Copyright
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Another Christmas (copyright) wish list for 2015
The copyright reform announced by both Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, and Günther Oettinger, Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, is going to be one of the core priorities of the new Commission’s Digital Agenda in 2015. Ansip has shown signs of interest to tackle copyright […]
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Danish court orders a UK company to block Danish IP addresses
In Denmark, and in most other EU member states, furniture design is protected by copyright for 70 years from the death of the designer. However, a few member states have shorter protections for furniture. In the United Kingdom, for example, Article 52 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 limited the protection for […]
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Draft Commission Work Programme 2015: huge challenges for digital rights
EDRi has obtained a copy of the draft Commission Work Programme 2015. For those who have followed the nomination hearings of the Commissioners, this draft programme does not contain any major surprises. However, it does show the huge number of proposals and initiatives that will have a direct impact on our fundamental rights and freedoms […]
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CJEU: Embedding not a copyright infringement
On 21 October 2014 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled that embedding copyrighted videos is not a violation of copyright, even when the source video is uploaded without the permission from the rightsholder. The case, dealing with a dispute between a water filtering company BestWater International and two independent commercial agents […]
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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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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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Google pushes forward with its voluntary pro-copyright policing
For the past number of years, Google has chosen to impose US copyright law on the world, completely de-indexing any website which fulfils the non-judicial criteria of a valid order under American law. Last year alone, it removed 222 000 000 links, which means 74 links per second. In addition to applying US copyright law […]
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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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Finland: Complaints about the copyright law drafting procedure
An update to the copyright law is being prepared in the Copyright Commission of the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland. To affect the outcome of the preparations, and help correcting excessive interpretations of the current copyright laws, a citizens’ initiative “Common Sense For Copyright” was launched by the Open Ministry, a non-profit organisation […]
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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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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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Finnish copyright initiative: Unbalanced expert hearings
In its meeting on 9 September, the Education and Culture Committee of the Finnish parliament decided to continue the expert hearings for the citizens’ initiative on an update to the copyright legislation, “Common Sense For Copyright”. The decision was somewhat unexpected and a positive surprise, as the original agenda of the meeting stated that the […]
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