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I dislike this deal but every single member of the EU Council has been elected in his/her own country with the right of representing that country. They are either Prime Ministers or Presidents. That said, they probably are the usual group of money-grabbing power-hungry and our of touch morons who do whatever you want if you've got the cash, but they have also been elected. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?id=429&lang=en

If I remember correctly laws about personal data directories are VERY strict in the EU...

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31995L0046:EN:HTML

Iceland is not in the EU (yet at least) But there was a special law written about this database which states that the data can not be moved out of Iceland.

If I remember correctly laws about personal data directories are VERY strict in the EU... http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31995L0046:EN:HTML

While I strongly disagree with everything you claimed and find it to actually have no relevance to this discussion, let me point out that since 1963 it has been virtually been agreed to that European Union law is supreme to member state law. Here's the verdict:

By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty, became an integral part of the legal systems of the member states and which their courts are bound to apply.

By creating a community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacityof representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of powers from the states to the community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited fields, and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves ..

You can, could, and still will be able to block cookies in your browser, so whatever web site operators are doing with them, it isn't going to affect your privacy or "trackability".

Unfortunately, that isn't really what happens.

For example, many sites now use local shared objects ("Flash cookies") to store data, rather than regular cookies. No mainstream browser controls these by default, so even if you have disabled all cookies in your browser's privacy settings or asked to clear all your private data, LSOs will still work. Moreover, use of LSOs is often not even mentioned in a site's privacy policy; even big-name sites like YouTube have been offenders in this respect. Moremoreover, the way to disable these little buggers in Flash is hidden in a settings dialog that most users wouldn't even know to exist.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see how failing to disable something that is being used to do something you never asked for, which you don't know is happening, via an obscure dialog you don't know exists, can constitute implied consent, particularly if you've explicitly disabled all similar functionality that is presented in your browser's UI.

I can't decide whether this is Brazil-style bureaucracy galore, or Eastern Standard Tribe-style anti-productivity warfare.

Neither, it's basic privacy protection, and as far as I can see it's long overdue and a good thing. Why should we support out-opt monitoring rather than opt-in, just to make life easier for those who want to produce targeted advertising and affiliate blogspam?

If you have a legitimate need to use cookies, for example to help a user with a shopping cart or remember they've logged into your forum, then there will be no problem stating clearly at the point that they start to use these facilities that a cookie will be set for that purpose. If you manage to wade through all the FUD blog posts and find the actual wording we're talking about here (you'll want article 2, clause 5, on page 76), you'll notice that this does not require UAC-style dialogs or 'screen after screen of "permissions" to continue'. In fact, there is even wording saying that the new rule doesn't apply in cases where the user has explicitly requested a service that needs to store cookie-like information to function properly.

May I recommend you spend the same time with Google that it takes you to post these questions the first Google hit would answer? Oh, what am I expecting from an american. Here, bite-size ready: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/index_en.html

A variety of groups have shown their interest in getting more information on the substance of the negotiations and have requested that the draft text be disclosed. However, it is accepted practice during trade negotiations among sovereign states to not share negotiating texts with the public at large, particularly at earlier stages of the negotiation. This allows delegations to exchange views in confidence facilitating the negotiation and compromise that are necessary in order to reach agreement on complex issues. At this point in time, ACTA delegations are still discussing various proposals for the different elements that may ultimately be included in the agreement. A comprehensive set of proposals for the text of the agreement does not yet exist.

...

ACTA is not intended to interfere with a signatory's ability to respect its citizens' fundamental rights and civil liberties, and will be consistent with the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) and will respect the Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

Great. We must hold our governments to this intent.

Section 4: Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement in the Digital Environment
This section of the agreement is intended to address some of the special challenges that new technologies pose for enforcement of intellectual property rights, such as the possible role and responsibilities of internet service providers in deterring copyright and related rights piracy over the Internet. No draft proposal has been tabled yet, as discussions are still focused on gathering information on the different national legal regimes to develop a common understanding on how to deal best with these issues.

I don't like that "possible role and responsibilities of internet service providers" idea. They pass along bits from A to B. Nowadays in Europe you can get a court order to divulge recent traffic information, it seems. As other people have put it, should telephone operators be sued for their "possible role and responsibilities in deterring (threats and slander) over the (telephone)"?

