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EDRI-gram
biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe
Number 6.5, 12 March 2008
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Contents
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1. German constitutional challenge on Data Retention
2. EDRi's Statement at WIPO SCCR
3. Google completes the DoubleClick deal after EC clears the acquisition
4. Ireland: Music industry sues ISP, demands filtering
5. High Level Contact Group talks about EU-US personal data issues
6. French website Note2Be.com closed by court order
7. Israeli's ISPs forced by court to block torrent links website
8. European Parliament criticized for not using open standards
9. Swiss Bank was denied the closure of whistleblowers website
10. German police raids against patent breaches at CeBit fair
11. ENDitorial: The battle for Sound Copyright
12. Recommended Action
13. Recommended Reading
14. Agenda
15. About
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1. German constitutional challenge on Data Retention
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The complaint challenging the German data retention law in front of the
Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has become the biggest
constitutional case in German history with the submission of more than
34000 signatures backing up the action. The Working Group on Data
Retention has also prepared an amicus curiae brief that it wants to submit
to the European Court of Justice in the case Ireland vs. the Data Retention
Directive and that can be signed by other NGOs.
In early February 2008, the German Federal Constitutional Court sent the
application for the suspension of the data retention act to the Government,
both chambers of the Parliament as well as the Governments of the Länder for
comments. The court asked, among others, for confirmation of a study
according to which, even before data retention was enacted, only 2% of the
requests made by authorities could not be served by the service providers.
The Federal Constitutional Court has announced it would decide on the
application for an injunction in the month of March.
On 29 February 2008, the "Arbeitskreis Vorratsdatenspeicherung" (Working
Group on Data Retention) submitted to the Court the mandates of over 34 000
citizens willing to fight againts the storage of their telecommunications
over a period of six months. The complainants' mandates filling
102 folders and 12 packing cases were handed over to the Federal
Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on behalf of Berlin attorney Meinhard
Starostik.
Afterwards, on the Platz der Grundrechte (Basic Rights Square), members of
privacy NGO Working Group on Data Retention symbolically hang 17 theses
for the defence of basic rights in modern times. Some panels read contrary
statements by politicians such as the German chancellor Angela
Merkel who said: "There must not be any space in which terrorists can
communicate without the possibility of government access."
The members Working Group on Data Retention commented: "We demand that
government and parliament initiate an independent review of all surveillance
powers introduced since 1968 with regard to their effectiveness and adverse
side-effects. We also demand a halt to new surveillance bills further
encroaching on our basic rights. Among those plans are the surveillance of
flight passengers, the central population register, biometric and electronic
ID cards as well as police powers for the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal
Criminal Police Office) including state spying into personal computers."
In a parallel activity, the German Working Group Against Data Retention has
drafted an amicus curiae brief that is to be presented to the European Court
of Justice regarding the action started on 6 July 2006 - Ireland vs. Council
of the European Union, European Parliament (Case C-301/06). The amicus
curiae brief is an attempt to add substantial arguments, as the Irish
challenge is based only on formal grounds. The signatories claim that the
data retention directive is first and foremost illegal on human rights
grounds. They urge the court to base its decision on the incompatibility
with human rights rather than the lack of competence and are explaining why
the present text is breaching the right to respect for private life and
correspondence (Article 8 ECHR), the freedom of expression (Article 10 ECHR)
and the protection of property (Article 1 PECHR).
Other NGOs are invited to join the German Working Group Against Data
Retention by signing the petition as well.
German Working Group Against Data Retention - The Amicus Curiae Brief
https://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/ind...us_Curiae_Brief
Historic class-action lawsuit filed against telecommunications data
collection (29.02.2008)
http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/cont...202/79/lang,en/
34,443 applications lodged against data retention (only in German,
29.02.2008)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/104279
EDRI-gram: German data retention act challenged (16.02.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.1/ger...-data-retention
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2. EDRi's Statement at WIPO SCCR
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On 11 March 2008 Ville Oksanen, representing EDRi at the WIPO SCCR, made the
following statement on the agenda item related to limitations & exceptions:
"European Digital Rights, EDRI, represents 28 privacy and civil rights
organisations from 17 different countries in Europe. As this is the
first time EDRI takes the floor, we'd like to congratulate you and your
vice chairs on your election.
