From lawrence at altlawforum.org Thu Jun 1 16:10:25 2006 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2006 16:10:25 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] IP, Education and Access to knowledge in South Africa Message-ID: Hi all Sending this on behalf of Achal Prabhala who along with Andrew rens and Dick kawooya have just finished a report Intellectual Property, Education and Access to Knowledge in Southern Africa, which should be interesting to many on this list Available at: http://www.iprsonline.org/unctadictsd/regional_research.htm or directly: http://www.iprsonline.org/unctadictsd/docs/06%2005%2031%20tralac%20amended-p df.pdf Lawrence From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Mon Jun 5 09:37:10 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 00:07:10 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] The Continuing Adventures of Private Infringer Message-ID: <4483ADEE.884483B7@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> > http://privateinfringer.blogspot.com/ Sunday, June 04, 2006 Chapter I Private Infringer isn't a super hero like Captain Copyright of course. He is just a lowly private who wants to know why everybody keeps trying to tell him what to do, even in the privacy of his own home. Every time he tries to rip his CDs to put them on his MP3 player, that guy Captain Copyright in spandex pajamas, is in his face telling him it's wrong. Yesterday he downloaded a copy of DJ Dangermouse's Grey Album. When CC showed up to lecture him in his usual condescending way, Infringer tried explaining that DJ Dangermouse put it on the web for free himself. But Copyright said that didn't matter. Paul McCartney did not approve, and that is all that really did matter. How was it, Infringer wondered, that a society which judges itself to be so enlightened could find it so easy to suppress art. He then thought about all the other lost art which he had either heard of, or in some cases, even seen parts of himself. "The Cat NOT in the Hat", "Eyes on the Prize", and another new book. What was it again? Oh yeah, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got in". The last one was ChickLit, so the thought of reading it did not really grab him, but he did begin to wonder just how much stuff might be out there that had not seen the light of day long enough for him to be able to discover its existence. Even worse how much art was never being created in the first place because people were too afraid of the consequences? Oh well, he wasn't going to worry about this now. He was almost home. With any luck the movie he started downloading this morning would be finished and he could kick up his feet, order some pizza, and chill in front of a great movie. Rounding the corner onto his street in his busy downtown neighbourhood he saw the street vendor who often sells things in his little stall on the sidewalk. Usually the vendor sold the same old stuff, cheap electronics, cheap DVDs and CDs, and assorted nicnaks. Today some new nicnaks grabs his eye. Infringer had always been a ravenous reader. He had fond memories of when he was a kid and he read the entire collection of “Anne of Green Gables. “ with his mother. The new nicnaks all looked like various Anne of Green Gable characters. He picked up a couple to examine them thinking one of them possibly tied in with a some flowers and a bow might make a thoughtful mothers day present. Choosing a rather nice one, which was distinctly Anne with the freckles and red hair, he paid the vendor and started to walk away. But he'd only gone about 3 feet when that self important busy body Captain Copyright flew in out of the blue. Wow. Just like a real super hero too. “Did you know that you have just purchased an unauthorized and unlicenced product” said Captain Copyright in his deep, strong and authoritative voice. Everyone on the street could hear this and as he spoke the vendor started cowering in his seat and glancing up and down the street with a very guilty look on his face. Infringer's first instinct of course was to immediately put the product back. Copyright spoke with such authority and certainty, and his words always seamed so reasonable on the surface that it was very difficult for anyone not to do exactly what he said. But Infringer gathered his strength this time. “Oh no, not you again”, he sighed, “What, what, have I done this time?” “That ceramic doll you just purchased was not licensed by the Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority. It is illegal. You must hand it over to the appropriate authorities along with information about who you received it from so that they can all be destroyed. If you don't, the authorities will prosecute you instead.” “huhh” Private Infringer was confused, “Wait a minute. I haven't done anything wrong. What do you mean licensed? What is there to license? These are characters from a book. There weren't even any pictures in those books. How can this be breaking copyright?” “It isn't” said Captain Copyright with his arms crossed and a stern disapproving look on his face. The look on Private Infringer's face was more a look of bewilderment. He began to wonder if perhaps Copyright's spandex pants were a little to tight and were cutting off circulation to the the part of his anatomy his brain must be in. “It's breaking trademark law” Copyright continued, “The Anne of Green Gables Licensing Authority is a corporation jointly owned by the province of PEI and the heirs of Lucy Maud Montgomery. They own all rights to any character likenesses from the books as well as the words 'Anne of Green Gables' and the Montgomery name” Private Infringer still had a bewildered look on his face. “But wait a minute, these books are all in the public domain now aren't they? Doesn't that mean, they don't need to be licensed? Besides”, Infringer paused for a moment, “ I thought your name was Captain Copyright, not Trolling Trademark”. Captain Copyright's face started to look a little more angry. Infringer began to get a little worried that maybe he'd gone too far and stepped over the line. He had heard about how Captain Copyright had completely destroyed people in the past with his powerful 'Statutory Damages' death ray. He did not really want to make Captain Copyright angry if he could avoid it. He broke eye contact with Copyright and instead stared down at his feet. The Captain continued. “ It does not matter what the status of the books are. This is trademark law. There is no limitations on trademarks. The owner of a trademark can continue to dictate how that trademark is used for as long as they maintain its registration. The AGGLA has complete control of every....” BOOM Copyright's words were suddenly interrupted by the loud sound of a vehicle backfiring. Copyright and Infringer both turned to see an old army jeep turning the corner of the street. Its paint was peeling, and smoke was coming out of the tail pipe. The front axle was obviously bent as the vehicle had a pronounced vertical wobble in its movement. It pulled up in front of Copyright and Infringer, coughed and sputtered then stopped. An old man got out who looked like he could be Moses' grandfather. He had a short white beard, wrinkled face, and a tattered but clean, old army uniform which was full of rusty medals. “Who are you?” said Captain Copyright and Private Infringer at the same moment. The old man paused in front of them for a moment to catch his breath. “I am General Intelligence”, he said. Copyright's face changed to look a little more worried. For years now he had managed to maintain order and control without having to worry about anything that had anything to do with Intelligence. Was this guy back now to undo all his good work. Copyright sized up this Intelligence and hopefully concluded that he was to old and frail to offer much of any opposition. “What do you want?” scoffed Copyright. “For years now I have not paid attention to these issues of copyright and Intellectual Monopolies, while you and your corporate friends have slowly tightened the noose upon our society. It is almost to the point now where nothing creative can be done without explicit permission from some corporate entity or another. Our culture is dying and what's left is being sold off to the highest bidder. I'm going to protect this boy from the likes of you.” “Words of intelligence eh?” Captain Copyright scoffed with a wide grin on his face. “Yes”, replied General Intelligence, looking a little perplexed by the new look on Copyright's face. “The word is 'property' you simpleton”, Captain copyright shot back with a laugh. “Intellectual Property”, he yelled, “Boy, if you can't get that right, you really haven't got a hope defeating me.”. Captain Copyright was starting to feel much more sure of himself now. There was a pause before Intelligence spoke again. Then he spoke slowly. “I said 'Intellectual Monopoly', and that is precisely what I meant. Just because you and your control obsessed cohorts have managed to convince the world that the inappropriate use of the word property is justified, does not make it right. A monopoly right granted to you by the state, allows you to dictate other people's behaviour. It is not property. In fact it is the exact opposite of property, as it gives you the right to tell others how they may or may not use their own property. This is one of the first things I need to rectify.” Copyright was starting to worry again, and small beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. Intelligence continued, “Now as for this Anne of Green Gables thing.” the General paused as he turned to look at Private Infringer, “Alas my boy, I'm afraid Captain Copyright is correct. In fact the trademark owners already won a landmark victory in court which prevents anyone from making commercial use of any of the characters or names associated with the Anne of Green Gables story. Verbatim copies of the book are probably OK but any derived works would violate the registered trademarks.” Private Infringer was in shock. “You mean these people can use trademark law to totally circumvent the purpose of copyright law and effectively maintain a monopoly on these stories forever?” “I'm afraid so,” replied the General. Captain Copyright had a look of satisfaction on his face, strikingly similar to the one Mickey Mouse wore the day the American overlords successfully extended their term of copyright, thereby saving their iconic mascot from falling into the hands of the pagan artisans. “Not so fast Captain Copyright”, General Intelligence turned to Captain Copyright just as he was reaching for ceramic figurine, intent on smashing the poor thing to bits with the sincere belief that this was somehow going to save the world from evil. He pulled a large roll of red tape out of his jacket as he continued speaking. “The Private here is quite right. As you yourself have said, this is a trademark issue, and as such it is completely out of your jurisdiction. Not even the American FCC has successfully been able to rule outside their jurisdiction and impose their dreaded Broadcast Flag.” General Intelligence and Private Infringer both shuddered at these words. “You too are restricted by jurisdiction and will have to leave this poor boy alone.” Captain Copyright was utterly stunned by this. Could General Intelligence really use such a technical detail to prevent Captain Copyright from saving the world for the exclusive cultural exploitation of large multinational corporations? While Copyright was contemplating this horrible concept, his jaw slowly moving up and down so that he resembled some kind of large green fish trying to breath out of water, General Intelligence took advantage of the opportunity. With a little help from Infringer he tied Copyright up in the red tape as tightly as he could. Then the two of them proceeded down the road in the direction of Infringer's Apartment. “Thank you General Intelligence, I thought I was a goner back there.” “Don't thank me too quickly my boy.” said Intelligence, “These are dark times that we live in. They will get much darker too I'm afraid before they get brighter. These multinational corporations are very powerful indeed, and they have a tight reign on both our culture and our government. I've slowed Captain Copyright down by tying him up in red tape, but I certainly have not stopped him. He will be back, and he will bring his friends.” There was a long pause as they walked slowly down the street together. “I'm getting old my boy,” continued General Intelligence after a while, “and people don't listen to me very much many more. I can advise you, but I can do no more. If you want a society different then the one the multinational corporations and the collective associations want, then you will have too take action on your own. You will have to do something about it.” They were approaching the front door to Private Infringer's third story walk up. Infringer knew the General would have difficulty climbing those stairs so instead of inviting him up, he thanked him, shook his hand, then reached for his keys and made his way up to the his apartment. General Intelligence turned around and slowly started walking back to his jeep by himself. He didn't mind. He was actually getting use to being by himself. Most people, he we was beginning to think, simply did not want Intelligence. And he could live with that. Private Infringer checked his mail box on the way up and was delighted to discover that a DVD he had recently ordered from the BBC in the UK through mail order had finally arrived. posted by Infringer at 9:27 PM From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Tue Jun 6 13:28:33 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006 03:58:33 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Mueller Releases Book on Software Patent War in the European Union Message-ID: <448535A9.14EADA8C@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Patents] Book on the war over software patents now available for download Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 08:47:48 +0200 From: Florian Mueller To: Florian Mueller's book "No Lobbyists As Such - The War over Software Patents in the European Union" now available for download Starnberg, Germany (June 06, 2006) -- Florian Mueller, the founder of the award-winning NoSoftwarePatents.com campaign, has published his memoir-style book, "No Lobbyists As Such - The War over Software Patents in the European Union", on the Internet. On 377 pages, Mueller tells the story of the legislative process that ended in July last year with a landslide vote of the European Parliament against a proposal for a software patent directive. The book is now available on the Internet for download: http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/NoLobbyistsAsSuch.pdf The file may be redistributed under a Creative Commons license. Mueller explained in his blog (http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller-blog/ebook/) that he wants "to get [this] book out to a large audience, especially since the next major war over software patents in Europe will officially break out on July 12 at a hearing to be held by the European Commission in Brussels. The same forces who supported the software patent directive we successfully fought against are now trying to achieve everything they wanted the last time, and even more, by means of the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA)." Wlodzimierz Marcinski, the then Polish deputy minister of science who blocked an EU Council decision in favor of software patents all alone on December 21, 2004, said he looks forward "to reading Florian Mueller's book that tells the story from the perspective of the citizens who became involved and through their untiring commitment made such a difference." When Mueller announced his book in late March, reviewers were enthusiastic: For William New, editor-in-chief of the news service Intellectual Property Watch (www.ip-watch.org), Mueller's book "really reads like a spy novel, very instructive as well as entertaining and engaging." Professor Brian Kahin, former Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office on Science and Technology Policy, says: "Mueller's lucid, gripping account succeeds as an engrossing introduction to one of the major policy problems of our time and to Europe's struggle for integration." Benjamin Henrion of the non-governmental organization FFII comments that the book "vividly conveys the feeling of what we experienced", and considers it a "must-read for all who are concerned about software patents, and for those who want to know how things work in EU politics." Kaj Arnö, vice-president of community relations at open source database maker MySQL AB, felt like "standing in a parliament and talking directly to the politicians who made the decisions" when reading the manuscript. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONCERNING THE BOOK: Publisher: SWM Software-Marketing GmbH (Florian Mueller's own company) Copy-editor: Wendy Grossman (www.pelicancrossing.net), a UK-based journalist from the US, copy-edited Mueller's manuscript. Other language editions: The book has been simultaneously published in German ("Die Lobbyschlacht um Softwarepatente", www.softwarepatente-buch.de). AUTHOR'S BACKGROUNDER: http://www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/florian-mueller.html CONTACT DATA: Florian Mueller Phone +49 - 81 51 - 2 10 88 fmueller.nosoftwarepatents at gmail.com -- Subscription management: http://www2.aful.org/wws From namita at altlawforum.org Tue Jun 6 21:06:38 2006 From: namita at altlawforum.org (namita at altlawforum.org) Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 11:36:38 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] cyber tree house Message-ID: <380-22006626153638515@M2W013.mail2web.com> captain copyright also has the cyber tree house for company. this has to be the most ridiculously easy game i've played http://www.playitcybersafe.com/kids/games/deepfreeze/ -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . From prashant at nalsartech.org Wed Jun 7 10:27:46 2006 From: prashant at nalsartech.org (Prashant Iyengar) Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 10:27:46 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] VIEWS ON CABLE TV ACT AMENDMENTS SOUGHT Message-ID: <20060607102746.s2zowzp9tpbswk40@www.nalsartech.org> Source: The Hindu NEW DELHI:The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Tuesday sought the comments of all stakeholders on the proposed amendments in the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995, and the existing telecom licences for facilitating growth of IPTV services. The proposed amendments have been put on www.trai.gov.in. Written comments on these have been invited by June 23. http://www.trai.gov.in/trai/upload/PressReleases/330/pr6jun06no49.pdf © Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu http://www.nalsartech.org/tikiwiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=15335 From prashant at nalsartech.org Wed Jun 7 10:28:59 2006 From: prashant at nalsartech.org (Prashant Iyengar) Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 10:28:59 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] TRAI WANTS IPTV TO BE PART OF TELECOM AND OUT OF CABLE TV Message-ID: <20060607102859.e4qsaoqzo600kosk@www.nalsartech.org> Source: The Hindu New Delhi,June 6:In a significant move, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has mooted a proposal to keep Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) out of the purview of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act 1995 and instead make it part of the existing telecom licence norms. The proposal will mean that telecom operators such as Bharti Airtel and Reliance Communications will be free to offer IPTV using their broadband network. The proposal comes as a blow to broadcasters who have been demanding to keep IPTV as part of the laws governing Cable TV. IPTV is a system where a digital television service is delivered over a broadband connection instead of the traditional way of transmitting through a cable network. Users will also get new services such as video on demand where they can watch their favourite movies for a fee. TRAI pointed out that IPTV services cannot be governed by the Cable TV laws as it will violate some of the provision of the Act. For instance, use of different protocols by different companies and lack of standardisation for IPTV services violates the requirement about use of equipment conforming to Indian standards. IPTV service "The problems pointed are primarily on account of the fact that when the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 was prepared, the IPTV service was not even conceived. Therefore, the Act is primarily aimed at regulation of conventional cable TV systems. Application of this Act to IPTV services leads to problems. The unified access service licence (UASL) agreement permits the licensees (telecom operators) to provide broadband services including triple play i.e. voice, video and data. Thus, they are authorised to offer IPTV services over their networks," TRAI said. Amending definition Therefore, TRAI has proposed to amend the definition of `cable services' under the Cable TV Act to exclude video services offered under unified access licence. It has also sought to amend the UASL licence to include retransmission of any broadcast television signals within the definition of video services. TRAI also proposed to make the telecom operators responsible for compliance with all the Codes governing programmes and advertisements. © Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu Business Line http://www.nalsartech.org/tikiwiki/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=15340 From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Thu Jun 8 09:40:51 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 