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OOXML in not an example of speed as much as it is one of corruption and irregularities. The speed was a byproduct of the corruption. It was covered in detail at Groklaw and the EFFI, among others. Pretty much every single country involved displayed irregularities in their process. These irregularities included but were far from limited to stacking committees, whittling down committees and overriding committee decisions. There was a strong correlation between national corruption and OOXML but as stated problems with the process were everywhere. Even "low" corruption regions like Sweden and Norway. The Norwegian committee was overridden and most quit in protest, not that M$ or ISO cared about protest.

Further, the specification was "fast tracked" within ISO despite not qualifying for such treatment. M$ and ISO kept selectively ignoring rules until they could finally push the specification through the approval process, despite initial disapproval. It was so bad that some considered a possible secondary purpose of the action a discrediting of ISO itself.

There's not enough that can be said on the problems and it was well-documented at the time in disparate news coverage. What's needed now for history is a central summary. It's enough to fill a book.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's take on it.

What puzzles me is how is the NDA supposed to threaten other downloaders. They ought to take lessons from a despot on how to make an example, usually public hangings are public for a reason. The NDA is clearly there to keep a lid on their activities, because drawing the spotlight is bad for them.

Sure,

EFFI, Electronic Frontier Finland ry. (registered association) once got few years back in trouble with the same law as it asked donations on its web page. They also forgot to apply the permit, which is notable mistake as they have lawers in their ranks. It should have been applied beforehand and they were later cleared out of the matter.

On the other side, founding association in finland is easy and process is light. Just few (3) legally capable members required.

One funny side note I took a glimpse and saw who are the backers of the Senja Teaches You Swedish (and Finnish) -project and 1/3 at least justifying by names have swedish-finnish roots and surely (some known names) swedish speakers. I'm not sure what it going on with this, but I have a hunch and can't come to any other resolution that this is something to do with much discussed "pakkoruotsi" (a name for forced swedish finnish students have to take at school, swedish speakers need to take finnish ofcourse).

Disclaimer: I'm 1/4 swedish roots, a native finnish speaker who learned swedish from my mother and school ofcourse too, but still do not believe that this obligatory system does good job regarding very few few finnish need swedish after completing the school and the language skill level most reach at school is not adequate to fluently communicate with swedish speakers and once not needed and used afterwards skill usually just gets worse over the time.

Please name a single country without an elected legislature where the citizens have greater rights than Americans.

According to Press Freedom Index 2010, Finland, Iceland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, New Zealand, Estonia, Ireland, Denmark, Japan, Lithuania, Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Germany, Australia and United Kingdom. You're at the 20th rank. Shame on you, USA, especially considering your 1st amendment. And good for you, Finland, for as a citizen I accept nothing less than topping the chart. Which, of course, is why you topped the chart, which is a direct challenge for the rest of you for the next year.

Which is pretty impressive, considering how Finland has it's own version of the Great Firewall of China. Shame on you, United States, you are at the 20th state, below even Germany. On the other hand, all the Nordic countries besides Denmark vie for number one position.

Today Europeans in general and Germans particularly know what happens if you let governments screw around to much.

I take it you haven't been in Finland. We have some weird on-going process where our highest ranking police officer seems to be running some sort of political campaing to get every people under at least some kind of surveilance. Latest idea was to take finger prints of every citizen so that they could "solve serious crimes more easily". I really don't know how my finger prints are going to help solve serious crimes when I'm not the one making them.

Then there's our current government, which I thought was supposed to be liberal and all but ended up being as socialist as the former one, making all kinds of laws to protect the children (of course) and Nokia.

So if you have open positions for programmers in Germany I might be interested ;)

What good is the right to a broadband connection if they don't have the right to an unfiltered connection? In case you didn't know, a filter maintained by Finnish police that's supposed to block child pornography also blocks other content, including a website critical of Finland's internet filter:

http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html

Oh, fortunately the ISP:s have to opt-in to that. I think that there's one big ISP left who's using the list, maybe not even that..

