In Portugal, an attempt by rights-holders to catalyse government action against peer-to-peer file-sharers and Internet downloading, appears to have back-fired. They tried to get the authorities to take action against file-sharers, but instead, they've got an official ruling that file-sharing - at least for personal use - is not illegal.

As the Zapatero government winds down and hands over to his rival Mariano Rajoy, the winner of the November 20 Spanish election, there is a little matter of copyright law to sort out. This is the so-called Ley Sinde ( Sinde's law) which provided for blocking of websites deemed to infringe copyright.

The so-called 'Centemero law' - proposed recently in Italy and named after the MP who tabled it- would appear to put ISPs under a duty of care to filter for the purpose of enforcing copyright. On the basis of an English translation, the Italian proposal would put ISPs under an onerous obligation which would radically alter the Italian implementation of the E-commerce directive 'mere conduit'. Indeed, it would reverse mere conduit. And it would be the most draconian, if unimplementable, copyright enforcement law in Europe.

Will Germany cut off Internet users without a court ruling?

A German MP is in a hurry to make his name by tabling a copyright enforcment law before Christmas. The law will be a variant on the graduated response - 3-strikes - model, where Internet users are sent warnings after which their Internet access will be cut off. Only it is missing the second 'strike' so German activists are calling it a 2-strikes law. The proposal is that

What is the real objective of this proposed Italian copyright enforcement law? Is there a hidden attack on the E-commerce directive?

A proposed new law in Italy threatens to reverse the E-commerce directive and ask ISPs to filter all content for copyright enforcement purposes. Without any subtelty at all, the proposed law attacks all the core principles of the Internet, not to mention freedom of expression and other fundamental rights such as privacy and due process. Its structure is very simple, but in terms of its content, it contains the entire basket of measures which the rights-holders are asking for all around Europe and in Brussels.