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The General Assembly of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has decided that the very controversial proposed treaty on the protection of broadcasting organizations, including cablecasting organizations, must be approved by two more meetings before being put for discussion in a diplomatic conference established to take place from 19 November to 7 December 2007.

The General Assembly considered these two meetings as necessary to achieve enough consensus among member states, as India, US and Brazil had objected to introducing the treaty immediately to a conference.

Addressing the General Assembly, Robin Gross, executive director of IP Justice, said: "A diplomatic conference is now contingent upon member states

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British Academy - Copyright and research in the humanities and social sciences Through its series of research-related reviews, the British Academy seeks to examine issues related to the condition and health of the sector. The Academy is concerned that recent developments in technology, legislation and practice have meant that the various copyright exemptions, which enable creative and scholarly work to advance, are not always achieving the intended purpose. This document summarises the results of a Review of the issue by a working group established by the Academy.
http://www.britac.ac.uk/reports/copyright/index.html

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Vista, the new operating system developed by Microsoft, has received vivid criticism from European officials and possible competitors regarding the new features that might take advantage of the Microsoft position in the market.

Two major software companies, Symantec and Adobe, have complained to EU regarding certain electronic document and security features of Vista.

Symantec has expressed its concern related to the Windows Security Center and to the feature called PatchGuard that blocks access to the system kernel. Adobe has complained about the inclusion in the new Microsoft product of a free software for reading and writing electronic documents.

In its turn, the European Commission has also expressed concerns on how

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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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Several representatives of the IT, telecommunications, consumer electronics industry, public interest organizations and performers joined in a common statement issued on 5 September to oppose the WIPO Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations.

The treaty creates a new class of IP rights meant to protect broadcasters from the theft of their TV signals which is considered by the signatories of the statement as "misguided and unnecessary". On their opinion, the issue could have been solved by a "signal protection-oriented approach, ideally focusing narrowly and specifically on protecting signals from intentional misappropriation or theft."

The opponents to the treaty claim that its text may give broadcasters

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This was the motto of a Swiss symposium on Internet Governance held on 7 July at ETH Zurich. Inspired by the international efforts of convening an Internet Governance Forum (IGF) the symposium in Zurich was co-organized by ETH Zurich, a leading Swiss technical university and SWITCH, a Swiss non-profit ISP which has been established by the Swiss Confederation and eight university cantons, and which primarily serves academic institutions. The conference was supported also by many civil liberties organizations including EDRI-member Swiss Internet User Group (SIUG).

After a welcome address by Professor Bernhard Plattner (who had been in charge of the Swiss country-code TLD ch. during the pioneer phase of the

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Michelle Child - Notes of Barcelona Conference "The Proposed WIPO Treaty on the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations: From the Rome Convention to Podcasting" - 21 June 2006
http://downontheriver.blogspot.com/2006/06/notes-of-wipo-barcelona-sem...

Report on the situation of fundamental rights in the EU in 2005
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2006/jun/EU-funrights-report05.pdf

European Commission opened an online public consultation on radio frequency identification (RFID)
http://www.rfidconsultation.eu/
Read also the consultation background paper
http://www.rfidconsultation.eu/docs/ficheiros/Your_voice_on_RFID.pdf

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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