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That from http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p _action.gettxt=gt&doc=IP/03/1150%7C0%7CRAPID&lg=EN ; hey note theres a .ksh in the URL - think they run korn shell cgi's in brussels? :)

Anyway that says OPEN YOUR API TOTALLY MS or face punishmnet. GREAT NEWS for interoperability! Samba and dozens of other programs will benefit immensely.

Maybe if you read a little harder you would have noticed the reference to document IP/00/906 which outlines the original complaint:

Commission opens proceedings against Microsoft's alleged discriminatory licensing and refusal to supply software information

The European Commission, at the initiative of the Commissioner in charge of competition, Mr. Mario Monti, has sent a statement of objections to Microsoft Corp for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the market for personal computer operating systems software by leveraging this power into the market for server software. The Commission's action follows a complaint by American software company Sun Microsystems that Microsoft breached European Union antitrust rules by engaging in discriminatory licensing and by refusing to supply essential information on its Windows operating systems.

You didn't even need to read that far, because the document IP/03/1150 which is linked to in the article text quite clearly states:

Commission gives Microsoft last opportunity to comment before concluding its antitrust probe

Bear in mind this is a press release and not a legal document. I'm sure if you called the press relations office they could supply you with the specific antitrust laws which the EU commision feels that Microsoft are violating.

While I applaud the EU for standing up to the Microsoft monopoly, I don't really think that these proceedings will have any long term effect. Quoting from the EU press release
"With respect to tying, the Commission has set out two alternative proposed remedies. The first would be the untying of Windows Media Player from Windows, whereby Microsoft would be required to offer a version of Windows without Windows Media Player included."
Doesn't this just mean that the Windows installer will give you the option not to install WMP with a line two-thirds of the way down the license agreement that informs you that other media players are available?
Although it sounds impressive, I'm betting that the long-term effect will be extremely minimal.

According to 2002/58/EC (British version):

(25) However, such devices, for instance so-called "cookies", can be a legitimate and useful tool, for example, in analysing the effectiveness of website design and advertising, and in verifying the identity of users engaged in on-line transactions. Where such devices, for instance cookies, are intended for a legitimate purpose, such as to facilitate the provision of information society services, their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using. Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment. This is particularly important where users other than the original user have access to the terminal equipment and thereby to any data containing privacy-sensitive information stored on such equipment. Information and the right to refuse may be offered once for the use of various devices to be installed on the user's terminal equipment during the same connection and also covering any further use that may be made of those devices during subsequent connections. The methods for giving information, offering a right to refuse or requesting consent should be made as user-friendly as possible. Access to specific website content may still be made conditional on the well-informed acceptance of a cookie or similar device, if it is used for a legitimate purpose.

This is one point of 49 other interesting ideas for the rights and protection of privacy in the electronic comm. sector. On the Danish EU-information site it is mentioned as still in progress in Denmark. Many IT-companies have had hearings for this directive, but cookies has not been discussed yet (so to my knowledge).

Actually, you're wrong there: every five years, there are EU wide elections for the European Parliament. Together with the Council, which is nothing other than the combined elected governments from each member state with a more fancy name, they are the ones with the power to pass legislation. The EU does have its problems, but it's not nearly as undemocratic as a lot of people (including people in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia and the UK) believe.

BTW, the previous poster was a little wrong on the population size -- the EU is nearly 380 million people now, and around 100 million more (if I'm not mistaken) next year following the accession of the new member states.

would add even more DMCA-like protections to technical measures.

That's unfortunately a blunder in the EFF statement. Read the directive yourself. The article in question is article 21:

"technical device" means any technology, [...] designed for the manufacture of authentic goods and the incorporation therein of elements which are manifestly identifiable by customers and consumers and which make it easier to recognise the goods as being authentic.

So, for instance, unless, say, CSS is "manifestly identifiable by customers" "to recognise the goods as being authentic" deCSS doesn't fall under this provision.

I'm living slightly to south from Estonia. I do not agree with some ideas in some postings - specifically, about Estonia leading the ex-USSR and/or Baltics (Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia) regions.

Cultural differences aside (Estonians are Ugro-Finnic, others are Balts, none of them Slavs), the three countries are similar in size, economic conditions, they share same recent history (post WWI independence, pre-WWII Soviet occupation, 1991 restoration independence, economy recovery and upcoming EU membership.

Looking at economics, GDP growth in Estonia in 2002 (5.8%) was the slowest among its Baltics neighbors (Latvia 6.1%, Lithuania 6.7%) for second year in a row, while GDP-per-capita (9240 in "purchasing power standards", roughly equal to euros) was similar to Latvia's (7750) and Lithuania's (8960), even Belarus or Iran, yet a far cry from European Union average (23210).

This despite the fact that Estonia does lead Baltic states in internet usage. By June 2002, 66% Estonian companies and 19% people had internet conections at home (in Latvia 36% and 3%, in Lithuania 49% and 4%).

Don't make bold statements before checking facts.

I'm living slightly to south from Estonia. I do not agree with some ideas in some postings - specifically, about Estonia leading the ex-USSR and/or Baltics (Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia) regions.

Cultural differences aside (Estonians are Ugro-Finnic, others are Balts, none of them Slavs), the three countries are similar in size, economic conditions, they share same recent history (post WWI independence, pre-WWII Soviet occupation, 1991 restoration independence, economy recovery and upcoming EU membership.

Looking at economics, GDP growth in Estonia in 2002 (5.8%) was the slowest among its Baltics neighbors (Latvia 6.1%, Lithuania 6.7%) for second year in a row, while GDP-per-capita (9240 in "purchasing power standards", roughly equal to euros) was similar to Latvia's (7750) and Lithuania's (8960), even Belarus or Iran, yet a far cry from European Union average (23210).

This despite the fact that Estonia does lead Baltic states in internet usage. By June 2002, 66% Estonian companies and 19% people had internet conections at home (in Latvia 36% and 3%, in Lithuania 49% and 4%).

Don't make bold statements before checking facts.

I'm living slightly to south from Estonia. I do not agree with some ideas in some postings - specifically, about Estonia leading the ex-USSR and/or Baltics (Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia) regions.

Cultural differences aside (Estonians are Ugro-Finnic, others are Balts, none of them Slavs), the three countries are similar in size, economic conditions, they share same recent history (post WWI independence, pre-WWII Soviet occupation, 1991 restoration independence, economy recovery and upcoming EU membership.

Looking at economics, GDP growth in Estonia in 2002 (5.8%) was the slowest among its Baltics neighbors (Latvia 6.1%, Lithuania 6.7%) for second year in a row, while GDP-per-capita (9240 in "purchasing power standards", roughly equal to euros) was similar to Latvia's (7750) and Lithuania's (8960), even Belarus or Iran, yet a far cry from European Union average (23210).

This despite the fact that Estonia does lead Baltic states in internet usage. By June 2002, 66% Estonian companies and 19% people had internet conections at home (in Latvia 36% and 3%, in Lithuania 49% and 4%).

Don't make bold statements before checking facts.

And even if you are convicted of some sort of made up IP crime, you can always take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights, which pretty much always finds for the individual, because the EU Convention on Human Rights is a very broad and generous document.

If the EU Convention on Human Rights is anything like the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it includes something about copyright. Article 27 of the UDHR guarantees at least some semblance of copyright to adhering nations.

Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union states bluntly: "Intellectual property shall be protected."

Known as the naturalistic fallacy, the problem of deriving norms from nature is very old indeed. It has to do with the impossibility of translating 'is' language (how things are) into 'ought' language (how things ought to be).

We here in some countries in Europe have very good laws already against SMS Spam.

Finally, all of Europe even has very good legislation against spam in general:
Directive 2002/58/EC, Article 13:
In a nutshell: Technology-neutral opt-in, with only a few, rather reasonable exceptions, but no gaping loopholes.
It's a new concept for Europe either. Now, if Americans have to suffer from spam for years whenever a new technology comes along, call your "congressperson" to explain why they don't make a law like this. Hint: Their answer (post it!) should not contain poor "red herring" excuses citing the "First Amendment" or the "Dormant Commerce Clause" if they count on being re-elected: The courts have already decided that it is perfectly constitutional to wham spam with a ban by federal law.

", i.e. there are no EU-wide elections."

I don't know who modded you as interesting, but this statement is utterly false. The first elections date back from 1979, the whole parliament is renewed every 5 years and they are the one making laws (directives is more precise).

Now a question : when was the last time you voted ?

For your information, you can also visit this site europa.eu.int (especially EU at a glance and EU Parliament)

", i.e. there are no EU-wide elections."