00:10:51 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Compulsory Computing License in Denmark Message-ID: <4487A34B.8F6570D0@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> (Machine translation from Danish. -- Seth) > http://politiken.dk/VisArtikel.iasp?PageID=457668 Now you have to pay licence fee for the computer By Michael Lund Now it has to cost to see TV in the computer. - Arkivfoto: Thomas Borberg Henceforth that will cost over 2.000 DKK per annum to have a computer with net-access. That is one of the results of the media-deal. More and more Danes see TV on the computer. Therefore it has to really be included of the licence-arrangement. It says in the new media-deal, which a wide parliamentary majority in morning agreed on. The licence will rise The new media-licence include all devices, that are in a position to receive picture-programmes and services, under here computers and certain cell phones, it says in the deal. The media-licence will be at level with the present colour tv-licence, and it'll in the period 2007-2010 follow the general price and payrise. Thus that will by estimate cost 1.075 DKK every six months in 2007 and 1.130 DKK every six months in 2010. In return all licence-liable devices are in the household then also included. Financially badly placed pensioners as well as blind and weak-sighted persons want to still have possibility of licence-reduction or - exemption. Victory for Plummer The new media-licence is a victory for Danmarks Radio. The station's director general, Kenneth Plummer, has hotly argued for to extend the licence and has earlier said that DR stands to lose 30 millions of DKK in 2006, because about 15.000 Danes do not see TV on the computer, and therefore any licence fee doesn't pay. No to off-report On the other hand DR didn't offer through the wish, that viewers actively have to off-report themselves licence. Henceforth one has to still oneself register as use in order to pay licence fee. The question has been one of the decisive knots in the negotiations - both the Social Democrats, the radical ones and Minister of Cultural Affairs Brian Mikkelsen par-l K par-r has wished a frameldings-model, where all households automatically pay licence fee, unless one actively signs up off. But resistance from several prominent Liberal politicians has led to, that the suggestion was dropped. Ones With the deal the fact that DR has to establish a digital combinedly children's-/history channel, as well as send newses in widespread language with immigrants and fugitives, struggles and fugitives. --- Nu skal du betale licens for computeren Fremover vil det koste over 2.000 kr. årligt at have en computer med netadgang. Det er et af resultaterne af medieforliget. Flere og flere danskere ser tv på computeren. Derfor skal den nu også omfattes af licensordningen. Det fremgår af det ny medieforlig, som et bredt folketingsflertal i formiddag blev enige om. Licensen vil stige Den ny medielicens omfatter alle apparater, der er i stand til at modtage billedprogrammer og -tjenester, herunder computere og visse mobiltelefoner, fremgår det af forliget. Medielicensen vil være på niveau med den nuværende farve-tv-licens, og den vil i perioden 2007-2010 følge den generelle pris- og lønstigning. Dermed vil det anslået koste 1.075 kr. halvårligt i 2007 og 1.130 kr. halvårligt i 2010. Til gengæld er samtlige licenspligtige apparater i husstanden så også omfattet. Økonomisk dårligt stillede pensionister samt blinde og svagtseende personer vil fortsat have mulighed for licensnedsættelse eller -fritagelse. Sejr for Plummer Den ny medielicens er en sejr for Danmarks Radio. Stationens generaldirektør, Kenneth Plummer, har argumenteret varmt for at udvide licensen og har tidligere udtalt, at DR står til at miste 30 millioner kr. i 2006, fordi omkring 15.000 danskere ser tv på computeren, og derfor ikke betaler licens. Nej til framelding Derimod kom DR ikke igennem med ønsket om, at tv-seere aktivt skal framelde sig licens. Fremover skal man fortsat selv tilmelde sig som bruger for at betale licens. Spørgsmålet har været en af de afgørende knaster i forhandlingerne - både Socialdemokraterne, de radikale og kulturminister Brian Mikkelsen (K) har ønsket en frameldingsmodel, hvor alle husstande automatisk betaler licens, med mindre man aktivt melder sig fra. Men modstand fra flere fremtrædende Venstre-politikere har ført til, at forslaget blev droppet. Med forliget slås det også fast, at DR skal etablere en digital kombineret børne/historie-kanal, samt sende nyheder på udbredte sprog hos indvandrere og flygtninge. From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Thu Jun 8 17:20:17 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:50:17 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Norway Slams iTunes Music EULA Message-ID: <44880EF9.8F8EA7BA@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Ecommerce] Unfair contract terms (choice of law) story Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 07:31:54 -0400 From: Manon Ress To: ecommerce at lists.essential.org QUOTE from register According to the ruling, iTunes breaks section 9a of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act. The regulator said it was not reasonable that the consumer must sign up to a contract regulated by English law, rather than Norwegian law. It also said iTunes must accept responsibility for damage its software may do, and said it is unreasonable to alter terms and conditions after a song has been sold. END OF QUOTE From: "Michelle Childs" Date: June 8, 2006 5:59:51 AM EDT The Norwegian Consumer Ombudsman has ruled that certain contractual terms for the Apple iTunes service break consumer protection law, and has given the company two weeks to fix the problem. Further information is needed from Apple before the Ombudsman also rules on the whether the DRM system is unreasonable. Below is info from The Consumer Council of Norway who made the complaint to the Ombudsman. There is also a press coverage of the ruling in the Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/07/norway_rules_itunes_unfair/ Michelle The Consumer Council of Norway is on track to win case against iTunes The Consumer Council of Norway won support for almost all its complaints regarding iTunes Music Store. http://forbrukerportalen.no/Artikler/2006/1149587055.44 Jo Singstad Informasjonsrådgiver / pressekontakt, 06.06.2006 20:55 » On 25th January, the Consumer Council lodged a complaint with the Consumer Ombudsman against iTunes Music Store Norge for breach of fundamental consumer rights. Important victory The decision is in accordance with what the Consumer Council alleged in its complaint. "We are very satisfied with the decision. There is a general tendency for consumers to meet grossly unreasonable agreements when they download files with cultural content. It is therefore positive that the Ombudsman gets a grip on this so that consumer interests are also protected when such material is downloaded," senior advisor Torgeir Waterhouse says. Among other things, the decision clearly states that the terms of agreement demanded by iTunes are unreasonable with respect to Section 9a of the Norwegian Marketing Control Act. Moreover, it is unreasonable that the agreement the consumer must give consent to is regulated by English law. That iTunes disclaims all liability for possible damage the software may cause and that it may alter the rights to the music, are also considered unreasonable. iTunes must now alter their terms and conditions to comply with Norwegian law by the 21.of June. "A trade agreement with a consumer must be balanced, also in the digital sphere. The Consumer Council has seen a trend where terms of agreement, technical blocks and their legal protection have led to a reduction in the rights of consumers and their opportunities to use cultural material," Waterhouse says. "The digital rights of consumers have been dictated by the industry for a long time. This decision marks the start of a struggle to recover them," Waterhouse continues. Must be followed up The Consumer Council now wants attention focused on other downloading services operating in Norway. "The terms, both technical and written ones, are not unique to iTunes. Many other companies employ similar ones. We anticipate that the Ombudsman will also pursue these, initially the music shops mentioned in our complaint. "Several Norwegian record shops have said they will start downloading services this year. This case puts severe constraints on the formulation of their terms and on their service to customers," Torgeir Waterhouse says. The Consumer Council will be watching the trend carefully in the time ahead. Awaiting a response A reply from iTunes is being awaited before a final conclusion can be reached on certain points, including: The cooling-off period when purchasing from iTunes Whether the technical blocks (DRM) are unreasonable Whether the geographical limitations are unreasonable "We want the Ombudsman to take an offensive and a consumer-friendly attitude to the points on which a conclusion has so far not been reached. This particularly concerns the technical conditions (DRM) in the agreement. The widespread use of DRM and its legal protection have upset the normal, balanced regulation of copyright. It is important that such technical blocks do not create unbalanced terms of agreement between the consumer and the industry," Torgeir Waterhouse concludes. -- Michelle Childs -Head of European Affairs Consumer Project on Technology in London 24, Highbury Crescent, London, N5 1RX,UK. Tel:+44(0)207 226 6663 ex 252. Mob:+44(0)790 386 4642. Fax: +44(0)207 354 0607 http://www.cptech.org Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC 1621 Connecticut Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20009 USA .Tel.: +1.202.332.2670,Fax: +1.202.332.2673 Consumer Project on Technology in Geneva 1 Route des Morillons, CP 2100, 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland Tel: +41 22 791 6727 _______________________________________________ Ecommerce mailing list Ecommerce at lists.essential.org http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/ecommerce From gopa.kumar at centad.org Thu Jun 8 18:42:54 2006 From: gopa.kumar at centad.org (gopa kumar) Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2006 18:42:54 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Data Exclusivity-Action Alert Message-ID: <016001c68afd$43362a20$0f01a8c0@GOPANOTEBOOK> APPROVAL OF AFFORDABLE GENERIC MEDICINES*** 5 May 2006, New Delhi - The Government of India is in the process of deciding its stand on the crucial question of amending the Drugs and Cosmetic Act, 1950. They are seriously contemplating inserting provisions in the Act, which will provide pharmaceutical companies exclusive rights over pharmaceutical data submitted by them to the Drug Controller of India for marketing approval i.e. data exclusivity. What is Data Exclusivity? n A new type of intellectual property right in the name of data protection, intended to provide exclusive monopoly rights to pharmaceutical companies where patents would not. Unlike what is being portrayed to the people and the media, 'Data Exclusivity' measures imply much more than non-disclosure of test data by the drug regulatory authority to rival pharmaceutical companies. n Changes the current system of approval for generic medicines. n How does it impact access to generic drugs: Provides pharmaceutical companies exclusive rights on pharmaceutical data so that they can effectively prevent the drug regulatory authorities (DRA) themselves from relying on test data already in their possession for subsequent approval of generic versions of the medicine. n Practically, prevents DRAs from registering generic versions of a medicine for a period ranging from 5 to 10 years, unless the generic manufacturer independently carries out its own tests showing the safety and efficacy of the medicine. n Even when a medicine is not protected by any patent, pharmaceutical companies are assured a minimum period of monopoly because of data exclusivity. n It is the regulatory authorities that enforce data exclusivity rights. Unlike patents, the rights holder is spared the expense and embarrassment of being seen to enforce their rights in public. Public health agencies reduced to enforcing private commercial rights!!! What is the current practice for approval of generic drugs? As of now there are no data exclusivity provisions in Indian law. According to current practice in India, generic manufacturers have to apply for marketing approval of the generic version of a medicine to the DCGI. They are off-course required to provide bio-equivalence studies to prove that their generic version of the medicine is the therapeutic equivalent to the original and do not have to again submit test data regarding safety and efficacy which is already with the DCGI. For this the DCGI is entitled to rely on test data submitted by the pharmaceutical company who first sought marketing approval for the medicine. Why are public interest groups concerned? · 'Data exclusivity' measures have the effect of limiting generic competition. Generic production of drugs has been one of the most important, reliable, and powerful forces to reduce drug prices systematically in India and other developing regions, making essential, life-saving medicines such as antiretrovirals (ARVs) for the treatment of HIV/AIDS more affordable for individuals and the health systems that serve them. · If such data exclusivity provisions are introduced in India the Drug Controller of India (DCGI) will be barred from relying on test data, which is already in its possession in granting marketing approval to generic medicines. Instead it will be forced to ask the Indian generic manufacturer to carry out its own clinical trials showing efficacy and safety of the medicine. Theoretically data exclusivity provisions do not legally prevent generic manufacturers from generating their own test data for marketing approval. However in reality the financial resources and the time needed for conducting clinical trials for generating test data already available with the Drug Controller creates a market barrier that is difficult for generic manufacturers to overcome and delays the introduction of the generic drug by a number of years. · Data exclusivity measures in other countries is already preventing drug regulatory authorities from granting approval to generic medicines up to five to ten years, seriously delaying access to affordable generic versions of medicines. In Guatemala in February 2004, Atazanavir a drug used in HIV treatment (priced at US$ 10, 000 per person per year) received data exclusivity protection for five years under the law passed by the government. However a more affordable generic version of Atazanavir cannot enter the Guatemalan market until 2009 as drug regulatory authorities have to provide data exclusivity protection to test data related to Atazanavir. As a consequence drug Regulatory authorities in Guatemala are themselves barred from relying on it to approve of subsequent generic versions. · Coupled with the new patent law this can easily result in an absolute monopoly regime in pharmaceuticals, seriously affecting the manufacture and availability of affordable generic drugs. Can also seriously limit the ability of the government to make use of safeguards in their patent laws to protect public health. · Unnecessary and possible human injury associated with duplicative testing. What can organisations and individuals do? The government is considering amendments to the Drugs and Cosmetics Act as it is under pressure from US, and multinational pharmaceutical companies to amend the Act to include data exclusivity protection provisions (see pg 103 of 2005 PhRMA "Special 301" Submission to United States Trade Representative). · Write to the government of India to ask for more information on the issue and also to convey your concern on its possible decision on amending the Drugs and Cosmetic Act to include such provisions. · Brief the parliamentarians and policy makers on the implications of data exclusivity Mobilise public opinion against such move Data exclusivity committee seeks more time to handle pharma issues Monday, June 05, 2006 08:00 IST Joe C. Mathew, New Delhi The high level committee constituted by the Central Government to examine the need for providing data protection in the context of the provisions of Article 39.3 of the TRIPS Agreement has once again deferred its decision on data protection in pharmaceutical sector. The inter-ministerial meeting that was expected to give a final view on the issue last week ended up calling for more debate among various stake holders before a consensus decision can be taken. The recent meeting of the committee held here decided to ask the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion and Department of Health to re-examine their views on the issue and come up with their suggestions within two weeks. The final recommendations of the committee is thus to be delayed. According to the official sources, the committee has proposed a model that calls for a fix term data protection along with clauses of non-reliance of data for regulatory approvals during the period. The departments will have two weeks time to comment on the suggestion made by the committee. Industry views would also be sought, it is learnt. The decision of the data protection committee is to trigger intense lobbying by interest groups in the coming days. As of now, majority of the members are supporting a view to provide protection against disclosure of data and fixed term data exclusivity. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) has made it clear that they are recommending three years data exclusivity along with sufficient safeguards. The major reason for toeing this line is the increasing US pressure to introduce sufficient data exclusivity provisions before India can think of expanding its trade relations with that country. The committee is also of the opinion that the introduction of some data exclusivity provisions would induce USA and other countries to introduce less stringent TRIPS plus measures in the future free trade agreements with those countries. As pharmabiz had reported, the inter-ministerial meeting was convened after the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) took serious note of the inability of the high level committee to finalize its observations even after two years. The PMO has asked the Chemicals Ministry, which set up the committee, to finalise the report at the earliest. In its response to the PMO, the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals informed that while the committee had reached at a consensus with regard to data exclusivity in agro-chemical sector, it needs more time to finalise its recommendations on pharma sector. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20060608/712f1ea8/attachment.html From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Fri Jun 9 18:21:39 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 08:51:39 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Drew Clark as COPE Passes House Message-ID: <44896EDB.E237AB83@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> A lot of work ahead . . . COPE Act vote breakdown: > http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll241.xml Markey Amendment vote breakdown: > http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll239.xml (Lost in the flurry is the fact COPE mandates the broadcast flag) Seth > http://www.drewclark.com/2006/06/joe-barton-fred-upton-ed-markey-and-me.shtml Friday, June 09, 2006 The House passed the telecommunications legislation of Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, just past 10 p.m. on Thursday. The final vote tally on the bill was 321-101. Among Republicans, 215 supported it, with only 8 opposed. A majority of Democrats, 108 versus 92, voted for passage. The one independent voted no. Earlier in the evening, an amendment seeking to strengthen the Barton bill's "network neutrality" provisions failed 269-152. The amendment had been offered by Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. Normally when major legislation is being passed by Congress, even late in the evening or early in the morning, there is a crowd of reporters following the event. Not so last night. Shortly after the members left the floor for the evening, I caught up with Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Barton in the speakers' gallery. Barton was ready for a crowd, but since I was the only one there, here is our exclusive interview. DREW CLARK: How do you feel at this moment? JOE BARTON: Stunned and absolutely ecstatic. I think this sends a very strong signal to the country and the Senate that the county is ready for a broadband policy that promotes competition, good jobs for American workers, and new services for consumers. CLARK: What about the vote on network neutrality? BARTON: On that vote, we almost ended with a two-thirds vote against Markey. The premise of the Markey amendment is just flawed. If you had passed Markey, even if you go by his own analogy you would have forced the [auto] dealer to sell both cars at the same price. [He was referring to Markey's argument that both a Ferrari and a cheaper car could travel the same speed on the highway.] We want to empower the consumer to make choices from a broad array of services. The consumer will regulate the choice, not the regulator. CLARK: Are you at all afraid that without neutrality rules, we are letting the genie out of the bottle and creating a second-tier Internet? BARTON: That is a bogus argument. You will not see a second-tier Internet. These companies are going to spend billions of dollars and offer new choices in markets where there is one cable company. At this point, Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., walks into the Speaker's Gallery. I ask Barton about the prospects for the bill in the Senate, and he points to Upton, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. FRED UPTON: It is my understanding that the Senate Commerce Committee is likely to mark up their bill this month and be on the floor in July. We have established a very good relationship with [Alaska Republican and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman] Stevens and his members: [John] Sununu, [Sam] Brownback and others, in addition to Stevens, through work on digital television, decency legislation, we have [bridged] any breaches that might have existed. CLARK: What about the Universal Service Fund? There is a considerable difference with Stevens on that. BARTON: We will work with Sen. Stevens, and we will find a compromise that satisfies most of the parties. I fundamentally disagree that we should saddle a new service with a fee that in the Internet era makes no sense. Why put a fee that was based on a monopoly service? With wireless and the Internet, you don't need that model. We can give them the functionality of the Universal Service Fund without given them regulation. At this point, Ed Markey walks close to our circle, greets Barton, but turns to leave. ED MARKEY: I agree with everything he says, [referring to Barton. But I assume Markey is joking.] CLARK, to Barton: How is your relationship with FCC Chairman Kevin Martin? BARTON: I have a cordial personal and professional relationship with the Chairman and the other commissioners. CLARK: [I ask him about the pointed letter he sent to Martin on Wednesday over the issue of cable operators being required to carry broadcasters' digital multicasts.] BARTON: Multicast must-carry is another example; there is no reason in a broadband Internet competition model to impose regulatory [rules] based on some sort of constrained capacity. You don't need must-carry [when technologies] have no capacity constraints whatsoever. posted by Drew | 1:30 AM From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Fri Jun 9 19:56:54 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 10:26:54 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Re: Drew Clark as COPE Passes House Message-ID: <4489852E.CECE4E64@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> Okay, thanks Drew. I was indeed thinking of Stevens' Bill. Will send corrections . . . :-) Seth Drew Clark wrote: > > Seth, > > To my knowledge, COPE does not mandate the broadcast flag -- it is the > Stevens bill that has the flag included. > > Drew Clark > > On 6/9/06, Seth Johnson wrote: > > > > > > A lot of work ahead . . . > > > > COPE Act vote breakdown: > > > http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll241.xml > > > > Markey Amendment vote breakdown: > > > http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll239.xml > > > > (Lost in the flurry is the fact COPE mandates the broadcast flag) -- RIAA is the RISK! Our NET is P2P! http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/ftc DRM is Theft! We are the Stakeholders! New Yorkers for Fair Use http://www.nyfairuse.org [CC] Counter-copyright: http://realmeasures.dyndns.org/cc I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of this incidentally recorded communication. Original authorship should be attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of exclusive rights. From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Sat Jun 10 05:41:34 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 20:11:34 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] FLASHMOB TOMORROW: DRM Protest at Apple Stores Message-ID: <448A0E36.D7269501@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 4 Jun 2006 22:09:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Gregory Heller DefectiveByDesign.org To: praveen sinha Subject: DRM Action: 6/10 Apple Event Info =================================================================== DefectiveByDesign.org DefectiveByDesign.org DefectiveByDesign.org =================================================================== Dear praveen, RSVP now to join local freedom fighters from 10am to 12pm (local time) in: New York, San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Chicago, and Plano to Flash mob Apple stores If you want to make news on June 10th: * RSVP to appleflash at defectivebydesign.org or reply to this message with the city in the subject * Let us know what you would like to do from 10:00am to 12:00pm (take pictures, hand out leaflets, wear a hazmat suit) in the RSVP email * Sign up friends in the target city to join you in the fun (http://www.defectivebydesign.org/spread) If you are an experienced organizer or would like to assist with local logistics in any of these locations, please tell us when you RSVP. We will send out details on the location, contact info for your local organizer, and other logistics later this week. We look forward to making a big splash with you and your friends on June 10th! Henri, Peter & Gregory P.S. Please feel free to widely distribute this message to any local lists or social networking sites to spread the word! DefectiveByDesign.org is a project of the Free Software Foundation Fifty One Franklin Street, Fifth Floor Boston, MA 02110 United States - ----- End forwarded message ----- From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Sat Jun 10 07:38:12 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Fri, 09 Jun 2006 22:08:12 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Cogent is a Global Neutral Network Message-ID: <448A298C.59DFA541@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> (I have no relationship with Cogent that I know of, except that I am a free citizen of the United States, not an "information service" consumer. I therefore require the Internet as much as anybody else. Cogent is #1 in global pure play Internet capacity and #2 after UUNET [aka MCI, now Verizon] in total traffic. -- Seth) Link at bottom of every page on http://www.cogentco.com : > http://cogentco.com/htdocs/neutrality.php Net Neutrality Cogent practices net neutrality. We do not prioritize packet transmissions on the basis of the content of the packet, the customer or network that is the source of the packet, or the customer or network that is the recipient of the packet. It is Cogent's belief that both the customer and the Internet as a whole are best served if the application layer remains independent from the network. Innovation in the development of new applications is fueled by the individual's ability to reach as many people as possible without regard to complicated gating factors such as tiered pricing or bandwidth structures used by legacy service providers. Applications proliferatein a free market economy which is the Internet today. Map of Cogent Network: > http://cogentco.com/htdocs/map.php If you want to support a provider of actual Internet connectivity . . . * Set up your web server in a Cogent colocation center: > http://cogentco.com/htdocs/colocation.php * Arrange for your building to connect via Cogent: > http://cogentco.com/htdocs/buildings.php If you need a private prioritized network: > http://cogentco.com/htdocs/ethernet.php About Cogent: > http://cogentco.com/htdocs/about.php Cogent is a multinational Tier 1 Internet service provider ranked as the largest Ethernet Service Provider in the United States by Ovum-RHK and consistently ranked as one of the top five networks in the world. Our primary service offering consists of Internet access, data transport, colocation and managed modem services—all offered over our award-winning fiber optic, IP data-only network. We service two customer segments: “Corporate” (small businesses to Fortune 100 companies) and “NetCentric” (access providers and content providers whose businesses rely primarily on Internet access). Our innovative, facilities-based network spans across North America, across the Atlantic and throughout Western Europe. With over 29,500 miles of route fiber, we provide service to over 95 major markets and interconnect with over 1,750 other networks. Cogent was founded on the premise that bandwidth can be treated like a commodity—produce mass amounts and position it for sale based on price. Leveraging new technologies, we built our own IP data network independent of the traditional voice-based networks owned by the RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies). By doing so, we believed we could reduce the cost of high quality bandwidth down to a level never before offered in the marketplace. Less than five years after lighting our network backbone, we have become widely recognized as one of the largest carriers of Internet traffic in the world. We stand apart from our competitors in many areas, but key differentiators include: * Our customer connections are dedicated and non-oversubscribed * Our prices are the lowest in the industry * Our diversity from traditional carriers enables redundancy for customer data * Our simple network structure allows for rapid provisioning * Our ‘self-healing’ ring architecture design minimizes outages Cogent is Smart Business Internet. Cogent Communications is a public company trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol CCOI. Cogent is headquartered in Washington, D.C. For more information, click on the link below. Contact Us or Call 1-877-875-4432. From patrice at xs4all.nl Sun Jun 11 00:23:55 2006 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 20:53:55 +0200 Subject: [Commons-Law] "Intellectual Property" - the word(s) Message-ID: <20060610185355.GC48022@xs4all.nl> For years now I have been fuming agaisnt the use of the words 'intellectual property' - which I always write between brackets, prefering the immo more realistic 'Coasian' monicker 'proprietary knowledge'. I argued that 'IP' was a 'discursive war machine', an ideological term used by large transnational corporations ("and", as I never failed to add, "their allies in big government" ;-) to legitimize, or even moralize, their predatory and monopolistic practices. I also assumed that the term must have been 'invented' fairly recently, say somewhere after WWII. I was wrong on the last point, and might even have to reconsider my whole position (though, God forbids, not in favor of big business! ;-) Reading a most enjoyable biography of Albert Einstein, I learned what the name was of the hallowed Patent Office, where Einstein strated his salaried career: the "Eidgenossische Amt fuer geistiges Eigentum" ( Federal bureau for intellectual property), and this on the facsimile of a ducument dated 1901. So the thing must have been called like that since inception, I guess somewhere in the mid/ end 19th century (Someone Googles that for me, please? - my connectivity here sucks) Therefore, there must have been quite early some form of consensus as to the real existence of such a thing as the property of, if not ideas, at least of the embodiment of ideas, something that many of us tend to find inadmissible or even repugnant.Or is that the eternal imbroglio about 'commercial use'? OK, maybe you knew this all along. For me it still came as something of a disturbance. cheers ferom Glastonbury (UK) (Yep, blame it all on the Holy Grail...) patrizio & Diiiinoooos! From prashant at nalsartech.org Thu Jun 15 08:48:44 2006 From: prashant at nalsartech.org (Prashant Iyengar) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:48:44 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] "Intellectual Property" - the word(s) In-Reply-To: <20060610185355.GC48022@xs4all.nl> References: <20060610185355.GC48022@xs4all.nl> Message-ID: <20060615084844.ivgir2klb75wkcws@www.nalsartech.org> Hi, Couldnt resist posting my tuppence on this subject esp since this was as big a discovery to me sometime back. I think the myth of the 1960s WIPO origin of the phrase "Intellectual Property" is one that accosts most new critics of the domain (and stays with some of us for long thereafter). However, thanks to the multiplicity of sources on the internet, it is also one that is easily identified as being untrue. I'm excerpting a portion of the Wikipedia article on Intellectual Property History which certainly provides sufficient info to counter the myth. "As the words indicate, intellectual property is an asset product of the creativeness of the human mind, or intellect. The earliest use of the term appears to be from an October, 1845 Massachusetts Circuit Court ruling in the patent case Davoll et al. v. Brown. Justice Charles L. Woodbury wrote in that decision, "only in this way can we protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and interests as much a man's own...as the wheat he cultivates, or the flocks he rears." (Woodury & Minot, CCD Mass. 7 F. Cas. 197, 1845). The term also appears in Europe during the 19th century. French author A. Nion mentions "propriété intellectuelle" in his Droits civils des auteurs, artistes et inventeurs, published in 1846, and there may well have been earlier uses of the term. The use of the term to describe these statutorily granted rights has increased markedly in recent times, though it was rarely used without scare quotes until about the time of the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980 Paper by Mark A. Lemley, "Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding"; see Table 1, pp. 4-5.. However, worldwide use of the term was uncommon until actively promulgated by the World Intellectual Property Organization after WIPO's establishment in 1967. .. The term "intellectual property" does not occur in the United States Copyright Statutes, except in certain footnotes citing the titles of certain Bills. The term used in the statutes and in the Constitution is "exclusive rights". " Regardless of how old the term "intellectual property" is, it appears that patent, copyright and trademarks have been regarded as forms of property for quite some time. For instance, I have a copy of the 1906 edition (first edition 1848) of a book titled "Law of Personal Property" by Joshua Williams (Published by Sweet and Maxwell) which classifies the three as "Choses in Action" - a kind of property. I think it is not viable to mount a criticism against the term "intellectual property" from the standpoint of jurisprudence, because the term "property" itself has been historically so fluid as to accomodate the most uncommon of "things" e.g. goodwill or electricity. However, at best one may say that post WIPO, the phrase began to be used more commonly than it was before. This popularisation has had rabid affects of its own which should not escape mention/condemnation. Regards, Prashant Quoting Patrice Riemens : > For years now I have been fuming agaisnt the use of the words > 'intellectual property' - which I always write between brackets, > prefering the immo more realistic 'Coasian' monicker 'proprietary > knowledge'. I argued that 'IP' was a 'discursive war machine', an > ideological term used by large transnational corporations ("and", as I > never failed to add, "their allies in big government" ;-) to > legitimize, or even moralize, their predatory and monopolistic > practices. I also assumed that the term must have been 'invented' > fairly recently, say somewhere after WWII. > > I was wrong on the last point, and might even have to reconsider my > whole position (though, God forbids, not in favor of big business! ;-) > Reading a most enjoyable biography of Albert Einstein, I learned what > the name was of the hallowed Patent Office, where Einstein strated his > salaried career: the "Eidgenossische Amt fuer geistiges Eigentum" ( > > Federal bureau for intellectual property), and this on the facsimile of > a ducument dated 1901. So the thing must have been called like that > since inception, I guess somewhere in the mid/ end 19th century > (Someone Googles that for me, please? - my connectivity here sucks) > > Therefore, there must have been quite early some form of consensus as > to the real existence of such a thing as the property of, if not ideas, > at least of the embodiment of ideas, something that many of us tend to > find inadmissible or even repugnant.Or is that the eternal imbroglio > about 'commercial use'? > > OK, maybe you knew this all along. For me it still came as something of > a disturbance. > > cheers ferom Glastonbury (UK) (Yep, blame it all on the Holy Grail...) > patrizio & Diiiinoooos! > > > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law > From patrice at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 15 15:24:18 2006 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2006 11:54:18 +0200 Subject: [Commons-Law] fwdfyi: Sweden could scrap file-sharing ban Message-ID: <20060615095418.GD28887@xs4all.nl> ----- Forwarded message from Felix Stalder ----- From: Felix Stalder To: nettime-l at bbs.thing.net Subject: Sweden could scrap file-sharing ban Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2006 09:47:16 +0200 [It would be ironic if the raid on piratebay.org turned out to be the trigger to create an 'alternative compensation system' (levy on broadband to compensate right holders in order to legalize p2p file sharing). The guys from piratebay have been among the most vocal (and astute) critics of such an idea. [1], [2]. [1] http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0407/msg00020.html [2] http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0407/msg00032.html Felix] http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=4024&date=20060609 The Local: Sweden's news in English Sweden could scrap file-sharing ban Published: 9th June 2006 10:36 CET Sweden could introduce a charge on all broadband subscriptions to compensate music and film companies for the downloading of their work, while legalizing the downloading of copyright-protected material, justice minister Thomas Bodstrom has said. Bodstrom told Sydsvenskan that he could consider tearing up legislation passed last year that made it illegal to download copyrighted material. He said that a broadband charge was discussed by Swedish political parties last year, but the Moderates and Left Party rejected it. If they have changed their minds, he is willing to discuss any new proposals they might have, he said. The Left Party said yesterday that they wanted to scrap the current law because it had not reduced illegal file sharing. The Moderate Party has said that the whole area of copyright law should be overhauled to make it clearer, more effective and adapted to technological developments. "The most important thing for me is that authors and artists get paid and I will never retreat from that," he told the paper. "I have not changed my position, I still think that [the current law] is the best option for two reasons: first, it would be unfair on those who have subscribed to broadband and don't want to download, secondly because it would mean that the government was setting the price for goods, which I don't think we should do, whether those goods are in a shop or on the net," he told TT. "But if the Moderates and Left Party have made a 180 degree turn and changed their minds completely, of course they can come and tell us about it. But we had this discussion last year. If they now want to find a completely new solution and have new proposals or ideas we will naturally discuss them." But he emphasized that he favoured the current rules, which he said "has created a market, which would not have happened if we hadn't had this law. It is now possible to buy a song for ten kronor, and that is thanks to the new law." Bodstrom said he had not been approached directly by the Left Party or Moderates, and had only read about their proposals in the media. TT/The Local - ----http://felix.openflows.org------------------------------ out now: *|Manuel Castells and the Theory of the Network Society. Polity, 2006 *|Open Cultures and the Nature of Networks. Ed. Futura/Revolver, 2005 - ----- End forwarded message ----- # distributed via : no commercial use without permission From lawrence at altlawforum.org Sat Jun 17 11:11:37 2006 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 11:11:37 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] "Intellectual Property" - the word(s) In-Reply-To: <20060615084844.ivgir2klb75wkcws@www.nalsartech.org> Message-ID: Hi Patrice and Prashant Thanks for your mails, I also want to add some stuff which is culled from the notes that I made from Peter Drahos's Philosophy of Intellectual Property which may help stretch the time line of the debate further Lawrence * What we know call intellectual property and the unified discourse that it seems to signify really began as very different things and there is a need to provide a historical account of the emergence of this discourse called IP to interrogate the very basis of why IP protection took the form of a property jurisprudence * In roman law there was a distinction between law relating to persons, things and actions. The law relating to things is further divided in corporeal and incorporeal. Where does the idea of incorporeal emerge from. In stoic philosophy, 4 things are considered to be incorporeal namely time, space, void and lekta (meanings of words and sentences) * Lekta- is something that is expressible but not to be confused with the material expression; so they are signified meanings which are logically distinct from their physical representations or communications. Lekta are causally inert objects until they enter into a person¹s belief systems. * Once then enter into the realm of the bliefs of people, then they become corporeal objects, but there is something that has to be done before the lekta achieves a sense of being in the physical (similar to the modern day requirements of fixation and tangibility and various procedures of disclosure etc before one ca claim an IP right) * This process of significaion does two things: > * It firstly creates signifiers (physical representations ) > * It also generates entities with a specific meaning, which in the language of > the stoics amounts to the creation of an expressible * An expressible is also an abstract entity but it also has a convenient mental fiction. Once this abstract object enters into the world of the corporeal, by becoming embodied belief, it can lay a causal role in the social and productive relations between people. At the same time because it affects relations between people, it also becomes the subject of legal regulation * The contradiction in roman law is that while there is a category of the incorporeal and this also relates to the idea of legal rights, they are still firmly rooted within corporeal objects. * The link between an incorporeal right and an incorporeal object occurs when English property law distinguishes various fro of property classified as choses in action and property rights in chattels * In roman law the relationship between the incorporeal is not very clear and while it would be imagined that ownership would be a right incorporeals since it is a right and a right in intangible, yet it is classified as a res corporales * This distinction or contradiction lay dormant for a long time till the rediscovery of roman law in the 11th century ( See Harold Berman for an account of the modern legal system during this period) at Bologna where res incorporeales starts to find itself into other systems of jurisprudence including English law where it gets fused with the idea of rights in choses (choses in action); when property begins to loose its thinglikeness and paves the way for a recognition of property as a set of relationships between persons. * Initially common law always restricted assignments of choses in action but the courts of equity start diluting this principle and start allowing for assignments of choses in action * The linkage of the two begins to then create a very flexible notion of property and its flexibility arose precisely because it was not limited by some set of exact attributes. * The roman law category was then used by the English jurists to fashion a practical solution to a practical problem. Once the law recognizes property in abstract objects, the significance of the materiality which governed property relations in the physical world grew stronger because through abstract objects many more material object , both in number and in kind could be reached by individual property owners. * What was the justification of these rights? English law had to answer these question in light of patents and copyright. In both cases, the answers emerged from a highly theological tradition, heavily dependent on natural law theories of property. On 6/15/06 8:48 AM, "Prashant Iyengar" wrote: > Hi, > Couldnt resist posting my tuppence on this subject esp since this was > as big a discovery to me sometime back. I think the myth of the 1960s > WIPO origin of the phrase "Intellectual Property" is one that accosts > most new critics of the domain (and stays with some of us for long > thereafter). However, thanks to the multiplicity of sources on the > internet, it is also one that is easily identified as being untrue. > > I'm excerpting a portion of the Wikipedia article on Intellectual > Property History which certainly provides sufficient info to counter > the myth. > > "As the words indicate, intellectual property is an asset product of > the creativeness of the human mind, or intellect. The earliest use of > the term appears to be from an October, 1845 Massachusetts Circuit > Court ruling in the patent case Davoll et al. v. Brown. Justice > Charles L. Woodbury wrote in that decision, "only in this way can we > protect intellectual property, the labors of the mind, productions and > interests as much a man's own...as the wheat he cultivates, or the > flocks he rears." (Woodury & Minot, CCD Mass. 7 F. Cas. 197, 1845). > The term also appears in Europe during the 19th century. French author > A. Nion mentions "propriété intellectuelle" in his Droits civils des > auteurs, artistes et inventeurs, published in 1846, and there may well > have been earlier uses of the term. > > The use of the term to describe these statutorily granted rights has > increased markedly in recent times, though it was rarely used without > scare quotes until about the time of the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act > in 1980 Paper by Mark A. Lemley, "Property, Intellectual Property, and > Free Riding"; see Table 1, pp. 4-5.. However, worldwide use of the > term was uncommon until actively promulgated by the World Intellectual > Property Organization after WIPO's establishment in 1967. > > .. > > The term "intellectual property" does not occur in the United States > Copyright Statutes, except in certain footnotes citing the titles of > certain Bills. The term used in the statutes and in the Constitution > is "exclusive rights". > " > > Regardless of how old the term "intellectual property" is, it appears > that patent, copyright and trademarks have been regarded as forms of > property for quite some time. For instance, I have a copy of the 1906 > edition (first edition 1848) of a book titled "Law of Personal > Property" by Joshua Williams (Published by Sweet and Maxwell) which > classifies the three as "Choses in Action" - a kind of property. > > I think it is not viable to mount a criticism against the term > "intellectual property" from the standpoint of jurisprudence, because > the term "property" itself has been historically so fluid as to > accomodate the most uncommon of "things" e.g. goodwill or electricity. > > However, at best one may say that post WIPO, the phrase began to be > used more commonly than it was before. This popularisation has had > rabid affects of its own which should not escape mention/condemnation. > > Regards, > Prashant > > Quoting Patrice Riemens : > >> For years now I have been fuming agaisnt the use of the words >> 'intellectual property' - which I always write between brackets, >> prefering the immo more realistic 'Coasian' monicker 'proprietary >> knowledge'. I argued that 'IP' was a 'discursive war machine', an >> ideological term used by large transnational corporations ("and", as I >> never failed to add, "their allies in big government" ;-) to >> legitimize, or even moralize, their predatory and monopolistic >> practices. I also assumed that the term must have been 'invented' >> fairly recently, say somewhere after WWII. >> >> I was wrong on the last point, and might even have to reconsider my >> whole position (though, God forbids, not in favor of big business! ;-) >> Reading a most enjoyable biography of Albert Einstein, I learned what >> the name was of the hallowed Patent Office, where Einstein strated his >> salaried career: the "Eidgenossische Amt fuer geistiges Eigentum" ( >> >> Federal bureau for intellectual property), and this on the facsimile of >> a ducument dated 1901. So the thing must have been called like that >> since inception, I guess somewhere in the mid/ end 19th century >> (Someone Googles that for me, please? - my connectivity here sucks) >> >> Therefore, there must have been quite early some form of consensus as >> to the real existence of such a thing as the property of, if not ideas, >> at least of the embodiment of ideas, something that many of us tend to >> find inadmissible or even repugnant.Or is that the eternal imbroglio >> about 'commercial use'? >> >> OK, maybe you knew this all along. For me it still came as something of >> a disturbance. >> >> cheers ferom Glastonbury (UK) (Yep, blame it all on the Holy Grail...) >> patrizio & Diiiinoooos! >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> commons-law mailing list >> commons-law at sarai.net >> https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law >> > > > _______________________________________________ > commons-law mailing list > commons-law at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/commons-law From aprabhala at gmail.com Tue Jun 20 14:00:45 2006 From: aprabhala at gmail.com (Achal Prabhala) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:00:45 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Commoner 11 Message-ID: <3bda1f230606200130h3992fd35i911798e58c48db80@mail.gmail.com> *http://www.commoner.org.uk/* ** *Reinfusing the Commons* After ten issues, *The Commoner* makes the first timid steps toward changing format and organisation, towards making more explicit and visible the practices of cyber commoning it is grounded on. Watch this space, we are slow, but things will happen. Meanwhile, enjoy the edition that our two guest editors, Nate Holdren and Stevphen Shukaitis, have put together, an edition in which the different contributions are traversed by the problematic of commoning. Commoning, a term encountered by Peter Linebaugh in one of his frequent travels in the living history of commoners' struggles, is about the (re)production of commons. To turn a noun into a verb is not a little step and requires some daring. Especially if in doing so we do not want to obscure the importance of the noun, but simply ground it on what is, after all, life flow: there are no commons without incessant activities of commoning, of (re)producing in common. But it is through (re)production in common that communities of producers decide for themselves the norms, values and measures of things. Let us put the "tragedy of the commons" to rest then, the basis of neoliberal argument for the privatisation: there is no commons without commoning, there are no commons without communities of producers and particular flows and modes of relations, an insight we have focused on in issue 6 of this journal, entitled "What Alternatives? Commons and Communities, Dignity and Freedom." Hence, what lies behind the "tragedy of the commons" is really the tragedy of the destruction of commoning through all sorts of structural adjustments, whether militarised or not. As the guest editors of this issue rightly point out, the question of commoning is linked to the question of "refusal of work," that magic expression used in the 1970s to highlight the frontline clash of value practices. The term, however, is not meant as a refusal of doing, of commoning, of (re)producing in common, but on the contrary is an affirmation of all this in the only way possible when in the presence of a social force, capital, that aspires to couple its preservation to that of the commoners through the imposition of its measures of things. In these conditions, "refusal of work" as refusal of capital's measures, and commoning as affirmation of *other *measures are the two sides of the same struggle. How can we refuse capital's measure without participating in the constitution of other common measures? And how can we participate in this commonality without at the same time setting a limit, refusing capital's measure? The setting of a limit to the beast and the constitution of an "outside" are two inescapable coordinates of struggle. It is through the problematic of this polarity that we could read the very diverse contributions of this issue of The Commoner. Massimo De Angelis ___ In June 2005, at the centenary celebration of the Industrial Workers of the World, historian and Midnight Notes Collective member Peter Linebaugh made a provocative remark in a talk about the commons. He said the World Bank also talks about commons.[i] An important difference in how we think about the commons, he suggested, should be that we pay attention to practices of commoning, as human activities. In light of this remark, we would like to suggest a gloss on the title of this journal. Commoner, not only as someone who dwells within and relies upon the commons, but also as someone who commons. To common: to produce and hold in common. Just as capitalist production has as its fundamental product social relations in the form of the capital relation, commoning produces social relations in the form of commons, freely associated humanity. It is in this sense that we want to link the commons with the work of Mario Tronti, linking commoning with the refusal of work. What is the relationship between refusal of work and commons? Well, first, what do we mean by refusal of work? It has been noted before that 'refusal of work' is not simply 'refusal to work,' but it is refusal of the work relationship. Work has at least two moments: the purchase by the capitalist of our bodies and time in the form of the commodity labor power, and the capitalist attempt to make use of our bodies and time after the purchase is made. Refusal of work spans both moments: the attempt to break out of the need to sell oneself as a commodity, and the attempt to resist or completely refuse being made use of if one has sold oneself. How does this relate to commons? We see it this way: another name for the compulsion to sell labor power is 'enclosure.' And it is only within the enclosed spaces of workplaces (which, to be clear, for us include homes, classrooms – potentially any moment of life) and by resort to the violent mechanisms of enclosure that the capitalist can make use of us for surplus value production. The commons, then, in these terms is two things. It is a name for spaces, times, histories, memories, moments of life that are not – or at least not fully – enclosed, ruled by and functional for capital. It is the uses of our bodies and times that are different from and antithetical to the capitalist use. We do not only mean this in an abstract and utopian sense. The commons were constructed; the new commons are being constructed. Commoning is a process of organization. In a sense the commons are always already organized. They do not exist without organization(s), sometimes formal but more often informal. The simple fact of producing the commons is a moment of refusal of the values of capitalism. Refusal of work is simultaneously an attempt to produce new commons, new forms of commoning (we can all point to relationships, memories, styles, images, and knowledges produced through our involvements in strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of refusal), an attempt to defend existing commons, and a use of existing commons to attack – or defend ourselves against – capitalism. If we do not have a type of commons in the social relationships with our comrades then our efforts are less likely to succeed. Stan Weir recognized this when he stressed the importance of informal work groups, and emphasized their empirical existence within important struggles. This issue of the Commoner was originally intended to commemorate the 40thanniversary of the publication of Mario Tronti's *Operai e Capitale*, a text which had an enormous impact on the Italian far left and whose influence is most present today in the work of Antonio Negri. Part of the project for we commoners is to analyze the facts and questions that Tronti posed: "How is the working class made, from the inside, how does it function inside capital, how does it work, how does it struggle, in what sense does it accept the system, in what way does it strategically refuse it?" Our goal for this issue is a modest one: to show the continuing relevance of Tronti's work and to draw more attention to this neglected body of Marxist thought.[ii] We expect that we are largely preaching to the choir when it comes to the readership of *the Commoner*. Some of the contributors to this issue have decided to directly engage with and develop Tronti's work at a theoretical level; others carry out inquiry into trends and practices within the global movements of commoners and of capitalism. While Angela Mitropoulos opens the issue by applying ideas from Tronti's writings to explore issues around immigration and autonomy, Ida Dominijanni closes it by exploring the relation between Tronti's thought and the feminist politics of difference. As Nick Dyer-Witheford explores connections between species-being and the specter of commonism, George Ciccariello-Maher begins to draw together a line of thought based on the logic of separation that connects thinkers such as Sorel, Tronti, Negri, and Fanon. In exploring the connection between refusing work and creating new commons it is important to not give the impression that this is not a difficult or in some cases even impossible task, especially for those who are engaged in forms of caring and affective labor. For as argued by Alisa Del Re, to build a conception of utopia upon refusing work that does not take into account the labors of social reproduction most often carried about by females is to base one's notions of freedom on the continued exploitation of female labor. This issue is taken up by Precarias a la Deriva in their consideration of what form a strike from such constrained positions might take as well as a previously published article by Silvia Federici from the early 80s which elaborates on the revolt against housework that took place during the 70s coming out of campaigns such as Wages for Housework. What runs through all the contributions is the attempt to understand refusal and commoning in order to practice both better. To us, commoning and refusal are one and the same. Freely associated production of social relations is precisely the real movement that abolishes the present state of things. Refusal defends and produces the commons. Let us then, following the whimsical suggestion of p.m., hang golden globes all over marking points for the congealing of new planetary commons and revolt. The commons nourish and produce refusal. In the words of the IWW constitution, by the subversive practices of the global movement "we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old." Nate Holdren + Stevphen Shukaitis ------------------------------ [i] Peter Linebaugh, "Magna Charta and Practical Communism," talk delivered at the centenary of the Industrial Workers of the World, 2005. Those interested can find the text and audio of a similar presentation that he delivered to the "Contested Commons / Trespassing Publics" conference at Sarai in New Delhi here: http://www.sarai.net/events/ip_conf/ip_conf.htm. [ii] At the time of this writing, less than 1/3 of Tronti's first book and no other work by Tronti have been translated. Interested readers can consult the available passages online ( http://affinityproject.org/theories/tronti.html), and a recent electronic discussion of Tronti (http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/tronti). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20060620/ac8ff744/attachment.html From gopa.kumar at centad.org Tue Jun 20 15:41:24 2006 From: gopa.kumar at centad.org (gopa kumar) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 15:41:24 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] News on Dta Exclusivity from the Hindu Business Line and Pharmabiz Message-ID: <00e601c69451$e5f30a50$0f01a8c0@GOPANOTEBOOK> The data-exclusivity debate hots up P.T. Jyothi Datta Prime Minister's Office moots high-level meeting on the issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Data-exclusivity ensures that information submitted by drug or agro-chemical companies while seeking a marketing approval is kept confidential by the Government -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mumbai , June 19 The rumble over data-exclusivity is getting louder, with international aid agencies and political parties joining the debate. Data-exclusivity ensures that information submitted by drug or agro-chemical companies while seeking a marketing approval is kept confidential by the Government for a fixed period of time, when even the regulatory authority is not allowed to rely on this classified data. Contentious Issue And the heightened interest in data-exclusivity is because a high-level meeting mooted by the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) is expected to swing a decision one way or the other. The PMO is said to have initiated the meeting as inter-ministerial interactions failed to chart a course on the contentious issue. In a recent letter to the Prime Minister, BJP's Dr Murli Manohar Joshi says, "Providing of data exclusivity has serious implications for the role of domestic enterprises in the fields of pharmaceutical and agro-chemical products. If data exclusivity is conceded domestic enterprises would be prevented from taking marketing approvals on the basis of the data submitted by the first enterprise who had generated the data and submitted the same for taking marketing approval." Intellectual Property Rights Writing in his capacity as the Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce, Dr Joshi, echoes the World Health Organisation's recommendation on data exclusivity: That developing countries be well advised to keep the systems of Intellectual Property Rights and drug regulation separate and reject efforts to make connections between the two. Earlier this month, international aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) - Doctors Without Borders - said in its letter to the Prime Minister that the Drugs and Cosmetics Act was a legislation related to health and improving access to drugs. "An amendment to implement an intellectual property agreement in the Drugs and Cosmetics Act can have a serious impact on the approval and availability of generic versions of essential drugs," the letter said. Exclusive Rights "If the Indian Government starts providing exclusive rights over test data, this will delay generic competition from Indian pharmaceutical companies even in cases where the medicines are not patent protected," the MSF letter points out. But with the debate set to go down to the wire, innovator companies insist that India has an international legal obligation to protect commercially sensitive data generated during the development of regulated products. And protection of this data was important for new products and investments to come into the country. WHO against data exclusivity that hampers access to medicines Tuesday, June 20, 2006 08:00 IST Our Bureau, New Delhi The World Health Organisation has made it clear that it advises against any move to link drug regulatory system and intellectual property system through 'data exclusivity'. In a briefing note on access to medicines, WHO says that two separate legal and regulatory systems, the intellectual property system and the drug regulatory system, have different objectives and should and function independently be administered separately. "Recent efforts to integrate these two systems via data exclusivity "linkage" or other means are likely to have negative implications for access to medicines. Thus, (developing) countries would be well advised to keep these systems separate and to reject any and all efforts to make connections between them," it said. According to WHO briefing note, from the perspective of public health and access to medicines, it is preferable not to grant data exclusivity. It also points out that there is no requirement under international law that countries grant data exclusivity as they have only been asked to provide data protection. However, the briefing note goes on to say that if a country, for some reason does grant data exclusivity or otherwise provides data protection beyond that mandated by TRIPS, it is important to limit its potential negative implications on access to medicines. "This can for example be done by limiting its duration and/or scope (e.g. only for new chemical entities) and by providing that reliance on the originator's safety and efficacy data is allowed in case of compulsory licensing," it stated. Calling data exclusivity provision as a "TRIPS-plus" requirement, it stated that all TRIPS-plus requirements like patent term extensions, limitations of the grounds for compulsory licenses, linkage between patent status and generic registration, etc will complicate and/or delay the marketing of generics, and thereby reduce access to medicines. "Yet, while these requirements are going beyond the TRIPS Agreement -or, in other words, are not required by TRIPS- in recent years, "TRIPS-plus" requirements have at times been incorporated in bilateral or regional free trade negotiations, in bilateral investment agreements and in other international agreements and treaties. From the perspective of access to medicines, this is a worrying trend; countries should therefore be vigilant and should not 'trade away' their people's right to have access to medicines," WHO cautioned. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20060620/1621c721/attachment.html From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Tue Jun 20 20:24:19 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 10:54:19 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Preserve Net Neutrality Standards for the Internet! Message-ID: <44980C1B.A1010041@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> (We are seeking more supporters to make sure our Congressfolks see and hear this proposed legislation today and tomorrow. If you want to contact me, my number is (212) 543-4266. -- Seth) > http://www.dpsproject.com Preserve the Internet Standards for Net Neutrality Facing Reality on Net Neutrality (Click here for the proposed "Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006" [http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html]) Is there a place for fresh thinking and new recommendations in the infamous "network neutrality" debate? The advocates below suggest there is. In the following document we recommend the prosecution of distorted offerings of Internet connectivity as "deceptive practice." When several incumbent telephone carriers announced their plans to give preferential treatment to favored Internet sites, a wide range of Internet users and designers felt in their guts that it somehow violated the very meaning of the term "Internet." On the other hand, many of these people feel uncomfortable letting Congress set parameters for Internet service. It is safer to deal with Internet offerings as a market issue, not to legislate fundamental protocols or router behavior. As a way to break the impasse, we offer the following draft language. We believe the gut feeling -- that one cannot discriminate and still call the service "Internet" -- is founded in reality. The very term "Internet" suggests that participants assume their traffic will be passed without interference; the concept is backed up by over thirty years of standards and ISP behavior. In effect, under the present circumstances, the system of developing specifications, which involves the writing and review of formal documents known as RFCs, which has held since the beginning of the Internet, would be tossed out by a few large providers and equipment manufacturers and replaced by corporate fiat. The loss of an open, consistent, and predictable platform would also crimp innovation at higher levels. Thus, we recommend that Congress clarify the meaning of offering Internet connectivity and set up rules for the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the definition. * Facing Reality on Net Neutrality (http://dpsproject.com/) * Two Types of Neutrality (http://www.dpsproject.com/twotypes.html) * Proposal: The Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006 (http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html) Signed, (Affiliations listed for identification only) John Bachir, Lead Developer, Lyceum Daniel Berninger, Senior Analyst, Tier1 Research Dave Burstein, Editor, DSL Prime Steven Cherry, Senior Associate Editor, IEEE Spectrum Gordon Cook, Editor, Publisher and Owner since 1992 of the COOK Report on Internet Protocol Cynthia H. de Lorenzi, Washington Bureau for ISP Advocacy Miles R. Fidelman, President, The Center for Civic Networking Richard Forno (bio: http://www.infowarrior.org/rick.html) Bob Frankston, Telecommunications Analyst and Visionary Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University Lucas Gonze Saleem Jahangeer, Ph.D. Seth Johnson, New Yorkers for Fair Use Paul Jones, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Peter D. Junger, Professor of Law Emeritus, Case Western Reserve University Bruce Kushnick, chairman, Teletruth Michael Maranda, President, Association For Community Networking Sascha Meinrath, Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, Free Press Edward Mills, Independent Technology Consultant John Mitchell, InteractionLaw Steve Mossbrook, President, Wyoming.com Andy Oram, Editor, O'Reilly Media Dave Pentecost, documentary television producer Jan L. Peterson, Software Developer David P. Reed, contributor to original Internet Protocol design Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley Clay Shirky, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University Jay Sulzberger, New Yorkers for Fair Use Siva Vaidhyanathan, Department of Culture and Communication, New York University Eric F. Van de Velde, Ph.D., Director, Library Information Technology, California Institute of Technology Esme Vos, Founder, Muniwireless David Weinberger, Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center Michael J. Weisman, JD, LLM, Technology and Intellectual Property Law and Policy Brett Wynkoop, Wynn Data Ltd. From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Tue Jun 20 21:59:19 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 12:29:19 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Summary for Congress of Our NN Act Proposal Message-ID: <4498225F.C545A738@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> John Mitchell has just produced a wonderful summary of our proposed legislative approach for Congressional staff. See below. Seth > http://www.dpsproject.com/CongressSummary.html Introduction and Summary for Congressional Staff (Click here for the proposed "Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006" [http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html]) Attached is a fresh approach to "network neutrality." It recognizes that the Internet is, in fact, neutral. Neither slick promotions offering “premium” or “exclusive” services, nor thoughtful legislation, can change that. Any service offered by one of the many networks that form a part of the “network of networks” called “the Internet” which favors the delivery of some data packets over others based on their content, source or destination, is simply not “the Internet.” To pass off access to specially modified networks as “Internet access” is false and deceptive. In over thirty years of global standards and Internet service provider behavior, Internet participants have come to assume that their traffic will be passed without interference. Because the global “Internet Protocols” of the Internet are based on this concept, neutrality is inherent in it. So, when Congress seeks to preserve network neutrality, it need not do so by “regulating the Internet,” as it would be difficult and unnecessary to legislate fundamental global protocols of Internet router behavior. Rather, it is far better to allow Internet-connected services and specially-tailored networks (even if perceived as more valuable to some) to compete freely in the marketplace, regulating those who would misrepresent them as “Internet” services or “Internet access.” This has the critical advantage of not allowing the standards to be overridden by these custom modifications. Without standards, there is no competition or ability to connect between networks. For as long as we have had an Internet, we have also had “local access networks,” or LAN’s, typically operated within a single company. Today, major network access providers have the capability of offering very large LAN’s, and even networks of LAN’s, which may look a lot like the Internet to many unsuspecting consumers. If such LAN providers happen to be the only viable choice for Internet access, they will have the power, working with a few major corporations, to replace the Internet access for millions of Americans with access to a “walled garden” containing only such portion of the Internet as they allow, and in which only those companies willing and able to pay will be able to have access – or best access – to their subscribers. It may be the case that some consumers will prefer the more limited access being offered, but such offers must compete on their own merits, and not at the loss of an open, consistent, and predictable platform for the transport of innovative products and services by all. Conversely, if networks that treat applications specially wish to create a global network consistent with their practices, they can enter into appropriate processes and work to develop standards. Thus, this proposal recommends that Congress authorize the Federal Trade Commission to enforce a prohibition on false and deceptive representations pertaining to “Internet access” while leaving innovative networks free to develop their own proprietary services, so long as their nature is not misrepresented. This approach will enable consumers to make informed comparisons among the Internet access being offered as distinct from other products and services offered by their Internet access providers, while assuring that anyone who purchases true Internet access will get what they bargained for – access to the global Internet, unfettered communications throughout the globe, and access by myriad competitors, individuals, advocates, and news sources whose products, services and communications can be made available to them on a level playing field. * Introduction and Summary for Congressional Staff (http://www.dpsproject.com/CongressSummary.html) * Facing Reality on Net Neutrality (http://dpsproject.com/) * Two Types of Neutrality (http://www.dpsproject.com/twotypes.html) * Proposal: The Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006 (http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html) From sunil at mahiti.org Tue Jun 20 22:22:18 2006 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:22:18 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Please endorse: Joint statement against KORUS FTA Message-ID: <1150822338.5185.13.camel@localhost.localdomain> -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: PatchA Reply-To: participants at asia-commons.net To: participants at asia-commons.net Subject: [participants] Please endorse: Joint statement against KORUS FTA Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 23:55:56 +0900 Dear all, Below is joint statement for the public health and access to medicine, and against KORUS FTA including IPR negotiation. We are now organizing endorsements from civil society organizations. Please check below and if you want to endorse it, please let me know your name and organization's name. The Deadline is June 21st. Thanks and Best, Kim Jeong-woo (PatchA) Korean Progressive Network 'Jinbonet' Email) i at patcha.jinbo.net Website) www.jinbo.net | nofta-ip.jinbo.net - --------------------------------------------------------------- Joint Statement against KORUS FTA We say NO to FTA, which threatens the people¹s health right June **, 2006 People¹s health is under threat. Neoliberal globalization is the keyword explaining the current global political and economic system. Its policies and orders, implemented through multinational as well as bilateral or regional trade agreements, deteriorate public interest and deprive the people of their rights to access to public service in the name of ³free trade². FTA aims to promote privatization and commercialization of essential services such as health care, education, culture, electricity, and water and every aspects of life. As a result, it restricts access to medicine and threatens food security and safe environment. The proposed KORUS FTA contains provisions that put profit of transnational corporations (TNCs) ahead of people¹s health right. These are the reasons why we say No to KORUS FTA. 1. FTA facilitates privatization and commercialization of public services including healthcare system We believe that everyone has the right to health service such as prevention, treatment and rehabilitation based on one¹s needs. Commercialization of health service and privatization of public health facilities restrict people¹s access to proper health care. Approving profit hospitals and private health insurance system undermines the national healthcare system which has been mandatory in Korea. We oppose the KORUS FTA as it undermines the healthcare system as public goods. 2. TRIPS plus provisions seriously restrict people¹s access to medicine Every nation is responsible to ensure its people to access medicine at affordable price. FTAs seriously block people¹s access to medicine by forcing various measures to strengthen patent and intellectual property protections on medicine. For instance, linkage between patent and drug approval, patent term extension for examination delay, exclusive right on drug approval data, expanding patentable subject matter, limiting the circumstances under which compulsory license may be issued, and prohibiting parallel import would restrict the entry of generic competitors and undermine the ability to access to medicine at affordable price. We are also concerned of other measures such as A-7 average price for innovative drug used to raise the drug price and serve to benefit patent owners. We demand that any measures that restrict compulsory licensing and parallel import against the spirit of Doha Declaration on TRIPS Agreement and Public Health should be stopped. 3. FTA threatens the safety of food and water We believe that water is a common resource that everyone has the right to get access. Also, safety should be the priority concern in food trading. We worry that the decision to restart import of beef infected of mad cow disease is made by Korean government simply because beef was considered as a barrier to FTA talk. It should have been based on medical and epidemiologic evidence provided by independent party. The SPS & TBT should not be used as measures to promote export against people¹s health. Thus we oppose KORUS FTA that privatize water; reach agreements on SPS & TBT that threatens health; and decide import of beef on political basis. 4. The investor-to-government claim system can infringe on government¹s duty and right to protect public goods. We have witnessed many cases that investor-to-government claim system seriously infringes on people¹s right to health, safe environment, and public security system. Under NAFTA, Ethyl and UPS claims against government showed that public health policy could be ruined for the profit of corporations. We also know the case that the attempt of New Brunswick state government to introduce a policy to improve public health system was set back by an investor¹s claim. Therefore we oppose the KORUS FTA that contains provisions of investor-to-government claim system. Any international agreement, bilateral and regional trade agreements should not contain provisions that adversely affect people¹s health status. We conclude that KORUS FTA would infringe on people¹s health right. Also we conclude that it will be a barrier to the global movement to enforce people¹s health right. Thus we support the movement opposing KORUS FTA and we ask individuals and organizations all over the world to join our action. June ***, 2006 - -- Sunil Abraham, sunil at mahiti.org http://www.mahiti.org "Vijay Kiran" IInd Floor, 314/1, 7th Cross, Domlur Bangalore - 560 071 Karnataka, INDIA Ph/Fax: +91 80 51150580. Mob: (91) 9342201521 UK: (44) 02000000259 From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Wed Jun 21 12:12:28 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 02:42:28 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Infoworld, etc. Cover New Net Neutrality Proposals Message-ID: <4498EA54.4D67DE9E@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> Infoworld: > http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/06/20/79453_HNnetneutrality_1.html Computerworld: > http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001313 Networkworld: > http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/062006-groups-push-alternate-net-neutrality.html --- Groups push alternate 'Net neutrality proposals By Grant Gross 06/20/06 To advance the 'Net neutrality debate in the U.S. Congress, two groups have offered separate proposals to prohibit broadband providers from discriminating against competing Internet content, while letting providers separate part of their networks for specialized products. Civil liberties advocacy groups, the Center for Democracy and Technology (http://www.cdt.org/) and New Yorkers for Fair Use (http://www.nyfairuse.org/), composed of businesspeople and technology advocates, both released 'Net neutrality proposals Tuesday, two days before the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee (http://commerce.senate.gov/public/) is set to debate the issue as part of a hearing to amend a wide-ranging communications bill. The proposals differ in their approaches, but both would let broadband providers, such as AT&T and Comcast, separate part of their broadband pipes for services they or their partners offer. On the public Internet, however, broadband providers would be required to treat all content equally. The CDT wants a "narrowly tailored" set of 'Net neutrality rules, even though large broadband providers have questioned the need for new regulations, said Leslie Harris, CDT's executive director. Broadband providers have said there's no need for new rules because there's no evidence of their blocking or impairing competing content, but a lack of broadband competition makes for a "significant risk" of that happening, Harris said. If Congress fails to pass a 'Net neutrality law now, it will be difficult to come back later and force broadband providers to change their business plans retroactively if problems do occur, she said. "In our view, the Internet is too important -- the openness of the Internet, the democratic platform it creates, the economic engine it creates -- to take that level of risk," Harris added. The CDT proposal (http://www.cdt.org/speech/20060620neutrality.pdf) would require broadband providers to treat all Internet content and services equally. At the same time, the providers could experiment with private network services where they could make exclusive agreements -- a practice some 'Net neutrality advocates object to -- with services such as broadband video. The CDT plan would let Congress monitor the Internet for evidence of discriminatory treatment. The second proposal (http://www.dpsproject.com/), authored by Seth Johnson, a member of New Yorkers for Fair Use, also would let providers offer tiered services, but they would not be able to classify them as Internet services if they discriminate against competing content. Broadband services that divide content sent over the Internet would destroy the standards that are the foundation of the current Internet, Johnson said. If broadband providers set their own transport standards, the Internet would stop being a public medium, he said. Among those endorsing the Johnson proposal are David P. Reed, a contributor to the original IP design; Miles R. Fidelman, president of The Center for Civic Networking; and Peter D. Junger, law professor emeritus at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. Congress needs to clarify the meaning of Internet connectivity, the Johnson group said in an e-mail sent Tuesday. "In effect, under the present circumstances, the system of developing specifications, which involves the writing and review of formal documents known as RFCs, which has held since the beginning of the Internet, would be tossed out by a few large providers and equipment manufacturers and replaced by corporate fiat," the group said. "IP-layer