Amelia Andersdotter - Piratfrågor

Fredrik, Sofia och Filippa

Amelia Andersdotter — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 08:11:30 +0000

Språk Svenska

Idag befinner jag mig i Tjeckien för att prata dataskydd med tjeckiska pirater, politiker och allmänheten. Olyckligtvis har många politiker från parlament och senat valt att ställa in sitt deltagande, eftersom landet befinner sig i politiskt kaos. För 1,5 vecka sedan uppdagade det sig nämligen att halva statsministerns kabinett ägnat sig åt organiserad brottslighet. Det ledde till statsministerns och regeringens avgång. Enda sättet att undvika nyval verkar vara att utnämna den kandidat till statsminister som Civildemokraterna vill ha.

Tydligen har statsministerns kabinettchef spionerat på statsministerns fru genom att kultivera ett nära förhållande med chefen för säkerhetstjänsten. Motivet antas vara personligt snarare än professionellt, då statsministern tydligen haft ihop det med både kabinettchefen och frun samtidigt. Är man högt uppsatt och har goda kontakter med säkerhetstjänsten finns det ingen anledning att vara svartsjuk i onödan.

Också på Irland har man haft problem med poliser som har för stor tillgång till mycket information om medborgare. Justitieministern på Irland uppmuntrade sin poliskår att sluta se medborgarregistrena som en "sorts facebook".

Båda historierna visar det mänskliga i alla relationer, och varför man inte ska förlita sig på att nyfikenhet hos enskilda privatpersoner kan stävjas av domstolsutlåtanden. När vi som pratar om massövervakning som någonting dåligt menar att det innebär risker menar vi inte bara att det är en plågsamt orättvis och farlig maktförskjutning till staten, polisen och/eller militären, utan också om att det finns mänskliga aspekter hos personer som jobbar i tjänstemannakårerna i dessa institutioner som man inte vill att andra enskilda personer i samhället ska bli utsatta för. Som Anna Troberg påpekar i sitt svar till Torbjörn Tennsjö finns det en massa saker som vi själva inte skäms för, men som vi kan ha goda anledningar att tro att andra kommer höja ögonbrynen över. Det finns ingen allmän anledning att tro att personer som jobbar på t ex FRA inte är människor och uppvisar mänskliga kvaliteter. Det är naivt av t ex Allan Widman att tro att vi kan skapa ett säkerhetsnät för oss själva mot oss själva: samhället är svårt just för att det bygger på att människor som måste befinna sig i varandras närvaro ska komma överens, och att då ge vissa människor mycket mer makt än andra är inget bra sätt att uppnå bra konfliktlösning i fall där det inte funkar.

När jag för kanske 4 år sedan första gången åkte till Berlin och träffade Piratpartiet där (långt innan de blev delstatsledamöter) berättade en person för mig att DDR på många sätt var mycket värre än många av öststaterna, för tyskar har en hög arbetsmoral. Vi har ungefär samma lutheranska arbetsmoral i Sverige och det är i de flesta fall bra. Men när maktförskjutningen till staten från medborgaren blir allt större blir det ett större problem att tjänstemännen i maktapparaten helst vill göra ett bra jobb givet sina instruktioner.

Keynote på Open Source Days, Köpenhamn (9 mars)

Amelia Andersdotter — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 07:02:45 +0000

Språk Svenska

Jag hade den stora äran att få närvara vid Open Source Days, en stor dansk konferens om öppen källkod och öppen mjukvara som anordnas varje år i Köpenhamn sedan 1998. Nedan följer det anförande jag gjorde under konferensen, och efteråt var det många som ställde frågor och förde diskussioner som jag också besvarade så gott jag kunde. Det var många intressanta presentationer utöver min egen som DNS-censur, privatlivsskyddande teknologier för din mobiltelefon (specifikt Android och orbot), samt en mycket intressant historia om hur man kan porta mjukvara från slutna plattformar till Linux, och vilka avväganden man som företag då behöver gå igenom. Jag träffade PROSA, KLID, Superusers och ett makerbot-team som tillverkade små bystar (alltså statyer). Också närvarande var Ung Pirat Malmö:s nya ordförande Janni! Stort tack för sällskapet och jag hoppas vi ses snart igen :-)

I'm very happy to see so many people here. Welcome.