Not surprisingly, we are strongly in favour of starting the work that
would hopefully lead to new international instrument on limitations and
exceptions of copyright. EDRI therefore warmly supports the proposal
presented by the honourable delegate of Chile.
However, EDRI firmly believes that any new instrument should have also
a strong focus - for example as a part of best practices - on the rights
of totally ordinary citizens -- in addition to the professional or
institutional users that traditionally occupy the center stage during
these discussions of limitations and exceptions.
One of the key reasons for this is that value of all kinds of consumer
goods is based nowadays increasingly on the software and content and not
so much on hardware. As a consequence, copyright has to learn to live
with consumer protection regulation. From our perspective, it would make
most sense to address this challenge inside the copyright system at the
international level. In practice this means that the proposed research
should also seek to answer questions like "is it OK to hack your iPhone
even if that requires making a derivative copy of the software " and "is
it legal to create tools that help consumer to transfer maps from his
old navigator to a new one even if the license agreements forbid it".
As far as we know, answers to this kind of questions are not yet firmly
established at any jurisdictions and therefore task at hand would be
forward-looking global harmonization.
Finally, EDRI would like to see very much such limitations and
exceptions whose aim is to protect free speech - for example parody and
satire, quotations for criticism, usage of works in news - included
extensively to the process. Copyright has a dark history for being a
tool for censorship and oppression of controversial opinions - hopefully
the possible new instrument could be a tool for redeeming this black past."
WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights: Sixteenth Session
http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=14502
(Contribution by Ville Oksanen - EDRi member Electronic Frontier Finland)
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3. Google completes the DoubleClick deal after EC clears the acquisition
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The European Commission (EC) announced on 11 March 2008 that it has
cleared the Google-DoubleClick deal after its investigation made according
with the EU Merger Regulation.
The decision of the EC considered that "found that Google and DoubleClick
were not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities
and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors at the moment. Even
if DoubleClick could become an effective competitor in online intermediation
services, it is likely that other competitors would continue to exert
sufficient competitive pressure after the merger. The Commission therefore
concluded that the elimination of DoubleClick as a potential competitor
would not have an adverse impact on competition in the online intermediation
advertising services market."
Also the Commission found out that the Microsoft complaints were not correct
and took the presence of the company on the market as a sign that the new
entity "would not have the ability to engage in strategies aimed at
marginalising Google's competitors, mainly because of the presence of
credible ad serving alternatives to which customers
(publishers/advertisers/ad networks) can switch, in particular vertically
integrated companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL."
The EC makes it clear that the decision did not took into consideration the
complaints related to EU privacy and personal data legislation, such as the
one submitted by Privacy International. Also the consumer issues created by
the merger - such as behaviour profiling, as pointed by BEUC, were not
present in the Commission decision.
Mergers: Commission clears proposed acquisition of DoubleClick by Google
(11.03.2008)
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction...;guiLanguage=en
Google wins Commission approval, closes DoubleClick deal (11.03.2008)
http://www.out-law.com//default.aspx?page=8931
EDRI-gram: EDRI supports PI's comments on Google-Doubleclick merger
(7.11.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.21/go...leclick-pi-edri
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4. Ireland: Music industry sues ISP, demands filtering
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EMI, Sony, Warner and Universal have sued Ireland's largest ISP, Eircom,
demanding that it install filters to prevent users from illegally sharing or
downloading music. The action was admitted by Mr. Justice Peter Kelly to the
Commercial Court, meaning that it will be heard on an expedited basis.
