It's quite straightforward really, we have a coalition government. Each Party controls one of the relevant departments, and they're fighting over control of these things.
On one side you have the Conservatives who, along with Labour (in power when the DEA was passed) were very heavily lobbied over this sort of thing (lots of private meetings, tickets to events, that kind of stuff).
On the other side, you have the Lib Dems, who are answerable to their members on policy grounds, and have a few vocal MPs who understand the Internet (and evidence). They were a minor force during the DEA debate, so seem to have been mostly ignored re lobbying.
At the moment, the Conservatives control DCMS (the Department of Culture, Media and Support) which is under Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey (the latter has been running the closed-door meetings on web-blocking), which has been pushing for a larger clampdown on copyright (as you might expect from a "Media" department; i.e. answerable to the big media giants). Then the Lib Dems control DBIS (the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills) - under Vince Cable (who announced the plans to shelve the web-blocking parts of the DEA) - which has the policy brief for the DEA, runs the IPO and which is answerable to businesses, and cares about innovation etc.
It's not all that hard to see why there might be conflict here...
That said, the IPO isn't completely unbiased; one of their recent reports contained a wrongly-applied, inaccurately-copied, wrongly-cited (and with an obvious typo) statistic for losses, from a copyright industry (I think Hollywood) source, based on a paper, quoting the draft results of a survey, noting that it was changed in the final version, which was never published. It's quite impressive that they managed to get nearly every step of that wrong.
Fraud is the all-purpose offence that has been used in copyright infringement cases (such as the failed trial of the OiNK operators, or the more recent cinema/iPhone uploader). Basically, copyright infringement can be quite a bit harder to develop and establish; fraud is the easy way out.
Also, if it helps, downloading is definitely not "theft" or "stealing" in the UK; there are a couple of cases (one from the House of Lords) which ruled that information (i.e. a song) can't be property.
Also, for those interested, the relevant laws on criminal copyright infringement are s107 and s198 of the CDPA 1988, although it seems the site operators have been arrested for Fraud (despite there being case law going against them - the OiNK trial).
I knew that the IFPI were getting cosy with UK law enforcement (particularly the City of London Police, who are indirectly controlled by local businesses, including the IFPI), but I thought that was just over advertisers and blocking payment providers.
That said, Nominet has been working semi-secretly (under pressure from police forces) to implement a domain-name seizure process, but that would only apply to .uk domain names. For SOCA (basically the UK's FBI, but not nearly as old or powerful) to decide to shut down a site... without a trial (I assume), is quite a step.
One wonders why the Hollywood studios bothered taking BT (and now TalkTalk) to court to get Newzbin blocked, if they could just set SOCA on it.
Oh, it seems I'm wrong about the second point; that right was created by Article 7 of the InfoSoc Directive (2001/29), implemented into UK law as s296ZF CDPA 1988.
Odd - I've never seen that used or discussed before. I've finally learnt something from all this ACTA rubbish.
ACTA provisions are compatible with existing EU law. ACTA will not require any revision or adaptation of EU law and will not require any Member States to review the measures or instruments by which they implement relevant EU law.
I'm no expert on EU law, but I can't see how anyone could possibly say this with a straight face.
Firstly, you have Articles 23-26, or "Section 4: Criminal Enforcement." The EU does not do criminal law. Aside from something like 7 specific crimes, there aren't any criminal provisions in EU law. While there was an attempt to include some in IPRED2, that Directive was abandoned (partly, it seems, due to concern about it including criminal measures). For the EC to suggest that EU law is already compliant with ACTA seems ludicrous on this point; how can a Treaty stating that "[e]ach Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties" (Art 23(1)) not require a change to EU law?
Secondly, you have Article 27(7): "To protect electronic rights management information, each Party shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against any person knowingly [and] without authority ... remov[ing] or alter[ing] any electronic rights management information" etc. Now, again I'm no expert, but I'm not aware of any country in the EU (or outside) that has any sort of law protecting "electronic rights management information" as defined in footnote 16. The claim made by the EC (or any other supporter of ACTA) that no laws need changing clearly falls apart completely at this point. ACTA seems to require the creation of an entirely new type of IP protection.
