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Deutsch: Belgischer Senat streicht repressive Teile des 3-Strikes-Entwurfs

The Belgium version of the French Hadopi three strikes law was significantly changed by the Commission of Finance and Economical Affairs (COMFINECO) of the Belgium Senate during a hearing organised on 11 May 2011 on copyright and Internet.

The proposal, initially submitted in 2010 and re-tabled at the beginning of 2011, was amended by the removal of a series of articles which actually referred to the three strikes system.

NURPA (the Net Users' Rights Protection Association) warns that the proposed law, although amputated, still r

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Deutsch: Italienisches Gericht sperrt BitTorrent-Seite

On 21 April 2011, an Italian court ordered all Italian ISPs to block the BitTorrent search website BTjunkie considered by the public prosecutor as one of the most prominent havens for pirated media. BTjunkie IP addresses and its domain name were to be made inaccessible by all Italian ISPs by blocking users' access to the site.

The court order follows an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian police body responsible for cybercrime.

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Deutsch: Urheberrechtsbeschwerde: Musikbibliothek offline

International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), the largest public domain music library on the Internet, has been recently taken offline following a complaint from the UK's Music Publishers Association which convinced registrar GoDaddy to takedown their website.

The action was brought over a single 90 year-old classical piece by Rachmaninoff.

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Deutsch: EU-Komission strauchelt bei Entgegnung auf ACTA-Stellungnahme

Last week, the European Commission posted a rebuttal to a widely cited opinion document by prominent European academics on the Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). The Commission however made several factual errors in its rebuttal, according to an analysis by Ante Wessels of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructures (FFII).

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Deutsch: Serie: Privatisierung der Online Strafverfolgung – Teil C

The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice recently published his views with regard to the Scarlet/Sabam case C-70/10 in the European Court of Justice. This is a crucial case with regard to privatised enforcement, as it is the first time that the legality of this approach has been tested. The case came as a result of an attempt by the Belgian collecting society Sabam to require the small Belgian ISP Scarlet to install a filtering system to monitor all peer to peer traffic on its network and block files which Sabam ruled to be unauthorised.

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Deutsch: Niederlande: Regierung kündigt Maßnahmen gegen illegale Downloads an

On 11 April 2011, the Dutch government published its copyright policy plans for the coming years. The plans include restricting the currently existing private copying exception and the possibility to block access to websites facilitating copyright infringement.

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Deutsch: Diskussion um Netzsperren im Vereinigten Königreich

UK Minister Ed Vaizey is involved in discussions for private blocking schemes to prevent access to copyright infringing websites. This follows the delays in implementing the Digital Economy Act.

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Deutsch: Überprüfung des Digital Economy Act

In July 2010 UK ISPs TalkTalk and BT filed papers seeking a Judicial Review (JR) of the Digital Economy Act, and were then granted a hearing. In the UK, JRs are rare. They can be brought when there is concern that a UK law contradicts over-riding legislation (e.g. European law).