With all indignity and rage: Fuck it. The European Commission has decided to table a small proposal on trade secrets which would put trade secrets under the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive. This is not only bad for citizens, their human rights, their privacy and their freedom of speech but also for other businesses. Evidence-gathering procedures under IPRED are such that companies who are accused of trade secret infringement, would themselves run the risk of having their trade secrets infringed.
Last year, in close cooperation with several Pirate Parties in Europe, we organized at my office an opportunity for citizens to voice themselves on trade secrets. Trade secrets are currently supported by three major industry blocks: the pharma industry, the chip manufacturers and the defence industry. In the last case, defence industries, it's because intelligence agencies and military muppets have a deep desire to monitor everyone in order to ensure that we don't act in a way negative for the economy.
That's right sirrah: trade secrets is our militaries' and law enforcements' tickets into persisting presence in the networks. For our own good, of course, and with maximum corporativist intentions.
Citizens were heard by the Commission - in the consultation summary of responses the Commission says that citizens expressed "European should support citizens, not corporations". On page 4 of their proposal they say that the overwhelming majority of citizens did not want any EU action on trade secrets.
The Commission chooses to disregard the citizens who did make the effort to reply and that did want to make themselves heard because those citizens were incentivized to make themselves heard for instance by me. The Commission should however carefully consider the dysmally low confidence ratings of the European institutions with European citizens - the European institutions have never been as disliked, never so distrusted, by so many in the Union and no wonder!
Even when citizens bravely attempt to make themselves heard in this process, by participating in the legitimate proceedings of Commission consultations, voicing their concerns with a development that is not desirable to them, the Commission charges right ahead - tapping into a form of corporativism which isn't even really possible at the European level: we have too many member states simultaneously competing to be the most corporativist. The Commission should be the counter-balance to that, not the active participant! It's not possible for me nor for any other honest democrat to defend the development of European democracy in this way.
Companies can actually protect their own secrets! It's time that the Union, its member states, militaries and intelligence agencies stop corporativistically baby-sitting their major corporations and start thinking a bit about SME:s, people's lives and what they're doing.
Was this a surprise to you?
Is it not standard procedure that citizens of EU gets fucked over by Corporate? Oh, with the one exception of ACTA?
My faith in the institution EU is at par with NSA. You are the resistance.
Thanx. I'll vote for you.
Oh, the Commission... From what I see and have seen I can not find it in me to trust them on a single issue. If anything, they are a threat to our rights and liberties.
The Commission is a sham. European Parliament is a sham. The EU is a sham. Just this year they sold out the rights of Azerbaijani's so they could have better oil deals. There's no room for democracy in the EU's 'caviar' diplomacy!
Waaaaah!
It's not entirely true that the EU never does anything to protect citizens' rights. The data protection regulation is a clear example of the EU doing good things. It is the member states (like Sweden and the UK) block the EU from progressing further with the good deed.
Also, there are a few member states that already have trade secret laws and upon which the Commission proposal is modelled: Sweden and France.
In the United Kingdom, trade secrets and confidential business information should be part of the current cyber defence strategy, namely, a reason for the military and the intelligence agency to hack, slash and spread misery.
In Sweden there have been attempts at getting to such a development since 2008, but we have the labour unions making resistance because trade secret laws and strict enforcement creates bad employee situations (what are you allowed to learn at work, what are you allowed to bring with you as experiences - how do you know when you're suddenly criminally liable for being an attentive employee? et c).
I think this is connected to the #TTIP negotiations with the US. The problem is that we have promised the US to negotiate on all intellectual property rights, only they consider trade secrets IPR and European countries normally don't (with the exception of France, where in specific instances they can fall under "industrial property rights").
But the Commission has been studying this for well over 2 years already. We have needless to say made resistance every part of the way.
Somehow tragically, the EU is unable to defend "geographical indications", an intellectual property right that we consider important but that they doesn't consider important. We will, of course, fail to get the US to recognise this right as we have done the past 15 years.
The problem for the EU is that we're sucking it up in a which is not good for us - we need some backbone, guts and willingness to defend our own interests or so.
