McCreevy's new IPR-expanding plans

Charlie McCreevy, our Internal Market Commissioner, wants to increase the copyright on recordings from the current 50 years, to 95 years. And he ignores two studies his Directorate commissioned in the process. (via Bente Kalsnes)

This guy never saw an intellectual property right he didn't want to expand.

Prior to the Lisbon Treaty, we also had something called a Lisbon Strategy. Officially, it's still there, but you know...

It was a largely mistaken project to make the EU into the world's most dynamic economy by 2010. The reasons why it was largely mistaken are largely that the EU doesn't understand information, in abstract. Which is a bad thing, if you want to build a 'knowledge' or 'information' economy. More on that in this older post: Software Patents, Revisited.

Although "the Commission reinforces the suspicion, already widely held by the public at large, that its policies are less the product of a rational decision-making process than of lobbying by stakeholders" may be a more straightforward explanation.

That's from a hard-hitting letter the author of the abovementioned studies wrote to the Commission President, Barroso. Worth reading (.pdf).

(though they also really don't get it)