Monster Energy Loses Trademark Bid To Push Around Japanese Software Company

from the monster-loss dept

There must be something about using the word "monster" in one's business that turns that business into a true monster from a trademark bully perspective. Readers of this site will be familiar with the two largest offenders along these lines, Monster Cable and Monster Energy Corporation. It's the latter that has continued its prolific trademark bullying ways to date, as recently as earlier this year, when it threatened a root beer company with the word "beast" in its name, claiming that this was too close to "monster" for the purposes of trademark law.

Still, as laughable as that spat was, at least it could be said that Monster Energy was going after another beverage company. That isn't the case with Monster Energy's latest failed attempt to block the trademark for a video game company out of Japan.

United States energy drink manufacturer Monster Energy failed to block Japanese mobile-game producer Mixi Inc's move to register its trademark Monster Strike in Singapore for its popular mobile game. A trademark registrar held that Energy's bid to ring-fence the word "monster" for its own use was unjustified as both products operate in different business fields and the marks were more dissimilar than similar.

"Stripped of its legalese, this dispute is, at heart, about one trader's battle to fence off an ordinary English word - monster - for itself, and to exclude others," said assistant registrar of trade marks Gabriel Ong from the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore in decision grounds last month.

It's worth highlighting that the video game company, Mixi Inc., conducts business well outside the realm of the beverage industry. Monster Strike is a mobile game and Mixi Inc. is in the entertainment gaming business. In other words, far from any serious concern over customer confusion, Monster Energy was essentially asserting it could wall off any prominent use of the word "monster" by other, non-competing businesses. Few if any trademark laws in any country allow for this type of language lock, with most trademark provisions necessitating that the offending entity operate in a related industry to that doing the complaining.

Even the complaints about claw marks on some of Mixi's branding failed to persuade, it seems.

Mr Gabriel Ong found both marks to be more dissimilar than similar, noting that the second word in each differentiated the marks. He added that the marks were registered for types of goods that are unlikely to cause confusion among consumers.

There is also no risk of misperception of co-branding nor any likelihood of confusion as the public at large recognise Monster Energy drinks not by reference to the words but the accompanying trademarks above the words, including the "claw" graphics. "It is one thing to describe the goods as Monster Energy, but how they are marketed and sold is another matter," added Mr Gabriel Ong, noting that each can of the Monster Energy drink "invariably bears the claw device", although there were minor variations to each product range.

In a 48-page judgment, he found that the opposition by Monster Energy to Mixi Inc's application failed on all grounds and ordered costs for the game producer.

It's a good result, but one which begs the question: why does Monster Energy continuing wasting everybody's time and its own money with its bullying behavior?

Filed Under: drinks, monster, monster strike, singapore, trademark, video games
Companies: mixi, monster energy

Singapore Court Tosses Copyright Troll Cases Because IP Addresses Aren't Good Enough Evidence

from the preach dept

We've been saying this for years, but IP addresses are not good enough evidence on which to base copyright infringement lawsuits. At some level, everyone already knows this to be true. You can tell that's the case because the typical pretenders stating otherwise are the copyright trolls with a business model that relies on gathering large numbers of supposedly infringing IP addresses, mailing out settlement demands to the supposed pirates that own the accounts of those IP addresses, and then collecting very real money from some percentage of the recipients. On top of that, even these trolls will often claim that the onus is on the account holder of an internet connection to police their own pipe, which is a delightful end-around to the common concept of punishing true infringers as opposed to innocent third parties.

There are places with legal systems that have had enough of this practice and we can now add Singapore's to the list. The High Court in Singapore recently threw out requests from several copyright trolls made to ISPs there to produce account information for IP addresses they claim were used to infringe on two movies, Fathers & Daughters and Queen Of The Desert.

The oral decision delivered at a closed-door hearing on Monday was on the grounds of "insufficient evidence", the Attorney-General's Chambers (AGC) told The Straits Times yesterday. In a rare move, the AGC intervened in civil applications made in the High Court in July last year by Samuel Seow Law Corp (SSLC), the local law firm that represents the two studios.

Last year, SSLC again served papers on Singtel, StarHub and M1 to get details of alleged pirates of Fathers & Daughters and Queen Of The Desert, with a list of over 500 offending Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The AGC and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (Ipos) said they highlighted to the court that SSLC did not submit "sufficient evidence" to show a link between the IP addresses and alleged illegal downloaders. It was on such grounds that the case was dismissed.

