Companies from across IT face criminal sanctions, including prison time for employees, if their networks, software programs or online services are ever used to carry illegally copied material such as music or film, according to a draft law from the European Commission supported Tuesday by a committee of the European Parliament. ...
Radio Stations and Online Broadcasters Challenge Copyright Ruling on Internet Royalties -- A wide array of broadcasters and online companies on Monday challenged a ruling from a panel of copyright judges that they say could cripple the emerging business of offering music broadcasts over the Internet. Clear Channel Communications Inc., National Public Radio, and groups representing both large and small companies providing music broadcasts online were among those asking the Copyright Royalty Board to reconsider key parts of its March 2 ruling. That ruling, the challenging parties say, would greatly increase the amount of royalties that online music broadcasters would have to pay to record labels and performers as well as put unreasonable demands on them to track how many songs were listened to by exactly how many individuals online.
There are two principles that influence the interpretation and application of TRIPS and that must be mentioned here: the principle of national treatment and the most favoured nation principle.
... The section sets out the principles, policy recommendations and implementation guidelines the GNSO Council’s Committee on the introduction of new top-level domains has developed through its policy development process. The development of all elements of the Committee’s work has been done in close consultation with an ICANN staff team who have provided advice on policy, operational and legal matters for the Committee. ... Recommendation 6 - Strings must not be contrary to generally accepted legal norms relating to morality and public order.
NCUC Minority Report I wish to supplement the work of the Committee by adding these comments. It is my view that any general Principle which seeks to prohibit any gTLD promoting hatred, racism, discrimination, crime or any abuse of religions or cultures is fundamentally flawed insofar as it fails to include any reference to Freedom [...]
14 March 2007 - The NY Times published a terrific article today about internationally renowned singer/song-writer Gilberto Gil, who also happens to be Brazil's Minister of Culture. Gil is speaking at "South By SouthWest" this week before kicking off his US concert tour. I was lucky to meet Gil at the 2005 World Summit on [...]
ARTICLE 29 - DATA PROTECTION WORKING PARTY ON THE PROTECTION OF INDIVIDUALS WITH REGARD TO THE PROCESSING OF PERSONAL DATA Opinion on the application of the data protection principles to the WhoIs Directories (ORIGINAL DOCUMENT AS .PDF) 1. Introduction: The WhoIs directories raise several issues from the data protection perspective. WhoIs data relates to those [...]
On 2 March 2007 the US Copyright Royalty Board (a 3-judge panel) sided with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and against Web-casters, musicians and consumers with a ruling on the new web-casting royalty rate. The CRB took the highly controversial position of adopting a pay-per-play rate for streaming digital music instead of the current percentage of revenue model. Web-casters report that the fee hike will put them entirely out of business and kill Internet radio since it amounts to more than 100% of their revenues.
Civil Society Proposes Amendment to Protect Civil Liberties and Innovation ICANN’s Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) submitted a proposal to protect freedom of expression and innovation in the introduction of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). ICANN’s policy council, the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), is currently developing policy recommendations to regulate the introduction of new top-level domain names on the Internet. NCUC is troubled by the GNSO’s draft recommendation to create string selection criteria that would prevent the registration of a new gTLD string that contains a controversial word or idea. ..."
"... Unless reformed, this ICANN policy will prevent anyone in the world from being able to use controversial words like "abortion" or "gay" in a new gTLD if a single country objects to their use. The proposal would further prevent the use of numerous ordinary words like "herb" and "john" in a string since they can have an illegal connotation in certain contexts. In addition to any country in the world being able to stop a new gTLD string, ICANN staff would also be able to prevent any idea that it deemed too controversial to exist in the new domain space. The 13 Feb. proposal (Term of Reference 2(x)) gives ICANN staff the important job of making preliminary determinations as to whether a string is inappropriate and who the "legitimate sponsor" of a domain name (such as .god) should be. "The 13 Feb proposal would essentially make ICANN the arbiter of public policy and morality in the new gTLD space, a frightening prospect for anyone who cares about democracy and free expression," said Robin Gross, Executive Director of IP Justice, an NCUC member organization. "The proposal would give ICANN enormous power to regulate the use of language on the Internet and lead to massive censorship of controversial ideas." ...