Original news and analysis on international IP policy
Maintaining openness and promoting access were two major themes that emerged during the Global INET conference opening session yesterday. A panel of key internet actors gave their perspectives on the past, present and future of the internet, in line with the conference theme, “Meeting at the Crossroads: Imagining the Future of the Internet.”
A major consumer group today released the results of its annual survey of 30 countries' copyright laws and concluded that bias against consumers in favour of multinational copyright holders is "entrenched" and that there is a "global outcry" about overly strong copyright enforcement legislation. Meanwhile, international journalists groups joined songwriters, composers, film directors, screenwriters, illustrators, photographers and visual authors across Europe today to launch a public campaign "to bring an end to the unfair contractual practices facing creators."
The 2012 Global INET Forum is uniting some of the architects and builders behind the internet with the industry leaders and policymakers who are shaping it today in an event taking place in Geneva from 22-24 April.
The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) on Monday re-issued a request for proposals to manage the sensitive IANA contract. IANA, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority function, includes the management of the central root zone of the internet domain name system, the allocation of internet protocol addresses to the Regional Internet Registries and other core parts of the internet infrastructure.
Today, a US appellate court released its decision in a key case in which rights holders asserted that online video site YouTube should be liable for copyright infringing content appearing on its site. According to a preliminary reading, the appeals court reversed the earlier decision, signalling that YouTube, owned by Google, could have known about infringing content and therefore may not fit under the safe harbor clause of the US Digital Millenniumn Copyright Act limiting the liability of online service providers.
Stalled talks on Europe's broken system of private copying levies resumed on 2 April, with European Commission-appointed mediator António Vitorino laying out his goals and urging parties to move beyond their entrenched positions. Meanwhile, a report for rights owners found that abolishing levies will hurt them as well as device makers and, possibly, consumers. And in another copyright-related development, a UK government study identified problems with the country's copyright licensing regime.
With the commercial internet now in its early twenties, stakeholders are finding themselves at a crossroads, unsure whether to allow business as usual or embrace a more regulated regime. Intellectual property, with its penchant for protection, is one of those areas where the tug-of-war is most evident, and seemingly caught in the middle are internet intermediaries.
The last year has witnessed a series of convictions of copyright pirates by the Federal High Courts in Nigeria. Information provided by Afam Ezekude, the Director General of the Nigerian Copyright Commission, the government agency responsible for copyright matters, shows that the courts have convicted copyright infringers in 18 cases within the last 5 months (October 2011 to February 2012).
Public Knowledge, a Washington, DC-based public interest group, has launched an initiative that capitalises on active participation from American online and social media users to lobby for the adoption of some reforms in internet governance aimed at protecting knowledge access.
In passing a comprehensive Internet Governance Strategy, the Council of Europe (CoE) today laid claim to a front runner position in the human rights dialogue for the internet.