It's an important decision in the country, with the High Court cementing the position that IP addresses are not sufficient evidence with which to demand account information over infringement issues. That the practical use for that account information would have been the type of sleazy settlement demands that have become the norm in copyright trolling circles may have played a role in the decision, but it need not have. Viewed solely on its merits, there are any number of ways an internet connection might be used for copyright infringement by someone other than the owner of the internet account: shared WiFi, brute force break-ins into the connection, etc. The simple fact is that knowing an IP address that was used for infringement doesn't tell anyone who did the actual infringing. Viewed that way, compelling ISPs to turn over personal account information based solely on IP addresses is crazy.

Some IP attorneys are already whining about the decision.

Mr Lau Kok Keng, an IP lawyer at Rajah & Tann Singapore, said requiring the rights owner to link the IP address to the actual infringer is akin to "putting the cart before the horse" - copyright holders need to know who the account holder is to ascertain if he is the actual pirate.

"So it could mean that individuals who illegally download copyright content will be able to get off scot-free because their identities will never be known, short of being caught in the act," said Mr Lau.

Which is much to do about nothing, given that, again, the infringing party might not be the IP address owner to begin with. What the copyright trolls are really looking for are essentially lead lists for settlement letters. They don't really care if the recipient of those letters is the infringer or not, they care if they can scare enough people into paying settlements to make money.

In that light, it's nice to see a government get it right on this question about IP addresses as evidence, even if we have to look all the way to Singapore to see it.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright trolls, ip addresses, singapore

YouTuber Jailed In Singapore For Criticizing The Government Seeks Asylum In The US

from the are-we-still-a-country-that-believes-in-free-speech? dept

Last year, we wrote about the ridiculous situation for Amos Yee, a teenager in Singapore who was arrested for some of his YouTube videos criticizing Lee Kwan Yew, the country's founder and long-time Prime Minister. As we said at the time, watching the videos over which he was arrested (which have since been made private), it seemed clear that Yee was doing what many teenagers do, and mouthing off to authority. He was a precocious kid with strong opinions, and he had an audience on YouTube. Good for him.

We quoted an excellent New Yorker profile of Yee at the time that had this fantastic paragraph, written by Nathan Heller:

Yee has all the hallmarks of a green and thriving mind; he is exactly the kind of person you would one day want reviewing your books, making your movies, maybe even running your country. Americans, who enjoy the benefits of free media, have a responsibility to take him more seriously than they take the government that has tried to quiet him for thinking freely in the public sphere. And those of us in the Fourth Estate have a duty to spread word of his ridiculous charges. If people like Amos Yee end up the custodians of our profession, the future of countries like Singapore can be brighter than their past.

A few months ago, Yee got in trouble yet again. Specifically, he was thrown in jail for criticizing religions (Christianity and Islam in particular). Once again, it involved an opinionated teen being punished for his opinions -- though, as Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch noted at the time, there appeared to be something of a Streisand Effect going on:

"Every time the authorities go after him, it just adds to his online audience," said Mr Robertson in an email.

Apparently, Yee has had enough of being sent to jail in Singapore for his opinions and has applied for political asylum in the US. Somewhat amusingly, just a day before hopping a flight to Chicago, Yee gave an interview to a Singapore publication claiming that he was a changed individual, and had a new view on freedom of expression:

Yee explains that his position now is: if a social media user is found to be inciting harassment and gets taken down, that isn’t clamping down of free speech. That’s what should be done.

Along that line, he also believes it would have been reasonable for YouTube to take down many of his videos, which he has now largely retrospectively privatised.

“I could even go as far as to say that my kind of video that humps the Quran, and was overly rude to religious people. I’d probably want my videos and maybe even my account to be taken down too. It is just not a good way to communicate information to people.”

And then the next day he suddenly arrived in Chicago seeking asylum:

Amos Yee, 18, was detained Dec. 16 and remains in custody "pending federal immigration court proceedings," U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said in a written statement.

Separately, Marilu Cabrera with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which handles some asylum requests, said the agency "cannot confirm or deny" details of any asylum case.

The Human Rights Watch deputy director for Asia, Phil Robertson, called on the U.S. to recognize Yee's asylum claim, saying he has been consistently harassed by the Singapore government for publicly expressing his views on politics and religion and severely criticizing the city-state's leaders, including late Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Whether or not you agree with Yee's views, it is an important free speech case -- and granting him asylum would be a good way to show that the US still does believe in promoting freedom of expression around the globe.

