Here’s an update on our works for this month, which is basically your quick and easy roundup of our campaigning and community efforts.

Supporter update - November 2008

The flawed proposal to extend the term of copyright protection afforded to sound recordings, robbing consumers in the name of performers but for the benefit of the world’s four major record labels, is being fast-tracked through the democratic process. Earlier this month MEPs from the relevant European Parliament committees presented their draft reports at a meeting of the legal affairs committee (JURI), the Committee which will make recommendations to the European Parliament on how to vote on the Directive early next year. They proposed a host of worrying new amendments which threaten to:

• Weaken further already inadequate measures intended to allow orphan works, and commercially worthless but culturally significant recordings to pass into the public domain (Culture (CULT), Internal Market (IMCO) and the Industry, Technology and Research (ITRE) committees draft reports).

• Allow record labels to deduct “costs” from a fund intended to benefit session musicians, further shrinking the pot of money made available to performers in favour of labels (IMCO committee draft report).

• Dramatically widen the scope of the Directive to include audio-visual recording, even though no relevant impact assessment has been conducted into what effect this might have on consumers and follow-on innovators. (JURI and ITRE committee draft reports).

At the JURI meeting, Dr Lionel Bently of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) Cambridge, dismissed the proposal stating that “record producers will gain the lion’s share of revenues on sales in the extended term”. He warned that the Directive would accrue serious social and economic costs, and concluded that MEPs should “oppose this measure in its totality.”

Bently is not the only expert to oppose the Directive. In an open letter to MEPs, Europe’s leading intellectual property research centres unanimously condemned the proposal. The European Broadcast Union has also stated publicly that the proposal will make consumers foot the bill while stifling innovation.

Earlier this month ORG met with MEPs in the European Parliament to express our serious concerns about the proposal. We warned that the European Commission’s own figures demonstrate that performers will benefit little from the extended term, while the world’s four major record labels will gain millions of Euros direct from consumer’s pockets. We argued that this damaged the respect necessary for a functioning IP system.

But our voice is not as powerful as yours. It’s vital that you contact your MEPs now and tell them why term extension is bad news.

With all the evidence pointing against this measure, you can call on your MEPs to put a stop to bad IP law and reject this proposal. You can also also tell the appropriate government department in your own EU country (in the UK it is DCMS), as they will be meeting in the Council of Ministers to discuss term extension.

With the European elections next year, Parliament is set to move quickly on this issue. It’s up to you to remind your representatives that their job is to look out for your interests, not to rush through bad law.

Image courtesy of Steve Cadman.

Today I’m proud to release ORG’s annual Review of Activities [.pdf]. It’s been a bumper year for digital rights. From HMRC posting half the nation’s bank details to the Darknet, to the ongoing campaign against Phorm, to three strikes and the rightsholder lobby’s so-far thwarted attempt to take control of your internet connection, this year was the year digital rights went mainstream. Thanks to generous support from the ORG community, we’ve been there giving an informed perspective on the issues to the natonal press, working with policymakers behind the scenes and mobilising the grassroots into effective action.

As ORG Chair William Heath writes in his foreword to the review:

“Built on the enthusiasm and promise of people who live, work, play, socialise and create online, ORG is a celebration of the emerging possibilities that technology and the internet offer us. ORG exemplifies that social activism which brings out the very best people have to offer: expertise, creativity, energy, and professionalism – and none of this ever without humour.

“Behind this lies an irrepressible motivation. The ORG community knows there are real abuses of our rights online, and real threats to our information society.”

Threats to our digital liberties continue to menace us. 2009 will see new challenges, such as the Government’s proposed Intercept Modernisation Programme. That’s why, as we celebrate ORG’s third birthday, we’re also asking the community to renew their support for ORG. The ORG-GRO campaign is delivering excellent results (huge thanks to all the people who have contributed so far). But the leap from 750 to 1000 fivers received each month is not yet enough to guarantee us long term financial stability. We must reach our target of 1500 fivers before the end of the year. And we can’t do that without you.

So please, if you’re not an ORG supporter, become one today. And if you are, and can afford to up your monthly donation, please consider doing so. As our Review of Activities demonstrates, you’ll get a lot of bang for your buck. If money’s tight, then remember talk is cheap. How many people that would like to join the ORG community could you email right now? If you’re sat in an office, how many of the people around you could you recruit before lunch? Why not spam your mates/make your colleagues a cup of tea and find out?

Finally, thanks to all the people - Advisory Council, Board, volunteers, staff - who have contributed mentally and physically to ORG’s activities this year. ORG couldn’t exist without you. I hope you enjoy reading about what ORG’s been up to. You can download the report here, or read the html version.

Happy Birthday ORG!

