“The prospects for quick European approval of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement dimmed Wednesday as the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, announced plans to seek an opinion from the European Court of Justice about ACTA’s constitutionality …” (more)
[Timothy B Lee, Ars Technica, 22 February]
“Under a new deal signed by the University of Western Ontario and the University of Toronto, the act of emailing a link will be classed as equivalent to photocopying, and each student and faculty member will cost the universities $27.50/year for this right that the law gives them for free …” (more)
[Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, 20 February]
“… The universities of Western Ontario and Toronto have signed a deal with Access Copyright that allows for surveillance of faculty correspondence, defines e-mailing hyperlinks as equivalent to photocopying a document, and imposes an annual $27.50 fee for every full-time equivalent student to pay for it all …” (more)
[Slashdot, 18 February]
“The Minister for Research and Innovation Sean Sherlock said he ‘welcomed’ a decision from the European Court of Justice which ruled that social networks cannot be obliged to install a filter for user-generated content to prevent copyright infringement, saying it will guide Irish courts when looking into similar matters …” (more)
[Laura O'Brien, Silicon Republic, 16 February]
“The European Court of Justice has ruled that web hosting companies and services cannot be ordered to install filtering software monitoring uploaded content for potential copyright infringement …” (more)
[Business ETC, 16 February]
“The decision by the European Court of Justice that an online social network cannot be obliged to install a general filtering system to prevent copyright infringement has been welcomed by Minister for Research and Innovation, Sean Sherlock …” (more)
[Business Post, 16 February]
“On Tuesday, Mother Jones blogger Kevin Drum suggested that we don’t have effective copyright enforcement on the Internet because we just haven’t tried hard enough …” (more)
[Timothy B Lee, Ars Technica, 15 February]
“Kader Arif is the former EU official who served as rapporteur on ACTA (the secretive copyright treaty pushed by the US Trade Rep) on Europe’s behalf. He made headlines when he handed in his report on ACTA …” (more)
[Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, 14 February]
“The international copyright treaty is meant to improve the protection of intellectual property. But critics fear the deal could severely restricts Internet freedoms. Supporters and opponents of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) agree that intellectual property must be protected. But European societies are divided over how this is to be achieved …” (more)
[Anne Allmeling, Deutsche Welle, 11 February]
“The main reason – effectively the only reason – given by Minister Sean Sherlock for pushing ahead with a deeply flawed statutory instrument is that he is acting on the advice of the Attorney General. However, he has not revealed any detail of that advice and we are being asked to take it on trust both that it is correct (a matter which is open to debate) and also that it compels this particular course of action …” (more)
[TJ McIntyre, IT Law in Ireland, 12 February]
“Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in cities across Europe to voice anger at a controversial international copyright treaty (ACTA), which they fear will lead to a curtailing of Internet freedoms …” (more)
[Deutsche Welle, 11 February]
“I cannot think of an issue that has highlighted the deep disconnect between politicians and Ireland’s younger population more acutely than the proposed statutory instrument to modify Ireland’s copyright legislation …” (more)
[Karlin Lillington, Irish Times, 10 February]
“The journal publisher Elsevier has hit back after being pilloried for supporting an anti-open-access bill in the US Congress. A row has been rumbling along for weeks over the publisher’s support for the Research Works Act introduced to Congress in December …” (more)
[John Gill, Times Higher Education, 9 February]
“California State University and University of California campuses are taking new steps to limit what students can do with their class notes: At least one CSU Chico student recently was reported to judicial affairs for selling notes to a website …” (more)
[Tina Barseghian, MindShift, 6 February]
“Remember all that talk of how the supporters of SOPA/PIPA were ‘humbled’ by the protests of January 18th, and how they had learned their lessons about trying to push through a bill without actually involving the stakeholders? Remember the talk of how they hoped a new tone could be found in the debate? Yeah …” (more)
[Mike Masnick, Techdirt, 8 February]
“Last minute hopes for a controversial statutory instrument dubbed Ireland’s SOPA going back out to the public for consultation have been dashed. The instrument is due to be signed shortly …” (more)
[John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, 8 February]
“It was a terrible shame that Irish internet service providers were more concerned with stopping the downloading of songs and other forms of entertainment than they were with awful images of children being abused, Jillian van Turnhout (Ind) said …” (more)
[Jimmy Walsh, Irish Times, 8 February]
“Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have announced that they will delay their endorsement of a controversial trade agreement following a tide of public protest …” (more)
[Out-Law.com, 7 February]
“‘We need to address the threat to humanity posed by the tsunami of unverifiable data, opinion, libel and vulgar abuse in new media. I know all the stuff about it being a tool of freedom and democracy, and I also know it has the capacity to destroy civil society and cause unimaginable suffering …’” (more)
[TJ McIntyre, IT Law in Ireland, 6 February]
“Tomorrow, the controversial statutory instrument concerning a change to the Copyright Act 2000 to correct a loophole in the legislation – dubbed ‘Ireland’s SOPA’ – goes before Cabinet. The ultimate decision can go one of either two ways …” (more)
[John Kennedy, Silicon Republic, 6 February]
