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On 3 January 2008, the European Commission (EC) launched a public consultation for the preparation of a recommendation on Creative Content Online to be adopted by the European Parliament and Council that calls for a common legal environment for online content, proposing multi-territory licences.

In the opinion of the European Commission, EU policies should support the rapid implementation of "new services and related business models for the creation and circulation of European content and knowledge online."

As a result of the public consultation on "Content Online in the Single Market" launched by the EC in July 2006, there were several calls for the encouragement of the cooperation between industry, right holders and

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A new policy paper drafted by the European Commission (EC) shows its intention to promote new measures to fight against illegal file-sharing, taking as a positive example the French agreement between ISPs and the record industries already presented in EDRI-gram.

The policy paper obtained by EurActiv and entitled "Creative content online in the Single Market" wants to involve all the stakeholders in the activities against piracy: "It seems appropriate to instigate co-operation procedures between access and service providers, right holders and consumers".

The Commission communication also talks about the development of new legal offers of digital content available for consumers, educational programs to

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Concern has been raised by a memo sent to European policy-makers by the International Federation of Phonographic Industries asking European ISPs to filter the content transferred by their networks. The music and film industry continues to pressure from the EU regulators for control on the Internet, through ISPs.

The issue raises even more concern as some European politicians seem comfortable to consumer's communications being interfered with and controlled by ISPs on behalf of rightholders. In November 2007, the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) handed to the Parliament a report amending a previous Culture and Education Committee report, calling ISPs "to apply filtering measures to prevent

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Under the patronage of the French President Nicolas Sarkozy, an agreement was signed on 23 November 2007 between some French ISPs and the music and movie representatives in order to act directly against the big illegal file-sharers. These could be warned in the first stage and then their connection could be even cut-off..

The agreement was struck under the supervision of the Olivennes Commission, named after its chairman Denis Olivennes who is also the President-Director General of FNAC, the largest French retailer of cultural and consumer electronics products. According to this convention and as already announced by EDRI-gram one month ago, the French ISPs will spy on their users to see

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The local edition of Moscow-based independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta from Samara was closed down on 8 November 2007 by the Russian authorities and its editor Sergei Kurt-Adzhiyev was criminally indicted under the accusation of having violated copyright provisions of the Russian Penal Code, by using counterfeit software. Violations carry up to six years in prison.

The problems started on 11 May 2007 right before the so called March of Dissent, led by Kasparov's Other Russia opposition coalition, as the paper was one of the few media company having planned to cover the march. Several officers from the Samara Main Internal Affairs Directorate came to the newspaper offices and seized all of its computers under the accusation of

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A recent statement from the European Commission reveals that it has started negotiations with US, Japan, Korea, Mexico and New Zealand to create an international treaty on counterfeiting - Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), despite the absence of any independent data on the topic.

The European Commission is looking for a mandate from the European Member States to proceed in this endeavour, but the ball is already rolling, taking into consideration the almost simultaneous press statements from the US Trade Representative and Canada's Minister of International Trade as well.

But "while the claims regularly focus on health and safety risks or suggestions that organized crime or terrorist groups benefit from

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The case against Sharemula.com, a website publishing P2P download links through which users can acquire movies, music and software, has been recently dismissed by a Spanish magistrate.

The case was opened in October 2006, when the Brigade of Technological Investigations retained 15 people responsible with Sharemula.com, asking the closing down of the site for alleged copyright infringement. At that time, the Spanish media made a big fuss of the case, the 15 retained people having been considered as belonging to a large international clandestine pirating network. The case was considered a big success by Federación Antipiratería in Spain (Anti-pirating Federation).

A year later, a Madrid court decided that the site and its administrators

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The Association of the French ISPs (AFA) agreed to propose concrete solutions to stop illegal downloading, following the discussion on 3 October 2007 with the Commission fighting Internet piracy led by Denis Olivennes. The solutions included the introduction of a system to detect the Internet users that illegally post copyrighted contents on the Internet.

On 5 September 2007, this French Commission received its formal mission from the French government to find ways of combating illegal downloads on the Internet and thus support the legal cinema and music offer. By taking the decision to create this mission, the French government wanted to show its determination to take initiatives against online piracy and support the