Eight Member States were referred by the Commission in December 2003 to the Court of Justice for failure to transpose the Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC) into national law. The deadline for implementation was 22 December 2002, but was only met by Greece and Denmark. Italy, Austria, Germany and the UK transposed the Directive into national law in 2003, while Ireland and Luxembourg implemented the Directive in 2004.

The remaining seven original states - Belgium, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland and Sweden - have all published draft legislation. Controversy over the Directive has ensured a rocky ride for these laws, most of which have now been rewritten at least once after negative comment on the initial drafts. Implementation continues in the 10 new member states.

The European Commission has issued a Communication on the Management of Copyright and Related Rights. In the period since 1991, 7 Directives have entered into force on copyright law, but none of these specifically addressed the role and functioning of the collecting societies. The Commission now recommends a Community framework instrument regulating the 'establishment and status of collecting societies; their functioning and accountability subject to rules of good governance; as well as their internal and external control, including dispute settlement mechanisms."

The main problem with the collecting societies is the lack of common rules, and the problems for commercial users to obtain a community-wide license. Both users and rightholders have also complained about the tariffs and operating expenses, access to arbitration and general lack of transparency and flexibility.

Adoption of the Directive on Measures and Procedures to Enforce Intellectual Property Rights - the infamous Fourtou Report - is a mere formality. The General Secretariat of the European Council has invited the Council's Committee of Permanent Representatives (COREPER) to suggest to the Council, at one of its forthcoming meetings, to adopt the Directive as an 'A'-item.

The Council is fully satisfied with the final version, as amended by Parliament on 9 March 2004. The vote was the result of a deal between the Rapporteur - French Conservative Janelly Fourtou - with the Council in order to allow for the Directive to be adopted in First Reading.

After adoption by the Council, the next step will be publication of the Directive in the EU's Official Journal. Member States then have to transpose it within 24 months.

A district court in Munich, Germany granted a preliminary injunction against Sitecom Germany GmbH for violating a GNU General Public License (GPL).

Sitecom is offering a wireless access router product based on software developed by the netfilter/iptables project and licensed under GPL. The GPL offers a free license to software, but requires any re-distributor to provide the full source code. The GNU GPL is commonly used for many free software projects, such as the Linux Operating System Kernel.

According to the court, Sitecom did not fulfil the obligations imposed by the GNU General Public License covering the netfilter/iptables software. In particular, Sitecom did not make any source code offering or include the GPL license terms within their products.

Following a warning notice, Sitecom refused to sign a declaration to cease and desist. The netfilter/iptables project asked the court for a preliminary injunction, banning Sitecom from distributing its product, or comply with all obligations imposed by the public license.

Today, 21 April, the controversial Urbani decree will be discussed again by the Culture Commission of the Italian Parliament. This law (named after the Minister of Culture) puts heavy fines on the download of movies, music or other copyrighted works even when done without any commercial purpose. Downloaders and file-sharers also risk the seizure of their equipment and a humiliating publication of the verdict in the national press. Fines start at 154 euro for private use of a work that has been distributed illegally, and run up to 1.032 euro in case of a repeated offence.

The decree attempts to authorise surveillance of electronic communication, introducing an assumption of 'guilty by default' of all internet users. The debate in the Parliamentary Commissions only seems to cause temporary delay, since it has the support of most of the Italian government.

European Digital Rights condemns action taken by the international phonographic industry association (IFPI) against European users of file-sharing networks. On 30 March IFPI announced legal actions against a total of 247 file-sharers in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada. Similar actions were announced by the French and Swiss music industry shortly after. Following previous actions in the United States, European internet users will be charged with illegally making available hundreds of music tracks for copying, transmission and distribution via file-sharing services.

In Italy 30 file-sharers are accused, mostly users of 'Opennap'. At the request of FIMI, the Italian music industry federation, financial police has raided the houses of these file-sharers and seized their computers, hard disks and CD's to secure evidence. The German section of IFPI has announced lawsuits against 68 users. In response, the German Chaos Computer Club (by far the largest usergroup in Europe), announced a campaign to boycott the music industry.

After a five-year investigation into Microsoft's business practise the EU Commission has decided that the company has violated the EU competition rules by abusing its near monopoly in the PC operating system. Microsoft will have to pay a 497 million euro fine.

The Commission has been investigating Microsoft practices since 1998 following a complaint by Sun Microsystems. The Commission has ruled that Microsoft abused its market power by deliberately restricting interoperability between Windows PCs and non-Microsoft work group servers, and by tying its media player with its operating system.

Microsoft's illegal conduct has enabled it to acquire a dominant position in the market for work group server operating systems and has significantly weakened competition on the media player market. The

The Italian government has issued a decree on Friday 12 March that puts a fine of 1.500 euro on the internet file-sharing of feature movies.

On top of the fine, computers and digital storage media can be seized. To complete the humiliation for the file-sharer, the sentence has to be published in 1 national daily newspaper and 1 specialised entertainment magazine. The Ministry of Culture Giuliano Urbani has mockingly declared this sanction 'symbolic'. Adding to that, in reference to peer-to-peer file sharing, Urbani said that 'multimedia piracy is a theft, and must be handled as such'.

Since its first draft, this legislative measure was strongly protested against by citizens, ISPs (forced to violate the privacy laws by spying and filing complaints against their customers), columnists and