EDRI - Intellectual Property Enforcement

ENDitorial: Lessons from the failure of Licences for Europe

bogdan — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:35:52 +0000

Now that the Licences for Europe has failed so comprehensively, it is time to reflect on what types of voluntary or self-regulatory initiatives are likely to work and which are likely to fail.

Last May, at the Stockholm Internet Forum, EDRi ran an “unconference” session, which brainstormed about what characteristics a self-regulatory initiative would need to have in order to be likely to succeed. Participants produced eight criteria. To avoid failures or counterproductive outcomes of such projects in the future, it would be valuable for the Commission to develop a comprehensive methodology for analysing the context and potential for success.

ECJ Advocate General: Forcing ISPs to block websites could be legal

bogdan — Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:30:29 +0000

The Austrian Supreme Court has sent a request to the European Court of Justice to clarify whether an ISP providing Internet access to those using an alleged illegal website was to be considered as an intermediary.

TPP may be worse than ACTA

bogdan — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:33:19 +0000

A version of 30 August 2013 of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) draft confirms previously expressed concerns that the negotiating parties are prepared to expand the reach of intellectual property rights to the detriment of consumer rights and data protection.

Failure of "Licenses for Europe"

bogdan — Wed, 20 Nov 2013 18:26:38 +0000

Ahead of the last meeting of the “Licences for Europe” initiative, EDRi together with other four European civil rights organisations – Centrum Cyfrowe, Kennisland, Modern Poland Foundation and La Quadrature du Net – released, on 13 November 2013, the following joint press release reaffirming the urgent need of an European Copyright reform.

Today, the Licenses for Europe experiment comes to an end.

European Parliament draft report on private copy levies – serious or satire?

joe — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 09:03:22 +0000

French Socialist MEP Françoise Castex published her draft report on private copying levies on 9 October. The biggest question that the document raises is... are you serious, Ms Castex?

The policy issue being addressed is that “creators” are meant to be “compensated” for private copies that are made of legally acquired content, such as music or printed material. In some EU countries, there are no levies, in some EU countries there are low levels of levies.

After 3 years: French authority Hadopi keeps proving its uselessness

bogdan — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 18:00:31 +0000

After three years of existence, Hadopi French authority in charge with the infamous three-strikes gradual response system, has succeeded in proving nothing but a large waste of public money.

To mark its 3-year anniversary, Hadopi has issued its activity report which shows that, to the day, it has succeeded in ordering 1 sole Internet disconnection and, on the other hand, it has experienced large bureaucratic problems and issues with identifying subscribers.

Hadopi has sent a total of 1.912 million notifications to French Internet subscribers as strike one, 186 153 follow-up letters as strike 2 and has caused 1 disconnection as strike 3.

Only for 2013, Hapodi costs the French taxpayers 5.4 million Euro, large part of it spent to answer subscribers who make request regarding

Increased level of online censorship in Italy

bogdan — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 17:57:56 +0000

AGECOM, Italy’s independent Electronic Communications Authority, is on the verge of undertaking the power of ordering the removal of any online content that it deems to be in violation of the copyright law, without the need of the parliament or court approval.

Despite strong criticism from NGOs, ISPs, other companies or legal practitioners, the authority’ new Draft Regulation on Copyright Protection on Electronic Communication Networks allows it to black out foreign sites and take down Italian ones alleged to have infringed the copyright law, within 48 hours, without any court decision.

The legislation is to be passed definitively in November 2013 after a decision from the European Union.

AGCOM’s bill will give the authority the power to order Internet access provid

Spain: New penal sanctions proposed for alleged illegal linking

bogdan — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 18:22:06 +0000

Spain plans to toughen its legislation by including penal sanctions for publishing links to alleged pirated content. From a very relaxed environment some years ago, Spain is, more and more, giving in to US pressure after having been threatened to be put on the blacklisted countries.

Since his election in December 2011, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has continued to increase its anti-piracy legislation, including the Sinde law. Now, on the 20 September 2013, the Spanish government approved an amendment to the penal code that introduces penalties to the admins of sites offering links to copyrighted works without the work owners' permission.

German newspapers sued for pointing out an alleged illegal site

bogdan — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 20:18:01 +0000

At the end of August 2013, a group of German publishers sued newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Zeit, accusing them of assisting copyright infringement for having printed an interview with the operator of an alleged unauthorized ebook site, giving the site name as well - TorBoox, which claims to be the largest ebook piracy site in Germany, with 1.5 million books downloaded monthly.

While hosting copyright infringing material may be considered illegal, and, in some cases, linking to illegal content and indexing links containing illegal material has been considered illegal, to consider publishing an interview and just naming an illegal site as an infringement seems a little far fetched.

“With the direct and multiple naming of the Internet address the reader is immediately

The French three strikes system gave up on Internet disconnection

bogdan — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 18:05:10 +0000

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Three-Strikes: Frankreich verabschiedet sich von Netzsperren

The French three strikes law, known as Hadopi, has for years generated debate and controversy, primarily because it allowed for the disconnection of the Internet connections of individuals deemed to have illegally downloaded copyrighted material. Now, however, there is a slight ray of sunshine in the matter. The French Government has given up on this approach.

On 9 July 2013, a decree was published eliminating the possibility to cut off users’ connections for alleged copyright infringement.