Original news and analysis on international IP policy
In an effort to clean up a draft treaty text providing limitations and exceptions to copyright for blind and visually impaired persons, World Intellectual Property Organization members will meet this week for intense drafting sessions. The text, once cleaned, is expected to be sent to a top-level treaty negotiation in June.
A meeting meant to advance discussions on a treaty to protect the rights of broadcasting organisations held last week at the World Intellectual Property Organization yielded substantive results, according to the meeting chair. However, civil society remains cautious about potential side effects of such an instrument, while countries appear to have divergent views on the practicalities of the treaty.
This week, registry, registrar and user constituencies at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) complained about what they saw as deviations from the bottom-up multistakeholder process by late additions made to policies or by processes never being laid out to the community for review.
The publication by governments of additional safeguards for new top-level domains at this week‘s 46th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) sparked warnings that the private net management body should avoid becoming a content regulator.
A significant gap remains in advanced and developing economies' access to information technologies, according to the 2013 "Global Information Technology Report" released today by the World Economic Forum.
The protection of broadcasting organisations will be discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization this week as delegates are expected to work on a text that could become an international treaty.
Brand owners that have applied with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for their brand’s top level domain (TLD) are seeking to create their own constituency group.
In an effort to improve internationalisation, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will open hubs in Singapore and Istanbul, to serve the Asia-Pacific and Europe, Middle East and Africa respectively. ICANN's headquarters in Los Angeles will become the hub serving the Americas.
Members of the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) are pushing for additional contractual clauses for applicants of new generic top-level domains (TLDs).
The Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), the French privacy body, said this week in a statement that it will take legal action against Google after the search engine failed to implement changes to its privacy policies. They were joined by data protection agencies from five other European countries.
Multilingualism not only expands cultural horizons but also provides a tool for innovation, speakers gathered at an international roundtable yesterday said. However, language uniformity is a tempting road taken by many - often for cost-related reasons - while multilingualism should be promoted as a factor in development, they said.
The Second United States Circuit Court of Appeals today determined that online live television broadcasting service Aereo doesn’t violate US copyright law, upholding a lower court ruling. Aereo is a cloud computing-based service in New York City.