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Web-blocking in Austria – law with the law taken out
Following the European Court of Justice ruling on the UPC Telekabel v Constantin in April 2014, Austrian internet access providers have started “blocking” several websites. In the case in question, the Court established that an injunction may be imposed on an internet access provider (ISP) “prohibiting an internet service provider from allowing” its customers access […]
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ENDitorial: Malmström – Always there to protect US
Now that Commissioner Cecilia Malmström will be taking over as the EU’s Trade Commissioner, and as the Commissioner in charge of negotiating the controversial TTIP trade deal with the USA, it is a useful time to cast our minds back to her achievements as Commissioner with responsibility for Home Affairs in the European Union. Commissioner […]
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France to follow Turkey’s lead on lawless Internet censorship
Despite many setbacks, bad publicity, budget cuts and a change of government, France is persisting with its Hadopi, a “three strikes law” and government agency to enforce copyright laws and fight online “piracy”. Even more worrying, the country’s Minister of Culture is now making moves to curb online rights even further. In the past years, the […]
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Macedonian investigative magazine fined in defamation case
On 27 September, 2014, the Skopje Court of Appeals, Macedonia, confirmed the decision of a lower court, and ordered a critical independent magazine “Fokus” to pay a nearly ten thousand euro fine to a high government official for defamation. The ruling was another setback to country’s media freedom. Sasho Mijalkov, the Director of the Security […]
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EU Parliament promises a better document register
In 2011 the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) discovered that some European Parliament decisions regarding the ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) were not recorded in any known document. A hidden class of documents (“coordinators’ minutes”) seemed to exist, but the Parliament denied their existence. The FFII filed a complaint with the […]
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Balancing rights (unless we are talking about copyright)
Recently Google was asked (spiced up with a threat of a 100 million dollar lawsuit) by an attorney representing “over a dozen” celebrities to take down pictures of his clients which had been hacked from their respective iCloud accounts and published in different websites. Google quickly reacted removing those pictures from its blogging and social […]
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Ex parte domain name seizures in Denmark
At the beginning of October, news media in Denmark reported about the seizure of the domain name raybansolbrillerudsalg.dk, which allegedly had been used for selling counterfeit products to Danish consumers. The Danish e-commerce Foundation, which administers the official Danish accreditation for safe online trading (the e-mark), has compiled a list of 1141 domains accused of […]
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UK format shifting and parody copyright laws come into force
On 1 October 2014, new copyright regulations adding exceptions for personal copying, parody, and quotation came into force in the UK. The personal copying exception allows copying of purchased media for private use. This includes format shifting and backups. The exception doesn’t cover making copies for friends, family or making copies of media you do […]
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Summary of the Commissioners-designate hearings
Between 29 September and 7 October the hearings of the Commissioners-designate in the European Parliament took place. This is a brief summary of the six hearings when the Commissioners-designate were answering to the MEPs’ questions regarding digital rights, privacy issues and trade agreements. Guenther Oettinger (Germany) is the nominee for the Digital Economy and Society […]
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Despite compromising document, Malmström is here to stay
On 29 September the public hearing on Cecilia Malmström, the EU Commissioner-designate for Trade took place. The day before, Der Spiegel published an article revealing an email exchange indicating that Malmström and/or her cabinet had been covertly working with the US at an early stage in the development of the European Commission’s General Proposal for […]
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Romania: The aftermath of the second CCR data retention ruling
As previously reported in the EDRi-gram, the Romanian Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled in its decision no. 440 on 8 July 2014 that the second Romanian data retention law (no. 82/2012) was not constitutional. The full reasoning for this was published in the Official Journal on 4 September 2014 in Romanian. EDRi-member ApTI is working on […]
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Italy: Administrative copyright enforcement unconstitutional?
Leggi l’articolo in italiano qui: https://edri.org/italia-procedimento-amministrativo-incostituzionale-sul-diritto-d-autore On 26 September 2014, an Italian regional administrative tribunal referred a question regarding the constitutionality of the administrative enforcement procedures foreseen by a new regulation on online copyright infringement to the Italian Constitutional Court. The Regulation on Online Copyright Infringement entered into force on 1 April 2014. It allows […]
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