It marks yet another changing point in my life. Just 15 months ago, I was a student, and from one day to the next, I started working for a law firm. 10 months later, I was signing the first of several documents that would ultimately lead to this day, when I actually own real estate.

I think it’s fair to say that I’ve been extremely lucky in life thus far:

• I have a job (>< a few people I know have been looking for one for several months)
• I really enjoy my job (>< several people I know don’t enjoy theirs as much or actually dislike it)
• My job pays well (>< some I know are paid close to minimum wage)
• I was able to buy a flat (>< not all those with only one year of work behind them get bank funding)
• I think said flat suits me, and I see real potential in it [i.e. for when I'll actually have furniture in it]

My great-uncle often says that it’s all about being the right person in the right place and at the right time, but I’ve never been sure I’m the right person. What I do know is that I’ve been extremely fortunate, and have my family to thank for that in great part.

Of course, there’s always the risk that the wind might change direction. If my luck turns for the worse, I could be left with a massive debt that would force me to sell the flat. The problem with that kind of thinking is that it would make me gloomy and fearful of tomorrow.

Instead, therefore, I’ll keep on believing that, while possibly premature and potentially very brash, my move to buy was the right one. After all, it gives you a boost in self-confidence, and having the right dosage of that allows you to do pretty much anything.

Anything? Well, I’m currently trying to get a whole international law firm to update its website (that cost millions to make, apparently). Ambitious much? We’ll see if my luck holds true.

I shall be working as a lawyer in the Brussels office of Loyens & Loeff, a Dutch firm, and in their “Commercial/Intellectual Property/Information Technology” department to be more precise.

After my first full week (i.e. the one that starts on Monday 4 October, with my taking of the lawyer’s oath at the Brussels Court of Appeal), I shall post my thoughts on this new environment. Until then, know that my first day with Loyens is best summarised by three words: fascinating, intense and exhausting (all in a very positive way).

If you have any interest in the questions of why countries filter the Internet, of why speed bumps are preferred to simple car speeding laws, of how Alex in A Clockwork Orange may be our future, I heartily recommend that you take a look at lawcode.net, a place where a few friends and myself will attempt to bring these questions into the open, with the hope that as time goes by, people from all over will contribute articles or short columns.

You don’t need to be a lawyer and you don’t need to be a technologist. All you need is an interest, however remote, in the questions that will appear there. So why not take a look and see what you think?

Law Code: choice is but a memory.

When I was twenty-two,
It was a very good year,
It was a very good year for independent life,
And nights in London town,
We rarely felt down,
And had great things to do,
When I was twenty-two

Thus Ervin Drake’s song (popularised by Frank Sinatra) would have gone, had the composer of “It Was A Very Good Year” benefited from my support as lyricist.
The academic year of 2009-2010 has now come and gone, and I believe my time in London was not only well spent but also great fun.
Between work and play, squirrels and pigeons, Irish and Indian, cuisine and grub, it was a wonderful blend of smiles and tears (well, not quite) from mid-September to end of June.

As an LLM student, I enjoyed lectures that qualified, in my view, as classes worthy of the degree of “Master of Laws”. Those who shared their knowledge and wisdom with us did so (overall) in a positive, instructive and interactive manner. I shall remember many a discussion about the implications of regulation by/of technology, about the reach of intellectual property, et cetera. Hopefully, I shall be able to put this acquired knowledge to good use in the near future; in any event, I know that the valuable teachings of my professors shall not have been wasted.

I encountered in London the same administrative frustration I found in my previous universities, but I am starting to think that this is inevitable (although it should not be so). Many of my fellow students had unacceptable problems regarding course or even exam timetables, even when they revolved around courses of one common specialism and would thus inevitably attract the same students. I have of late encountered much reluctance from my Faculty to allow me to communicate the creation of a new web board to all Law students (KCL-Law.net), and this is a form of censorship I sought to evade for the sake of all students by creating the web board.

