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Upon recommendation by the Canadian Information Highway Advisory Council (IHAC), the federal Government of Canada commissioned a study on the liability of owners, operators and users of bulletin boards, Internet and Usenet sites. The study was published in February 1997 and deals with the legal aspects of issues like obscenity, child pornography, hate propaganda, trade-marks infringement, defamation, invasion of privacy, communication of erroneous information, violation of secrecy, unfair competition, copyright infringement, and electronic commerce.

The Office of Telecommunications (OFTEL), responsible in the UK for regulating conditional access services for digital television, has published at the end of March its guidelines. These are the result of consultations began in last year (see IRIS Vol. III, No 1)). The regulations governing the provision of conditional access services were laid before Parliament in December 1996 and the Telecommunications Act class licence for conditional access services was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry. The regulations and licences require OFTEL to ensure that control of conditional access technology...

The Free State of Bavaria has submitted a Bill on compensation for crime victims to the Federal Council. The Bill not only aims at improving the procedural position of victims of acts of violence, but also at ensuring that the perpetrators can derive no immoral profits from commercial exploitation of their actions in the media. Fees paid for film treatments or talkshow appearances are now to go, on certain conditions, to the victims. So far, such assets have not usually been available to meet the legitimate civil law claims of victims, although publicising the crime often interferes with their...

The Barclay brothers, publishers of The European, sought to challenge the interpretation of Section 143 of the Broadcasting Act 1990, which refers to the power of the Broadcasting Complaints Commission to adjudicate on complaints alleging infringement of privacy arising out of programmes which had been broadcast. The question was: would it be competent to seek an adjudication in respect of material which had not yet been broadcast? What was the scope, in other words, of the adjudicative power of the BCC? The judge, who commented that in England and Wales there are no general constraints on the...

On 30 August 1996, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) published the drafts of three treaties that are to be concluded at a diplomatic conference in Geneva which will take place from 2-20 December 1996. The first draft concerns an amended version of the Protocol to the Berne Convention which has been the subject of intense intergovernmental consultation during recent years. The Treaty would no longer have the status of a "protocol", because it would be open for adherence by States that are not member of the Berne Union. Also, the European Union, that has carried out the negotiations...