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Subject: EDRI-gram newsletter - Number 6.5, 12 March 2008
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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 ============================================================
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/index.php?title=Amicus_Curiae_Brief
Historic class-action lawsuit filed against telecommunications data collection (29.02.2008) http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/content/view/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/germany-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 ============================================================
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.do?reference=IP/08/426&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&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/google-doubleclick-pi-edri
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4. Ireland: Music industry sues ISP, demands filtering ============================================================
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/2008/0310/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/irma-v-eircom-why-isp-filtering-for-the-music-industry-is-a-bad-idea/
Paul Durrant (ISPAI), Comment (18.07.2007) http://www.tjmcintyre.com/2007/07/can-isps-be-required-to-block-file.html#954318685854293200
(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 ============================================================
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-us-dp-principles.pdf
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6. French website Note2Be.com closed by court order ============================================================
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/2008/03/04/le-site-internet-note2be-devra-retirer-les-noms-des-enseignants-qu-il-note_1018583_3224.html
CNIL judges the site grading teachers, note2be.com, as "illegitimate"(only in French, 6.03.2008) http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2008/03/06/la-cnil-juge-le-site-de-notation-des-professeurs-note2be-com-illegitime_1019770_3224.html
Note2be.com judged "illegitimate" by Cnil (only in French, 7.03.2008) http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/internet/0,39020774,39379361,00.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 ============================================================
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-of-file-sharing-site-080306/
IFPI gives a publicity stunt to tracker BitTorrent HttpShare (only in French, 10.03.2008) http://www.numerama.com/magazine/8845-L-IFPI-donne-un-coup-de-pub-au-tracker-BitTorrent-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 ============================================================
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/declaration/manifesto-with-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/latest-news/new-petition-calls-for-open-standards-in-the-european-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 ============================================================
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/tech/mg19726445.900-court-deals-blow-to-online-whistleblowers.html
Wikileaks restraining order a failure, judge says (3.03.2008) http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080303-wikileaks-restraining-order-a-failure-judge-says.html
Baer Drops After Losing Bid to Disable Wikileaks.org (Update1) (3.03.2008) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=a6qm40knwPMI&refer=europe
Wikileaks
http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks
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10. German police raids against patent breaches at CeBit fair ============================================================
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.jhtml?articleID=206902340&cid=RSSfeed_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/190585,german-police-51-accused-of-product-piracy-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/open-rights-group-and-eff-launch-europe-wide-anti-term-extension-petition/
EDRi-gram : Extension of the copyright term for performers proposed to the EC (27.02.2008) http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.4/copyright-performers-extension
(Contribution by Becky Hogge - EDRi-member Open Rights Group - UK)
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12. Recommended Action
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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/dispatch?form=RFIDRec
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13. Recommended Reading
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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/coe-access-convention-7-main-problems.pdf
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14. Agenda
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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?Page=65&Return=70&ProductID=8914&LS=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/
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15. About
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EDRI-gram is a biweekly newsletter about digital civil rights in Europe.
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