around the globe. It all began in the year 2000 and has now become a well established meeting place for members and friends of the Free Software movement. Between 6-10 July 2004 about 700 persons gathered to discuss the bright future for users of Libre Software.

There were many very different subjects to choose from, ranging from accessibility to Content Management Systems, from law to music and other arts and from public administration to corporate business solutions.

Another important topic was education. It has always been a very important part of the 'Rencontre Mondial du Logiciel Libre / LSM' both in numbers of presentations and workshops and in numbers of participants. This year the EDU-conference was integrated into the conference - mainly in the big conference room. Some 50 percent of participants came from local French schools. The Abul Edu program is highly popular in all French speaking countries and offers a wide range of programs for learning, everything from spelling to mathematics. This year there were also demonstrations of solutions from Norwegian Skolelinux to LinEx in Extremadura, Spain and an Italian school using the Knoppix distribution.

The annual 'New Directions in Copyright' conference was held 29 and 30 June 2004 at University of London, organised jointly by the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the Birckbeck School of Law. The focus was on legal issues pertaining to recent developments in copyright. The flat fee / compulsory licensing was under serious debate and also otherwise the user rights-angle was prominently present. Especially Professor David Vaver's 'User Rights vs. User Exceptions: Reconceptualising the Public Domain' was a very strong presentation about the need to change the language used in copyright debates. Another very interesting presentation was given by Professor Peter Jaszi, who has been fighting for balanced copyright long before the current generation of copyright fighters. He showed how best practices can be used to shape fair use in his presentation 'The Crisis in Fair Use and the Potential of a 'Best Practices' Approach'. Professor Lisa Maruca's 'Cultures of Copying, Cultures of Copyright: Academic Anxiety and the Plagiarism Panic' was also fascinating and scary at the same time, because it demonstrated how companies like TurnItIn can misuse other persons' copyrighted material to fight overly broadly against plagiarism cases.

The European Commission has funded a new project to make Digital Rights Management more acceptable to consumers. INDICARE (the Informed Dialogue about Consumer Acceptability of DRM Solutions in Europe) is distributing its first e-mail newsletter this week. The newsletter includes links to articles on the INDICARE website that are conceived as the starting point for online discussions. Under the E-Content programme 2003-2004 1 million euro is allocated for 'accompanying measures' like community building.

DRM-technology is seen by both the Commission and the (multi-)national entertainment industry as the best solution to control copyrights in a digital environment. Civil rights organisations, data protection authorities and consumer unions however are not very keen on giving complete control over their reading, listening and watching habits to industrial parties. Initiatives to integrate DRM in both hard- and software, like the TCPA initiative, have strongly been criticised for violating fundamental freedoms of computer and internet usage.

10 years ago, on 23 June 1994, the TRIPS agreement was concluded as a part of the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO. A good reason for the European Commission to have a party. After all, the Brussels executive body has not only taken the helm within the EU in transposing the agreement, but also goes much further than the agreement requires by pushing for example for civil and penal sanctions for intellectual property rights infringements, legal protection for DRM systems and the patentability of software.

Even though constantly under attack for taking such disputable initiatives, the Commission likes to see itself sidelined by international experts in the field of Intellectual Property rights. However, neither the Commission's 'Mr. Copyright' - Joerg Reinbothe, who is responsible for the proposals most widely acclaimed by IPR industries and most widely criticised by experts -, nor any of his colleagues of the Internal Market DG came to the two-day Conference organised in Brussels last week. Thierry Stoll, the DG Internal Market's Deputy Director General, was replaced last minute by a colleague from DG Trade, co-organising the conference.

According to a short notice on the website of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty the Russian Federation Council rejected a proposal to extend the copyright term on 26 May 2004. The bill, which passed the Duma on 18 May, would extend the period that authors have the rights to their works to 70 years after their death. Currently the term is life plus 50 years.

The Chairman of the Science and Culture Committee, Viktor Shudegov (from the Unified Russia party) said that increasing the norm would lead to numerous legal battles to restore the rights of authors whose rights expired before the law came into effect. In addition, the bill contradicts certain provisions of the Code on Administrative Offences.

The refusal is remarkable, since Russia is working hard to become member of the World Trade Organisation before the end of 2004. During the recent G-8 meeting of industrialised countries, the US once more said it supported the entry of Russia, if it were willing to sign more agreements on the protection of intellectual property rights.

During the Wizards of OS conference in Berlin, from 10 to 12 June 2004, legal scientists and civil rights defenders jointly launched a declaration on collectively managed online rights. The declaration is a response to the call for comments on the Communication from the European Commission on the management of copyright and related rights in the internal market - COM(2004) 261. See also EDRI-gram 2.8, 21 April 2004. The declaration states that DRM and mass-prosecution of file-sharers are not acceptable to an open and equitable society and calls on the Commission to consider a music flatrate to ensure compensation without control.

"File-sharing teaches us a lesson that markets and lawmakers should listen to. It says that shipping bits from A to B has become such a low value service that Internet users effortlessly can provide it themselves. This is a result of the communications revolution that the EU has been supporting actively for the last decade. These developments could be good news to the content industries, but not if they are continue to base their business models on a proposition of exclusive service provisions that they no longer hold."

One of the highlights of the Free Bitflows conference in Vienna, Austria on 3 and 4 June 2004 was a lecture by Brewster Kahle about the Internet Archive. This digital archive aims at no less than offering universal access to all human knowledge, by collecting digital copies of all old and new public domain books, music, films, software and web-sites. A copy is in San Francisco (US) and a partial copy is in Alexandria (Egypt).

Around 300 BC the classic library of Alexandria contained about 75 percent of all documents that were ever made. Today, the internet archive wishes to secure and disclose a similar percentage of all creative works ever made, but with improved protection against destruction. The final goal of the archive is to have a full copy in 5 or 6 countries and jurisdictions, to be able to survive any war or censorship.

Bulgarian members of Parliament and Internet Society Bulgaria have filed a case with the Bulgarian Competition Protection Commission against both Microsoft Bulgaria and Microsoft USA.

The members of the Bulgarian Parliament Ivan Ivanov and Stoicho Katsarov and the Internet Society Bulgaria signed a letter to the Competition Protection Commission with four points questioning Microsoft practices and business behaviour.

The complaint concerns the development of the Bulgarian government e-gateway, which requires the users to have Windows and Internet Explorer if they want to use the electronic services, provided by the government. This is against rulings of art. 34 (2) of the Bulgarian law for protection of competition. Other articles concerned are art. 2 (1), points 2 and 3, and art. 18, point 2.