Amelia Andersdotter - News Review

Towards more open formats for public information

Julien Bencze — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:10:49 +0000

Language English

Yesterday the committee for Industry, Research and Energy voted in favour of a proposal that should make the information held by public administratrion in the Member States more accessible for citizens, including for their re-use by interested individuals and businesses.

It has potential for improving the efficiency of public information in the digital world, increase transparency and create new business opportunities. A big source of worry for us appreared in the beginning of the negotiations between the members of the European Parliament that was dealing with the file. They seemed to agree that the public information could be accessible under any format (under the wording "technology neutral"), which would have made possible proprietary formats to proliferate, putting public information under a "business lock" for its access and re-use and thus jeopardising the whole point of the text.

Amelia managed to convince them to whitdraw all the references to technology neutral and replace them by "open format", which will be eventually and where possible chosen for containing public sector information.

Open standards will be used "in so far as possible". The total amount charged by public bodies for the re-use of documents would be limited to the marginal costs inccured for their reproduction, provision and dissemination, which should in principle ensure charges close to zero. However the conservative majority in the Industry committee managed through confusing and tricky wording to seriously limit in practice the implementation of the marginal costs.

The vote in plenary is foreseen at the beginning of next year.

Testing "words"...

Julien Bencze — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 18:08:37 +0000

Language Swedish

Today the members of the Industry committee of the European Parliament voted their opinion on the completion of the digital singel market. For details see the draft here and the tabled amendments here. This opinion will be taken into account by the Internal Market committee members, that will produce the final report on the subject.

The final report of the European Parliament will not be binding, which means that the content should not be implemented within the EU society, it is rather a short text that "reminds" to the other EU institutions (the Commission, the Council) and the national Member States what the European Parliament think on the topic and would like to be considered in future EU law. So basically, its only words, but words that can be used to justify and negotiate the orientation of future binding EU law :-)!

Globally, we are slightly satisfied with the amendments that were voted today, the compromises between the different political groups, where Amelia negotiated in the name of the Greens on this file, reached noticeable wordings on the need to increase trust of EU citizens on the internet: "[the European Parliament ] Recognises the need to create ways of enhancing citizens‘ trust and confidence in the online environment and to guarantee protection of personal data and privacy, freedom of expression and information including the removal of geographical, technical and organisational barriers in redress mechanisms;"

We also got positive affirmation on the need for ambitious European internet infrastructures , including the deployment of fibre. These "words" are good to have with us in the coming negotiations of the future EU internet infrastructures. The need to harmonise exceptions and limitations in copyright was also stated, which is encouraging. Even if we don't see yet the light at the end of the tunnel, at least, we go forward.

We also reached a controversial compromise on net neutrality:

on the positive side, the industry committee wants the Parliament to ask the European Commission to consider measures to ensure net neutality, and Amelia made sure to remind that anticompetitive behaviour, blockage of innovation, restriction on freedom of expression, lack of consumer awareness and infringement of privacy are against net neutrality and hurts society as a whole.

on the less positive side :-) , first, there is a stated confusion between the principle of net neutrality and technical, telecom-like characteristics that could, maybe, be useful to implement this principle: "quality of service", "transparency of traffic management and ease of swithching ". Put these words alone, like the opinion does, without context explanation, and they become useless to ensure that, like the European body of telecom regulators wrote in 2010, "all electronic communication passing through a network is treated equally", [...] independent of content, application, service, device, sender address and receiver address".

Second, the European Parliament should have asked the European Commission for proposing regulatory measures to ensure net neutrality. Despite that the opinion refers to the risk of content blocking and to the concerns expressed by the same organisation more recently on operators that increasingly restrict access to their users on non technical ground , the text omits to recognise the need for voting binding texts to protect net neutrality. There is a difference between law that should be respected ("regulatory measures") and simple "measures" that can be taken in, for exemple, "guidelines" or "recommandation" or by me when I wake up in the morning. We really want the European Commisison to move... its...But despite harsh negotiations on this very particular point , a monolit majority that consisted of the conservative EPP, the liberals of ALDE and the soverenists of ECR emerged on the very last moment, to finally avoid the word "regulatory measures".

