Sześć lat temu Polacy wyszli na ulice by uratować Europę przed ACTA – międzynarodową umową handlową, negocjowaną z inicjatywy Stanów Zjednoczonych, która groziła wprowadzeniem szeroko zakrojonej cenzury i nadzoru w Internecie w imię rzekomej ochrony praw autorskich. Read the rest
The EU plan to mandate censoring filters for online speech to catch copyright infringement could be finalised as early as next week, and our best hope for halting it is to get the national governments of key EU member states to reject the proposal at that "trilogue" committee meeting. Read the rest
The European Parliament is meeting this week, and the committee that will decide the future of the controversial new Copyright Directive will meet next, and depending on what they do, it might be the end of the road for the internet as we know it. Read the rest
In 2011, Europeans rose up over ACTA, the misleadingly named "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement," which created broad surveillance and censorship regimes for the internet. They were successful in large part thanks to the Polish activists who thronged the streets to reject the plan, which had been hatched and exported by the US Trade Representative. Read the rest
For nearly two months now, the people of Poland have been captivated by the tale of a missing 16-foot python that is believed to be slithering around Warsaw still. Read the rest
Jakiw Palij is a convicted Nazi war-criminal who helped train the force charged with murdering every Jew in Poland, guarded the Trawniki forced labor camp -- where 6,000 prisoners were murdered in a single day -- and was present at the "liquidation" of the Warsaw Ghetto. He's lived in the USA since 1949, when he entered the country and lied about his Nazi past. Read the rest
Protests are boiling over across Poland after the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) passed legislation that would allow the government to force the country's judges, all the way up to the Supreme Court, to retire, allowing them to appoint new, party-friendly judges in their place. Update: Thankfully, the president vetoed the legislation. Read the rest
Trump is an infamously domineering handshaker, who uses the gesture to impose and humiliate. Sometimes, a wily Trudeau or muscular Macron will get the better of him, but they're still playing his game.
Agata Kornhauser-Duda isn't, drifting right past his outstretched l'il smokies to greet Melania Trump instead, only turning to the orange morgellons monster once she had dealt with its much better half.
This swerve by Poland's first lady is smooth af pic.twitter.com/EiyiaXVG61
— Marv (@marv_vien) July 6, 2017
The latest Copycamp call for papers is up, inviting presentations for the excellent Warsaw symposium on copyright, innovation and freedom -- now six years old! Read the rest
Jakub "Mr Werewolf" Rozalski is a prolific Polish painter whose longrunning series of painters depict rural Eastern European folk fighting against mecha warriors, werewolves, and demons. Read the rest
It's been a year since the Law and Justice Party won the Polish election, on familiar-sounding promises to drain the swamp and restore Poland to its former greatness: now school textbooks are being redesigned to downplay evolution and climate change and to recount a fanciful version of Poland's history; the government is mooting giving hoteliers the right to turn away customers based on sexual orientation or skin-color; a minister rejected an international accord against wife-beating because it subverted traditional gender roles; Parliament is about to get the right to choose which journalists may report from its debates; the guy in charge of national sex-ed curriculum believes that condoms give women cancer; a proposed law will virtually end opposition protests; and disloyal journalists at the "independent" state broadcaster have been purged. Read the rest
Last month, Poland's ultra-right government collaborated with the Catholic Church to progress an extreme abortion law that would have sent doctors who performed operations to save fetuses (or their mothers) to prison. Read the rest
Mass protests in Poland and across the world have led Poland's far-right government to drop its Vatican-pleasing total ban on abortion, which was so sloppily overbroad that it potentially criminalized miscarriage and surgeries to save foetuses' lives. Read the rest
Poland's ultra-right government has passed an insane, incoherent ban on abortion that is so badly drafted that it potentially criminalizes miscarriage and surgeries to save the lives of fetuses. Read the rest
Marta sez, "The Modern Poland Foundation is calling for speakers at the 5th International CopyCamp Conference (Warsaw 27-28th October 2016) to discuss the Future of Copyright in Europe. If you'd like to join the debate on the impact copyright has and will have on education, politics, culture and society, send us your proposal and meet with other speakers from all over the world: lawyers, artists, politicians, academics, representatives of NGOS and the media."
It's the fifth time CopyCamp gives floor to all interested parties to talk about copyright in the friendly space of the popular movie theatre in the heart of Warsaw.
Thematic tracks of CopyCamp 2016:
* Copyright and Art
* Remuneration Models
* Copyright, Education and Science
* Technologies, Innovation and Copyright
* Copyright and Human Rights
* Copyright Enforcement
* Copyright Debate
* Copyright Lawmaking
Find more information here. If you are interested in presenting your viewpoint during a 10-minute talk, please send us an abstract of not more than 1800 characters by 31 July.
The International CopyCamp Conference 2016 Future of Copyright in Europe Read the rest
Kolejka ("Queue") is a popular satirical Polish board game that lampoons life under Stalinist rule; the Russian consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has banned publisher IPN, the Polish "Institute of National Remembrance," from distributing its Russian version of the game unless they remove "anti-Russian" elements that are "excessively critical" of the USSR. Read the rest
Poland's Auschwitz Memorial installed mist showers to cool down visitors at the former site of the Nazi's largest concentration camp. Somehow, management was surprised that some people found this insensitive. Read the rest
