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Deutsch: Telekompaket: alle Seiten bereiten sich auf die letzte Schlacht vor

Preparations are being made in the EU institutions for the expected third reading of the Telecom Package. The timescale for the remainder of the legislative process will be determined by the official communication of the Council Common Positions to the Parliament. In theory, this can happen as late as mid-October, meaning that the final agreement could happen as late as the end of November or early December.

In the absence of official finalised documents from the Council, work on the dossier is focusing at the moment on procedural aspects of the negotiations.

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Deutsch: Ermittlungen gegen Google News in Italien wegen angeblicher Diskrimini...

The Italian Competition Authority opened an investigation on 27 August 2009 in relation to Google News after the Italian Editors Association (FIEG) claimed Google was discriminating those publishers choosing not to appear on the Italian version of Google News, by automatically excluding them from its primary search engine as well.

Various Italian newspapers consider they are deprived of attracting users and advertisers to their own web sites when their stories turn up on Google News.

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Deutsch: Anhörung der Europäische Kommission über die Google Books-Einigung

The EU Google Books hearing highlighted some very serious concerns with the settlement, but mainly from a rights holder point of view.

The hearing itself addressed two quite distinct sets of issues; firstly concerns of EU rights holders with the USA agreement, and how they feel their rights are affected by that agreement.

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Deutsch: The Pirate Bay – Staatsfeind Nummer 1

The Pirate Bay (TBP) seems to be the website in the limelight these days, after the music industry decided to attack it with every legal possibility and in any country they can, with actions in Denmark, Netherlands, Norway, Ireland and, of course, Sweden.

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Deutsch: Russisches Urheberrechtsgesetz wird für Nachrichtenberichte gelten

A new modification in the Russian copyright legislation was drafted by the Government in order to extend the protection to news reports.

The new draft was pushed by the biggest Russian news agencies which were claiming that other regional and online publications are plagiarizing their news reports. The law could be submitted to the Russian Parliament in the fall.

The draft presented by the Communications and Press Deputy Minister Alexander Zharov foresees fines from 10 to 20 000 rubles (approx. 230-460 euros), but also the confiscation of the production as sanctions for plagiarism for an agency.

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Deutsch: EC-Anhörung zu Googles Buch-Deal

The European Commission (EC) will hold a hearing on 7 September 2009 to evaluate Google's proposed deal with U.S.

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Deutsch: Endabstimmung über Hadopi 2 auf den 15. September verschoben

The French deputies had only a few days before the summer vacation to debate the new text of the three strikes law (called Hadopi 2) that was adopted by the Senate on 8 July 2009. As the opposition introduced a very large number of amendments, a vote for the entire text was not possible and the National Assembly President's decision was to postpone the vote until September.

The Assembly had 894 amendments to discuss but the text was not basically modified, but rather adjusted.

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Deutsch: EU-Kommissarin: bestehende Geschäftsmodelle ermuntern illegales illeg...

On 9 July, during the Ludwig Erhard Lecture 2009 Lisbon Council in Brussels, Viviane Reding, EU telecommunications commissioner, while presenting the proposed strategy for a future digital European society, expressed the idea that present business models lead to the increase of the illegal copyrighted material.

Reding made a presentation of the EU strategy for the so called Digital Europe.