Most of you have come here because you are developers, or implementers, of open source solutions. Am here in a slightly different role. Even if I have been known to use open source software, I'm here because I am a member of the European Parliament, a publically elected representative, and, as such, legislating and creating norms for interactions in society are some of the tasks for which I m responsible and accountable. I am, optimally, responsible and accountable both for choices that I make, and choices that I don't make.

We all make choices, on a daily basis. In the vast majority of cases they don't have a big impact on the people around us, nor do they impact our surrounding world a lot. Many of the choices I make, when I work in Brussels, by contrast impact the framework in which the 500 million citizens of the European Union find themselves.

So I would like to talk about responsibility and accountability.

Last year I was awarded the honour of being named the fifth most influential internet activist in the world by online internet social community magazine Daily Dot, because of my work in the European Parliament against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

Now, ACTA is an interesting piece of work since, ultimately, the European Parliament rejected the agreement. The international federation of phonogram industries issues a press release on the day after the vote, July 6th 2012, urging the parliament to be more responsible ”next time”.

But the agreement was already from the outset an example of devastatingly bad allocation of responsibility and accountability.

One of my major concerns in the agreement was the proposition that businesses make their own agreements on how copyright law or trademark law should be enforced.

The reason I don't like this is because I recognise that business, ultimately, doesn't have the olbigation to make difficult and sometimes costly judgement of which particular society benefit should be given preference over another at some given time.

It is us, the legislators, who make that balance through the laws that we enact, and up to the courts to implement these balances.

We have to be able to trust our legislators and our courts to uphold our rights and freedoms. We, the people, everyone of us that interacts every day, need to feel safe that our legislators take responsibility for our common interaction spaces. In the case of ACTA they did, so that is good.

But returning to the issue of responsibility: earlier this week the European Economic and Social Committee had invited me to hold a keynote at one of their meetings. They are not a legislative institution, by the way, so they do not necessarily cause a lot of harm. I was invited to hold a keynote on the responsible use of the Internet. Their thematic conference concerned children, nasty comments on the internet and how we can ensure that the Internet become a friendlier and funner place.

I said at that meeting, and I will maintain, that we have a fundamental political problem in how we define interaction spaces in society when all responsiblity for friendlieness is hurled towards the individual rather than us assessing whether the interaction frameworks are in fact wrongly defined.

We know, for instance, that at the World Summit for Information Society in 2005, ”communciation” was left out from the list of expected benefits from public access to information benefits. An arbitrary exclusion, given how important communication is for society and group cohesion.

In the European Union similarly we are not reforming the opyright laws. They create only uncertainties and risks for those who try to express themselves through use of culture, or those who turn to culture to build commonalities with others. Being a user of cultural works is associated with nothing but risk – all rights and certainties are kept for rightsholders. But because we either do not value communication or because we, the legislators, are unwilling to acknowledge the huge impact our work or, as it were, non-work, has on the abilities for people to interact, the reforms aren't coming.

I will give you an example: in December of last year, the current European Commissioner in charge of copyright issues Michel Barnier said in front of a parliamentary meeting that he did not want to look closer at users' rights in the European legislation because he didn't want to make copyright weaker.

I would argue that a legal framework made in such a way that it creates fear, uncertainty and doubt for those who try to build social networks and communities with each, is a weak legal framework. Our legal system can never be stronger than its legitimacy, and the legitimacy of the current copyright framework with its few limitations is very low.

When teachers, librarians, e-book consumers, radio stations, organizations helping out the visually impaired or Djs find themselves in a situation where they cannot, at any other than severe cost in time, money or to themselves, comply with or respect the law, that is the definition of a weak legal framework.

Laws have no purpose if they don't minimize conflicts between different members of society, or make the conflict resolution between these members as painless as possible if a conflict nevertheless arises. Copyright does exactly the reverse: it generated a multitude of conflicts, and makes the resolution of those conflicts painful and traumatic.

To no reassess users in copyright is irresponsible. It is an avoidance of responisibility that users and citizens themselves can't remedy. It falls upon politicians and elected representatives to take this responsiblity, but the political fear of action in this field is harming our society and our communication places.

Many here will be private persons, entrepreneurs or business people who are deeply concerned with policy areas like competition, standards development or patent law, trademarks or worse: trade-secrets, one of my biggest problems in legal development today.