And those are just the two obvious and clear examples. As discussed in the article, much of the text is so vague there's plenty of room for further doubt.
As an aside, there are a couple of older English cases on this sort of issue, where courts have refused to enforce the copyright in certain works due to not approving of it.
In Glyn v Weston Feature Film (from 1915, so under substantially similar copyright law to now, post-Berne) the work was found not do be protected by copyright due to being "grossly immoral", as it "advocated free love and justified adultery", so there was no infringement (although there was also an issue of 'fair dealing' which back then was much closer to the US's 'fair use' now).
There was also a case from 1826 (pre-Berne), Stockdale v Onwhyn, where a book about a courtesan was also held not to be protected for similar reasons, with one of the judges going as far as to point out that the statute creating what would later be called copyright (the 1710 act) was titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning...", and so this work wouldn't be protected.
It will be interesting to see if a US court will apply the same sort of literal and purposive approach to the law here (obviously UK law has changed a lot since 1710, so that issue no longer applies).
This area of privacy seems to be one of those interesting cultural differences; in my experience (however limited), Europeans (including UKers) seem to have a much higher regard for personal privacy than some others. Not just in the sense of "if it's not been made public it's private" but also the sense of "this information is personal, so should remain private unless I explicitly give it to someone else." While I need to work on the arguments, I'm not convinced that there can never be privacy in information that has been made public..
Anyway, in this case, I wonder if this "right to be forgotten" is more along the lines of a "right to have personal data deleted" (it only applies to personal data, of course, so not merely comments), where keeping the data could amount to an invasion of privacy. The classic example that springs to mind would be the DNA (etc.) databases collected by UK police forces. While under exiting EU law you should be entitled to a copy of the information they have on you (subject to various exceptions) there isn't anything that allows you to get that data (or any other data an organisation holds on you) removed. This might provide such a right (although not if the police groups have a say).
Obviously the right proposed is far broader, but it aligns with the principle of "consent" that is fundamental to EU data protection law; one must consent for any sort of processing or publication of personal information, and that consent can be withdrawn at any point prior to an act of processing or publication. This "right to be forgotten" is merely a formal way of withdrawing that consent, and requiring action based on it.
As for the idea of demanding the removal of data you published yourself, again that doesn't seem too unreasonable; most services already provide some sort of removal capability (usually you have to do it yourself), and it doesn't seem too unreasonable to require such a capability (no different from taking down a poster you've put up somewhere, perhaps?).
To solve the first problem, you have a notice system, whereby rather than suing, it simply blocks the video and notes that it may contain copyright stuff, giving her the direct option to buy a licence or alternatively dispute the claim (claiming 'fair use' or another defence, or that it is a different work).
The second problem is the major hole at the centre of all copyright issues. It's a direct consequence of extending the duration (and scope) of copyright and not having a registration system. The only real way around it is to set up a compulsory licensing scheme, with the funds being held on some sort of trust if the copyright owner comes forward. But to most copyright lobby groups, "compulsory licensing" is almost as bad as "free" as it takes away control, and forces them to provide frand-style licences.
Of course, the other problem is the complete disinterest any of the parties required to set this up have in it:
The idea sounds quite a bit like the "Digital Copyright Exchange" proposed by the Hargreaves Review in the UK; unfortunately, no tech company wants to go near it because they don't trust the copyright owners, the copyright owners aren't interested because it involves giving up control (and is basically compulsory licensing, as discussed above), and the government can't be bothered to force it as it is a minor issue.
But where does the judge's analysis of the law fail?
There's copyright in the original photograph.
The defendant took that photograph and copied all the major elements of it (i.e. a substantial part of it) to make his photograph.
How is that not copyright infringement under current law?
The "artistic work" is the photograph. Rather confusingly, in UK Copyright law "[an] "artistic work" means a ... photograph... irrespective of artistic quality". It's artistic because it is a photograph - it doesn't have to be *good* to be protected by copyright.
Onto the case itself; one thing a lot of commentators are missing on this is that the two photographs are causally linked; the defendant saw the claimant's photograph and said "I want something like that." He didn't just take a photograph of the same things, from a similar position (which there's an 1997 case on, involving an Oasis album cover, where the copyright claim was dismissed, despite taking a photo of a "set" prepared for the main photo), he knowingly and wilfully copied all the elements of the first work.