Filed Under: amos yee, asylum, free speech, singapore, us

DailyDirt: Dealing With Zero (Or Negative) Population Growth

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Pessimistic economists have predicted overpopulation problems based on exponential growth trends, but statistics point to lower birth rates as countries become more industrialized. So now, there's a different kind of problem -- aging populations and minimal population growth in certain countries. How will we deal with people living longer and having fewer and fewer kids?

• China has officially ended its "one child" policy, allowing its citizens to have up to two kids. An estimated 400 million babies "avoided conception" since 1979, but now that the Chinese population is skewing older, more 25-64yo workers will be needed. However, the social norm of having only one child might be more difficult to reverse than simply lifting a ban. [url]
• The Government of Singapore has been trying to encourage its citizens to have more kids for many years, partnering with ad agencies to create some goofy campaigns. A few years ago, on "National Night" (Aug 9th), Singaporeans were called upon to perform their civic duty... and make some babies. (The government has also tried tax incentives, paid maternity leave, and programs to help singles develop long-term relationships.) [url]
• Denmark also has an aging population problem -- and a goofy ad campaign to "do it for mom" to get people to think about making grandkids. The country is even throwing in a vacation package discount because statistics show that couples tend to have kids after romantic, exotic getaways. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ad campaigns, babies, birth rates, china, demographics, denmark, national night, one child policy, parenting, singapore, zero population growth, zpg

DailyDirt: No More Teaching To The Test?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

A Singaporean math test question went viral not too long ago, confusing some people and making others wonder how American kids should be taught math. Plenty of other countries perform better on international standardized tests than US kids do, but it doesn't always mean the US should adopt other countries' lesson plans and policies. However, there's always some political pressure to try to change things (not always for the better). Check out some links on Finland and how it has been working to improve its school system since the 1960s.

• Finland is often cited as the shining example for how to run an educational system. However, the detailed story of Finland's educational system is complex, without much evidence to support the narrative that a more relaxed approach is the reason behind the country's high test scores. [url]
• The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests surprised some people by ranking Finland among the top ten nations to administer the test in 2009, but the scores highlighted the decades-long efforts of Finns to improve their school systems. Standardized test scores were not the goal of the Finland school system, but students seemed to do well regardless. So there may be lessons in how Finns raise their kids, but it's not clear how well their system can be translated to other locations. [url]
• Finnish children start school at age 7 and have shorter school hours than US kids do. Teachers in Finland have a lot of training and are highly respected professionals. Pouring more money into education isn't necessarily a silver bullet solution, but making teaching a highly respected career might require a bit more funding. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: education, finland, pisa, schools, singapore, standardized testing, teachers

Teen Blogger Arrested In Singapore For Being A Teenager And Posting A Video The Government Doesn't Like

from the free-expression-matters dept

In Wired Magazine's 4th issue ever, back in 1993, it sent famed author William Gibson to Singapore, leading him to write an amazing article entitled "Disneyland with the Death Penalty," talking about the strange contradictions of the city state. It starts out with this sentence:

"It's like an entire country run by Jeffrey Katzenberg," the producer had said, "under the motto 'Be happy or I'll kill you.'"

Singapore is famous for both its clean, modern and high tech city... and the fact that it is more or less a dictatorship in which no criticism of the government is allowed. Talk to Singaporeans who have made it to the US for more than a little bit and you'll discover somewhat horrific stories about living in that country -- the kind of stuff that almost no one wants to talk about publicly. And in the last few weeks, the actions of the Singaporean government have highlighted just why so many Singaporeans are fearful of speaking out about what the place is really like.

A 16-year-old precocious YouTuber named Amos Yee was arrested last month, basically for saying mean things about Lee Kwan Yew, the country's founder and long-time Prime Minister -- though many say that he was actually the country's dictator -- who died just a few weeks ago.

Amos Yee's "controversial" video is still up as I write this. You can view it here, though I imagine someone may eventually try to take it down. The title is "Lee Kuan Yew is Finally Dead!" and in it Yee unloads his feelings on LKY and his infamous tendency in going after anyone who criticizes him, including the international press. Yee more or less tells the government to try to go after him... and it did.