Now you have made clear that the EC is "fuck it", allow me to ask what, if you were part of the EC, would do different, so that it woud not be "fuck it" anymore?
I would not propose legislation which, according to my own surveys, 75% of all citizens which made the time and effort to respond to the consultation opposed.
It's exceptionally difficult to argue that the European Union is a useful tool for democracy, human rights, empowerment and cross-border cooperation for a better tomorrow when cross-border cooperation to empower individuals to defend their democracy and human rights seems to have no particular effect. Check citizen response rates in the consultation summary: clearly there were many citizens, from many different member states, who wanted to express themselves on this issue, who took the time to inform themselves of the consultation and the possibility to respond. That should have a larger effect, normally - you can't expect that citizens have to go riot in the streets before the Commission listens.
The trade secret consultation that they did last winter is actually quite devious, because even the responses from SME:s that they received can easily be traced down to something which must be some form of SME campaign - citizens are not the only actors in society that keep track of EU consultations only because they get alerted to it by Brussels-based people.
In the consultation response summary, they explicitly list trademark lawyers associations as NGO:s - a formal truth, probably, but in essence a trademark lawyer association is clearly a group of individuals which have a business interest in a very specific development of law.
The Commission's own study which they commissioned to a law firm which specialises in trade secret cases and breach of confidence cases in the UK argued that trade secrets are in fact not intellectual property in the vast majority of member states (France, in fact, is the only exception). Despite this the Commission makes this proposal as part of their "Single Market of IP" strategy
It's stuff like this which I would not do. Governments and the European Union have no business dealing with trade secrets - companies can protect their own information.
All persons get 24 hours in a day. Within that time, most are expected to do some amount of work for compensation. The model that followed from that is averaged as 9 am - 5 pm Monday - Friday. In that amount of time, we are not only expected to excel at our chosen profession, but to remain entirely civil in the course of our duties. So on one hand, we are expected to be seamless in our application of skill and on the other, remain totally professional.
Now with breach of confidence, intellectual property and trade secrets, working individuals must perform during that time (again to maintain their compensation, necessary to acquire food, clothing, and shelter) but they also must remain bound to a one sided contract that limits their on the job learning capacity, their outside interactions with peers, and their future career choices. With the difficulties facing a modern world wide economy, and similarly in the regional and continental sense of things, it would seem this commission failed to interpret the scope of their task. Human beings cannot be bound by paper to ignore curiousity. And once that curiousity is sated a bit, what then? We share information. We might not share it with everyone in the pub, or on the street, or on the internet.
For whatever unforeseen situation that might arise from the sharing of information, it always seems like a group of lawyers and business persons are active in trying to limit that natural step that comes after discovery. The implications to education, history and international relations are staggering. That a commission would outsource the investigation to a biased party is even harder to believe. It escapes common sense, and demands its own investigation. Blatantly ignoring all other data for a commissioned report from a biased party is no way to ensure any bit of our civilizations will stand. To counteract their "fuck it" attitude, I would propose that internships be offered to university students in each member state. Have them try to replicate each approach. Poll the citizens and on the other hand poll the interests groups. See if the commission had any real foot to stand on.
The year was the 1454th Johannes Gutenberg published the book that would change the media image in Europe, and later the world, forever.
The book was simple, the 42 -row Bible. The spread was admittedly modest, by today's standards, but no less revolutionary. And controversial. Until then, all literature copied by hand by monks. The customers consisted mainly of clergy. This meant that the few printed works that existed was owned and managed by the church.
It was very convenient, especially during a time when the Church's power over the people not only touched the spiritual plane , but to an even greater degree was all about big politics. Since the majority of the people were illiterate, and the priests have a monopoly in the scriptures, it was also easy to manipulate interpretations. Who would control the source?
........
The Internet is the Gutenberg printing press in 2000's vintage. Those in power today could learn a lot from the medieval clergy. The technology is here, ideas are born and shared, cultural and political effects spread no matter what we think of them, or the measures we put in to limit them.
No government is eternal. Nations are fragile . Power is not obvious.
Check out this inspiring documentary about Gutenberg:
"Stephen Fry - The Machine That Made Us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6KmzuULPmQ
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