Also here, unarguably, we are suffering from a gret number of problems over which politicians largely do not exercise much responsibility. Because of the very unclear value-base which guides all policy around communication, be it innovation, group work, personal or economic endeavours or what, the very concept of ”responsible use of the internet” is naturally confusing.

Is it responsible to have built a market model entirely dependent on the removal of freedom, choice and privacy of your customers?

I would argue that it isn't, but politically we have huge difficulties acknowledging concepts like indutrial leadership or the consequences of showing, or refusing to show, such leadership. What we seem particularly unable to determine, politically, is how to discuss the frameworks for interaction that we are making.

Because politicians, publically elected officials, decide the frameworks within which all other actors in society operate, it is incredibly important that they have a vision and some values to impose on that framework.

So for instance, I believe that we need a much stronger policy against vertical integration. Competition policy, which today deals msotly with cartels, mergers and dominant actors need to have a shift of focus towards market entrance barriers. For each level of a different product chain we should not only ponder, but also enforce, functional separation. This will make market entrance on each level of the vertical chain much easier and more actors will be able to join in innovation and product development.

What we are seeing instead is a less conflictful application of competition law now than in the past. When Apple locked its platform sot hat developers only by locking in themselves could participate in the AppStore, the European Commission was happy to accept only a weak commitment from Apple to open partially the developer kit in 2010.

Clearly a more useful discussion or investigation to have been had could and should have been the exact control exercised by Apple over every step of their value chain, and whether anti-trust laws should actually be given a larger role in contravening such practises.

Similarly, when Apple and four publishers were doing price-fixing and locin-in for the e-book sectors, the Commission cautiously criticized the license market they were engaging in as potentially in violation of competition laws, but in the end the Commission decided to not go in and actually just ban the market that they though was not in any way competitive, but instead accept the voluntary commitment to discontinue these market practises for a period of two years.

Clearly more political evaluation over what type of market models we are actually willing to accept would have been useful here.

Even in the Commission's merger investigations, they will very rarely scrutinize the conglomerating effects of merging patent portfolios on a licensing market. But the market for licenses of certain types of patents can be very heavily influenced by large mergers.

The type of competition overhaul that I would like to see would of course demnd involvement not only of competition authorities, but politicians and sector-specific national regulatory authorities as well. It is possible, but it reuires consistent and responsible politicians that are willing to be accountable, and responsible, for the decisions and values they implement.

We as citizens should not be letting our publically elected officials get away with losely referring to industry self-regulation or how they do not want to stop some business development from happening.

Even if it is clear that vertical integration and centralization can have some benefits, freedom, choice and the liberty to make new things is to me more important, and comes only from a structural framework of functional separation.

This brings me over to a last point that i would like to propose on the topic of responsibility. I say that often we hear politicians avoiding responsibility by stressing their unwillingness to interfere with business development or the development of new business models. It is already quite clear that all businesses emerge inside a society context, and that politicians, parliamentarians, governments and commissioners have the responsibility for how that framework is set up.

We all exist inside this framework, which defines how and when we interact in which way with whom. It defines our social interactions, our interactions with businesses, public authorities or the way that businesses interact with each other or public institutions.

These frameworks are made to reduce th total amount of conflicts and bad blood. They are here to help us make bad blood that nevertheless appers go away in some process least traumatic to the parties involved.

So clearly, in order to preserve these conflict minimizing properties of our framework for interaction, we should not be scared of, or avoid, showing an appropriate amount of industrial leadership.

Privacy, data protection or security are good examples of where a larger degree of political responsibility is needed.

In one place I read, and I think this captures beautifully this point: one national data protection authority based in a member state of the European Union stated that it feels its mission is to mitigate the negotative consequences brought on to private persons and citizens in their interactions with business and public authorities by the large scale deployment of information and communication technologies.

Mitigating the negative consequences implies that all is lost, and you would wonder why we at all make public investments in data protection authorities if all is lost.

As we see, and as many of you know, we could simply politically decide not to accept some economic models which create the need for ex post crisis management and damage mitigation with respect to privacy concerns.

We need stronger leadership, responsibility and enforcement of the privacy and data protection measures that we want.

I'm not saying politicians must necessarily favour some technology over another, but I do believe strongly that we both can and should consider the properties which technologies that get deployed at large-scale have to possess.

As business models deal a lot with interaction and communication, we can and should also exercise responsibility in open, democratic debates about which business models we find ok, and which ones we don't.