neutrality is not a property of the Internet. It *is* the Internet." From k.ravisrinivas at gmail.com Wed Jun 21 15:20:56 2006 From: k.ravisrinivas at gmail.com (ravi srinivas) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:20:56 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] News on Data Exclusivity Message-ID: Any idea about the recommendations of the committee appointed by the govt. Have they been published. I understand that Prof.N.S.Gopalakrishnan has written a report on that.Does anyone has an idea about it / read it. ravi srinivas -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20060621/447e3d54/attachment.html From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Wed Jun 21 20:32:51 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 11:02:51 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] Visiting or Contacting the Hill on Net Neutrality? Message-ID: <44995F9B.2CBF4B95@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> The folks backing this proposal[1] would be very pleased if anybody visiting the Congressional offices that will be working on the Stevens Bill tomorrow, would bring along the following and show it to them. We specifically prepared this legislative proposal to get the discourse on track. We think it's a powerful approach that will transform their understanding. If this is in front of those who are working on markup of the Stevens Bill, it will move BOTH sides closer to the right position. Do read John Mitchell's summary -- it is quite effective and has major impact in sorting out this issue and setting the exact right frame. So please show the legislative folks, or point them to, the following. Print them out and bring them with you on the Hill: 1) The Congressional Summary below: > http://www.dpsproject.com/CongressSummary.html 2) The draft legislative language: > http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html Thank you to any and all who are able to help! Seth [1] Endorsers at http://www.dpsproject.com > John Mitchell has just produced a wonderful summary of our > proposed legislative approach for Congressional staff. See > below. > > :-) > > Seth > > > http://www.dpsproject.com/CongressSummary.html > > Introduction and Summary for Congressional Staff > > (Click here for the proposed "Internet Platform for Innovation > Act of 2006" [http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html]) > > Attached is a fresh approach to "network neutrality." It > recognizes that the Internet is, in fact, neutral. Neither slick > promotions offering “premium” or “exclusive” services, nor > thoughtful legislation, can change that. Any service offered by > one of the many networks that form a part of the “network of > networks” called “the Internet” which favors the delivery of some > data packets over others based on their content, source or > destination, is simply not “the Internet.” To pass off access to > specially modified networks as “Internet access” is false and > deceptive. > > In over thirty years of global standards and Internet service > provider behavior, Internet participants have come to assume that > their traffic will be passed without interference. Because the > global “Internet Protocols” of the Internet are based on this > concept, neutrality is inherent in it. So, when Congress seeks > to preserve network neutrality, it need not do so by “regulating > the Internet,” as it would be difficult and unnecessary to > legislate fundamental global protocols of Internet router > behavior. Rather, it is far better to allow Internet-connected > services and specially-tailored networks (even if perceived as > more valuable to some) to compete freely in the marketplace, > regulating those who would misrepresent them as “Internet” > services or “Internet access.” This has the critical advantage > of not allowing the standards to be overridden by these custom > modifications. Without standards, there is no competition or > ability to connect between networks. > > For as long as we have had an Internet, we have also had “local > access networks,” or LAN’s, typically operated within a single > company. Today, major network access providers have the > capability of offering very large LAN’s, and even networks of > LAN’s, which may look a lot like the Internet to many > unsuspecting consumers. If such LAN providers happen to be the > only viable choice for Internet access, they will have the power, > working with a few major corporations, to replace the Internet > access for millions of Americans with access to a “walled garden” > containing only such portion of the Internet as they allow, and > in which only those companies willing and able to pay will be > able to have access – or best access – to their subscribers. It > may be the case that some consumers will prefer the more limited > access being offered, but such offers must compete on their own > merits, and not at the loss of an open, consistent, and > predictable platform for the transport of innovative products and > services by all. Conversely, if networks that treat applications > specially wish to create a global network consistent with their > practices, they can enter into appropriate processes and work to > develop standards. > > Thus, this proposal recommends that Congress authorize the > Federal Trade Commission to enforce a prohibition on false and > deceptive representations pertaining to “Internet access” while > leaving innovative networks free to develop their own proprietary > services, so long as their nature is not misrepresented. This > approach will enable consumers to make informed comparisons among > the Internet access being offered as distinct from other products > and services offered by their Internet access providers, while > assuring that anyone who purchases true Internet access will get > what they bargained for – access to the global Internet, > unfettered communications throughout the globe, and access by > myriad competitors, individuals, advocates, and news sources > whose products, services and communications can be made available > to them on a level playing field. > > * Introduction and Summary for Congressional Staff > (http://www.dpsproject.com/CongressSummary.html) > * Facing Reality on Net Neutrality (http://dpsproject.com/) > * Two Types of Neutrality > (http://www.dpsproject.com/twotypes.html) > * Proposal: The Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006 > (http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html) > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=2881973&user_secret=1e3a49c3 From hbs.law at gmail.com Thu Jun 22 10:41:15 2006 From: hbs.law at gmail.com (Hasit seth) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:41:15 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Greg Aharonian on Information Processing... Message-ID: <8b60429e0606212211gc7df820n8c7a12a41ca11c02@mail.gmail.com> Hi, Greg Aharonian is (or was?) a vocal critic of software patents. However, it seems that his views have titled a little bit. The big punching bag of anti-software patent activists is that mere processing or alteration of data (information) cannot be patentable because that is sort of math or statistics. Here, Greg explains with a reference to a book as to how fundamental is alteration or tranformation of data is to physical processes. Sometimes it is almost funny to see the religio-fanatic opposition to software patents. For example, a software based telecom switch mimics a relay based telephone exchange, but for activists this would be just pure mathematics. This ostrich-in-the-sand attitude ignores the emerging view that information processing is perhaps as core as atomic interactions. Greg mentions a book and another one to try is "A New Kind of Science" by Wolfram (full book online here: http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/toc.html ). But if information processing is so fundamental then doesn't it mean that it should be kept away from patenting? This argument is like saying since Ohms law is a simple ratio-proportion relation, all electronics should be kept away from patenting. By denying economic incentives to development of information science, activists are doing great disservice to progress of a technical field. Does anybody hold activists responsible for the damage they cause by opposing something sensible? Patents need not be the only or even one tool of promoting investment, research, creation of applications, etc. But till a better subsitute is found patents need to be encouraged in software and information sciences. Ching-Ching (non-alcoholic version), Hasit ==================================================== c/o Mail Stop Comments P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, VA 22313-1450 Dear Ray / Linda, Your office is currently seeking comments on the "Interim Guidelines for Examination of Patent Applications for Patent Subject Matter". One of the questions you ask is: "Is the distinction between physical transformation and data transformation appropriate in the context of the Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Interim Guidelines?" My first comment is that this question is worded incorrectly. Something more appropriate would be: – Is the distinction between physical transformation and data/information transformation appropriate in the context of the Patent Subject Matter eligibility Interim Guidelines? – given that one standard definition of "information" is a "set of data". To this latter question, and even the original question, the answer based on modern physics is "NO" - transforming data and transforming information is always a physical transformation, in light of information's role as a fundamental physical quantity of modern physics. Included in this mailing is a copy of a book for your reading, titled "Decoding the Universe: how the new science of information is explaining everything in the cosmos from our brains to black holes" by Charles Seife (Viking Press, 2006). It is an excellent introduction to the physics of information, and should help your Office relate the question you ask to developments in modern physics. Information is physical. Transforming information is a physical transformation. Any other view is a denial of the science of modern physics, a science the patent system helps progress. There is no progress in denying any aspect of such science. If you have any questions, please contact me. Thanks, Greg Aharonian From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Fri Jun 23 02:03:39 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:33:39 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] URGENT TODAY on Net Neutrality: "Packets" not "Applications, Content and Services" Message-ID: <449AFEA3.8DB1E290@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> Urgent advisory on lobbying related to net neutrality today: If you're talking with Congressional staff on this issue, the key message is that you have to get language that talks about packets, not "applications, content and services." Snowe-Dorgan needs to be amended to talk about packets, not applications, content and services. Presenting nondiscrimination in those terms only authorizes policies at the application layer to take control of the transport. There isn't any approach to net neutrality that works, that talks about the application layer -- whether you're doing it to prioritize or to treat equally or nondiscriminate. The proposal here shows one way to do that: http://www.dpsproject.com See the proposed language at http://www.dpsproject.com/legislation.html , for an example that says the behavior of the routers, transmitting packets independently of the application layer, is what assures net neutrality and all the characteristics of the IP transport. It could be put in a few words, if you use the word "packets." So that's the word: "Packets," not "Application, content and services." Get that in there. That will save the Internet. You can use the proposal at http://www.dpsproject.com to illustrate. Seth From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Fri Jun 23 02:58:31 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 17:28:31 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] YEE HAAWWW! Stevens Bill Deferred! Message-ID: <449B0B7F.24D1E4B3@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [IP] Senate Commerce Committee reprive for broadcast flag, net neutrality decisions Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2006 16:19:10 -0400 From: David Farber Reply-To: dave at farber.net To: ip at v2.listbox.com Begin forwarded message: From: Ethan Ackerman Date: June 22, 2006 4:12:38 PM EDT To: dave at farber.net Subject: Senate Commerce Committee reprive for broadcast flag, net neutrality decisions Greetings Dave, Perhaps begining to realize just how big a bite it has taken on sooo many contentious issues related to telecom reform, the Senate Commerce Committee hearing scheduled for today just adjourned. The Committee had made it less than one-tenth of the way through its markup of S.2686, the Senate's version of the telecom. reform bill. The two concerns most dear to the technology community, 'net neutrality' and 'broadcast flag' issues, weren't addressed, and it doesn't look like they will be until next week at the earliest. ------------------------------------- Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ From gopa.kumar at centad.org Fri Jun 23 10:33:20 2006 From: gopa.kumar at centad.org (gopa kumar) Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 10:33:20 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] India law could hit access to vital drugs - activists Message-ID: <009401c69682$5bfcb200$0f01a8c0@GOPANOTEBOOK> Reuters India law could hit access to vital drugs - activists Thu Jun 22, 2006 3:25 PM IST By Jonathan Allen NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Plans to change India's drug approval system would price life-saving drugs out of reach of millions of poor people by preventing generic versions being made, campaigners said on Thursday. New Delhi, under pressure from the United States and global drug giants, is considering a law that could effectively grant a monopoly to the developer of a new drug for several years even without a patent. "This will seriously affect accessibility to essential drugs for people in developing countries," said Leena Menghaney of Swiss-based Medecins Sans Frontieres, which has been campaigning for better access to healthcare. The law would particularly affect people with HIV who had developed immunity to first-line anti-retroviral drugs and were waiting for second-line drugs to become affordable, she added. Making generic copies of a new, unpatented drug is a hugely lucrative business in India. Once a new drug is approved for sale, other drug companies only need to point to the clinical safety data already filed with India's drug controller by the drug's original developer, and prove that their generic drug is identical to the original. But innovating drug companies -- which invest millions of dollars collecting the necessary data they need for marketing approval through clinical trials -- say this is unfair. This system allows them to recover little of their investment and reduces the incentive to research and develop new drugs, they say. India, as a member of the World Trade Organisation, should give them exclusive rights to reap the benefit of their data for several years under the Trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) treaty. In bilateral talks with New Delhi, Washington is also urging India to adopt the change. But others, including the World Health Organisation, say data exclusivity goes beyond what TRIPS requires and should not be introduced atthe expense of public health. They say generic drug companies are unlikely to invest in conducting their own trials and would have to wait for the data exclusivity period to end before making their cheaper versions. Indian officials said the government was considering a safeguard in the new law that would allow it to override data exclusivity in the interest of Indian public health. The possibility of generic drug-makers paying royalties to use other companies' data was also being looked at. "We are still trying to evolve some kind of consensus," Gurdyal Sandhu, a top official in the Ministry of Chemicals and Fertilisers, told Reuters. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- © Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20060623/f7bead61/attachment.html From vinay at nls.ac.in Fri Jun 23 12:13:35 2006 From: vinay at nls.ac.in (Vinay Aravind) Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 12:13:35 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] US Supreme Court dismisses LabCorp patent case Message-ID: <43850.59.94.109.43.1151045015.squirrel@59.94.109.43> Anti-climax! But it would be interesting to read the dissents. Originally available at http://today.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-06-22T162754Z_01_N22381714_RTRIDST_0_COURT-LABCORP-PATENT.XML&rpc=66 WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed an appeal of a key patent case by medical testing company Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LH.N: Quote, Profile, Research). The high court declined to issue a ruling on the merits of the case, which could have provided further guidance on the limits of what can be patented. LabCorp had argued that a patent it licensed from a small company called Metabolite Laboratories Inc. was too vague because it claimed to cover a basic scientific relationship. The subject of the patent is a system for diagnosing a vitamin B12 deficiency by correlating it with elevated levels of a compound called homocysteine. A jury had found LabCorp liable for infringement of the patent, and the decision was upheld by a federal appeals court. In dismissing the case, the Supreme Court said it had been mistaken in granting the appeal and agreeing to decide the case in the first place, but did not give any further explanation. Three of the justices dissented from the decision to dismiss the case, saying the patent should have been ruled invalid. Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Stephen Breyer said the patent amounted to "no more than an instruction to read some numbers in light of medical knowledge." Failing to decide on the merits of the case "threatens to leave the medical profession subject to the restrictions imposed by this individual patent and others of its kind," Breyer wrote. He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and David Souter. From hbs.law at gmail.com Fri Jun 23 15:41:11 2006 From: hbs.law at gmail.com (Hasit seth) Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:41:11 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] HOT - SC on LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories Message-ID: <8b60429e0606230311h385ed3a8v98068452191f7b24@mail.gmail.com> Just hot off the press...The dissent in this case has opened a slight window for those opposing software and business method patents. Future will tell us if such efforts gain traction or not. Hasit Justices Drop Consideration of Boundaries for Patents By ANDREW POLLACK Published: June 23, 2006 The Supreme Court backed away yesterday from ruling on a closely watched case that could have set the boundaries on what kinds of discoveries and inventions can be patented. The court, saying it had "improvidently" agreed to hear the case in the first place, instead dismissed it. That action effectively upheld the medical diagnostic testing patent at issue in the case. And it averted a decision that some patent lawyers said could have undermined thousands of patents on medical tests or genes. Three justices dissented, saying the court should have decided the case. They strongly suggested that they were concerned that patents in areas like biotechnology and financial services were being granted too liberally and should be rolled back. The failure to decide the case "threatens to leave the medical profession subject to the restrictions imposed by this individual patent and others of its kind," Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in the dissent, which was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter. Justice Breyer said such restrictions "may raise the cost of health care while inhibiting its effective delivery." The case, LabCorp v. Metabolite Laboratories, involved a patent that said that deficiencies of some B vitamins could be detected by finding high levels of the amino acid homocysteine in a person's blood. The question for the Supreme Court was whether that part of the patent was merely the statement of a natural relationship between chemicals in the body. Natural phenomena, like gravity, are not patentable. Some people in the biotechnology industry argue that such patents are fundamental, that many diagnostic tests are based on finding a relationship between a body chemical or gene and a disease. Others, including groups representing doctors, argue that such patents would impede medicine. Doctors, for instance, might be guilty of infringement merely by thinking that a patient with high homocysteine levels had a vitamin deficiency. A federal jury in Denver and a federal appeals court both upheld the patent, which is controlled by Metabolite Laboratories, a tiny testing company based at the University of Colorado, and Competitive Technologies, a patent management company in Fairfield, Conn. LabCorp, a giant clinical testing company, was found to have infringed and was ordered to pay $7.8 million in damages and lawyers' fees, according to LabCorp. The Supreme Court agreed to hear LabCorp's appeal even though the United States solicitor general advised against it. The solicitor general argued that LabCorp had not formally made the argument about natural phenomena in the lower courts. But after