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Deutsch: Hearing im EU-Parlament: "Urheberrecht und Geistiges Eigentum im ...

The Socialists and Democrats Group in the European Parliament held a hearing on Copyright and Intellectual Property in the Digital Age" in the European Parliament (EP) on 29 and 30 June 2011. The event was organised in order to permit a balanced and calm discussion ahead of the launch of a range of intellectual property proposals from the European Commission over the coming months.

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Deutsch: Europäische Politk zu geistigem Eigentum lähmt digitale Wirtschaft

European policy makers are strangling the digital economy, hurting consumers and putting Europeans' fundamental rights at risk, according to a report into the failures of IP policy making in Europe, published by EDRi on 24.05.2011. The report sets out how the EU has been making policy "blind", building its strategies on faith not fact and ignoring objective, robust evidence.

The report sets out a series of proposals that would add up to a radical change of direction for EU IP policy.

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Deutsch: Irland: Innovationen zu geistigem Eigentum

Richard Bruton, the Irish Minister for Enterprise, Jobs and Innovation, said that he was determined that the Irish government should make whatever changes were necessary to allow innovative digital companies to reach their full potential in Ireland. He said that some companies have complained that the current copyright legislation did not cater well for the digital environment and created barriers to innovation and to the establishment of new business models.

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Deutsch: Nachhaltige Modelle für Kreative im Digitalen Zeitalter

Each year, the Free Culture Forum (FCF) brings together key organisations and active voices in the sphere of free/libre culture.

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Deutsch: EU steht vor einer Flut von Gesetzesinitiativen in Sachen geistiges Ei...

In the course of the next few months, the European Commission will be launching a flood of intellectual property initiatives, some aiming at repression, some at restricting access to culture and some at feeding uncreative intermediaries.

Work is now underway on an "impact assessment" which will assess the various options available to address the problem of collective rights management. These are the bodies which collect royalties from anyone who uses music and have become a growing barrier to effective reform of European copyright.

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: WIPO SCCR 21 Meeting

The present text is a report from the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights 21st meeting in Geneva, Switzerland (SCCR 21). In this report, the debate on the Broadcasting Organizations' protection (except for the NGO statements) is not included due to the fact that the author was not present during these negotiations.

The discussions on the matter started during the afternoon of the second day of the meeting. A handy comparison chart of the four previously introduced proposals from 2009 and 2010 was available, from which it was fairly easy to catch up with the current discussion.

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Deutsch: Irland: Neugestaltung des Gesetzes über die digitale Wirtschaft

EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland, Google and the Institute of International and European Affairs co-sponsored an event in Dublin on 19 November 2010 which presented suggestions for the reform of Irish law to promote digital innovation.

Speakers were Niall O'Riordan (Google) who called for developing fair use at the Irish and European level, Kate O'Sullivan (UPC) who spoke on the topic of the difficulties faced by ISPs due to the music industry demands that they act as copyright police, Johnny Ryan (IIEA) who placed the growth of interactive media in a historical context, Nick Kelly (musician and auth

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Deutsch: Neues Urheberrechtsgesetz in Mazedonien

Prison sentences of up to five years for copyright infringement are projected in the new Law on Copyright and Related Rights adopted in September 2010 in Macedonia.

With this law, which in addition to authors' and artists' rights also regulates the rights of film and stage producers, radio and television organizations, as well as the rights of publishers and database developers, copyright infringement is actually becoming a crime.

With these changes to the law that was being prepared for four years, Macedonia now formally has the same copyright protection standards as the EU member states.