Poland Prime Minister Suspends Any Effort To Ratify ACTA; May Kill ACTA In The EU

from the don't-piss-of-the-net dept

This is getting interesting. Following the growing protests about ACTA in Europe, as well as signs of US meddling, Poland's prime minister is making it clear that Poland will not ratify ACTA for the time being, leading to speculation that the EU may not actually join ACTA.

Tusk's backtracking could spell the end of ACTA for the entire European Union. If Poland or any other EU member state, or the European Parliament itself, fails to ratify the document, it becomes null and void across the union. As it stands, there are already five member countries that have not even signed ACTA.

"I share the opinions of those who from the beginning said that consultations were not complete," Tusk said, according to a report in Wirtualna Polska. The 54-year-old prime minister added that a Polish rejection of ACTA is now on the table, and admitted that he had previously approached the agreement from a "20th century" perspective, due to his age.

Filed Under: acta, poland, prime minister

Is The US Meddling In Polish ACTA Voting?

from the how-dare-they? dept

With the immediate threat from SOPA/PIPA on hold, people have started to turn their attention to the long-running saga of ACTA. While it was being negotiated behind closed doors, few people knew about it, and protests against it were muted. Now that it has finally emerged into the open and begins its last dash towards the finishing line of ratification, the pace of anti-ACTA activism is beginning to pick up quickly. That's especially true in Europe, where everything hinges on the result of the European Parliament's vote on the treaty later this year. If it rejects it, ACTA is dead.

First we had the dramatic resignation of the European Parliament's "rapporteur" on ACTA, then the public apology of the Slovenian Ambassador to Japan for signing ACTA last week in Japan. Individual members of the European Parliament are also coming out against ACTA, notably the Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake, who has prepared an excellent briefing document on the subject, together with several Bulgarian MEPs. But without doubt, the main focus of anti-ACTA actions so far has been in Poland.

As Techdirt has reported, the first demonstration against ACTA took place in Warsaw, and some Polish politicians donned Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in parliament to express their displeasure at the Polish government's signing of the treaty. Even the Polish prime minister is trying to back-pedal. Meanwhile, the Polish "No to ACTA" Facebook page has gathered nearly half a million supporters.

Clearly, something very interesting is happening at all levels of Polish society as a result of ACTA, and someone else has noticed this too. According to a translation of a report on the Polish web site gazeta.pl:

"--It was around 11.00 in the morning when an employee from the US Embassy called. She was curious about the voting [on ACTA]. He has counted the votes and she thought some of the deputies were missing. Eight deputies were for, three against, four have held up. Something's wrong here, because some votes seem to be missing." -- said Mieczysław Golba from Solidarna Polska.

As another Polish politician explained:

"-- If the US embassy was just interested in the voting itself, it's okay with us. But questioning about party discipline is scandalous"-- says Sławomir Neumann from PO. -- "Americans should calm down a little, as such behaviour is an interference into the internal affairs of the Polish parliament. We can treat Americans as friends, but there are some borders that one shouldn't cross.We are partners, but not a parliament dependent on the Congress or the president's Obama administration."

Assuming this really was someone from the US embassy checking up on the whether Polish politicians were following the party line on ACTA -- there's been no independent corroboration yet -- it does seem pretty extraordinary. Judging by the generally outraged tone of the 1100+ comments on this piece, the Poles themselves don't seem very happy either. I think we can expect to hear much more about Poland's resistance to ACTA in the coming weeks.

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

Filed Under: acta, meddling, poland, us

Polish Politicians Don Guy Fawkes/Anonymous Masks To Protest ACTA Signing

from the isn't-that-infringing? dept

There's been lots of talk today about how various EU governments are agreeing to sign ACTA (which still needs to be ratified by the EU Parliament). It's gotten the most attention in Poland, where there were mass protests -- but the government there still signed. Of course, not everyone in the Polish government agreed. Amazingly, officials from the Palikot's Movement held up the famed Guy Fawkes/Anonymous masks in Parliament to protest the vote: Of course, we should note that, from the picture, it sure looks like those masks are "counterfeit" copies of the official Guy Fawkes mask that Time Warner holds the rights to. Good thing ACTA is coming into force to stop such blatant "counterfeiting," huh?

