-
EU written declaration 12/2010 on ACTA
Posted on April 25th, 2010 1 comment1½ month ago (8/3-2010), 3 members of the European Parliament proposed this one page written declaration as a stance on the secretive ACTA negotiations.
The statement contains these 6 short guidelines for the impact of ACTA on European legislation:
- Takes the view that the proposed agreement should not indirectly impose harmonisation of EU copyright, patent or trademark law, and that the principle of subsidiarity should be respected;
- Declares that the Commission should immediately make all documents related to the ongoing negotiations publicly available;
- Takes the view that the proposed agreement should not force limitations upon judicial due process or weaken fundamental rights such as freedom of expression and the right to privacy;
- Stresses that economic and innovation risks must be evaluated prior to introducing criminal sanctions where civil measures are already in place;
- Takes the view that internet service providers should not bear liability for the data they transmit or host through their services to an extent that would necessitate prior surveillance or filtering of such data;
- Points out that any measure aimed at strengthening powers of cross-border inspection and seizure of goods should not harm global access to legal, affordable and safe medicines;
To me they seem so simple and so obvious, which makes me even more surprised that only around 25% of parliament members have signed the declaration (50% needed before 17/6-2010).
So who are the politicians who have signed this declaration and who have not (updated regularly)? Denmark in the high end with 6 out of 13 politicians having signed the declaration, but looking at who each of the signatories are (and which party they’re from) I’m surprised this number isn’t a lot higher.
Have signed (as of 24/4):
Margrete Auken (SF)Ole Christensen (Soc.)Christel Schaldemose (Soc.)Britta Thomsen (Soc.)Jens Rohde (V)Morten Messerschmidt (DF)
Haven’t signed (as of 24/4):Personally I intend to contact a few of these and I can only suggest you do the same (links contain contact information). If you’re interested in helping out check out this list of what to do (includes dates when the MEP can sign the declaration).On a related note a current draft of ACTA was publicized this week and while the scope seems slightly more moderate than previously leaked drafts in the way it is phrased, there’s still considerable bad ideas in there and substantial legroom for some interpretations with awful implications. So while (2) is less of an issue now, the remaining 5 points remain more important than before. For a more in-depth look (3 pages) at the implications of ACTA head over to Ars. -
Gmail default for mailto links in Google Chrome (Windows)
Posted on April 14th, 2010 No commentsUpdate:
Approach might break, as Microsoft Outlook seems to be overwriting this registry key on a regular basis. I’ll update this post with a more solid approach sooner or later.It’s a small annoyance, but I’d prefer to have my mailto: links open a compose window in Gmail, rather than waiting for Outlook to start. Furthermore then personally I’d rather not have to install apps such as “Google Toolbar”, “ChromeMailer” or “Google Notifier” simply to have my mailto links do what I want, which I know is the solution many people resort to.
On Windows however a mailto: link is just like any other file type, so you can set the default application for that file type. In theory you could go through the a bunch of menus in the file explorer change the settings there, but who wants to do that when you can just apply the change directly in the registry with a single click (more like 6 actually)?
Anyway here’s the content of the registry file (right click and save as gmailto.reg):
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command]
@=hex(2):22,00,25,00,55,00,53,00,45,00,52,00,50,00,52,00,4f,00,46,00,49,00,4c,\
00,45,00,25,00,5c,00,4c,00,6f,00,63,00,61,00,6c,00,20,00,53,00,65,00,74,00,\
74,00,69,00,6e,00,67,00,73,00,5c,00,41,00,70,00,70,00,6c,00,69,00,63,00,61,\
00,74,00,69,00,6f,00,6e,00,20,00,44,00,61,00,74,00,61,00,5c,00,47,00,6f,00,\
6f,00,67,00,6c,00,65,00,5c,00,43,00,68,00,72,00,6f,00,6d,00,65,00,5c,00,41,\
00,70,00,70,00,6c,00,69,00,63,00,61,00,74,00,69,00,6f,00,6e,00,5c,00,63,00,\
68,00,72,00,6f,00,6d,00,65,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,22,00,20,00,20,00,2d,\
00,2d,00,61,00,70,00,70,00,3d,00,68,00,74,00,74,00,70,00,73,00,3a,00,2f,00,\
2f,00,6d,00,61,00,69,00,6c,00,2e,00,67,00,6f,00,6f,00,67,00,6c,00,65,00,2e,\
00,63,00,6f,00,6d,00,2f,00,6d,00,61,00,69,00,6c,00,3f,00,65,00,78,00,74,00,\
73,00,72,00,63,00,3d,00,6d,00,61,00,69,00,6c,00,74,00,6f,00,26,00,75,00,72,\
00,6c,00,3d,00,22,00,25,00,31,00,22,00,00,00What this does is change the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\mailto\shell\open\command to be of type REG_EXPAND_SZ and with the value “%USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –app=https://mail.google.com/mail?extsrc=mailto&url=”%1″.
Changing the key type to REG_EXPAND_SZ expand the environment variable %USERPROFILE%, so you don’t have to manually type in the path to your user profile directory.Normal disclaimers apply to changing stuff in the registry and also you should probably consider checking for yourself if the hex values actually correspond to what I claim, for example by using this hex to string tool.
Different platform? Same idea. E.g. on Ubuntu Linux change settings in System > Preferences > Preferred Applications.
Different default browser? Same idea, just change path and however it likes its command line arguments.References:
Google Chrome suggestion thread