In response to an informal consultation by the European Commission on a report on the future of Digital Rights Management (DRM), several digital rights organisations have sent in statements. The report was prepared by a High Level Group consisting of companies and industry groups. As user representative only the European Consumers Union (BEUC) was invited to participate, and it withdrew its support from this report.

EDRI member FIPR points out the democratic failure of this process. "The consumer representative (BEUC) was unable to subscribe to most of its recommendations. It is quite improper for the Report to nonetheless represent its findings as a 'consensus'."

The German group Privatkopie.net "urges the commission to create conditions under which the privacy of information users and their 'right to read anonymously' are guaranteed." A similar point is made in the Italian response (including Associazione Software Libero and the Italian Linux Society). "We notice that leaving it to 'rights holders to build balanced business practices with their customers' is a short-sighted position because it does not consider that the balance between right holders and society - the pivot of all laws on human intellectual production and on the related economic exploitation - cannot be guaranteed neither by one of the two sides alone nor by the market tout court." And the Italian paper concludes with the demands that no personal or characteristic data of the user should be required, detected or used when not absolutely necessary to the authentication mechanism and DRM systems may not include or allow user tracking features.

For its 6th edition, the Werkleitz Biennale changed location, from Tornitz/Werkleitz to the city of Halle (near Leipzig) in east Germany. The theme 'common property' brought together many artists and activists working in copyright-critical environments. The location, a former workers-building from 1907 in very rich Jugendstil overlooking an idyllical park, offered an excellent meetingplace for both the invited guests and visitors from the city of Halle. Besides interesting debates about copyright and the post-heroic future of civil society activism, the Biennale excelled in concise film and video-screenings on biogenetics, on city-planning and on strategies of dissent.

The preview screening of the film 'The Yes Men' no doubt caused the biggest applause and the loudest laughs. In this film, the Yes Men (Andy and Mike) register what happened after they open up a parody-site on the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The site, www.gatt.org, seems official enough, in spite of many critical sentences, to make people take it serious. The Yes Men are invited to several conferences as official representatives of the WTO. Invited to a conference in Finland, they decide to give a talk about the world economic advantages of managerial leisure. After 10 minutes of semi-serious slides, the presenter tears off his business suit and and suddenly shows a ridiculous golden outfit with a gigantic phallus popping out that supposedly gives the manager full control over all his workers. In stead of being arrested, the audience doesn't even respond surprised and seems to agree with every terrible idea the two come up with.

Today, 9 September 2004, the German minister of Justice presented a cornerstone-paper on the so called 'second basket' of copyright regulations, implementing the European Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC).

The cornerstone-paper defines a clear right to make private copies, even when ordered by a third party, and does not require the original to be legal, though 'downloading works that are apparently unlawfully distributed', is not allowed. Also, in spite of rumours before the release, there are no plans to give rights-holders the power to demand name-address data from p2p-users from internet providers.

As generous as that might seem, the German digital rights organisation NMN has issued a brief statement complaining about the fact that the regulation will not allow people to make a private copy if the material is protected with technological measures.

On 1 July 2004 the Dutch Lower House adopted a motion directed at Minister Brinkhorst and State Secretary Van Gennip (Economic Affairs) to withdraw the Dutch vote in support of the Council of Ministers' text for the Directive on Software Patents. It was quite a surprise the motion was accepted.

In a letter to MPs, the State Secretary acknowledged that the Ministers initial claim was false that the Dutch agreement with the proposal didn't have any significant meaning. According to the Minister it was only a hammer piece, without any significant difference from earlier proposals. In the debate following the letter, on 24 June, the State Secretary got away with the embarrassing excuse that 'an error was made in the word-processor', somehow changing the crucial 'no' into 'yes!'.

Dutch MPs didn't accept these explanations, initiated a second debate and took a historical step in sending the minister back to the Council with the embarrassing mission of having to withdraw his agreement and convert it into an abstention.

The plans from the city council of Munich, Germany, to migrate all civil servants to open source Linux software, are endangered by the proposed new EU software patents directive. The Greens in Munich have filed 2 motions on 30 July 2004 demanding more research into how the directive affects the project. A cursory search revealed that the Linux 'base client', which the city of Munich plans to install on the desktop computers of approximately 14,000 employees, is in conflict with more than 50 European software patents. The planned advertisement at the end of July for the client was immediately cancelled until more research is done.

According to a newsitem on linuxelectrons, the Green alderman who filed the motions is a fan of open source, and "expresses concern over the future ability of open source software to meet the needs of the city

The European Commission is organising two interesting public consultation rounds, on nanotechnology and on digital rights management (DRM).

The consultation on nanotechnology invites public feedback on the communication 'Towards a European Strategy for Nanotechnology', in which the Commission proposes an integrated and responsible approach for developing nanosciences and nanotechnologies in Europe. All interested people are encouraged to take part by directly writing to the Commission rtd-nano-strategy@cec.eu.int by 30 September 2004.

Commission press release: How big is nanotechnology for Europe? (30.06.2004) http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/04/1005...

Online questionnaire about nanotechnology http://www.nanoforum.org

On 8 June 2004, the European Court of Justice issued an opinion on four (similar) cases regarding the database directive 'sui generis' right. The opinion seems to grant perpetual protection to databases, and confirms grave public concerns about the impact of the directive on the use and re-use of online information. Though the opinion of the Advocate General is not binding on the court, it is persuasive and often mirrored in the final verdict.

The parties are the British Horseracing Board (BRB) versus William Hill and Fixtures Marketing Ltd (football fixture lists) versus football pools operators in Finland, Sweden and Greece. Advocate General Stix-Hackl found that the database rights of the plaintiffs (BRB and Fixtures Marketing) were infringed. "'Bookmakers' use of data constitutes a prohibited re-utilisation even if they do not obtain the data directly from the database but from other independent sources such as print media or the internet."

Since the beginning of July, the European Parliament had two weeks to group up fractions and build coalitions. A new pro-EU Centrist and Liberal group has emerged, which will be the third strongest in the European Parliament after the Conservatives and Social Democrats. Due to all the political power game, there was not much time left to discuss digital rights-related issues, even though important decisions were made about the working agenda of the EU institutions for the next months.

The most interesting development was the widespread tendency with national parliaments to make their governments step back from the decision taken on 18 May, adopting the Council Common Position on the patentability of so-called computer-implemented inventions, more accurately known as the the Software Patent Directive. Technically, amendments are still possible to the position taken at that time, because the decision has not yet been translated into all 20 official languages of the EU.