Watching the video, though, you see a typical teenager mouthing off to authority. That's what teenagers are supposed to be doing -- and Yee has quite a following as a precocious teenaged commenter on culture, both Singaporean and around the globe. The New Yorker has a profile of Amos, detailing some of his other videos that show him as a pretty typical teenager with opinions -- and the ability to create some fairly entertaining videos, like How to Speak Singlish (the modified English that some Singaporeans use) or his somewhat overwrought review of the movie Boyhood.

As the New Yorker's Nathan Heller writes about Yee:

Yee has all the hallmarks of a green and thriving mind; he is exactly the kind of person you would one day want reviewing your books, making your movies, maybe even running your country. Americans, who enjoy the benefits of free media, have a responsibility to take him more seriously than they take the government that has tried to quiet him for thinking freely in the public sphere. And those of us in the Fourth Estate have a duty to spread word of his ridiculous charges. If people like Amos Yee end up the custodians of our profession, the future of countries like Singapore can be brighter than their past.

And yet, he's facing the potential of three years in prison and many thousands of dollars in fines, based on "Penal Code Section 298" which forbids "the uttering of words that might hurt the religious feelings of any person," as well as a recent anti-cyberbullying law that the country passed.

We talk a lot on Techdirt about the importance of freedom of expression, and have called out other examples where people are pushing for laws against cyberbullying, with an expressed interest in stopping people from "hurting feelings" by unkind speech online. But when you have laws that make people criminals for merely expressing their opinions, you are shutting down the very way in which people learn and grow. Expressing opinions, having debates about them is a key part of growth, intelligence and innovation. Singapore wants to be seen as a modern and innovative country -- and yet at the same time it allows no dissent and no freedom of expression. It is a travesty.

Even some in Singapore have been willing to point out that this is ridiculous, and only serves to show the world that Singapore's ego is fragile that it cannot stand up to a bit of criticism:

What Amos Yee did was crude, rude and insensitive. But he is, at the end of the day, a provocative child playing at being hardcore. He’s certainly not the first – it was only the lack of access to YouTube that saved many of us from eternal embarrassment in our teenage years – and he won’t be the last by any stretch of the imagination. Is Singapore really so fragile, so easily threatened by offensive comment, that there was a need to charge a kid in court?

What Amos and the two protesters did were against the law – but it’s also high time that we think about the laws we have, and whether the trade-offs made make sense in today’s context. Is the Singaporean situation really so precarious that freedom of speech and assembly needs to be curtailed to such an extent?

Of course, given the way in which general deference to authority is demanded in Singapore, plenty of others have come out in favor of throwing Yee in jail. The New Yorker piece describes how ridiculous some of this has become:

In the days after Yee’s arrest, a slew of local celebrities, including three Singaporean starlet types, were interviewed about his videos on national TV. In sequences depressing to watch, they all sided with the state. “If you say that, ‘Oh, people can say whatever they want, all the time,’ then what about those people who are listening?” Joshua Tan, a young actor, said. Well, what about them? The suggestion that citizens should withhold political criticism for fear of offense is preposterous—far more embarrassing to Singapore than any videos by Yee could be.

We see this same attack on free speech in other places (often college campuses) today, as well as in certain areas of social media, in which people immediately leap to the idea that we need "new laws" to punish those who say things that people don't like, because "what about those people who are listening." Those people can be offended. And they can have their feelings hurt. Because that's how a free society is supposed to be -- where not everyone agrees with one another, and sometimes people say things you don't like. And that's good for the community. It's good for ideas and intelligence in that it allows for people to be challenged and to improve their arguments.

Singapore, apparently, wants to put teenagers in jail for acting like teenagers. And thus, it appears that little has changed since that William Gibson article more than two decades ago -- and that's a real shame. In the age of the internet, Singapore has continued to try to position itself as a high tech mecca. But if it can't handle free expression, it's going to find that a difficult image to maintain.

Filed Under: amos yee, free expression, free speech, lee kuan yew, singapore, teenagers

Singapore's Precarious Surveillance State The Envy Of US Intelligence Agencies

from the total-information-awareness-test-market dept

If you want to build a surveillance state with a minimum of backlash, you'll need a very controllable environment. Shane Harris at Foreign Policy has a detailed report on Singapore's relatively peaceful coexistence with Big Brother that includes the United States' involvement in its creation, as well as the many reasons pervasive surveillance and an out-sized government presence have been accepted, rather than rebelled against.

The genesis of Singapore's surveillance net dates back to 2002, and traces all the way back to former US National Security Advisor, John Poindexter. Peter Ho, Singapore's Secretary of Defense, met with Poindexter and was introduced to the Dept. of Defense's Total Information Awareness (TIA) aspirations.

