This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Britisches Parlament stimmt für Digital Economy Bill

In a hasty meeting that lasted only two hours and a half, the UK Parliament, with an overwhelming majority (189 votes to 47), passed on 8 April 2010 the Digital Economy Bill, in third reading, without a real debate, which means that the bill will get royal assent and become law.

The Labour version of the website blocking clause as well as the 3-strikes clauses, including "technical measures for automated blocking" remained. Clause 43 on orphan works which was strongly opposed by photographers was dropped.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: ENDitorial: Europäische Kommission präsentierte falsche ACTA-Version

At a meeting in Brussels on 22 March 2010, the European Commission presented a counterfeit version of ACTA to participants. As with any good counterfeit, it bore quite a strong relationship with the genuine article. However, the differences were quite obvious for those in the know.

For example, in this counterfeit version, there is no mention of ISP liability changes that would lead to measures such as the cutting off of consumers ("three strikes").

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Litauisches Gericht urteilt zugunsten eines BitTorrent-Nutzers

A Lithuanian District Court has recently ruled against the anti-piracy organisation LANVA in a case against a user of the BitTorrent tracker LinkoManija.net.

Last year, LANVA accused 106 users of LinkoManija.net of sharing Windows 7 Ultimate and brought one of them to court, which has now decided in favour of the defendant due to faulty evidence.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Einige deutsche Bibliotheken veröffentlichen ihre Katalogdaten

Some German libraries, most of them from Cologne, announced at the beginning of the Leipzig Congress for Information and Library on 15 March 2010 that they would release 5.4 million bibliographic records under an open licence.

The University and Public Library of Cologne (USB), the Library of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, the University Library of the University of Applied Science of Cologne and the the Library Centre of Rhineland-Palatinate in cooperation with the North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center are the first German libraries to implement the Open Access principles to their catalogue

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Spanische Regierung bestätigt Anti-Piraterie-Gesetz

The Spanish Council of Ministers approved on 19 March 2010 the draft for the Sustainable Economy Law (LES) that gives legal cover to the closure of sites that links to "illegal" content made available without the the copyright owners' permission.

Despite the very active and strong opposition and criticism (even that of the Spanish Fiscal Council) the draft LES was approved by the Spanish Government without any change as stated Ángeles González Sinde, Minister of Culture.

The approved draft stipulates the setting up of an Intellectual Property Commission that would have the power to denounce to the high court w

Article corrected on 31.03.2010

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: GB macht einen Schritt auf die Unterbindung von Internetzugängen zu

The most controversial Digital Economy Bill has advanced one more step having been passed by the British House of Lords on 15 March 2010.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Diskussionen im EP zur Durchsetzung des geistigen Eigentumsrechts

The recent votes in the Industry and Internal Market Committees of the European Parliament (who are providing Opinions to the responsible Committee - the Legal Affairs Committee) have given a good insight into the main battle lines as the Parliament reaches the final stages of adopting its non-legislative report on IPR enforcement. These can be broadly categorised as follows:

1. Data Protection

Efforts are being made to downgrade citizens' fundamental right to privacy through amendments to the Gallo Report.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Spanisches Gericht urteilt: Links zu P2P-Inhalten nicht gesetzeswidrig

A civil court in Barcelona has recently ruled against SGAE (the Spanish collective society of authors and editors) in a case brought against Jesus Guerra who was administrating a site called elrincondejesus.com with links to P2P content.

SGAE accused Guerra of infringing copyrights by having reproduced and communicated to the public works owned by their constituency. The defendant argued that his website was a non-profit site only providing links that could be used by users only through eMule, a P2P application, to connect to other Internet users.