Eircom has said that it is not on notice of specific illegal activity that
infringed the rights of the companies and has no legal obligation to monitor
traffic on its network. Previously the music companies had sought to have
Eircom voluntarily install software such as that produced by Audible Magic,
which will "fingerprint" music files, but Eircom refused indicating that it
could not run that software on its servers.
The Internet Service Providers Association of Ireland (ISPAI) has previously
said that it opposes any filtering of this sort, with General Manager Paul
Durrant saying:
"The Association is totally opposed to any obligation (such as that
apparently in this Belgian court decision) that ISPs should monitor all of
their customers' Internet communications on the off-chance that someone may
be distributing copyrighted work which they do not have permission to use.
(How is an ISP, or any other third party, to know whether a communication is
copyrighted, who owns the copyright or whether permission has or has not
been granted?)
The privacy of all personal and business communications is at stake here.
This is the electronic equivalent of the post-office steaming open every
letter in the sorting office, checking the contents and never delivering the
bits some unknown worker believes should be censored. If legislation forced
ISPs to monitor, never mind the democratic or moral issues, in practice
everyone would immediatly switch to encryption rendering any such monitoring
useless, the monitoring process itself would slow the Internet to an
unusable snail's pace."
Digital Rights Ireland has condemned this action, saying that it will
jeopardise the privacy of internet users, add to the cost of broadband,
"overblock" legitimate files, and ultimately be easily circumvented by
encrypted peer to peer programs.
Irish Times, Eircom taken to court over illegal music downloads (10.03.08)
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/.../breaking61.htm
RTE News, Record firms seek to ban illegal downloads (10.03.08)
http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0310/download.html
Digital Rights Ireland, IRMA v. Eircom - Why ISP filtering for the music
industry is a bad idea (11.03.08)
http://www.digitalrights.ie/2008/03/11/irm...-is-a-bad-idea/
Paul Durrant (ISPAI), Comment (18.07.2007)
http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2007/07/can-isps...318685854293200
(contribution by TJ McIntyre - EDRi-member Digital Rights Ireland)
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5. High Level Contact Group talks about EU-US personal data issues
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According to a document revealed by Statewatch, the EU and US are
negotiating the data protection principles for which common language has
been developed. The Group has as purpose to draft a proposal that should
deal with the personal data protection in any future EU-US agreements that
will deal with this topic.
In November 2007 Paul Rosenzweig, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy at
the US DHS said, on the EU requirement, that data could only be passed to
third states whose laws passed the "adequacy" test guaranteeing equivalent
rights:
"The EU should reconsider its decision to apply notions of adequacy to the
critical area of law enforcement and public safety. Otherwise the EU runs
the very real risk of turning itself into a self-imposed island, isolated
from the very allies it needs" (Privacy and Security Law).
He is also opposed to the EU's draft Framework Decision on data protection
in police and criminal matters (covering the exchange of personal data
within the EU):
"The draft seeks to apply the same tired, failed standards of adequacy that
it has applied in its commercial laws."
Data Protection principles for which common language has been developed
(03.2008)
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/mar/eu...-principles.pdf
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6. French website Note2Be.com closed by court order
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Following the legal action initiated on 14 February by several individual
teachers and SNES-FS union, a French court ordered on 3 March 2008 to
Note2be.com to eliminate from their site the names of the teachers graded
by students.
The site, launched on 30 January 2008, that allowed students to grade and
evaluate their teachers, got immediate vivid reactions from the Ministry of
Education, teachers and parents accusing the site of breaching privacy and
inciting "to public disorder".
The court decided the site could no longer identify the teachers by name,
asked the site to pay a symbolic 1 euro fine and the legal expenses for some
of the teachers that were part of the case and advised the site owners they
were facing a 1000 euro fine for every infringement.
Stephane Cola, co-founder the site, expressed his disappointment related to
the decision considering that an evaluation of the teachers on the Internet
was "a fundamental principle and a primary motor of the Internet around the
world".