It would gather up all manner of electronic records -- emails, phone logs, Internet searches, airline reservations, hotel bookings, credit card transactions, medical reports -- and then, based on predetermined scenarios of possible terrorist plots, look for the digital "signatures" or footprints that would-be attackers might have left in the data space. The idea was to spot the bad guys in the planning stages and to alert law enforcement and intelligence officials to intervene.

Though initially presented as an anti-terrorism tool (something Singapore was looking for after several recent terrorist attacks), it first found usefulness as a way to track and predict the spread of communicable diseases.

Ho returned home inspired that Singapore could put a TIA-like system to good use. Four months later he got his chance, when an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) swept through the country, killing 33, dramatically slowing the economy, and shaking the tiny island nation to its core. Using Poindexter's design, the government soon established the Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning program (RAHS, pronounced "roz") inside a Defense Ministry agency responsible for preventing terrorist attacks and "nonconventional" strikes, such as those using chemical or biological weapons -- an effort to see how Singapore could avoid or better manage "future shocks."

Singapore politicians sold "big data" to citizens by playing up the role it would play in public safety. Meanwhile, back in the US, the program began to fall apart as privacy advocates and legislators expressed concerns about the amount of information being gathered. In Singapore, this was just the beginning of its surveillance state. In the US, it became an expansion of post-9/11 intelligence gathering. Rather than end the program, it was simply parted-out to the NSA and other agencies under new names by sympathetic lawmakers.

Singapore's TIA program soon swelled to include nearly anything the government felt it could get away with gathering. The government used the data to do far more than track potential terrorists. It used the massive amount of data to examine -- and plan for -- nearly every aspect of Singaporean existence.

Across Singapore's national ministries and departments today, armies of civil servants use scenario-based planning and big-data analysis from RAHS for a host of applications beyond fending off bombs and bugs. They use it to plan procurement cycles and budgets, make economic forecasts, inform immigration policy, study housing markets, and develop education plans for Singaporean schoolchildren -- and they are looking to analyze Facebook posts, Twitter messages, and other social media in an attempt to "gauge the nation's mood" about everything from government social programs to the potential for civil unrest.

Making this data collection even easier is the Singaporean government's demand that internet service can only be issued to citizens with government-issued IDs. SIM cards for phones can only be purchased with a valid passport. Thousands of cameras are installed and government law enforcement agencies actively prowl social media services to track (and punish) offensive material.

But this is accepted by Singapore citizens, for the most part. The mix of Indians, Chinese and Malays makes the government especially sensitive to racially-charged speech. The country's dependence on everyone around it makes everyday life a bit more unpredictable than that enjoyed by its much larger neighbors. In exchange for its tightly-honed national security aims (along with housing and education), Singaporeans have given up their freedom to live an unsurveilled life. And for the doubters, the government has this familiar rationale to offer.

"In Singapore, people generally feel that if you're not a criminal or an opponent of the government, you don't have anything to worry about," one senior government official told me.

What goes unmentioned is just how easy it is to become an "opponent" of the Singaporean state. It can take nothing more than appearing less than grateful for the many government programs offered in "exchange" for diminished civil liberties. While the government goes above and beyond to take care of its citizens' needs, it acts swiftly to punish or publicly shame those who are seen to spurn its advances, so to speak. Not for nothing did sci-fi writer William Gibson calls this Singapore "Disneyland with the Death Penalty."

So, to make the perfect police/security state, you need a small country and a mixture of government largesse and palpable threats. You need a nation so precariously balanced that it "shouldn't [even] exist," according to one top-ranking government official. You also need a nation not built on civil liberties. Despite this, US intelligence agencies still view Singapore as a prime example of what could have been.

[M]any current and former U.S. officials have come to see Singapore as a model for how they'd build an intelligence apparatus if privacy laws and a long tradition of civil liberties weren't standing in the way. After Poindexter left DARPA in 2003, he became a consultant to RAHS, and many American spooks have traveled to Singapore to study the program firsthand. They are drawn not just to Singapore's embrace of mass surveillance but also to the country's curious mix of democracy and authoritarianism, in which a paternalistic government ensures people's basic needs -- housing, education, security -- in return for almost reverential deference. It is a law-and-order society, and the definition of "order" is all-encompassing.

