In retrospect, it is now clear that the pivotal moment in the campaign against ACTA was last January, when thousands of people took to the streets in Poland despite the sub-zero temperatures there. A few weeks later, similar protests took place across the continent, especially in Eastern Europe, which then influenced politicians at all levels, culminating in the rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament on July 4.

Although the SOPA Blackout day was one inspiration for the European street protests, a key question is: why did they happen first in Poland? Krzysztof Kietzman points us to an interesting piece of research, newly available in English as "The Circulations of Culture. On Social Distribution of Content," that goes some way to offering an answer. Here's the summary:

It describes how books, music, and movies circulate among Poles who sometimes buy them, but more often than not acquire them via the Internet and borrow or copy them from friends.

Interestingly, according to the publication's introduction, the document itself played a role in the ACTA debate when it first appeared (in Polish) in January 2012:

The publication took place at the height of the debate on ACTA and became an important element in public debates on copyright and regulation of online circulations of content.

One reason why it may have provoked discussion is because of the terminology it uses:

this is not a report about "pirates" that conduct illegal activities, but rather about people who engage in informal content sharing practices.

As the report's authors explain:

abandoning the simple legal-illegal binary has yet another reason. The goal of this report is to foster real dialogue on the issue of acquiring cultural content in Poland. The overuse of labels such as "piracy" or "theft" will not improve the chances of establishing such dialogue. An opposition between "formal" and "informal" is in our opinion a much better way for framing this debate.

Here are some of the key findings:

62% of Poles do not participate in either the formal or the informal circulations of cultural content. The primary form of cultural activity for most Poles is probably watching television and listening to the radio.

Things are even worse when it comes to buying stuff:

13% of Poles purchase content, as opposed to 33% that obtain it through informal, digital circulations. Only 13% of Poles have purchased a book, a movie, or a musical recording in the year before the survey. On the other hand, one third of Poles are engaged in the informal sphere understood here as sharing books, music, and movies in digital formats via the Internet.

This indicates how important the informal circulation is in terms of sustaining culture in Poland. A key discovery is that informal and formal patterns of acquisition are not mutually exclusive:

The survey did not corroborate the thesis about informal circulations supplanting the formal ones. The people who most actively engage in the informal content circulations (i.e. Internet users who download files) constitute the largest segment of the purchasers. They comprise 32% of all people purchasing books, 31% of all people purchasing movies, and over half of all people who buy music. They also make up the largest segment of people who lend each other content. People from that group probably treat both informal and formal circulations as complementary.

Of course, this is precisely what a number of other studies have found, so it's no surprise to see it confirmed here.

The following statistics go some way to explaining why so many Poles took to the streets in sub-zero temperatures to protests against ACTA:

92% of active [Internet] users claim to have engaged in informal circulations if their definition is expanded to include all avenues of content access (such as streaming, sharing files with friends, etc.). If we include the informal circulation of content stored on physical media (e.g. sharing and copying books or CDs and DVDs) in the aforementioned definition, then practically all of the respondents (95%) claim to have engaged in such content circulations. The survey indicates, that among people who actively use the Internet, the informal, non-market economy of cultural content is the norm.

The cultural importance of this shared content emerges from another figure:

The most commonplace attitude of active Internet users (50% of respondents) towards the informal circulations is moderate and focused on the broadening of cultural horizons. For them, the crucial factor is the ability to know more and see more, not acquire free content.

That's not to say that money isn't a factor:

75% of active internet users indicated price and a wider selection of content available on the Internet as justifications for their behavior. Two-thirds of them pointed to such factors as availability without delays (typical of formal circulations, where global content arrives in Poland often with a delay) or the selection available.

That is, much of the sharing that takes place in Poland is as a result of copyright companies failing to make their material available in a timely fashion, or pricing it inappropriately for the market there. Again, this is just what other research has found, notably the "Media Piracy in Emerging Economies" that Techdirt reported on before.

