Publishers want control over how we share news online
Publishers are lobbying hard to get more control over the way we all read and share news articles online. For months now, Digital Commissioner Oettinger has been mulling over whether to give in to their demands and grant them a new kind of copyright for […]
more ›In many of the biggest political scandals of the past months – Luxleaks, Dieselgate and now the Panama Papers – we saw trade secret laws abused as a shield against investigation and exposure of how corporations are harming the public good, avoiding taxes and endangering public safety. Whistleblowers find themsielves fighting for their freedom in […]
more ›The European Parliament is finally starting its investigation into the Dieselgate emissions scandal, in which millions of cars by VW were found to be cheating on emissions tests, massively exceeding the limits for pollutants in actual driving conditions even after supposedly acing their approval procedures.
The Committee of Inquiry, of which I am a […]
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This is a guest post by Rio (Twitter:@ld4jp), an intern at Julia’s office.
An agreement was reached on TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, on the 5th of October 2015. The negotiation process of 5 years was entirely undertaken behind closed doors, and during the process Wikileaks had been the primary source for people to get […]
more ›tl;dr: Projects building open communications networks using custom router software are playing an important role in providing refugees with Internet access. Last year, largely unbeknownst to the public, a new EU directive was passed on the regulation of radio equipment. This directive may limit the software that can be run on WiFi routers to those […]
more ›Preliminary version adopted in plenary on July 9, 2015 – subheadings added
Changes to previous version (Legal Affairs Committee) shown as strikethroughs
See Parliament website for PDF download and official translationsBackground on the report: Context, status, next steps
Recitals A. whereas the revision of Directive 2001/29/EC is central to the promotion of creativity […]
more ›The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs committee on Tuesday voted on draft legislative proposals on the protection of trade secrets. While the Parliament’s proposals are a slight improvement on the original Commission proposals, my demands on improving transparency requirements were not heard.
Constance Le Grip’s report was adopted with eighteen votes in favour, two against and […]
more ›This page covers my draft of the report on the current copyright framework for the European Parliament. A heavily amended version was later adopted. See here for background and the final version. Core finding
The provisions of 2001’s copyright directive have not been able to hold step with the increase of cross-border cultural exchange facilitated by […]
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Today we know: After the tragic events of September 11th 2001, the U.S. put into place – in the name of security – a set of secret policies that sacrificed the very values they were supposedly defending. These measures, ranging from global mass surveillance all the way to the torture of prisoners, were enforced with the avid support […]
more ›What do you see?
This could be the beginning of a reform of copyright which finally takes into account the needs of people in the 21st century.
–Marcin Maj, Dziennik Interautów
The losers [of the report’s proposals] are European individuals […]: they lose protection over their own words and images, becoming second class global […]
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