A possible analogy would be to taking characters out of one book and using them in another, maybe renaming them and changing some minor details, but keeping the basic facts and figures the same; the expression is different, but it is still an act of copying (and a "parody" or "criticism" defence would only apply if there was actual parody or criticism, rather than just copying in this case).
It's an odd ruling, and caught some people by surprise, but it isn't particularly outlandish. For a 21st century copyright case. In terms of common sense etc., it's a stupid ruling in many ways, but the judge is limited by the law.
There was a case on the UK equivalent of this ruling a while back (the requirement to hand over keys is enshrined in legislation over here), and they discussed the issue of self incrimination, and admissions of ownership/knowledge.
The Court ended up finding that it wasn't contrary to the principle against self-incrimination on the grounds that the law only covered decrypting information as part of the investigation, not as part of the trial, and if issues of self-incrimination did come up, they could be dealt with by declaring either the material uncovered, or the fact that the defendant had handed over the key (thus "proving" knowledge) could be withheld from evidence.
However, that seems to be a particularly English approach, perhaps not reflected in the US, where you start with as much information as possible, then cut out whatever the jury or court shouldn't know about.
Except $175m over a few years is nothing to most of the companies involved. Remember, WB alone made $822m in profits in one quarter alone last year. While these groups like making a big fuss over the "huge" amount of money these sites make, it's only huge relative to what we individuals make...
Yes; the O'Dwyer case (the first ruling was on Friday); the US claimed jurisdiction due to having US users and advertisers. They claimed he lost his "safe harbour" (or, due to being EU, "mere conduit") protections due to "vetting" the users, which is something those supporting him deny.
If the indictment is anything to go by, it seems they have a fairly strong case... if they can show jurisdiction and get extradition of all the individuals.
I particularly liked the way they managed to bring up the fact that MegaUpload hosted "child pornography and terrorist propaganda", and then use the fact that they removed the stuff against them around para 24.
As a non-USian, I'm beginning to wonder if I should move away from US hosting providers, domain names, advertisers and users, just in case, so that they can't claim jurisdiction over me...
Just been to google search for mission impossible. Wow, several sites offering free links. I rest my case.
Out of curiosity I did a Google search (in a "clean" browser with no account logged in), and the top results are the official site, IMDB entries for the various films, Wikipedia pages, reviews and links to the trailers on YouTube. You have to get halfway down the second page to find a link to a search page on IsoHunt, and the next "pirate" link is to tPB on page 10.
Now, I'm assuming by "free links" he means somewhere to download the film without paying (rather than a link you don't have to pay to click on - possibly a poor choice of words - although maybe he does think that all sites should be behind paywalls like the Times's), which suggests either he thinks IMDB/Wikipedia/Review sites are actually offering the film, he thinks his company's own trailers on YouTube (where Google kindly hosts them for free) are piratical, or he uses Google so often to find free downloads that it has personalised his search page.
So, he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's a hypocrite (or both). Sounds about right, as far as Murdoch and the Internet go...
The main part of the case turned on whether or not the site was legal in the UK, and here the judge found that, unlike TV-Links, it wasn't. The key issue is whether or not the 'mere conduit' principle applies, and it was argued (and apparently accepted by the judge) that O'Dwyr wasn't protected by that defence for two reasons:
"Firstly both TVShack websites were entirely in the hands of Richard O’Dwyer and his co conspirators requiring third parties to sign up to TVShack and be vetted before going further. Secondly he argues, unlike [TV-Links], there was no attempt to protect copyright, he, Richard O’Dwyer, knew materials were subject to copyright and actively taunted already cited efforts in June 2010 to seize TVShack.net."
Personally, I'm not sure the second part of that is relevant to the issue, and the first seems to be a very narrow interpretation of the law and, for example, could see ISPs lose their immunity under this law as they also "vet" their customers to a degree.
Hopefully, though, we'll now get a nice High Court or even Court of Appeal ruling on this issue, showing whether or not linking is illegal, and ruling how broad the 'mere conduit' defence is.
