A “right to be forgotten” online?
The recent European Commission proposal for a EU data protection regulation expressly provides for a “right to be forgotten”, under which it is possible to obtain erasure of personal data online as well as the abstention from further dissemination of such data. For an interesting discussion how the proposal would apply to ISPs, and of recent ... Read the full post ...
IP address alone not sufficient to identify infringing downloader
A U.S. district court judge has ruled that an IP address, on its own, is not enough to determine a person’s identity as an infringing downloader of copyright material. As Fenwick & West explain, this ruling throws a wrench in the copyright infringement claims brought by pornographic film producers in four related mass BitTorrent lawsuits. ... Read the full post ...
Student ordered to pay $675,000 for downloading 30 songs
Sony BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum began in 2007, when graduate student Joel Tenenbaum was sued by a number of record labels for downloading and distributing 30 songs using file-sharing services like Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa and LimeWire. After a five-day trial in 2009, the jury found Tenenbaum liable for infringing the copyrights in the 30 ... Read the full post ...
New gTLDs won’t be operational before August 2013
According to ICANN’s recently-published “roadmap”, the earliest any new gTLD will be delegated is August 2013. ICANN cannot delegate more than 1,000 new gTLDs per year due to constraints on scaling the Root Zone. Thus, it requires an ordering of the applications for new gTLDs, either at the Evaluation phase (called batching) or at the Pre-delegation phase ... Read the full post ...
Swiss court finds Google not liable for suggested search terms
A Swiss appeal court has found that automatically-generated suggested search terms are not statements made by the search engine. Thus, Google has no legal liability for suggested search terms that have negative imputations. Robert Kennedy College had argued that the suggested term “Robert Kennedy College scam” implied that the college was involved in fraudulent activity. Google responded that ... Read the full post ...
US cybersecurity proposal defeated in the Senate
The United States Senate failed to pass legislation prior to the August recess that would have established security standards to prevent large-scale cyber attacks on the nation’s critical infrastructure, despite strong endorsements from top military and national security officials, reports King & Spalding. ... Read the full post ...
Google alters search rankings algorithm to penalise infringing sites
Google has announced it will add a new ranking parameter to its search algorithm: the number of valid copyright removal notices it receives for any given site. Under the new algorithm, sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in search results. According to Google: “This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality ... Read the full post ...
Global pharma calls on ICANN to act against online counterfeits
The international pharmaceutical industry has released a policy statement targeting counterfeit medicines on the internet, recommending that ICANN join the fight. The statement calls on ICANN “to take appropriate actions and ensure accountability measures in order to protect Internet users from illegitimate online sites that are engaged in the illicit sale of prescription medicines”. IP ... Read the full post ...
Public interest groups take aim at FCC Net Neutrality Order
Four U.S. public interest groups have filed an amicus brief with the Washington, DC Court of Appeals claiming that the US Federal Communication Commission’s 2011 “Preserving the Open Internet” order is unconstitutional. According to IP Watch, the coalition of interest groups argue that the 2011 order unjustly favours content providers and marginalises the constitutional rights of ... Read the full post ...
Online video providers are subject to U.S. privacy requirements
A recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has held that Internet video streaming site Hulu.com is subject to the U.S. Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), 18 U.S.C. § 2710, reports Davis Wright Tremaine. This marks the first time a court has subjected a provider of exclusively online streaming video ... Read the full post ...
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