hearing arguments in March and reading about 20 briefs from interested parties, the court said yesterday that it would not consider the case after all. It did not offer a reason other than that its earlier decision had been improvident. Such decisions to drop cases are made occasionally. A spokeswoman for LabCorp, formally known as Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, said the company was "very disappointed that the court decided not to hear the case based on a technicality." Competitive Technologies called yesterday's outcome "a big win." Millions of homocysteine tests are performed each year, though many companies offering such tests already pay royalties to the company, one of its lawyers said. In their dissent, the three justices said the court had enough information to decide the case and said they would have invalidated the patent. They also questioned a 1998 appellate court decision that opened the door for patents on methods of doing business, like ways to order merchandise on the Internet or to calculate executive compensation. The dismissal will be a relief to companies holding broad patents on diagnostic tests or genes, said Dennis Crouch, a patent lawyer who co-wrote a brief on behalf of a group of corporate patent holders, arguing against hearing the case. "There are billions of dollars tied up" in such patents, said Mr. Crouch, who also runs the Patently-O patent law blog. "There was a potential that a decision would come out that would put all those rights into question." But he and other experts said the dissent would encourage more challenges of broad patents. "It says that some justices have a problem, at least with some patents that are extreme," said John Dragseth, a patent lawyer at Fish & Richardson in Minneapolis, who was not involved in the case. "So people are going to want to test that." Yesterday's outcome, he added, "might mark the end of an expansion in terms of what you can patent, but it doesn't mark a contraction, at least not yet." From vinay at nls.ac.in Sat Jun 24 11:44:05 2006 From: vinay at nls.ac.in (Vinay Aravind) Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:44:05 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Commons-Law] update: LabCorp v. Metabolite decision Message-ID: <34660.59.94.109.43.1151129645.squirrel@59.94.109.43> A copy of the decision is available here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-607.pdf From tetranew at sarai.net Sat Jun 24 11:41:21 2006 From: tetranew at sarai.net (tetranew) Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:41:21 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] test mail please ignore Message-ID: <449CD789.2070908@sarai.net> test From rakesh at sarai.net Mon Jun 26 11:51:16 2006 From: rakesh at sarai.net (rakesh at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 11:51:16 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] contribute for media bibliography Message-ID: <449F7CDC.4000501@sarai.net> Dear All This is to invite you all to contribute references and links to compile a comprehensive media bibliography, which will be published in Medianagar 03. Whatever you have read, or came across about media can be contributed. All the contributors will be given their due credit. The only request to you is that please write a two line introduction of the references, but keep the deadline ie 15 September 2006 in mind. thanks & salam rakesh - Rakesh Kumar Singh Sarai-CSDS 29, Rajpur Road Delhi-110054 Ph: 91 11 23960040 Fax: 91 11 2394 3450 web site: www.sarai.net web blog: http://blog.sarai.net/users/rakesh/ From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Mon Jun 26 22:33:50 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 13:03:50 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] URGENT Net Neutrality Action TODAY: Please fax these materials Message-ID: <44A01376.4176EEDC@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> Please send the following materials on net neutrality TODAY to Senators on the Commerce and Judiciary Committees. Send me a note if you'd like rich text files of these materials. Commerce resumes markup on the Stevens Bill tomorrow morning. We are working to make sure that language that addresses the nature of network neutrality is in front of as many of the interested legislators as possible. We believe that our proposal can move all parties to a fuller, more constructive understanding of this issue. PLEASE FAX these materials or similar to the contacts below. If you compose your own cover notes, I recommend including: 1) a mention of Steve Wozniak's endorsement, 2) something saying this proposal shows the real definition of net neutrality, and 3) a statement that net neutrality language needs to talk about the transport layer, not just "applications, content and services" -- that that basically means use the word "packet." The Judiciary Committee has claimed it has oversight over the matters covered by the Stevens Bill, so there's a tiny text modification you can use in sending the same materials to them -- just replace the opening of the cover letter below with: Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate Dirksen Senate Office Building 224 Dirksen Senate Office Building 147 Washington, D.C. 20510-2603 Dear Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: Please see the attached proposed legislative language for assuring "network neutrality." We think that the Judiciary Committee will find it particularly interesting in light of the current discussion related to the Stevens Bill, currently in the Commerce Committee. Thanks, all! :-) Seth Suggested Text to Send: See below the following logistical details. Targets: 1) Your own Senators You can get detailed info for any Senator by replacing the "NYJR" in the following link with appropriate values for the particular Senator. NYJR stands for New York's Junior Senator -- Hillary Clinton. So plug in the appropriate state and "graduating class" for the Senator you want: > http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newmemberbio.cgi?lang=&member=NYJR&site=ctc (These links have fax numbers for the committees as well as the individual members, and links to more detailed info about the members) 2) Senate Commerce Committee Majority Fax: 202-224-1259 Minority Fax: 202-228-0303 > http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=scommerce Ted Stevens (R-AK) [Chairman] Fax: 202-224-2354 Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) [Ranking Member] Fax: 202-224-6747 3) Senate Judiciary Committee Majority Fax: 202-224-9102 Minority Fax: 202-224-9516 > http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=sjudiciary Arlen Specter (R-PA) [Chairman] Fax: 202-228-1229 Patrick Leahy (D-VT) [Ranking Member] Fax: 202-224-3479 4) The Sponsors of Snowe-Dorgan Sen Snowe, Olympia [] Fax: 202-224-1946 Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA] Fax: 202-228-2382 Sen Clinton, Hillary Rodham [NY] Fax: 202-228-0282 Sen Dodd, Christopher J. [CT] Fax: 202-224-1083 Sen Dorgan, Byron L. [ND] Fax: 202-224-1193 Sen Inouye, Daniel K. [HI] Fax: 202-224-6747 Sen Leahy, Patrick J. [VT] Fax: 202-224-3479 Sen Obama, Barack [IL] Fax: 202-228-4260 Sen Wyden, Ron [OR] Fax: 202-228-2717 Here are the rest of the Commerce Committee members with fax numbers: John McCain (R-AZ) 202-228-2862 Conrad R. Burns (R-MT) 202-224-8594 Trent Lott (R-MS) 202-224-2262 Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) 202-224-0776 Olympia Snowe (R-ME) 202-224-1946 Gordon Smith (R-OR) 202-228-3997 John Ensign (R-NV) 202-228-2193 George Allen (R-VA) 202-224-5432 John Sununu (R-NH) 202-228-4131 James DeMint (R-SC) 202-228-5143 David Vitter (R-LA) 202-228-5061 Minority: John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV) 202-224-7665 John F. Kerry (D-MA) 202-224-8525 Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) 202-224-1193 Barbara Boxer (D-CA) 202-228-2382 Bill Nelson (D-FL) 202-228-2183 Maria Cantwell (D-WA) 202-228-0514 Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) 202-228-4054 Ben Nelson (D-NE) 202-228-0012 Mark Pryor (D-AR) 202-228-0908 Here are the rest of the Judiciary Committee members with fax numbers: Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT) 202-224-6331 Charles E. Grassley (R-IA) 202-224-6020 Jon Kyl (R-AZ) 202-224-2207 Mike DeWine (R-OH) 202-224-6519 Jeff Sessions (R-AL) 202-224-3149 Lindsey Graham (R-SC) 202-224-3808 John Cornyn (R-TX) 202-228-2856 Sam Brownback (R-KS) 202-228-1265 Tom Coburn (R-OK) 202-224-6008 Minority: Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) 202-224-2417 Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE) 202-224-0139 Herb Kohl (D-WI) 202-224-9787 Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) 202-228-3954 Russell D. Feingold (D-WI) 202-224-2725 Charles Schumer (D-NY) 202-228-3027 Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) 202-228-0400 My Cover Letter and other materials: June 26, 2006 Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation United States Senate Dirksen Senate Office Building 508 Dirksen Senate Office Building 558 Washington, D.C. 20510-2603 Dear Members of the Senate Commerce Committee: Please see the attached proposed legislative language for assuring "network neutrality." This proposal has been endorsed by numerous technology, telecommunications and legal professionals, including co-founder of Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak, and one of the original developers of the Internet's fundamental protocols, David Reed. We designed this legislative approach to preserve the nature of the Internet itself, while distinguishing it from the unique types of networks being proposed. It incorporates a correct definition for the term "network neutrality." The right definition for "network neutrality" keeps the Internet platform flexible and reliable for everybody. It cannot merely talk about "applications, content or services" alone, but must talk about how information is transmitted in "packets" independently of how the information is being used. Any other approach will end the flexibility of the Internet and in fact end "network neutrality." S2917 comes the closest to meeting this goal, but still requires language to be added referring to the way information is transmitted in packets. If you enact legislation that authorizes broadband providers to break the principle of "network neutrality" as they purport to provide “the Internet” -- and not follow the standards that define the Internet -- the effects will be far-ranging and disastrous. The effects don't only relate to the offering of “tiered services.” Most critically, the enacting of such policy overrides the standards-making processes that establish the rules assuring the sound design of the Internet. It not only impacts areas of free speech and the potentials presently available to Internet users, it affects the ability for the Internet to support a wide variety of applications, and shapes the Internet in such a way as to favor the designs offered by the broadband providers, as opposed to innovative designs. It also affects the ability for global Internet providers to interoperate. We think that this legislative approach will be a revelation to many in the discussion related to network neutrality, and we think that it provides a way for all parties to come to understanding of what the best policy is for innovation, freedom and the appropriate treatment of the unprecedented type of public medium for communications that the Internet has brought to us all. Thank you for your kind and careful consideration. Cordially, Seth Johnson Corresponding Secretary New Yorkers for Fair Use (212) 543-4266 --- Preserve the Internet Standards for Net Neutrality: Introduction and Summary for the Proposed "Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006" Attached is a fresh approach to "network neutrality." It recognizes that the Internet is, in fact, neutral. Neither slick promotions offering “premium” or “exclusive” services, nor thoughtful legislation, can change that. Any service offered by one of the many networks that form a part of the “network of networks” called “the Internet” which favors the delivery of some data packets over others based on their content, source or destination, is simply not “the Internet.” To pass off access to specially modified networks as “Internet access” is false and deceptive. In over thirty years of global standards and Internet service provider behavior, Internet participants have come to assume that their traffic will be passed without interference. Because the global “Internet Protocols” of the Internet are based on this concept, neutrality is inherent in it. So, when Congress seeks to preserve network neutrality, it need not do so by “regulating the Internet,” as it would be difficult and unnecessary to legislate fundamental global protocols of Internet router behavior. Rather, it is far better to allow Internet-connected services and specially-tailored networks (even if perceived as more valuable to some) to compete freely in the marketplace, regulating those who would misrepresent them as “Internet” services or “Internet access.” This has the critical advantage of not allowing the standards to be overridden by these custom modifications. Without standards, there is no competition or ability to connect between networks. For as long as we have had an Internet, we have also had “local area networks,” or LAN’s, typically operated within a single company. Today, major network access providers have the capability of offering very large LAN’s, and even networks of LAN’s, which may look a lot like the Internet to many unsuspecting consumers. If such LAN providers happen to be the only viable choice for Internet access, they will have the power, working with a few major corporations, to replace the Internet access for millions of Americans with access to a “walled garden” containing only such portion of the Internet as they allow, and in which only those companies willing and able to pay will be able to have access - or best access - to their subscribers. It may be the case that some consumers will prefer the more limited access being offered, but such offers must compete on their own merits, and not at the loss of an open, consistent, and predictable platform for the transport of innovative products and services by all. Conversely, if networks that treat applications specially wish to create a global network consistent with their practices, they can enter into appropriate processes and work to develop standards. Thus, this proposal recommends that Congress authorize the Federal Trade Commission to enforce a prohibition on false and deceptive representations pertaining to “Internet access” while leaving innovative networks free to develop their own proprietary services, so long as their nature is not misrepresented. This approach will enable consumers to make informed comparisons among the Internet access being offered as distinct from other products and services offered by their Internet access providers, while assuring that anyone who purchases true Internet access will get what they bargained for - access to the global Internet, unfettered communications throughout the globe, and access by myriad competitors, individuals, advocates, and news sources whose products, services and communications can be made available to them on a level playing field. --- Endorsers' Statement Facing Reality on Net Neutrality Is there a place for fresh thinking and new recommendations in the infamous "network neutrality" debate? The advocates below suggest there is. In the following document we recommend the prosecution of distorted offerings of Internet connectivity as "deceptive practice." When several incumbent telephone carriers announced their plans to give preferential treatment to favored Internet sites, a wide range of Internet users and designers felt in their guts that it somehow violated the very meaning of the term "Internet." On the other hand, many of these people feel uncomfortable letting Congress set parameters for Internet service. It is safer to deal with Internet offerings as a market issue, not to legislate fundamental protocols or router behavior. As a way to break the impasse, we offer the following draft language. We believe the gut feeling -- that one cannot discriminate and still call the service "Internet" -- is founded in reality. The very term "Internet" suggests that participants assume their traffic will be passed without interference; the concept is backed up by over thirty years of standards and ISP behavior. In effect, under the present circumstances, the system of developing specifications, which involves the writing and review of formal documents known as RFCs, which has held since the beginning of the Internet, would be tossed out by a few large providers and equipment manufacturers and replaced by corporate fiat. The loss of an open, consistent, and predictable platform would also crimp innovation at higher levels. Thus, we recommend that Congress clarify the meaning of offering Internet connectivity and set up rules for the Federal Trade Commission to enforce the definition. Two Types of Neutrality So far, much of the argument over "net neutrality" has been over whether service providers should be allowed to favor one application, destination or Internet service over another. This is Net neutrality at the application layer. But the real issue is the neutrality of the IP layer where routers treat alike bits from every type of application. This neutrality is what makes the Internet flexible -- while it also assures uniform treatment of information flow. If this neutrality is not maintained, the Internet will be changed fundamentally. It will no longer be the flexible, open platform that allows anyone with a good idea to compete on a level ground. IP-layer neutrality is not a property of the Internet. It is the Internet. The Internet is a set of agreements (protocols) that enable networks to work together. The heart of the Internet protocol is the agreement that all data packets will be passed through without regard to which application created them or what's inside of them. This reliable, uniform treatment of packets is precisely what has made the Internet a marketplace of innovation so critical to our economy. Providers certainly should be allowed to develop services within their own networks, treating data any way they want. But that's not the Internet. If they want to participate in the Internet, they need to follow the protocols that have been developed over the course of more than thirty years through consensus standards processes. Nor should they be permitted to single-handedly subvert the authority of the processes that have developed and maintained the Internet. We call on Congress to end the confusion and protect not only the Internet but the tens of millions of American citizens who need to know that when they buy Internet access, they're getting access to the real Internet. Network providers who offer services that depend on violating IP-layer neutrality should be prohibited from labeling those services as "Internet," as their doing so will only undermine the weight of consensus authority presently accorded to the existing standards. The term "Internet" represents specific standards that provide IP-layer neutral connectivity that supports the openness of access and innovation that have been the defining characteristics of the Internet since its origins. To that end, we present the attached draft legislative language and call for concerned citizens and members of Congress to offer their support for passing it into law. Signed, (Affiliations listed for identification only) John Bachir, Lead Developer, Lyceum Daniel Berninger, Senior Analyst, Tier1 Research Dave Burstein, Editor, DSL Prime Steven Cherry, Senior Associate Editor, IEEE Spectrum Gordon Cook, Editor, Publisher and Owner since 1992 of the COOK Report on Internet Protocol Susan Crawford, Associate Professor of Law, Cardozo Law School Cynthia H. de Lorenzi, Washington Bureau for ISP Advocacy Ray English, Director of Libraries, Oberlin College Miles R. Fidelman, President, The Center for Civic Networking Richard Forno (bio: http://www.infowarrior.org/rick.html) Bob Frankston, Telecommunications Analyst and Visionary Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University Lucas Gonze, founder, Webjay Bob Gregory, I. T. Manager, Community Action Opportunities Michael Gurstein, Chair: Community Informatics Research Network (CIRN) Dewayne Hendricks, CEO, Dandin Group Paul Hyland, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility David S. Isenberg, Ph.D., Founder & CEO, isen.com, LLC Saleem Jahangeer, Ph.D. Seth Johnson, New Yorkers for Fair Use Paul Jones, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill Peter D. Junger, Professor of Law Emeritus, Case Western Reserve University Joe Karaganis, Social Science Research Council Bruce Kushnick, chairman, Teletruth Michael Maranda, President, Association For Community Networking Kevin Marks, mediAgora Sascha Meinrath, Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network, Free Press Edward Mills, Independent Technology Consultant John Mitchell, InteractionLaw Steve Mossbrook, President, Wyoming.com Kenneth G. Olthoff, EFF Austin Advisory Board Andy Oram, Editor, O'Reilly Media Dave Pentecost, documentary television producer Bruce Perens, VP Sourcelabs, Co-founder of the Open Source initiative Jan L. Peterson, Software Developer David P. Reed, contributor to original Internet Protocol design David Rosen, Ed.D., Senior Associate, Newsome Associates Lawrence Rosen, Rosenlaw & Einschlag; Stanford University Lecturer in Law Pamela Samuelson, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law, UC Berkeley Clay Shirky, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University Jay Sulzberger, New