The problem is that there are several competing directives in this area of law, to grossly oversimplify:
- The Copyright Directive 2001/29 (sometimes the InfoSoc Directive) sets out a lower bound for what must be covered by copyright in all EU member states.
- The Enforcement Directive 2004/48 (sometimes IPRED) sets out a lower bound for what sort of remedies must be available in MSs for copyright infringement.
- The Electronic Commerce Directive 2000/31 sets out various limits on the liability of ISPs (including website hosts),
- The Data Protection Directive 95/46 sets out how personal data of individuals can be collected.
- The Authorisation Directive 2002/20 which places limits on what ISPs can be made to pay for.
Basically, the first two set out what *must* be put into law, in order to 'protect' copyrights, and the second three set out what *can't* be done, even to 'protect' copyrights. Over the last few years there have been a number of cases across the EU where courts have tried to find the right balance between these (such as the DEA judicial review in the UK (back in court on Monday, iirc), the SABAM v Scarlet case mentioned above, the Infopaq(?) case a while back and these Irish cases). It's a big mess.
Iirc, in the last Irish case, the judge found that the proposed measures (the private agreement one ISP had reached with EMI) went too far, and so was illegal under EU law. However, he also noticed that the existing Irish law didn't go far enough either. So now EMI are suing Ireland (using the EU principle of state liability for not fully implementing the relevant EU Directives (probably IPRED) and thus causing EMI some sort of damage (although it could be a challenge for them to prove it).
[As mentioned above, this last part is mostly speculation as I haven't seen any of the paperwork from the new filing.]
1. You should have heard of it if you read TechDirt, as it was reported here.
2. No. That ruling merely set an upper bound on what copyright enforcement people can demand; in that case, SABAM wanted the ISP to actively monitor all their traffic and magically filter out potentially infringing content, and the CJEU said that was far too much. Lesser degrees of enforcement may be fine.
The thing most reports on this case seem to miss is that this isn't just EMI (now mostly being sold off to Universal and Sony) suing the Irish government for not doing what they want, they're suing the Irish government for failing to implement certain provisions of EU law (probably parts of the IPR Enforcement Directive 2004/48 - which should have been implemented by April 2006).
If I remember correctly, in the November ruling, the Irish judge noted that what EMI wanted wasn't possible under Irish law, but should be under EU law, and so the law needed to be changed.
Suing the government over failure to implement a directive (particularly when they think they're losing money over it) is quite normal in the EU.
[Disclaimer: I haven't read their actual filing, so I could be wrong.]
On the post: Two Contradictory Paths In The UK When It Comes To Copyright Issues
Quite straightforward
On one side you have the Conservatives who, along with Labour (in power when the DEA was passed) were very heavily lobbied over this sort of thing (lots of private meetings, tickets to events, that kind of stuff).
On the other side, you have the Lib Dems, who are answerable to their members on policy grounds, and have a few vocal MPs who understand the Internet (and evidence). They were a minor force during the DEA debate, so seem to have been mostly ignored re lobbying.
At the moment, the Conservatives control DCMS (the Department of Culture, Media and Support) which is under Jeremy Hunt and Ed Vaizey (the latter has been running the closed-door meetings on web-blocking), which has been pushing for a larger clampdown on copyright (as you might expect from a "Media" department; i.e. answerable to the big media giants). Then the Lib Dems control DBIS (the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills) - under Vince Cable (who announced the plans to shelve the web-blocking parts of the DEA) - which has the policy brief for the DEA, runs the IPO and which is answerable to businesses, and cares about innovation etc.
It's not all that hard to see why there might be conflict here...
That said, the IPO isn't completely unbiased; one of their recent reports contained a wrongly-applied, inaccurately-copied, wrongly-cited (and with an obvious typo) statistic for losses, from a copyright industry (I think Hollywood) source, based on a paper, quoting the draft results of a survey, noting that it was changed in the final version, which was never published. It's quite impressive that they managed to get nearly every step of that wrong.
On the post: UK Now Seizing Music Blogs (With American Domains) Over Copyright Claims
Re: Fraud?
