From prashantiyengar at gmail.com Fri Jul 4 13:55:55 2008 From: prashantiyengar at gmail.com (Prashant Iyengar) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 13:55:55 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Want information? Pay Rs.53,860 Message-ID: <908adbd0807040125jdcbd4ebq752fb1d5aeefa639@mail.gmail.com> http://www.thehindu.com/2008/07/04/stories/2008070457980800.htm Back Kerala - Kochi Want information? Pay Rs.53,860 Special Correspondent KOCHI: The District Planning Officer, Palakkad, has asked an information seeker under the Right to Information Act to pay Rs.53,860 towards the cost of providing information relating to use of MPs' funds. The cost includes Rs.13,000 for photocopying the documents, Rs.30,560 for paying two research assistants for compiling the information, Rs.300 for loading and unloading charges and Rs.4,000 as postal charges. D.B. Binu of Kochi, a lawyer and campaigner for Right to Information, who had sought the details of Kerala MPs' Local Area Development fund, said the demand was illegal and against the spirit of the RTI Act. He said he would appeal to the State Information Commission. According to him, the rules framed by the Kerala government only require the information seeker to pay Rs.2 per page of certified copy of the information sought. Those belonging to the below poverty line (BPL) category need not pay even this. Mr. Binu had requested the Prime Minister's Office in New Delhi to give him the details of the funds utilised by Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs from Kerala. The PMO, after providing some details like the guidelines for using the funds, had asked the Secretariat at Thiruvananathapuram to provide the rest of the details. (c) Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu From the.solipsist at gmail.com Mon Jul 7 23:16:00 2008 From: the.solipsist at gmail.com (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 23:16:00 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Europe votes on anti-piracy law -- in the name of "investment, consumers, and telecom operators" Message-ID: <4785f1e20807071046y739fb280o42b8a4f6381ef62e@mail.gmail.com> From http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7492907.stm Europe votes on anti-piracy laws * Europeans suspected of putting movies and music on file-sharing networks could be thrown off the web under proposals before Brussels. * The powers are in a raft of laws that aim to harmonise the regulations governing Europe's telecom markets. Other amendments added to the packet of laws allow governments to decide which software can be used on the web. Campaigners say the laws trample on personal privacy and turn net suppliers into copyright enforcers. * Piracy plan * MEPs are due to vote on the so-called Telecom Packet on 7 July. The core proposals in the packet were drawn up to help European telecoms firms cope with the rapid pace of change in the industry. Technological and industry changes that did not respect borders had highlighted the limitations of Europe's current approach which sees national governments oversee their telecoms markets. "The current fragmentation hinders investment and is detrimental to consumers and operators," says the EU document laying out the proposals. But, say digital rights campaigners, anti-piracy lobbyists have hijacked the telecoms laws and tabled amendments that turn dry proposals on industry reform into an assault on the freedom of net users. Among the amendments are calls to enact a Europe-wide "three strikes" law. This would see users banned from the web if they fail to heed three warnings that they are suspected of putting copyrighted works on file-sharing networks. In addition it bestows powers on governments to decide which programs can be "lawfully" used on the internet. A coalition of European digital rights groups have banded together to galvanise opposition. "[The amendments] pave the way for the monitoring and filtering of the internet by private companies, exceptional courts and Orwellian technical measures," said Christophe Espern, co-founder of French rights group La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) in a statement. The UK's Open Rights Group said the laws would be "disproportionate and ineffective". The Foundation for a Free Internet Infrastructure (FFII) warned that if the amendments were accepted they would create a "Soviet internet" on which only software and services approved by governments would be allowed to run. "Tomorrow, popular software applications like Skype or even Firefox might be declared illegal in Europe if they are not certified by an administrative authority," warned Benjamin Henrion, FFII representative in Brussels, in a statement. "This is compromising the whole open development of the internet as we know it today," he said. MEP Malcolm Harbour, rapporteur for users rights and the e-privacy directive who has helped oversee the Telecoms Package, challenged the rights groups view of the amendments. "The intention of the directive is nothing like direction they are claiming," he said. The reforms to the package would likely improve rights for consumers, he said adding that there was no mention of specific anti-piracy measures in the Package. It is not clear yet whether the amendments will be accepted in full. In April 2008 European politicians voted against similar proposals that would have seen suspected file-sharers thrown off the net. Susan Hall, media partner at solicitors Cobbetts LLP said: "The amendment will cause several problems, firstly, many broadband users routinely transfer large files which are encrypted. "Many of these are acting quite legitimately and in order to determine whether or not such large files are or are not the produce of illicit file sharing the ISP will have to carry out an unprecedented degree of analysis of its customers' traffic. "Furthermore, computers are frequently shared - within offices, within homes, within educational institutions and inadvertently, where wrong-doers "piggy back" on an inadequately secured Wi-Fi connection. "All this raises the spectre of people losing internet access - for reasons which are no fault of their own." Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/7492907.stm Published: 2008/07/07 16:42:50 GMT (c) BBC MMVIII -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20080707/ffc7484b/attachment.html From lawrence at altlawforum.org Sat Jul 12 12:36:42 2008 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:36:42 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Enterprising workers turn hawkers on weekends Message-ID: <48785802.8080802@altlawforum.org> http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=Local_News&subsection=Qatar+News&month=July2008&file=Local_News2008071243820.xml Enterprising workers turn hawkers on weekends Web posted at: 7/12/2008 4:38:20 Source ::: The Peninsula / By Suddep Sonawane *Doha ? A few dare-devil workers from the low-income group turn hawkers on weekends and sell pirated CDs and DVDs illegally in some areas of Doha. * One such popular spot where many low-income workers congregate and where this illegal business is done is the green square, dotted with trees, off the Grand Hamad Street at the HBK signal (Old Toyota signal) junction. "There are some who are keen to make money. They sell audio and video CDs and DVDs and many labourers buy since they are sold very cheap," said one worker hanging around in the area. The audio CDs are sold for QR2, VCDs for QR3 and DVDs for QR5, according to him. The pirated copies of audio CDs and video CDs or DVDs are mostly from the Asian entertainment world. Those featuring latest Bollywood films and songs move quickly from the makeshift shops, which are little more than a mat spread out under a tree or in some other convenient location with shade. There is demand for movie CDs from other regions too. "Many workers from Industrial Area, Al Khor, Wakra and even from far-off places like Dukhan regularly assemble at some popular public areas in the city," said one worker who could communicate articulately. "They can do nothing much on weekends as they cannot afford to entertain themselves at expensive restaurants or buy things available in malls, so they come to such places and buy these CDs to entertain themselves in their camps." "Most workers arrive here in Karwa buses or in private vehicles and exchange notes on their friends and families back home," said another man hanging around at Grand Hamad Street. "So these spots are a good place for those who are brave enough to sell these film CDs." Pirated CDs and VCDs can be watched on cheap unbranded players, available at less than QR100. These players do not have inbuilt features that prevent them from playing pirated CDs. Many workers living in labour camps own such cheap DVD players that play pirated copies. This completes the grey market circle of buyer and seller. From namita at altlawforum.org Wed Jul 16 18:54:07 2008 From: namita at altlawforum.org (namita) Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:54:07 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] anti-piracy ad from the IT crowd Message-ID: <487DF677.1060806@altlawforum.org> A funny scene from the IT crowd (brit television series) where two guys are watching the anti piracy ad at the theatre. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTbX1aMajow From the.solipsist at gmail.com Fri Jul 18 01:34:32 2008 From: the.solipsist at gmail.com (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:34:32 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] From 50 to 95: EU seeks to accommodate increasing life expectancy of retired rockers Message-ID: <4785f1e20807171304j7043606ai5fa29489c51a6fca@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, Nate Anderson's piece is so well argued that there is not much one can add by way of comment. One point which I believe deserves greater discussion is the role that differing views of copyright (for benefit of the individual vs. for benefit of society / as entitlement vs. as incentive) play in argumentation around things like copyright term. If one argues for it as entitlement (neo-Lockean/neo-Hegelian justifications, etc.), then it seems to me to be easier to justify even a retroactive copyright term extension. Any thoughts on this? Cheers, Pranesh -------- EU caves to aging rockers, wants 45-year copyright extension By Nate Anderson | Published: July 16, 2008 - 01:00PM CT The European Commission today filed its proposal for extending musical copyrights from 50 to 95 years, retroactively. The argument? Think of the children aging musicians. The European Union has proposed a plan to retroactively extend the copyright termson musical recordings for another 45 years. Apparently, it's unfair for performers who recorded tracks in their twenties not to keep receiving money for them in their