The whole "Summary of Key Elements Under Discussion" document seems to focus on "better international enforcement of intellectual property rights". There is no place where the rights of the actual citizens of the countries are mentioned.
At the moment, without further information, I'd guess ACTA builds on the TRIPS agreement (countries must do what the USA tells them to do / harmonize their intellectual properties laws together) rather than on the South-American Operacion Condor approach to countries giving each other "technical assistance in improved enforcement" :-).
But it's probably good to be vigilant.

Here is some supplemental info straight from one of the horses' mouths:
Anti-counterfeiting
It's a bit heavy on the misleading term "intellectual property".

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/trade-topics/intellectual-property/index_en.htm

"This post is simply wrong. The poster has completely distorted the message in the original text by using unfair citing methods. If you actually read the article .."

I read both the article and the original and my reading is that the EIF went from supporting an open standard maintained by a not-for-profit organisation to a redefinition of 'openness' as meaning organizations willing to debate. And the only 'OPen Source Software' allowed is under a new EUPL license. Which I presume specifically excludes all other Open Source licenses.

The strategy is clear; It's not about 'open source' but about 'open standards'. Then get 'open standards' to mean proprietary closed source companies get control of the process and get real Open Source Software shoved off into a backwater.

"To attain interoperability in the context of pan-European eGovernment services, guidance needs to focus on open standards. The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an open standard:

The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.)"

--

"Within the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and to stimulate debate within that community ..

Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results of which can freely be accessed, reused and shared are considered open ..

For the specific case of Open Source Software, the European Commission has set up the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) 14 and developed the European Union Public Licence (EUPL)"

Could you point out which provisions are supposed to impose this requirement? I know for a fact that many cinemas and even late-night TV are showing original language versions (subtitled at worst) which are popular with both expats and local movie enthusiasts in Germany and increasingly even France. As a matter of EU law, the Common Market actually demands Television without Frontiers with the rights having to be acquired by the broadcaster for the entire satellite footprint, i.e. regularly across national and language borders.

Swing to the right for Europe meant dropping 138 was just a matter of time: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/parliament/archive/elections2009/en/index_en.html

I don't think all of the EU FP7 stuff is "end-usable releases" - I'm working on a project that works with end-users but isn't planning (AFAIK) to be usable as-is at the end of it. At least I hope it isn't - we've got lots of fixing to do if it is :D

If anyone cares, there's actually a public EU FP7 site with more on the various projects and the proposals they put out.

How did that Kyoto protocol go? It didn't work, and it didn't have the desired affect

The EU15 are on target to meet the Kyoto limits

Though I disagree with some of what GP says I have to agree with him here. Europe may of reduced it's own emissions, but it shifted the emissions elsewhere. The report you provided the link to even says the EU "promotion of biofuels in transport" was part of how emissions were reduced. Switching to biofuels only switched where the emissions happens. The third biggest emitter of Greenhouse Gases is now Indonesia. How did that happen? In order to feed Europe with those biofuels forests were burned down and wetland drained to plant oil palm plantations in Indonesia which are used to make biofuels for Europe. Europe is just as responsible for this as if they produced the emissions there.

Falcon

How did that Kyoto protocol go? It didn't work, and it didn't have the desired affect

The EU15 are on target to meet the Kyoto limits. The countries of the EU15 (those that formed the EU when Kyoto was agreed) consist of some of the most industrialised nations in the Western world. If you meant that some other large nations didn't sign up to Kyoto, then that is true, but you can't blame the ones that did for the ones that didn't.

Under the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006, the suggested EU VAT rate for books (and children's nappies!) is the reduced rate of 5%. Many countries, such as Ireland, the UK, and Poland, for example, have charged zero percent VAT on books for years. Amazon is, as usual, full of it.

But, there's also the exchange rate, they'll be selling in euros and as we all know, $1 = 1.5 € (roughly) so they have to adjust their prices accordingly (same for UKP), as all of the other US companies routinely do.

