International Law

Search Engine Copyright Exception Culture Ministry Ordinance

Posted on February 23, 2010
The government ordinance on the search engine exception leaves the standard for opting out to be defined by an ordinance of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. That ordinance was also enacted on December 28, 2009, and it introduced a new Article 4-4 into the Copyright Law Execution Order (????????)...

Search Engine Copyright Exception Government Ordinance

Posted on February 22, 2010
The new Japanese copyright exception for search engines gives copyright holders the right to opt out. That however is not very clear from the text of the law itself (I was confused about that when first reading it). However, it becomes clear when reading the relevant Government Ordinance and the Culture Ministry Ordinance that were issued [...

Search Engine Copyright Exception in Violation of Berne Convention

Posted on February 21, 2010
The new Japanese copyright exception for search engines I have translated here is in force since January. Basically it gives search engines the right to copy without a license as far as that is necessary to run their search business. It also gives them the right to display a cached copy of pages linked to in [...

Google Fail

Posted on February 18, 2010
That’s the heartwarming headline for this Sullivan post, pointing to a BBC story about the latest privacy disaster from the Evil Spam Empire. Google has multiple users for their Gmail service. Now they have added some new functionality called “Buzz” which allows people to share content...

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Recommendations on Privacy for Search Engines

Posted on November 11, 2009
The following text is a recommendation of the “International Working Group on Data Protection in Telecommunications“, adopted first in 1998 and revised in 2006. At the original host it does not have a single URL, making it impossible to point to exactly this file...

Sri Lanka GSP+ Status

Posted on November 01, 2009
The EU Commission has issued a statement confirming that Sri Lanka is not living up to the commitments to international human rights protection standards that are conditions for access to the GSP+ program. The Commission will now consult with the Member States about temporarily suspending GSP+ status, while calling on Sri Lanka to constructively work [...

Book Review: William F. Patry, Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars

Posted on October 31, 2009
Recently Amazon released their Kindle internationally. I immediately ordered one. The first book I bought for it was Patry’s. When reviewing it, the first thing I need to point out is that the author is Senior Copyright Counsel at Google. The first reason is that the author does not want people to note this fact when discussing [...

EU-Korea FTA Initialed

Posted on October 19, 2009
See the Commission press release for details.

AP and News Corp on Search Engines

Posted on October 16, 2009
They don’t seem to agree with the idea that all search engines can copy and redistribute their content.

Commission v Spain Gambling Case

Posted on October 11, 2009
The first chamber of the European Court of Justice handed down a judgment on October 6th that gives a rather different impression compared to that of the Grand Chamber in the BWin case I discussed here recently. In the new case, the Commission sued Spain because lottery winnings are exempted from income tax only in case [...

Preemptive Peace

Posted on October 10, 2009
As Glenn Greenwald notes, there are no achievements to justify a Nobel Prize for Barack Obama. Unless one counts beating McCain/Palin in the election, which was probably a major contribution to world peace, or sees it as an extraordinary achievement that Obama already is in office for nine months without having started any other illegal wars...

Winny Developer Acquitted

Posted on October 08, 2009
The Osaka High Court has acquitted Winny developer Isamu Kaneko from charges of copyright violation. I have commented on that case five years ago, when Kaneko was first arrested. And I have discussed the question of secondary liability for dual-use software a couple of weeks ago...

Search Engine Exception

Posted on October 07, 2009
A copyright reform bill containing the new exception for search engines has passed the Japanese Parliament and will come into force on January 1st, 2010. I will post an English translation and offer a couple of comments. The English translation will depart from the unreadable style of the Japanese original by relocating all information in brackets [...

Copyright Disclaimer

Posted on October 07, 2009
The copyright notice for this blog reads: Please feel free to forward copies of this work to others, mirror it on your homepage or blog, or post it on bulletin boards or P2P networks. However, please leave my name attached and don?t edit the work. Commercial use requires separate permission...

BWin Case

Posted on September 28, 2009
The Eu Law Blog has a short report on the recent BWin gambling case of the European Court of Justice. That case is a large setback for the internal market in gambling services. While earlier cases like Gambelli left some leeway for national courts to approve cross-border services in this sector, this case goes way back [...