seventies; under the current 50-year copyright term, "this means that income stops when performers are retired." Funny—we thought that most retirees faced the same problem. The whole plan has the whiff of grotesque entitlement about it. Take, for instance, comments made earlier this week by bass player Herbie Flowers in support of an extension. "The term of protection for performers has not kept up with life expectancy and it is high time it was changed. I played on a couple of very successful tracks, including Lou Reed's 'Walk On The Wild Side' and David Bowie's 'Space Oddity,' and it would be unfair for me to stop receiving income for this performance after 50 years—probably just at the time when I will need it the most." One wonders why, knowing all this when he recorded the tracks fifty years ago, Flowers hasn't been putting some of that money aside over the last five decades like everyone else who plans for retirement. EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy announced back in Februaryhis support for term extension, but the plan was not actually put forward until today. It would extend protection from 50 years to 95 years for musical works, and apparently EU citizens should be grateful for such a modest retroactive extension plan; composers and authors already get life plus 70 years. The plan won't cause consumer prices to rise, which we know because a music-industry-commissioned study says so. It's probably true, since relatively few fifty-year-old recordings sell in any real volume, and most of these performers' pay comes from radio performance payments now. The high-profile Gowers Report, a lengthy copyright study commissioned by the UK government a few years back, recommended against just such a term extension , and the howls of music industry outrage ("How can you *cut off retirees* during their most vulnerable years?") sounded much as they do now. The whole bizarre debate never seems to haul itself around to addressing the fact that everyone who participated in the current system did so knowing about the 50-year term; no one is in danger of "losing" anything they were once promised, and they've had half a century to plan for the future. McCreevey's most compelling argument for the extension is that, in his view, "Copyright represents a moral right of the performer to control the use of his work and earn a living from his performance, at least during his lifetime." Sounds fair enough, though it raises the question of why McCreevey isn't simultaneously trying to retroactively lower the copyright term on books? The "poor retired musician" argument has been a staple of US lobbying efforts, as well, as artists have trotted up to Capitol Hill recently to demand that Congress force radio stations to pay recording artists(and not just songwriters) for playing their music. No one wants to come out against old and starving musicians, of course, making this the perfect defense whenever rightsholders want to extend copyright terms or rake in more money. In the EU's case, though, an extra 45 years of protection won't even make that much money (for the artists, anyway); McCreevey's own numbers show that it will produce €150 to €2,000 per year for an "average" artist, an amount small enough that it hardly seems worth locking up the building blocks of cultural creativity for another 45 years. Fortunately, the proposal will allow works to enter the public domain if neither a record label nor a performer "shows any interest in marketing the sound recording" in the first year after the extension passes (assuming that it does). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20080718/544238a2/attachment-0001.html From patrice at xs4all.nl Mon Jul 21 13:25:37 2008 From: patrice at xs4all.nl (Patrice Riemens) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:55:37 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Commons-Law] Pelargonium plant patent row Message-ID: <10222.82.73.9.6.1216626937.squirrel@webmail.xs4all.nl> bwo Hippies from Hell list/ Marius de Pijper It's now 1 year old almost, but typical. If someone knows how it ended..? Original at: http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/News/Article.aspx?id=580773 (The Times South Africa) Drug companies looting SA’s bounty of medicinal plants Bobby Jordan Published:Oct 07, 2007 GERMANE: Elizabeth Nkqayi, 73, holds up a pelargonium root Picture: GARY HORLOR ‘When they come they are just like thieves, stealing the indigenous knowledge’ State to protect shrubs, and traditional healers’ rights The government has stepped in to save a tiny South African plant from extinction after hundreds of tons were harvested for foreign drug companies, one of which has patented its use to fight HIV/Aids. Now traditional healers, who have used the plant for centuries, are trying to win back the patent which they claim is rightfully theirs. The matter has become so heated that the Eastern Cape government has banned all further harvesting of the plant pelargonium — part of the geranium family— until further notice. But illegal harvesting of pelargonium, also known as umckaloabo and klawerbossie, continues in the hills around Grahamstown and Alicedale and has led to dozens of arrests, according to Eastern Cape researchers. Now the Department of Environmental Affairs has decided to review all biological prospecting projects to make sure they conform to new regulations that protect the commercial rights of