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The Belgium newspaper group Copiepress sued Google News, considering they should have asked its permission and agreed financial terms when publishing material from their Belgium newspapers. Google lost in the first instance, but also the appeal against the ruling given on 5 September 2006.

Facing a 1 million euro fine per day, Google removed the pages in question but did not answer immediately to the decision of the court asking for the publishing of the full judgment on its site for 5 days, considering that the publicity around the case had made this action "unnecessary". However, in danger of being fined 500 000 euros per day for not publishing the judgment, Google abided to the court's decision on 22 September. The decision can now

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New changes in the Russian copyright law entered into force on 1 September 2006, giving the same legal regime to the electronic documents as to the traditional ones.

The new provisions were adopted by the Russian Duma in 2004, but their application was delayed in order to give the online businesses the possibility to comply with the new provisions. Among the new provisions, one of the most important is granting the same protection to the works published online as to the traditional paper-based books, CDs or videos.

The new law tries also to cover a loophole in the previous version that allowed Russian websites - the most famous being allofmp3.com - to sell music online, even though that had signed licences with agencies that didn't

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The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) accused the ISPs Tiscali and Cable&Wireless of harbouring filesharers and demanded the close up of 17 and 42 respectively..

BPI has already taken action against 139 uploaders, having settled in court 111 cases of them and considers its campaign against filesharers is going well. However, it considers ISPs are failing to take effective measures stop illegal filesharing.

BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said, "We have demonstrated in the courts that unauthorised filesharing is against the law. We have said for months that it is unacceptable for ISPs to turn a blind eye to industrial-scale copyright infringement."

Cable&Wireless' answered that it would take "whatever steps are

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In a verdict on 13 July 2006, the court of appeals in Amsterdam upheld a lower court ruling about the question whether Internet service providers (ISPs) have an obligation to hand over a user's identity when accused of illegal uploading by copyright holders. The lower court had concluded that ISPs can be ordered by a judge to hand over the identity of their users, when there is no reasonable doubt that those users whose identity is sought in fact did upload unauthorised files. This fairly strong criterion couldn't be met by BREIN, the Dutch Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands. It had made the appeal, seeking the name and addresses of 42 users, suspected of infringement of copyright through unauthorised uploads,

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By Legislative Decree no.140 of 16 March 2006, with more than one month before the deadline, Italy implemented Directive 2004/48/EC on the enforcement of intellectual property rights (IPRED) by amending law no.633/1941, which has already been the subject of so many modifications since its inception that several parties are calling for its complete re-drafting.

The most notable modifications to the Italian copyright law include the presumption of ownership of the neighbouring rights, as it was already the case for author's rights; the possibility for collective and "representative" organizations to independently promote judicial actions in order to defend their members' rights; the possibility to ask judges to

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Swedish company Tankafritt offers insurance against file sharing law suits damages and intends to expand to other Scandinavian countries.

Magnus Brath, the owner of the company, found it in reaction to the recent copyright infringement cases in Sweden. He also thinks he could develop his business in countries like Norway and Denmark where there are similar laws on file-sharing.

His company is a small one operating on membership basis. For about 15 euro/year the members are covered in case RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) asks for damages for copyright infringement..

According to Slyck.com, the probability of being sued by RIAA is 1:1,840, a ration that is lower than that of dying from external causes which is

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The Dutch Parliament stated on 28 June 2006 that the European Commission has no competence to propose a new directive that is focusing on criminalizing intellectual property offences. The statement refers to a new draft directive - Directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights, 2005/0127 - revived by the European Commission at the beginning of May 2006.

The Parliament also said that the Commission should present concrete evidence why such a directive is needed, considering that the European body should show why the measures are essential for the good functioning of the single market. Also it considers that the directive might harmonise some

The Dutch Court of Appeals in Amsterdam has ruled that search engine zoekmp3.nl is unlawful. This search engine provided links to mp3-files on the World Wide Web. The court chose not to answer the question whether linking itself to unauthorised mp3-files is an infringement of copyright law. The lower court had found that this was not the case. The Court of Appeals based the unlawfulness on Dutch tort law, and the specific circumstances of the case. The Court stated that in principal search engines are free to make money from providing search results to mp3-files, even if these files are known to be unauthorised. Only in particular circumstances will the search engine be liable for damage to copyright holders.

The specific circumstances the court found relevant to conclude the