Let's see now how the Internal Market committee will consider the content of this opinion and how the final text of the European Parliament would look like ... "Battles and voting on words"... Welcome to the political work.

After ACTA let's also have a look at the sources of the internet

Julien Bencze — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 07:36:48 +0000

Language Swedish

The European Parliament is expected to vote in January next year on a key file for the future of our ICT economy: the shaping of its future infrastructure. Technically it is a "proposal for a regulation on the guidelines for trans-European telecommunications networks" . Translation: the text will impose a framework that will "orientate" the way EU public money will be spent for the next telecommunication infrastructures during 2013-2020. The target proposed by the European Commission is to reach, by 2020, 100% of EU households at a connexion speed of 30 Mbps or above, and 50 % of EU households at 100 Mbps or above. This target comes from the European Digital Agenda previously set by the European Commission.

The requirement of an efficient and universal internet network for our citizens on a wide and disparate EU territory in terms of covering, the substantial investments both from the EU, 9.2 Billion €, and private actors make this file of particular importance.

That is why we decided to push, together with other MEPs, for the European Parliament to organise at the end of last month a workshop on the file called ''Building a European energy infrastructure - selecting and implementing projects of common interest' to see and hear experts discussing the relevance of the dossier. To see the power points of the speakers, see here.

How did the discussion go? Well, there is a rather normal consensus between EU institutions and stakeholders to allocate the EU funding and financial support towards areas where private investments alone don't go because of lack of investment return, i.e. due to poorly dense population in what we call remote or "white" areas. The questions on how we allocate the EU public money and financial support and for what kind of network are more subject to debate.

The European Commission, some MEPs and market analysists such as analysys mason or wik consult invited at the workshop give main importance to the principle of 'technological neutrality' to reach the target, principle under which the applicants for EU support (businesses or public bodies) are able to choose whatever 'technology' to reach the target: wireless including satellites, or Fibre to the... FTTx, or copper or mix technologies.

We understand that for each new infrastructure every technology should be considered, but we are less sure about the central relevancy of such principle: if you are really ambitious and want to get the best possible infrastructure at a good price, and if you see that this is financially reasonable to have such ambition for your geographical area, maybe one technology would be more used than the others and you would have to make a kind of choice. Some of the defendant of technological neutrality among the experts at the workshop pointed out that optical fibre and especially fibre to the home FTTH is very or extremely costly and that for cost efficiency consideration it couldn't be too much generalised, and that it should be complemented by wireless or mix technologies.

Other experts like from Cisco, Netnod in Sweden or SIEEA in France counterbalanced somehow this approach by showing that if the costs of heavy FTTH infrastructures are reduced by the use of existing infrastructures, shared between operators or even publically managed, the general costs can be reduced thanks to a healthy and income-generating competition in the exploitation of these infrastructures, for the benefit of the end-user that can pay a reasonable connexion price for a top 100 Mbps or above connexion speed. A possible future congestion of the wireless market was also hinted at.

In the coming months we will need to be vigilant to orientate and properly allocate EU support for projects that REALLY bring excellence at still affordable price and that invest in infrastructure technologies where private investments are REALLY not keen to go alone. Too be continued after the summer in the European Parliament...

Are we sure we need independent experts?

Julien Bencze — Sat, 12 May 2012 16:04:34 +0000

Language Swedish

As my political awareness has been increasing I have realised how important it is to have independent experts. Whenever you go deep into a controversial, political issue, at one more or less quick moment, often the crucial question that comes to your mind is: do we have independent experts we can rely on to tell us what comes the closest to the truth and therefore can help us defining what action we should take to solve the problem?

The European Union, of course, agree with this view and have created EU independent bodies of experts in various areas that are serious and respected. One of them is the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS).

As it is stated in its constitutive legislation, voted by the EU in 2001: "With respect to the processing of personal data, the European Data Protection Supervisor shall be responsible for ensuring that the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, and in particular their right to privacy, are respected by the Community institutions and bodies".

Since 2010, twice the EDPS have expressed concerns about the effects of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) on our fundamental rights. Its latest opinion dates back from the end of April.

If an expert body, recognised and supported by our EU institutions, assesses on two separate occasions that ACTA is a risk for our fundamental rights, I feel inclined to take this assessment into consideration, and I am sure many of my fellow EU-citizens would follow the same logic.

Therefore, I am astonished and even worried by the statement made by the European Commission representative at the European Parliament' committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs on 26 April, to comment on the EDPS opinion on ACTA. It rejects the EDPS's "wrong" conclusions, on the ground that they are based on "erroneous assumptions" and "selective analysis" (watch the debate from 11:48:48 from the presentation of the EDPS opinion and the reply of the European Commission representative from 12:13:00).

How can the European Commission explain how it was able to communicate that the EDPS's concerns about the impact of the agreement on fundamental rights are "wrong", while at the same time having submitted the agreement to the European Court of Justice because it needs to know whether ACTA is indeed compliant with fundamental rights?

Also, the European Commission checks that the Member States have similar independent data protection authorities, whose expertise they should acknowledge. But here it seems the Commission does not consider in its priority to follow the independent authority they themselves have at their disposal... This weakens the position of the institutional framework the European Commission is proposing for the Member States and thereby undermines their own ambitions in data protection.

The EU should show the right way, be exemplary to its citizens, and if not at least show some logics in its way of being able to assess whether a future law (ACTA) is right or not. By undermining the EDPS expert's voice, the European Commission representative at that particular meeting did not do so. His statement, according to the European Commission, is not its official position. "You are damn' right!" and we will help making sure it will never be.

ACTA est fabula!

Julien Bencze — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:27:46 +0000

Language Swedish

For the liberals of the European Parliament, "the play is over"

Today the president of the ALDE group (liberals) within the European Parliament announced they will vote against ACTA.

Because ACTA does not provide a suitable balance between the protection of IPR and Fundamental Rights, the ALDE, "champion of fundamental rights and freedom" according to its President Guy Verhofstadt, will vote against.

He reminded yesterday's opinion from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) that also sated ACTA as being unbalanced and as such a threat to privacy.

ALDE reminded that main counterfeiting "countries" such as China and Russia are not signatory parties, and that the US Congress will not ratify ACTA, to point out the uselessness of the Treaty to fight properly counterfeiting. The group also blamed the European Commission for not having made a deep impact assessment of ACTA including on its compliance with fundamental rights before submitting it to the vote.

The fact that too many different kinds of IP infringements are put together and subject to the same enforcement mechanisms, going from counterfeit handbags, counterfeit medicines, or illegal downloading, is not relevant. ALDE insisted on the need to have a sectoral approach when dealing with IP enforcement that would take into account the different kinds of goods and IP rights, dealt with in separate treaties, within the World Trade Organisation (i.e. for medicines) or bilateral agreements (i.e. for basic consumer goods like Louis Vuitton handbags). The group invited the European Commission to consider this approach in future intiatives.

MEP Niccolò Rinaldi, who is in charge of ACTA within the International Trade committee for the ALDE, pronounced the Latin phrase: 'ACTA est fabula!' which means 'the play is over'. The group will not wait a revision from the EC to vote, actually, no.

ALDE reminded that if ACTA is voted down by the European Parliament, it could still be enforced to minimum 6 ratifying parties. But it would be difficult for EU countries to ratify the treaty if the EU itself votes down...

Let's see now how united the ALDE group will be behind the ACTA refusal in the different committees, but more importantly in the plenary vote, which should take place by mid-July inStrasbourg.

Julien Bencze — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:06:26 +0000

Language Swedish

EU Data retention directive in Germany

Germany tries to find a compromise on its implementation of the EU data retention directive but risks to be sanctioned by the European Commission.

The liberal German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger suggests a "quick freeze" of data under court statement, before considering longer retention and transmission to investigators, instead of the 6 month automatic compulsory data storage from ISPs and Telecom firms required by the EU directive.

In Sweden a new data retention law that complies with the directive requirements was passed yesterday.