Yorkers for Fair Use Rahul Tongia, Ph.D., Systems Scientist, School of Computer Science (ISRI) / Dept. of Engineering & Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University Siva Vaidhyanathan, Department of Culture and Communication, New York University Eric F. Van de Velde, Ph.D., Director, Library Information Technology, California Institute of Technology Esme Vos, Founder, Muniwireless David Weinberger, Fellow, Harvard Berkman Center Michael J. Weisman, JD, LLM, Technology and Intellectual Property Law and Policy Steve Wozniak, Co-Founder of Apple Computer, Inc., Member, National Academy of Engineers Brett Wynkoop, Wynn Data Ltd. Contact: Seth Johnson (212) 543-4266 seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org --- Legislative Proposal: “The Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006” (See http://www.dpsproject.com) SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the "Internet Platform for Innovation Act of 2006". SEC. 2. FINDINGS. The Congress finds the following: (1) The Internet is the most successful means of communication ever developed, connecting people of all walks of life across the globe and enabling unprecedented flexibility in applications and unfettered exchange of information and ideas. (2) The success of the Internet is built on the establishment of certain commonly observed principles of practice, expressed in “Internet protocols,” governing the manner in which transmissions are exchanged. Interoperation among competing Internet providers on the basis of these principles assures that the Internet remains a generic, flexible platform that supports innovation and free expression. (3) This flexible platform, commonly referred to as the “IP layer” of the Internet, enables users to independently develop innovative applications by devising rules and conventions describing how information transmitted between connected users will be interpreted in order to serve diverse purposes. The vast collection of applications that have been freely created in this manner is commonly referred to as the “application layer” of the Internet. (4) The Internet protocols that created this architecture have been developed and maintained by globally recognized standards bodies through participatory processes that work to develop optimal engineering designs and establish the consensus necessary for interoperability. (5) Among the commonly-observed principles of practice that govern Internet transmissions are the following: a) Transmissions are broken down into small pieces referred to as "packets," comprised of small portions of the overall information useful to the users at each transmission's endpoints. A small set of data is prefixed to these packets, describing the source and destination of each packet and how it is to be treated. b) Internet routers transmit these packets to various other routers, changing routers freely as a means of managing network flow. c) Internet routers transmit packets independently of each other and independently of the applications that the packets are supporting. (6) These principles governing the IP layer establish a technical behavior that not only assures the platform's flexibility, but also assures its reliability, availability, universal accessibility, and uniform treatment of information flow. The IP layer assures that all applications may compete on a level basis of connectivity, be they commercially developed by a major corporation and made available to millions, or non- commercial applications developed by individuals and offered at no charge. (7) These principles of practice are commonly understood and recognized as features of existing, commonly- observed communications standards defining the behavior of the Internet transport. (8) This settled understanding of the Internet, based on an architecture created by well-recognized standards bodies, leading to user expectations about the accessibility and behavior of the Internet, is what "the Internet" has come to mean to users in the United States and around the world. (9) Network providers who analyze and interpret the types of applications being conveyed within packets at the IP layer in order to offer special service features (including but not limited to prioritized delivery) intrinsically favor particular application designs that they recognize over competing ones. This practice therefore works at odds with the flexibility and other desirable features of the IP layer brought about by the above-described principles of practice. They depend, for their success, on the neutral platform afforded at the IP layer, even as they upset the neutrality of the IP layer to benefit services best offered at the application layer. (10) Network providers who offer special treatment for specific types of applications by identifying the applications being conveyed by packets, presently face competition from providers who provide neutral networks by means of the above principles, as well as from the diversity of applications, flexibility, uniform treatment of information flow, availability and access made possible by these networks. (11) If network providers in the United States were given support in legislation for presenting as "Internet" services that diverge from the above global principles of practice, as they offer special treatment of packet transmissions on the basis of identifying particular types of applications, the result would be to: a) supplant and undermine the consensus authority currently accorded to existing international protocols and standards-making processes; b) impair innovation and competition by undermining the flexibility and other desirable features afforded by the technical behavior of the Internet transport as described above; c) deny consumers the expectation of quality and breadth of service globally associated with the Internet; and d) suppress freedom of speech within the United States, while the people of other nations continue to enjoy unabridged Internet communications; (12) It is in the national interest to a) support the international consensus authority that gave rise to the current IP layer and associated protocols; b) encourage innovation in the applications layer of the Internet through the flexibility, reliability, availability, and accessibility afforded by the commonly established principles of practice expressed in existing consensus standards for the IP layer; and c) assure consumers in the United States that the globally accessible and open architecture of the Internet will be preserved even as some Internet access providers may choose to compete in offering additional features to their customers. SEC. 3. DECEPTIVE PRACTICES IN PROVIDING INTERNET ACCESS. (1) Definitions.— As used in this Section: (A) Internet.— The term “Internet” means the worldwide, publicly accessible system of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP), some characteristics of which include: i) Transmissions between users who hold globally reachable addresses, and which transmissions are broken down into smaller segments referred to as "packets" comprised of a small portion of information useful to the users at each transmission's endpoints, and a small set of prefixed data describing the source and destination of each transmission and how the packet is to be treated; ii) routers that transmit these packets to various other routers on a best efforts basis, changing routers freely as a means of managing network flow; and iii) said routers transmit packets independently of each other and independently of the particular application in use, in accordance with globally defined protocol requirements and recommendations. (B) Internet access.— The term “Internet access” means a service that enables users to transmit and receive transmissions of data using the Internet Protocol in a manner that is agnostic to the nature, source or destination of the transmission of any packet. Such IP transmissions may include information, text, sounds, images and other content such as messaging and electronic mail. (2) Any person engaged in interstate commerce that charges a fee for the provision of Internet access must in fact provide access to the Internet in accord with the above definition, regardless whether additional proprietary content, information or other services are also provided as part of a package of services offered to consumers. (3) Network providers that offer special features based on analyzing and identifying particular applications being conveyed by packet transmissions must not describe these services as "Internet" services. Any representation as to the speed or “bandwidth” of the Internet access shall be limited to the speed or bandwidth allocated to Internet access. (4) Unfair or Deceptive Act or Practice- A violation of paragraphs 2 or 3 shall be treated as a violation of a rule defining an unfair or deceptive act or practice prescribed under section 18(a)(1)(B) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 57a(a)(1)(B)). The Federal Trade Commission shall enforce this Act in the same manner, by the same means, and with the same jurisdiction as though all applicable terms and provisions of the Federal Trade Commission Act were incorporated into and made a part of this Act. From lawrence at altlawforum.org Tue Jun 27 08:26:37 2006 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:26:37 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Bill Gates The Pirate on the Block Message-ID: Read http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2803 for an intveriew with gates in which he admits to watching pirate films in you tube but what is interesting is that he finally says that stolen may be a strong word for copyright infringement Lawrence WSJ: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters [on YouTube]? Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places. WSJ: But those were stolen, correct? Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes. From prabhuram at gmail.com Wed Jun 28 14:43:48 2006 From: prabhuram at gmail.com (prabhu ram) Date: Wed, 28 Jun 2006 11:13:48 +0200 Subject: [Commons-Law] The foolishness of stifling creativity Message-ID: <68752c9f0606280213x2383508ai63ffcb39c8857c60@mail.gmail.com> http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/27/opinion/edming.php The foolishness of stifling creativity Francisco Mingorance International Herald Tribune Published: June 27, 2006 BRUSSELS Intellectual property Europe today is home to a confused debate over the value of intellectual property. Put simply, some want to reward intellectual property while others are striving to penalize it. Outside Europe, this debate has become the subject of much head- scratching. India recently adopted new and robust intellectual property laws and, last year, China overtook Britain, France and Germany by filing more patents for inventions than the three leading European economies combined. In April, countries as diverse as Australia and the Ukraine celebrated World Intellectual Property Day in tribute to the role of intellectual property in turning ideas into products, whether it be song or sculpture or software. Some in Europe respect intellectual property, too. In the run-up to the World Cup, Germany mounted a campaign on the theme "Land of Ideas" that celebrates the country's great artists, chemists, engineers, designers and inventors. It highlights inventions such as Adi Dassler's first football shoe with cleats, which helped Germany win the 1954 World Cup; Bayer aspirin; automobiles; polyurethane; cinema projectors; lasers; solar panels; reconnaissance robots; traffic-guidance systems; new glues; intelligent textiles, and even an "intelligent" beer mat. Germany's message is clear: Its economic power today is a product of its inventive passion of the past. France, on the other hand, has been debating amendments to the European Union's Copyright Directive that would force companies to give away proprietary technology to their competitors and expose the creative community to increased digital piracy. Success in France, it seems, is only welcome if it is "made in France" - an attitude that is dangerously out of step with the evolution of ideas on technology and the role of technical standards in promoting prosperity. In a global economy, how can France expect other countries to respect the patents, trademarks and copyrights of its inventors - who have included such famous figures as Rudolf Diesel (diesel engine), Blaise Pascal (first digital calculator) and Jean Foucault (the gyroscope) - if it displays such open disregard for the intellectual property rights of others? What's happening in France today isn't just about digital music, either. It is centered on the broader debate over the value of intellectual property. Intellectual property, and specifically copyright protection, gives every author of a creative work, amateur or not, the choice and freedom to distribute and protect the fruit of their creativity. Choice and flexibility is embedded, by design, in modern copyright law. The debate in France is being watched closely by other countries in Europe, including the Netherlands and Sweden, where courts and politicians have come out in favor of file-sharers at the expense of people and companies whose life works have been usurped by lawless profiteers, and where many big-time pirates and counterfeiters have faced a proverbial slap on the wrist for their sins. The bottom line is that technologies and inventions that have become indispensable - from portable music players to off-road bicycles to biofuels, microchips, life-saving drugs and mobile phones - would not exist if it weren't for the incentive that intellectual property offers to creative individuals and companies to invest their time and energy. Europe would do well to remember that as it pursues the ambitious goal of overtaking the United States in competitiveness. Europe's global competitors clearly understand the links between intellectual property and economic prosperity. Europe - and countries such as France in particular - ought to respect those links, lest neglect of intellectual property lead to economic, technological and cultural stagnation. Francisco Mingorance is European director of public policy for the Business Software Alliance. From seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org Fri Jun 30 01:12:21 2006 From: seth.johnson at RealMeasures.dyndns.org (Seth Johnson) Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:42:21 -0400 Subject: [Commons-Law] David Reed on Verizon Trojan Horse Router Message-ID: <44A42D1D.DE17182E@RealMeasures.dyndns.org> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: [IP] Verizon "Broadband Router" the perfect Trojan Horse Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:12:54 -0400 From: David Farber Reply-To: dave at farber.net To: ip at v2.listbox.com Begin forwarded message: From: "David P. Reed" Date: June 29, 2006 12:20:09 PM EDT To: David Farber Cc: Dewayne-Net Technology List Subject: Verizon "Broadband Router" the perfect Trojan Horse http://www.quote.com/home/news/story.asp?story=59427414 Dewayne's list passed on this press announcement of a new "high speed home router" that comes with its new FIOS service, allowing multiple users to access the Internet over the FIOS fiber. This router is described in the press release in terms of its speed and customer support capabilities. Verizon carefully notes that it was designed specifically for the FIOS users. But this router should also be defined in terms of the "Trojan Horses" that are embedded, designed by the DSL industry (i.e. the LECs captive suppliers). The major one being the "Industry Standard TR-069" touted at the top of the press release as a tool for customer support. But it is far more than that. I would note that "Industry Standard TR-069" is not hard to find on the DSL Forum site. www.dslforum.org/techwork/tr/TR-069.pdf However, a little (though not much) careful reading is required to find the reasons why Verizon might like this standard. For the worst example: I direct the reader to Appendix D. Appendix D describes an architecture for intercepting web page requests from the customer and redirecting them based on arbitrary policy choices. In other words, the standard contains the perfect tool for controlling every Internet access a customer (or the Internet-based equipment the customer might choose to buy at a later time) might make, since Verizon owns and controls the router. Note that this router feature does not merely "prioritize" traffic. This feature is promoted because it meddles with every web request you make, redirecting some requests to special sites that are in a business relationship with the owner (Verizon, I presume, here). Rather than just forwarding packets, it can only work by singling out and deeply inspecting every web page address you seek. The history of the web requests will be selectively or entirely sent to servers on Verizon's network, whether the customer agrees or not. >From an Internet point of view, this router is severely non-standard. There is no Internet RFC that has been filed for the protocol involved. Not even a draft RFC. The DSL Forum is an organization that has no standing in the Internet community. Verizon's description of the protocol as "industry standard" is deceptive. It is a standard, from a very biased part of an Industry. But it has not followed the normal route by which Internet protocols are developed and deployed on a worldwide consensus basis. It violates the basic principles of the Internet architecture as well, which have created the most rapidly growing world-wide communications capability in the history of civilization. Verizon is perfectly within its rights to develop and deploy any technology it wants to sell to customers, if that is what they choose when fully informed of what they are buying. But it must acknowledge that this equipment and its network are not giving customers access to The Internet. Instead, Verizon is giving its customers access to a private walled garden, with limited access to the Internet when and if it suits Verizon's purposes. In my personal opinion, putting this kind of technology in the path of a service that claims to offer Internet access comes close to *misappropriating* and distorting an important public good, called The Internet, which was built by voluntary market cooperation and social contribution, for private gain, and deceiving its customers in its representations in the process. You may not agree, but if you do find this a bit fishy, please share this observation with your friends, and perhaps your US Senators as an example of how companies like Verizon try to deceive their customers and to exploit their government-granted monopoly power over their customers by baiting them with speed, and reserving the right to switch their communications to preferred substitutes. You might also share with your friends the following link to a proposed bill to protect the Internet from such redefinition by vendors that pretend to sell Internet Access, but sell something else instead: http://www.dpsproject.com . ------------------------------------- Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ From prabhuram at gmail.com Fri Jun 30 15:38:41 2006 From: prabhuram at gmail.com (prabhu ram) Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 12:08:41 +0200 Subject: [Commons-Law] WIPO at crossroads over substantive patents law row Message-ID: <68752c9f0606300308j1ec50318iada00cbe30d22dc6@mail.gmail.com> WIPO at crossroads over substantive patents law row Arun S New Delhi, June 29 The controversial Substantive Patents Law Treaty (SPLT), aimed at harmonisation of certain practices in patent grant, search and examination at the global level, will come up before the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) General Assembly during September-October, a senior official of the world body told FE on Thursday. There is still no convergence of views on the issue, with many countries - including India- expressing apprehensions over the harmonisation move. WIPO is keen to arrive at a consensus on the issue. Talking to FE, WIPO deputy director-general designate Narendra K Sabharwal said the emphasis in WIPO had moved from legislative-focussed approach to finding out methods as to how intellectual property could be made a catalyst for development as well as a growth factor. WIPO's goal now was to find innovative ways to make IP relevant to developing countries, he said. Sabharwal, currently the coordinator in the WIPO's coordination office for external relations, said there was no agreement among the member countries at the WIPO's standing committee on patents on the proposed SPLT as the developing countries fear that harmonisation of patents laws across the world would lead to higher standards which could go against them. The developing countries don't want this treaty to become a reality as they think it would amount to a TRIPS-plus treaty which would make it difficult for them to have access to important drugs. On the other hand, according to the proponents of the proposed treaty in the developed west, it would help reduce the huge backlog of applications for grant of patents rights. According to the pro-SPLT lobby, a harmonised law would avoid duplication of procedure for grant of patents in different countries, Sabharwal said. But, the WIPO would remain non-political as it had always been and would give only legal and technical support as and when requests come before it, he added. Developing countries, like India, fear that such a treaty would usurp their discretionary power to take a decision with respect to patents. There is also an apprehension in India that the new system will lead to taking away powers of national governments in patents determination, search and examination. URL: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=132294