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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Eine Woche des Schreckens für die deutsche Netzpolitik

In Germany, political developments in the last week have been perceived as a frustrating defeat by the "Internet community", as three legislative measures that had been heavily criticised (and ridiculed) have progressed in the Parliament.

On 20 March 2013, "De-Mail", Germany's standard for "court-proof" electronic communications and document exchange between citizens, authorities and businesses, was discussed in a hearing in the Committee on Internal Affairs of the Bundestag (the "lower house" in Germa

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Deutsch: Online-Piraterie nicht schuld an rückläufigen Musikumsätzen

As continuously argued by different IT specialists, digital freedom activists and organisations during the last few years, online piracy does not affect music industry revenues, as it is shown by a new research performed by The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies which is part of European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

After having examined the browsing habits of 16 000 Europeans, the researchers found there is actually a positive relationship between online piracy and visits to legal music s

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Deutsch: Zivilgesellschaft gegen Urheberrechtsbestimmungen in TAFTA

More than 45 civil society organisations from US and Europe, including EDRi, ask that the proposed EU-US trade agreement called Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) should exclude any provisions related to patents, copyright, trademarks, or other forms of so-called "intellectual property".

US President Barack Obama, the European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso announced on 13 February 2013 the official launch of negotiations of the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA),

The Swedish Court of Appeal has referred to ECJ (European Court of Justice) a case involving the question of whether publishing a hyperlink to content can be considered a communication to the public and, implicitly, a breach of the creator’s copyright (in case the hyperlink is published without the author’s consent), under the European law.

The case in question is that of Svensson, a Swedish journalist who wrote an article published by a Swedish newspaper both in print and on the newspaper’s website and who claimed that Retriever Sverige AB, a subscription service providing links to articles that can be found online, had made links to his article available to the public, without his permission, and, therefore, for this he should be compensated.

But Retriever refused

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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Europäische Lizenzen und der Fight Club ... es gibt nur e...

There was a moment in November 2012 when even the most cynical observers of the European Commission were hopeful of an effective reform of copyright. Commissioner Barnier gave a speech where he demonstrated that he understood the problems. He explained that “the digital revolution has not yet lived up to expectations in the European context” and described some barriers to cross-border access to content as illegitimate. Finally, the problems had been identified.

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Deutsch: Deutschland: Debatte um Leistungsschutzrecht

The Judiciary Committee of the German Bundestag held on 30 January 2013 an expert hearing on the proposed “Leistungsschutzrecht” (LRS, known also as “ancillary copyright”) law for news publishers which will require search engines and others to ask permission from news publishers to link to their content or even give summarize news content.

The draft law was criticized by civil society groups as well as the German association of Internet economy which pointed out the lack of clarity of the terms used in the text and the negative effects that

The Dutch government announced that it wouldn't prohibit the unauthorised downloading of copyrighted material.

It did so on 4 February 2013 in a letter to the Parliament, putting an end to a heated debate that lasted for years. As a result, the Netherlands remains one of the few countries in Europe where downloading without permission of the rightsholders is allowed under the private copying-exception. Dutch digital rights organisation Bits of Freedom urged that this should be the first step in a long overdue modernisation of the copyright system.

The Dutch government responded to a resolution by the Dutch Parliament earlier this year. In this resolution, the Parliament called on the government to maintain the application of the private copying-exception to downloading.

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Deutsch: Urheberrecht im digitalen Zeitalter

EDRi has freshly launched a booklet that overviews the challenges that copyright is facing in the digital environment.

For the past twelve years, the European Union has discussed how to support, develop and protect creation in the digital environment.