As a London resident, I was able to take advantage of the wealth of cultural events that London has to offer, from musicals to museums, although my impression at the end of my stay was that I had not achieved all I set out to achieve. I bathed in the melting-pot of cultures that nourishes London, and had access to an array of sources of entertainment and, of course, plenty of shopping opportunities.

I was also, rather unfortunately, forced to deal with the inadequacies of London transport, from the frequent Tube closures to the incessant traffic congestion problems (especially around Oxford Street). Most annoying, or so I found, was the fact that London seems not to have been designed with pedestrians in mind: zebra crossings with traffic lights are few and far in between, and road names are for all intents and purposes absent outside of the main junctions, which made London navigation in my first months rather difficult.

Of course, living in Hampstead gave me ready access to wonderful scenery, beautiful houses and stunning vehicles. With all the green around, I felt relaxed, at ease. The worries of daily commuting and of the intensity of crowds were easily brushed aside by pleasurable walks in the neighbourhood.

Most of all, I met during this year many people who left their mark on my stay. Some were floor mates, some were course mates and some I knew from beforehand; all were friends. These are the people who made this year what it was, and it was both a privilege and a pleasure to share my year in London with them. As the world is a small place after all, I do not doubt that I shall see or keep in touch with some of them in the future. Regardless of what shall happen, I wish each and every one of them all the best for the years to come.

It was a learning experience. It was a living experience.
Truth be told, I do not regret it.

The existence of the Order of the Two Magpies was unknown to most of the world for many centuries, but on 3 June 2010, P.C. discovered an anomaly in a number of paintings exhibited at the National Gallery, London: there appeared to be a motif common to art of different eras, namely a constant depiction of two birds, generally resembling magpies. Their significance, at first deemed to be a mere coincidence, soon led to the unraveling of the greatest mystery known to man.

Clues left behind by Rubens

It was the examination of several paintings by the Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens that piqued P.C.’s interest: in A Shepherd with his Flock in a Woody Landscape (link to the painting’s page on the National Gallery’s website), in The Watering Place (link) and in A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (link), Rubens includes two birds flying together. While the birds may appear to be of different species according to the painting, it was a sufficiently puzzling inclusion to intrigue the art historian.

Pursuing the search

After this discovery, the mystery increased as P.C. examined other paintings in the National Gallery.

Thus, the two birds could also be found in the painting Tobias and the Archangel Raphael (link – author unknown, said to be based on a composition by Adam Elsheimer).
Furthermore, there are two such birds in Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a Donor (link), a much earlier work, by Bernardino di Betto, otherwise known as Pintoricchio.
[Other paintings portraying the two birds have been omitted from this list due to lack of notes on them]

A number of other works include more than two birds, but feature two of them more prominently.
Thus, in A Castle on a Hill by a River by a Dutch imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael (link), four birds are visible in the sky, though two of them fly together. The same is true of A Deerhound with Dead Game and Implements of the Chase by Jan Weenix (link) and of The Watering Place by Thomas Gainsborough, which echoes the painting by Rubens (link).
In A Boy holding a Grey Horse, attributed to Abraham van Calraet (link), two birds are flying together, with four other birds in the distance. A similar pattern can be found in A Herdsman with Seven Cows by a River, by an imitator of Aelbert Cuyp (link), and in A Scene on the Ice, by Andries Vermeulen (link).

Understanding the clues

Are the two birds significant? Most sceptics would dismiss such a claim. Indeed, it may be mere coincidence, as such sceptics would have us believe.
There is, however, one fact that the sceptics do not take into account. As cultural critic N.B. stressed, “it is so crazy an idea that it might be true”.

If we approach the mystery from this angle, more questions ensue, but none are without an answer:

Why did the painters leave clues?

Much like any secret organisation, many members of the Order of the Two Magpies felt pride in being part of this exclusive group. We may presume that a debate followed Pintoricchio’s depiction of the two birds, if this is indeed the first such depiction, with the possible result that only obscure references were tolerated. Such a result is likely, as Pintoricchio’s popularity did not falter after Saint Catherine of Alexandria with a Donor was made; rather, it grew as Pintoricchio was summoned to work in the Vatican.