Update (17/11/08): Write to your UK representatives today! French campaigners La Quadrature du Net have today launched a letter-writing campaign to urge Council of Ministers delegates from each of the European Member States to honour amendments passed by the European Parliament that ensure only proportionate and just sanctions against illicit filesharing can be proposed by national governments. From their press release:

“Should amendment 138 be removed from the Telecoms Package by the Council, it would show to the whole of Europe that the technocratic structure can be used by the executive branch to bypass the democratic expression of the Parliament. Such an acceptance of the will of Nicolas Sarkozy, to serve the interest of a very few lobbies from the entertainment industries, would be a very sad example of the failure of European Democracy.”

More information about the Quadrature du Net’s campaign to save amendment 138 is available here.

If you’re living in the UK and you’d like to take part in the campaign, write to your MP and ask them to pass on your concerns to the relevant official, and/or write directly to Stephen Carter, Minister for Commnications, Technology and Broadcasting, and Shiriti Vadera, Minister for Economic Competitiveness, both at BERR (Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, 1 Victoria Street, London SW1H 0ET). Feel free to leave a copy of your letter in the comments to this post.

You can find resources for your letter in this legal brief [pdf] (which has a 9 point summary at the end), in ORG’s submission to BERR’s recent consultation on domesitc proposals to combat illict filesharing [pdf], and on the Quadrature du Net’s wiki. The Council of Ministers will meet on 27 November, so it’s vital you get in touch with UK representatives as soon as possible.

Back in September MEPs responded to public concerns over the EU Telecoms Package by voting through vital safeguards that would help ensure that only proportionate and just sanctions against illicit filesharing could be proposed by national governments. Since then, you’d be forgiven for thinking your internet connection was safe from disconnection via corporate fiat.

However, deep inside the belly of Brussels, the Council of Ministers and the European Commission have been amending the European Parliament’s adopted text. Crucially, they’ve been arguing over whether to remove the very safeguards MEPs fought hard to include against the so-called “3 strikes and you’re out” plans favoured by the French. The result is a high level of uncertainty, underpinned by a forest of papers and amended texts that even the toughest legal minds might have trouble unpicking.

We’re lucky, then, that cyberlaw expert and ORG Advisory Council member Professor Lilian Edwards, together with her former student and now trainee barrister Simon Bradshaw, have been scrutinising the ongoing negotiations process, and the resulting proposed texts. In a 14-page paper [.pdf] analysing the various Directives that make up the Telecoms Package (as amended by Parliament in September) and the reactions to these amendments from the Council of Ministers and the Commission, they conclude:

“On the basis of our analysis it is clear that the package does, or at least can, provide a mandatory basis for the “warnings” part of a French-style connection sanctions law (the “strikes”) (see para 12 of brief), and also potentially provides a means by which public CSPs (ISPs and the like) can be compelled by the national regulator to work with (”promoting cooperation”) rightsholders to implement a disconnection scheme (the “you’re out” – see para 19 of brief). Wording in various places of the latest version seems to confirm that this “co-operation” is a more extensive obligation than simply providing copyright-related public interest information.

“This is a crucial set of obligations, about to be imposed on all of Europe’s ISPs and telcos, which should be debated in the open, not passed under cover of stealth in the context of a vast and incomprehensible package of telecoms regulation. It seems, on careful legal examination by independent experts, more than possible that such a deliberate stealth exercise is indeed going on.”

Negotiations are ongoing and Edwards and Bradshaw promise to update the brief as developments occur. You can download the full brief here.

ORG has submitted a response to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s consultation into legislative options to tackle illicit peer to peer filesharing [pdf]. Here are some of the main points from the response:

• Illicit peer to peer filesharing is not a law enforcement problem, it’s a business model problem. The best way to tackle the problem is to provide consumers with competitive legal alternatives. This would deliver substantial additional revenues to the recording industry, and render the enforcement challenge radically different.
• All enforcement measures suggested by the consultation are either wildly disproportionate, completely ineffective, or both. In the ten years the international recording industry has been fighting peer-to-peer filesharing, every development in enforcement has been matched by a development in technology that circumvents it. Without competitive alternatives, this cycle will only continue.
• No case has been made for legislative change. Those who seek to alter the balance to make enforcement cheaper, more arbitrary and less respectful of privacy rights must show a sufficient justification. We do not believe that this has happened.
• None of the regulatory solutions have satisfactory consumer safeguards. Consumers have been locked out of the negotiations between ISPs and rightsholders currently being chaired by OfCom. As recent news reports show, rightsholders are already levelling false accusations of file-sharing at consumers. Without proper safeguards, many more consumers will suffer. The clandestine OfCom negotiations are a disgrace.