That work was led by Joe Karaganis, and in a kind of postword to the present research, he offers perhaps the best analysis of why it was Poland, and the other former Soviet bloc countries, that led the ACTA revolt:

most visible was the demand for transparency and democratic accountability in policymaking -- a demand juxtaposed to the secretive construction and potentially far-ranging obligations of the Agreement. Anti-ACTA sentiment became a channel, in this respect, for dissatisfaction with the wider democratic deficits of European governance.

Less explicit, but no less important in my view, was the use of this secretive process to target a prevalent and largely normalized form of access to culture in Eastern Europe -- the copying, sharing, and downloading of media. These are the compensatory strategies that allowed young Poles, especially, to participate in the wider media culture in which they -- and everyone else -- now grow up. It is no accident, in this context, that the major anti-ACTA protests and first government rejections of the agreement came from Poland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Romania, and Bulgaria -- the economic periphery of Europe.

That is, young people in these countries were not prepared to give up without a fight wide-ranging access to the kind of culture that had been denied to their parents' generation because of Soviet censorship, and to which they now had access despite their continuing economic disadvantages. And so they took to the streets.

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Apple is very protective of its Apple name and logo trademarks. We have noted in the past that it seems to think that no company can use a logo that even remotely resembles an apple. So it really should be no surprise to learn that Apple is going on the offensive, double time, in order to stop a Polish online grocery store from receiving a trademark for A.pl.

"Apple brand is widely recognised and the company says that A.pl, by using the name that sounds similar, is using Apple's reputation," patent office spokesman Adam Taukert said.

There also seems to be a dispute over a logo trademark sought by A.pl for its site Fresh24.pl. You can see the logo in question below. Or how about this side by side comparison: Last time I checked, Apple had no business endeavors in online grocery sales, so it would seem to be a stretch to think that consumers would be confused and think that A.pl was an offering by the electronics company. Additionally, A.pl and Fresh24.pl seem to be regional and limited to Poland at this time. So there would be limited harm if any to Apple's global brand. In the end, this just ends up looking like a bunch of trademark lawyers on Apple's payroll looking to keep busy and gain billable hours.

Google has continued to update its big "Transparency Report" with new data on specific content takedown requests from government agencies. With this latest update, Google has put out a blog post warning people that governments -- including those not normally associated with censorship -- are increasingly seeking to shut down speech for what appear to be politically motivated reasons:

We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not.

This is the fifth data set that we’ve released. And just like every other time before, we’ve been asked to take down political speech. It’s alarming not only because free expression is at risk, but because some of these requests come from countries you might not suspect—Western democracies not typically associated with censorship.

For example, in the second half of last year, Spanish regulators asked us to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and articles in newspapers referencing individuals and public figures, including mayors and public prosecutors. In Poland, we received a request from a public institution to remove links to a site that criticized it. We didn’t comply with either of these requests.

There are some interesting, if odd, specific examples, like the following:

Brazil: In December, we received an electoral court order that resulted in the removal of four orkut profiles for content related to political campaigns.

Canada: We received a request from the Passport Canada office to remove a YouTube video of a Canadian citizen urinating on his passport and flushing it down the toilet. We did not comply with this request.

Pakistan: We received a request from the Government of Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology to remove six YouTube videos that satirized the Pakistan Army and senior politicians. We did not comply with this request.

Poland: We received a request from the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development to remove a search result that criticized the agency as well as eight more that linked to it. We did not comply with this request.

Spain: We received 14 requests from the Spanish Data Protection Authority to remove 270 search results that linked to blogs and sites referencing individuals and public figures. The Spanish Data Protection Authority also ordered the removal of three blogs published on Blogger and three videos hosted on YouTube. We did not comply with these requests.

United States: We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove a blog because of a post that allegedly defamed a law enforcement official in a personal capacity. We did not comply with this request, which we have categorized in this Report as a defamation request.

