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Submission + - US-EU Trade Agreement Gains Exaggerated, Say 41 Consumer Groups, Economist

Glyn Moody writes: The main claims about likely economic gains from concluding the US-EU trade agreement TAFTA/TTIP, billed as a "once-in-a-generation prize", are increasingly under attack. BEUC, representing 41 consumer organizations from 31 European countries, has written a letter to the EU Trade Commissioner responsible for the negotiations, Karel De Gucht, complaining about his "exaggeration of the effects of the TTIP", and "use of unsubstantiated figures regarding the job creation potential". In a blog post entitled "Why Is It So Acceptable to Lie to Promote Trade Deals?", Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, has even harsher words: "Implying that a deal that raises GDP by 0.4 or 0.5 percent 13 years out means 'job-creating opportunities for workers on both continents' is just dishonest. The increment to annual growth is on the order of 0.03 percentage points. Good luck finding that in the data." If the best-case outcome is just 0.03% extra growth per year, is TAFTA/TTIP worth the massive upheavals it will require to both US and EU regulatory systems to achieve that?

Submission + - Water Cannons Used Against Peaceful Anti-TTIP Protestors: The Next ACTA Revolt? (techdirt.com)

Glyn Moody writes: The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), potentially the world's biggest trade agreement, has been negotiated behind closed doors for nearly a year now. Apart from what we learn from a few official releases — and an increasing number of leaks — we still don't really know what is being agreed in the name of 800 million people in the US and EU. When a peaceful anti-TTIP protest was held outside yet another closed-doors meeting in Belgium, the local police sent in the water cannons and arrested nearly 300 people in what seems an extreme over-reaction. Will TTIP turn into the next ACTA revolt?
China

Submission + - Pro-ACTA Site Says "Get The Facts" (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "We hear a lot about politicians and countries rejecting ACTA, but not so much from the treaty's supporters. Here's a new site, called "ACTA Facts", which invites Europeans to "get the facts" on how wonderful ACTA really is. Judging by its content, this one will be about as successful as Microsoft's "Get the Facts" campaign a few years ago, which tried to dissuade people from using GNU/Linux. For example, a new report linked to by the site claims that ACTA could "boost European output by a total of €50 billion, and create as many as 960,000 new jobs." Unfortunately, that's based on numerous flawed assumptions, including the idea that countries like China and India are going to rush to join ACTA, when the treaty is actually designed as a weapon against them, as they have already noticed."
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Tried to Buy Netscape: Suppose They Had? (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "In an interview, Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and currently CIO at Mozilla, reveals that Microsoft tried to buy Netscape at the end of 1994. They were turned down because the offer was too low, but imagine if Netscape had accepted: no browser wars, no open Web standards, no Mozilla, no Firefox. How might the Web — and the world — have looked today if that had happened?"
Open Source

Submission + - UK: Open Standards Must be RF, not FRAND (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "There has been a big battle in the UK over whether open standards should be Restriction/Royalty-Free (RF) or Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND). That matters, because open source can't in general implement FRAND standards (there are legal hacks that can be applied in a few special circumstances.) First it seemed that RF had the upper hand [.pdf], but later comments from officials cast doubt on that. Now we have the definitive answer from the UK Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude: "The Government require that their ICT should be built on open standards, wherever possible, to improve competition and avoid lock-in to a particular technology or supplier. Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) specifications may present some difficulties for the open source software development model in terms of patents and royalties. To deliver a level playing field for both open source and proprietary software, open standards are needed." Will UK government use of open source finally take off, or is this a hollow victory?"
Linux

Submission + - Linus' Other Great Gift to the World (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "Linus is widely recognised for initiating two major developments: Linux and Git (it's an interesting discussion which of the two in the long term will be regarded as more important). But there's a third, which people tend to overlook: he also pioneered the key ideas behind what later came to be called open innovation. As more and more companies open up to embrace customer-generated ideas, and the idea spreads to other areas like open government, perhaps it's time to add open innovation to the list of Linus' achievements."
Piracy

Submission + - BSA 2010 Piracy Report: Big Numbers, Big Flaws (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "The annual BSA report on software piracy is out, with even bigger numbers: "The commercial value of software piracy grew 14 percent globally last year to a record total of $58.8 billion." Yes, they're using the old "commercial value" trick: "The commercial value of pirated software is the value of unlicensed software installed in a given year, as if it had been sold in the market." Except, of course, that the main reason users in developing countries — the main focus of the report — resort to piracy is because they can't afford Western-style pricing. It's also fun to see the BSA trotting out the old "reducing piracy would generate lots of new jobs and taxes for local governments" — except that it doesn't, because the money not paid for software licences does not disappear, but is just spent elsewhere in the local economy."
Censorship

Submission + - The Great Firewall of Europe (blogspot.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "The Presidency of the EU's Law Enforcement Working Party wants to create [pdf] "a single secure European cyberspace with a certain "virtual Schengen border" and "virtual access points" whereby the Internet Service Providers (ISP) would block illicit contents on the basis of the EU "black-list"." Leaving aside the fact that this won't work for lots of reasons, how seriously can you take anyone talking about "cyberspace" in 2011?"
Google