I don't know who modded you as interesting, but this statement is utterly false. The first elections date back from 1979, the whole parliament is renewed every 5 years and they are the one making laws (directives is more precise).

Now a question : when was the last time you voted ?

For your information, you can also visit this site europa.eu.int (especially EU at a glance and EU Parliament)

From what I hear though, there is little to fear. The EU patents on software won't allow any patenting of business methods

Accordingly, a computer-implemented business method or other method in which the only contribution to the state of the art is non-technical cannot constitute a patentable invention.

The technical contribution shall be assessed by considering the state of the art and the scope of the patent claim considered as a whole, which must comprise technical features, irrespective whether or not such features are accompanied by non-technical features.

Anyway, things are looking actually quite good currently. Have a look at this press release, most MEPS are finally seeing that the proposal is completely wrong. I'm in direct contact with several people working with the MEPS and these people are really eager to learn as much as possible about the dangers of software patents.

Hi,

If you read the texts published by the EP-members that published eg

this

then you will see that they claim to avoid these kinds of "frivolus patents". I guess that one has to really read the proposal to be sure. At least make sure that you say something else than "Don't do it - it will be like horrible like in America" - because the MEP's are told that it won't be like that.

You should remark that the examples of "ok to patent" from the linked text

# an invention in which an X-ray apparatus was controlled by a data processing unit in a way which provided an optimum balance between potentially conflicting operational requirements

# an invention in which an increase in processing speed in a computer was achieved by a new and non-obvious method

actually allows the sorts of patents one sees in the US unless the EUPO is given _ample_ technical expertise to assert which ideas really are new.

Even better is of course to explain why patents on software are evil in all shapes and forms (if that is true).
Or to explain that the bennefits of "good patents" will be outweighed by the disasterous roadblocks to normal conpetetion on the software market that the inevitable "bad/frivolous patents" will create.

In short - MAKE SURE THAT YOUR ARGUMENT IS NOT EASILY DISMISSED BY YOUR MEP AS "OUR PROPOSAL TAKES CARE OF THAT"! If it is dismissed easily your mail will do more harm than good.

You're wrong.
Look here for the view of the EU of their bilateral trade relations to the USA, there are many interesting facts in there.

russia, china, kazakhstan, japan ...

All very nice examples for "dumping to destroy the market or mafia", but you conveniently forgot to mention that the european union has massively fought against the us steel taxes, which were illegal (if you follow the WTO) from the start.
So, which of the countries you mentioned above are in the european union? None
And you don't want to tell me that in britain/france/germany/spain the mafia does the steel production, heh?

here is some info about the state of EU vs. USA trade.

The real question is if governement agencies should be allowed to use expensive licensed software for which there is a viable alternative in the OS/FS community (read without paying required license fees). I think we have since long passed the time that we should believe that e.g running GNU/Linux in combination with OOo is at least as expensive as well know commercial products and can dismiss these statements as FUD.

I for one think they should not buy those products, though it is not any better where I live. In those cases, they are not only throwing our hardly earned (and often reluctantly paid) tax money out the window, which could be used for far better alternatives, they are also increasing the power of a monopolist, a self fulfulling prophecy.

I think this is the strength of the Australian proposal and the ISC tries to oppose (instead of using the money 'equally' (?) for the own population, it would now go to a few companies, from which a lot of them are foreign (not Australian).

And how many members of the Council of Europe are not either EU members, or applicants?

Not more than a tithe, I would expect.

If by a tithe you mean 10% then you're way out.

According to the European Union web site, the EU has 15 members and 13 applicants.

According to the Council of Europe web site, the Council of Europe has 45 member stats. That doesn't include the non-voting 'observer' members.

Russia must be the most prominent Council of Europe member that isn't in the EU, or likely to be in the near future, but there are many others too.

Europe lacks a First Amendment and the respect for limited government, private property and free enterprise that America still enjoys.

EU is build on the foundation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (the national states in the EU have to make sure that their national laws don't conflict with the Human Rights, and EU citizens can take their case to the European Court of Human Rights if they feel that their Human Right is violated by an European country (for instance, free speech). This document is of course also the foundation of the UN and has its philosophical basis in the philosophers of the enlightenment (the most important of them being French philosophers) which lead to the French revolution and the American Constitution. Paragraph 19 of the Human Rights Charter states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

So, it is very wrong to state that EU lacks a "First Amendment".

The other claims are equally absurd.