On the post: UK Now Seizing Music Blogs (With American Domains) Over Copyright Claims
Music being stolen
Also, for those interested, the relevant laws on criminal copyright infringement are s107 and s198 of the CDPA 1988, although it seems the site operators have been arrested for Fraud (despite there being case law going against them - the OiNK trial).
On the post: UK Now Seizing Music Blogs (With American Domains) Over Copyright Claims
That said, Nominet has been working semi-secretly (under pressure from police forces) to implement a domain-name seizure process, but that would only apply to .uk domain names. For SOCA (basically the UK's FBI, but not nearly as old or powerful) to decide to shut down a site... without a trial (I assume), is quite a step.
One wonders why the Hollywood studios bothered taking BT (and now TalkTalk) to court to get Newzbin blocked, if they could just set SOCA on it.
On the post: Debunking The EU Commission's 'Myths About ACTA'
Re: No need to change EU law...
Odd - I've never seen that used or discussed before. I've finally learnt something from all this ACTA rubbish.
On the post: Debunking The EU Commission's 'Myths About ACTA'
No need to change EU law...
I'm no expert on EU law, but I can't see how anyone could possibly say this with a straight face.
Firstly, you have Articles 23-26, or "Section 4: Criminal Enforcement." The EU does not do criminal law. Aside from something like 7 specific crimes, there aren't any criminal provisions in EU law. While there was an attempt to include some in IPRED2, that Directive was abandoned (partly, it seems, due to concern about it including criminal measures). For the EC to suggest that EU law is already compliant with ACTA seems ludicrous on this point; how can a Treaty stating that "[e]ach Party shall provide for criminal procedures and penalties" (Art 23(1)) not require a change to EU law?
Secondly, you have Article 27(7): "To protect electronic rights management information, each Party shall provide adequate legal protection and effective legal remedies against any person knowingly [and] without authority ... remov[ing] or alter[ing] any electronic rights management information" etc. Now, again I'm no expert, but I'm not aware of any country in the EU (or outside) that has any sort of law protecting "electronic rights management information" as defined in footnote 16. The claim made by the EC (or any other supporter of ACTA) that no laws need changing clearly falls apart completely at this point. ACTA seems to require the creation of an entirely new type of IP protection.
And those are just the two obvious and clear examples. As discussed in the article, much of the text is so vague there's plenty of room for further doubt.
On the post: Why A Case Testing The Theory That Porn Cannot Be Covered By Copyright Could Be Important
Older English cases
In Glyn v Weston Feature Film (from 1915, so under substantially similar copyright law to now, post-Berne) the work was found not do be protected by copyright due to being "grossly immoral", as it "advocated free love and justified adultery", so there was no infringement (although there was also an issue of 'fair dealing' which back then was much closer to the US's 'fair use' now).
There was also a case from 1826 (pre-Berne), Stockdale v Onwhyn, where a book about a courtesan was also held not to be protected for similar reasons, with one of the judges going as far as to point out that the statute creating what would later be called copyright (the 1710 act) was titled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning...", and so this work wouldn't be protected.
It will be interesting to see if a US court will apply the same sort of literal and purposive approach to the law here (obviously UK law has changed a lot since 1710, so that issue no longer applies).
On the post: Why Can't Europe Just Forget The Ridiculous Idea Of A 'Right To Be Forgotten'
A cultural difference
Anyway, in this case, I wonder if this "right to be forgotten" is more along the lines of a "right to have personal data deleted" (it only applies to personal data, of course, so not merely comments), where keeping the data could amount to an invasion of privacy. The classic example that springs to mind would be the DNA (etc.) databases collected by UK police forces. While under exiting EU law you should be entitled to a copy of the information they have on you (subject to various exceptions) there isn't anything that allows you to get that data (or any other data an organisation holds on you) removed. This might provide such a right (although not if the police groups have a say).
Obviously the right proposed is far broader, but it aligns with the principle of "consent" that is fundamental to EU data protection law; one must consent for any sort of processing or publication of personal information, and that consent can be withdrawn at any point prior to an act of processing or publication. This "right to be forgotten" is merely a formal way of withdrawing that consent, and requiring action based on it.
As for the idea of demanding the removal of data you published yourself, again that doesn't seem too unreasonable; most services already provide some sort of removal capability (usually you have to do it yourself), and it doesn't seem too unreasonable to require such a capability (no different from taking down a poster you've put up somewhere, perhaps?).
On the post: Is The 'Legislative Solution' To Online Infringement To Create A Content Use Registry?
Re: Two problems
The second problem is the major hole at the centre of all copyright issues. It's a direct consequence of extending the duration (and scope) of copyright and not having a registration system. The only real way around it is to set up a compulsory licensing scheme, with the funds being held on some sort of trust if the copyright owner comes forward. But to most copyright lobby groups, "compulsory licensing" is almost as bad as "free" as it takes away control, and forces them to provide frand-style licences.
Of course, the other problem is the complete disinterest any of the parties required to set this up have in it:
The idea sounds quite a bit like the "Digital Copyright Exchange" proposed by the Hargreaves Review in the UK; unfortunately, no tech company wants to go near it because they don't trust the copyright owners, the copyright owners aren't interested because it involves giving up control (and is basically compulsory licensing, as discussed above), and the government can't be bothered to force it as it is a minor issue.
On the post: UK Court Says You Can Copyright The Basic Idea Of A Photograph
Re: Re: Re: Hmmm, smells like...
There's copyright in the original photograph.
The defendant took that photograph and copied all the major elements of it (i.e. a substantial part of it) to make his photograph.
How is that not copyright infringement under current law?
On the post: UK Court Says You Can Copyright The Basic Idea Of A Photograph
Re: Hmmm, smells like...
Onto the case itself; one thing a lot of commentators are missing on this is that the two photographs are causally linked; the defendant saw the claimant's photograph and said "I want something like that." He didn't just take a photograph of the same things, from a similar position (which there's an 1997 case on, involving an Oasis album cover, where the copyright claim was dismissed, despite taking a photo of a "set" prepared for the main photo), he knowingly and wilfully copied all the elements of the first work.
A possible analogy would be to taking characters out of one book and using them in another, maybe renaming them and changing some minor details, but keeping the basic facts and figures the same; the expression is different, but it is still an act of copying (and a "parody" or "criticism" defence would only apply if there was actual parody or criticism, rather than just copying in this case).
It's an odd ruling, and caught some people by surprise, but it isn't particularly outlandish. For a 21st century copyright case. In terms of common sense etc., it's a stupid ruling in many ways, but the judge is limited by the law.
On the post: Judge Says Americans Can Be Forced To Decrypt Laptops
Re:
The Court ended up finding that it wasn't contrary to the principle against self-incrimination on the grounds that the law only covered decrypting information as part of the investigation, not as part of the trial, and if issues of self-incrimination did come up, they could be dealt with by declaring either the material uncovered, or the fact that the defendant had handed over the key (thus "proving" knowledge) could be withheld from evidence.
However, that seems to be a particularly English approach, perhaps not reflected in the US, where you start with as much information as possible, then cut out whatever the jury or court shouldn't know about.
On the post: DOJ Gives Its Opinion On SOPA By Unilaterally Shutting Down 'Foreign Rogue Site' Megaupload... Without SOPA/PIPA
Re: Re: Can someone crunch the numbers?
On the post: DOJ Gives Its Opinion On SOPA By Unilaterally Shutting Down 'Foreign Rogue Site' Megaupload... Without SOPA/PIPA
Re: Re: Reading the indictment...
On the post: DOJ Gives Its Opinion On SOPA By Unilaterally Shutting Down 'Foreign Rogue Site' Megaupload... Without SOPA/PIPA
Reading the indictment...
I particularly liked the way they managed to bring up the fact that MegaUpload hosted "child pornography and terrorist propaganda", and then use the fact that they removed the stuff against them around para 24.
As a non-USian, I'm beginning to wonder if I should move away from US hosting providers, domain names, advertisers and users, just in case, so that they can't claim jurisdiction over me...
On the post: Rupert Murdoch Lashes Out Bizarrely Against The White House For Asking Congress Not To Break The Internet
Evidence backing up his argument
Out of curiosity I did a Google search (in a "clean" browser with no account logged in), and the top results are the official site, IMDB entries for the various films, Wikipedia pages, reviews and links to the trailers on YouTube. You have to get halfway down the second page to find a link to a search page on IsoHunt, and the next "pirate" link is to tPB on page 10.