VAT is just one aspect. Besides it might only be 5% on books but there's the sales tax, which in the US is more like 10%. So you have to fit that in somewhere as well.

So you end up with prices that are around 170% US prices. It all makes sense.

The EU VAT policy directives specifically categorise ebooks and audio books as books, and thus *supposed* to be within the reduced VAT bands.

Following its policy line in the field of reduced rates of VAT established in its Communication of July 2007 (COM (2007) 380 final), the Commission adopted a proposal for a Council Directive amending Directive 2006/112/EC as regards reduced rates of VAT : COM(2008)428: ...
allow reduced rates for:

        * children's nappies;
        * audio books, CD's, CD-ROMs or other physical support that predominantly reproduce the same information content as printed books;
        * few other technical adaptations already proposed in 2003, which are still valid, as equipment, aids and other appliances for disabled or services linked with waste treatment, etc.

Amazon has a long history of basically ignoring EU law when it suits it. For example, Amazon.co.UK insisted for years on charging for VAT for books delivered to Ireland (when the UK still charged VAT). Did it refund that improperly charged VAT for Irish customers when it finally relented? No. See also: One-Click Patent. Amazon likes to borrow a lot of the oxygen about the freedom of information and open markets and the disincentivising quality of software patents, etc, but when it comes down to it, it's as aggressive and exclusionary and predatory as Apple or Microsoft.

Under the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC of 28 November 2006, the suggested EU VAT rate for books (and children's nappies!) is the reduced rate of 5%. Many countries, such as Ireland, the UK, and Poland, for example, have charged zero percent VAT on books for years. Amazon is, as usual, full of it.

Norway isn't in the EU

The EU have initiated proceedings against plenty of European companies, but because in the US your heads are stuck in the sand, the only ones you hear about are MS and Intel:

• Svenska Kraftnät
• Ronds à béton
• Carglass
• E.On and GdF (collusion)
• Slovak Telekom
• Telekomunikacja Polska
• Wanadoo

That's just European companies in 2009.

You're completely wrong, yet could have saved yourself from making such an ignorant comment with one simple Google search. Instead you chose to open your mouth and make a fool of yourself.

Typical European Protectionism

Typical unique American blend of ignorance and arrogance; because that 'Buy American' policy of Obama's isn't protectionism at all! Get your own house in order before -- wrongly -- criticising others.

Actually, the proceedings were started by Opera when they complained to the European Commission! So even though I do not agree with the parent post, he is right insofar that Opera is involved.

However, you are also overlooking the fact that Norway, though not part of the EU, is part of the European Economic Area (EEA). This is basically an association of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) states (except Switzerland) with the EU to establish a single market that is somewhat like the EU itself, except it isn't.

Anyway, what is important is that most EU antitrust and competition rules are applicable in the EEA as well. This is the reason why Opera could complain to the European Commission at all.

You can read the full case history on the European Commission's website: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/index/by_nr_79.html#i39_530

Yup: "Article 5 General information to be provided 1. In addition to other information requirements established by Community law, Member States shall ensure that the service provider shall render easily, directly and permanently accessible to the recipients of the service and competent authorities, at least the following information: [...]" Check out the EU Directive

which serves to trigger the portion of the DMCA law (Britain probably has equivalent legal language now due to copyright "normalization" treaties)

And that's where you're wrong.
Like most US abominations, the DMCA is a US-only thing.

European laws prevent the adoption of any DMCA-like law in any country of the union. It does have something slightly similar though: circumvention is allowed unless it is done for illegal purposes; that means you're not allowed to spread information of how to break the protection of a certain service to render that protection ineffective and use the service for free, for example.

Well then you might want to contact your EU representatives and let them know. They appear to have gone and not only passed the EUCD . Since then, the member states have been scrambling over each other to make nasty implementations of the EUCD at home.

Besides, laws only apply to honest folk. The situation there at the BBC is that Microsoft toadies have been moving in and locking the BBC into anti-democratic technologies. M$ still hasn't made good on the legal obligations set by the European courts about media formats, players and browsers. All three violations come to play here in the BBC.

The time for putting up with Microsofters is over. They're killing services (e.g. BBC), jobs and the economy.

TBH just focusing on China is laughable. Some years back the EU did a report on ECHELON and what they got up to on what you consider is your allies.

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do;jsessionid=7B9ED0C4A4792505626B9FE5464FFC33.node1?language=EN&pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+REPORT+A5-2001-0264+0+NOT+XML+V0//EN

Well worth the read.

There was also another report on Israels spying on the USA. Some months back, but I don't have the URL handy.

That's the rumour. According to the tinfoil hat brigade

Rumour? Wha? The frickin' EU investigated this "rumour". Hell, right in Motion for a Resolution they flat out state:

whereas the existence of a global system for intercepting communications, operating by
means of cooperation proportionate to their capabilities among the USA, the UK, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand under the UKUSA Agreement, is no longer in doubt

Followed by:

whereas there can now be no doubt that the purpose of the system is to intercept, at the
very least, private and commercial communications, and not military communications,
although the analysis carried out in the report has revealed that the technical capabilities of
the system are probably not nearly as extensive as some sections of the media had
assumed

And then:

whereas, therefore, it is surprising, not to say worrying, that many senior Community
figures, including European Commissioners, who gave evidence to the Temporary
Committee claimed to be unaware of this phenomenon

ECHELON exists. How capable it is... well, you can read the report yourself. And it's primarily focused on satellite communication interception. But it definitely exists.

Do you really think iplg@microsoft.com will grant the Samba team a written license or possibly a patent license?

Yes, I would imagine so.

And this is why: JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (Grand Chamber)
17 September 2007

48 By way of remedy for the abusive refusal referred to in Article 2(a) of the contested decision, Article 5 of that decision provides as follows:

â(a) Microsoft ⦠shall, within 120 days of the date of notification of [the contested decision], make the interoperability information available to any undertaking having an interest in developing and distributing work group server operating system products and shall, on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, allow the use of the interoperability information by such undertakings for the purpose of developing and distributing work group server operating system products;

(b) Microsoft ⦠shall ensure that the interoperability information made available is kept updated on an ongoing basis and in a timely manner;

(c) Microsoft ⦠shall, within 120 days of the date of notification of [the contested decision], set up an evaluation mechanism that will give interested undertakings a workable possibility of informing themselves about the scope and terms of use of the interoperability information; as regards this evaluation mechanism, Microsoft ⦠may impose reasonable and non-discriminatory conditions to ensure that access to the interoperability information is granted for evaluation purposes only;

Are you seriously thinking they might renege on a punishment (samba interoperability documentation) dealt out at the cost of half a billion euros?

Well, try comparing the US with the EU and look at firearm related deaths per 100,000

They aren't entirely comparable as they are very different culturally, and comprised of nations that have recently had wars fought on their own soil, come out from under the boot of military dictatorships or have had relative peace for a few hundred years. And you need to piece together the EU numbers yourself. Even better, that list doesn't contain all EU members either.

It seems there are no available combined statistics for the EU, which I find rather sad and slightly disturbing, considering the amount of pressure for even tougher weapon laws. Denmark is currently in an uproar because a 19-year-old kid has been sentenced to the mandatory 7 days in prison for having two box cutters in the front door of his car, when he was picking up a friend from a club.

Best I could come up with was simply averaging across the 14 available EU member countries and I came up with this:
[Firearm homicide rate];[Non firearm homicide rate];[total] (all per 100,000) between 1998 and 2000.
USA - [2.97];[1.58];[4.55]
EU - [0.85];[3.73];[4.58]

Austria, Belgium, The Czech Republic, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Romania, Sweden aren't listed. I'm also missing a country but I can't figure out which one.

It should be noted that while none of the listed EU countries have a higher firearm rate than the US, five countries have higer homicide rates (highest was 12.3/100,000).

And while Eurostat does have some info, it doesn't seem to allow you to separate whether or not firearms were involved.

Generally speaking firearms doesn't stop people getting killed. It just means they'll be killed in a different way. At least that's what the '98 to '00 statistics seem to say.

But finding usable data on non-homicide crimes that (doesn't) involve guns is going to be even trickier.

Copyrights are not enough. If X is the new innovative piece of code within a program, a competitor can buy the program, fire up a debugger, and look at the disassembled code for X.

