The representatives of the European Commission (EC) had a closed meeting last week with Apple and other four major record companies, regarding the different pricing schemes used in different countries in Europe.

The meeting should have lasted for two days, but two record companies EMI Group and Warner Music Group decided they didn't need to show up in the oral hearings, considering the EC had been "persuaded that they are not responsible for how Apple prices songs". Therefore the meeting lasted just one day with Apple's iTunes global president Eddy Cue and general counsel Donald Rosenberg that joined Universal Music and Sony BMG.

According to a Reuters source, an Apple representative said during the meeting that "there was nothing in its contract with Universal obliging it to operate national stores or to set a higher price in countries such as

Microsoft has lost the appeal made to the Court of First Instance against the European Commission's (EC) ruling of monopoly abuse that obliged Microsoft to grant competitors access to its server protocols and to unbundle its Media Player software from its Windows operating system .

The case has a long history; following a complaint in 2003 from Novell that accused Microsoft of making server protocol information unavailable, the European Commission gave a preliminary ruling ordering Microsoft to unbundled Windows Media Player from Windows and to give information to competitors to ensure compatibility with Windows servers. Considering Microsoft had not complied with that ruling, in March 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft with the highest fine in the EU history - 497 million euro.

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Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) adopted on 12 July 2007 a resolution on a protocol amending the World Trade Organization agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of 1994.

The protocol, that would make permanent a 2003 waiver from the TRIPS agreement, is to be ratified by the EU 27 governments. The waiver was meant to allow poor countries to deal with public health emergencies by importing cheap generic versions of patented drugs produced under a compulsory licence. However, the waiver has not been invoked by any country since 2003 as the EP resolution notes.

David Martin, a British Labour deputy, complained of the fact that in four

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The Council of Europe (CoE) has definitely highly prioritised the broad ratification, all over the world, of its Convention on Cybercrime, opened to signatures since November 2001 and entered into force on 1 July 2004. As part of its efforts to achieve this goal, a conference on "Cooperation against cybercrime" was held in Strasbourg on 11-12 June 2007, to which EDRI was invited to participate with a presentation (some of the participants presentations are available on the conference website).

This conference was organized in the framework of the CoE Octopus programme against corruption and organised crime in Europe, three years after the 2004 venue on "The challenge of cybercrime" and two years after the joint CoE-OAS

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The legislative package on the Visa Information System (VIS) was adopted by the European Parliament and a political agreement was reached within the Justice and Home Affairs Council in the last couple of weeks. This means that the final steps have been adopted to create the biggest biometric database in the world.

The VIS Legislative package is formed by the VIS Regulation and the VIS Decision. The VIS Regulation will allow consulates and other competent authorities to start using the system when processing visa applications and to check visas. The VIS Decision will allow police and law enforcement authorities to consult the data under certain conditions that should ensure

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The EU has adopted as its own law, with very little alterations, the so-called Prüm Treaty, signed on 27 May 2005 by Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Austria, which allowed the police forces of their countries to compare and exchange data more easily.

The new law, adopted by the European Parliament's report of Fausto Correia (PES, PT) and approved by the Council of Ministers during a meeting of the justice and home office ministers last week, gives the EU member-states three years to rewrite domestic laws in order to comply with it.

"Member states have to adopt legislation on the basis of the decision. They can copy and paste it, it is self-explaining, not like a Directive, which

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The Second Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) is now going through the Justice and Home Affairs route. On 4 June, it passed it's first port of call at the Council's Working Group on Substantive Criminal Law (DROIPEN) - the first step on the road to the decision of EU's Council of Ministers.

DROIPEN's job is to prepare the Council's first reading on the directive. The national government representatives might come up with a proposal that all Member States agree on, or else they will identify issues that the Ministers of Justice will have to vote on.

According to information kindly shared by some Member States representatives following DROIPEN's work, the state of play in general

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On 21 May 2007, the European Parliament (EP) voted for the reinstallation of the data protection principles in the legislation that allows the police forces in Europe to share data.

The European Council, which is the one deciding in police and judicial matters, had formally asked the EP for its opinion on this issue as, lately, concern has been expressed on the lack of proper protection of personal data processed in the framework of police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters. Such a concern has been expressed also by the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Peter Hustinx who, at the end of May, advised the Council against adopting the Commission's new Council Framework Decision