Now finally, then, if one is a private person and one would like to interact with policy making institutions because one is concerned about the lack of responsibility or one wants to increase accountability? I would suggest writing e-mails, letters or give phonecalls to deputies, that are personal. One person writing a heartfelt, personal email to their deputy easily counts more than any lobbyist or any other interest. Keep in touch with your deputies, ask what they are doing, get in touch when you know that they are addressing issues relevant to you.

Debattartikel från bokmässan: Hög tid att se över upphovsrättslagen

Nils Agnesson — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 11:35:28 +0000

Språk Svenska

Under bokmässan i Göteborg förra helgen delade vi ut en flyer med en debattartikel från Amelia. Den återges nu här under för den som vill läsa. För bilder från bokmässan, se här.

32 miljoner kronor blev kostnaden för licenserna i kultursatsningen som Lena Adehlson-Liljeroth presenterade i augusti tidigare i år. En dubbelsatsning på verk redan finansierade av skattepengar. Amelia Andersdotter, EU-parlamentariker för Piratpartiet, anser att man med en mer effektivt utformad upphovsrätt hade kunnat få mer kultur för pengarna.

I slutet av augusti var svenska kulturdepartementet, med Lena Adehlson-Liljeroth i spetsen, stolta över att kunna presentera ett nytt avtal med Utbildningsradion om tillgängliggörande av deras offentligfinansierade produktioner. Mer än 8 000 kurser och utbildningar skulle göras tillgängliga på internet, till en kostnad av endast 32 miljoner kronor.

Kunskapssverige jublade, men glädjen blev kort. Upphovsrätt gäller under livstid plus 70 år, ett enormt tidsspann där licenskostnaderna måste betalas varje år.

När vi nu har lusläst regeringens budgetsproposition kan vi konstatera att det inte finns några medel till UR för att betala de licenser som krävs för att kunna ha kvar de 8 000 kurser och utbildningar fritt ute på internet, eller för den delen publicera nya utbildningsprogram. De där extra 32 miljonerna räckte inte längre än till kulturministerns nästa politiska utspel.

Att materialet redan bekostats av skattemedel verkar ointressant i frågan.

Det är svårt att se någon rationalitet i dagens upphovsrätt. Inte ens om man bortser från det faktum att lagstiftarna straffat bort en helt naturlig och samhällsgrundande kommunikationsform, går det att se någonting positivt i att vi som medborgare tvingas förhålla oss till kunskap som någonting flyktigt och temporärt. Någonting som i ena stunden finns, för att vi genomför dubbelinvesteringar, och i andra stunden snabbt försvinner.

Kunskap borde ju, om inte annat, vara ett permanent inslag i vår vardag som medborgare och ett hjälp och stöd för oss när vi utövar demokratiskt inflytande eller dagliga aktiviteter. Om upphovsrättsinnehavarna får bestämma kommer jag och mina barn, och mina barnbarn, betala för att detta material ska vara tillgängligt trots att mina föräldrar och deras föräldrar redan betalat för just dessa produktioner. Vem ifrågasätter rationaliteten för detta? När kommer regeringen korta upphovsrättsskyddstiderna eller i alla fall offentligt ta ställning mot denna plåga?

World Pretentious Property Organisation

Amelia Andersdotter — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:54:54 +0000

Språk Svenska

The General Assembly decision on the Pirate Parties International application for World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) observer status has been postponed until 2013. Yesterday during the deliberations between the member states of the WIPO assembly, all of which are nation states that are also members of the United Nations - therefore the European Union, represented by the European Commission, does not have a voice - concerns were raised about letting political parties obtain observer status. Observer status implies that you can follow the meetings and the discussions. At times a representative member of the organisation may also make interventions on behalf of the observing organisation.

This decision is really distressing. The American non-profit organisation Knowledge Ecology International reports that the United States, in particular, "asked for a hold on the decision until WIPO could decide if it wanted to accept political parties as WIPO observers". Some of the European member states were apparently "concerned that the Pirate Parties would take 'political action' back home when they disagreed with positions taken by the official delegates at the WIPO meetings".

It bears mentioning in this context, that earlier this summer WIPO General Director Francis Gurry said "Innovation is too important as an economic and social phenomenon to beover-politicized." What exactly could he mean by that? We talk about innovation, growths and jobs in my institution every day, and I'm a publically elected official sitting in a supra-national parliament. It is difficult to imagine a more political environment than the one in which I find myself. If Mr Gurry means that intellectual property law should not be held up to public scrutiny and democratic debate, he would really need to look deeper in himself to dig out a justification for why this "social phenomenon" needs to be outside of social control.

Indeed, Mr Gurry himself has acknowledged that "Beyond law and infrastructure, we have culture, and the Internet has, as we know, developed its own culture, one that has seen a political party, the Pirate Party, emerge to contest elections on the basis of the abolition or radical reform of intellectual property, in general, and copyright, in particular. /.../ [T]he sentiment of distaste or disrespect for intellectual property on the Internet that it voices is widespread." Clearly, even at the World Intellectual Property Organisation they know that intellectual property rights, copyrights, patents and trademarks are quickly becoming highly politicized topics, very present in the public debate and the number of private persons in society who do not feel in some way negatively affected by the current regulatory framework is quickly decreasing. But Mr Gurry's methodology for dealing with these problems is, first of all, to lead the process of signing an ill-conceived performers' rights agreement in June of this year in Beijing which clearly bears the mark of benefitting global film studios without remedying the power balance in place between those same studios and the actual performers (normally actors) assumed to be protected by the agreement, and secondly, to "also sa[y] the growing anti-IP sentiment is “quite normal” and described the challenge of winning the “hearts and minds” of people toward the notion of paying for copyrighted material on the internet."

In other words, Mr Gurry's solution to a very fundamental question on how to solve the issue of communication between people, the building of communities over borders and the social interactions of normal persons in a digital environment and elsewhere, is to make them suck it up.

He seems to suggest we have to pay or stay silent. Well, I refuse to sign up to this world view. It's deranged.

It also really bothers me that the European governments presented are afraid of being held accountable for their actions in WIPO in their home countries. The European representatives are sent out by goverments of European countries to convey the political position of the government they are representing in the forum of WIPO! Surely the accountability of a European government towards its people doesn't stop at the Swiss border?

My own government, which without hesitation told Swedish national press that they supported a binding treaty for the access to books for visually impaired and blind people in WIPO, were unable to communicate as much to the rest of the assembly in WIPO. Is my government operating under the assumption that the rest of the WIPO delegations read Swedish media niched at European Union coverage or did they just lack the courage to represent the view of their government in the chamber?

In a system where no one wants to be held ultimately accountable for the changes that are happening, seemingly largely in opposition to the will of the people, isn't politicizing of the debate actually extremely good? I believe the Pirate Party, and its international cooperation organ PPI, is actually not like other political parties - we are not a highway into public administration. We are exactly that which a political party is supposed to be: a bridge between the political debate that people are having and feeling, and the institutions that can do something about it. It's time for politicizing to reach WIPO.

Styrelsen på besök i Bryssel

Tess Lindholm — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:54:43 +0000

Språk Svenska

Nu i helgen var det dags för ytterligare ett Brysselbesök för min del. Eftersom vi har en ny kollega på kontoret så behövdes det fotas och filmas lite inför höstens #exile6e episoder. Jag håller på och förbereder inför nya avsnitt av serien och försöker hitta nya intressanta saker att filma och belysa. Det kommer bli ytterligare besök senare i höst där jag bland annat kommer utbilda en av praktikanterna som kommer vara i kontoret i höst i att filma och dokumentera. För er som längtar efter nya avsnitt får ni vänta lite till, men vi är snart igång igen.

Även Piratpartiets styrelse var på besök här under helgen. De började med ett besök här på parlamentet och hade sedan styrelsemöte i vår externa lokal som ligger i närheten där de hållit hus hela helgen. Jag har varit på plats under delar av helgen och fotat och filmat dem lite, så ni kommer möta även dem i något avsnitt i höst. Här kommer bilderna på styrelsen.

Fler bilder går att hitta bland albumen på Amelias facebooksida.

Reflektioner - Framtidens Piratpolitik 2012

Nils Agnesson — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 09:07:26 +0000

Språk Svenska

För någon vecka sedan så var jag och Amelia i Västerås på ett Parley med titeln Framtidens Piratpolitik 2012. För den som inte vet vad ett Parley är så är det helt enkelt en medlemsträff där man träffas för att prata politik eller något annat ämne. Ordet Parley kommer från Pirates of the Caribbean-filmerna, nördigt som partiet är, och betyder egentligen att två fiender måste sätta sig ner och prata när den ena parten vill förhandla.