We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove 1,400 YouTube videos for alleged harassment. We did not comply with this request. Separately, we received a request from a different local law enforcement agency to remove five user accounts that allegedly contained threatening and/or harassing content. We terminated four of the accounts, which resulted in the removal of approximately 300 videos, but did not remove the remaining account with 54 videos.

We received a court order to remove 218 search results that linked to allegedly defamatory websites. We removed 25% of the results cited in the request.

This expansion of governments seeking to censor speech via Google takedowns is clearly worrisome, though it's good to see that Google at least investigates the details before taking down the content.

Earlier this year, Poland played a crucial role in igniting street protests that pretty much stopped ACTA in its tracks. That's not the first time it has had a major impact on European tech policy. Half a decade earlier, it derailed a proposed EU software patent directive, which had sought to make software patentable in Europe -- something that Article 52 of the European Patent Convention had appeared to rule out. That led to a later vote in the European Parliament where software patents were decisively rejected.

Unfortunately, that's not the end of the story as far as software patents in Europe are concerned. Despite its name, the European Patent Office is not the patent office for the European Union: it is part of the European Patent Organisation, which is independent of the EU, and is therefore not bound by the EU's policies and decisions. This has enabled it to let in software patents by the back door, using the artificial concept of a "computer-implemented invention (CII)":

A CII is usually defined as an invention that works by using a computer, a computer network or other programmable apparatus. To qualify, the invention also needs to have one or more features which are realised wholly or partly by means of a computer program.

To be patentable, CIIs must fulfil the same basic patentability requirements as inventions in all other fields. These are set out in the European Patent Convention (EPC).

Accordingly, CIIs can be patented if:

They have technical character and solve a technical problem.
They are new.
They involve an inventive technical contribution to the prior art.

Some national patent offices in the EU have tried to hold back the wave of software patents being let through as CIIs by applying stringent conditions for granting them. That has led to a situation where the Polish Patent Office ruled against an application for a software patent that the EPO had approved:

Pursuant to its longstanding practice in the area of so-called software patents, the Polish Patent Office held that the invention was not of a technical character and therefore was not patentable, despite the fact that the European Patent Office had granted a European patent for the same invention. In other words, the Polish Patent Office refused to issue a patent to an applicant already approved by the EPO.

This incompatibility between the rulings of the Polish Patent Office and the EPO led a higher Polish court, the Polish Supreme Administrative Court, to intervene. It has now reviewed the case and issued a revocation of the earlier decision by the Polish Patent Office, implicitly giving precedence to the EPO on the matter. The reasoning of the Polish Supreme Administrative Court seems to be essentially that technology has moved on, and therefore the Polish patent system should take account of that by allowing software patents now, just as the EPO does:

The [upper] court also noted that great technological advances across many industries have been made in recent years, which must have an effect on the practice of the Polish Patent Office. Thus, the Polish Patent Office, while conforming to the provisions of Polish patent law, should change its approach on the subject matter of the technology.

But that's an absurd argument. Software has been around for half a century: the basic ideas underlying it haven't changed, nor have the sound reasons for excluding it from patentability been superseded -- it's just become much more widespread. If anything, that's a further argument against allowing software patents.

To grant software patents now would be like granting patents on written phrases simply because writing has "moved on", and literacy has become more widespread. Clearly that would stifle creativity, since writers would then have to worry about "infringing" on patented elements of their craft, and lawsuits would break out between authors claiming their ideas were "stolen", when in fact they were simply part of their cultural heritage.

Similarly, in the digital world, allowing software patents would mean that programmers would run the risk of "infringing" just for using basic programming building blocks in their creations. And that, of course, is precisely what is starting to happen on a massive scale in jurisdictions that do allow software patents: litigation is making innovation increasingly hard, especially for start-ups without the resources to fight long legal battles, or patent portfolios to use for striking licensing deals.

Given Poland's glorious recent past in defending Europe from dangerous ideas like ACTA and software patents, it's sad to see the country's courts trying to make its own citizens subject to the EPO and its maximalist views that more or less anything is patentable. Perhaps it's time to take to the streets again....

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I recently gave a talk at the Innovate/Activate conference, where I discussed where the copyright lobby had been super successful, and where it seemed some of their weaknesses were. One thing I pointed out was that they had completely lost the hearts and minds of the public -- and no matter how hard they tried, they were unable to muster up any kind of public or grassroots support. As an example, I showed a photo of the massive street protests against ACTA in Poland, and questioned what a pro-ACTA demonstration might look like. Well, bizarrely, it appears that some in the Copyright Lobby had decided to try to put on a pro-ACTA demonstration... but they needed to hire people to act as ACTA supporters. Of course, when you seem to think -- as the industry often appears to -- that the only motivating factor possible in the world is monetary exchange, perhaps this isn't that surprising.

One of the fields that is ripe for disruption by open digital technologies and business models based on abundance is education. That's already starting to happening with growing successes in the areas of open access and free textbooks. Now here's a major win for open educational resources in Poland (via Slashdot):

Polish Prime Minister Office yesterday accepted "Digital School program" with "Digital Textbooks" component included. With 45 million PLN (approx. 15 million USD) funding it has been the biggest governmental Open Educational Resources initiative in Poland so far. The government has decided to fund creating full set of educational materials for grades 4-6 (9-11 year olds). All those resources will be available under CC BY license, which is fully free license according to the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

It sounds like the use of that cc-by license was a close thing:

This draft [of the Digital School program] was accepted by Ministry of Education, but at a later stage of preparations the free licensing requirement was left out. Both Open Education Coalition and Modern Poland Foundation took part in the public consultation process; their comments in support of free licensing were taken on board in the very last minute.

Without that free license, this would have been just another scheme to produce government-funded educational materials. But with the license, those resources can take on a life of their own through re-use, improvement and wide-ranging adaptations. And once teachers, parents and students begin to see what can be done with freely-licensed educational materials that is hard or impossible to match with traditional licensing, the demand for them is likely to grow.

This makes the last-minute acceptance by the Polish government that the materials would be released under the cc-by license, after some apparent reluctance, doubly welcome, since it may well help to trigger the production of further open educational resources both within and beyond Poland.

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Through BoingBoing we learn of an interesting contest organized by the Modern Poland Foundation, offering a crowdfunded cash prize for the best proposal to modernize copyright law:

How should a good copyright system look like? Obviously, the one our civilization uses now doesn't fit the reality of today. Outdated, over-extended and unenforceable it leads to ridiculous court cases against random people and clearly fails to meet the needs of the digital world. Without good alternatives, the only solution some can imagine is to take what doesn't work and get more of it, hoping that this will do the trick. It won't.

In order to form the future of copyright system we need to step up and craft a model that will fit the digital reality, shaped by technology of today and tomorrow. There are some initial proposals, most notably Barcelona Charter or Washington Declaration, but we believe there's room for improvement and we want to give it a try. We invite you all to take part in the global project of crafting the Future of Copyright!

There are a number of things that make this contest interesting. Firstly, the judges: one is professor Michael Geist, a vocal copyright critic who comes up a lot here at Techdirt, and the other is Piotr Czerski, who wrote the phenomenal "We, The Web Kids" manifesto that has been making waves online. Secondly, they are accepting submissions in any medium and any genre, meaning we may get to see some cool copyright fiction coming out of this contest. Finally, the whole thing is crowdfunded: they are raising the prize money on IndieGoGo (which uses a similar model to Kickstarter), starting with a modest goal of $500 that they have already surpassed.