The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), also gave
its verdict on 6 March backing up the ruling of the court and considering
the site as "illegitimate in relation to the personal data protection". CNIL
considered that on the basis of art. 7 of the Information and Freedoms Law
the teachers should be given the option of giving or not their consent for
the publication of information on them, option which is not provided by the
site especially as Note2be.com is a commercial activity "relying on the
audience of an Internet site which does not grant the necessary legitimacy,
in the legal sense, to proceed to an individual grading of the teachers".
However, CNIL did not consider it was necessary to take any penalty action
having in view the decision of the court but stated it would continue to
monitor the site in case of future infringements of the law.
The site owners will probably file for an appeal and, in the meantime, on 15
March, D & E Investments will open a similar site, Note2bib.com for the
evaluation of the health professionals.
French court says site cannot grade teachers (3.03.2008)
http://www.news.com/2100-1030_3-6232855.html
Note2be Internet site will have to remove the names of the teachers it
grades (only in French, 4.03.2008)
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2008...18583_3224.html
CNIL judges the site grading teachers, note2be.com, as "illegitimate"(only
in French, 6.03.2008)
http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2008...19770_3224.html
Note2be.com judged "illegitimate" by Cnil (only in French, 7.03.2008)
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,...39379361,00.htm
EDRI-gram: Note2be.com under investigation by CNIL (27.02.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.4/note2be-cnil-france
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7. Israeli's ISPs forced by court to block torrent links website
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On 25 February 2008, following pressure from the International Federation of
the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and a petition initiated by the 12 biggest
record companies of Israel, the Haifa District Court ordered the country's
three largest ISPs to block access to HttpShare.com, a BitTorrent and http
hyperlink-only website.
Gideo Ginat, Haifa District Court Judge, stated: "I order the respondents,
that is Israeli internet service providers, to systematically block access
to the illicit site, HttpShare, so that surfers cannot enter this site and
utilize it in order to impede upon the claimants' copy rights." The
decision did not indicate any deadline for the application of the decision
or duration period for the blocking.
Actually the respective site, httpshare, does not contain any movies or
music files to be downloaded; it has only links to file sharing sites, such
as BitTorent. In the opinion of the site operators, the site is perfectly
legal. "According to legal codes in the Netherlands, sites providing
external links allowing surfers to download movie, music, games and program
are perfectly legal. Sites cannot sites these illicit files on their
internet servers, and that is precisely what we do not do. The site merely
provides links to file sharing sites such as http:bittorent." The site is
operated from the Netherlands and is therefore subject to Dutch laws and not
Israeli law even if it is in Hebrew. "Israeli law applies only to Israeli
residents and to websites operating from Israel itself" said the site
operators.
Tel Aviv lawyer, Jonathan Klinger, contacted by TorrentFreak, claimed that
even in Israel the decision has no legal ground: "First of all, it has no
legal grounds (the decision itself was given like in the Wikileaks case,
with the Defendant's consent). Not the Israeli Copyright Order nor the civil
torts act or the Copyright Act acknowledge an Injunction blocking Users from
accessing a website in this level, as the users are not a party to the
process nor is the ISP a hosting provider. The ISP is simply granting access
to a website which only provides links for users to use in file sharing
programs. The Users themselves chose to infringe copyright. (and until today
no court decision was given claiming links to files stored elsewhere deem as
liability for copyright infringement)."
Trying to stop people from using such kind of sites has no legal basis and
yet IFPI has already succeeded in making pressures that led to similar
situations like the blocking at the beginning of February 2008 of the access
to Pirate Bay in Denmark and the blocking of 20 torrent sites in Kuwait.
Pirate Bay was also blocked in September 2007 in Turkey.
IFPI also intends to extend its actions to international sites. Moti Amitai,
Director of the Enforcement Unit of IFPI stated: "we want to utilize this
verdict as a precedent and go after international sites as well. We are now
looking into the logistics and the legal issues involved."