At this point he's infringing copyright just as much as when he'd making unlicensed copies.

No, he's not.

Yes, he is, at least in the EU. Reverse-engineering is forbidden by software copyright law here, except if all of the following conditions are true:

• it's solely for the purpose of interoperability
• the information you need is not readily available otherwise
• you do not publish the information that you discovered this way (although you can sell programs making use of this information; not sure how this would work with open source)

See article 6 of the EU software copyright directive.

The output of his reverse engineering will be the abstract method that can be covered by a patent, but not by copyright. For example, after looking at the disassembly for X, and performing more analysis using a debugger, he figures out the steps to perform X are:

At the very least, you are tainted when you do stuff like this. Phoenix didn't do clean room reverse-engineering for nothing when they re-implemented IBM's BIOS.

Then there are cases where the code is not that hard, and you can copy the idea by just looking at the end product. Therefore having patents is necessary.

Well, no. It's only necessary if the competition stemming from this imitation kills the market rather than stimulate it. In general, more competition is better.

Right, but competition usually means performing to equal or exceed your competitor.

And this can be in many ways: customer service, price, time to market, branding, offered products etc.

If you simply sit by and wait, then copy (steal) something innovative created by your competitor, that's not performing at all.

Actually, that is exactly how competition works. You take what already exists, duplicate it and presumably add value in one way or another (from the list above). A certain amount of imitation is mandatory to have a competitive market.

Thanks to copyright and to the complexity of making well-working and polished software, innovators automatically have a limited lead-time advantage. Artificially extending this by many years using patents is only justifiable if otherwise the entire innovation of the industry would collapse. And there are simply no indications that this is the case, on the contrary.

It's just leeching off someone else's work to profit yourself. Soon inventors will get tired of getting taken advantage of, and only pursue inventions that take little time and money. That way, if someone copies their ideas, the loss won't be much. But society, as a general, will suffer more because many good inventions take more time and money, and those won't be created without sufficient protection.

It turns out that the above is simply not true in case of the software world. Competition (i.e., what you call copying, stealing and whatnot) is what drives innovation in the software industry, and the traditionally mild IP-regimes have been very conductive to this. See the overview of studies I posted in a previous comment.

In Europe, at least, this comes under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/rights/ Here's a more friendly synopsis: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/new-uk-law-criminalizes-stealth-marketing-techniques

This 40 hour work week minimum seems to be mostly an American tradition (misfortune?) too. Britain's typically have 35 or 37.5 hour weeks, often including lunch. I expect other European countries have similar or even shorter work weeks.

The US has longer work hours than some countries in Europe but shorter than others. As for the length of work hours in the US, as early as 1842 Boston ship carpenters had 8 hour work days. By the 1870s 8 hour days were a central demand of unionizers, other labor organizers, anarchists, and socialists in the US.

Ok Falcon, based on you posting history you seem to resent laws that restrict the "right" of employers to impose whatever conditions they want on their employees... but what is the deal with lumping 19th century anarchists with the labor movement? Anarchists wanted to ultimately dismantle all formal power structures, in contrast the labor movement wanted to improve the balance of power between employers and employees. Do you really not appreciate the difference?

We should also not discount the effect long commutes have on our performance, either.

I think that's a big problem in the US, for 2 reasons. In some places people can't afford to live closer to where they work and there's no employment available in their fields near where they live.

Yes this is a problem and one without a single, easy solution. I think it will utimately require adjustments in both the real estate prices and pervailing wages. It would also help if some areas re-ubanized intelligently and/or invested in better public transit.

Next many zoning boards don't allow much mixed zoning. I recall about 10 years ago a neighbor near where I lived had an indoor pool they used to teach swimming. They were required to have a license and when it came up for renewal all the neighbors in the area were invited to a hearing to decide whether a renewal would be granted. Where I live now if I wanted to start a business using my home as an office, to be legal, I'd have to go through a city or county board to get a license. Even as a photographer/designer or web developer. As a condition of being granted one I may have to pay to make sure it was handicapped accessible as well.

