On March 22, 2022, Russian lawmakers amended the “fake news” laws with fines and prison sentences. The law, signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 4, criminalized specific types of news coverage over the invasion of Ukraine and could force more social networks out of the country. From P...
The Nexa Center for Internet and Society, an interdisciplinary research center based at the Polytechnic of Turin, has recently published its observations on the Italian Communication Authority’s (AGCOM) regulatory proposal regarding online copyright enforcement.
The proposal is primarily intended to...
A recent UK case shows how court orders mandating ISPs to block access to IP numbers hosting allegedly infringing websites can go wrong. The London High Court, Chancery Division, upon a claim from the Football Association Premier League (“FAPL”) and related organizations, issued an injunction agains...
The ongoing claims against the Rojadirecta website for linking to streams of sporting events are novel and quite important in defining the rights and responsibilities of intermediaries that host links to possibly infringing content stored elsewhere. While the U.S. case against Rojadirecta was...
Valérie Laure Benabou, a law professor at the University of Versailles and an esteemed expert on French and international copyright law, kindly agreed to share her thoughts on the Google vs. SAIF case decided yesterday by the Paris Court of Appeals:
An important decision of the Paris Court of Appeal...
As the Wall Street Journal is already reporting, today eBay sustained an important win in its long-running dispute with Tiffany over counterfeit goods sold through its marketplace. (The full opinion is available here.)
I wrote about this case as my leading example of the legal problems that appear at...
The German Constitutional Court (GCC) this morning struck down a law that imposed on private telecom operators and service providers such as ISPs and telephone companies comprehensive duties to keep record of all communication data, including Internet activity, e-mails, SMS, MMS etc., for six months...
I don’t usually blog “personal” stories, but this one is irresistible. It raises disturbing questions at the border of digital and physical life, and legal problems of trademark and the emerging issues of cloud computing and data liability.
EBay, as everyone knows, has been struggling to improve...
The German blogsphere is buzzing about the new opinion handed down by a court in Hamburg, finding Google’s image search infringing. The court agreed with the copyright holder of comics images, and held that the unauthorized display of the images as thumbnails on the search result pages violated his...
Zdnet reports on a new initiative in France to tighten copyright protection over the Internet and prevent illegal downloading. The French president himself gave announcements that makes one think he’s on payroll of the music and film industry ("we run the risk of witnessing a genuine destruction of...
Today was the official publication of a new amendment to the German Copyright Act. The amendment will enter into force in January 1st, 2008. After four long years of discussions, debates and negotiations, the final text is now available. A few highlights: