EU commissioner backs record biz on copyright extensions
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The picture of Dorian Gray Sir Cliff European internal markets commissioner Charlie McCreevy has thrown his weight behind the long-running record industry campaign to extend copyright protection for sound recordings.â¦
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The record industry's anti-piracy czar has given a thumbs-up to the Department of Justice's Operation Digital Gridlock.
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Blog: A ruling by the top court in the European Union deals another blow to the recording industry's efforts to fight the distribution of copyrighted recordings through file-sharing networks.
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Singers and musicians should earn royalty fees for 95 years, almost double the current 50-year limit, a European Union official said Thursday as he promised to draft new copyright protection rules.
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The European Commission has expanded  an informal probe into whether the licensing strategies of two  rival groups of DVD developers are anti-competitive by seeking  information from film studios, the EU executive said.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European Commission said Tuesday it has asked several Hollywood studios to explain why they have chosen either the Blue-ray disc or HD DVD format for movie discs to see if they are breaking EU rules that bar companies from shutting out rivals.
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European Parliament is pushing for changes in how musicians collect online copyright fees.
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The European Commission said Tuesday it has asked several Hollywood studios to explain why they have chosen either the Blue-ray disc or HD DVD format for movie discs to see if they are breaking EU rules that bar companies from shutting out rivals.
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The EU is backing a project that would let viewers personalise shows and films to suit their tastes.
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The European Commission says the organizations that collect royalties for songwriters in Europe are restricting competition in the field of music distribution over the Internet.
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The music industry claimed another legal victory in its battle against illegal file sharing in Europe on Friday, but the win may not last long.
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Major record corporations say that a licensed file-sharing system could bolster their position in their fight against piracy as well as increase digital music sales.
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Web media threatens to move out: take toys Ofcom, the UK telecommunications regulator, has said that a European Union plan to regulate video risks restricting innovation and even forcing companies to relocate outside the EU to avoid compliance.â¦
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Europeans said the call to drop copy protection from music sold online seemed to be an effort to shift the focus of the debate.
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The European Parliament urged the European Commission Tuesday to propose a law that would force the dismantlement of the current method of distributing online copyright fees to songwriters and musicians in Europe.
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(InfoWorld) - European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy set out his plan for a single approach to patents across the European Union on Thursday, ahead of an Oct. 12 vote on the matter in the European Parliament, winning plaudits from some erstwhile opponents. Previous attempts to introduce European legislation on patents, or to extend existing legislation to encompass software, haveÂ met stiff opposition. McCreevy spelled out his two-track approach in a speech to the Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday. His ultimate goal is a single patent system across the E.U., but he is also pushing for improvements to the existing patent regime, governed by the European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich. The EPO sees two problems with the existing regime: the lack of a single jurisdiction for patents in Europe, and the prohibitive costs involved in translating the patents into all European languages. Its answer to the jurisdiction question is the European Patent Litigation Agreement (EPLA), which many opponents of patents for software-related inventions abhor. The EPLA would create one patent court for patent disputes in all countries that are members of the EPO, which include all 25 E.U. member states except Malta. In his speech on Thursday, McCreevy appeared to take some of the EPLA opponents' concerns to heart. "I recognize there are legitimate doubts and concerns" about the EPLA, he told members of the Parliament. Florian Mueller, coordinator of a lobby group opposed to software patents, welcomed the Commissioner's approach. Mueller's group helpedÂ defeat a proposed European directiveÂ last year that could have enabled patenting of software. "During that long debate about the software patent directive, our concerns were always ridiculed by the Commission, making us out to be paranoid. Times seem to have changed," he said in a blog posting Friday. "McCreevy conceded that the proposed European Patent Litigation Agreement leaves a lot to be desired in its present form," he added. Mueller, along with many other critics of Europe's patent regime from the open-source and free software communities, and members of the European Parliament from four mainstream political parties, believe that the plans for an EPLA will simply duplicate the approach to patenting championed by the EPO. This regime has granted numerous software-related patents and is considered to be much more lax in the way it hands out patent monopolies than the national patent offices in individual European countries. Opponents of the EPO object to the fact that the EPO would select judges from within its own ranks to preside over disputes, as they believe this will spread what they call the lax attitude to software patents to all EPO countries. At a hearing in July hosted by the European Commission, EPO president Alain Pompidou called for the swift ratification of the EPLA, which remains a draft agreement. "The draft European Patent Litigation Agreement must be submitted to an intergovernmental conference as soon as possible," Pompidou said then. While McCreevy appeared to favor taking divergent views into account, he did stress the need for the EPLA in his speech. Mueller took issue with that in his blog, pointing out that patent disputes rarely involve more than one country at a time. National patent courts are, therefore, sufficient to deal with the vast bulk of cases, he said. "I don't mean to say that it's a perfect state of affairs if a company may have to enforce one and the same patent in more than one country at a time. But the current practice of sue-in-one-settle-in-all works quite well. About two-thirds of all E.U. patent infringement litigation takes place in Germany [about 900 cases per year], and in many of those cases the parties settle the dispute for the remaining European countries after a ruling or settlement in the first country in which they fight it out in court. That's pragmatic," he said. The European Parliament will vote on whether to support McCreevy's approach to patents on Oct. 12.
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The European Commission reaffirmed its  attachment to media freedom on Tuesday when asked about a  Polish plan to investigate the Teletubbies children&#39;s  television show for allegedly promoting homosexuality.