Germany freezes the idea of a two-strike online piracy law

Last week the negotiations in Berlin between the righholders and internet providers representatives, under the supervision of the government, failed on a possible two-strike online piracy law, after a proposal from the Ministry of Economy. The representative of the German association of the internet economy eco said he was satisfied with the negotiations (non)outcome, as 'warning notices are without any doubt inGermany against data protection and constitutional rights'.

Previous attempt from the music industry failed in 2008 for the introduction of a three-strike law based on the French model of Hadopi. already at that time the German internet providers said the rightholders could send themselves the warnings, but wouldn't do so it because its too costly...

French new law on 'unavailable books'

Julien Bencze — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:02:20 +0000

Language Swedish

At the end of last month the French Parliament passed a new law enabling the digitalisation and commercial exploitation by a mandatory collective management society of out-of-commerce, 'unavailable' books, edited before 2001 but not sold anymore, by a sort of a 'default setting'. The authors have 6 months to oppose the process if they whish to, after that the exploitation of their work will occur automatically under terms and conditions they would have not priory agreed with.

The draft comes from the Ministry of Culture and was somehow negotiated under kind of secrecy. The high advisory council for literary and artistic property - Le Conseil Supérieur de la Propriété Littéraire et Artistique (CSPLA) who is taking part in the national discussions on the EU orphan works Directive proposal, was not informed of the preparatory work of this law. However the National Publishers Union (Syndicat National de l’Édition - SNE) and the Société des Gens De Lettre (SGDL, representing authors) did worked on it, and welcome the results in a common press release, also available in EN.

On a purely legal aspect, the law looks like an infringement of the French author's right. It seems the French government and its Parliamentarian majority did not properly take into account the particularities of the moral right that recognises the authors an inalienable paternity on their work, thus conditioning any kind of release, to their prior-consent, always. The rapporteur of the law at the French National Assembly, Hervé Gaymard, did simply ignore or were not aware of the distinction moral right/commercial right in preparatory meetings, where he was quoted as saying any right = commercial right. A collective of 500 French authors did warn the government that this law violates their moral rights but were not listened to.

What if the authors would like to release his/her unavailable work for free? The French law-makers didn't bother thinking of it, of course... Which makes the transition with the cultural aspect of the issue: Guillaume Champeau from Numerama, says it is an attempt from the French legislator to circumvent the effect of the orphan works directive proposal, that foresees the possibility for libraries and other cultural institutions to digitalise and diffuse orphan works in rather open conditions without having to pay rights, based on general cultural interest considerations. The French law would actually target, without saying it, the digitalisation and exploitation of orphan works, which would represent half of the 500,000 'unavailable' books inFrance.

For the French speaking Libre Software Users' Association AFUL, the law legalises real piracy and blocks the EU attempt to open access to culture and knowledge, see their comprehensive warnining.

German news

Julien Bencze — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 09:30:29 +0000

Language Swedish

Germany: 1 MBite/s Broadband almost everywhere

99.1 % of German households benefit a basic 1 MBite/s broadband coverage, according to a report from the standardisation body TüV and made public today by the Minister of Economy. It still slightly misses the 100% target that should have been reached by the end of 2010. Most of the progress has been done in rural areas where 92% of the 4.2 Millions households are covered since the beginning of 2012. The rate reaches 99.9 % of the households in the big cities Berlin,Hamburg and Bremen. Also, a significant 8% increase of households covered by the 50 MBite/s digit rate occurred during the second half of 2011 to reach now 48 % of all German households. The Government targets 75% coverage by 2014. 8,5 Million of households are now covered by the LTE, the radio telecommunication mobile technique that can reach a 3.9 MBite/s speed.

Threat of a copyright enforcement on small online citations in Germany

A new German law backed-up by the government that could be soon voted would force online news aggregators to pay a fee for the use of small citations to online publishers.

German court condemns facebook for infringing privacy

The German consumer association Verbraucherzentrale Bundesverein (VZBV)'s claim against facebook for not respecting EU privacy rules was well received by the Regional Berlin court . It stated yesterday that the terms and conditions of facebook applying to its Friend finder service were not informing enough the users to obtain their consent on the fact that all their email addresses were imported, and that invitations to join Facebook were sent even to people who are not members of the network. Facebook is excpected to appeal.