Submission + - Why Google Should Buy the Music Industry (blogspot.com)

Glyn Moody writes: "According to this story about Google's attempts to launch its own music service, "the search giant is “disgusted” with the labels, so much so that they are seriously considering following Amazon’s lead and launching their music could service without label licenses." So here's a simple solution: Google should just buy the major record labels — all of them. It could afford them — people tend to forget that the music industry is actually relatively small in economic terms, but wields a disproportionate influence with policy makers. Buying them would solve that problem too."
Linux

Submission + - Putin Orders Russian Move to GNU/Linux (blogspot.com) 2

Glyn Moody writes: Vladimir Putin has signed an order calling for Russian federal authorities to move to GNU/Linux, and for the creation of "a single repository of free software used in the federal bodies of executive power". There have been a number of Russian projects to roll out free software, notably in the educational sector, but none so far has really taken off. With the backing of Putin, could this be the breakthrough free software has been waiting for?
Microsoft

Submission + - Is Linux at the End of its Life Cycle? (blogspot.com) 3

Glyn Moody writes: That's what Nikolai Pryanishnikov, president of Microsoft Russia, seems to think. Quoted in the context of continuing questions about Russia's plans to create its own national operating system based on GNU/Linux, Pryanishnikov said [via Google Translate]: "We must bear in mind that Linux is not a Russian OS and, moreover, is at the end of its life cycle." An off-the-cuff comment, or something more?
Microsoft

Submission + - Is the CodePlex Foundation Truly Independent Now? (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: Microsoft created its CodePlex, "an online collaborative software development portal", four years ago, as the latest in a string of attempts to play nicely with open source. Well, maybe not: Microsoft saw the open source software projects it hosted there as reflecting "the open community-building spirit of Microsoft’s Shared Source Initiative." In September last year, it tried again, launching the CodePlex Foundation, "a forum in which open source communities and the software development community can come together with the shared goal of increasing participation in open source community projects," and not to be confused with CodePlex.com, "a Microsoft owned and staffed forge that encourages the development of open source software based on Microsoft technology." The only problem is that all the funding for the CodePlex Foundation still comes from Microsoft. But the new Technical Director of the CodePlex Foundation, Stephen Walli, thinks it can become truly independent of Microsoft, open to all companies to create open source software for any platform using only OSI-approved licences. Will the CodePlex Foundation take its place alongside existing foundations addressing this sector, like Apache and Eclipse, but complementary to them? Or is it forever doomed to be ignored by the open source world because of its origins?

Submission + - German Publishers Want Monopoly on Sentences (blogspot.com)

Glyn Moody writes: You think copyright can't get any more Draconian? Think again: in Germany, newspaper publishers are lobbying for "a new exclusive right conferring the power to monopolise speech e.g. by assigning a right to re-use a particular wording in the headline of a news article anywhere else without the permission of the rights holder. According to the drafts circulating in the internet, permission shall be obtainable exclusively by closing an agreement with a new collecting society which will be founded after the drafts have matured into law. Depending on the particulars, new levies might come up for each and every user of a PC, at least if the computer is used in a company for commercial purposes." Think that will never work because someone will always break the news cartel? Don't worry, they've got that covered too: they want to "to amend cartel law in order to enable a global 'pooling' of all exclusive rights of all newspaper publishers in Germany in order to block any attempt to defect from the paywall cartell by single competitor." And rest assured, if anything like this passes in Germany, publishers everywhere will be using the copyright ratchet to obtain "parity".
Businesses

Submission + - Why No Billion-Dollar Open Source Companies? (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: If open source is such a success, why aren't there any billion-dollar turnover open source companies? A recent briefing by Red Hat's CEO, Jim Whitehurst, to a group of journalists maybe provides an answer. Asked why Red Hat wasn't yet a $5 billion company, as he suggested it would be one day, he said getting Red Hat to $5 billion meant “replacing $50 billion of revenue” currently enjoyed by traditional computer companies. If, as is likely, that's generally true for open source companies, it means they will need to displace around $10 billion of proprietary business in order to achieve a billion-dollar turnover. Few are likely to do that. Perhaps it's time for managers of open source startups to stop chasing the billion-dollar dream. If they don't, they will set unrealistic ambitions for themselves, disappoint their investors and allow opponents of free software to paint one of its defining successes – saving money — as a failure.
Music

Submission + - Diaspora: The Future of Free Software Funding? (computerworlduk.com)

Glyn Moody writes: Diaspora, the free software project to create a distributed version of Facebook, has been much in the news recently — not least because it has raised $170,000 in just a few weeks. But what's also interesting is the way they've raised that money: through a series of graded rewards for pledges of financial support. This is an approach adopted by some forward-thinking musicians: for example, Jill Sobule funded her last album in the same way, garnering $75,000 in pledges from fans. Is this a model that could be applied to other free software projects, or is it just a one-off?

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