Greetings from Finland. :)

What good is the right to a broadband connection if they don't have the right to an unfiltered connection? In case you didn't know, a filter maintained by Finnish police that's supposed to block child pornography also blocks other content, including a website critical of Finland's internet filter:

http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2008-02-18.html

No, slander is illegal. "Insulting" was a bad word to use, "criticizing" would have been more correct. Currently you have to be very careful about objecting to anything done by a foreigner. Just look at this article (Finnish). Apparently police targeting pickpockets is now racist if most of the pickpockets happen to be foreigners.

Female circumcision is an extreme example that no sane person tolerates. The problem is that anything less in your face is tolerated, in the name of multiculturalism. That leaves plenty of room to oppress women.

You're wrong about the hotels. Two of them are in central Helsinki. One is in Kallio, which is probably the least popular central area, but still popular compared to locations further away. The totally insane one is in Punavuori (Finnish), one of the most sought after locations for apartments.

Nice strawman calling anti-immigrants skinheads. Most of us are against skinheads too. We're not willing to tolerate people who themselves don't tolerate anything. This includes both refugees from backwards cultures and skinheads of our own. Unfortunately the skinheads are already here, but the refugees can be stopped at the border without harming our democracy. I would also point out that most modern skinheads are more talk than action, and they should have free speech too.

You're being hopelessly naive believing that officials have any success "encouraging women to have more equal status" (", mmmkay"). In Stockholm, TEN percent (article in Swedish) of 15-year old girls are having trouble with honor culture. This is in one of the most accepting countries on the planet. Even worse, when the percentage of immigrants in one area becomes large enough, attacks against the local culture reach out of control status (Swedish). If you don't speak Swedish, part of the article points out that firemen had to stop responding to fires that weren't spreading because they were too afraid of violence.

The talk about integrating refugees is all talk and no action. In practice, the refugees are trying to bring their own oppressive culture with them - the one they claim to be fleeing from. Sure, some of them actually believe in freedom, but there is no effort at all to weed out those who actually deserve our protection. The same will happen in Finland unless it's stopped now.

The multiculturalist fanatics are also trying to destroy our democracy. A Dutch member of parliament was banned from entering the UK to address the House of Lords, because their government thought it would cause trouble.

The Finnish prime minister is a coward and a traitor to the constitution. When the muslim world was in uproar about the Danish political cartoons, he apologized on behalf of Finland that they were published here too. Apparently he thinks they should have been hidden from view so us subjects couldn't decide for ourselves whether there was anything wrong with them. The message is clear: anything that muslims find offensive shouldn't be free speech, and boy are there a lot of those things.

Of people suspected of crimes with a racist motivation, natives only account for 85% despite being more numerous. Somalis account for 2.1%. Taulukko 27 in this document (in Finnish).

EFF Finland on freedom of speech (in Finnish)

A foreigner finds racism against Finns in newspapers targeted to foreigners.

About your last comment: Insulting someone because they're black is stupid, but criticizing someone's religion is most certainly a free speech issue.

According to the original sources (e.g. http://www.effi.org/blog/2008-10-28-finnish-evoting-votes-lost.html): It actually wasn't about losing registered votes, but about votes not getting registered because people pulled their smart cards out too early (insert joke here).

Finnish e-voting results annulled, municipalities to hold new elections by Electronic Frontier Finland ry (Effi), the best summary in English, IMO;
Helsingin Sanomat;
Helsinki Times;
The Brad Blog;
NewsRoom Finland;
YLE; and
Turre (the lawyers that won the case).

The voting system was provided by Tieto and Scytl. In their News Page, Scytl declares: "Scytl's Pnyx.core successfully used in local elections in Finland" Shouldn't they update this...? It is even possible that the 2% of the votes lost was due to the Pnyx.core, instead of usability issues with the voting terminals, as has been commonly assumed - who knows.

Here's an article in non-google-translated English. Also contains some other links in English.

Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi) has an English article on this matter as well.

According to the Electronic Frontier Finland article, the troubled system was used in areas representing 2% of the electoral roll, but actually affected only 232 voters total. Finland has a population of 5.5 million. Depending on how many of those voted, less than 0.01% of all votes were actually lost; a much better margin of error than most paper ballot systems.

Only the Turre Legal blog mentions the "2% of all votes" figure, and its source is...another Slashdot summary, which is also wrong.

It's still a problem, especially at the municipal level, but it's a much smaller problem than it's made out to be.