News Review Korea

Mattias Bjärnemalm — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 15:58:24 +0000

Language Swedish

Censorship
Unionized workers of KBS, the nation’s largest broadcaster, have voted to go on strike, joining journalists of MBC who walked out more than a month ago. Like the union of MBC, KBS journalists and other staff are calling for the resignation of the company president who has allegedly censored coverage critical of President Lee Myung-bak.

Privacy
Google's new Privacy policy is still discussed in regards to privacy. Experts say Google is not the first one who has aggregated personal data. Korean conglomerates including Samsung Group, CJ Group, and KT have done what’s called a single sign-on or SSO, which is to unify private log-in information across their services, to make it easier to manage data and save costs as well. And critics argue that the Korean government has brought a double standard to foreign and national companies when it comes to protecting online privacy, when criticizing Google's new policy.

Social Networks
Lee Chang-sup, chief editorial writer of The Korea Times, writes that people are often prone to sympathize with even wrong information they like, and reject accurate information they disfavor in an editorial discussing the role of traditional media versus social networks.

Cyber Security
Seven adolescents committed a DDos attack on the website of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family because they didn’t like the ministry’s policies. The ministry has implemented policies such as banning young gamers from accessing online games at nighttime and putting “harmful to adolescents” labels on songs of idol groups because of cigarette- or drinking-related lyrics.

This week in the German Patent Championship: Apple: 3 - Others: 1

Julien Bencze — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 17:20:58 +0000

Language Swedish

The different Apple's conflicts with Samsung on one side and Motorola on the other side were substantially 'updated' this week.

The first court decision came from the Munich Regional Court, which stated on Monday that specific Motorola smartphones infringed an Apple patent over a 'zoomed-in' photo gallery display. Apple can in principle ask for the destructions of all infringing phones in Germany, and with this 'weapon', will at least get from Motorola workaround of its software to go on selling in the country. Apple 1: Motorola: 0.

But Apple's greatest goal was scored by the Karlsruhe appeal court, the higher court of Manheim's judges. According to the decision, Motorola, by refusing to accept a reasonable licensing proposal from Apple to use some of its standard-essential patents violated its obligations under which a patent right holder of essential technologies should license them under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) conditions. The decision will likely, at least for the moment, block other attempts to ban the commercialisation of Apple smartphones for standard-essential patent infringements in the country. Apple:2 Motorola:0

Also yesterday two decisions came from the Manheim court : in the first one, Apple's request from last January to condemn Samsung for violating its 'slide to unlock' patent was rejected. The decision goes against the one stated by the Munich court against Motorola on the same patent last month. If Apple have not commented on the decision yet, it is likely to appeal. The second one stated that Apple does not infringe a standard-essential 3G/UMTS Samsung patent because the relevant patent covers a calculation method that Apple did not copy, even if the results on the phone are similar. Apple: 1 Samsung: 1

Google faces critics from the German government with its new confidentiality rules

Ilse Aigner, the German consumer minister, expressed her strong concerns about the lawfulness and fairness of Google's last confidentiality rules applicable since last Thursday. According to her, 'Google's lip service data protection campaign has no value, if it does not give a single possibility for the users to veto their personal data collection'. Aigner already showed public critics towards the controversial, especially in Germany, Google Street View in 2010 for not protecting privacy enough.

Google confidentiality rules include the controversial provision: 'We may combine personal information from one service with information, including personal information, from other Google services – for example to make it easier to share things with people you know'.

Aigner relays the concerns expressed by the French data protection authority, the CNIL, who, in the name of all EU data protection bodies, criticised also Google's confidentiality rules for being to vague on the type of data collected, the exact services, the purposes and the identification of the beneficiaries of such data, thus going against EU data protection provisions.

Google 'launched' these new rules despite the concerns coming both from Europe and the US, which made Aigner think this act violated the trust the European public authorities were to expect from Google.