Some voices however say that actions like this only give a boost to the
sites they act against offering them free publicity. HttpShare site says:
"We receive more than 70.000 visitors per day, we have up-dated our network.
(...) A big thank you to IFPI for the publicity." HttpShare also announced
they opened a forum in English for the new visitors.
Internet providers ordered to block file sharing website (6.03.2008)
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3515275,00.html
IFPI Pressure Forces ISPs to Block Another File-Sharing Site (6.03.2008)
http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-forces-block-...ng-site-080306/
IFPI gives a publicity stunt to tracker BitTorrent HttpShare (only in
French, 10.03.2008)
http://www.numerama.com/magazine/8845-L-IF...-HttpShare.html
EDRI-gram - PirateBay - blocked in Denmark (13.02.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.3/piratebay-denmark
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8. European Parliament criticized for not using open standards
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A public petition was initiated by OpenForum Europe, The European Software
Market Association, and the Free Software Foundation Europe asking the
European Parliament (EP) to change its ICT system in order to allow the
adoption of open standards.
The petition specifically points to the fact that the live web streaming
from the European Parliament's plenary sessions is currently only available
to those using Microsoft's Media Player. Also, it appears that members of
the European Parliament are unable to "access documents sent to them in
formats adhering to Open Standards, including the ISO standard for
electronic office documents, the Open Document Format (ODF) - the primary
format for an ecosystem of office productivity applications."
Graham Taylor, Chief Executive of OpenForum Europe said: "The benefits of
the Internet were achieved from open standards, freedom of access,
participation for all, innovation where it really mattered. Not proprietary
lock-in and monopoly. Government and Parliament need to show leadership in
ensuring full participation for all its citizens."
The petition explains that the EU Public procurement laws are based on the
principles of transparency and non-discrimination, but the usage in the EP
ICT systems of a proprietary solution with closed formats just means that
"the European Parliament is dependent on a single vendor and that companies
cannot freely compete on merit to provide applications and services."
Pieter Hintjens, General Secretary of Esoma explains, "Small businesses are
moving to modern open standards like Open Document Format, yet to write to
their MEPs they have to switch back to old proprietary formats? The EP
should lead the way in open government, starting with open standards for
documents and recordings."
The petition is supported by the Green MEPs in the EP. In a press conference
organized on 6 March, Green MEP David Hammerstein, spokesperson for the
Greens in the Petitions Committee said: "The European Parliament must
practice what it preaches. We support the "Open Parliament" petition because
we believe the current situation of a Microsoft monopoly has a negative
impact on participatory democracy, innovation and competition."
Green MEP Eva Lichtenberger, vice-president of the Green Group in the EP
expanded the topic to web-related monopolies :"We are confronted with a very
problematic situation on the Web and also concerning hardware: Monopolies
are gaining ever more influence - the latest news about Google taking over
DoubleClick and a possible absorption of Yahoo by Microsoft are two such
examples. Monopolies tend to loose flexibility and in the end to block
innovation."
The latter declaration is in line with the recently adopted Declaration on
"Standards and the Future of the Internet" adopted in Geneva on 25 February
2008 by the members of the OpenForum Europe Conference.
The signatories support the idea that "Open Standards already underpin the
success of the Internet, and acts as an exemplar to the market on what is
important, and what is possible when full competition and innovation is
unleashed." Therefore they pledge to maintain the openness and integrity of
the Internet as enjoyed today.
