Council of Europe seeks right to reply to correct false online reports
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The Council of Europe has called on its 46 member-states to introduce legislation on the right of reply to correct false information on online media.
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John Reid says 'do as we say' Franco Frattini, the reactionary EU commissioner leading a campaign against violent and "perverse" video games, is expected to push for the UK's ratings laws to be applied across Europe.â¦
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STRASBOURG, France  - European Union lawmakers clashed on Wednesday over whether they had enough evidence to accuse their governments of colluding with the CIA on alleged secret flights of terrorism suspects in the bloc.
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As EU charter proclaims respect for data rights The European Parliament has condemned the EU's fondness for collecting personal information, mining and generating profiles in a resolution slamming the EU and national governments' approach to fighting terrorism.â¦
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The European Commission is told to compensate a firm whose takeover it was found to have wrongly blocked.
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STRASBOURG, France  - Rights groups have urged European Union lawmakers not to dilute on Wednesday a report that accuses their governments of colluding with the CIA on alleged secret flights of terrorism suspects in the bloc.
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The European Commission confirmed Monday it has received a written response to the&#160;formal antitrust charges&#160;it filed against computer chip maker Intel, after some delays.&quot;We have received the company&#39;s response and are examining it carefully,&quot; said a person close to the competition department.In July the Commission accused the world&#39;s biggest maker of computer chips of handing out &quot;substantial rebates&quot; to computer manufacturers in return for buying the bulk of their x86 chips from Intel.It also accused the company of paying computer makers for scrapping or delaying the launch of machines fitted with AMD chips, and of selling its chips for server computers at below cost to large customers such as governments and universities.Such practices are illegal under European antitrust law when applied by companies that dominate their market, as Intel does.In addition to the written response filed Monday, Intel has also asked the Commission for the opportunity to respond to the charges face-to-face in an oral hearing, said Chuck Mulloy, a company spokesman in Santa Clara, California. The Commission will decide the date&#39;s oral hearing.&quot;It will be a while before the hearing. The Commission staff will have to read our substantial response,&quot; Mulloy said.Intel asked twice for extra time to prepare the written response. The initial deadline was in October. That was shifted to Jan. 4. Then, as the new deadline loomed, Intel asked for the weekend to complete the document.&quot;There were some loose ends that needed to be addressed. It was nothing unusual,&quot; Mulloy said.
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I didn't get a 'harrumph' out of that guy ... EU ambassadors have agreed on a draft statement regarding "cooperation to combat terrorist use of the internet". Justice and Interior ministers are expected to endorse the document in June.â¦
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They are asking the European Union Council to reject this proposal. They claim that software patent directive would be harmful to the European economy.
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The new European Commission has spent its first day in office trying to quell a storm over the previously undisclosed, amnestied conviction of one of its members for party funding offences.
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(InfoWorld) - No one used the 'L' word, but both sides in the Microsoft Corp. antitrust battle in Europe accused each other of lying about basic facts surrounding the latest twist in the long-running saga that emerged Thursday. The European Commission sent Microsoft a so-called statement of objections Thursday accusing the software vendor of failing to provide interoperability information on "reasonable and non-discriminatory terms." This was a requirement laid out in the landmark 2004 antitrust ruling against the company. In its statement the Commission said the software giant proposes overcharging for vital interoperability information needed by software makers to allow their products to work properly with the Windows operating system. It dismissed almost all of the information Microsoft proposed revealing as not innovative and therefore not worth the price the company wants to charge to license it. Competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said Microsoft had agreed that the innovativeness of the information should be the main criterion when setting the price, but in a conference call with journalists later Thursday, Microsoft top lawyer Brad Smith denied his company had agreed innovativeness should be the main criterion. "We told the Commission we believe innovation is one of three main elements. We don't have the same interpretation of what had been established [between Microsoft and the Commission]," he said. Then ECIS, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, accused Microsoft of misleading journalists by citing a study by accountants Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), which, according to the software company, shows that the prices Microsoft wants to charge for licenses to the interoperability information are 30 percent below normal market rates. "It is an outrageous comparison," said Thomas Vinje, ECIS's legal advisor and a partner in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance. "The PWC study compares the prices Microsoft wants to charge with the market price for much more valuable information such as software code, documentation, and full redistribution rights," he said. "What people will get with Microsoft's interoperability information is a lot less valuable. To compare it with the sort of information in the PWC study is like comparing apples with... some withered fruit," he