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Deutsch: Entscheidung im Schwedischen Pirate Bay-Prozess erwartet

The Pirate Bay trial in Sweden continued until 3 March 2009 with the hearings of the prosecution and defence witnesses.

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Deutsch: IRMA will Webseiten sperren

Macedonian: ИРМА се обидува да блокира веб-сајтови

IRMA, the Irish Recorded Music Association, wants to block Irish Internet users' access to certain websites. In February 2009, after having reached the deal with Eircom, the association sent letters to Irish Internet providers asking them to block the sites that it indicated, under threat of legal action.

Eircom has already agreed to a "three strikes" approach and IRMA was to take the same approach with all other Irish ISPs.

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Deutsch: HADOPI-Gesetz schafft beinahe einen gefährlichen Präzedenzfall

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Macedonian: Законот HADOPI близу до креирање на опасе...

On 18 February 2009, Christine Albanel, French Minister of Culture, presented to the Chamber of Deputies the controversial Création et Internet draft law (so called Hadopi law) calling for the creation of a government agency to manage the graduated response (or three-strike) process.

The law which was passed by the Senate in October 2008 was discussed by the deputies in the legal commis

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Deutsch: Der Pirate-Bay Prozess in Schweden

The big, long and extremely mediatized trial filed on 31 January 2008 by Swedish prosecutors against the four Pirate Bay founders for "promoting other people's infringements of copyright laws" started at Stockholm's District Court, on 16 February 2009.

The first day of the trial was dedicated to the opening statements of the prosecution and the defendants, the latter denying any criminal act. Prosecutor Håkan Roswall presented the claims of the plaintiffs Warner Bros, MGM, EMI, Colombia Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony BMG and Universal and spent most of the morning trying to describe how the Pirate Bay works suggesting it was a commerc

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Deutsch: Datenschutzbehörden unterstützen die Zivilgesellschaft beim Thema Te...

Macedonian: Органите за заштита на лични податоци ...

The Article 29 Working Group and the European Data Protection Supervisor have issued public statement supporting some of the arguments of the civil society, including EDRi, made in the recent open letter sent to the European Parliament on 17 February 2009 and in the campaign against "voluntary data retention".

The open letter underlines the signatories' concerns related

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The war between IFPI and the Pirate Bay continues with a new banning of the site in Denmark ruled by a Danish court at the beginning of February this year.

Exactly a year ago, in February 2008, following an IFPI action, a Danish court ruled that Tele2 had to block its users from accessing The Pirate Bay. Now, the court has issued a preliminary injunction against DMT meaning that all ISPs owned by DMT have to deny their users' access to The Pirate Bay. Also, in January 2009, TDC, the largest Danish ISP and owner of most of the cables, decided to block access to the Swedish site as a preventive measure.

However, ISPs are not happy with the decision and three of them, TDC

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The case introduced by IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Industry) against Irish ISP Eircom through which Eircom was required to block P2P filesharing by applying a filtering system to its network, was settled outside the court room. The music industry decided to drop the action provided Eircom introduces a "three strikes" system where users accused of filesharing by the industry would be disconnected after two warning letters.

Eircom is pleased with the settlement as it does not risk breaching privacy laws by providing to the music industry details about its subscribers and because it does not have to add software to its network that might interfere with its broadband service.

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The Spanish General Society of Authors and Editors (SGAE) has been fined for having placed a private detective in a restaurant in Seville, in 2005, to film a wedding in order to prove that the restaurant was using music for which it had paid no royalties.

The court in Seville where the action was heard found that the video presented by SGAE as proof against the restaurant was inadmissible because it was "a clear violation of the constitutional rights to a person's own image" and it was in breach of the privacy of the couple because it had been taken clandestinely.