The European Commission is consulting on the enforcement of intellectual property rights and copyright. Hold tight for more debate on website blocking, domain seizure, filtering, account termination .... and a new attack on 'mere conduit'.

With the 16 April deadline looming for responses to the European Commission's consultation on enforcement of intellectual property rights, the question of content blocking is rearing its head once again. The online world is clearly the target, even though the scope of the existing law is much wider. Reading between the lines, the influence of the main stakeholder interests such as the music and film industries, and luxury goods manufacturers, can be seen. Given that this is a heavily polarised and toxic issue, is the European Commission going about this in the right way?

It was thought to have died, but this week week it was given a new lease of life. This is the Notice and Action directive which will regulate take-down requests to Google, FaceBook and other online content platforms, and which is now set to come back onto the EU policy agenda. This was revealed on Tuesday in the European Parliament by Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier, who is responsible for the dossier.

The draft notice and action directive could itself be put under an internal block in the European Commission. The information is sketchy but it seems that the move follows copyright industry lobbying, forcing the Commission to back-peddle.

Opening up the E-commerce directive on content liability hangs like the sword of Damocles over the European Commission. But is the situation changed by bringing in a new legal instrument?

A leaked draft of the proposed new Notice and Action directive reveals that the European Commission has ruled out the option of opening up the E-commerce directive and instead has chosen to draft this new, specific legislative instrument to address the problem of Internet copyright infringement. Reading between the lines, it would seem that the Commission is gripped by fear of a reprise of ACTA, with high-pressure copyright industry lobbying and countervailing citizen protests. According to the draft directive, seen by Iptegrity, the proposed EU Notice and Action directive aims to address copyright enforcement by

Iptegrity understands that there is a draft directive on notice and action in existence. It will affect anyone providing or using web hosting facililities, search engines and social media. It is currently making its way around the inter-stitial processes in the European Commission. That means it is being passed around for comment to the different units that have an interest in it. From what I understand, the draft directive is