Open Parliament - Petition to the European Parliament on the implications of
ICT lock-in for participative democracy and for competition (6.03.2008)
http://www.openparliament.eu/petition
Declaration for open standards in the internet passed (29.02.2008)
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/104270/
Declaration Standards and the Future of the Internet" (25.02.2008)
http://www.openforumeurope.org/geneva/decl...logos-final.pdf
Complaint Lodged Over EU Parliament's Exclusive Use Of Microsoft Systems
(6.03.2008)
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/index.php?p=948
New petition calls for open standards in the European Parliament (6.03.2008)
http://www.openforumeurope.org/press-room/...pean-parliament
Greens call for end of Microsoft monopoly in the European Institutions
(6.03.2008)
http://www.greens-efa-service.org/medialib/fe/pub/en/dct/180
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9. Swiss Bank was denied the closure of whistleblowers website
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U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White reversed his initial decision of shutting
down the wikileaks.org domain of Wikileaks, a website where whistleblowers
can untraceably leak documents.
Wikileaks, launched in early 2007, has anonymously posted documents
revealing delicate subjects such as the infiltration of agents of the Stasi,
the former East German secret police, into the commission investigating
their organization or massive corruption in Kenya.
The Swiss bank Julius Baer sued Wikileaks, at the beginning of February
2008, in relation to documents posted to the site that were showing
corruption in the bank's Cayman Islands branch allegedly used by bank
clients to launder money, hide assets and evade taxes. The Bank had obtained
a temporary injunction of the domain on 15 February and signed an agreement
with domain name registrar Dynadot to redirect the Wikileaks.org domain name
to a blank page.
The judge initially ruled on shutting down the domain. Julius Baer lawyers
had told White that the case was about protecting privacy rights of
customers as information on them were disclosed in the documents revealed by
the site, considered by the bank as stolen. The judge's initial decision
had also been due to the lack of reaction from Wikileaks at that time.
White admitted that his earlier injunction had had "exactly the opposite
effect as was intended" as "..the press generated by this Court's action
increased public attention to the fact that such information was readily
accessible online." He reconsidered his position and dissolved the agreement
with Dynadot after getting a better understanding of the issues in the case
and following reactions from various news and civil liberties groups that
revealed the problematic issues raised by the case and argued that White's
order to shut down Wikileaks.org was violating free-speech rights.
In addition, he stated that federal courts could not take cases between two
foreign nationals, and that he "may well lack subject matter jurisdiction
over this matter in its entirety." A lawyer was also sent to the court by
the person who claims to be the owner of the Wikileaks domain name.
Bank Julius Baer's decision to file the action against Wikileaks has proven
a bad one as following the judge ruling and the bad press, the bank declined
4.8 percent in value.
Court deals blow to online whistleblowers (23.02.2008)
http://technology.newscientist.com/channel...tleblowers.html
Wikileaks restraining order a failure, judge says (3.03.2008)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...judge-says.html
Baer Drops After Losing Bid to Disable Wikileaks.org (Update1) (3.03.2008)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...mp;refer=europe
Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks
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10. German police raids against patent breaches at CeBit fair
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On 6 March 2008, the German authorities raided 51 exhibitor stands at CeBit,
the German information technology fair, in a search for goods suspected of
infringing patents.
The Hanover police stated that the reason for this action in which about 180
officials from the police, customs and prosecutor offices took part, was
"criminal complaints by the holders of patent rights in the run-up to
CeBit," that have increased during years.
The officials took away a number of electronic goods and documents including
cell-phones, flat-screen monitors, navigation devices, and digital picture
frames. Out of the 51 raided booths, 24 were from China, 15 were from Taiwan
or Hong Kong, nine were from Germany, and the rest from Poland, the
Netherlands, and Korea. Most of patents in questions were related to devices
that had MP3, MP4, or digital audio and video functions, DVD players and
copiers and blank CDs and DVDs.
The action is also probably due to the Italian firm Sisvel, which pursues
breaches of audio compression patents and which has filed complaints in
Hanover after having monitored the fair for some years. "We help patent
proprietors to obtain royalties for their intellectual property," said
Giustino de Sanctis, chief executive of Audio MPEG of the US Sisvel unit.
