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Earlier this year four MEPs submitted a Written Declaration on the lack of a transparent process for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), also called Written Declaration 12. The declaration urges the Commission to make the documents relating to the negotiation of that Agreement publicly available. Importantly, though, it also draws attention to a number of substantive provisions that might be objectionable: namely, those relating to criminal sanctions, liability of service providers and border measures. Moreover, it stresses that ACTA should not impose indirect harmonisation of intellectual...

On 27 July 2010 the Consiliul Naţional al Audiovizualului (National Council for Electronic Media - CNA) imposed sanctions on 10 TV stations and one radio station broadcasting in Romania for having broken the Audiovisual Code rules when covering the death of a Romanian star, the singer Mădălina Manole, who committed suicide on 14 July 2010. The CNA considered the broadcasters had broken the Codul de reglementare a conţinutului audiovivzual (Regulatory Code for Audiovisual Content) rules with regard to the protection of children, human dignity and of the right to one’s own image, in news programmes...

The Supreme Court has decided that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) may be obliged to reveal the identity (name and home address) of an Internet subscriber engaging in illegal file-sharing to the rightsholder intending to pursue relief. In a landmark ruling delivered on 18 June 2010, the Supreme Court found that a statutory duty of confidentiality may be repealed when there is a copyright infringement of a certain gravity. A customer of the Internet Service Provider Altibox had engaged in illegal file-sharing by uploading different Norwegian blockbusters, such as Max Manus and Kautokeino-opprøret,...

The Swedish website The Pirate Bay offers a service with which users can find and download so-called ‘torrent files’. When using appropriate file-sharing software, these files can be used to download music, films, software, etc., from other users of the same file-sharing software (the so-called ‘peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing’). In April 2009, the four persons behind the operation of The Pirate Bay website were found guilty by a Swedish court of contributory copyright infringement and were sentenced to one year in prison, as well as ordered to pay damages of SEK 30 million. The website has also...

The EU’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party has adopted an Opinion on data protection law as applied to behavioural advertising. In its Opinion, it gives legal guidance on legal issues related to the tracking of internet users when they surf the net. Amongst other issues, it addresses the permissibility of the use of cookies and it clarifies the legal responsibility of online content and advertising network providers under European data protection laws. Behavioural advertising involves the tracking of internet users’ online behaviour in view of the targeting of advertising to internet users...