added. The actual prices Microsoft wants to charge for licensing out the interoperability information are too complicated to share with journalists, Microsoft spokesman Tom Brookes said. He warned inquisitive journalists that there is no simple price list. The Commission believes that if all software vendors bought licenses it would amount to around 35 percent of the net profit of the industry. Microsoft's Smith dismissed this, saying: "I don't think you can conclude that." He said that if all vendors bought the licenses the total revenue Microsoft would earn would total around US$30 million -- a tiny fraction of annual software industry profits. "That $30 million figure bears no resemblance to reality, and if Microsoft can't explain how they reached this figure it has absolutely no value," Vinje said. Microsoft has four weeks to respond toÂ the latest statement of objections, after which it faces daily fines of up to â¬3 million (US$3.9 million). In the meantime, the Commission is expected to conclude its assessment of the substance of the interoperability information Microsoft submitted. It doesn't have to be innovative. In fact Microsoft's rivals, including ECIS, argue that much of the information competitors need in order to build their software so that it interoperates with the ubiquitous Windows OS on PCs is quite straightforward. Nevertheless, if it isn't revealed then rivals are stuck, Vinje said. Commission spokesman Jonathan Todd told journalists Thursday that Microsoft's continued failure to comply with the antitrust ruling is unprecedented. "In the 50 years of European antitrust policy, it's the first time we've been confronted with a company that has failed to comply with an antitrust decision," he said. "You have to look at their attitude faced with other antitrust authorities in other jurisdictions. This is a company that apparently does not like to have to conform with antitrust decisions," Todd added.
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European Commission is looking into claims that Intel has been pressuring Europe's largest computer chain.
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Talk of monetary union and wine quotas gave way to controversy over orgasms and innuendo at the European Commission on Wednesday as it defended a risque Internet video clip highlighting its backing for European cinema.
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McCreevy calls for consensus European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has acknowledged that there are "legitimate concerns" about proposals to create a pan-European patent litigation system.â¦
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Europe&#39;s top data protection officials are working to clarify a grey area of Internet law: the legal status of an IP address.The question of whether an IP address should be considered private data occupied much time at a hearing earlier this week at the European Parliament regarding Google&#39;s planned acquisition of DoubleClick. If a person can be identified by an IP address, then the address is private, said Peter Schaar, the German data protection commissioner and chairman of the Europe-wide privacy group, the Article 29 Committee.This has been the rule in most countries in the European Union for more than 10 years. However, it is hard to set a clear-cut rule because some ISPs&#160;give out fresh IP addresses to subscribers each time they go online, and people also buy time online at Internet cafes.The Article 29 Committee has been examining the question of IP addresses as part of its analysis of how search engines respect European data protection rules. It is expected to reach some conclusions by mid-June, according to an official working for the committee who asked not to be named.The committee cannot fine transgressors of E.U. data protection rules, nor can it propose legislation, but it can prompt the European Commission to do so.Internet search companies, including Google, argue that an IP address merely locates a computer rather than identifying who is sitting at that computer. Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications for how search engines record and use people&#39;s data.If the committee persuaded lawmakers to toughen IP address protection in Europe &quot;that would definitely change things [for search engines],&quot; said John Steinback, a spokesman on policy matters for Google.From Google&#39;s perspective, whether an IP address is personal depends on the context, Steinback said. An ISP can link an IP address to a subscriber, but a Web site visited by the person using a specific IP address cannot link the address to a person, he explained.The European Parliament hearing was convened by the assembly&#39;s civil liberties committee to assess whether citizens&#39; privacy would be harmed by Google&#39;s planned acquisition of Internet advertising company DoubleClick. The deal, which has already been given the green light by U.S. regulators, is under investigation by European Commission competition officials. However, like its U.S. equivalents, the Commission won&#39;t consider the privacy question.Nevertheless, if data being collected for one purpose by one of the companies is then handed over to the other company for use in a different way, European data protection officials would be obliged to intervene, said the official close to the Article 29 Committee.&quot;Google will have to respect all the obligations of DoubleClick, including its data protection obligations,&quot; the official said. If the two databases are to be used for the same purposes, then they would be deemed compatible and could merge. &quot;But if there was an incompatibility between the two databases, then they couldn&#39;t be merged,&quot; he said.The European Parliament&#39;s civil liberties committee said it would be holding more seminars to examine the issues surrounding data protection in the months and years to come.
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By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in Brussels and Bruce Johnston in Rome. The European Union&#39;s incoming justice commissioner accused MEPs yesterday of anti-Catholic &quot;fundamentalism&quot; after they voted him unfit to take
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Papers judge the aftermath of the EU Commission wrangle, examine football racism and French mobile phones