During the raid, twenty people were ordered to pay a security deposit 1 000
or 500 euros each and, under the German law, those found guilty will face
fines or prison up to five years.
Police raid 51 CeBIT stands over suspected piracy (6.03.2008)
http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jht...eetimes_newsRSS
Patent police raid booths at CeBit trade show (6.03.2008)
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9887955-7.html?tag=newsmap
German police: 51 accused of product piracy at CeBIT (6.30.2008)
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/19...y-at-cebit.html
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11. ENDitorial: The battle for Sound Copyright
============================================================
Commissioner Charlie McCreevy's announcement in February 2008 that he
proposes to nearly double the term of copyright protection for sound
recordings from 50 to 95 years came as a shock to UK digital rights
campaigners. Back in 2006, here in the UK, the case against copyright
term extension was robustly made - by campaigners such as my
organisation, the Open Rights Group, and more importantly, by
economists from one of the UK's leading universities. It led to a firm
commitment from our Government that they would never seek to extend
copyright term retrospectively.
There is no case for copyright term extension. Term extension would
reduce, yet again, the size of the public domain, harming public
access to old material and chilling the creation of new works that
build upon the past. The only beneficiaries will be the owners of a
limited number of valuable back-catalogues - the majors and a very few
lucky performers - who will receive windfall gains at the public's
expense and at the expense of future innovators. That the UK
government finally recognised this looked like a line in the sand for
IP reformists. Professor Lawrence Lessig, whose own gambit to stop
copyright term in the US failed despite his having the backing of two
Nobel-prize winning economists - called the work of the Open Rights
Group "proof that we cynics were wrong".
So what happened? The UK publication Music Week, the local gazette for
the band of musicians, record label bosses and collecting societies
who are pushing an extension in term, summed it up well when it
observed last week that people need to "keep faith in the lobbying
process, which has been ongoing in Europe". The battle against term
extension is fought by unequal sides. Those who are for it are a
coherent group of people with something singular and immediate to
gain, as well as significant funds to invest in their lobbying
efforts. Those who are against term extension - and that should be
anyone with an interest in access to the public domain - are a large,
disparate mass who will benefit from sensible copyright laws and a
healthy public domain in many different ways.
That lobbyists have had their way with McCreevy should be obvious; the
proposal to extend term flies in the face of the iVIR study (quoted in
last EDRI-gram), a piece of research commissioned by McCreevy's own
Directorate Generale, DG MARKT. But we should not give up. If past
experience is anything to go by, it will take two things to expose
McCreevy's mercantilism: evidence that term extension will do little
to benefit regular session musicians and other performers, and
evidence that Europeans care about this issue. We have the former. And
we are gaining the latter.
At the campaign website Soundcopyright.eu, launched in February by the
Open Rights Group and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, over 8,000
people have already signed a petition which demands that the EU take
account of all stakeholders when devising copyright policy. If you
believe that copyright policy should be decided on the basis of
evidence, and not on the basis of who lobbies the hardest, please add
your voice to theirs.
Sound Copyright - Don't Let the Record Labels Break Their Promise
http://www.soundcopyright.eu/
Open Rights Group and EFF launch Europe-wide anti-term extension petition
(29.02.2008)
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2008/02/29/...nsion-petition/
EDRi-gram : Extension of the copyright term for performers proposed to the
EC (27.02.2008)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.4/cop...rmers-extension
(Contribution by Becky Hogge - EDRi-member Open Rights Group - UK)
============================================================
12. Recommended Action
============================================================
Draft Recommendation on the implementation of privacy, data protection and
information security principles in applications supported by Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID): your opinion matters!
The Public Consultation will be open for a period of eight weeks and will
finish on 25th April 2008.