If this was what the NSA and others were pushing for, there's no hope of achieving it. The Snowden leaks have undermined a lot of these agencies' stealthy nudges in this direction. The US government can never hope to achieve the same level of deference, not even in the best of times. A melting pot that has folded in refugees from authoritarian nations -- along with the country's founding principles -- have made many Americans predisposed against views of the government as an entity worthy of reverence. Widespread abuse of the public's trust has further separated the government from any reverential thought.

This isn't to say the desire to convert US citizens into nothing more than steady streams of data doesn't exist. The NSA's previous director often stated his desire to "collect it all." In the hands of the government, useful things could be done with all of this data (like possibly heading off epidemics, etc.), but the more likely outcome would be collecting for collecting's sake -- which violates the civil liberties the country was built on -- and the use of the information in abusive ways.

It may work for Singapore, an extremely controlled environment. But that doesn't necessarily make it right. And it certainly shouldn't be viewed as some sort of surveillance state utopia.

Filed Under: civil liberties, freedom, nsa, singapore, surveillance

Singapore Says 3 Strikes Is Too Intrusive For Copyright Reform, So Goes With SOPA-Style Censorship Instead

from the say-what-now? dept

I saw two headlines in a row recently about Singapore's plans for copyright reform. The first one sounded good, and the second one sounded dreadful:

1. Singapore decides 'three strikes' laws are too intrusive
2. Singapore proposes law to block sites such as Pirate Bay

It turns out that both headlines are accurate, though it's the second one that's the bigger issue here. You can see the details laid out (quite clearly) by Singapore's Ministry of Law. It notes that they currently have a DMCA-like notice-and-takedown setup, but have apparently decided that this is somehow too burdensome for rightsholders who have pushed the government to come up with an alternative plan (gee, this sounds familiar...). They don't seem to explain why this is so burdensome, they just say that there's too much "uncertainty" in having to actually "establish the liability for infringement." So, rather than do that, it appears that the Singaporean government is willing to chuck basic due process, and go for flat-out censorship without due process.

Under the proposed legislative changes, rights holders will also be allowed to apply directly to the Courts for injunctions to prevent access to pirate sites without having to first establish ISPs’ liability for copyright infringement. This judicial process is more efficient and avoids implicating the ISPs unnecessarily.

So, just as in SOPA, the idea is that rightsholders can suddenly declare that certain sites are "rogue" and courts can agree to wipe them off the face of the internet, by ordering ISPs to block access to them. The Singaporean government insists this won't be a problem for legitimate sites, because it seems to have bought into the Hollywood fallacy that what is a "legitimate" site and what is a "pirate" site are somehow obvious, rather than a spectrum in which nearly everything is some form of gray.

This is targeted at websites that show a blatant disregard for, and that clearly infringe, copyrights. Legitimate search engines and content sharing sites such as Google and YouTube will not be affected.

Notice how they just blithely insist that YouTube is legitimate. That may well be news to YouTube's lawyers, who just concluded (via settlement) a seven-year battle in which Viacom literally insisted that YouTube was the equivalent of a video Grokster (the file sharing service that lost its court case for enabling infringement). And that's where the real problem is. It's easy to claim that it's obvious when a site is legitimate and when it's not, but reality doesn't work that way. For years, many people were pretty sure that Napster was perfectly legitimate under the rules of the Sony Betamax ruling, but then a court decided otherwise. Similarly, many assumed that YouTube was illegal, until that case settled. Hell, even the VCR was a "pirate tool" until the Supreme Court ended that argument thirty years ago.

And, of course pretty much all of modern entertainment history is filled with similar examples of new innovations in the delivery and consumption of content that are at first deemed illegal, until suddenly they're not. The player piano, the phonograph machine, radio, television, cable television, the photocopier, the DVR, the VCR, the mp3 player, and many other innovations were first decried as "pirate" technologies. And then they weren't. But with the Singaporean government insisting that it's somehow obvious which ones are legitimate and which ones are not, Singapore is almost guaranteeing that important legitimate innovations that help move the industry forward will, instead, get censored and blocked across the entire country.

That's no way to present yourself as an innovative country.

So, yes, later in the document, they reject three strikes (and administrative, rather than judicial, blocking) as too draconian and intrusive:

Countries like Spain and Malaysia have implemented an administrative site-blocking approach where rights holders can apply for site-blocking orders from a Government-appointed body. Countries like France have introduced a “graduated response” system where individual internet users are notified of their infringing activity by the ISP, and can be penalised if they continue their infringing activity despite repeated notifications (or “warnings”).

