"EU Commissioner Kroes' deal with Microsoft creates real dangers to Europe's growing open source economy, warns the FFII. Using patent licenses that exclude businesses, the software monopolist has turned the EU competition ruling into a victory, and now gets implicit support from the Commission to proceed aggressively against its competitors.

Neelie Kroes European Commissioner for Competition and Microsoft agreed that the royalties payable for the interoperability information will be 10,000 Euros, and that Microsoft can use its EPO software patents to charge 0.4 percent of all the sales of its competitors. The FFII says that these conditions effectively exclude open source competitors and add costs for all who wish to communicate with Microsoft products. This is a new transaction cost for all society, its the opposite of an open Internet." -- Read more

"Internet service providers (ISPs) are not obliged to hand over information on people suspected of illegally sharing music and other copyright material online, an advisor to the EU's highest court has said.

The advisor to the European Court of Justice (EJC), advocate general Juliane Kokott, said on Wednesday (18 July) that according to EU law, member states are allowed to 'exclude' revealing personal data on internet traffic in civil

cases -- unlike criminal cases where such compliance would be required." -- Read more

The Free Software Foundation Europe are calling our attention to a proposed new directive which will criminalise "aiding, abetting, or inciting" infringement of copyright, trademarks, and patents". From the FSFE's webpage on the matter, they list changes and amendments which they think should be applied to this directive as to protect our freedoms: