Crowell & Moring LLP, a law firm with offices in the US, Brussels and the UK released a white paper that describes the legal mechanisms available to copyright holders in the EU to prevent ISP systems from being used for online file sharing. Published by the US based Copyright Alliance, the paper provides a summary of European laws which have been used to grant injunctive relief to prevent online file sharing including injunctions requiring ISPs to implement DNS blocking. The paper also summarizes the recent ECJ Scarlet case which dealt with the power of EU courts to grant orders requiring ISPs to filter peer to peer traffic over their networks.
Archive for the ‘Copyright’ category
DNS blocking and filtering in the EU
December 14th, 2011Webcasts of the Supreme Court copyright cases now available
December 9th, 2011The webcasts of the five Supreme Court of Canada copyright appeals are now available. The ESA/Bell v SOCAN “communicate to the public” and the SOCAN v Bell fair dealing cases can be viewed here. (They are streams and not downloads and so are communications.) The K-12 Access Copyright and Re:Sound appeals can be viewed here.
UK: “not practical” to adopt US fair use
December 9th, 2011The UK will not adopt US fair use. This was revealed in statements made by Baroness Wilcox, the UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills and John Alty, Chief Executive and Comptroller General, Intellectual Property Office, in testimony before the UK Business, Innovation and Skills Committee on November 15, 2011.
Here is a extract from the testimony.
Q219 Chair : At the time, there were assertions that companies such as Google would not start up in this country because of the UK copyright law. Do you still hold that theory now and will Government policy reflect that or accommodate Google?
Copyright coming to the Supreme Court of Canada
November 25th, 2011The copyright bar and the Supreme Court are gearing up for two big days of copyright appeals. The five appeals are being heard back to back on December 6 and 7, 2011.
Earlier today the Court circulated the draft schedule for the arguments. It lists all the parties, the interveners, the lawyers involved, and the order in which the cases are going to be heard. It is going to be a very interesting two days for copyright in Canada.
Jurisdiction in the Internet Age
November 5th, 2011Below are slides used by my colleague Dan Glover in a presentation on Friday at the Canadian Council on International Law’s (CCIL) Annual Conference. His talk was on jurisdiction in the internet age.
Glover ccil internet_jurisdiction_slides.ppt
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ITCan Annual IP Update
October 28th, 2011I had the pleasure of attending ITCan’s 15th Annual Conference yesterday. I moderated the Annual IP Update. I also gave the upate on copyright, pitch hitting for Casey Chisick who had to go to court. My slides are below
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Copyright Bill C-11 gets second reading in the House of Commons
October 19th, 2011Yesterday Bill C-11 was given second reading in the House of Commons. The statements by the Government and opposition parties can be found here.
For the record, Industry Minister Christian Paradis said the following in speaking about the Bill in the House:
Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is the second time that the government has introduced this bill. During the previous Parliament and for almost a year, the Copyright Modernization Act—then known as Bill C-32—was carefully examined and debated by parliamentarians and stakeholders.
Belgium ISPs ordered to block The Pirate Bay
October 11th, 2011On September 26, 2011, the Antwerp Court of Appeal ordered two Belgium ISPs to block The Pirate Bay. The ISPs, Telenet and Belgacom, were ordered to implement DNS blocking on 11 domains to do this.
The legal basis for the order was Article art. 87, §1, al.2 of the Belgian Copyright Act. This provision transposes Article 8(3) of the EU InfoSoc Directive 2001/29/CE. This Article provides that
“Member States shall ensure that rightholders are in a position to apply for an injunction against intermediaries whose services are used by a third party to infringe a copyright or related right.”
This site is published by Barry Sookman personally. It is not affiliated with McCarthy Tétrault or any of its clients. Full bio 