Original news and analysis on international IP policy
A high-level, highly technical UN meeting that occurs about once every four years at which key decisions are made about wireless communications opened today in Geneva. The meeting comes as devices such as smart phones and tablets are devouring many times more spectrum than mobile phones of the past.
The blog Monday Note has an analysis today on digital piracy in light of the media frenzy over the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill last week. The analysis suggests that anti-piracy measures like France's Hadopi are not working, but there is evidence that offering competitive legitimate download sites does work.
French online rights group La Quadrature du Net this week announced an analysis asserting that in more than half of European Union countries, telecommunications operators engage in "illegitimate" restrictions of their users' access.
Industry profits from digital music are on the rise as industry-owned music download services expand and gain acceptance, anti-piracy efforts take hold in some countries, and internet intermediaries join in, music industry representatives said today.
In the midst of the global flare-up over draft anti-piracy legislation in the US Congress this week, several heavy-hitting actions were taken in the United States against websites said to be supporting unauthorised content.
It may be too much, too late for content providers finally trying to tame the internet, and a fresh approach is needed, writes Bruce Berman.
The new age of lobbying through online public engagement showed its effectiveness today as the Senate announced the postponement of next week's vote on controversial anti-piracy legislation that led to unprecedented protests on the internet.
The online protest yesterday against the bills in the United States Congress aimed at stopping internet piracy was the biggest yet, according to statistics being circulated by the protestors. More than 115,000 websites - including four of the top 10 in the US - and over 13 million internet users participated. There were 10 million petition signatures, 3 million emails sent, 100,000 phone calls, and some 3 million messages on Twitter.
A list of answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the much-disputed anti-piracy legislation before the United States Congress has been published by CNET News. It also reported that some 4.5 million people signed the petition on Google during the blackout protest yesterday.
The United States Supreme Court today ruled on one of the top intellectual property legal cases expected this year. The case questioned whether the US Congress acted constitutionally when it restored copyright to millions of foreign works that had been in the public domain in the US. And it affirmed Congress' actions, allowing the US to avoid questions of compliance with its international obligations.
In an unprecedented action suggesting intellectual property rights have bumped up against an access threshold, thousands of websites have gone "dark" today in protest against two draft anti-piracy and counterfeiting bills in the US Congress that the protestors say would harm freedoms online. The protest includes major technology firms like Google, Mozilla, Wikipedia, Flickr, Reddit, Vimeo and WordPress.
As of today, no one is really sure what the future holds for the controversial internet anti-piracy bills in the United States.