When was the Order of the Two Magpies founded?

Current findings do not provide a definite answer to this question, but the lack of known depictions of the two birds suggests that Pintoricchio was among the earliest members. Further research is required to ascertain the truth of this assumption.

What was the purpose of the Order of the Two Magpies?

The most fundamental question that P.C. faced was that of the purpose of said Order.

After examining the paintings depicting the two birds, P.C. stumbled upon Raphael’s painting entitled The Mond Crucifixion (The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saints and Angels, named “Mond Crucifixion” after its former owner – link), which shows two angels in the air around the crucified Christ, holding chalices to gather Christ’s blood.

Could this be relevant? This work was made after Pintoricchio’s Saint Catherine, and when putting the two together, P.C. made an astonishing discovery: P.C.’s findings suggest that the Order of the Two Magpies held the key to one of the greatest mysteries of our existence, namely how we humans came to exist.

Indeed, the following reinterpretation puts our entire existence into perspective: in Raphael’s painting, the two angels behave like magpies and take life (blood) from a dying divinity. The angels/magpies are analogies for we, as humans, as Adam and Eve, who came to consciousness only by taking from our superior guardians.

P.C. notes that this theory was coincidentally embodied in a recent work of great cultural value, the tale of Ezio Auditore da Firenze and Desmond Miles, Assassin’s Creed II. That work, however, is slightly more violent than P.C.’s theory.

Disclaimer: the author of this article does not believe a single word of P.C.’s theory. This was merely an aftermath of the examination period.

Epicaricacy (also “epicharikaky”) is a little-used word, often replaced with the German “Schadenfreude”, that describes the pleasure one feels at the misfortune of others, and the term perfectly encompasses what was going through my mind as I saw the film. As I watched a scene where one of the main characters accidentally blows up both himself and a sheep, I could not help but think of the many times where I laughed at other people suffering/dying (such as the many deaths of Kenny in South Park, or the famous accident scene in Meet Joe Black). There seem to be many, many instances in which the gravest misfortune befalls a character in a story with comic effect. Yet why does this make us laugh?

While I understand the link between epicaricacy and envy or resentment when faced with an opponent (see e.g. Smith, Powell, Combs & Schurtz, Exploring the When and Why of Schadenfreude [2009]; Takahashi, Kato, Matsuura, Mobbs, Suhara & Okubo, When Your Gain Is My Pain and Your Pain Is My Gain: Neural Correlates of Envy and Schadenfreude [2009]), I have some trouble understanding why one feels pleasure at the misfortune of someone else, who is not a competitor but someone with whom we sympathise.

What theories might one suggest?

One could imagine that comedy is achieved because the viewer does not wish the same thing to happen to him/her.

While this may be true in part, I realise that it is often a dose of absurdity and unexpectedness that makes the difference between a tragic and a comic accident.

Are absurdity and abruptness therefore the cause of the comic effect?

I’m not entirely satisfied with that, either, because I’m sure that there are instances in which the comic effect only appears later – I have often realised that something was both absurd and funny only after the moment had passed. Furthermore, there is not necessarily a direct causal effect: I can imagine that should a UFO crash in front of me, flattening a few pedestrians, I would find it absurd but not amusing (whereas Kenny dies in such a manner in one South Park episode, with great comic effect).

Does our involvement in the situation play a role?

Being able to distance oneself from the situation allows one to look at the situation from a wholly different angle. I’m sure it helps, but that doesn’t remove the amusing character of a situation in which one is involved. To illustrate, a few weeks back, a friend stumbled in front of me in a most acrobatic manner. It was sudden and absurd, and it was hilarious, despite the fact that we were worried about him (he was perfectly all right).

