News and Research articles on CopyrightThe District Court of Munich ruled on February 25 that YouTube cannot blame German royalty collecting society GEMA for content blocked on its platform.
“Digital” is written big in the coalition agreement, which was signed to give way to the new German government. Will this propell Germany onto the front seat in international internet politics.
After a first on Slovenia, here is our second in our series on internet policy innovation in small European countries. Finns are moving fast and experimenting with crowdsourced legislation.
The system of national collecting societies provided a relatively stable framework for licensing musical works – until the internet changed the field of music distribution. The GEMA-Youtube case serves as a starting point to discuss the future of collective copyright management.
There is user-generated content in many shapes – from musicians setting up their own labels, funded and supported by users to remixes of the latest political campaign slogans. What is still pending, is a genuine European copyright reform which would address this type of content.
Can smaller countries in Europe only copy and past from the legislation of the EU or other big players, or are they in a position to provide fresh ideas for innovation in policy development? This new series by the Internet Policy Review checks on it.
Russian internet industry and civil society groups bite back at newest law designed to protect corporations holding rights to audiovisual material.
The provisions of copyright law can potentially be bypassed by cloud computing applications whose interface is designed to regulate the access, use and reuse of online content.
It looks like a negotiated revolution: members of the World Intellectual Property Organization signed a treaty that will allow exemptions from copyright in favour of visually impaired people.
Over the years, the video game industry has grown into one of the largest, most profitable entertainment industries in the world. Originality and innovation - instead of fueling competition and guaranteeing a diverse market - are regarded by many as risky ventures. Some would even argue that innovation in the industry is not really innovative at all anymore. It doesn’t come as a surprise then, that user-driven innovation has come to play a considerably important role for the industry in recent years.
The last years have seen a growing politicisation of intellectual property issues, especially those relative to the internet. Sebastian Haunss assesses the current state of the policy field and draws attention to three parallel processes, which structure the future development of intellectual property policies related to the internet: the growing focus on enforcement, the plurilateralisation of international IP policies, and the trend to open access.
The majority of the European Parliament welcomed the start of the negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership – a EU-US free trade agreement - in a resolution released in Strasbourg on May 15. The Green Party wanted more conditions to avoid a potential degradation of European standards in data protection. European civil rights organisations warn against a mega-ACTA-like free trade agreement.
When it comes to information technology Sweden is considered to be at the forefront both in terms of technological innovation, as well as in progressive policy-making, regulation and internet freedom. It seems that from a policy perspective Sweden is an interesting example, as it is both perceived as free and neutral, while at the same time pursuing a tough and much contested policy approach. The following ‘snapshot’ seeks to give a brief, yet nuanced picture of the Swedish policy landscape.
With the growing tension between the cross-border internet and the patchwork of national jurisdictions, it becomes crucial to keep track of key global trends that drive the debate on appropriate frameworks. Based on the 2012 monitoring work of the Internet & Jurisdiction Project, twelve high-level patterns can be identified. Paul Fehlinger of the I&J project reports.
In Europe, education and free knowledge are subject to political restrictions that can only be effectively changed on the EU level. Wikimedia, the not-for-profit organisation behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, believes this. The organisation could therefore soon open an office in Brussels to participate in the future debates about a European knowledge society. Nikolas Becker is a member of the board of Wikimedia Germany. Using three concise examples, he explains why and where he sees need for action.