Yes, Denmark is in the EU. There are some EU wide initiatives to combat spam as well, although I don't know what the current status is.

Perhaps he doesn't want to go to England just to get a degree? (And pay a lot of money in the process.)

England's not that far from Norway, and the EU would probably give him a grant to study. I guess it all depends on how serious he is.

In the end, everyone benefits except the customers... since obviously stations care less and less about broadcast, several stations will move to cable-only, or neglect having decent over-the-air broadcasting. Customers have to pay a montly fee for what could be freely available through broadcast. Doesn't it ... suck?

What I still do not understand is why there is no company able to make money in this system using an ads-only revenue model (like elsewhere outside the U S of A) - and there are quite successful companies elsewhere which profit from such model.

Why not here?

Your comment makes me think nobody should trust any statement in comments unless checking the information!

The Galileo project has been really launched now. It's a project funded by different partners (*including* ESA) : European Commision, ESA, European Investment Bank and other smaller partners to come. The goal of Galileo is double : 1) get rid of our current dependency towards the american military GPS system for strategic reasons and because there are reliability issues with the GPS (in particular for civil planes) 2) offer a better system (better precision in localization), primarily for civil usage (but not only) and make money from that.

Galileo's price is 3.2 billions Euros which is roughly the price for building 150 kilometers of semi-urban motorway.

All these informations were taken from the official Galileo website at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/gal ileo/index.htm

I would think a system like this would best be implemented by the European Union. Unless something like this already exist in EU nations?

Hmmmm. This must be some new, European definition of "free" that hasn't yet spread to the US.

Shhhh! You're supposed to pretend that it's the United States which has been trying for centuries to become a fascist, totalitarian empire, and Europe which is trying desperately to preserve Western civilization. It's the new fad, you see.

ASA

Galileo has been in the planning for quite a while, and will as far as I can tell be compatible and possibly linked with the US GPS system.

The Galileo homepage, in english.

Well,

EU does not have so clean hands after all. The European Directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions is rather horrible and the majority of member states have actually refused to transpose it. Unfortunately the new member states from Central/Eastern Europe won't have the same luxury because they have to accept everything without furher conditions (with certain very limited exceptions). It's not going to be a good time to be a farmer in Poland or Hungary, I believe..

V.

Is UK not a member of the European Union? Maybe you should inform the webmaster of the European Union website.

"I think somewhere along the way you mixed up Europe (the continent) and EU (the union) ;-)"

UK is both a member of the European Union, and contrary to the local belief it is also a part of Europe the continent.

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. :( )))

Minor niggle, although the British Conservative party seems unaware of this (or anything else), they usually go in front of the European Court of human Rightswhich has nothing to do with the EU courts (European Court of Justice and European Court of auditors), since it includes countries that are not part of the EU although they both were setup to stop WW2 having an encore.

And like the US Supreme Court, the executives are sometimes very slow and reluctant to obey court rulings.

Brad Templeton has previously argued that unsolicited email falls under the free speech rights enumerated by the US Constitution, and that sending UBE/UCE is legal. He also stated, "The free speech rights on ONE SINGLE PERSON outweigh the speech-prohibition rights of 49,999,999 others."

Interestingly, about six years later, spam costs US businesses an estimated $9B per year, including costs for increased hardware and software to handle the load, and has been estimated by the EU to globally cost recipients 10B per year just to download it all, all for delivery of unsolicited (and usually unwanted) advertisements.

One wonders if Mr. Templeton still believes this is a free speech issue.

(33) The exclusive right of reproduction should be subject to an exception to allow certain acts of temporary reproduction, which are transient or incidental reproductions, forming an integral and essential part of a technological process and carried out for the sole purpose of enabling either efficient transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made.
(34) Member States should be given the option of providing for certain exceptions or limitations for cases such as educational and scientific purposes, for the benefit of public institutions such as libraries and archives, for purposes of news reporting, for quotations, for use by people with disabilities, for public security uses and for uses in administrative and judicial proceedings.
(38) Member States should be allowed to provide for an exception or limitation to the reproduction right for certain types of reproduction of audio, visual and audio-visual material for private use , accompanied by fair compensation [...]

(40) Member States may provide for an exception or limitation for the benefit of certain non-profit making establishments, such as publicly accessible libraries and equivalent institutions, as well as archives.