I guess this is a question of whether it is possible to have a "perfect" user interface such that 100% of people who use it will get it right. Given the number of nincompoops out there, that is a pretty difficult problem. What is the percentage of mistakes with paper ballots? I bet there are 2% who manage to screw that up too.

You lose. According to EFFI, only 0.6 percent of paper votes had to be rejected, and of those, only 0.17 percent were not obviously intentional screwups, such as voting for Daffy Duck etc. Not that Daffy would be a worse politician than the current lot, but that's another discussion ;(.

In the Finnish municipal elections 2008, 0.17% of the paper votes were inadvertently spoiled (unclear marking in the ballot ticket etc.) and had to be dismissed. This can be compared with the 2% of the electronic votes lost in three municipalities in which the new voting system was piloted (see Effi's Electronic Voting FAQ, in Finnish).

The total fraction of the spoiled paper votes in the municipal elections was 0.6%. Most of the dismissed paper votes were due to a deliberate action by the voter (votes for Donald Duck - a popular candidate here!, empty ballot tickets etc.). There is no evidence to support the claim that the lost electronic votes were due to a deliberate action by the voters. On the contrary, in addition to the usability problems with the voting machines, there is evidence of system malfunctions which may have contributed to the lost votes (slow response times, freezing of the voting machines during the voting etc.). Additionally, the electronic voting did allow to cast an empty vote.

This was a municipal election, carried out in three small municipalities with just several thousand voters. The victory margin in those municipalities was just a few votes. This error clearly affects the outcome of the vote.

Effi's site had an english version, too:
An error margin of 2% in municipal elections ruled acceptable in Finland

Finally, blacklists in general are prone to misuse, abuse and human error.

Absolutely. In Finland, a leading critic of internet censorship had his website added to the list, and the list also contains:

• THC hearing aid devices
• IT consulting service for teachers
• Music instrument store
• Doll store
• Computer repair service
• Windows tips in Thai
• Data Management and Biostatistics Network Journal Guestbook
• English and Thai discussion of gay rights (no images!)

There has now been at least one report of touchscreen issues. A voter had repeatedly tried to click on "ok", but either due to system lag or touchscreen sensitivity problems, it took "minutes" to get the button press registered. If hit by this type of problem, the voters may well have thought that the ballot casting process had completed.

[Added 29th Oct:]

One of the biggest issues on the Finnish system is that you can connect the vote to a voter. Basically, a vote is stored in to the main database with voter identification. The database is encrypted, but anybody with right password and key can check who voted for who. The database, keys and passwords will be stored for years.

Compared to this the user interface glitch is just a minor issue.

More detailed criticism can be found from Effi's e-voting report.

Somewhat similar scheme was attempted in Finland... starting about a year ago. It wasn't officially mandatory but the minister in charge hinted it would be made so unless ISPs cooperated "voluntarily". It rather blew on their face when it was discovered how poorly it worked (like, 95%+ of the sites blocked weren't what they were supposed to be - e.g., w3c.org was blocked for a while), and after a public uproar they backed down - not dismantling the system or admitting it was a mistake, but saying "of course it was intended as voluntary to everybody all along".

Today, police still maintains the blacklist and many ISPs use it by default but if you complain, they just tell you how to bypass it (change DNS servers), and some ignore it completely.

There're English stories about it here and here.

The trap is mandatory internet filtering (see the last paragraph in section 1):

We will:
[...]
Implement new legislation to require all Canadian Internet Service Providers to prevent the publication or proliferation of child sexual abuse content on the Internet.

Generally, countries implement this by using a blacklist which:

• blocks entire sites (by DNS or IP) rather than just the forbidden content, thereby blocking legitimate content as well
• is secret, and maintained by an unaccountable organisation
• can be abused to block legitimate speech
• is unverifiable: assuming it works perfectly, nobody can access the listed sites to check whether they really contain child pornography
• doesn't work unless you're in a police state: things like international VPNs, proxies, TOR, and private DNS servers can't be blocked in a free country

Effi: Finnish police censors a critic of censorship

This shows that they are using DNS based filtering. Very easy to get around, run your own DNS servers and bypass your ISP's DNS servers alltogether.

A lot of people.