Well not everyone likes to live next to a business, especially the types that bring a lot of "strangers" around their home. Personally, I don't mind sharing a neighborhood with a few commercial ventures provided the roads can hand the increased traffic and doesn't cause too much additional noise, etc... Or alternatively, since I'm single I wouldn't mind the older model of a few floors of apartments above retail shops and small business offices. However, I do understand why neighbors of a perspective business would like some say in the matter. A home-operated business has the potential to signficantly effect the character of where they live.

As for your specific issue, you may be able to get around the disability access requirement if you make it a clear policy that you will never deal face-to-face with a customer in your home. Of course this means only communicating with them through phone, email, or by meeting them elsewhere. The whole point of requirements for disability access to businesses is so a physical disability isn't allowed intentionally or unintentionally limit someone's choice to patronize a given business. If none of your customers ever come into your home, a physically disabled person's ability to work with you is the same as an abled-bodied one.

This 40 hour work week minimum seems to be mostly an American tradition (misfortune?) too. Britain's typically have 35 or 37.5 hour weeks, often including lunch. I expect other European countries have similar or even shorter work weeks.

The US has longer work hours than some countries in Europe but shorter than others. As for the length of work hours in the US, as early as 1842 Boston ship carpenters had 8 hour work days. By the 1870s 8 hour days were a central demand of unionizers, other labor organizers, anarchists, and socialists in the US.

We should also not discount the effect long commutes have on our performance, either.

I think that's a big problem in the US, for 2 reasons. In some places people can't afford to live closer to where they work and there's no employment available in their fields near where they live. Next many zoning boards don't allow much mixed zoning. I recall about 10 years ago a neighbor near where I lived had an indoor pool they used to teach swimming. They were required to have a license and when it came up for renewal all the neighbors in the area were invited to a hearing to decide whether a renewal would be granted. Where I live now if I wanted to start a business using my home as an office, to be legal, I'd have to go through a city or county board to get a license. Even as a photographer/designer or web developer. As a condition of being granted one I may have to pay to make sure it was handicapped accessible as well.

Falcon

The Economist's latest figures have the unemployement rate at 9.8% Sweden, 3.8% Denmark and 3.1% Norway. Sweden's rate is not seasonally adjusted.

Where are your 2% figures from?

Anyone wishing to actually do a proper comparison of unemployment and education should probably look at Eurostat's Unemployment rates of the population aged 25-64 by level of education (at least for Europe).

Dear x,
Thank you for your response.
I have been speaking to the Product Managers for the Software and Laptops and they have both advised that we would not issue a refund on the OS.
You may return the product for a refund if you are within the time period of 28days after purchase but other then that we are not going to be issuing a refund on the OS.
The Product Manager for the laptops has been speaking to the manufacture and they have come back with the below response regarding the matter:
'It's a load of rubbish, I don't know where this rumor has come from J we started getting people asking for it on the EEE PC when we first produced the XP versions.
We get the odd person phoning up saying this to us but no one gives the cost of XP back and I can understand why they think we would.
I'm sorry we cannot help -- I have never heard of any manufacture or reseller giving the money back.'
Kind Regards,
y
Ebuyer Customer Support Team

isn't it remarkable that they started getting these requests when they did the XP eeePC! What an uncanny co-incidence.

Haha. Insightful, really?

Strong branding is useful for consumers to make an informed decision.

cf. http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/quality/

If another brand of directly substitutable food or drink is as good as the PDO brand but cheaper, the PDO brand will surely wither out of the market or at least lower prices.

The problem is that the CAP is used to subsidize PDO brands directly through marketing and price supports, so even if there is a brand crisis (like the occasional listeriosis scares affecting PDO soft cheeses like gorgonzola) there are barriers for substitute brands (like safe, pasteurized Kraft blue cheese) to compete effectively.

Strong branding without the state insurance against brand self-destruction and without barriers to actually selling comparable products under different names (i.e., the case today in the European Economic Area) seems like a better approach than aggressive deregulation and non-regulation of food claims including implicit ones associated with well-known traditional ingredients and methods.

Microsoft "stole" nothing. Every thing they have was given to them voluntarily for something else in exchange. Not a shot was fired. If you have a complaint, take it up with the people who make it difficult to use an alternative... like your bank possibly, or the tax man. Microsoft has done nothing out of the ordinary in this market economy. Don't be playing the victim.

