EDRI-member FIPR (the Foundation for Information Policy Research) has published a strong analysis of the proposed new EU intellectual property enforcement directive. According to FIPR, the proposed new directive is pushed by the UK Presidency, but will undermine basic freedoms. It will force all EU member states to criminalise incitement to infringe patents or copyrights. The directive is promoted by big drug companies and the music industry.

FIPR writes: "If passed, the police will have more powers against copyright infringers than they have against terrorists. At present, the EU cannot freeze assets if a suspected terrorist financier is a European citizen. Yet the Government wants to empower IP lawyers to seize the assets of EU citizens accused of aiding and abetting infringement -- such as the parents of children who might have downloaded music files."

A Spanish gaming programmer may face up to one year prison charges for developing a video-game which makes fun of religious practices. 'Matanza Cofrade' is a video-game, a first person shooter Doom-like game in which the player shoots participants to the famous Holy Week procession. The participants are zombies and in the background, images of several religious brotherhoods from Sevilla are shown.

This game was supposed to be offered as a present with a CD of the Spanish Rock band "Narco" in November 2002, but when the brotherhoods heard about it, they started a lawsuit against it. In the end, the game was removed from the CD.

In a legal movement that it is becoming a classic when facing issues of freedom of expression, the programmer has been accused by the attorney of both offending religious feelings and of misuse of intellectual property,

In response to the article about the Norwegian Supreme Court decision on hyperlinks in the previous EDRI-gram, subscriber Matthias Spielkamp from Germany pointed to an article he wrote about recent jurisprudence in Germany. Contrasting the Norwegian decision that a hyperlink can not be considered unlawful in a copyright context, irrespective of the legal or illegal nature of the content offered, the appeal court of Munich decided to uphold a ruling that the e-zine Heise had to remove a link to the website Slysoft.com. At the site software was offered to make copies of copy-protected CDs and DVDs.

Spielkamp writes: By providing a link to the company's homepage, the court said, Heise intentionally provided "assistance in the fulfilment of unlawful acts" and is therefore liable as "an aider and abettor". The case

The Belgian and Dutch music copyright collecting societies are to drop their claims of national exclusivity on the licensing of online rights. SABAM and BUMA, that manage the music copyrights for authors in Belgium and in the Netherlands, have announced this intention to the European Commission, after the Commission started in-depth investigations into the problems of online music licensing in the EU. In July 2005, the Commission proposed a serious reform, granting every artist the right to freely choose a collecting society anywhere in Europe to exploit their online rights.

The European Commission now invites public comments on the proposal from the two collecting societies. In the notice in the Official Journal about the consultation, the Commission states: "Given the fact that there is a

On 1 August 2005 the Irish Minister for Trade and Commerce, Mr. Michael Ahern, announced a package of new IP legislation to be presented to parliament before the end of the year. Ireland needs to bring the public lending right and the artists' resale right into conformity with EU legislation and will simultaneously implement the new EU Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice. The enforcement directive (2004/48/EC) has to be implemented before the end of April 2006.

On the website of the ministry, the Minister acknowledges that the new implementation of the EU Rental and Lending Directive is caused by the Commission proceedings against Ireland in the European Court of Justice. Ireland exempted all public libraries from a remuneration scheme for lending, "referring to our small lending pool, the expected modest benefits for authors in relation to collection costs, and our long-standing efforts to encourage greater use of public libraries."

On 27 January 2005 the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled on old case; the existence of the website napster.no, which Norwegian internet users could use in 2001 to find music files (not more than 170 in practice) on the Napster file-sharing system. The owner of the site is found guilty of accessory copyright infringement, for having contributed to make the copyright protected music files available to the public.

The Court states that it is beyond doubt that making a web-address known on a website does not constitute a 'making available to the public', regardless of whether or not the link refers to a web-address containing legally or illegally published material. Whether a web-address is expressed on the Internet or in a newspaper is immaterial.

If linking were to be considered as the 'making available to the public', the Court writes, every link, be it to legally or illegally published copyright protected material would require prior authorisation from the rightholder. This was exactly what the music industry claimed. But the court said this was too complicated a reasoning and therefore decided to only look at accessory liability.

The Spanish government has issued a press release announcing a new draft Intellectual Property law. The law aims to adopt the existing copyright and intellectual property rights to the context of IT and implement the European Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC).

The main changes are:

1. The right to "interactive disposition" which regulates the way authors offer their works on the Internet. 2. Libraries can present their contents in telematic media as long as they remain within a closed intranet. 3. Quotes of both text and audiovisual material are allowed as long as its main use is teaching/ research. It is legal to quote press and journals as long as there are no economic benefits from such quotes. If the quote serves a commercial purpose, previous authorisation from the owner is necessary.

From 15 to 17 July there will be a (freely accessible) festival on copyleft and creative commons in Barcelona, with talks by Lawrence Lessig, Wikipedia, Cory Doctorow and John Perry Barlow and plenty of workshops, screenings and presentations in the CCCB (Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre). The festival is devoted to the exploration of non-restrictive alternatives to the current intellectual property regime, new models of copyleft licenses, remix culture, and all the possibilities opened by free culture creation and distribution tools. The organisers, Oscar Abril Ascaso and the Elastico collective, write: "The effects of copyright and the reach of intellectual property laws on the development of culture have become one of the hottest issues in the last few years. Everybody wants to protects culture, but from whom? From the artists? From the consumers? Is culture a luxury item? Can culture be owned? These contradictions are pitting governments and public institutions against each other, companies against their own costumers, rights management societies against their own artists."