September 26, 2007

European Commission investigates Apple's European prices

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 […]

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October 10, 2007

UK: Decrypt data or go to prison!

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) The controversial Part 3 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) in UK is in force starting with 1 October 2007. This new regulation gives the power to police forces to ask for the disclosure of encryption keys, or force suspects to decrypt encrypted data. RIPA […]

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November 5, 2008

One more step for France in adopting the graduated response

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) Despite all opposition and debates, on 30 October 2008, a crushing majority of the French Senate voted in favour of the anti-piracy law, the so called Hadopi law, introducing the graduate response against illegal content downloading. The law enabling the introduction of three-strikes measure against file-sharers and […]

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November 7, 2007

Whois privacy problems not solved by ICANN

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) ICANN meeting that took place last week (29 October – 2 November 2007) in Los Angeles was expected to decide on the WHOIS database privacy problems. But unfortunately the decision taken was just to make further studies on the matter, despite the already seven years of discussions […]

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November 6, 2013 · Blogs

EU Council worries that data protection reform is too fast

The recent EU Council allegedly decided to slow down the speed of the reform of data protection arguing that it was moving too fast. Germany, for example, was reportedly worried about "not moving too quickly". By a strange coincidence, this is exactly the same argument used by the main lobbying groups. However, if the data […]

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December 17, 2014 · Blogs

Irish surveillance legislation: secret interpretations of secret laws

A few weeks after introducing lawless internet blocking in Ireland, Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald took her assault on the rule of law to another level. On 26 November 2014, she introduced into national law – by means of a “Statutory Instrument” (SI, an executive power that does not require any parliamentary discussion) – new […]

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January 25, 2017 · Blogs

#PrivacyCamp17: Controlling data, controlling machines

Accountability, transparency and profiling were the buzzwords of the fifth annual Privacy Camp, which took place on 24 January in Brussels. The camp, this year entitled “Controlling data, controlling machines: dangers and solutions”, brought together civil society, policy-makers and academia to discuss the problems for human rights in the digital environment. The event is organised […]

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May 4, 2011

Copyright complaint leads to public domain music library takedown

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Urheberrechtsbeschwerde: Musikbibliothek offline | http://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_9.9_Urheberrechtsbeschwerde_Musikbibliothek_offline] International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), the largest public domain music library on the Internet, has been recently taken offline following a complaint from the UK’s Music Publishers Association which convinced registrar GoDaddy to takedown their website. The action was brought over a […]

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November 20, 2013 · Blogs

TPP May Be Worse Than ACTA

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. The document was recently leaked and published by Wikileaks […]

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December 6, 2006 · Blogs

France Parliament shifts to open source software

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) Starting with July 2007, the computers used by the French deputies will be equipped with Linux operation system, Open Office software and Firefox browser. The project, initiated at the request of the General Assembly President, was based on a study made by Atos Origin, a technology services […]

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April 25, 2012

YouTube loses a case in Germany to collective society Gema

This article is also available in: Deutsch: [Youtube verliert im Fall gegen GEMA | https://www.unwatched.org/EDRigram_10.8_Youtube_verliert_im_Fall_gegen_GEMA?pk_campaign=edri&pk_kwd=20120507] A German court decided on 20 April 2012 that YouTube was indirectly liable for the copyrighted content posted by its users in a case brought to court in 2010 by the royalty collective society Gema. In this case, the defendant […]

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December 19, 2007

No decision yet from the EC on the status of the online music market

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar) During a conference on creative rights and cultural diversity organised by EUobserver on 6 December 2007, José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, stated the European Commission (EC) was not yet ready to take any short-term decision related to the management of the online music […]

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