I am sorry, but I beg to disagree - Microsoft has done somethings out of the ordinary, otherwise the DOD and the European Comission would have not punished Microsoft

Plus, I really think that Windows ME was a crime against the whole humankind :P

Google is, so Apple and so does Intel

Note that having a monopoly is not illegal - abusing it is. The fines and other actions taken against different companies reflect the extent to which they abused monopolies.

Google is, so Apple and so does Intel

Note that having a monopoly is not illegal - abusing it is. The fines and other actions taken against different companies reflect the extent to which they abused monopolies.

Google is, so Apple and so does Intel

Note that having a monopoly is not illegal - abusing it is. The fines and other actions taken against different companies reflect the extent to which they abused monopolies.

e.g. EU bananna regulation

Take for example European Commission Regulation (EC) 2257/94

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31994R2257:EN:HTML

What The Fuck... As they say.

The US Will have similar wastes of time and money on it's law books. All laws should have a mandatory default time limit of somewhere around one generation, about 25 years after which they have to be renewed or are removed from the books.
 

I hope the EU issues a GPL3-compatible version of the EUPL, so devs in Europe are on the legally safe side.

C# is an ECMA/ISO standard. Linux vfat drivers are reverse engineered.

So was RAMBUS.

It's called a "patent ambush"

It's warm and I'm tired but I think it goes like this:

Step 1. Join standards committee and learn all there is to learn about competitors
Step 2. Patent something in such a way that you know your competitors infringe
Step 3. Leave standards committee so you're no longer held by its rules
Step 4. 15 years later ( 20 years), sue their pants off
Step 5. ??
Step 6. Profit!

press release and a memo.

Most interesting parts:

Incompatibility of chargers for mobile phones is a major inconvenience for users and also leads to unnecessary waste. Therefore, the Commission has requested industry to come forward with a voluntary commitment to solve this problem so as to avoid legislation.

and

Industry commits to provide chargers compatibility on the basis of the Micro-USB connector. Once the commitment becomes effective, it will be possible to charge data-enabled mobile phones from any charger compatible with the common specifications.

press release and a memo.

Most interesting parts:

Incompatibility of chargers for mobile phones is a major inconvenience for users and also leads to unnecessary waste. Therefore, the Commission has requested industry to come forward with a voluntary commitment to solve this problem so as to avoid legislation.

and

Industry commits to provide chargers compatibility on the basis of the Micro-USB connector. Once the commitment becomes effective, it will be possible to charge data-enabled mobile phones from any charger compatible with the common specifications.

Call it naivety on my part, but am I the only one worried about National governments studying the Iranian uprising, in search of countermeasures to YouTube and Twitter? Judging from various crowd control measures being implemented (such as 50,000 volt riot shields, I'm sure there is an interest in figuring out a way around everything people are doing in Iran. I can easily see the physical destruction of a website's servers to be on the top of a government contingency plan. Cut power to Twitter's servers? Done. I hate conspiracy theories, and am looking for anyone to tear me apart on this one.

Yeah, they clearly only care about US companies.

Yes, there are absolutely no EU antitrust cases against European Companies.

There is still a way to get the document, the EU Public Access to documents reform.

I wonder if the Swedish Presidency will move forward with this.

Although the passive house approach is more expensive than standard construction, in countries where the concept is most widespread â" such as Germany and Austria â" prices are coming down as technologies and building techniques become more common.

Although the passive house approach is more expensive than standard construction, in countries where the concept is most widespread â" such as Germany and Austria â" prices are coming down as technologies and building techniques become more common.

I read through the article and a lot of blogs covering Riversimple. Here's what it looks like under the hood. It seems too early and preliminary for adoption. "Open Source" seems to have been employed purely as a buzzword to generate interest. Most of the detail is actually at the 40 Fires foundation website which will probably release design schematics. Their FAQ answers questions I had in mind and is a good place for a starting read. The codename for this car is Hybran. The EU welcomes Hydrogen cars as a strong "Green" alternative.

