The European Child Safety Online Conference 2012

Another conference

Working together to create a better internet for children
15th November 2012, The Renaissance Hotel, Brussels

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WD 0019/2012 for open and collaborative government

A few Members of the European Parliament started a Written Declaration for open and collaborative government. Gianni Pittella, Rodi Kratsa-Tsagaropoulou, Marisa Matias, Katarína Neveďalová, Marietje Schaake. Written Declarations are documents which could get co-signed by other Members of Parliament. They get adopted when they reach a majority. Written Declarations could be perceived as petitions within the European Parliament and civil society groups often pressure MEPs to sign a Written Declaration that suits their interests. Here it would be rather difficult to get them to endorse the document WD 0019/2012. The reason is simple: instead of “unrestricted” they drafted “current”. That single phrase makes the declaration appear like a Trojan horse.

0019/2012
Written declaration on open and collaborative government
The European Parliament,
– having regard to Rule 123 of its Rules of Procedure,
A. whereas the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the Aarhus Convention enshrine the right to good administration, the right to have access to documents and the right to impart information;
B. whereas citizens have increasing expectations of institutions in terms of transparency, credibility and efficiency;
C. whereas interactivity should be strongly encouraged between citizens and governments, as well as European institutions, to further enhance trust and transparency;
D. whereas Parliament aims to lead by example in providing access to information and cooperating with citizens;
1. Asserts that public sector information is a public good and must be freely available and permanently accessible online in a machine-readable, searchable and current format, consistent with personal data protection and national security interests;
2. Asserts that the Commission’s Open Data Strategy is an important step towards greater transparency and stresses that Member States need to develop such policies for transparency and accountability;
3. Asserts that the public must have the opportunity to participate in policy-making, information collection, policy development and decision-making;
4. Asks Member States and governments to collaborate with civil society to develop processes and platforms for meaningful citizen engagement in consultation and policy innovation, and report on the results;
5. Supports the Commission in developing further policies and platforms on open data and collaborative governance;
6. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the Commission and Member States of the European Union.

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AT4AM will become open source

Some of my colleagues were keen on broader access to AT4AM, the amendment template software of the European Parliament. It is used by Members of the European parliament to draft amendments to legal text. Certain meetings were taking place and now a breakthrough is announced:

The IT department of the European Parliament will next year make available as open source At4am, software that helps staff at the EP write amendments. The tool could be useful for many other parliaments and other public bodies that create legislative texts.

AT4AM uses akoma ntoso, an XML format for legislative texts. Open Sourcing AT4AM would simplify the processing of public input to the legislative process.

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Ronny Patz zum Brüssel-Bloggen

Meine Kollegen von Netzpolitik haben ein Interview mit Ron Patz auf der Re:Publica 12 geführt.

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Commission’s misconceptions about recasting – Cashman Public Access report

The European Commission in its consideration of the amendments adopted by the European Parliament on the Cashman report (Public Access to Documents) wrote:

The following amendments touch upon parts of the Regulation which the Commission did not propose to amend. In the Commission’s view, they are not compliant with the Inter-institutional Agreement on Recasting:

This is a misconception, though a common one. Recasting is not any different from the ordinary legislative procedure. It is just a presentation technique as the inter-institutional agreement shows. The recasting technique does not limit what Parliament may change of the recasted act. The purpose of “recasting” is to avoid a later codification of the text by doing amending act and codification in a single process.

Interinstitional Agreement, 2002/C 77/01, Provision 8 clarifies the process for provisions that were left unchanged by the Commission proposal:

“Where, in the course of the legislative procedure, it appears necessary to introduce substantive amendments in the recasting act to those provisions which remain unchanged in the Commission’s proposal, such amendments shall be made to that act in compliance with the procedure laid down by the Treaty according to the applicable legal basis.

With other words, Parliament could amend as it likes. The recast technique enables as much freedom to amend as the ordinary legislative procedure. The only difference is that a Commission recast proposal is easier to read and there won’t be a need for later codification.

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ESOP studies on Linux laptop market barries public

The association ESOP from Portugal made available two papers of original research. They concern what they call an “artificial exclusion of Linux-based laptops”. I had the opportunity to see the study earlier. Both studies can be freely accessed from ESOP. It is not easy to calculate economic effects but ESOP applies their own innovative approach for calculating losses.

The first study analyses the national economic impacts of introducing a series of locally-assembled laptops with an Open Source system and applications. This study measures the effects on GDP, employment, trade balance and discretionary income. The idea had a previous successful try-out in a government project called e.iniciativas, where the debuting Linux laptop achieved a 10% market share. Later on, despite several attempts, Portuguese retailers were altogether unwilling to supply identical laptop solutions, when the e.iniciativas experience had clearly established that such products would be in demand.

The second study analyses this market behaviour, which is typical of retail oligopolies. The analysis derives a probability model for retail markets and addresses several malfunctioning phenomena in the frame of the existing European legislation for competition. This model can be applied to other markets where the imbalance between production and distribution control is felt and where distribution is highly concentrated.

They find the current market organization unpleasant:

The theoretical basis allows for the identification of two critical issues:

1) a small number of intervening parties holds the power to choose which products become available for millions of citizens

2) different degrees of decision-coupling between parties may show within an oligopoly

This matter has been neglected by our national Competition Authority and apparently not corrected by European institutions.
 

ESOP.pt may trigger an entertaining debate with their papers.

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Danish Presidency on the scrounge – Future Internet Assembly

Die Danish EU Presidency is on the scrouge. For the EU Future Internet Assembly they raise fees from lobbyists. Makes me wonder if they fear EU presidency conferences become the new food stamps. I find it unpleasant that even a low walled garden would exclude parts of the Dutch population e.g. students from participation.

Future Internet Assembly May 7 – 11, 2012 – Aalborg Congress & Culture Center – Aalborg-Denmark Welcome to the online registration of the Future Internet Assembly.

Registration fee Future Internet Assembly (FIA) (May 10 – 11, 2012): DKK 1.500 / EUR 200 if you register latest April 23, 2012. After April 23, 2012 the registration fee is DKK 1875 / EUR 250
Future Internet Week: DKK 375 / EUR 50

The registration fee for Future Internet Week includes:
– Free access to Future Internet Week and all sessions on May 7 – 9, 2012
– Lunches & coffee breaks during the days of the program

The invitation was sent from a Commission address:

The Future Internet Assembly (FIA) of 2012 will be held in Aalborg on May 10-11, under the Presidency of Denmark in the EU Council. The theme for FIA-Aalborg will be “Smart Cities and Internet of Things”, and the programme promises many interesting discussions on how the Future Internet can be used to make our cities smarter and become a basis for more innovation, how the architecture of the Internet of Things relates to the Future Internet and examples of successful business models for IoT applications. There are also other interesting workshops on the impact of HTML5, interoperability of clouds, gaming and future networks.

And they even offer “early bird” discounts. How does it suit the dignity of a public office? I don’t know but at the Commission most staffers do not see any difference.

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Nach Beagle Befall Wlan wiederherstellen

Wenn man der Entfernung von Würmern und nach dem Entfernen von Proxyeinträgen das Wifi zickt, und Garbage injiziert.

Programme – Zubehör – Eingabeaufforderung (als Admin ausführen)

netsh winssock reset catalog
netsh int ipv4 reset
netsh int ipv6 reset

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IFPI – The Effect of French Hadopi on Music Sales

A study from IFPI The Effect of Graduated Response Anti-Piracy Laws on Music Sales: Evidence from an Event Study in France” (SSRN record). Four major record labels (Universal, Warner, EMI and Sony Music) supplied music sales data. Scientists from American Universities analysed the French data. It is insightful that the effect is mostly psychological. The mere enactment of the Hadopi law is perceived as a signal to consumers. The study “does not quantify the entire effect of HADOPI on producer surplus in the media industries, but merely indicates that for one industry (music) in one channel (iTunes), the law has had a large and statistically significant effect.”

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Gender and climate change pave the road for Sokalism

When two issues are set high on the agenda it seems natural to examine an interlink. Women and climate change.

whereas climate change will amplify inequalities and there is a risk that climate change policies will also have a negative impact on gender balance…

Calls on the Commission and the Council, in order to ensure that climate action does not increase gender inequalities but results in co-benefits to the situation of women, to mainstream and integrate gender in every step of climate policies, from conception to financing, implementation and evaluation;

The European Parlament rapporteur Nicole Kiil-Nielsen almost manages to make a case. Still I’d like to suggest a Sokalist analysis of past initiative reports from the European Parlament.

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