You may find also a translation of the consultation in French and German.
http://ec.europa.eu/yourvoice/ipm/forms/di...ch?form=RFIDRec
============================================================
13. Recommended Reading
============================================================
Council of Europe: Access to Information Convention: Seven Key Problems
Remain in the Draft European Convention on Access to Official Documents:
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2008/mar/co...in-problems.pdf
============================================================
14. Agenda
============================================================
15 March 2008, London, UK
OKCon 2008 - Open Knowledge: Applications, Tools and Services
http://www.okfn.org/okcon/
19 March 2008, London, UK
Musicians, fans and online copyright
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/98391291
31 March 2008 Vilnius, Lithuania
"Ethical Public Domain: Debate of Questionable Practices" - Second COMMUNIA
workshop
http://www.communia-project.eu/ws02
31 March - 2 April 2008, Bled, Slovenia
The Future of the Internet
http://www.fi-bled.eu/
2-4 April 2008, Berlin, Germany
re:publica - The Critical Mass
http://www.re-publica.de
10-12 April 2008, Amsterdam & Hilversum, Netherlands
Economies of the Commons - Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative
Reuse of Images and Sounds Online
International Working Conference
http://www.ecommons.eu
12 April 2008, Rijeka, Croatia
International seminar on digital evidence
http://law.pravri.hr/hr/digital-evidence-seminar.pdf
28-29 April 2008, Vienna, Austria
PRISE Final Conference -Towards privacy enhancing security technologies -
the next steps
http://www.prise.oeaw.ac.at/conference.htm
9-10 May 2008, Florence, Italy
"Digital communities and data retention"
Deadline for papers submission is 31 March 2008
http://e-privacy.winstonsmith.info/
15-17 May 2008, Ljubljana, Slovenia
EURAM Conference 2008 - Track "Creating Value Through Digital Commons"
How collective management of IPRs, open innovation models, and digital
communities shape the industrial dynamics in the XXI century.
http://www.euram2008.org
20-23 May 2008, New Haven, CT, USA
18th Annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference
http://cfp2008.org/
30-31 May 2008, Bucharest, Romania
eLiberatica 2008 - The benefits of Open and Free Technologies
http://www.eliberatica.ro/2008/
6-7 June 2008, Bremen, Germany
IdentityCamp - a barcamp around identity 2.0 and privacy 2.0
http://barcamp.org/IdentityCampBremen
17-18 June 2008, Seoul, Korea
The Future of the Internet Economy - OECD Ministerial Meeting
http://www.oecd.org/FutureInternet
23 June 2008, Paris, France
GigaNet is organizing an international academic workshop on "Global Internet
Governance: An Interdisciplinary Research Field in Construction".
http://tinyurl.com/3y9ld8
26-27 June 2008, London, UK
International Conference on Digital Evidence
http://www.mistieurope.com/default.asp?Pag...DigitalEvidence
30 June - 1 July 2008, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
First COMMUNIA Conference - Assessment of economic and social impact of
digital public domain throughout Europe
http://www.communia-project.eu/conf2008
23-25 July 2008, Leuven, Belgium
The 8th Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS 2008)
http://petsymposium.org/2008/
19-20 July 2008, Stockholm, Sweden
International Association for Media and Communication Research
pre-conference - Civil Rights in Mediatized Societies: Which data privacy
against whom and how ?
Deadline for papers submission is 1 April 2008
http://www.iamcr.org/content/view/301/1/
8-10 September 2008, Geneva, Switzerland
The third annual Access to Knowledge Conference (A2K3)
http://isp.law.yale.edu/
============================================================
15. About
============================================================
EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe.
Currently EDRI has 28 members based or with offices in 17 different
countries in Europe. European Digital Rights takes an active interest in
developments in the EU accession countries and wants to share knowledge and
awareness through the EDRI-grams.
All contributions, suggestions for content, corrections or agenda-tips are
most welcome. Errors are corrected as soon as possible and visibly on the
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Except where otherwise noted, this newsletter is licensed under the
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Newsletter editor: Bogdan Manolea <edrigram@edri.org>
Information about EDRI and its members:
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