歐洲議會嘗試撥款支援 Open Source Software 的 Bug Bounty 計畫

Hacker News 上看到歐盟議會試著以 Bug Bounty 計畫支援 Open Source Software 的消息。這次看到的是 VLC:「VLC: Bug Bounty Program - Get Rewards through HackerOne」。

The European Parliament has approved budget to improve the EU’s IT infrastructure by extending the free software security audit programme (FOSSA) and by including a bug bounty approach in the programme.

這還蠻特別的... 由官方經費贊助 open source 的計畫,除了 VLC 外,重點會在成效以及後續還有哪些被贊助。

歐盟對於盜版是否帶來傷害的研究

歐盟在 2014 年做了關於盜版與銷量的研究,結果一直被壓到最近才發表出來 (於是就大概可以猜到結論了...):「EU Piracy Report Suppression Raises Questions Over Transparency」。

“In general, the results do not show robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online copyright infringements,” the study notes.

甚至:

The study found that piracy had a slightly positive effect on the videogames industry, suggesting that those who play pirate games eventually become buyers of official content.

另外也描述了現有電影與 TV-series 定價策略偏高:

“Overall, the analysis indicates that for films and TV-series current prices are higher than 80 per cent of the illegal downloaders and streamers are willing to pay,” the study notes.

難怪被壓著...

AWS EU (Stockholm) Region

由老大 Werner Vogels 出來講一些細節...

AWS EU (Stockholm) Region 預定在 2018 年開張營業:「Välkommen till Stockholm – An AWS Region is coming to the Nordics」。

The new AWS EU (Stockholm) Region will have three Availability Zones and will be ready for customers to use in 2018.

這會是歐洲第五個 Region (還有一個法國預定在今年開):

The new AWS EU (Stockholm) Region, coupled with the existing AWS Regions in Dublin, Frankfurt, and London, and a future one in France, will provide customers with quick, low-latency access to websites, mobile applications, games, SaaS applications, big data analysis, Internet of Things (IoT) applications, and more.

歐盟法院認為公開無線網路的營運者不需要對使用者的侵權行為負責

歐盟法院 (The Court of Justice of the European Union) 認為公開無線網路的營運者不需要對使用者的侵權行為負責:「EU Court: Open WiFi Operator Not Liable For Pirate Users」。

不過這是有一些前提的,法院認為應該要符合這幾個要件,營運方才不要負責。基本上完全沒有 filter 限制的無線網路會符合這些條件:

The Court further notes that in order for such ‘mere conduit’ services to be exempt from third party liability, three cumulative conditions must be met:

– The provider must not have initiated the transmission
– It must not have selected the recipient of the transmission
– It must neither have selected nor modified the information contained in the transmission.

帶這並不代表丟著不管,而是在發生後要求改善:

In an effort to strike a balance between protecting a service provider from third party liability and the rights of IP owners, the Court ruled that providers can be required to end infringement.

“[T]he directive does not preclude the copyright holder from seeking before a national authority or court to have such a service provider ordered to end, or prevent, any infringement of copyright committed by its customers,” the Court found.

One such measure could include the obtaining of an injunction which would force an operator to password-protect his open WiFi network in order to deter infringement.

但法院並不同意直接監控:

On a more positive note, the Court rejected the notion of monitoring networks for infringement or taking more aggressive actions where unnecessary.

“[T]he directive expressly rules out the adoption of a measure to monitor information transmitted via a given network. Similarly, a measure consisting in terminating the internet connection completely without considering the adoption of measures less restrictive of the connection provider’s freedom to conduct a business would not be capable of reconciling the abovementioned conflicting rights,” the Court concludes.

網路對現在的言論自由非常重要,所以只有在確認侵犯他人權益的情況下才採取必要措施,歐盟法院這樣判大概是覺得這樣吧...

歐盟廢止境內漫遊的費用

歐盟廢止了在歐盟境內漫遊的費用:「Europe finally abolishes mobile phone roaming charges」:

Members of the European parliament have voted through new rules that will scrap mobile roaming charges and stop holidaymakers returning home to the nightmare of a massive phone bill racked up on their travels.

不過接下來還有要戰:

The abolishment of roaming charges was not met with universal approval. In the days before the vote Roger Helmer MEP tabled an amendment to reject the agreement on behalf of Ukip.

搭板凳看吧...

歐盟開始調查 Google 的壟斷

歐盟開始調查 Google 的壟斷:「Europe to accuse Google of illegally abusing its dominance」,原始報導出自「Europe to accuse Google of illegally abusing its dominance」。

不知道是不是跟先前在「Google 利用搜索的壟斷優勢打擊競爭對手」提到的文件有關:

AWS 在歐洲開第二個資料中心了:德國

上次開 us-west-1 (Ireland) 是 2008 年 12 月了,離這次 eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) 開在德國差了快八年:「Now Open - AWS Germany (Frankfurt) Region - EC2, DynamoDB, S3, and Much More」。

六月的時候有人發現 eu-central-1 這個代碼:「Amazon AWS builds a data center in Germany: Nice idea!」。

比較有趣的是,公告雖然出來了,但有些地方好像還沒完全搞定:

價錢的部份比 eu-west-1 貴一點點而已,對於要符合歐盟法令將資料留在歐盟地區,並且希望有遠距離異地建設的服務來說,解決了相當多的問題 :p

剛剛踹了 ec2.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com 這個 domain,看起來目前亞洲地區都還是從美國西岸再一路過去,不知道之後會不會再最佳化這塊,走俄羅斯或是有辦法走東歐過去...

Semantic Versioning 與 Composer 的應用

Nomad PHP EU 上的議程:「Composer: Stability and Semantic Versioning Demystified」,講 Semantic VersioningComposer 上的應用。

投影片還講到了 Composer 處理版本需求互相重疊時的情況,可能會有 conflict 的問題...

歐洲議會通過網路中立條款

前幾天歐洲議會通過了網路中立條款:「European Parliament passes strong net neutrality law, along with major roaming reforms」,條文內容的 PDF 可以在這裡看到。

PDF 的左側是 Text proposed by the Commission,右側是 Amendment,可以看到「網路中立」被清楚定義:

The principle of "net neutrality" means that traffic should be treated equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independent of the sender, receiver, type, content, device, service or application

然後下面圍繞著網路中立的主題規範了許多電信服務提供商的行為,並且保障公民的上網權利。另外還要求各國的電信主管機關制定檢舉程序,讓公民可以很容易檢舉。