There seem to be many factors, but none of them seems to have a sure role. As I’m running out of ideas for theories, and as I’m in the middle of exams, which has impaired my ability to think of non-legal stuff, I must temporarily surrender to the absence of definite knowledge.

May I ask for your thoughts on the matter?

Here is my analysis of the situation, based on the BBC’s “Where they stand” articles, the Conservative Manifesto, the Labour Manifesto and the Liberal Democrats’ Manifesto.
I also went through the Green Party’s Manifesto, but found it to have very few elements of general policy, so I won’t analyse it here.

Britain and the European Union

On EU-related topics, the Conservative Party is a clear loser. It states in its manifesto that it’s opposed to the Lisbon Treaty but will not reverse it, and that it will enact a law to ensure that “any proposed future treaty that transferred areas of power, or competences, would be subject to a referendum”. They will “introduce a United Kingdom Sovereignty Bill to make it clear that ultimate authority stays in this country, in our Parliament”.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, I am very pro-Europe.

The Liberal Democrats, in their Manifesto, say that they “believe that European co-operation is the best way for Britain to be strong, safe and influential in the future”. They wish to “continue to campaign for improved accountability, efficiency and effectiveness”. They say that they would opt in to pan-European justice policies and encourage greater European security and defence co-operation.

Labour are on a similar wavelength, stating that “Britain is stronger in the world when the European Union is strong, and that Britain succeeds when it leads in Europe and sets the agenda for change”. They have an interesting take on Turkey’s membership to the EU: “Turkey’s future membership is a key test of Europe’s potential to become a bridge between religions and regions”.

Overall, so far: Tory (Conservatives) = 0; Labour = 1; LibDem = 1.

Civil Liberties

In the land of Big Brother, with enough CCTV in operation for people to be filmed 300 times a day in London, the brandishing of civil liberties by parties may be somewhat perplexing. It is nevertheless good to see that some of them still care a little about all of this “freedom” nonsense (“privacy”, “rights”, …).

There are two issues about which I have a strong opinion: the National DNA Database, which is supposed to help “quickly identify offenders, make earlier arrests, secure more convictions, provide critical investigative leads for police investigations” (I quote the website), and libel laws.

The former is a database of DNA samples and profiles that came under fire from the European Court of Human Rights in the Marper v UK case. To cut a long story short, the DNA database was meant to fight crime, but held information about people who were held to be innocent, and this was a problem.

Where libel is concerned, the 2-year libel case against Simon Singh was dropped a few days ago, and suddenly all the parties are talking about an issue to which they rarely gave thought beforehand. If you want to know what the problem is with the English laws on libel, I suggest taking a look at the (not so neutral, but very informative) LibelReform website.

The Conservative Party support the DNA database, but would ensure DNA from innocent people is removed: they will “legislate to make sure that our DNA database is used primarily to store information about those who are guilty of committing crimes rather than those who are innocent”. Regarding libel, they will “review and reform libel laws to protect freedom of speech, reduce costs and discourage libel tourism”.

Labour is surprisingly brief, both on the topic of the DNA database, where they state that they will “continue to make full use of CCTV and DNA technology”, and on libel, where they wish to “bring forward new legislation on libel to protect the right of defendants to speak freely”.

The Liberal Democrats don’t say much about the DNA database, only that they want to “remove innocent people from the police DNA database and stop storing DNA from innocent people and children in the future, too”, but have more to say on libel than the others: they wish to “protect free speech, investigative journalism and academic peer-reviewed publishing through reform of the English and Welsh libel laws – including by requiring corporations to show damage and prove malice or recklessness, and by providing a robust responsible journalism defence”.

Here, the loser is definitely Labour, as I do not adhere to their full support of the DNA database.

Education

Education has been a problematic aspect of the UK, and England in particular, for some time now: English universities are renowned worldwide, but tuition fees are far higher than those at other European universities, without necessarily guaranteeing a higher standard of quality of teaching. To take an example based on personal experience, a year studying postgraduate law in Belgium costs about 1000 Euros in tuition fees, where a year studying postgraduate law in London costs at least 8000 Euros in tuition fees. It’s not half as costly as education across the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s still scary.

