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Deutsch: Britisches Parlament stimmt für Digital Economy Bill

In a hasty meeting that lasted only two hours and a half, the UK Parliament, with an overwhelming majority (189 votes to 47), passed on 8 April 2010 the Digital Economy Bill, in third reading, without a real debate, which means that the bill will get royal assent and become law.

The Labour version of the website blocking clause as well as the 3-strikes clauses, including "technical measures for automated blocking" remained. Clause 43 on orphan works which was strongly opposed by photographers was dropped.

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Deutsch: ACTA: Europäische Kommission ignoriert Europäisches Parlament offens...

After years of effort from civil society and from the European Parliament, the European Commission finally published a draft text on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

The most immediately striking point is that the "digital chapter" is still in the text and still contains provisions on ISP liability.

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Deutsch: Wirre Diskussionen im EP über die Durchsetzung geistiger Eigentumsrec...

The probably final set of discussions around the much-debated "Gallo Report" on the enforcement of intellectual property rights was held recently in the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament (EP).

In the week prior to the discussions, a study prepared for the International Chamber of Commerce had claimed that 185 000 jobs were lost as a result of intellectual property infringements in 2008 and this would rise to 1.2 million jobs by 2015.

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Deutsch: Britische Digital Economy Bill: Im Eiltempo durch das Unterhaus

After several hours of debate on 6 April 2010 in an almost empty British House of Commons, the Digital Economy Bill was passed to the next stage. The final debate is today, 7 April 2010 and the vote is scheduled at around 9 PM.

The yesterday's debate in the UK Parliament "has shown under the glare of thousands of webcasts, just how shamefully it can behave", as Monica Horten underlines. The only major change of the text could be the Clause 18 regarding blocking of websites which would be subject to a "super-affirmative procedure".

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Deutsch: Litauisches Gericht urteilt zugunsten eines BitTorrent-Nutzers

A Lithuanian District Court has recently ruled against the anti-piracy organisation LANVA in a case against a user of the BitTorrent tracker LinkoManija.net.

Last year, LANVA accused 106 users of LinkoManija.net of sharing Windows 7 Ultimate and brought one of them to court, which has now decided in favour of the defendant due to faulty evidence.

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Deutsch: Vier Treffer in der belgischen Nachahmung des französischen Hadopi-Ge...

On 17 March 2010, Belgian senator Philippe Monfils presented a new version of his proposition for a law that would implement in Belgium the graduated response system in illegal downloading cases, as the one introduced by the Hadopi law in France. The Belgium draft law includes blocking of websites via ISPs.

Very similar to the French system introduced by Hadopi law, the Belgium version of the graduate response would imply not three but four strikes. It starts with a warning by e-mail, followed by an administrative fine with the possibility to appeal.

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Deutsch: Spanische Regierung bestätigt Anti-Piraterie-Gesetz

The Spanish Council of Ministers approved on 19 March 2010 the draft for the Sustainable Economy Law (LES) that gives legal cover to the closure of sites that links to "illegal" content made available without the the copyright owners' permission.

Despite the very active and strong opposition and criticism (even that of the Spanish Fiscal Council) the draft LES was approved by the Spanish Government without any change as stated Ángeles González Sinde, Minister of Culture.

The approved draft stipulates the setting up of an Intellectual Property Commission that would have the power to denounce to the high court w

Article corrected on 31.03.2010

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Deutsch: GB macht einen Schritt auf die Unterbindung von Internetzugängen zu

The most controversial Digital Economy Bill has advanced one more step having been passed by the British House of Lords on 15 March 2010.