Article 2.
2. Member States may provide for exceptions or limitations to the reproduction right provided for in Article 2 in the following cases:
(a) in respect of reproductions on paper or any similar medium, effected by the use of any kind of photographic technique or by some other process having similar effects, with the exception of sheet music, provided that the rightholders receive fair compensation;
(b) in respect of reproductions on any medium made by a natural person for private use and for ends that are neither directly nor indirectly commercial, on condition that the rightholders receive fair compensation which takes account of the application or non-application of technological measures referred to in Article 6 to the work or subject-matter concerned;
[...]
(n) use by communication or making available, for the purpose of research or private study, to individual members of the public by dedicated terminals on the premises of establishments referred to in paragraph 2(c) of works and other subject-matter not subject to purchase or licensing terms which are contained in their collections;

hy,

AFAIK the big problem is, that the germans MUST make such laws because the European Union.

There were some basic EU rules they had to implement, and some from the WIPO.

But nevertheless the new law cound be better :-(
In Germany it's called "Lex Bertelsmann": Bertelsman owns hundrets of radio stations, magazines, book publishers, music labels (like BMG), TV stations and so on. Compare it to Fox ;-)


Yutsok

• You have to expect similar laws in all major industry nations (and some nations you haven't even heard of, especially if you're American)
• Political action agains national laws does not help much: You can only reach the least bad solution possible within the scope of International Law.
  To really change something, you have to address the WCT (and the EUCD).

The German parliament which has just adopted DMCA-style provisions to outlaw the circumvention of technical protection measures that control and curtail the fair use of intellectual property (and only needs the other House's assent for part of the new legislation) makes Germany the third country, following Denmark and Greece, to implement the highly controversial "monstrosity" known as the European Union Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC.

This move, allegedly a "propaganda victory" dubbed "lex Bertelsmann" (after the giant media conglomerate expected to line their corporate pockets under the new laws) in furious disapproval by tech-savvy parts of the news media, makes Germany one of the early adopters setting an unfortunate precedent for further European countries like the UK and France whose citizens, and notably developers like Linux kernel guru Alan Cox, will probably not be spared from similar legislation for much longer either.

Although open-source researchers, cyber-rights activists and even the ruling Social Democrats' very own IT experts as well as hardware manufacturers underlined the severe dangers and inconsistencies of this new and doubtful philosophy extending copyright law to reduce many of the general public's rights to insignificance, in a debate focusing only on academic exemptions from the publishers' power grab, the opposition even tried to tighten the government's bill, ignoring widespread experiences of Chilling Effects such as censorship and assaults on the Freedom to Tinker during the past four years under the EUCD's U.S. counterpart of draconian "bad law and bad policy", the flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, another overreaching implementation of the

The German parliament which has just adopted DMCA-style provisions to outlaw the circumvention of technical protection measures that control and curtail the fair use of intellectual property (and only needs the other House's assent for part of the new legislation) makes Germany the third country, following Denmark and Greece, to implement the highly controversial "monstrosity" known as the European Union Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC.

This move, allegedly a "propaganda victory" dubbed "lex Bertelsmann" (after the giant media conglomerate expected to line their corporate pockets under the new laws) in furious disapproval by tech-savvy parts of the news media, makes Germany one of the early adopters setting an unfortunate precedent for further European countries like the UK and France whose citizens, and notably developers like Linux kernel guru Alan Cox, will probably not be spared from similar legislation for much longer either.

Although open-source researchers, cyber-rights activists and even the ruling Social Democrats' very own IT experts as well as hardware manufacturers underlined the severe dangers and inconsistencies of this new and doubtful philosophy extending copyright law to reduce many of the general public's rights to insignificance, in a debate focusing only on academic exemptions from the publishers' power grab, the opposition even tried to tighten the government's bill, ignoring widespread experiences of Chilling Effects such as censorship and assaults on the Freedom to Tinker during the past four years under the EUCD's U.S. counterpart of draconian "bad law and bad policy", the flawed Digital Millennium Copyright Act, another overreaching implementation of the

As you can see from the fact that many of the products and services advertised this way are offered "to customers in the U.S. only" (p0rn, piracy and p.... enlargements seem to target a rather international audience though), the contents for most of it do originate there indeed, although of course servers all over the world are (ab)used to spread the spam.

Even though it will be a while before spam is outlawed universally, national and regional legislation setting a standard in some countries is an achievement that tends to influence at least the views held in courts and the associations of legitimate businesses.