To address concerns of both universities, who don’t receive much funding from the government, and students, who seem to pay more and more, a review was commissioned, the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance, called the “Browne Review” as it is being led by Lord Browne. The Browne Review has yet to publish its findings, as it has just launched a “call for proposals”.

Both the Conservatives and Labour state that they will consider the forthcoming findings of the Browne Review, although Labour states that it has “eliminated up-front fees paid by parents and students”, which I must admit I don’t understand.

The Liberal Democrats, on the other hand, have a radical idea: to “scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their first degree, including those studying part-time, saving them over £10,000 each”, and to “immediately scrap fees for final year students”. They say that they “have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over six years, so that the change is affordable even in these difficult economic times, and without cutting university income”. This seems to be a likely way of gaining support among students, and I must admit that this plays in their favour where I’m concerned.

Family and Pensions

Coming from a Belgian political background, I find Britain to be very anti-socialist in many ways, but this does not preclude social issues from finding their way into the parties’ manifestos. Two such issues are very interesting, in my opinion: parental leave, and retirement age.

Parental leave is still mostly “maternity leave” in most countries, a remnant of the sexist society from which we are attempting to depart, and I tend to admire the Scandinavians for their focus on equality in that respect.

Retirement age is also an issue today, as our population lives longer. When pensions were born in the late 19th century, under Otto von Bismarck, the age of 65 was picked because few people lived beyond that age. Today, many people can expect to enjoy 30 years of pension, for an average of 40 years of work. While this is nice in theory, it means that the people who work are supporting an ever-growing number of retired persons, which causes issues of funding (among others).

The Conservatives state that they will “introduce a new system of flexible parental leave which lets parents share maternity leave between them, while ensuring that parents on leave can stay in touch with their employer”. On retirement, they will “look at how to abolish the default retirement age, as many older people want to carry on working”.

Labour prove to be more conservative than the Conservatives here, stating that they will “introduce more flexibility to the nine months’ paid leave that mothers currently enjoy – allowing them to share this entitlement with fathers after a minimum of six months”. On retirement, their views are similar: they will “proceed to end default retirement at 65, with a review to establish the right way in which to support more people to work longer should they choose to do so”.

The Liberal Democrats propose a parental leave system similar to the Conservatives, allowing “parents to share the allocation of maternity and paternity leave between them in whatever way suits them best”, although they go beyond the standard term: they wish to “extend the period of shared parental leave up to 18 months when resources and economic circumstances allow”. Regarding retirement age, they state the same thing as the other two parties: they aim to “scrap compulsory retirement ages, allowing those who wish to continue in work to do so”.

Here, once again, Labour seems to lose, proposing a parental leave system that unfortunately stays locked in the past.

Overall…

It seems rather clear to me that, of the three main parties, the Liberal Democrats are closest to my views. I was surprised to see how many Conservative views resembled my own in issues important to me. This is, however, just one election. Perhaps in the next one (when I will most probably be back in Belgium), the responses to issues will be wholly different. In the meantime, on the 6th of May, I guess I know for whom I am voting.

There is, however, one great absent (in my opinion) from these manifestos: intellectual property. Labour has one line on it, taking sides with the industry (“We will update the intellectual property framework that is crucial to the creative industries – and take further action to tackle online piracy”), and the Conservatives only mention its fiscal aspect, while the Liberal Democrats don’t mention it at all. Now, if one of these three parties had proposed any in-depth plan regarding intellectual property reform, I may have been inclined to give it some thought. Especially if it happened to strike a balance between users and the industry.

People want their private information to remain private until made public by themselves, but once the information is made public, there is no way for them to control this information any more. On the internet, especially, it is hard to erase information that you would want to see disappear, notably if the information in question does not cause harm to your reputation.