One thing is out of place, and that's the requirement that all submissions be licensed under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license. I'm surprised they added such a specific restriction, because it biases the entire contest, essentially endorsing Creative Commons as the future of copyright despite supposedly asking for varied opinions on the topic. It also implicitly endorses attribution and some sort of "share-alike" clause, even though there are many viable copyright philosophies that require neither of those things. Why can't people dedicate their entries to the public domain with a Public Domain Mark or a CC0 license, or retain their rights but make the submission freely available? Imposing a specific license on the entries runs counter to the idea of seeking a wide variety of proposals.

Nevertheless, I look forward to seeing the ideas this contest elicits, including those of any Techdirt readers who participate (and I suspect some of you might). If you want to enter, you have until April 15th.

A few weeks ago, we noted that Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk had agreed to suspend attempts to ratify ACTA while he explored the details -- completely flip-flopping on his earlier adamant support for the agreement. However, late last week he went even further. Rather than just putting off the issue, he's now actively campaigning against ACTA throughout Europe. While some are accusing him of bowing to public pressure and the protests throughout Poland (which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing -- listening to the public and all), he insists that it had more to do with learning more details about the likely impact of ACTA.

And here's the thing: unlike most other politicians out there, Tusk actually set up a real and open interaction with people online. This happened a few weeks ago, but Wired has the details:

On Feb. 6, all this activity culminated in an unprecedented conversation between Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and — for want of a better word — the internet, that lasted the better part of seven hours.

People used social media to lob questions and comments, but when the anti-ACTA NGOs involved said Twitter and Facebook were not sufficiently open and transparent platforms for voicing public opinions and suggested IRC (Internet Relay Chat) the government agreed. #debataACTA and #debataACTA-pytania were set up on the IRC server of the political hacker group Telecomix, where a geekier set came to participate. The discussions were projected for the PM who answer questions and points for hours while the event was livestreamed and broadcasted over Polish TV and Radio.

What strikes me as most interesting about all of this is that we've been suggesting a truly open and online meeting concerning what the legacy entertainment industry players feel they need and how they want the internet to change. And people keep insisting that using an open platform like IRC would never work... and yet here's an example where it clearly did. It's really pretty amazing to see a head of state spend nearly seven hours discussing internet regulation/copyright issues with regular internet users via IRC... and having that have a real impact. Impressive.

Following the news that Poland and the Czech Republic have put the brakes on ACTA ratification, we can now add Latvia to the bunch:

The Economy Minister Daniels Pavluts has decided to block the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which has caused wide protests in the society.

On Wednesday, February 8, the Minister announced that he made the decision taking into account the mood of various groups of the society, as well as worries of several experts about the possibility of ACTA implementation in Latvia.

He thinks that it is already too late for a proactive and timely explanation of what ACTA really means. So now there is no rush with its ratification in the Parliament. “First we need a constructive and reasoned dialogue and a discussion with all the interested parties,” he says.

Of course, Poland, the Czech Republic and Latvia are "smaller" players in the EU, and there are disputes over whether or not having some countries decide not to ratify kills the whole process. Basically, there are different interpretations of how things work under the Lisbon Treaty, with some saying that even if some countries don't ratify, the EU could still ratify and issue a directive forcing the various member states to "harmonize." So it's good to see these countries putting the brakes on what was going to be a pure "check the boxes" approval process -- but ACTA is still very likely to move forward overall.

This is getting interesting. Following the growing protests about ACTA in Europe, as well as signs of US meddling, Poland's prime minister is making it clear that Poland will not ratify ACTA for the time being, leading to speculation that the EU may not actually join ACTA.

Tusk's backtracking could spell the end of ACTA for the entire European Union. If Poland or any other EU member state, or the European Parliament itself, fails to ratify the document, it becomes null and void across the union. As it stands, there are already five member countries that have not even signed ACTA.

"I share the opinions of those who from the beginning said that consultations were not complete," Tusk said, according to a report in Wirtualna Polska. The 54-year-old prime minister added that a Polish rejection of ACTA is now on the table, and admitted that he had previously approached the agreement from a "20th century" perspective, due to his age.