Veni | Вени

When people choose a company to register a domain name, they MUST be very careful what they do.
Recent events around RegisterFly have shown that anyone can LOSE their domain name, if their registrar goes out of business, or if it behaves in a non-business way.

This is a very important issue for anyone, who has their own domain name, and uses it for business.

There’s an interesting article by my friend and colleague Elliot Noss, President & CEO of Tucows, an ICANN Accredited Registrar.

Disclosure: The Bulgarian Internet Service Provider BOL.BG, where I have some shares, is working with Tucows when registering domain names in the .com, .net, .eu and other top level domains.

Remarks from Veni:

On March 16 the Bulgarian special forces for combatting organized crime, have ordered the major telecoms to filter the access to and from the web site www.arenabg.com. The request was based on the current law, but was followed only by three of the large ISPs, among them the Bulgarian Telecom. The others rejected it on the basis that it’s illegal. The police withdrew the ordinance the following Monday, as indeed a number of lawyers have said in the meantime that this ordinance should not be followed.
ISOC-Bulgaria was the only Bulgarian non-governmental organization to issue a statement on that topic, and members of the Board participated in making their position public.
Besides the filtering, the police has arrested the owner of the web site (the web site itself is located in the USA), but the court released him on the following day, as “the police did not submit any evidence the defendant has caused any copyright infringement”, as the media reported.
ISOC-Bulgaria has translated in English two articles of the internationally known and respected law professor Nelly Ognyanova on that subject, which can be read at the following addresses: http://blog.veni.com/?p=205 and http://blog.veni.com/?p=204

Technology vs Law
by Nelly Ognyanova*

Last week we witnessed a new type of legal case: a police authority demanded a limitation of the access to certain Internet resources based on the Law of the Ministry of Interior.

Nevertheless, all the uproar surrounding the campaign against torrents and P2P technologies in general has its didactic effects. True, those issues are not central but they matter because they attract the attention of the people concerned with modern-technologies to more and more talked about problems. I will begin with saying this: the intellectual property rights are important, piracy robs, we love our writers, actors and singers and we support them. Technologies, however, are developing and the legislation must acknowledge the new situation.

There is no liability

for the creation and dissemination of technologies, which have a lawful use. There is a liability for breaking the law. The USA Court was the first one to declare such a solution twenty five years ago when Hollywood asked for the banning of video recording technologies and devices by Sony.

Until very recently, the Bulgarian services responsible for fighting organized crime put a sign of equality between piracy and torrents. For more than a year now they have been fighting a war against technologies and one could still read in older newspapers that whatever is a torrent, it is piracy. As a matter of fact, torrents are useful for communication. Torrent networks are faster and more effective. They have been acknowledged as lawful by jurisdictions all over Europe. It is true that copyrighted material could be transmitted against the law too. But although books could be printed without permission as well, no one would break in a printing-office. Today even the Bulgarian services admit that the law does not punish technologies but their illegal usage. This seems to be the first obvious educational effect of last week’s campaigns.

What is illegal use

of peer-to-peer technologies and against whom should the strictness of the law be applied? Influenced by the avalanche of cases for distinguishing between lawful and illegal usage of torrent technologies in the USA, Australia and Europe, the Bulgarian courts have not yet faced the need to analyze and solve the problem from the standpoint of the Bulgarian legislation. This is not good for the interpretation of the law because these days article 172a of the National Constitution is applied the way the people from GDBOP understand it. This is bad. It is well-known that technologies are realized through the participation of millions of people – American institutions have estimated that in the USA alone they are 60 million and their number is quickly rising. There are tens of thousands of participants with different roles in Europe as well. The Penal Code has been created for different epochs, different bearers, different ways of disseminating content. Legally responsible is the person who “records, reproduces, disseminates, broadcasts or transmits through a technical device a or in any other way” copyrighted works; there is no distinction between seeders and leechers and, thus, there is much space left for a subjective judgment. The deputy director of the Capital’s Investigating Authorities determined that there will be a criminal prosecution against “people, who uploaded more than 10 TB.” Why exactly 10 Terra bytes?

