Search results : 309

After lengthy delays, the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 has finally been enacted. The delays were mainly due to the large number of proposed amendments to the draft legislation that was published in 1999 (See IRIS 1999-5: 11). The Act implements various recent EC Directives and anticipates forthcoming ones. It also fulfils Ireland's international obligations as a signatory of the TRIPs Agreement 1994 and the WIPO Treaties of 1996. It is a complex and comprehensive piece of legislation, being over 200 pages long. New provisions in the Act include rental and lending rights, and copyright...

New legislation on electronic commerce (See IRIS 2000-4: 13) was enacted in July 2000. Using a unique signing key and digital certificate, the President of Ireland digitally signed the new legislation into law. The Electronic Commerce Act 2000 is designed to make Ireland one of the first jurisdictions to have a formal set of laws regulating e-commerce. It is intended to transpose into Irish law the Electronic Signatures Directive 1999/93/EC, as well as certain articles of the draft Electronic Commerce Directive. Many sections of the new Act are based on the Model Law on Electronic Commerce published...

Under the Freedom of Information Act 1997, members of the public have the right to obtain access to official information to the greatest extent possible consistent with the public interest and the right to privacy. The Act first came into force for Government departments in 1998. It has been progressively extended to include various public bodies, most recently RTÉ (the national broadcaster), to which the Act applies from 1 May 2000. Members of the public are now entitled to request access to documents and records held in RTÉ (in addition to the information that RTÉ has already made freely available...

In April 2000, in response to the long-running problem of unlicensed deflector systems operating in Ireland (see IRIS 1997-7: 9), the Director of Telecommunications Regulation issued a number of short-term licences (1). The move, which sees the introduction of the first ever licensing scheme for deflectors, is intended to facilitate consumers availing of the deflectors' multi-channel television services, at a time when preparations for Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) are being completed. From the beginning, the Director had cast doubts on the long-term viability of deflector systems in a...

New draft legislation on e-commerce has just been published. The Electronic Commerce Bill 2000 is designed to make Ireland one of the first jurisdictions to have a formal set of laws regulating e-commerce. It is intended to transpose into Irish law the European Community's Electronic Signatures Directive 1999/93/EC, as well as certain articles of the draft Electronic Commerce Directive, which is expected to be adopted in the near future. Many sections of the new Bill are based on the Model Law on Electronic Commerce published by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law in 1996.The...