Protest against new DRM's regulation in Poland

More than 15.000 people (!) have signed up to date an open letter with a protest against the bill which is said to introduce a restrictive DRM regulations into Polish law. Under the heavy critique of the public opinion the Ministry of Culture withdrew some most criticized provisions (inter alia changes to the penal code) but the situation is still unclear - there is no official version of the text. What is really impressive for me that 15.000 signatures (and still counting) have been collected in a very short time (1 month). This is a proof that our society is still willing to have some changes, use Internet to create democracy and take part in decision taking. It's a singn that Internet as a collaborative platform of exchanging ideas, will bring significant changes to the democracies around the world.

IT disputes

Recently I've got involved into some cumbersome IT disputes where the bone of contention is a conformity with procedures which the parties set out in the agreement between them and jointly did't obey the rules (classic :). As the Polish law and judicary is rather indigent in this area, it would be generous if the readers of this blog could indicate some cases which were decided in their countries or give some tips from their practice. Anyone ? :)

DRM debate

As the date of the implementation of the Enforcement Directive is closer, a discussion about DRM’s and their influence on the culture becomes hot. The Ministry of Culture is pushing it’s bill with changes to the Copyright Act which in the opinion of the Ministry is full compliant with the Directive, but in the opinion of many institutions and NGOs is not.

Against the changes are such institutions as the Society of the Polish Librarians, the Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (fine English page) which have published their negative opinions against the bill. Many of the bloggers in the comments compare the introducing the strict DRM protection to the process of the ‘land fencing‘ which happened in the UK in the 17’th century.

The Ministry also published recently some reports about the enforcement of the copyright law in Poland (sorry, just Polish) with the outline of the future actions. What is no surprise for me these governmental documents are full of round sentences with not much precise information what and when will be done.