Filed Under: acta, anonymous, guy fawkes, poland, politics, protests

People In Poland Come Out To Protest ACTA In Large Numbers; Polish Gov't Calls It 'Blackmail'

from the people-are-fed-up dept

Wow. We've noted that the folks who got revved up around SOPA weren't just focused on that one bill, but have remained active and interested in related issues -- with ACTA being an important one, especially given the effort by the government in Poland to sign on. Following on the big anti-SOPA protests, it seems that a bunch of folks in Warsaw decided to take to the streets in protest of ACTA... and it looks like an awful lot of people showed up, despite this being about a copyright trade agreement and the fact that it was below freezing temperatures outside. There are some photos on the site linked above that show a very large group gathering. This is really fantastic. Just a month ago, you would have never expected over a thousand people to show up in the freezing cold in Warsaw to protest a bad trade agreement about copyright issues. But it shows just how badly the entertainment industry is miscalculating on these things. The further and further the entertainment industry pushes, all it's doing is educating and activating a large and growing group of folks who are sick of bad copyright laws interfering with their own basic rights and civil liberties. That is not a small crowd. That's a demonstration of just how important these issues have become to a very large population of people around the globe. Those who still think this is about a small number of tech companies have no idea what they're facing.

But, alas, it appears the Polish government is following in the tone deaf footsteps of the MPAA. The government has said it's moving forward anyway, and appears to consider this example of democracy and assembly a form of blackmail:

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the government “would not submit to blackmail” and that the treaty would be signed.

Separately, he claimed that there's obviously no free speech concerns around ACTA, because countries like the US, New Zealand and others, who "are the backbone of freedom" signed on... so obviously it must be just fine and dandy.

Filed Under: acta, copyright, poland, protests

Polish Government's Plan To Sign ACTA Gets The SOPA Treatment

from the you-do-not-know-what-you've-unleashed dept

We received an amusing email over the weekend chiding us for never having covered ACTA -- the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Of course, we've actually written 247 articles that mention ACTA (yes, I just counted). It seems that among some folks who just joined the "worry about copyright legislation" bandwagon, they've just discovered ACTA as well. ACTA stories are quickly taking over the SOPA channel on Reddit. I'm happy that more people are coming around to these issues, but they might want to take some time to actually read up on things before they start screaming. For example, someone there put together a White House petition to stop ACTA, without even acknowledging that the US government already signed ACTA back in September.

The petition also ignores the most obvious line of attack for the US's participation: the questions about whether or not ACTA really qualifies as an "executive agreement." Instead, it takes that as granted, ignoring (or, more likely, simply not knowing) that there are serious constitutional questions about the claim that this is an executive agreement -- and that Senator Ron Wyden has already asked the White House to justify the claims that it's an executive agreement, rather than a treaty. Also, it's worth noting that other countries, including the EU, have already claimed that ACTA is a binding treaty, even as the US continues to deny that fact.

Either way, the EU failed to sign at the official signing ceremony (along with Mexico and Switzerland), claiming that it still had to get some legal ducks in a row. A legal review within the EU found that ACTA is terribly vague and wide open to interpretation, such that some of it may violate other directives -- which would be a pretty big problem. But rather than fix anything, it appears the EU (under great pressure from the US) is looking to go ahead with ACTA. We noted last month that an EU Council took a step forward in supporting ACTA, but did so by hiding it in an unrelated agriculture and fisheries meeting.

And, now, reports are spreading about how the Polish government is set to agree that the EU should sign onto ACTA, later this week. There are still more steps before the EU officially does sign ACTA, but the effort in Poland is definitely a step in that direction.

What's interesting to me, however, is how the SOPA/PIPA fight really has energized folks into fighting all sorts of efforts to encroach the internet with expanded copyright law and copyright enforcement efforts. Despite some of the hyperbole, ACTA is not SOPA. It's certainly bad -- though, massively watered down from what it was originally. But it's not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination. ACTA should not be approved, and there are significant legal questions in the US as to whether or not it really can be approved in the manner it was -- but either way, it's nice to see more people waking up to the serious problems with the ever expanding copyright law efforts -- pushed by the same folks who supported SOPA/PIPA.

And... it appears that these protests are already having at least some impact. Polish politicians are meeting ahead of the planned meeting "to review their stance on copyright protection policies." If the widespread online outrage about ACTA can actually lead countries to pushing back against this agreement, which is pretty much signed, sealed and delivered, it would be yet another sign of the growing power of online protests (though, some folks may ask where were you back when lots of people were arguing against ACTA, before it was signed by most participating countries).

Filed Under: acta, eu, poland, protests, sopa

How To Become A Scientific Author In Poland: Delete Part Of Someone Else's Article You Think Is Wrong

from the it's-that-easy? dept

Copyrightgirl pointed us to a bizarre judgement from the Polish Supreme Court last year, which found that you can become co-author of a scientific text by deleting a few sentences that you believe to be incorrect:

The defendant wrote an article about music therapy, i.e. applying music in medical treatment. Not being a physician herself, the author had requested three colleagues to verify the article and, as a result, they suggested deleting some parts, which, in their view, were not compatible with accepted medical knowledge (they were probably right, as one of the deleted sentences considered replacing anesthesia by music during surgery, which even to devoted music lovers must sound rather extreme). The defendant initially agreed to publish the article together with her – then – colleagues as co-authors, but later changed her mind. The colleagues duly sued to have their co-authorship recognised and, in the eyes of many experts surprisingly, won in all instances, including the Supreme Court.