traditional healers. The pelargonium tug of war will be discussed next week in Canada at a special United Nations working group meeting on biopiracy and biodiversity. At the heart of the row are three drug patents granted to German drug firm ISO Arzneimittel for the use of extracts from pelargonium to treat a wide range of diseases and symptoms such as pain, fatigue, depression, insomnia and all Aids-related infections such as tuberculosis, herpes and pneumonia. But traditional healers say they have been using the plant to treat some of these conditions for hundreds of years. ISO Arzneimittel has now reserved the right to apply for a South African pelargonium patent on the use of extracts of the plant to treat HIV/Aids. If successful it would stop South African companies using the plant to develop medicine to fight the pandemic. This means the company could make billions out of a plant that South Africans have harvested for centuries. ISO Arzneimittel, linked to giant German drug company Schwabe Pharmaceuticals, has teamed up with South African firm Parceval Pharmaceuticals, which has a permit to harvest pelargonium. Extracts of the plant are contained in homeopathic remedies and sold in Germany as “Umckaloabo” and in America as “Umcka”. Existing patent law makes no provision for traditional knowledge, although this is likely to change. In what is seen as a significant step towards patent reform, a group of community leaders near Alicedale in the Eastern Cape this week appointed legal advisers to help protect their traditional knowledge of pelargonium, which they say has started to disappear from the wild due to commercial demand. The move has also sparked a fierce backlash against the pharmaceutical companies from South Africa’s Traditional Healers Organisation and environmentalists, who now want ISO Arzneimittel’s patents revoked. “I grew up knowing that this plant is very important,” said Nomthumzi Sizani, spokesman for the Eastern Cape group. “T he community wants to stop [companies] from saying they were the first to know that this medicine is important, because we grew up knowing that.” She said it was unfair for a foreign company to make millions while unemployed villagers earned only R4 per kilo of pelargonium: “When the buyers come they are like thieves, just stealing the indigenous knowledge,” Sizani said. Patent experts said these issues would be addressed by at least two new laws which will soon be tabled in South Africa. Currently, foreign companies do not have to enter into community-sharing agreements with communities if they develop medicines based on traditional knowledge. Although a plant may not be patented, any company can patent extracts of a plant or a new use for plant extracts if they can prove they are the first to discover this use, experts said. Rich foreign companies have snapped up hundreds of patents this way despite ongoing protests from traditional healers who do not have the resources to compete. ISO Arzneimittel could not be reached for comment this week. However their South African partner, Parceval, said the German company’s patents did not clash with traditional use of the plant. Parceval spokesman Ulrich Feiter said: “The patents cover only one certain preparation and not pelargonium in general. Pelargonium is used by a number of companies, in South Africa and elsewhere, and they have not been challenged by the patent holder in any way.” But traditional healers say they don’t believe the company should qualify for any patents at all because it did not discover its powerful properties. It’s a view shared by some environmental groups fighting for social justice, including the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB). ACB director Mariam Mayet said: “Just because the traditional healers didn’t write down the chemical formula, doesn’t mean they didn’t know all about the plant and how it could be used. ” According to an ACB report, pelargonium was “discovered” in 1897 by a mechanic from Birmingham who sought medical advice from a Basotho healer. The plants were later tested in Europe and, after studies at the University of Munich, some of their biological properties were patented by ISO Arzneimittel in 2002. Pelargonium is one of dozens of South African plants being targeted by drug companies eager to develop new medicines. Other plants successfully targeted in recent years include sutherlandia and hoodia, a succulent plant used by San communities to suppress appetite and thirst on long hunting journeys. From the.solipsist at gmail.com Thu Jul 24 16:17:42 2008 From: the.solipsist at gmail.com (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 16:17:42 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Pirate Bay to add SSL Encryption Message-ID: <4785f1e20807240347n6aa56c81y10f86f97edd72f54@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, I wonder if this amounts to the wilful blindness that was outlawed in the U.S. P2P court battles. Would anyone care to hazard a guess? Cheers, Pranesh ----------- http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1691 SSL Encryption Coming to The Pirate Bay June 22, 2008 Thomas Mennecke Encryption and file-sharing technology have a long history together. Usenet servers, LimeWire, uTorrent, and many other applications and protocols have taken advantage of encryption technology to help give the end user an additional layer of security. In response to Sweden's new