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The copyright term for sound recordings is back on the public agenda in UK, after a report from the House of Commons culture committee has recommended its extension from 50 to 70 years, despite the negative feedback received earlier from Andrew Gowers' report or a recent study commissioned by the European Union and made public in January 2007.

The Culture committee report considered that the musicians have a "moral right" to keep control of their creations while alive and that 7000 people will lose in the next years their royalties from the 50s and 60s recordings. Also the report considered there was a non-reasonable difference between the copyright term for songwriters, whose families keep the copyright 70 years

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Rapidshare AG sued the German society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights (GEMA) in order to clarify the legal situation regarding free file hosting in Germany.

The counter-attack from Rapidshare, a well-known free file hosting provider based in Switzerland, comes after the suit initiated in Germany by GEMA in January 2007 for distributing MP3 files on Rapidshare.com. GEMA won a preliminary injunction in the first lawsuit that was upheld by the appeal in March of the District Court of Cologne.

The District Court in Cologne had considered that Rapidshare was liable for copyright infringements even if the works were uploaded by the users and not by the provider.

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The Norwegian Liberal Party (Venstre) passed a resolution on 14 April 2007 to support changes in the copyright law including free file sharing, free sampling and the banning of DRM systems.

The resolution proposed by the Young Liberals and supported by Trine Skei Grande, Vice Chairwoman of the Liberal Party, is meant to adapt the legislation to the modern technological developments.

"These are great opportunities, and the Liberal Party wants to use them. We want to advocate collecting, use, improvement and spreading of all culture, ideas and innovation for non-commercial use", said Jonas Stein Eilertsen, cultural spokesperson for the Young Liberals.

Venstre believes the copyright law in force is outdated and a balance needs

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On 18 April 2007, a copyright handling model for digitalised works was agreed by EU High Level Expert Group on Digital Libraries including major stakeholders such as the Federation of European Publishers, the British Library, the German national library and Google.

The High Level Expert Group, founded in 2006 by Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for Information Society and Media, advises the Commission on issues regarding digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation of cultural material. This action is part of the European Digital Library initiative adopted by the European Commission in June 2005 in order to preserve European cultural and scientific heritage making them available

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The Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED2), with the changes made by a report produced by Nicola Zingaretti (PES), was voted by the European Parliament in its first reading today with a vote a 374 in favour, 278 against and 17 abstentions.

Unfortunately, the suggestions from an alliance of libraries, consumers and innovators, including the 8 000 signatories of the petition at copycrime.eu were not considered by the Parliament, although the vote was much tighter than anticipated.

The scope of the directive still includes trade names, database and design rights, along with the copyright and trademarks. Liabilities for software and service providers are possible by criminalising also the inciting of an

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The European Parliament's Legal Affairs committee has adopted on 20 March 2007 the draft IPRED directive following the opinions presented by MEP Nicola Zingaretti, with some important amendments though.

The good news is that the very controversial definition of "commercial scale infringement", that previously included the IPRs (Intellectual Property Rights) infringements by private users for personal use, was detailed and now the text refers to a criminal infringement as "a deliberate and conscious infringement of the intellectual property right for the purpose of obtaining commercial advantage."

The patents and utility models have been excluded from the scope of the directive. From the unexamined IPRs, design rights, database rights, and

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Many consumer rights organizations in Germany, Norway, France and Finland have gathered to take common actions against Apples on its iTunes bundling services, but new concerns are expressed also by the EU Consumer Protection Commissioner, Meglena Kuneva.

In an interview for the German weekly Focus, Kuneva was very critical to this service: "Do you think it's fine that a CD plays in all CD players but that an iTunes song only plays in an iPod? I don't. Something has to change."

The statement was confirmed by Helen Kearns, a Commission spokeswoman who considered however that those were the commissioner's own opinions and not those of the Commission. "I don't think she was stating it as a definitive

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The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), a lobby group representing the American publishing, software, recording and movie industries, has been busy. On 12 February IIPA published its recommendations to the US Trade Representative's 2007 review of global copyright laws. This "Special 301" procedure can lead to significant trade sanctions against countries that are judged to be uncooperative in the US drive for ever stronger intellectual property rights. It has been used over the last two decades to bully developing nations into signing quite inappropriate IP agreements such as the World Trade Organisation's TRIPS and "TRIPS plus" Free Trade Agreements with the US.