In Europe, the proposal to outlaw spam was met with initial hesitation either, and thorough studies as well as public outcry against anything less than opt-in were required to finally convince politicians (unsurprisingly bombarded with misleading rhetoric from spam lobbyists) of what every netizen could have told them from the start:

The minimum requirements of any meaningful law against spam are that advertisers be required:

• never to trade their address lists
• not to disguise
• to honor opt-out requests immediately

If the companies you do business with are trying to make extra money on your data, lawmakers will have to make sure this happens only on terms that protect your privacy.

Domestically, there is no reason to settle for anything less either, as the courts have repeatedly ruled that banning spam is perfectly compatible with both the Interstate Commerce Clause and the First Amendment.

So, do look abroad indeed, not for sources of spam but for models of workable anti-spam laws, which can be well-balanced solutions like the European Directive 2002/58/EC (excerpt below), still permitting legitimate eMail (without redefining the technical standards), even within a narrowly defined business relationship, but outlawing all of the abusive practices that operate at the recipients' expense.
It's European, it's long, it's legalese, but probably it is just the inspiration American lawmakers need nonetheless:

(40) Safeguards should be provided for subscribers against intrusion of their privacy by unsolicited communications for direct marketing purposes in particular by means of automated calling machines, telefaxes, and

e-mails, including SMS messages. These forms of unsolicited commercial communications may on the one hand be relatively easy and cheap to send and on the other may impose a burden and/or cost on the recipient. Moreover, in some cases their volume may also cause difficulties for electronic communications networks and terminal equipment. For such forms of unsolicited communications for direct marketing, it is justified to require that prior explicit consent of the recipients is obtained before such communications are addressed to them. The single market requires a harmonised approach to ensure simple, Community-wide rules for businesses and users.
(41) Within the context of an existing customer relationship, it is reasonable to allow the use of electronic contact details for the offering of similar products or services, but only by the same company that has obtained the electronic contact details in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC [i.e. the General Data Protection Directive]. When electronic contact details are obtained, the customer should be informed about their further use for direct marketing in a clear and distinct manner, a

As you can see from the fact that many of the products and services advertised this way are offered "to customers in the U.S. only" (p0rn, piracy and p.... enlargements seem to target a rather international audience though), the contents for most of it do originate there indeed, although of course servers all over the world are (ab)used to spread the spam.

Even though it will be a while before spam is outlawed universally, national and regional legislation setting a standard in some countries is an achievement that tends to influence at least the views held in courts and the associations of legitimate businesses.

In Europe, the proposal to outlaw spam was met with initial hesitation either, and thorough studies as well as public outcry against anything less than opt-in were required to finally convince politicians (unsurprisingly bombarded with misleading rhetoric from spam lobbyists) of what every netizen could have told them from the start:

The minimum requirements of any meaningful law against spam are that advertisers be required:

• never to trade their address lists
• not to disguise
• to honor opt-out requests immediately

If the companies you do business with are trying to make extra money on your data, lawmakers will have to make sure this happens only on terms that protect your privacy.

Domestically, there is no reason to settle for anything less either, as the courts have repeatedly ruled that banning spam is perfectly compatible with both the Interstate Commerce Clause and the First Amendment.

So, do look abroad indeed, not for sources of spam but for models of workable anti-spam laws, which can be well-balanced solutions like the European Directive 2002/58/EC (excerpt below), still permitting legitimate eMail (without redefining the technical standards), even within a narrowly defined business relationship, but outlawing all of the abusive practices that operate at the recipients' expense.
It's European, it's long, it's legalese, but probably it is just the inspiration American lawmakers need nonetheless:

(40) Safeguards should be provided for subscribers against intrusion of their privacy by unsolicited communications for direct marketing purposes in particular by means of automated calling machines, telefaxes, and

e-mails, including SMS messages. These forms of unsolicited commercial communications may on the one hand be relatively easy and cheap to send and on the other may impose a burden and/or cost on the recipient. Moreover, in some cases their volume may also cause difficulties for electronic communications networks and terminal equipment. For such forms of unsolicited communications for direct marketing, it is justified to require that prior explicit consent of the recipients is obtained before such communications are addressed to them. The single market requires a harmonised approach to ensure simple, Community-wide rules for businesses and users.
(41) Within the context of an existing customer relationship, it is reasonable to allow the use of electronic contact details for the offering of similar products or services, but only by the same company that has obtained the electronic contact details in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC [i.e. the General Data Protection Directive]. When electronic contact details are obtained, the customer should be informed about their further use for direct marketing in a clear and distinct manner, a

All hope abandon, as far as Europe is concerned...