Finland's EFFI demonstrated the overall level of vote-buying with their analysis of corruption levels in P countries.

Both the FFI and IBM rep present at the Swedish meeting protested about the vote stacking there.

In Portugal it was the Sun and IBM reps who lodged complaints because they were denied a vote due to a "lack of chairs".

Everywhere you look there have been a litany of complaints about vote stacking and rigging of committees.

I suppose it will stick. A government is a large body and does have a lot of inertia, hence it will necessarily take some pushing to get this thing going. Lots of offices need ODF plugins for MS Office, scripts need to be changed to become compatible with these plugins, you may need new routines for storage and indexing, etc. There is broad political agreement on this in Norway though, so even if there should be some kind of political crisis during the next year, this decision is likely to stay. Together with the recent Dutch decision to prefer open standars this might be enough to get the ball rolling, at least in Europe.

Oh, FWIW, Norway and the Netherlands aren't very corrupt countries ;->

Most research in the social sciences considers the threshold for statistical significance below .05. Since this is above, few would have confidence that this result is not random chance.

As a Finn, I have always taken pride in our country - even though we don't have things like the Bill of Rights, we have our fundamental rights, and our copyright legislation isn't at least as horrible as the DMCA. Well, that has now changed. Finland has enjoyed #1 position in international competitiveness ratings and has been considered a vanguard of the spearhead of information age societies, but this piece of legislation has now set us back years, nay, perhaps even decades.

What wrenches my gut is that despite Finland's top rating when it comes to low corruption, shenaniganry in creating and passing this piece of legislation has been plentiful. The law was prepared in the Ministries of Culture and Education in close rapport with people who work for the very organisations that lobby for stricter controls on what citizens can do with the things they have bought. When sixty-six expert statements were collected on the law, only one was from a consumer-oriented organisation, that being EFFI.

Its passing was surrounded by nothing but smoke and mirrors, with misleading statements based on intentionally erroneus interpretations of the already-muddy law by its supporters. And finally when a demonstration was arranged in front of the Parliamentary building on Tuesday, when the bill was discussed for the very last time, a representative of a musicians' organisation was put on the wires stating the demonstrators' cry for free speech was tarnishing the concept for free speech because the demonstrators just want to download songs in its name. This while behind him people were touting DeCSS signs and spreading out short DeCSS programmes on flyers with the text "distributing this flyer will become illegal".

Not to mention the EEA statute, which makes distributing works not published in the European Economic Area illegal in the EEA, unless they have been acquired for personal use. No more import manga from stores if the publisher overseas decides that the market in Finland is too small.

Well, now there's a galvanised group of a few hundred people who are just really pissed off. We're already setting up forums for "organised discussion" and thinking up ways to turn ourselves in en masse to swamp the system. The Parliament has made an initial decision to modify the law later on, but until then, we'll have to just suck it up.

And guess who used her authority to press the bill through no matter what? The Minister of Culture, a former Miss Finland, whose only merit in getting into Parliament was that she was Miss Finland, and whose only merit in getting into the Ministry was that she raked in so many votes. No, I didn't vote for her.

Finally, what comes to the EU directive garbage, it was just an attempt to deflect blame by the Government. There is only an alleged record of a single EU official stating how tightly the EUCD should be implemented. Finland now has the strictest EUCD implementation in existence. Greece implemented it with most of the stupid parts axed out; a French court has now declared that copy protection (more like "use restriction") has no protection of law. DVD area codes are illegal in Belgium. The only thing the EU directive argument served was the populist and anti-EU True Finns party.

Oh FFS. I think I'll just move to Canada. Bonjour Monsieur, ca va bien, eh?

More information here:
http://www.effi.org/tekijanoikeus/laki/index.en.ht ml

I'm a Finn but didn't know all of this and now that I found out I'm _very_ concerned and wish that as many people as possible become aware of this.

Read more about this issue from EFFI's site. EFFI is a non-profit organisation that defend's users and citizens of the Finnish society in the electronic frontier. It's the Finnish version of EFF. I recommend that you and your friends join EFFI. We need a strong organisation that can defend our digital rights against some media industry lobbyists and corrupt/stupid politicians.

Of course, this is a Finish comment, so their law may work differently. But this idea of "privledges" sure as hell doesn't jive with US law.