Michael Carrier: Innovation for the 21st Century: DMCA

Posted on September 21, 2009
Michael A. Carrier sent me a copy of his book “Innovation for the 21st Century” for a book review. See also this “Blog Symposium” on the book at the “Truth on the Market” blog. Third in line (see here for discussion of the first recommendation and here for the second) is the proposal on pages 193 [...

Open Source Exception from Wassenaar?

Posted on September 20, 2009
Open Source project Firefox has obtained a “no-violation-letter” for the distribution of Firefox. That means participants in the project will not be prosecuted for violating rules against the distribution of strong cryptographic software in the American laws to implement the Wassenaar Agreement...

U.S. Department of Justice Joining in Google Opposition

Posted on September 20, 2009
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a brief in the Google Book Search class action (overview of documents at Justia.com) in opposition to the settlement. The French and German governments have filed their own briefs in opposition earlier. They object that foreign authors and publishers have not been adequately informed or represented...

Michael Carrier: Innovation for the 21st Century: Copyright Damages

Posted on September 20, 2009
Michael A. Carrier sent me a copy of his book “Innovation for the 21st Century” for a book review. See also this “Blog Symposium” on the book at the “Truth on the Market” blog. Second in line (see here for discussion of the first recommendation) is the proposal to limit statutory damages to cases of direct [...

Michael Carrier: Innovation for the 21st Century: Dual Use and Copyright

Posted on September 20, 2009
Michael A. Carrier sent me a copy of his book “Innovation for the 21st Century” for a book review. See also this “Blog Symposium” on the book at the “Truth on the Market” blog. I won’t write a lot about how I rate this book, but I just want to mention that it was the first [...

What!? Google Showing Signs of Respecting Copyright?

Posted on September 12, 2009
Eubusiness.com has a report about the recent hearing on the Google book search settlement in Brussels, with the headline of “Google removes European titles from digital book deal”. The article goes on to state that “books commercially available” in Europe will be excluded from the Google landgrab, and their idea of copyright (”we use everything [...

Sri Lanka Next in Line

Posted on September 06, 2009
for revocation of GSP+ status, failing to honour basic human rights commitments.

Google Patents Home Page

Posted on September 04, 2009
The American Patent Office has granted a “Design Patent” to Google for their home page. The main element of that design is nothing, leaving most of the page blank. I have no problem with design protection. I have also no problem with seeing it extended to important home pages...

Global Patent System?

Posted on September 04, 2009
Horacio Gutierrez, Deputy General Counsel at Microsoft, seems to think that there is an opportunity to create a global patent system, a “world patent that is derived from a single patent application, examined and prosecuted by a single examining authority and litigated before a single judicial body...

Google Refuses to Protect Privacy for Book Search Histories

Posted on September 03, 2009
That is what should be expected from a company that is the Worst on the Web, with a rating of ?comprehensive consumer surveillance & entrenched hostility to privacy? by Privacy International. The EFF had different expectations and asked Google to promise not to hand over their user’s data on search histories in the “Book Search” area [...

Brazil TRIPS Retaliation

Posted on September 01, 2009
Brazil says they have the right to retaliate against continued violation of WTO obligations in the Cotton case against the United States to an amount of $800 million, including $340 million of “cross-retaliation” against American intellectual property rights...

ACTA 5th Negotiation Round

Posted on September 01, 2009
A short report at the EU Commission website on the 5th negotiation round of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in Rabat on July 16th and 17th tells us that participants want to conclude the negotiations in 2010, and that they plan to publish draft agendas before all subsequent negotiation rounds, the next of which is [...

FON Illegal in Germany

Posted on July 13, 2009
In the opinion of the Koeln High Court, see this link (in German). That court opinion says that FON is a parasite feeding of the investment in Internet infrastructure other service providers pay for. The court also seems to think that widespread FON usage would lead to higher prices for consumers of Internet access...

Venezuala GSP+ Status Revoked

Posted on June 14, 2009
by Commission decision 2009/454 of 11 June 2009 for the reason of not having ratified the United Nations Convention against Corruption. That Convention is listed in the Annex of Regulation 732/2008 as one of the requirements for GSP+ preferential treatment...

Search Engine Exception

Posted on June 02, 2009
As I reported earlier, there have been discussions about introducing an exception for search engines into Japanese copyright. A draft law has been posted at the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Unfortunately, it is in a form unsuited for reading online...

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