...or could these developments still be stopped before setting a bad precedent for further countries such as the UK, which will probably not be spared from similar legislation for much longer either?

While this article assumes that Wednesday's approval by the Committee on Legal Affairs makes adoption of Germany's "DMCA" bill in plenary session on Friday "a mere formality" (as even the opposition's sole regret seems to be that fair use rights should have been curtailed even further), many of you sure wish to recount some experiences of the Chilling Effects from Four Years under the DMCA to the Members of the German Parliament about to repeat most of the DMCA's mistakes in their attempt to implement yet another overreaching implementation of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, the highly controversial "monstrosity" known as European Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC.

thats a pretty impressive open source project. although in the long run i think instead of using COM you would be better off using .NET. At least you are not currently using closed standards for TV application delivery like Europe has mandated - which my Coleagues and i have campaigned hard to prevent.

Directive 2002/58/EC (excerpt)

Unlike Europe, the U.S. of course do not even need to leave room for implementation, so with less Legalese than below, a hefty fine for spammers and punitive damages payable to the spammed can be defined right in the federal anti-spam statute. If it's balanced like the European solution (still permitting legitimate eMail within a narrowly defined business relationship, but outlawing all of the abusive practices that operate at the recipients' expense), it will easily pass constitutional muster, and help America get rid of junk mail once and for all (probably even within just a few weeks).

(40) Safeguards should be provided for subscribers against intrusion of their privacy by unsolicited communications for direct marketing purposes in particular by means of automated calling machines, telefaxes, and e-mails, including SMS messages. These forms of unsolicited commercial communications may on the one hand be relatively easy and cheap to send and on the other may impose a burden and/or cost on the recipient. Moreover, in some cases their volume may also cause difficulties for electronic communications networks and terminal equipment. For such forms of unsolicited communications for direct marketing, it is justified to require that prior explicit consent of the recipients is obtained before such communications are addressed to them. The single market requires a harmonised approach to ensure simple, Community-wide rules for businesses and users.
(41) Within the context of an existing customer relationship, it is reasonable to allow the use of electronic contact details for the offering of similar products or services, but only by the same company that has obtained the electronic contact details in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC [i.e. the General Data Protection Directive]. When electronic contact details are obtained, the customer should be informed about their further use for direct marketing in a clear and distinct manner, and be given the opportunity to refuse such usage. This opportunity should continue to be offered with each subsequent direct marketing message, free of charge, except for any costs for the transmission of this refusal.
(42) Other forms of direct marketing that are more costly for the sender and impose no financial costs on subscribers and users, such as person-to-person voice telephony calls, may justify the maintenance of a system giving subscribers or users the possibility to indicate that they do not want to receive such calls. Nevertheless, in order not to decrease existing levels of privacy protection, Member States should be entitled to uphold national systems, only allowing such calls to subscribers and users who have given their prior consent.
(43) To facilitate effective enforcement of Community rules on unsolicited messages for direct marketing, it is necessary to prohibit the use of false identities or false return addresses or numbers while sending unsolicited messages for direct marketing purposes.

(47) Where the rights of the users and subscribers are not respected, national legislation should provide for judicial remedies. Penalties should be imposed on any person, whether governed by private or public law, who fails to comply with the national measures taken under this Directive.

Article 13
Unsolicited communications
1. The use of automated calling systems without human intervention (automatic calling

havn't scratched our own project (Galileo). The first of the 30 satellites (27 + 3 active spares) will be launched in 2004, with an initial service operational by 2006 and the full system operational by 2008. The links are here (European Commission site), and here ESA site).

I think you must have been mistaken - IIRC the US tried to persuade Europe to dump the project, basically because it will be accurate to around 45cm (guaranteed to withing 100cm), whereas GPS can often be several dozen metres out (and has even known to be several hundred km out!), and the US gov doesn't want European civilians having better tech than their military. The project was debated but they finally agreed to go ahead with it anyway and tell the US gov to get lost (ok, more politely, but that was the basic effect).