Amelia var öppningstalare för parleyt och hon pratade om de stora frågor som kommer att komma i parlamentet i höst. Nätneutralitet är en sådan fråga. Idag filtrerar samtliga svenska operatörer sina billigaste mobilsurftjänster vid nytecknande av abonnemang, och nätneutralitet är någonting som du som konsument måste betala för. Piratpartiets ståndpunkt är att EU behöver en unionstäckande lagstiftning om nätneutralitet som täcker både trådade och trådlösa internetoperatörer, vilket också är den ståndpunkt som Amelia driver i parlamentet. Men knäckfrågan för parlamentet i höst är om man ska nöja sig med att nätneutralitet måste erbjudas som en premiumtjänst, eller om det ska lagstiftas om att alla anslutningar ska vara nätneutrala.

Parleyts första ämne var finanspolitik, med fokus på privata lån och EU-staternas indirekta stöd till banker. Att staten inte ska gynna storföretag framför små och medelstora företag är någoting som vi kunde konstatera, men vilket parti tycker någonting annorlunda? Vi kunde ganska snabbt konstatera att det inte finns någon tydlig piratpolitik idag.

Efter lunch så diskuterade vi en mer strategisk fråga, hur Piratpartiet kan placera sig som ett mittenparti. Förslaget var att man antar ståndpunkerna att inte vilja höja inkomstskatten och inte sänka bidragsnivåerna. Partiet måste dock driva frågor som väcker engagemang, att vi vill vara ett mittenparti måste förklaras på andra sätt än att säga att vi inte vill sänka några bidragsnivåer. Partiet driver inte längre en vågmästarstrategi utan kan förhandla med de partier som är villiga att förhandla med oss (möjligtvis undantaget SD), och de facto så är vi därmed ett mittenparti.

Senare under eftermiddagen diskuterades ämnena Tillväxt och hinder för e-handel och e-tjänster samt Immaterialrätt och tillväxt, vilket egentligen inte gav några nya idéer på politik som partiet skulle kunna ställa sig bakom. Ja, vi gillar fortfarande Internet, och vi vet vilka problem som finns idag.

Det sista intressanta ämnet som togs upp var frågan om EURO. Eller ja, det var inte så intressant. Att säga ja eller nej till EURO utifrån vårt principprogram är mer eller mindre omöjligt, vilket får till följd att vi som deltog hade väldigt olika politiska utgångspunkter när vi diskuterade frågan. En debatt som inte ger så mycket då det krävs betydligt djupare samtal om man ska övertala någon att överge sin tidigare politiska värdegrund.

Skynda långsamt i breddningsarbetet, det är vad jag tar med mig från detta Parley. Att diskutera frågor som inte har en naturlig del i vårt principprogram är att starta i fel ände.

Nästa episod av #exile6e ute: One brilliant day funeral

Tess Lindholm — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 09:16:34 +0000

Språk Svenska

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ2gt5h-6Ck&feature=youtu.be

What is the purpose of our network security agency?

Amelia Andersdotter — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:12:24 +0000

Språk Svenska

I am full member of the ITRE (industry, research, energy, formerly also transport but transport is currently in its own committee TRAN) and therefore have voting duty every time there are votes. The objects of my legislative prowess yesterday were the amendments for the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) report (see parliament dossier website). I wrote about this last week but then only in passing.

At the votes, I had the draft amendments and the voting lists at my disposal and found myself in a curious mind-wrestler. Last week, I had agreed with the Greens/EFA shadow rapporteur for the opinion that surely it cannot be good to ”identify and promote risk-prevention technologies” (suggested article 3(1a)) and that the better formulation would be ”identify and promote risk-prevention behaviours”. Of course, promoting a change doesn’t always go easily and the text we voted on yesterday says that one of the competences of ENISA should be ”identifying and promoting risk-prevention behaviours and technologies”. A compromise!

