opencontentlawyer.com

I’m liveblogging the 4th annual Gikii conference, kindly hosted by IViR in Amsterdam. (Gikii Programme)

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The Googlification of Copyright: The Google Books Settlement and its consequences for Europe
Bernt Hugenholtz

Google Book Settlement = GBS
Factors

- (practical) monopoly of google
- privacy
- practical licensing
- open content licensing short-circuited
- orphan works should be settled by legislature and not private ordering

GBS was only for US – European Union and other countries not affected. Class actions not here in Europe + national nature of copyright even in EU = different incentives. Is there a sea change in the Commission? Recent press release of McCreavy / Redding says that this may be a problem that Europe can’t have a similar Google books settlement because there is too much fragmentation. IvIR/Bernt/&co says that there is too much frag in EU on © and so should look at a Europe wide copyright. (they did a study within the last few years to commission on this)

Question from audience – seems google’s strategy is to drag out dispute until they complete digitisation and then as a practical matter they won because got all the data. Is this the strategy in Europe? Response – one way to do the PPP route which is quite popular in Europe (public private partnership) as strategy to get settlement.

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Towards new methods for resolving the conflict between copyright and the free flow of information

Ot van Daalen & Iris Kieft

p2p as toxic -> how to make it sustainable is the question?

Current conflict resolution procedures available:
- the courts
- legislative / public policy / lobbying

Question from audience – agree that sustainability is key, but that the players keep changing so it makes it difficult.

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France: the land of the Linux? The case of DRM interoperability and reverse-engineering

Nicolas Jondet

Open source users rely on reverse engineering of DRMs for interoperability. DRMs aren’t really part of the open source space and are a feature of the “proprietary world”.

If you use the decompilation exception it is a way around some of the market – recent French decision that is complex and possibly idiosyncratic. End message is that it is okay to use decomplied DRMs, especially in the absence of legal alternatives

Already starting to see DVD Flash etc on open source.

Me: great insights into a jurisdiction that can be hard to get access to on what is going on in open source