We Finns are as dumbfounded as you are. For after all, we've been looking at the recent U.S. copyright laws such as DMCA feeling "WTF, luckily we have things better around here", but it seems like that fun is about to end. Make some room, we're immigrating to the World of Shit, too.

Seems like the record collection of over 500 original titles me and my girlfriend own isn't going to make it to 600 due to music producers being so f-word arrogant and downright stupid to make us not want to buy a record anymore. I was supposed to buy a new record today, but I didn't. I ordered two EFFI (Electronic Frontier Finland, a Finnish equivalent to EFF) t-shirts [effi.org] instead. At least I don't feel like funding this Kyyrä idiot and his mates at all. Seems like I'm down to my existing record collection, live gigs, and my guitar when it comes to enjoying music. Well, I'll have to find out some other use for the three-figure sum of Euros I used to spend on records on a yearly basis. Thanks a lot, IFPI and the rotten part of the parliament. Don't come crying to me when record sales are dropping, for it's your own f-king grave you've dug. Treat me as a respectable customer instead of a gullible part of revenue stream and I might actually buy a record again.

The interview from which this was quoted is about the new Finnish copyright law, which is basically a Finnish version of the DMCA, following the EU directive on national copyright laws. (The interview was originally published in the Tietokone magazine; rumor has it that Mr. Kyyrä was less than amused at being quoted verbatim, and a cleaned up version was put up a few hours later.)

The high points of the law include (these are mostly quoted from Electronic Frontier Finland's FAQ on the law at http://www.effi.org/tekijanoikeus/laki/tekijanoike us-faq.html (Finnish only)):
- prohibition on sale, distribution, possession and "organized discussion" (yes, it says this; no, "organized discussion" is not defined; yes, it's hard to see how this isn't against the Finnish constituion) of products whose purpose is the circumvention of DRM (this would include all non-sanctioned DVD players using something like libdvdcss);
- prohibition on copying of "efficiently" protected music or other copyrighted material to, for example, MP3 players; this is sort of allowed in one clause and expressly prohibited in another (this has been the major point seen in public discussion in the last few days);
- prohibition of "parallel" import of goods from outside the EFTA; individuals can still order goods from outside the EFTA, but all (including private) resale is prohibited; it doesn't actually matter whether the import is "parallel" or the only import, it must still be sanctioned by the copyright holder;
- possibility of expansion of the "cassette tax" (currently paid for recording media such as audio tapes and CD/DVD-Rs sold in Finland; money goes to the record labels based on how many records they sell, IIRC) to other media that "may be used to store copyrighted material"; this potentially includes all hard drives.

"Efficient protection" is a key concept in the law, but is not actually defined. According to the committee responsible for the law, protection is "efficient" if it was "meant to protect the copyrighted work from being copied". So it could be said that this law makes the shift key an illegal circumvention device.

The law was written pretty much behind closed doors, with only "experts" from the record label trade bodies and similar organizations heard. Also the head of the committee, Jukka Liedes, sits on the board of ESEK, a sub-organization of Gramex (a trade association which represents record labels in Finland). The Ministry of Education, which is the ministry responsible for the law, has also been forwarding press releases penned by the abovementioned organizations pretty much verbatim and quoting them in interviews.

It is a matter of discussion whether the committee responsible for the law is actually evil and corrupt, or just so incompetent that they have no actual idea what the rules proposed by the industry actually mean in practice.

The law was accepted in its current form today, with an official (but not having any power of law) note attached effectively saying that "there's some stuff in there that should be fixed". I understand that the law will be headed for the final yes/no vote in the parliament in the near future. In my opinion, it's very likely that it will be pushed through; the recording industry has put their rather powerful propaganda machine in high gear and (I assume) also their lobbying machinery after the outcry from the public began.

The minister of culture Tanja Karpela (who is the "owner" of the law) has refused to admit that there are any problems with the current version of the law, even though it has obvious internal contradictions as well as contradicting the constitution. When opposition to the law first started making headlines, she stated her suspicion that it was a result of "machinations by certain parties" (that's a pretty much literal and verbatim translation). It would appear that she is mostly repeating statements prepared by someone else regar

Heh, thanks. Now you made me join the EFFi, the Finnish equivalent. :)

"I'd like to note my complete support for the CBDTPA.

I understand that virtually nobody else has said anything positive about this Act. That's because virtually everybody who has contacted you to discuss the Act so far is American. I'm not American, and I'd like to congratulate you on this most excellent piece of legislation, which will do more for the European computer, software, and music industries than any amount of pork our own legislators could have given us.

This Act is wonderful. At a stroke, you're crippling your software industry, destroying your nascent open source infrastructure, putting all your unsigned bands and hopeful novelists back behind the counter at McDonald's, and giving your computer and electronics vendors a huge ball and chain to lug around.

You'll also have given a big hand to Hollywood and the music industry -- a $35Bn turnover sector -- and successfully trashed the electronics, software and hardware industries -- upstarts whose $600Bn turnover is of no account. In so doing, you will have helped advance the USA to the status Imperial Britain aspired to in 1902 -- that of has-been former superpower.

If you pass this act, I will be sure to express my gratitude for the resulting pay rises and improved employment opportunities -- in Scotland and the rest of the EU, and indeed the developed world -- in writing. Thank you, and good luck."

On the yes, donate side... The US government's policies on copyrights / DRM / protecting Hollywood do affect the rest of the world. Our congress is the elephant in the electronics shop. The EFF is trying to keep the elephant tranquilized-- i.e. minimize the damage it can cause. The EFF is often a first responder-- it tries to catch weird new tech policies before they grow out of control and become laws in the US (and then the rest of the world). So donate 97% of your 'Rights x Technologies' monies to your local groups. But then also donate 3% to the EFF to prevent the bad US policies from being yet another worry for your local group. Insurance.

Electronic Frontier Finland ry has already send a questionnaire about software patents, spam, copyright etc. to the Finnish candidates. They have set up a page where you can compare your oppinions with those of the ones who answered.

Electronic Frontier Finland ry has already send a questionnaire about software patents, spam, copyright etc. to the Finnish candidates. They have set up a page where you can compare your oppinions with those of the ones who answered.

Yes, corporations probably have little less control over individual politicians due to tighter limits for electoral funding. However, companies still have powerful lobbyists; Here in Finland, for example, most politicians still seem to be for SW patents, mostly due to heavy lobbying of two largest IT corps, Nokia and TeliaSonera. (Actually, according to Electronic Frontier Finland Nokia is perhaps most powerful SW-patent proposer in the whole EU.)

Interesting. Finland has had anti-spam legislation since 1999, opt-in for individuals and opt-out for companies. Its enforcement and interpretation has been a problem, though. I believe a new law is being drafted (or is it already proposed?).

At the moment the law is being processed in the parliamentary committees. As far as I understand, the law will probably bring no signigicant changes to spam legislation (although the law itself covers many areas other than spam). EFFI has been heard in the process and their latest statement (in Finnish) on the law looks good.

Hopefully the U.S. won't get bought and paid for too soon, or it will become the world's Former Super-Power.

The only thing that could stop the snowball would be U.S.-style software patents in Europe, which is why the U.S. is lobbying so hard in the EU to get them put through. The EU will vote yet again on software patents 10 Nov 2003. Contact your EU representative and prevent the U.S. economic depression from dragging down the European development.

FYI, there is now also a press release on the open letter in the EFFI web pages (I just put it there).

Electronic Frontier Finland Co. warns and makes a note for all finlandians not to answer or reply to any Linux Licence procedures, statements or requests on the behalf of SCO. If at any given time or any way someone has received or will receive a letter or e-mail from SCO, offering Linux-Licences or likewise, it is to be ignored and handled just like any other ordinary spam, advices the EFFI's chairman, Mikko Valimaki. The minister of EFFI, Kai Puolamaki, points out and reminds that Linux is being shared and supervised by the GPL-licence, due to which the operating system can be developed and shared freely by independent factors. He also states the SCO to have offered their own developed Linux-version known as Caldera supported by GPL-licence conditions, and thus letting the code open in the public, free for all. Valimaki also comments SCO still has not publiced any proof or evidence regarding the copying of the code, in spite of the numerous requests.