Companies want to protect trade secrets as well as much commercial information, but while we tend to speak of information being “given”, “transferred”, “licensed for use”, the law doesn’t recognise information as being remotely similar to property, and this can lead to certain issues. Indeed, if reverse engineering is possible and if it is impossible for the company to obtain a patent, it may be easy for a competitor to find the information, and there’s nothing the company can do about it.

What can we do about it?

Critics of the idea of applying “property” to information say that “property” entails an idea of “rival” use (only one person can have it at a time) and exclusivity, while information is by nature “non rival” (many people can use it at one time). While I fail to see how “intellectual property” is allowed in such a case, where many people can end up using one piece of information (e.g. the description of an invention in a patent) through licences, I recognise that the idea of “property” may not be adequate.

There is therefore, in my opinion, a need for a new legal concept, that of “information ownership“.

Information ownership would entail the right for the information owner to use information, to transfer ownership of it, to allow certain uses of information by other persons, et cetera. It would not be “property” in the traditional legal sense, but would cover the same basic idea, thus allowing the law to better reflect reality (it goes beyond mere semantics, I believe, but it may appear as simply that to many).

In a world with the concept of information ownership, courts would recognise the right for a person to demand the deletion of all instances of publication of a certain piece of information, if the person’s interests trump those of society. It would be decided on a case by case basis, but such a system would allow for flexibility.

In a system of information ownership, the current tests with regard to private data could still apply, as they are merely a declination of the idea according to which people should have control over certain data. Trade secrets would potentially be better protected, as there would be a closer link between the intention of the parties (i.e. “I own the information, and I’m allowing you to use it”) and the legal framework.

The main problem with such a system is the following question: who owns the information?

Just as there can be co-ownership of property, so there can be co-ownership of information. Take the example of a picture of three people partying in a club. The information embodied in the picture is that these three people were partying in a club. On a Facebook/Flickr/… page, there may be additional details about the picture, such as the date on which it was taken, thus allowing third parties to infer the following piece of information: these three people were at this club on this day. Who owns ownership in this piece of information? All three. Who is allowed to use the information and allow use of it? All three, with the possibility of ex post control by the co-owners: if one person makes the information public, the other two can force any identified third person who is using the information to stop using it.

Moreover, the standard rules of evidence would apply, so as to better answer the question of ownership for cases where there is no identifiable link with any person (where there is as identifiable link with one person, there will be a presumption of ownership by this person).

Of course, I can see a million different issues arising as a result of such a system, but this was merely a first draft of an idea, a call for discussion.

All that I know is that, in my opinion, there is a need for something that bridges the gap between privacy, data protection and trade secrets, something that allows us to control information beyond its publication. Otherwise, it is not hard to foresee cases in the near future where people will wish to remove information that they themselves have published or that someone else did, and where the current legal and real contexts will prevent them from doing so.

Four words: copyright in Peter Pan.

Normally (in the EU), copyright in a work expires 70 years after the author’s death. Previously, this tended to be 50 years rather than 70.

The author of the play Peter Pan, Sir James Matthew Barrie, died in 1937, and at the time, the rule of 50 years applied, i.e. copyright was to expire in 1987. It turns out that Sir Barrie bequeathed copyright in his Peter Pan works to the Hospital for Sick Children, later renamed Great Ormond Street Hospital, in 1929.

While copyright in the works expired in 1987 (only to be later extended to 2007, when the “70 years” regime came into force), the Brits decided to create an exception to the standard rule, and included in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 a “Section 301″ and a “Schedule 6″.

The substance of these rules? They confer on the Hospital the following:

a right to a royalty in respect of the public performance, commercial publication or communication to the public of the play “Peter Pan” by Sir James Matthew Barrie, or of any adaptation of that work, notwithstanding that copyright in the work expired on 31st December 1987

In other words, perpetual royalties, at least within the UK.

Now I dare you not to find that cute…

It’s frustrating, because I hope to work in this very field (I find it fascinating), and all I seem to see are the manners in which people have been slowly destroying the system by acting in a way that they believe helps the system.

