Is Neelie Kroes Implicitly Calling For Your Assistance For Copyright Reform?
from the you-go-girl dept
Neelie Kroes, the Vice President of the European Commission and politician in charge of the Digital Agenda, announced the impressive ambitions of the EU to support the ongoing technology revolution in a recent speech in Brussels. Repeatedly, she calls for radical reform of policy and public R&D investment. The speech shows once again that she and her team really understand the current transformation to a networked economy, which brings about “open, agile and collaborative” innovation and research. Kroes wants to accelerate and boost the potential of technology innovation by creating space for “disruptive ideas”. A few snippets:“I want to try out support for truly open, disruptive innovation in ICT.”How refreshing is that from a senior government official? Of course, she names and shames some barriers, which she intends to bring down. Notably, she mentions the policy incoherence of EU copyright, where the status quo strangles innovation (if you follow her implied logic from the speech). This is not the first time she mentions that copyright is doing more harm than good. She has criticized the system again and again. And again just the other day. And several more times in unofficial speeches.“[…] remember that great innovation isn't about keeping the status quo: it's about challenging it. It's radical, disruptive, and sometimes non-linear – especially for emerging technologies. So let's make space for that in Horizon 2020.”
“We must update our policies and practices for the digital world”
It must now be getting obvious -- even for the layman -- that the copyright system is one of the biggest inhibitors of Mrs. Kroes’ ambitious and forward-looking agenda for positive technological change. Too bad the copyright office of the EU is not in her department, but in the department run by Mr. Barnier, who seems a little more hesitant to enact change. Perhaps it's because he has a top former IFPI lobbyist working for him? Perhaps Kroes’ frequent mentioning of copyright is an implied call for assistance to her audiences to help change Mr. Barnier’s mind.
I wonder how long it will take for civil society organizations to pick up on these hints. The current public interest in copyright policy after ACTA, SOPA and PIPA can now be called into action again to send a batch of friendly notes to Mr. Barnier, possibly with a few quotes from Mrs. Kroes’ speeches, urging him to develop new copyright legislation which should be discussed in open and transparent forums sooner rather than later. It would be a shame to let governments postpone legislative action until the public interest from the internet freedom movements subsides.
In any case, you may comment on Mrs. Kroes' speech or leave a reply on her blog to show your support and even make some suggestions of your own.
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Filed Under: copyright, copyright reform, eu, neelie kroes
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The primary problems of ACTA was not in itself a demand for more draconian laws in europe. I am pretty sure that the only real demand for change of laws would be a tort reform. Dont get me wrong: That is a horrible idea, with far reaching potential consequences.
The rest of ACTA is mostly under attack for the use of conciously obscure language without judicial meaning so far while being direct swaps of judicially well-defined and well-working terms. That is a sign of future malicious overreaches, but not even close to being a demand for such. The internet chapter was brought in at a late stage of the negotiations and the one in the final text was a hail Mary after the US lobbys draft was completely rejected as being so obscure and draconian that the negotiators were scared it could turn down the agreement. The final chapter is based on what is in the EU aquis today and then made more obscure to cover the rest of the parties demands.
It is a bit ironic that the things sparking protests in USA and EU are mostly already in EU laws, barred some horrible formulations and further openness of language...
Karel de Gucht went far too far in his defence of ACTA. He went as far as calling out the Greens in the parliament several times and he went somewhat ad hominem with some of the "experts" who disagreed with him.
On the other hand he had to defend what he and the commission had used years on reaching. EU is far from democratic in the sense that if there is any chance of avoiding any kind of vote or avoid a potentially unwanted discussion on the content of an agreement, the commission or council takes it since they think that a no will be years of wasted work (and in terms of direct law it is).
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If people that care about the internet would be as committed with the current (very important) proposals in the pipeline as they were with ACTA I'm sure the quality of the final outcome could be improved substantially.
I call for less negative protesting and more positive instead!
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Unless we can get politicians to hold back on the ridiculing, we will never know what they mean or what ideas they have before they hit office and start killing jews...
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Copyright reform solution
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