wiretapping law, The Pirate Bay's Peter Sunde has announced the tracker's intention to offer encryption services to its users. According to the Local , Sweden's surveillance law, which passed on Thursdayof this week, allows the government to monitor all incoming and outgoing transmissions in the name of national security. Although The Pirate Bay's lobbying efforts against the bill were unsuccessful, the tracker still has a few cards left to play. According to Sunde, The Pirate Bay will roll out an encryption option this week. "Many people have asked me what we're planning to do," Peter writes in his blog "- and the answer is "A lot!". We're going to help out in any way we can with fighting the law. This week we're going to add SSL to The Pirate Bay. We're also going to help out making a website about easy encryption - both for your hard drives and your net traffic. As some people know, we're running a system for VPN-tunnels already and we're going to lower the price for that as well and open it up for international users as well." The level of protection offered likely varies on the individual's geographical location. Since The Pirate Bay isn't (*sic*) actually situated in Sweden, a user in the United States isn't impacted by the law. However for the concerned user living in Sweden, the new SSL feature will offer some security against the perceived threat. Historically, BitTorrent end users have faced little in the way of legal repercussions, regardless of their association with a tracker. Despite the seizure of LokiTorrent and EliteTorrent's userbase information, the only legal action taken was against the administration. That's not to say that can't change in Sweden, however history is on the side of the user – and so is The Pirate Bay. The irony, interestingly enough, is that both The Pirate Bay and Swedish Government's intentions are in the name of security. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20080724/d54aa887/attachment.html From the.solipsist at gmail.com Fri Jul 25 02:17:36 2008 From: the.solipsist at gmail.com (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:17:36 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Agreement between British ISPs and BPI: Not a big deal (yet) Message-ID: <4785f1e20807241347t29fbf426o28d51bfbf0fba51d@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, British newspapers have been reporting a new agreement between a bunch of large ISPs and the BPI. In the agreement, the ISPs have promised to help in significantly reducing illegal P2P traffic, though how they will go about this is not mentioned. They have also agreed to forward all complaints from the BPI regarding particular users to their customers. A means of dealing with repeat offenders (the three-times-yer-out idea) has not been decided yet. (Cory Doctorow's take on that proposal, in the Guardian, is in the best traditions of satire: completely illogical, yet (or perhaps, thus) making the point effectively.) Cheers, Pranesh -------------- http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080724-whats-right-with-the-groundbreaking-uk-p2p-compromise.html What's right with the "groundbreaking" UK P2P compromise By Nate Anderson | Published: July 24, 2008 - 11:48AM CT Major music labels in the UK are crowing about a "groundbreaking" new agreement with the six largest ISPs in the country. Under the terms of the deal, negotiated with the help of the UK government, the ISPs will send sternly-worded warning letters to suspected illegal file-swappers. While any such deal will generate the predictable outrage in the usual quarters, this is actually a fair approach to the issue, and one that could have been a lot worse. Let's have a look. Just keep swinging, you can't strike out The memorandum of understanding between BPI, which represents the UK's largest labels, and the six ISPs (BSkyB, Virgin, Orange, Tiscali, Carphone Warehouse, and BT) is a far cry from some of the more radical ideas floated by the content industry over the years. ISPs will forward letters received from BPI investigators on to customers suspected of illegal file-sharing, and the ISPs have pledged to work toward a "significant reduction" in such downloading. Telecoms regulator Ofcom will work with the parties to come up with some method of dealing with repeat offenders, as the memo includes no enforcement mechanism. Note what's missing from the deal: a three-strikes rule. In fact, the deal contains *no* *enforcement mechanisms of any kind*. There have always been worries about such proposals, which would eventually cut off Internet access to repeat copyright offenders. What sort of evidence would be required? Who would decide guilt or innocence? Would there be judicial oversight or a method of appeal? Given the significance of 'Net access to people's lives, did the punishment truly fit the crime? The European Parliament earlier this year expressed opposition to such plans. According to the *Guardian*, the UK government has already taken such measures off the table, as well as part of this initiative. So what we're left with is simple notification. If you get a letter forwarded on from BPI, but weren't actually sharing the files in question, no worries. Previous studies have shown that UK file-swappers will generally stop illegal activity once the veil of anonymity is stripped away. Toothless notification letters won't eliminate the issue, of course, but they should put a significant dent