With a South Korean experience from last year in mind, in which South Korean authorities suddenly decided to promote a risk-prevention technology in the shape of anti-virus software by means of suggesting it should be criminal not to have it installed, I feel of course slightly wary of specific technologies being promoted. From a security standpoint, a large diversity will create a bigger resilience in our information systems than homogenization – a bit like how a democratic society is more resilient against anti-democratic tendencies if it has to accommodate for a large manifold of different opinions. We had both questioned the establishment of ENISA Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs) (see previous blogpost), which continue to be present in the end-report. And at this stage, what shall I vote? I ended up following the line of the Green shadow rapporteur (approval of the report).

It was a first reading report and probably we’ll see this dossier returning to the parliament. The Council will have to react to the fact that the Parliament is trying to create a second layer of CERT infrastructure on top of the one the Commission revealed plans to launch last year. This Commission-style CERT, set to start in 2013, is more edgy than the one proposed by the Parliament. For one, it is located under DG Home and Cecilia Malmström – the internal-affairs-but-now-also-defense-section of the Commission. Europol is not at all adverse to the idea of being the main responsible agency for this CERT and talk about their previous experience with cybercrime and terrorism.

Personally I like to maintain some skepticism towards overly ambitious formation of public institutions against cybercrime. Surely the vast majority of our infrastructure both in terms of hardware and software, its development or maintenance, is anyway in the hands of private actors, and the actions required to increase resilience and security such that they can be undertaken only by those private actors?

And as for ENISA, the question is why we would want or need a network security research agency in Europe. I can think of at least one question I would like to be answered: differences of company information security policies with respect to end-consumers and public institutions in different member states but where the company is the same (that is, active on several member state markets). If choosing their questions carefully, ENISA would be in a position to produce a lot of valuable material on information and network security in a geographical region (the Union) which is very geographically splitted, with different telecommunications backgrounds and different security threats or needs and that simply is not doable in any other part of the world.

Freedom of Press or Infosoc Reviewed

Amelia Andersdotter — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:09:58 +0000

Språk Svenska

Last week I had a brief encounter with two Icelandic ladies who were visiting the European Parliament in the interest of approaching MEPs who may have an interest the current endeavour of Iceland to join the European Union. I, of course, made no delay in asking about the on-going process of implementing the IMMI proposals into the Icelandic legislation. They said they believed the work was well underway within their respective parliamentarian committees and that the proposal was very well-received and that, strangely, it had always seemed a more controversial proposal outside than inside of Iceland.

A related, but still not very, exercise in copyright combinatorics performed by Smári McCarthy, also from Iceland, last year reveals the large number of permissible permutations of copyright exceptions in European harmonized copyright law. This combinatorial adventure reminds me of two things: first, an event organised by my colleague Marielle Gallo in the European Parliament on Friday the 20th of January at which several prominent academics from amongst others IViR and Cambridge U. Faculty of Law and US government WIPO representative John Hughes made contributions as to their views on the European Information Society Directive (2001/29/EC, also Infosoc Directive). The event can be summarized as follows: to the extent that the Infosoc Directive attempted to harmonize copyright legislaton in the Union, which one might come to believe if one considers its alternative name "Copyright Directive", it brutally failed. In many respects the current copyright legislation in Europe, including on a member state level, is far too prohibitive and it would be useful for the European Union to consider a development of the legislation such that a bigger space is left for so called fair use. How to incorporate greater legal uncertainty in exchange for more user freedom over copyrighted works with the French system for creating case law was not addressed (it anyway appears copyright is the only realm in which French courts allow themselves liberties with respect to legislators). There was a slight critique of how the European Court of Justice defines in its caselaw terms like "public", "work" and "broadcasting" despite the original European legal text (the directives) explicitly saying that these limitations are left up to the discretion of member states. And then there was a WIPO representative who, while not contributing much to the general academic air of the debate, certainly well summarized a political copyright maximalism.

Second, a courtcase on media freedom recently settled in Sweden. The copyright of a photograph is not considered the same when published on a webpage as if it had been published in a printed media, according to a recent case against a student magazine with a web edition in the south of Sweden. The Swedish Media Publisher's Association reacted quickly with an analysis where they state that the court, in this case, has made it very clear that a digital publication of a printed edition is considered equal but that in this case they decided that this photograph was used as a "critical publication" (the correct translation evades me, since eur-lex does not respond to calls just now). They also say that this particular exception and its non-extension to digital publications is an effect of a EU directive implemented in Sweden in 2005, and that they have already expressed their concerns with this directive and this specific provision because of the risk of exactly this situation arising. The only directive which fits this particuar description is the... Infosoc Directive 2001/29/EC, also subject of the Copyright Combinatorics linked above!

