Oneiric DVD abspielen

Wenn das Abspielen von DVD nach dem Upgrade nach Oneiric mit VLC nicht mehr funktioniert (Meldung: MRT..)  mit Rootrechten  in der Datei

/etc/fstab

die Zeile mit scd0 auszukommentieren, und danach den Rechner neu zu starten. In meinem Fall

# /dev/scd0       /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

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Das “Einsehen” für Sehbehinderte im Rechtsausschuss

Die österreichische MdEP Eva Lichtenberger sagt, dass zum Initiativ-Bericht von Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid “Unlocking the potential of cultural and creative industries” ein Änderungsantrag von ihr im Ausschuss JURI angenommen wurde, der die Recht von Blinden in Beziehung zum Urheberrecht betont. Früher einmal war das ganz selbstverständlich.

Sie meint die heutige JURI Sitzung, dort gibt es eine Stellungnahme(Entwurf) von Wikström und hier die Änderungsanträge.

Darin vermutlich der Antrag mit folgendem Wortlaut:

5a. betont, dass der „Lesehunger“ von sehbehinderten und lesebehinderten Personen endlich gestillt werden muss; erinnert die Kommission und die Mitgliedstaaten an ihre Verpflichtungen, gemäß der UN-Konvention über die Rechte behinderter Menschen sämtliche erforderlichen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um Personen mit Behinderungen den Zugang zu kulturellen Gütern in einem für sie geeigneten Format zu ermöglichen, sowie sicherzustellen, dass die Rechte zum Schutz des geistigen Eigentums keine unverhältnismäßigen oder diskriminierenden Hindernisse für den Zugang von Personen mit Behinderungen zu kulturellen Gütern darstellen; fordert die Kommission auf, sich im Rahmen der Bemühungen der Weltorganisation für Geistiges Eigentum (WIPO), auf der Grundlage des Vertragsentwurfs der Weltblindenunion, der der WIPO 2009 vorgelegt wurde, eine verbindliche Rechtsnorm zu vereinbaren, aktiv und positiv einzubringen;

Wer’s genau wissen will, der mag sich die Aufnahmen der heutigen JURI-Sitzung ansehen.

Es handelt sich aber nur um einen Stellungnahme des Rechtsausschusses zum Initiativbericht von Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid. Im zuständigen Ausschuss CULT wird noch einmal darüber abgestimmt. Initiativ-Berichte haben keinen institutionell bindenden Charakter, sind aber wichtige Meinungsbilder.

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EU-INDIA policy laundry or: ACTA as it was meant to be

Mayday! (doom mongering)

It is may. Mayday for democracy and internet freedoms. I just stumbled upon a weird document. I have no idea where the released document originates from, if its an authentic governmental negotiations document release, no reason to dispute that, have a look, simply outrageous. According to the URI it was put online only this month by Techrights.  Recently I often mentioned the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a plurilateral IPR agreement negotiated by some industrialized nations.  The ACTA drafts are a harmless Nagasaki-style menace compared to the H-Bomb-style proposal, a EU-India ipr agreement draft document. Appears to be part of a “dooms day machina” for democracy.

EU-India and the ACTA wolf

To me the document lets you view an evil wolf behind the ACTA, less window dressing, less constraints, focus on substantive law, not just on enforcement, what EU trade administration really had in mind before ACTA was publicly exposed. ACTA is dramatized by NGOs into an attack on the internet. Others criticise a lack of transparency. ACTA deserves better public scrutiny. It is not at all an internet agreement, it affects e.g. access to pharmaceuticals for developing nations.  With so much public awareness cast on ACTA an institutional aspect is hardly understood: The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)  is parallelized by bilateral trade talks with so called “problem countries”, among them India with its strong generic pharma industries, but also Korea and others. The bilateral agreements are negotiated by virtually the same few persons responsible for ACTA. EU-India is bilateral, two negotiating parties: EU (trade department) and India (trade department). It is far easier to negotiate bilateral agreements than plurilateral agreements, and certain dangers stem from that.

Backroom deals for billions of people

For European citizens the domestic effects of a “bilateral agreement” are exactly the same as of a plurilateral or multilateral one.[*]. Trade negotiators negotiate, legislators are asked to rubber stamp [+]. Provided the measures don’t get rubberstamped via ACTA (because parliament spotted it) administration can try again with bilaterals as EU-Korea, EU-India, EU-China, EU-Switzerland, EU-Bahamas, EU-Fiji, EU-Tschingbimbistan. While ACTA receives a lot of attention now (“light” which puts an end to the vampires, as J. Zimmermann of Quadrature coined their advocacy method), EU-India does not attract much debate and attention. An agreement which affects the legislative environment for billions of people, with no turning back.

With teeth

For EU anti-internet backdoor laws you don’t need ACTA, EU-India is sufficient to get criminal sanctions (Art 34), ISP liability (Art 35) and border measures (Art. 36), DRM protection and lots more. Of course all this is not in the existing EU legislation (“acquis”) . As an oddity the Techright document also refers to the idiosyncratic EU database copyright, an EU legislative failure as the Commission admitted in its policy review. The proposal exports these rights to India, too.

When Parliament insisted on internet freedoms for ACTA and rejected the three strikes proposals, the Commission pretended no one’s ever proposed that, the Commission publicly attacked those who mislead made the representatives aware of it. What we find in the EU-India document is an impression of ACTA as it was meant to be.

No one depends on ACTA

When the interested public and Parliament fails to spot undesirable measures in ACTA (cast light on it) we’ll get it anyway, sneaked through a bilateral route, because Commission trade specialists want it so. Domestic effects of institutional activism and forum shopping. The process demonstrates us how trade policy severely undermines parliamentarian democracy when trade administration steps into merely regulatory matters, legislation not trade. I hate to admit that but maybe the globalisation critics were right with their fierce criticism of the EU- “Global Europe” strategy spirit.

More EU-India

As I wrote above, I cannot confirm if the document was authentic but I found some background documents:

• EU-Commission’s press release about these negotiation (2007):

“On 28th June 2007, the EU and India began negotiations on a broad-based bilateral trade and investment agreement in Brussels, Belgium.”

• Commissioner De Gucht speech 4 Jan 2010: “We must complement the multilateral system by strengthening key bilateral and regional relationships. This is because bilateral agreements can go further and faster in promoting openness and integration, by tackling issues which are not ready for multilateral discussion and by preparing the ground for the next round of multilateral negotiations. Many key issues, including investment, public procurement, competition, intellectual property, …, can be addressed in such agreements. This would mean concluding Free Trade Agreements or similar types of agreements with amongst others India, ASEAN countries, Ukraine, Canada, Euromed, but also Mercosur.”
• Commissioner De Gucht about the agreement, Indian television, mentions the need to address “non-trade issues”. In his mind the term comprises issues like “Climate Chance” and “Human Rights” [x] but IPR aspects in the TechRights document are also not trade-related but legislative.
• Aid agencies on EU-India: Aids, not internet, EU-India may hinder access to essential medicines: “In recent years, India has become “the pharmacy of the developing world”. Ninety-two percent of people living with HIV on treatment in low- and middle-income countries currently use generic antiretrovirals (ART), mostly manufactured in India.”

[+] Commissioner De Gucht in Frankfurter Allgemeine stresses that Parliament’s role is just approval and assumes institutional legitimacy for the Commission like in a nation state: “In einer Demokratie muss das Parlament bei der Handelspolitik mitreden. Auf der anderen Seite muss klar sein, dass nicht das Parlament die Verhandlungen mit unseren Handelspartnern führt, sondern die Kommission. Das Parlament wird über den Fortgang der Verhandlungen informiert und kann dann am Ende “ja” oder “nein” sagen, mehr nicht. Das ist bei internationalen Verhandlungen in allen Staaten[!] so.”

[x] A classic Red Herring power technique, in order to avoid procedural criticism, that a trade process relates to non-trade issues, they shift the debate to other non-trade policy issues which are expected to be backed by potential opponents of the agreement.

[*] Bilaterals are a dangerous “policy laundry” road for our nascent EU parliamentarian democracy.

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Google DC talk on ACTA

Now on Youtube in full length, Google’s talk on ACTA from Washington.

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Copyright Conference Urheberrechtstage 2010

Copyright is in reform needs. The objective feels a bit like the movie plot kitsch of Metropolis, how to reconcile the heart and the hand of the digital environment. One approach by trade politicians is currently undertaken by e.g. a planned Trade Treaty, ACTA, which aims to tighten copyright enforcement and use so called digital rights management measures. Also the Commission investigates copyright licensing legal ambushes. Another approach is of intellectual, discoursive nature. No one really knows how to adapt copyright to the digital environment and make it sustainable. So the idea was to get the minds and interested parties together to discuss the future of copyright in an open, sea side remote location as Wilhelmshaven, the famous Prussian North Sea war port. Get the trias author-intermediary-user, as Dr. Joachim Losehand points out, to talk with each other, not about each other. Times are changing, so is copyright.

A preliminary website is up and running here:

http://www.urheberrechtstage.de/

A call for paper is preannounced, the event would take place 4-6 June 2010 in Wilhelmshaven.

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Federal Trade Commission asks for DRM opinions

Digital Rights Management. Customers don’t like it but customers like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is against DRM. Apple’s iTunes store is was the most successful showcase for DRM. DRM means other people control what you can do with the technical stuff you own because they have a stake in it. DRM is a modern chasity belt. No wonder the topic is controversial. So you get a nice polarised debate when you consult the different stakeholders.

The US Federal Trade Commission asks for user contributions:

Title: Notice and Request for Public Comments
Subject Category: FTC Town Hall to Address Digital Rights Management Technologies – Event Takes Place Wednesday, March 25, 2009, in Seattle
Published: To Be Added
Comments Due: January 30, 2009

The FTC also explains what this DRM is all about:

Digital rights management (DRM) refers to technologies typically used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders to attempt to control how consumers access and use media and entertainment content. Among other issues, the workshop will address the need to improve disclosures to consumers about DRM limitations. Interested parties may submit written comments or original research on this topic.

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