Now, I'm assuming by "free links" he means somewhere to download the film without paying (rather than a link you don't have to pay to click on - possibly a poor choice of words - although maybe he does think that all sites should be behind paywalls like the Times's), which suggests either he thinks IMDB/Wikipedia/Review sites are actually offering the film, he thinks his company's own trailers on YouTube (where Google kindly hosts them for free) are piratical, or he uses Google so often to find free downloads that it has personalised his search page.
So, he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's a hypocrite (or both). Sounds about right, as far as Murdoch and the Internet go...
On the post: US Can Extradite UK Student For Copyright Infringement, Despite Site Being Legal In The UK
Slightly Misleading headline
"Firstly both TVShack websites were entirely in the hands of Richard O’Dwyer and his co conspirators requiring third parties to sign up to TVShack and be vetted before going further. Secondly he argues, unlike [TV-Links], there was no attempt to protect copyright, he, Richard O’Dwyer, knew materials were subject to copyright and actively taunted already cited efforts in June 2010 to seize TVShack.net."
Personally, I'm not sure the second part of that is relevant to the issue, and the first seems to be a very narrow interpretation of the law and, for example, could see ISPs lose their immunity under this law as they also "vet" their customers to a degree.
Hopefully, though, we'll now get a nice High Court or even Court of Appeal ruling on this issue, showing whether or not linking is illegal, and ruling how broad the 'mere conduit' defence is.
On the post: Insane Entitlement: EMI Sues Irish Gov't For Not Passing SOPA-Like Censorship Law
Re: Suing The Govt For Obeying The Law??
- The Copyright Directive 2001/29 (sometimes the InfoSoc Directive) sets out a lower bound for what must be covered by copyright in all EU member states.
- The Enforcement Directive 2004/48 (sometimes IPRED) sets out a lower bound for what sort of remedies must be available in MSs for copyright infringement.
- The Electronic Commerce Directive 2000/31 sets out various limits on the liability of ISPs (including website hosts),
- The Data Protection Directive 95/46 sets out how personal data of individuals can be collected.
- The Authorisation Directive 2002/20 which places limits on what ISPs can be made to pay for.
Basically, the first two set out what *must* be put into law, in order to 'protect' copyrights, and the second three set out what *can't* be done, even to 'protect' copyrights. Over the last few years there have been a number of cases across the EU where courts have tried to find the right balance between these (such as the DEA judicial review in the UK (back in court on Monday, iirc), the SABAM v Scarlet case mentioned above, the Infopaq(?) case a while back and these Irish cases). It's a big mess.
Iirc, in the last Irish case, the judge found that the proposed measures (the private agreement one ISP had reached with EMI) went too far, and so was illegal under EU law. However, he also noticed that the existing Irish law didn't go far enough either. So now EMI are suing Ireland (using the EU principle of state liability for not fully implementing the relevant EU Directives (probably IPRED) and thus causing EMI some sort of damage (although it could be a challenge for them to prove it).
[As mentioned above, this last part is mostly speculation as I haven't seen any of the paperwork from the new filing.]
On the post: Insane Entitlement: EMI Sues Irish Gov't For Not Passing SOPA-Like Censorship Law
Re: What about this legislation
2. No. That ruling merely set an upper bound on what copyright enforcement people can demand; in that case, SABAM wanted the ISP to actively monitor all their traffic and magically filter out potentially infringing content, and the CJEU said that was far too much. Lesser degrees of enforcement may be fine.
On the post: Insane Entitlement: EMI Sues Irish Gov't For Not Passing SOPA-Like Censorship Law
EMI may actually be entitled to this...
If I remember correctly, in the November ruling, the Irish judge noted that what EMI wanted wasn't possible under Irish law, but should be under EU law, and so the law needed to be changed.
Suing the government over failure to implement a directive (particularly when they think they're losing money over it) is quite normal in the EU.
[Disclaimer: I haven't read their actual filing, so I could be wrong.]
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