in it—especially when a letter shows up and mum finds out what little Ian has been up to. No ISP spying The second exemplary part of the deal is that it preserves 1) the ISP relation with its customers 2) the principle that ISPs are not responsible for monitoring and filtering content flowing over their networks. Once an ISP starts spying on its users, all sense of trust is gone (see the controversy surrounding Phormand NebuAd, which use ISP data to sell more targeted ads). And making ISPs directly responsible for illicit content passing over their wires is horribly bad precedent that could be extended to thousands of illegal activities conducted every day over the web, by e-mail, or through Skype. This deal preserves that situation, since the notifications come from BPI, which will essentially adopt the tactics of groups like the RIAA as it seeks to identify file-sharers by looking at BitTorrent seeding addresses or shared folders. The fact that ISPs will not be burdened with installing deep packet inspection gear or other filtering solutions is a hugely important part of the current deal, and is something worth fighting for in any future negotiations. Keeping the government at bay—and a big caveat The entire deal was done under the looming shadow of legislation. The government has been threatening for months that if a deal was not worked out by next spring, it would pass a law, and it looked to be a three-strikes law. Assuming the deal proves even modestly effective, it should remove the burning impetus for more severe government regulation in favor of content owners. This is where the caveat to the whole deal comes in, though. Rightsholders have long shown an almost insatiable appetite for more control, longer copyright terms, etc. The music industry certainly won't rest on its laurels here, but will use the deal first to rope smaller ISPs into signing on, after which it will likely try to force the whole group of them to step up the pressure. If they don't comply, BPI appears to have the ear of the UK government, which makes an effective bully stick. As a more-or-less final compromise on the issue, it sounds like a good one to us (or, at least, not a fully bad one, which is about all one can hope for in these matters); as just the first stop in a continued ISP squeeze play, though, it takes on a less-appealing cast. A note on license fees The *Independent* has reportedthat the government is considering a (voluntary) £30 license pay for those users who want to download music. BPI boss Geoff Taylor said today in a conference callthat no such idea had ever been mentioned in negotiations he had been a part of, and that nothing like it was on the table, underneath the table, or located in any room in which the table might be found. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20080725/8b9c340d/attachment-0001.html From sunil at mahiti.org Sat Jul 26 00:13:12 2008 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:13:12 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Fwd: WIPO calls on India to sign Internet treaties on copyright Message-ID: <1217011392.29256.30.camel@sunil-laptop> -------- Forwarded Message -------- From: Frederick [FN] Noronha * फ्रेडरिक नोरोन्या Reply-To: asia-commons at googlegroups.com To: asia-commons at googlegroups.com Subject: WIPO calls on India to sign Internet treaties on copyright Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:04:33 +0530 http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/blnus/15151701.htm WIPO calls on India to sign Internet treaties on copyright GENEVA: The World Intellectual Organisation (WIPO) on Tuesday called on India to become a signatory to the two Internet treaties which will provide for global protection of the rights of copyright holders, performers and producers of phonograms. The WIPO Copyrights Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, collectively termed as Internet Treaties, were negotiated in 1996 under the auspices of WIPO. But India is yet to sign them. "India has got huge information, film and entertainment industries. For its own benefit, the country must become a signatory to the two treaties. It would ensure a strong protection about the use of creative works on the world wide web not only in that c ountry but also abroad,'' Director of Copyright Law at WIPO Jorgen Savy Blomqvist told PTI here. With Internet, web piracy is also fast gaining grounds in the world. As Indian products generate big money in that country and in the overseas, signing the treaties would ensure that producers of creative works in India get their fair share of income the products generate abroad, the Director said. It will provide an enormous boost to India's cultural and creative industries. Through digital networks, that country's music, art, literature, and folklore can reach new markets throughout the world, and be delivered directly to paying customers around the globe,'' he said. - PTI From the.solipsist at gmail.com Sat Jul 26 03:09:47 2008 From: the.solipsist at gmail.com (Pranesh Prakash) Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2008 03:09:47 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] The narnia.mobi dispute, or "English 101 for WIPO's arbitration panel" Message-ID: <4785f1e20807251439n49c6bd45j3702e31727880423@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, As per ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), three elements have to be proven: (i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; *and* (ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; *and* *(iii) your domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.* Please note that all three requirements need to be proven. The three requirements are connected by ands and not ors. Yet, the third requirement, that of bad faith, is barely ever proven. In most cases, it is simply presumed. The burden (wrongly) shifts on to the person holding the domain name to show that it has been registered and is being used in good faith (whatever that may mean). What is bad faith? Well, the UDRP policy provides some guidelines: *4(b). Evidence of Registration and Use in Bad Faith.* For the purposes of Paragraph 4(a)(iii), the following circumstances, in particular but without limitation, if found by the Panel to be present, shall be evidence of the registration and use of a domain name in bad faith: (i) circumstances indicating that you have registered or you have acquired the domain name primarily for the purpose of selling, renting, or otherwise transferring the domain name registration to the complainant who is the owner of the trademark or service mark or to a competitor of that complainant, for valuable consideration in excess of your documented out-of-pocket costs directly related to the domain name; or (ii) you have registered the domain name in order to prevent the owner of the trademark or service mark from reflecting the mark in a corresponding domain name, provided that you have engaged in a pattern of such conduct; or (iii) you have registered the domain name primarily for the purpose of disrupting the business of a competitor; or (iv) by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or other on-line location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with the complainant's mark as to the source, sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of your web site or location or of a product or service on your web site or location. Sure the wording makes it clear it is non-exhaustive, but surely they are to be held as guiding lights? And, even more surely, they have to be proven by the party alleging bad faith? WIPO thinks not. The arbitration panel held: "The language of . . . the Policy is couched in the present tense and unambiguously requires a respondent to be 'making a legitimate non-commercial or fair use of the domain name.'. . . The Policy only concerns active websites that practice genuine, non-commercial criticism, and only deals with fan sites that are clearly active and non-commercial." This inverts the language of the UDRP, and shows their skewed reading of the policy's language. (I am being charitable by not saying "shows their inability to read English". "English, *&%$#^#@*(&. Do you speak it?" (without any xenophobic/classist overtones)) They are correct in noting that the Policy is in the present tense. Section 4(a) is worded such that your site has to currently be doing some wrong. Thus, to re-frame the panel's sentence accurately: "The Policy only concerns active websites that practice non-genuine, commercial misappropriation, and does not deal with fan sites that are inactive. (And in fact does not explicitly talk of fan sites at all.)" This would have reflected the language of the UDRP. Thus, this would mean that the estate of C.S. Lewis could only file a case against the Saville-Smiths when they contravened Section 4(a). If this (the correct test, I would argue) is applied, they wouldn't qualify until it can be proven that "domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith". That cannot be proven when a) they don't misrepresent themselves to be related to Narnia, aren't dealing in the same areas as the C.S. Lewis estate (spin-offs, official merchandise, etc.); and b) when the domain name has not "been registered in bad faith" and c) when the domain name is not "being used in bad faith". So, until the Saville-Smiths try to sell it, or it is otherwise shown that they don't mean what they say (when they claim that it is for their child's future use), it can't be claimed that the domain name is "being used in bad faith". And how, by what spandex-ian stretch of imagination, is the subsequent registration of "freenarnia.mobi" suggestive of bad faith? I'd like to smoke what they're smoking. The WIPO arbitration panel is not bound by the principle (or policy) of stare decisis. They don't have to blindly follow precedents. They are, however, bound by the text of the UDRP. It is about time they realise that. The UDRP policy: http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp-policy-24oct99.htm Regards, Pranesh --------- http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/25/narnia_name/ *Dead author's estate snatches child's domain* Nar-nar-nar-nar-nar(nia) Published Friday 25th July 2008 07:02 GMT A British couple has lost the battle to keep the narnia.mobi domain name which they claimed was only registered so that their son could have a Narnia-related email address. The address will transfer to a company representing CS Lewis's estate. Richard and Fiona Saville-Smith failed to convince an arbitration panel of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) that they registered and used the domain name in good faith. Fiona Saville-Smith told OUT-LAW that they will not appeal. *Baaaaaaad faith* "The ruling was absolutely unfair. Although I'm a lay person the rules seem pretty