Copyright

First, a little introduction on copyright and Digital Rights Management (and here, I’ll be basing my analysis on the system in English law – see the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA) 1988).

Copyright is an exclusive right for a person to certain acts, with respect to a specific “work” (a product, …): copying the work, issuing copies to the public, renting/lending the work to the public, performing/showing/playing the work to the public, communicating the work to the public, making an adaptation of the work (these are the “restricted acts”).

The most well-known right among these is the right to copy the work, and copyright implies that if A has copyright in work 1, B cannot copy work 1.

This right has limitations, the biggest one being that if A gives a licence to B (in effect an authorisation), B is allowed to copy work 1.

Now, Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems have gained in importance over the last few decades, as the digital revolution unfolded and it became surprisingly easy to copy works such as digital music recordings, computer games, digital versions of films, …

In effect, DRM systems enable the rights holder to prevent many of the aforementioned “restricted acts” by rendering them more difficult, through the use of technology.

DRM has been heralded by many as a means of reducing piracy, notably by the music industry after Napster and Kazaa brought file-sharing to the world of computer users.

However, more often than not, it seems that DRM hurts those who legally acquire an item more than it hurts those who acquire it illegally.

Let us look at a recent case study, a controversy around the upcoming Assassin’s Creed II game for the PC (AC2), a sequel to the popular Assassin’s Creed. Ubisoft released AC2 a few months ago for several game consoles, but the PC version is only set for release around mid-March.

As the release date approaches, reports have surfaced of a new kind of DRM: it seems that Ubisoft require gamers on the PC version of AC2 to have a constant internet connection for the game to work. If your internet connection quivers, you lose all progress since your last checkpoint. If you don’t have an internet connection, you can’t play.

Who does this hurt most?

Theory 1: “piracy”. This is the official explanation. Ubisoft believe that game piracy on the PC is so large that the only way to stop it is to ensure that only players with a legally acquired copy (so-called “legit users”) can save their progress. This does not convince me: Ubisoft have stated that they can “release a patch so that the game can be played in single-player without an online connection” (source), which means that pirates may very well create the patch themselves, and pirate copies will start floating around the internet very soon.

Theory 2: Ubisoft and “legit users”. This seems to be the point the entire internet community is making, from Ubisoft’s own web forums to Ars Technica. It boils down to this: many people who have bought Ubisoft games in the past are frustrated by the announcement of this limitation, and will not buy the game. Therefore, Ubisoft have less pre-orders of its games. People who buy this game will be frustrated by the sudden inability not to continue playing the moment their internet connection drops, and will perhaps not buy Ubisoft games in the future. Therefore, less profit for Ubisoft in the long run. And both kinds of users may resort to piracy to go around this limitation. Therefore, piracy goes up.

Unless Ubisoft realise this soon (the game will be released in a week), its DRM scheme will hurt Ubisoft’s profits and generate more piracy. How does this fulfil the purpose of the DRM scheme?

As for me, I’m still hesitating, waiting for now. I have had a pre-order of AC2 for some time now, but I may cancel it in the coming couple of days. We’ll see how things progress.

All in all, though, this perfectly illustrates one problem: technical implementations of copyright restrictions are alienating users who would adhere to the original business model. Too much copyright, through DRM, kills copyright.

Patents

Let us now examine patents (pronounced “pah-tent”, not “pay-tent”, in the UK, notably to distinguish the adjective “patent” [as in "patently"] from the noun “patent” [as in "patents"]).

This analysis is once again based on English law (the Patents Act (PA) 1977).

Patents are a monopoly right given to commercially exploit an invention. In other words, with a patent, the owner has an exclusive right to make this product or carry out this process, to the exclusion of everyone else, even if someone else creates it without having copied from the owner.

Patents are granted after a procedure that involves publishing information about the product/process, and thus the theory goes that the monopoly right conferred by the patent is counterbalanced by the publication of this information.

