IPR Enforcement

The European Commission's Blueprint for Intellectual Property rights is out today. It has the expected attempts on ISPs 'at source'  and eBay.  And  there is  a distinctly  unpleasant  sting in its tail.

The European Commission released its blueprint for intellectual property enforcement today, and as predicted, it targets  the Internet.  The real intention of the  document is only very thinly  veiled. The European Commission is signalling a move against  Internet intermediaries in all forms - that is ISPs, ecommerce platforms  and web hosts, and will try to get legislation at European level which will force them to block content or sanction their customers.

The 'blueprint' is released under the name of the French Sakrozy-ite Commissioner Michel Barnier. And  his recently-appointed ex-IFPI head of copyright, Maria Martin-Prat,  is now firmly in her seat. On that basis,  a head-on attack on Internet companies and users was perhaps only to be  expected.

The unexpected proposal concerns the  European  Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy.  This institution was set up by stealth to monitor

The European Commission  threatens to  handbag* all speakers who go over  3-minutes at a public hearing on the IPR Enforcement directive (also known as IPRED).   A key focus of the hearing will be Internet copyright enforcement and peer-to-peer file-sharing.  What will the Commission's new, ex-IFPI, head of copyright have to say? 

Following the demise of its secret ‘stakeholder dialgoue', the European  Commission has   announced a public hearing on intellectual property enforcement in the digital environment.

 The  hearing  - on the enforcement of intellectual property rights: Challenges posed by the digital environment  - is the final  part of DG Markt's consultation exercise regarding the IPR Enforcement directive (IPRED). The Commission's objective is to obtain further feedback to its plans for revision of this directive.

 According to the Commission's Communication on the IPRED  review, the main focus of the policy

After almost a year's delay, the European Commission has finally dished up a report on the secret copyright enforcement talks it was hosting between ISPs and rights-holders. The Commission has done its best to put a nice gloss on it, but reading between the lines, the fists came out on more than one occasion.

The report concerns the so-called 'Stakeholder dialogue on Illegal Up and Downloading', a series of talks which took place in the European Commission's offices from 2009-2010 and for which the objective was to draw up a Europe-wide agreement or Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) mandating ISPs to enforce copyright on the Internet. The talks were terminated very suddenly a couple of months' ago. The termination was apparently prompted by a letter to the Commission from the telecoms industry lobby group, ETNO, stating that it would no longer participate.

The report has been carefully written by the European Commission, and vetted by the participants including major rights-holders such as the IFPI and the Motion Picture Association, as well as the large telcos in ETNO and ECTA. It is trying to clean up the egg from the Commission's face over the failure of the talks to reach any agreement. Notably, the report does not

Were eBay and Amazon - the two e-commerce platforms who signed - bulldozed into this?

The European Commission has quietly brokered an industry agreement on 'notice and takedown' which will apply to major e-commerce hosting sites. The current signatories are a long list of rights-holders - eg Adidas, LVMH, MPA, Lego Group, Nike, Proctor and Gamble, Richemont, Microsoft, Unilever - plus the two major e-commerce platforms, eBay and Amazon.

The agreement, signed on 4 May, comes as a surprise to those outside the Commission, as the talks appear to have been held in secret. It is a 'Memorandum of Understanding' (MoU) which means that it is not legally binding, but may be used by rights-holders to pressure Internet companies.

The MoU is intended 'to enhance collaboration' between rights-holders and Internet e-commerce hosting companies. Specifically, it

The European Commission has terminated secret talks aimed at brokering a Europe-wide agreement on Hadopi-style measures, just one day after Commissioner Barnier defended the talks in a written answer to the European Parliament. But why does the Commission still pull a veil over the MoU?

The European Commission has formally replied to MEPs Stavros Lambrinidis and Francoise Castex on the matter of the secret copyright enforcement talks being hosted by DG Markt ( the talks were previously uncovered in iptegrity.com). The reply was sent by Internal Market Commission Michel Barnier, and it denies the previously leaked information, saying that the talks are open and promote an exchange of views to find solutions to the online copyright enforcement problem within the existing legal framework.