There are plans for building a similar system to GPS in Europe so that we are not too much depending on the american empire. The following page nicely explains the concept. More is available here . This is technically very interesting and should open up new possibilities for navigation. Furthermore being constructed jointly by many partners and nations we can be reasonably sure that it can not be compromised by one weak leader.

Yep, it's ongoing

• do not trade address lists
• do not disguise
• have to honor opt-out requests immediately

If the companies you do business with are trying to make extra money on your data, lawmakers will have to make sure this happens only on terms that protect your privacy.

What worse do spam advocates want to wait for? To have their own Blackberry pagers rendered useless as Herbal Whatever, Nigerian Scams & Enlarged Everythings etc. get advertised 800 times a day even to everyone working on Capitol Hill?

Europe also did not react until damage figures had reached the $10 billion mark, but then this is what they finally came up with (Attention: Legalese@length ahead):

Directive 2002/58/EC (excerpt)

(40) Safeguards should be provided for subscribers against intrusion of their privacy by unsolicited communications for direct marketing purposes in particular by means of automated calling machines, telefaxes, and e-mails, including SMS messages. These forms of unsolicited commercial communications may on the one hand be relatively easy and cheap to send and on the other may impose a burden and/or cost on the recipient. Moreover, in some cases their volume may also cause difficulties for electronic communications networks and terminal equipment. For such forms of unsolicited communications for direct marketing, it is justified to require that prior explicit consent of the recipients is obtained before such communications are addressed to them. The single market requires a harmonised approach to ensure simple, Community-wide rules for businesses and users.
(41) Within the context of an existing customer relationship, it is reasonable to allow the use of electronic contact details for the offering of similar products or services, but only by the same company that has obtained the electronic contact details in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC [i.e. the General Data Protection Directive]. When electronic contact details are obtained, the customer should be informed about their further use for direct marketing in a clear and distinct manner, and be given the opportunity to refuse such usage. This opportunity should continue to be offered with each subsequent direct marketing message, free of charge, except for any costs for the transmission of this refusal.
(42) Other forms of direct marketing that are more costly for the sender and impose no financial costs on subscribers and users, such as person-to-person voice telephony calls, may justify the maintenance of a system giving subscribers or users the possibility to indicate that they do not want to receive such calls. Nevertheless, in order not to decrease existing levels of privacy protection, Member States should be entitled to uphold national systems, only allowing such calls to subscribers and users who have given their prior consent.
(43) To facilitate effective enforcement of Community rules on unsolicited messages for direct marketing, it is necessary to prohibit the use of false identities or false return addresses or numbers while sending unsolicited messages for direct marketing purposes.

(47) Where the rights of the users and subscribers are not respected, national legislation should provide for judicial remedies. Penalties should be imposed on any person, whether governed by private or public law, who fails to comply with the national measures taken under this Directive.

Article 13
Unsolicited communications
1. The use of automated calling systems without human intervention (automa

You are of course correct; VAT at 16% is already charged on every computer (or computer component - HD, motherboard, etc) sold in Germany.

Since nobody else seems to have figured this out when they read the article, most of the posts here are irrelevant. The actual issue is the $13 levy (plus the extra $2.08 which the government will earn by taxing that levy).

VAT is simply the European equivalent of US sales tax, and Germany is at the low end of the curve with 16% - although this may increase in the near future, it's got a long way to go before it reaches the VAT levels in Sweden and Denmark, where it's 25%!

See here for further info.

What's really interesting about this is that (to some extent) the introduction of such a levy would tend to legitimise the copying of music CDs on a computer - many people will reason that, since they've paid the levy, they are morally entitled to rip some CDs now. Even though this may not be true in a legal sense, I think that the end result of this levy will be to reassure the people who were uncomfortable about copying CDs that it must be OK, since by imposing the levy the German government is sanctioning the use of PCs for this purpose.

I was thinking the same thing in reverse: The European Union has drafted an anti-spam directive which is IIRC due to come into force later this year. Hurrah!... Except of course that every bit of Spam I recieve here in the UK where I can identify the source has originated from somewhere in the US, so any EU directive is of no use to me. The EU seems to be doing its bit for your SWAT taskforce, could you ask the US government to catch up? Ta.

Actually, no this is not the case. Unlike the USA, the number of stars on the EU flag does not represent the number of members. According to the official EU site "The number of stars is fixed, twelve being the symbol of perfection and unity."

Say what you like about 12 being the symbol of perfection and unity, but there is (and will only be) 12 stars.