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Deutsch: Den Worten müssen Taten folgen – Kommende ACTA-Abstimmungen im EP

After months of machinations, delays and politics, it appears that there is no more scope for delay and all four of the Committees giving Opinions on ACTA will finally vote next week.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: ACTA ist noch nicht am Ende

Next week, the European Parliament's Development Committee (DEVE), the first of the five Committees responsible for providing opinions on the proposed ACTA agreement will vote on its draft recommendation.

As of today, it appears more likely than not that the Development Committee will vote in favour of ACTA. The Parliamentarian leading on the dossier is Czech Eurosceptic Jan Zahradil.

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Deutsch: Portugal: Klagen gegen Urheberrechtsverletzer sind zwecklos

In a six-year long case brought by the Portuguese Phonographic Association (Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa -AFP), the Lisbon Criminal Court has recently given a ruling condemning a young men to a 2 month suspended jail sentence and a 880 euro fine.

Initially, AFP was after the 17 years old man (in 2006) for allegedly having shared hundreds of songs online without permission.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Der Tag, an dem sich der Hadopi-Strom in die Piratenbucht ...

On 16 April 2012, the HADOPI Authority published a study on economic models of streaming and downloading services and websites of illegal content (notwithstanding the fact that the content is legal). Included in the study is a list of the 25 most popular unauthorised streaming sites in France.

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Deutsch: Youtube verliert im Fall gegen GEMA

A German court decided on 20 April 2012 that YouTube was indirectly liable for the copyrighted content posted by its users in a case brought to court in 2010 by the royalty collective society Gema.

In this case, the defendant argued that it was not liable as it only provided the hosting platform for its users.

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Deutsch: Entscheidung des Europäischen Gerichtshofs in der Rechtssache Bonnier

Bonnier Audio took the Swedish Internet service provider (ISP) Perfect Telecommunication to court, to obtain an order to disclose the identities of alleged infringers of their intellectual property (IP) rights.

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Deutsch: ACTA – Wir sind noch lange nicht am Ziel

Following the announcement of David Martin, the Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in charge of the ACTA dossier in the European Parliament, that he will advise his colleagues to vote against the proposal, a widespread assumption appears to have developed that ACTA is now dead. This is not just wrong. It is dangerous and wrong.

The background of what's happening in the European Parliament is as follows.

Ruling

Bonnier Audio took the Swedish Internet service provider (ISP), Perfect Telecommunication, to court to obtain a court order to disclose the identities of alleged infringers of their intellectual property (IP) rights. As a result, the Swedish High Court asked the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) if, assuming such a measure was proportionate, a Member State could introduce legislation which would require telecommunications data to be made available for such purposes. More specifically, would such a national measure be in breach of the Data Retention Directive?