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In an interview with PC Pro, Mike Conner, Firefox Architect,  comments on the recent controversy surrounding Microsoft in the EU, saying that he would be against bundling Firefox with Windows.

“My personal view is that it’s not the right outcome, the choice would be weird. There’s no good UI for that.”

It was Opera who brought the charges against Microsoft, saying that bundling translates into marketshare, and Microsoft’s bundling of IE with Windows was monopolistic.  But Connor disagrees, referring to Firefox’s rapidly climbing marketshare:

“It’s [Opera] asserting that bundling leads to market share. I don’t know how you can make the claim with a straight face, as people become aware there’s an alternative, you don’t end up in that situation. You have to be perceptibly better.”

Manuel Medina Ortega, a member of the European Parliament for the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party, has released his report on piracy(PDF). His wish list is very similiar to that of the RIAA/IFPI ACTA wishlist.

Number 31, under “Implementation of rights”, Medina calls for:

“the setting up in the individual Member States of administrative authorities responsible, on instruction from rightholders and using a graduated approach, for the enforcement of copyright on the internet;”

That’s a fancy way of saying he wants a 3-strikes law enforcible across all countries in the EU. Keep in mind that no proof is needed for an ISP to disconnect a customer, just the word of the rightsholder (which will almost always be a corporation with an army of lawyers begging for the chance to take every penny you’ve ever earned, just because you downloaded a single mp3 from the Pirate Bay).

Number 35, under “Implementation of rights”:

“Encourages the use of work identification and recognition technologies with a view to distinguishing more easily between legal and pirated products;”

Here, Medina is endorsing digital rights management systems. It would seem also that Medina want to criminalize all P2P usage, infringing or not:

(Under “Sanctions and the protection of copyright and related rights holders”) “So the activity of internet users who send files to their peers must be regarded as an illegal act of communication to the public without the possibility of exceptions being applied.”

Under the “Explanatory Statement”, in big bold text:

The nature of copyright must not be allowed to change as a result of technological progress

The above heading goes against logic in every way.

The European Parliament has voted against 3 strikes proposals twice before, but this report is being touted as a much more reasonable approach to copyright law. I don’t see that.

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A few weeks ago, the European Comission complained about Microsoft bundling it’s web browser with it’s operating system, calling it anti-competitive and monopolistic.

Now the EU is considering forcing Microsoft or computer manufacturers to bundle Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari with the operating system.

Microsoft faces the threat of monetary fines, proportional to the sales of windows-based PC’s, and they plan to request a hearing on the matter, before the Commission makes it’s ruling in 2 months.

Its been known for a long time that visiting certain sites while using Internet explorer can look different than visiting a site using any other browser. Most of this is not an issue as some slight feature might be formatted a little different, but occasionally it really causes issues accessing some sites or with those sites functionality. It looks like the EU is noticing this, and in a flash back to the 90’s may be going after Microsoft.

Click here to view the original article on CNET

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure has filed a complaint, alleging that the intense secrecy surrounding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement goes against EU regulation 1049/2001, which deals with public acces to information (Like the EU’s version of the Freedom of Information Act).  Here’s an excerpt from the regulation:

“(7) In accordance with Articles 28(1) and 41(1) of the EU Treaty, the right of access also applies to documents relating to the common foreign and security policy and to police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. Each institution should respect its security rules.”