If you do compare it to other initiatives like OSCar, you would find this option from Riversimple probably at a better stage of adoption. But until they unveil their prototypes (16-Jun-2009 is not far) and manufacturing goals (however they intend to go about it,) consumers will be skeptical about adoption. They first have to hit a note on consumers _wanting_ it or _needing_ it before proposing an attractive business model. Most of the prior comments reflect that we are not yet ready. Design momentum on OSCar seems to have stalled in the year 2006.

In contrast another vehicle release earlier this year happened in India with a lot of buzz about a $2,500 car, the Nano from India. This car _can_ do more than 56 mpg on Gasoline. It isn't green, but you can grab one, drive one and feel much safer than the electric counterparts that roam about the cities. This car went through at least 2 yrs of testing because the average consumer was scared about safety. The adoption was further slowed down by slow manufacturing response from Tata Motors.

India has allowed an Electric car (REVA) to be used within City limits (for road safety and range concerns) manufactured by Reva. The vehicle (a modest 4 wheeler) which comes in multiple flavors has low adoption rates in cities which allow it. This car through evolution has been heavier than India's top selling gasoline small-car the Maruti Suzuki 800cc 4 seater, and offers lesser range within a city. It has a very short range of 80-100km and requires battery packs to be replaced every two years (or depending on usage.) From June, 2001 the adoption has been very slow. During July, 2008 at least 260 Reva's (multiple models) were sold which is a record high. The Reva is priced at a one time price tag of close to $6,500 with an installed set of batteries. These have to be replaced at about $1000 every year. There's some comprehensive information and links on the Wikipedia Article (Reva). The cost has been a factor in slowing down adoption added to the fact that electric charges are required almost on a nightly basis. India has welcomed the car with reduced parking charges and several cuts. The G-Whiz model sold outside India is far too pricey ($12000 in Chile) and does not enjoy these environment friendly regulatory benefits.

For crowded cities in India where pollution is a heavy problem, Electrical cars with limited range for office commuters who'd prefer some shade (where public transport is a little inconvenient with timings) has received early adoption. i would presume that countries facing rapid development and growth rates will have to take this more seriously. Scaling public transport infrastructure has always been a challenge in many developing countries owing to a myriad of reasons. The basis for creating indices to track air pollution is outlined quite well in this paper (PDF) from

I'm sorry, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what EC competition law is designed to do.

There's 3 aspects to EC competiton law (one of which is to do with mergers and we'll skip it). They're contained in articles 81-83 of the EC treaty. The first article, 81, (full text) deals with concerted practices and agreements between companies that hinder, or POTENTIALLY hinder, trade between member states. As you can see by my emphasis, it's not the point that an agreement affects trade, or that it affects trade in a minor way, or even that it affects trade in only a small area (since one case held that only affecting trade in one town was enough, since it had a large enough trade volume). Thus the fact it's a "relic from the 90s" is completely irrelevant. EC competition law is about potential infringements as much as it is about actual effects of those infringements.

Article 82 (full text) which Microsoft has also been in breach of is simply to do with abuse of a dominant position. Microsoft is dominant. "*EVERY* OS" may well come bundled with a browser, but it's Microsoft with the large market share. Under Article 81 you are permitted to have an infringing agreement if you can show your combined market share (between the conspiring parties) is below a certain level. Under Article 82, you can't have an action brought against you unless you are dominant. You talk about putting Microsoft at a "serious disadvantage" with Apple and Linux - but they are already far and away dominant. Penalising Microsoft would create a more open market with more operating systems having a larger market share, at the expense of Microsoft's own (in theory).

Lastly, if you'd read the article, you'd see that they're punishing Microsoft for 10 years of "bad behaviour." Rather than talking about the EC being "spiteful" and "not helping the consumer" (because an open market is sooooooooo bad for consumers), you should consider that when a company intends to trade within an economic zone it has to comply with certain rules. These rules have been applied to European companies time and time again - why should Microsoft get a free ride by virtue of being American?

And for the record, I'm fine with Microsoft (I don't particularly see why you'd distinguish them from other proprietary/closed source vendors), but I'm more in favour of the EC's positive steps to maintaining a free market than I am in favour of any one company.