It anyway reminded me of a similar, but much more difficult to understand, case from Germany's Bundesgerichtshof (highest court, I think?) last year. Photographs of an arts exhibition were allowed in printed media, but not in the digital edition since the digital edition would be used by many more people and over a longer period of time than the "transient publication" that was the printed paper edition.

I saw some calls for technology neutral legislation regarding publications, so that there could be no risk of something being lawful in one medium (say, a paper-based magazine) but not in another (say, the digital version of the exact same magazine). To my best of understanding this has already been proposed within the scope of Swedish government investigation Yttrandefrihetskommittéen but also received with some skepticism. I am currently most favourable to the proposal of simply allowing freedom of press and freedom of expression to always be applied by courts if the court is in doubt whether or not these freedoms can be applied (I think this translates into "if in doubt, pick freedom"). One of the problems with actually rewriting the freedom of press law of Sweden to become technology neutral is that we run the risk of getting other, more arbitrary, ways of defining what constitutes a publication. This could be something like "commercial scope of operations", "fixed publication dates", "a specific number of readers" or similar impractical or discriminatory criteria that could easily exclude some of the online publications that on some sensibility level merit support from freedom of expression laws. In the above mentioned case, it's quite clear that the flaw is anyway in a EU Directive (which strikes higher than Swedish freedom of press?!) so it would not be mitigated by such a change.

Ungaria și Uniunea Europeană

Amelia Andersdotter — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:39:23 +0000

Språk Svenska

This is an essay written by yours truly in Romanian about Hungary, to commemorate the debates in the European Parliament and international media of last week. It was actually originally written by me, but corrected by a native speaker who considered "80% of the [original] text intelligible". For Hungarian readers of this text, please see an interview with index.hu I made last year which is along these same lines. For non-Romanian and non-Hungarian speakers, essentially my concern is that the European Commission (in particular) avoids difficult issues about human rights for European citizens and focuses on administrative points because they are afraid of stepping on the toes of sovereignty of, in particular, founding member states (I'm thinking mostly about the non-critique of laws like LOPPSI, HADOPI, Sinde, etc).

Ungaria este o țară din Europa Centrală. Este membră a Uniunii Europene de peste 8 ani. În urmă cu mai puțin de un an, Parlamentul Ungariei a votat o nouă lege pentru mass-media care a redus libertățile jurnaliștilor. Anul trecut, Parlamentul European și-a exprimat nemulțumirea și îngrijorarea privind această nouă lege. Nici jurnaliștilor nu le place noua lege pentru că ea prezintă riscul cenzurii.

Îngrijorarea continuă și astăzi. Unora dintre parlamentarii europeni nu le place noua Constituție a Ungariei pentru că e foarte naționalistă. Guvernul Ungariei, care e susținut în Parlament de 67% dintre deputați (o "majoritate absolută"), și-a propus întinerirea forțată a corpului de judecători. Lipsa de independență a Agenției Naționale pentru protecția datelor cu caracter personal a fost criticată.

La nivelul Comisiei Europene se critică noua lege prin care statul va avea mult control asupra Băncii Naționale a Ungariei.

Navracsics Tibor, vicepremierul Ungariei, a spus pentru Reuters că Guvernul Ungariei este dispus să schimbe legea privind protectia datelor personale, așa cum a modificat și legea media anul trecut.

Lipsa de independeță a agenției naționale nu este cea mai mare problemă, ci riscul cenzurii și păstrarea forțată a datelor. Cabluri de internet traversează Ungaria, mulți alți cetățeni europeni fiind dependenți de acestea. Cenzura din Ungaria poate afecta oameni din afara jurisdicției maghiare.

Sancțiunile propuse împotriva Ungariei sunt sancțiune financiare, iar critica privește doar aspectele administrative (ca și lipsa independenței Agenției).

Dacă nu s-ar limita la atât, Uniunea Europeană ar trebui să critice și alte legi din alte state membre care limitează libertatea informației și cea a comunicării, dar acest lucru ar încălca principiul suveranității naționale.

În Europa se construiește un "internet of holes", un "internet al golurilor".

Språkkommentarer:
lege referitoare la = lag som berör/rör
nici jurnaliștilor nu le place = journalister gillar inte heller (dubbel-negation och ett dativ(!))