In a document, published online at the address http://ec.europa.eu/italia/attualita/primo_piano/commercio/acta_informazioni_it.htm,
the European Commission answers to the protests following the signing by the
European Union of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (so called ACTA), that took place on January 26th.

It is interesting to note that, among the 10 most common misinformation about the ACTA treaty, most are related to privacy and to feared risk of penalties for
criminal behavior on the Internet, while few apparently show an interest over
the effects of the new Trade Agreement on the protection of copyright online.

In fact, as the European Commission patiently explains in the document above, the text of the agreement (also available at the same link), is the result of careful negotiation, and introduces adequate and flexible tools to facilitate development and trade of copyrighted goods online, along with measures to enforce and stimulate international cooperation against unlawful distribution of such works.

In any case, says the Commission, the text of the Agreement is made not to require any “invasive” harmonization of EU law, since it largely reproduces
contents and updates that were already present in the European legislative
framework, as a result of previous trade agreements.

Meanwhile, Slovenia, Poland and Lithuania have openly expressed their disagreement to the signature of the ACTA treaty.

The mass media are still confused about contents and purposes of the international convention, yet the feeling is that of a lost opportunity for a constructive dialogue on the measures to implement the agreement, so to ensure its uniform application.

The air is tense around copyright’s matter..

In the last days harsh controversies and demostrations esploded, mainly
in Germany, despite the terrible cold, against the Acta (Anti-Counterfeiting
Trade Agreement), the anti-counterfeiting agreement signed in Tokyo last
January, 26th, by around 40 Countries: Usa, Canada, Australia, Japan, South
Corea, Marocco, Mexico, Switzerland and 22 of the 27 EU members.

The demostrators don’t believe that this multi-national agreement will
only fight piracy, but they are deeply convinced that this agreement will put
at risk the freedom on the Internet. Moreover today the Bulgarian Government
decided to suspend the ratification of the treaty because they  believe that the Bulgarian law are sufficient
to protect the Intellectual Property right.

Today represent an important “turning point”: the European Court of
Justice pronounced its definitive sentence on the case Sabam /Netlog. The
Belgian Sabam is the company that manage the rights of the authors while Netlog
NV is a company that run a social network like Facebook. As in the previous
case of the last months between Sabam and Scarlet, once more the Court of
Justice consider incompatible with the EU’s right to oblige the manager of a
social network to filter every kind of information concerning its client trying
to find those who make illicit things.

If you would like to read the judgement of the court:

http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=119512&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=161927

On the 30th of December 2011, the Spanish Parliament approved the implementing regulation of the controversial “Sinde Law” (named after former Minister of Culture, Ángeles González-Sinde). This law contains important innovations against digital piracy, and had already been approved in February 2011 (and published, together with extraordinary measures to support the Spanish economy, in the official bulletin of March 2011, available at the following address: www.boe.es/boe/dias/2011/03/05/pdfs/BOE-A-2011-4117.pdf), but had never been put into practice, in the absence of implementing rules, now disciplined by the Iberian Parliament.
Since March 2012, therefore, the two key measures of the legislative text will enter into force:
- On one hand, the abolition of the so-called “Digital tax”, (the Italian equivalent of fair compensation on blank media). This reflects the elimination decided by the majority judgments of Spanish courts, that on several occasions acknowledged as illegal the presumption of unlawful use of blank CD / DVD;
- On the other hand, and in this case in complete contrast with the case law, the new procedure for the removal of content in violation of copyright from websites and inhibition from accessing to the sites in question from Spanish IPs: the new-born Committee of Intellectual Property will be granted the power to act against anyone who publishes online content in violation of copyright, also by sanctioning hosting providers and ISPs that fail to comply with the order of removal, all this in a maximum of 10 days from the complaint by rights holders, following a procedure of notice and counter-notice.
The second measure cited above, as is evident, takes a different path from the “three-strikes-rule” adopted by the French “HADOPI law,” and aligns with what has already been subject to consultation by AGCOM in Italy: the provision of an additional procedure, not alternative to the judicial one, by which the rightful owner of the rights may, in a faster way and by consulting with the parties involved, obtain removal of illegally distributed media on the net, using mechanisms to block access to Web pages involved.
The Spanish public opinion has so far shown mixed reactions to the new measures proposed, alternating strong protests for alleged constitutional violations by the measures in question, to months of substantial apathy towards the Sinde law. Undoubtfully, it will be interesting to see whether the mechanism set up by the Spanish Parliament will produce or not the desired effect, especially considering the possible adoption of similar measures in Italy.
It is useful to remember that in the past November 2011 elections, the Popular Party won an absolute majority of seats, as well as its best result ever: among the many initiatives of the new government led by Mariano Rajoy, it is expected, in the culture and media sector, a review of the reform process of RTVE, initiated by former Prime Minister Zapatero , which led to removal of advertising from the Spanish public television.

Last December, the Specialized Sections of the Civil Court of Rome ruled again on a RTI vs Google case, this time for the publication by a user of the Blogger platform, of streaming videos of football matches of the Italian league, Series A and UEFA Champions League.
In its ruling, the judge provided two seemingly conflicting orders of reasons:
- On the one hand, the decision describes the complex relationship between the Internet Service Provider (ISP) and user posting the contents: Traditionally, the ISP has always been considered a “mere conduit” as per legislative decree n.70/2003: accordingly, liability has always been excluded , except when, notified of a wrongful use of its services, the ISP has not complied to removal requests in the shortest time possible. In this case, however, modern ISPs participated actively in the organization and management of contents posted by its users, providing indexing and allowing users to access related videos, and also drawing financial support from such activities, via dedicated advertising banners. Furthermore, and this is not at all irrelevant, usually an ISP contractually reserves all rights to control, exclude contents and interrupt their distrubution, where service is losing its economic advantage or is used differently from contractual provisions.
- On the other hand, the judge again denied the existance of an obligation for the ISP to act “preemptive controls” on content posted by its users, and has also rejected the demand for such monitoring issued by RTI since Google, as soon as the violation was reported, had immediately removed the pirate blog, thereby fulfilling its obligations.
Apart from the present denial to impose the measures sought by RTI, it appears that the issue is far from resolved, because the definition (so to speak) of a new “ISP 2.0 “, which may not be regarded as “mere conduit”, could be ground for further legal controversy between the television company and the webserch giant, to debate again whether or not to adopt a pattern of widespread realtime/preemptive control for content uploaded by individual users of Google services.”

It is official news that, following the widespread protests of last weeks, the legislative initiatives Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) have been slowed down.

In an official statement, a spokesman of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired
by the promoter of SOPA himself (Rep. Lamar Smith), said that this slowdown will be useful to incorporate many of the suggestions and concerns which were expressed by both law technicians and common people. Among the most important changes being considered by the Committee, the main one regards putting aside, both in the SOPA and the PIPA, the much-discussed clause that would have given the U.S. Department of Justice the power to blacklist websites reputed distributors of works protected by copyright, without any preliminary hearing of their authors/editors/distributors.

The spokesman stressed, however, that the decision to make such an elision, like the others to be performed on both draft bills, shall not affect the possibility to introduce changes at a later stage.