Copyright

MEP Julia Reda: Copyright expansion plans would kill EU startups »

Germany has approved a draft law that will enable businesses to run open WiFi hotspots without being held liable for the copyright infringements of their customers. Copyright holders will still have the ability to request that certain sites are blocked to prevent repeat infringement.

Torrentfreak: Germany Approves Draft Law to Protect WiFi Operators From Piracy Liability »

Under the extreme rules proposed by the Commission in the Copyright Directive, uploads to the internet would need to be scanned to assess if any photo, video or text that is being uploaded can be “identified” based on information provided by copyright holders. This would block, for example, memes that include copyrighted images or videos, parody, quotation and other perfectly harmless activities.

From almost a standing start, Sweden has a copyright troll crisis on its hands. Following a ruling by the Patent and Market Court, ISP Telia must hand over the personal details of individuals behind 5,300 IP addresses to companies known to make a business out of settlement fees. In all, around 20,000 persons could be sucked into the controversy.

EDRi has signed a joint open letter together with 27 other civil society organisations expressing concerns about European Commission’s copyright proposal. The proposal requires internet platforms to use automated upload filtering technologies. This obligation would impact negatively on free speech and democracy by building a system where citizens will face internet platforms blocking the upload of their content, even if it is a perfectly legal use of copyrighted content.

Guest Post by New Socialist Initiative (Delhi Chapter) On 9 March 2017 three well-established academic corporate publishing houses, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and Taylor and Francis withdrew their copyright suit filed in the High Court against Delhi University and Rameshwari Photocopy Shop, a shop stationed at the Delhi School of Economics campus in … Continue reading Hail the Students’ Struggle for its Victory in

Just in, regarding the EU Copyright package:
It seems as if the rapporteur in the European Parliament has killed off the proposed EU »link tax« (art. 11) and the demand for ISP:s to filter and censor user generated content (art. 13).
Julia Reda: MEP: European Parliament poised to reject EU copyright expansion plans »

I don’t get it.
The proposed EU »link tax« (charging people and platforms who are linking to a news site) is a backward idea. It will lead to fewer readers and reduced revenues for Big Media, not more money.
Aside from that, Big Media and politicians are at war with what they call »fake news«. (As it turns out, it might be more of a war against new and alternative media – to stamp out competition.)
But assuming that fake news is a real problem – then it makes the link tax even more incomprehensible.

Swedish ISP Bredbandsbolaget has begun blocking The Pirate Bay but it will not give up the fight. The provider says that in order to ensure that private players “do not have the last word regarding content that should be accessible on the Internet,” it will be forced to fight any new blocking demands. Meanwhile, several of the blocked domains appear to be linking to legal sites.

On 24 February 2017 the Rapporteur of the European Parliament (EP) Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), Catherine Stihler MEP, published her draft Opinion on the Copyright Directive. The Opinion sends a strong message against the most extremist parts of the European Commission’s proposal: the “censorship machine” (aka upload filter) proposal in Article 13 and the suggestion to expand the “ancillary copyright ” (aka “link tax”), that failed so miserably in Germany and Spain to every country of the EU.