simple, that they had to prove that we had a bad faith registration," she said. "Their grounds for that was that we used it to make money. We have provided extremely clear evidence that that was not the case." Saville-Smith, who also writes poetry under the name Gillian Ferguson, said that she and her husband had found the whole experience "dispiriting" and that they were extremely unlikely to appeal. The WIPO arbitration process will only transfer a name if the person who requests it has rights in the name, such as a trade mark, and the person holding the name has none, and if the person holding the domain name has registered or is using it in bad faith. It was uncontested that the estate of Lewis had rights in the word Narnia. The WIPO rules state that someone can have rights in a term if it is making "a legitimate non-commercial or fair use of the domain name, without intent for commercial gain to misleadingly divert consumers or to tarnish the trademark or service mark at issue". Saville-Smith argued that the planned use of the domain name as the basis for an email address for her son was a legitimate non-commercial use, but the WIPO ruling said that the only precedent for an email address counting as fair use was when the person for whom the address was intended shared a name with the domain name in contest. Had Saville-Smith created a fan site or a criticism site related to CS Lewis's works then that could well have been a legitimate use, but the WIPO ruling said that such a site would have to exist just now rather than simply be planned. "The language of…the Policy is couched in the present tense and unambiguously requires a respondent to be 'making a legitimate non-commercial or fair use of the domain name.'," said the ruling. "The Policy only concerns active websites that practice genuine, non-commercial criticism, and only deals with fan sites that are clearly active and non-commercial." Saville-Smith said that on the question of the registration or use of the domain name in bad faith she and her husband felt that the ruling was unfair. "As I understand it they had to prove that it is a bad faith registration and as far as we are concerned there is no evidence that it was a bad faith registration," she said. "We didn't sell it, we didn't try to make any money, we didn't pass ourselves off as anything to do with Narnia." The panel's justification for concluding that the registration was in bad faith was that "as prior panels have observed, when a domain name is so obviously connected with a complainant and its products or services, its very use by a registrant with no connection to the Complainant suggests 'opportunistic bad faith'," said the ruling. The WIPO panel also said that the fact that two further Narnia-related domain names were registered by the Saville-Smiths after the Lewis estate complaint was suggestive of bad faith use. Saville-Smith, though, told OUT-LAW that the registration of freenarnia.mobi was part of an aborted attempt to begin an online petition drawing attention to their case. Copyright (c) 2008, OUT-LAW.com OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20080726/5f2e6ac5/attachment.html From fred at bytesforall.org Thu Jul 31 06:02:55 2008 From: fred at bytesforall.org (=?UTF-8?Q?Frederick_Noronha?= =?UTF-8?Q?_[=E0=A5=9E=E0=A4=B0?= =?UTF-8?Q?=E0=A5=87=E0=A4=A6=E0=A4=B0=E0=A4=BF=E0=A4=95?= =?UTF-8?Q?_=E0=A4=A8=E0=A5=8B=E0=A4=B0?= =?UTF-8?Q?=E0=A5=8B=E0=A4=A8=E0=A4=AF=E0=A4=BE]?=) Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:02:55 +0530 Subject: [Commons-Law] Moser Baer seeks to vacate stay against using movie products Message-ID: <8ea78e010807301732vc28740fpec946b958ec53b18@mail.gmail.com> Moser Baer seeks to vacate stay against using movie products Chennai | July 29, 2008 11:35:05 PM IST http://news.webindia123.com/news/articles/Business/20080729/1013140.html Entertainment major Moser Baer has sought to vacate a Madras High Court stay issued against the company from using 12 movie products, sources told IANS Tuesday. "The products are all old and were sold to us properly. It is quite a common thing that small timers obtain stays which are routinely vacated subsequently. Further, we too have obtained similar orders against the same plaintiff, K.P. Ravindran, in the Delhi High Court," a Moser Baer spokesman said. Justice V. Ramasubramanian while hearing the petition Monday restrained till further orders Moser Baer from selling the 12 films against which a dispute has been raised, petitioner's lawyers said. The Rs.40 billion Moser Baer is producing many south Indian films in collaboration with several producers and exhibitors. The audio of "Raman Thediya Seethai", a forthcoming venture, is scheduled for a Wednesday release, the ciompany's publicists said.ap/tsv/am/vt (165 Words)29072241NNNN (IANS) -- FN * Independent Journalist http://fn.goa-india.org 784 Nr Convent, Saligao 403511 Goa India Ph +91-832-2409490 M: +91-9970157402 16,000+ photos from Goa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fn-goa/ From daya.shanker at deakin.edu.au Tue Jul 29 15:11:54 2008 From: daya.shanker at deakin.edu.au (Daya Shanker) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:41:54 +1000 Subject: [Commons-Law] TRIPS Agreement and Investment Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20080729192148.04555150@deakin.edu.au> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/attachments/20080729/e1bf5335/attachment.html