We considered the alternatives above but assessed that they may not be suitable in Singapore’s context as they are too intrusive on internet users.

But, in many ways, the alternative "solution" that Singapore appears to be supporting is worse than three strikes. It's outright censorship against innovation, based on a faulty belief that it will be immediately obvious whether or not new innovations and technologies are "legitimate" or "pirates."

Filed Under: 3 strikes, censorship, copyright, injunctions, notice and takedown, singapore, sopa

European Commission: ACTA Is Dead, Long Live ACTA?

from the hidden-in-plain-sight dept

The first six months of 2012 saw Europeans taking to the streets in order to kill off ACTA in the European Union. Against all the odds, they succeeded in that aim, as the European Parliament voted to reject ACTA on 4 July last year. That defeat has certainly been burned into the memories of Karel de Gucht, the EU Commissioner responsible for negotiating first ACTA and now TAFTA/TTIP. When he was asked whether the latter might see ACTA sneak in by the backdoor, here's what he replied:

"ACTA, one of the nails in my coffin. I'm not going to reopen that discussion. Really, I mean, I am not a masochist. I'm not planning to do that.

If the Commission advances new basic legislation, which I think she should, we will revisit the question, but I'm not going to do this by the back door".

So you might think that ACTA is definitively dead and buried in the EU. But then along comes a new free trade agreement, this time between the EU and Singapore, which has the following section, Article 11.44, paragraph 2 (pdf):

In determining the amount of damages for infringement of intellectual property rights, a Party's judicial authorities shall have the authority to consider, inter alia, any legitimate measure of value the right holder submits, which may include lost profits, the value of the infringed goods or services measured by the market price, or the suggested retail price.

Those with good memories may recall that something similar was to be found in ACTA, and that it was one of the problematic areas that led the European Parliament to reject the treaty. In fact, it's not similar, it's word-for-word identical with Article 9, paragraph 1 of ACTA (pdf). And it's not the only section that's been cut-and-pasted from ACTA: several other paragraphs are also direct copies.

This raises an interesting question. At the moment, the EU-Singapore FTA has only been "initialled": that means it must still be approved by the European Commission, the Council of Ministers representing the member nations, and the European Parliament. So will the EU's MEPs reject the new trade agreement because it represents ACTA by the backdoor -- or at least a part of it? That seems unlikely.

But if the European Parliament does pass the EU-Singapore FTA, de Gucht might then argue that the same sections from ACTA can now be pasted into TAFTA/TTIP, since they are no longer problematic. And if he does so, perhaps he will be tempted to include a few more sections from ACTA, on the grounds that he is doing nothing "by the backdoor", but doing it in the full view of everyone....

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: acta, europe, european commission, european parliament, karel de gucht, singapore, trade agreements

DailyDirt: Farming In The Future

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

So far, we've mostly avoided a Malthusian catastrophe, but the human population is likely to grow to about 9 billion by 2050 (or somewhere between 7.5 and 10.5 billion, depending on your estimates). By that time, huge cities could house enormous populations, but the resources to feed all those people might need to be shipped in from vast farmlands. Who knows, maybe there will be some suburban middle ground where billions of people live near locally-produced agriculture. Vertical farming technologies could make it possible to grow food without acres and acres of land. Here are just a few links on some futuristic farming techniques.

• Organic farming is great, but it often produces lower yields of crops compared to conventional farming techniques. Organic farming yields are actually comparable for some fruits, but for vegetables and cereals, conventional farming has the upper hand. The score isn't settled yet; organic farmers might be able to increase their productivity if they can find better sources of organic nitrogen. [url]
• Singapore has a commercial vertical farm in operation that could bring back more agriculture to the tiny nation-city. Sky Green Farms is selling its crops in Singapore supermarkets, and it's looking to license its technology to other countries that might also need small-footprint farming. [url]
• VertiCrop is another vertical farming technology company based in Canada which grows vegetables hydroponically with a fraction of the water and land usages of a standard farm. The mechanized farming can be managed by as little as 3 people and still process 10,000 plants every 3 days. [url]
• Some architects are creating "farmscrapers" -- super tall buildings that contain agricultural features. Growing trees on the sides of a skyscraper probably has a few problems, but the designs look cool. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: crops, farming, farmscrapers, food supply, organic farming, singapore, vertical farm
Companies: green sky farms, verticrop