Such selectivity of criminal prosecution

is a troublesome phenomenon and should not be tolerated. From here there is only one more step to the idea that economic interests could lead the offices and it has been made in Internet forums. Names of companies and people unaffected by the actions of GDBOP are discussed and, naturally, there are opinions that justice is not applied equally to everyone. That is the second important inference made from the torrent events: it is unacceptable in a constitutional state to apply the National Constitution selectively; this is repulsive.

The fight against illegal content in the Internet presupposes an exact assessment of the roles of different participants in its functioning. The European Union regulates the responsibility for the content of the Web through the Directive 31/2000/EC.

The Internet providers are the least ones to have a responsibility

if they have any at all. Nevertheless, the Bulgarian providers have been ordered to filter the access to the website arenabg.com, hosted in the United States. This instruction is based on article 15 of the Law of Electronic Commerce (LEC) about the responsibility of the provider “who transmits information entered by the user of the service over the telecommunication web.” According to Bulgarian providers, none of them offers access to Internet outside Bulgaria and, therefore, the order has no valid grounds. It is already known that some providers, such as the Bulgarian Telephone Company, obeyed the police order while others refused to do so. This is the third important lesson: the application of the laws is compromised because the police authorities set unachievable goals. This is not different from France’s failure to prohibit the access of the French people to pro-Nazi websites on servers in California, even with a decision from the French court. And the Bulgarian case even lacks a court decision – there is only a police statement which has not been verified by a court.

The reaction of the Internet providers is a separate issue for discussion. Only a few hours after the measure was taken, the forums posted solutions to go around the filters and the access remained open. The goals of the restriction were not effectively achieved.

Let us assume that there is a clear law and the police campaign has a rightful purpose. Even then, there are concerns about the rights of everyone who “downloaded two songs” from the Web (private copying).

The protection of the privacy

is not a subordinate constitutional right, which could easily be sacrificed to prove who used torrent technologies. Yes, the Web is transparent; yes, IP addresses are easily seen, but what next? In the EU (the Netherlands, Germany) courts have refused to disclose personal information because this process is irreversible – once disclosed, the personal data can not be “closed” again and there is a lack of certainty who exactly uses an IP address. Using special investigation tools doesn’t seem to be a proportional measure to reveal who is using a certain address in the Web. At least not when we are not talking about organized crime or criminal actions on a large scale. And for this the approval of everyone who supports the fight against piracy is required: there are no minor and major rights, the protection of intellectual property is not more important than the protection of the personal life, personal information is disclosed only under extreme circumstances and proportionality between the limitation of ones rights and the gravity of the supposed crime.

From the standpoint of free access to knowledge and the free culture

the perspective is not very optimistic. Copyright is itself a compromise between the large-scale interests which the industries of content have and the right of access to knowledge. This is relevant to the Community legislation as well. In the European Union a few directives are in action, including some about copyright in the information society. The industries who accepted them were extremely active during the elaboration and adoption, just as the organizations for collective management of IP rights are active in Bulgaria.

The European Commission has specifically pointed out the protection of copyrighted material as an area, not suitable for selfregulation, and has offered a harmonizing of measures in this field from now on. On the 19th of March the Commission on Legal Matters of the EP considered the draft directive on criminal measures against piracy. The use of criminal law for the protection of the interior market is a novelty (and an exception) for Community legislation; there is a precedent only in the sphere of environmental protection. Until now, however, this parliamentary Commission surprisingly does not support the criminalization of violations of intellectual property when it is for personal use only. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes are therefore excluded. The first plenary session of the European Parliament about this project is scheduled for 24th April.

_____
* – Nelly Ognyanova is a lecturer in Media Law at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She keeps a blog about media issues and new media at nellyo.wordpress.com/
** – GDBOP is the Bulgarian Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime, which by law has to deal only with organized crime, as its name suggests.
*** – This article was initially published in the Bulgarian weekly “Capital“, and is translated by ISOC-Bulgaria, and published here under CreativeCommons, granted by prof. Nelly Ognyanova

Remarks from Veni:

On March 16 the Bulgarian special forces for combatting organized crime, have ordered the major telecoms to filter the access to and from the web site www.arenabg.com. The request was based on the current law, but was followed only by three of the large ISPs, among them the Bulgarian Telecom. The others rejected it on the basis that it’s illegal. The police withdrew the ordinance the following Monday, as indeed a number of lawyers have said in the meantime that this ordinance should not be followed.
ISOC-Bulgaria was the only Bulgarian non-governmental organization to issue a statement on that topic, and members of the Board participated in making their position public.
Besides the filtering, the police has arrested the owner of the web site (the web site itself is located in the USA), but the court released him on the following day, as “the police did not submit any evidence the defendant has caused any copyright infringement”, as the media reported.
ISOC-Bulgaria has translated in English two articles of the internationally known and respected law professor Nelly Ognyanova on that subject, which can be read at the following addresses: http://blog.veni.com/?p=205 and http://blog.veni.com/?p=204

A Global Initative, Suspicious Methods
by Nelly Ognyanova*

There is much talk about torrents these days. Whoever knows what that is, knows what’s going on; whoever has no idea what a torrent is, doesn’t need to anyway. His or her kids probably have and that is enough for a household. Nevertheless, if one works for GDBOP, a judicial authority or is a member of parliament, the situation obliges one to be familiar with torrents, because they either make laws about them or enforce those laws.

Talking about torrents, we should speak about the rule of law – an important subject for everyone, not exclusively limited to Internet maniacs. In the case of torrents, GDBOP’s** campaign was undertaken against piracy and the fulfillment of the criteria Bulgaria faces. Truly this is important enough to be observed from different angles.

The Community’s Rights

The protection of the rights of intellectual property (IP) resides in the so called “horizontal questions” and numerous organizations and institutions deal with it. The different rights of the IP (copyright, neighboring rights and so forth) are regulated in directives, and there is a 2004 directive on IP enforcement, which insists on measures for an even more effective protection of the IP rights. The adoption of this directive was not easy. Although the initial draft of the Commission included a plan to harmonize the measures against piracy, the final version lacked harmonization of criminal measures. Bulgaria introduced this directive with amendments from the copyright legislation in 2005.

In 2006 a draft of a new directive was drawn up; once again its subject was harmonizing the criminal measures against piracy. The harmonizing of the penalties is not typical of the community legislation; it was possible only after the court posted a decision the allow competence of the Community on the matter of criminal law harmonization.

In the EU there is a principle of subsidiarity. From the beginning of the legislative procedure the Parliament of the Netherlands reacted negatively; it opposed the harmonization of penalties for piracy and took a stand that in this way the “zone of intervention” of the Community would be enlarged. Later on, the dissimilarities in the EPC on legal issues deepened. At this moment the proposition is that the criminal measures be limited only to the areas of copyright and trademarks. In addition, it has been recommended that criminal sanctions should only apply to those infringements deliberately carried out to obtain a commercial advantage. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes are therefore also excluded.

In the Bulgarian context

The stand of the parliamentary commission, which opposes basic propositions of the project for harmonizing the penalties in the IP sector, coincides with the campaign GDBOP undertook against torrent trackers. This concurrence gave the European parliament’s work a characteristic acoustic. There are thousands of propositions for a chance of the community legislation, but in Bulgaria propositions which about the Internet exchange of data echoed most loudly. Amendment 25 (Recital 10 a) proved to be very important for the situation here: (10a) It is understood that the non-commercial sharing of files between individuals is excluded from the scope of this Directive.

Very seldom the work of the European institutions on specific directives attracted so much interest as in the case of the proposition that the noncommercial exchange of files be dropped out of the scope of the directive. But let us once again take a look at what is going on with the EC legislation There is an impression that the European Parliament offers to decriminalize all violations in the IP sector or is giving up on some sanctions. On the contrary, with this project for a new directive the European Commission is seeking to introduce a coordinated zone, in which all violations be criminalized equally by the Member States. The proposition from the last few days is that this zone is limited significantly so that it does not include the exchange of files among private persons with a noncommercial purpose.

The text of the draft directive is about to be modified, it is too early now to predict how the final version will look like. Bulgaria is a member of the EU, the nation participates in the lawgiving process, Bulgarian ministers introduce opinions in the council, Bulgarian members of Parliament in the European Parliament are working in the parliamentary commissions and voting on issues. These are perfect opportunities to very accurately show the nation’s position on issues on the best balances between the protection of authors’ interests and the guaranteeing others their constitutional rights, including the right of access information and inviolability of person. After the directive is accepted, however, it must me introduced precisely and on time in the national jurisprudence and effectively applied. In this case the Community is uncompromising and sanctions severely all failures to execute obligations.

Not by all means

The campaign against the torrent networks have different assessments. A large number of the users are against it for different reasons. Leaving the desire to not pay for content aside, the negative reaction has its own reasons. The attempts to filter the content of the Web is a dark practice in some other countries. The filtering is neither well-grounded, nor possible. What could it show besides a demonstration of power? The application of the Penal code is only done by GDBOP’s judgment. By what criteria has it been made? The penalty requires an accurate identification of the guilty. How?

The deputy director of the Capital’s Investigating Authority gave an astounding interview in a local daily newspaper, in which he both disassociated himself from the law (“I don’t like anything in it”) and showed that he doesn’t understand what he is doing (“Our goal is not to eliminate all torrent trackers but to allow the spreading of information less protected by copyright”). Less protected information?

The Internet forums are very active. Obviously, the prevailing opinions are against the actions the Ministry of Interior is taking. But that is what the proponents say (L. Georgiev in Capital’s forum): “It is true that those campaigns are performed in the completely rude Balkan way, with the Ministry ignoring the law, but it is interesting why you fail to understand that the process of closing torrents and trackers is a global initiative, especially developed in practice by the authorities in Western Europe and, when we distance ourselves from the suspicious methods of our police, we will reach the conclusion that they are just trying to imitate their western colleagues.”

That is the whole problem. A global initiative, suspicious methods.

___
*Nelly Ognyanova is a lecturer in Media Law at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. She keeps a blog about media issues and new media at http://nellyo.wordpress.com/
** – GDBOP is the Bulgarian Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime, which by law has to deal only with organized crime, as its name suggests.
*** – This article was initially published in the Bulgarian daily “Dnevnikl“, and is translated by ISOC-Bulgaria, and published here under Creative Commons, granted by prof. Nelly Ognyanova

Yes, it’s true. The 2007 ITU Telecom will take place in Sofia, December 3 – 6, 2007!

Potential speakers / panelists can submit abstracts until April 5. See more at www.itu.int/EUROPE2007/forum/i.

If you are interested in what happens in the world with regards to Information Technologies, you will be in Sofia, Dec 3-6, 2007.

And if you are coming, let me know if you need assistance.

Just saw Larry Lessig’s blog about how bad it is to copy copyright material (the first link is to the category, the second to the article itself).

Worth reading.

Here are two of the arguments, edited (bold from me).

[ ] even if making “a copy of a copyrighted work” is illegal, it is not “in essence stealing it.” See the Supreme Court’s rejection of this false analogy in footnote 33 of Sony v. Universal.

[ ] and most important, not every “copy” violates copyright law. In particular, if a copy is “fair use,” then copyright law has not been violated. The question in this case is thus, as always, is the copying for purposes of making snippet access available “fair use.” As much as you know that it is wrong to download music without the permission of the copyright owner, I hope you also know that it is right to make copies — even without the permission of the copyright owner — when such copies are fair use.

True, most authors would prefer to make more money from their works than they did before. True, Google plans on copying them (for purposes of making snippet access available) without permission. But the implication — that Google’s copying will reduce author’s opportunity to make money — is false. Out of print books are — by definition — books the authors are not making money on. Google’s Book Search will refer people who discover the out of print book to book sellers. If demand for a currently out of print book grows, then it is more likely than before that the book will go back into print, meaning again, the author can make money. So contrary to the “if Google copies, authors lose” fallacy, if Google enables access, at least some authors will get something they don’t have right now — their out of print book back in print.

First, both sides in this debate are effectively “tell[ing] these authors what’s best for them.” Microsoft and the Publishers are telling the authors that it is best for them that the law ban companies like Google from securing access to snippets of their works. They want a rule that says “ask first” not for permission to distribute copies of their books, but for permission to enable access through a 21st century card catalog. When in the history of man did the law require permission from an author (or publisher) for a work to be included in a card catalog?

Second, the point ignores the central point in this debate: Given the insanely inefficient system of copyright that the government has created, there’s no way to identify the current owners of these copyrights (for works out of print). So how, again, are these people to be “asked”?

Today the head of the Sofia City Court Svetlin Mihaylov has announced some statistics for 2006, which is shocking!

Only 10 % of the wiretapped conversation are being used in cases against criminals. Only 5 % of those 10 % are actually good enough to be used by the court, when they sentence the criminals!

I wonder what the ratio would be in other countries, and if it is that low, why there’s wire tapping at all???

I have been part of different copyright-related projects for the last 10 years.
I believe that the old model of copyright is already exhausted. The huge music/audios/software/patent/etc industry needs a new model. Better said, the analog copyright versions should give way to the new, digital ones.
Why I thought about it? I was following an article, which was linked via a blog site of one of the Bulgarian politicians. His blog has no (C) nor (CC). The link in his blog was to his political party, which also has no copyrights listed on the site (e.g. note the difference with Bulgaria Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin, who is publishing under CC).
But the thing is that on the web site of the party, there’s a DOC (MS Word) file with an interview, which is actually copy & paste from a newspaper, that is, strict (C).

And there’s not a word about it in the doc file, or on the web site.

That is just yet another example why the analog model doesn’t workin the digital age.

I propose that we start thinking of a new model, and in the meantime, all such materials should be released by default in the public domain. Why would an interview with a politician be copyrighted (C)? Who is the author – the jouranlist, who is asking the questions, or the person answering them?

Let’s give the copyright holders substential amount of time, during which they have to come with new digital rights, and in the meantime allow non-commercial usage of all copyrighted material at will. Only such a move will push the industry in the right direction – that is, to sit and create their own, new, digital model. Otherwise here’s what happens – organizations like Creative Commons suggest changes, and the only thing they hear is, “That’s not good enough”. Big commercial companies, with millions of songs, stories, movies… They should be the one to create the new model, in cooperation with the users, sales, marketing, etc., etc.

I really hope that Bulgaria could also give some good example in that direction – e.g. by providing the first ever professinal writers’ creative commons theme. We, the Internet Society of Bulgaria, are working on it. I will keep you informed on the development there.

This year marks 20 years since my graduation.
I studied at the famous (and notorious while I was there) 114 AEG (AEG = Anglijska Ezikova Gimnazia, or English Language School).

I’d like to ask classmates worldwide (about half of us live abroad) to start thinking about getting together in Sofia somewhere end of July – beginning of August.

Please, write comments here (preferred), and send me an e-mail to veni at veni.com

Please, write also ideas about place for the party, let me know. My suggestion – Matti Hall at the NDK in Sofia.

Wrete also ideas about the date. My suggested date is – July 28 (Saturday, it is just before people start to take off to the sea – Black, White, Whatever:)

I got a new Dell XPS m1210 – wonderful piece! After some minor updates and edits, I can highly recommend it for usage by anyone. It’s worth getting one!

I could recommend it, but not immediately – there are some items, which I hope to be able to contribute in fixing; I’m expecting an e-mail from one of Dell’s engineers to talk about it.

It’s a great computer – powerful (2 Gb RAM, 2 GHz Intel Dual Core 2 CPU, 120 Gb 7200 rpm HDD, 256 nVidia… – the techie readers would know what all this means). Mozilla, Firefox, and Eudora run at the same time, without influencing the VLC, or the Picasa browsing.
Oh, and did I mention it has a 4 Mpx built-in camera?
Or that it has the best sound I’ve heard so far on a notebook?
And it’s quite light, too.

____
Update from Feb. 4: Now, when I’ve already sent my remarks to Dell’s engineers, I can recommend this notebook with no reserves. And also, I’ve been using it for two weeks now, and appreciate all of its features. Great machine!

Update from March 1:
Now I am finally happy. What bothered me was the fact that the Delete key was on the top right corner of the keyboard; what I did – replace the places of the four keys on the top right. In ther original setting they were Home/End/Insert/Delete and now they are Insert/Delete/Home/End.
That makes it much easier for someone who is used to have the keys there. However, just replacing the keys wouldn’t work. You need to reprogram them. You can do that by downloading the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools, and run remapkey.exe