Electronic Frontier Finland Co. warns and makes a note for all finlandians not to answer or reply to any Linux Licence procedures, statements or requests on the behalf of SCO. If at any given time or any way someone has received or will receive a letter or e-mail from SCO, offering Linux-Licences or likewise, it is to be ignored and handled just like any other ordinary spam, advices the EFFI's chairman, Mikko Valimaki. The minister of EFFI, Kai Puolamaki, points out and reminds that Linux is being shared and supervised by the GPL-licence, due to which the operating system can be developed and shared freely by independent factors. He also states the SCO to have offered their own developed Linux-version known as Caldera supported by GPL-licence conditions, and thus letting the code open in the public, free for all. Valimaki also comments SCO still has not publiced any proof or evidence regarding the copying of the code, in spite of the numerous requests.

The EU Copyright Directive is not the only worry. EU is also considering IPR Enforcement Directive which would add even more DMCA-like protections to technical measures. IPR Enforcement Directive would also introduce a "conviction of shame": if you are found guilty of rights infringment you must publish the judgement in a publication chosen by the rights owner at your own cost. See a statement by Electronic Frontier Finland on the proposed directive.

(For what it is worth, the Finnish parliament did not pass the national implementation of the EU Copyright Directive.)

The EU Copyright Directive is not the only worry. EU is also considering IPR Enforcement Directive which would add even more DMCA-like protections to technical measures. IPR Enforcement Directive would also introduce a "conviction of shame": if you are found guilty of rights infringment you must publish the judgement in a publication chosen by the rights owner at your own cost. See a statement by Electronic Frontier Finland on the proposed directive.

(For what it is worth, the Finnish parliament did not pass the national implementation of the EU Copyright Directive.)

EU has already made unsolicited commercial email (UCE) illegal, see article 13 of the Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), after intense lobbying e.g. by EuroCAUCE.

The directive must be implemented by the member states by 31 October 2003.

(I just wrote statement [in Finnish] to the Finnish ministry of transports and communications on behalf of Electronic Frontier Finland of our proposed local implementation of the directive (which at the current form would allow ask-permission-spam (i.e. you would be allowed to send spam to ask permission to send more spam. :( )))

EU has already made unsolicited commercial email (UCE) illegal, see article 13 of the Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), after intense lobbying e.g. by EuroCAUCE.

The directive must be implemented by the member states by 31 October 2003.

(I just wrote statement [in Finnish] to the Finnish ministry of transports and communications on behalf of Electronic Frontier Finland of our proposed local implementation of the directive (which at the current form would allow ask-permission-spam (i.e. you would be allowed to send spam to ask permission to send more spam. :( )))

In Finland, the law allows one to make personal copies of media for personal and family use. As I understand, this law exists in quite a few countries. The problem and debate seems to be "methods used to circumvent copy protection" such as this.

Still, highly intelligent thinking on the part of lawmakers. Their new proposal would allow personal copies, without allowing the methods required to make such copies. Fortunately EFFI is making a noise of it.

There's a very good chance NOW to make a noise about methods that can be used to circumvent copy protection for personal use, such as modchips. In countries where there's still debate, it seems like a healthy time to speak for this matter.

Another good idea is to check the opinions of local consumer agencies. Over here, they're favoring the customer, especially now that copy protected almost-cd's are sold more and more.

So - here's your free mansion on this nice looking island. Problem is, crossing the bridge will put you to jail and swimming with sharks is none too fun.

Ahh... you must be referring to the big brother awards distributed by the EFF's spawn in Finland, EFFi... link here Sorry, finnish version only, but you can see the lovely award... You want to see the future?

Electronic Frontier Finland
Electronic Frontier Canada
Electronic Frontiers Australia
Electronic Frontier Ireland
Electronic Frontier Sverige
Electronisk Forpost Norge
Electronic Frontiers Italy

It's exactly the same as if Microsoft changed the Windows license to say you could not run any GPL programs under the Windows operating system. Imagine the screaming that would take place if they tried that.

Microsoft are busy working on just this and it's much worse than you would imagine. See the TCPA/Palladium FAQ.

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How are you supposed to pay one dollar to the EFF? Going to a bank you'd probably end up paying like $21 for that transfer.

Oh, I do have joined my local EFF branch instead...