The trouble with this, of course, is that it leads to some ridiculous possibilities:

It also provokes the question whether all reviewers in scientific journals or university professors tutoring students, who certainly quite often (rightly or wrongly) consider certain parts of the reviewed works inaccurate or incorrect and have them deleted should not be regarded co-authors (if so, this would probably have to be the case with all university professors guiding their students through a thesis!).

It will be interesting to see what kind of cases try to build on this decision.

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

Filed Under: co-authors, editing, poland

Polish Prime Minister Says Things Funded With Public Money Should Be In The Public Domain

from the wow dept

Slashdot points us to a report that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has declared that anything funded with public money will be in the public domain (Google translation from the original Polish). It sounds like there was some hedging on this, as he perhaps suggests that they still need to classify what exactly will be public, but it's encouraging. It's also not entirely clear from the report if this just refers to state documents, or also the output of research funded by the state. Hopefully we'll get some clarification soon.

Filed Under: copyright, poland, public domain

Can You Copyright A Single Word?

from the hopefully-not dept

Glyn Moody points us to an interesting copyright ruling in Poland, where a company tried to claim that it could not just trademark a made up word, Jogi (referring to yogurt), but also that it could copyright the word. Apparently there was some confusion about the ruling, because the Polish Supreme Court (before issuing the full ruling) suggested that you could copyright a single word -- but the full decision indicated that this would only be possible in truly exceptional situations:

The Supreme Court stated that although newly coined words or names could theoretically be protected by copyright, this was only exceptionally possible, i.e. when a word in question possessed an extraordinary degree of originality. Quite forcefully the court observed that the belief every subjectively new creation of the human mind was a copyright work had no legal foundation and could even lead to the deprecation on the notion of "creativity". Although the decision explicitly confirms that works created solely for utilitarian purposes (including industrial products) may be protected by copyright (but this has not been seriously questioned for a long time now), it also takes the view that the purpose of a work can not in itself be sufficient to ensure copyright protection. In other words, the Supreme Court rejects the idea that the element of creativity can be discerned in the particular way the work is used. Consequently, in the case at hand the fact that the plaintiff "created" the connection between the word (trademark) and a certain category of goods is not enough – the word as such must be autonomously individual and should be capable of being used on various fields of exploitation. The Court correctly observed that the plaintiff essentially wanted to protect the idea of using a certain word in a certain context, whereas ideas are outside the scope of copyright protection.

While this ruling appears to have gotten it right, the attempt to copyright a single word (over which a trademark was already held) shows the constant efforts by those with government granted monopoly privileges to try to expand those rights. It's an unfortunate symptom of copyright maximalists continually pushing the myth of copyright as "property," that people naturally seek to expand their "property" rights well beyond what the law is designed to allow.

Filed Under: copyright, poland, word

Orange Pays Actors To Stand In Line For The iPhone

from the losing-its-magic? dept

When the disco era was dying, the story was that the famed Studio 54 in New York had to start paying people to stand out front in line, so that it still look the club was still a happening place. Is the same thing happening with the iPhone? Over in Poland, mobile operator Orange is happily admitting that it's paying actors to stand in line to wait for the launch of the new iPhone: "We have these fake queues at front of 20 stores around the country to drum up interest in the iPhone." That seems like a rather blatant admission that the phone itself isn't enough to drum up interest. Somehow, though, I don't think the iPhone is going the route of disco just yet.

Filed Under: actors, iphone, lines, poland
Companies: apple, orange

Of All The Reasons To Say No To Internet Voting, Wouldn't Porn And Beer Be Near The End Of The List?

from the try-that-again dept

There are many, many reasons to be against the idea of allowing political voting via the internet, starting with questions about the security, accuracy and reliability of the technology. However, former Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who admits he wants to attract younger internet users to his conservative party, gave some bizarre reasons for not being a fan of internet voting. Apparently the problem isn't questions about the technology but the idea that voters may be multitasking with beer and porn: "I am not an enthusiast of a young person sitting in front of a computer, watching video clips and pornography while sipping a bottle of beer and voting when he feels like it." Does that mean he'd be okay with if it people agreed not to watch porn or sip beer while voting?

Filed Under: beer, jaroslaw kaczynski, online voting, poland, porn