Digital Rights Network

Speech delivered as Director of FFII-UK at the TACD conference on The Politics and Ideology of Intellectual Property, taking place in Brussels today and tomorrow.

----

I always prefer discussion and questions so I'm going to keep my formal presentation very short. In keeping it short I'm also going to restrict myself to telling you one, well maybe, two things.

The first is that, at present, when it comes to intellectual property there are **no** political parties. That is there are no, or very few, discernible ideological differences between political grouping on intellectual property (and on innovation policy in general). If you look at other areas: labour law, monetary policy, etc you will see clear differences between political parties. In advance you can predict with a fair degree of confidence which way a party or grouping will go. But when it comes to intellectual property that really isn't the case.

BEUC, an umbrella organization for consumer groups across Europe, launched a new consumer digital rights campaign yesterday based around a declaration of six principles:

• Right to choice, knowledge and cultural diversity
• Right to the principle of “technical neutrality” – defend and maintain consumer rights in the digital environment
• Right to benefit from technological innovations without abusive restrictions
• Right to interoperability of content and devices
• Right to the protection of privacy
• Right not to be criminalised

This initiative is great news and the site contains a wealth of other material, including an excellent FAQ.

"LONDON -- Apple Computer's three-month-old European iTunes service came under attack Wednesday from Britain's Consumers' Association, which asked the Office of Fair Trading, a business watchdog, to investigate why the service's prices are higher than those in the United States.

British iTunes customers pay 79 pence ($1.40, or 120 eurocents) per song, while French and German residents pay 67.7 pence ($1.20, or 99 eurocents), a difference of 17.5 percent. Americans pay even less: just 99 cents per song"
source: wired news story