Original news and analysis on international IP policy
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) today wrote to several European Union commissioners in an appeal for them to weigh in against the standardisation of the Encrypted Media Extension (EME) for the new HTML version, HTML5.
Russia, Cuba, India and the civil society stakeholder group did not agree to the final outcome document of the NETmundial internet governance meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil yesterday.
Final decisions are pending if and how intellectual property protection should be covered in the outcome document of the NetMundial meeting in Sao Paolo, which comes to a close tonight.
Consensus on the outcome document seemed elusive on day one of the NetMundial meeting that started in Sao Paulo yesterday. But ambitions are high for many.
European data retention has to be rolled back after a clear judgment of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Justice in Luxemburg today.
The highest EU Court ruled that the directive which obliges telecommunication providers to collect and store communication traffic and location data for up to 2 years, depending on the implementation in the member states, is invalid.
The European Parliament today decided to clearly limit network operators' possibilities to treat selected services differently for purely economic reasons.
A number of problems with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) were outlined by legal experts during a 1 April hearing in Brussels of the International Trade Committee (INTA) of the European Parliament in its last session before the European elections. And the European trade commissioner said he would agree to open the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) talks and to drop ISDS from the TTIP if the United States would agree.
Lawrence Strickling, the United States assistant secretary of Commerce, today called on the internet community to come up with a “solid proposal” for the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), from the US to a new multi-stakeholder oversight model. IANA is responsible for changes made to the internet domain name system.
The Obama administration has announced a decision to make a last step towards completing privatisation of internet core infrastructure oversight, namely the central root zone of the domain name system. But it is not clear what this will mean for international efforts to increase intergovernmental control over the internet.
Press conferences, stakeholder meetings and presentations as well as picture-tweets about consultations have become a habit of the negotiators of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Still, after this week's round of negotiations, answers to tougher questions like what are the chances of reconciling regimes on the protection of geographic indications or data flows and data privacy seem far from clear.
A huge majority of the European Parliament today called for a stop to mass surveillance and a digital "New Deal" to enpower European citizens and companies following a six-month inquiry into the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence service surveillance programmes by the Parliamen's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
On the eve of European Parliament's final decision on consequences from revelations of mass surveillance directed against citizens, several members of the Parliament heavily criticised EU governments for the lack of action.