However, this right has limitations, two of which are of great importance: if B has created such a product or employed such a process before the publication of A’s patent, B will still be allowed to continue doing what he/she did beforehand; also, if A gives a licence to B, B is allowed to exploit the invention.

The patent system is generally given a few justifications: it serves as a reward for innovation (you invent something and are given a monopoly as a reward), it serves to incentivise innovation (the monopoly allows a return on investment – this is slightly different from the “reward” justification), it is a natural right (inventors should have a right in their invention), it allows the sharing of information (the patent allows the publication of information that would perhaps not have been shared otherwise). While one can disagree with these justifications, the first two seem to be still very present today.

There is one field in which patents have been the focus of debates and controversies: biotechnology, and we shall examine certain of the issues here.

The question of the patentability of biotechnology came to the forefront only in the late eighties/early nineties, with the OncoMouse case, which concerned one of the first transgenic animals, a mouse whose genes were particularly susceptible to cancer.

Biotechnological inventions have been the target of specific regulation in Europe since the adoption (after a long history of parliamentary debates, revisions, …) of the Biotechnology Directive, which takes into account the lessons from the OncoMouse case and other, later cases.

Taking cue from the Howard Florey/Relaxin case, the Directive specifies the following in Article 5:

1. The human body, at the various stages of its formation and development, and the simple discovery of one of its elements, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, cannot constitute patentable inventions.

2. An element isolated from the human body or otherwise produced by means of a technical process, including the sequence or partial sequence of a gene, may constitute a patentable invention, even if the structure of that element is identical to that of a natural element.

In layman’s terms, the situation is the following: when one discovers a discrete segment of DNA that contains the information necessary for producing specific proteins, one can reproduce it synthetically. Does this amount to a discovery, or is in at invention that can be patented?

The answer for which the Biotechnology Directive provides is that any gene that is isolated and thus created separately can be patented. The technical intervention is the creation of the artificial molecule, and this allows patentability.

Can you see the logic behind this rule? The more I think about it, the less I understand it. It may make sense to allow the patenting of the process used to isolate a gene, but what could possibly justify issuing a patent for the isolate gene itself?

According to this logic, if A isolates gene Z using method 1, whenever B isolates Z using method 2 there will be infringement, despite the fact that Z already exists in nature.

The patenting of a gene or of a molecule existing already in the human body causes all sorts of other issues, notably regarding innovation. Indeed, if A obtains a patent on molecule Y, A can oppose any use of molecule Y. Yet in the case of pharmaceuticals, medicine and other such areas of practice, the use of molecules is the starting point for any research.

The patent system is often seen as an incentive to innovation, but this is then surely one area where it stifles innovation, as one has to obtain a licence for the use of a molecule before one can even start doing any research. If one sees the patent system as a method of rewarding innovation, does this not go too far?

Closing comments

To me, intellectual property is a good thing to have in the Western society in which I live (I have very strong reservations about the way Westerners try to force intellectual property upon developing countries, but that’s another matter). Copyright especially has a special place in my heart as an author and composer: I would dislike to see any works I do be attributed to someone else, for example.

However, the current systems of intellectual property have flaws.

Copyright, which once favoured the author, has gone to favour the producer/publisher, and the latter has decided that fighting piracy is a topmost priority, to the extent of alienating normal users. What is the Creative Commons movement if not an indication that copyright in the minds of creators goes too far?

Patents, which cover most products and processes, may also be seen as going too far in certain cases. The biotechnological sphere provides us with illustrations, but it is by no means the only one. Furthermore, in the EU, incremental inventions gain as much protection (if not more) as a pioneering invention.

One major issue in all of this is that complaining appears to be of no use. The USA adore IP rights, and so does the EU. Powerful lobbies seem to always push for more rights for the industry (whether the publishers/producers for copyright or the companies with huge Research & Development sections for patents). Will the community of world users and creators/inventors ever take back what they have lost to the industry?