How effective are blocking orders against torrent sites?

The High Court of England and Wales has produced another blocking order for UK Internet service providers (ISPs) against three torrent sites. The action was brought by the British Recorded Music Industry (BPI) against the main UK ISPs in order to obtain a blocking order against three torrent indexing sites, namely KAT, H33T, and Fenopy.

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Argentinian court calls Cuevana blocking request “broad and disproportionate”

An interesting case from Argentina. A judge has received and rejected a request from HBO Ole Partners, the Latin American branch of HBO, to block access to the popular streaming site Cuevana. In case you have not heard about it, Cuevana is an Argentinian streaming site that offers high-quality movies free of [...]

Autores, fotocopias y educación en Costa Rica

Fotocopiadoras “self-service”

Durante los últimos días hemos presenciado un lamentable ataque contra el Congreso y la Fuerza Pública por parte de elementos opuestos al veto presidencial de la Ley 17342 que reforma varios artículos de la legislación vigente de observancia de derechos de propiedad intelectual. El ataque ha sido propiciado por una narrativa que [...]

Is Panama about to pass the worst copyright law in history?

In a Rogue’s Gallery of copyright legislation, many efforts deserve mention. The DMCA is surely there, together with Japan’s new copyright law, the Digital Economy Act, and Ley Sinde. But a new Panamanian copyright bill is giving those laws a run for their money.

The excellent project at Infojustice.org have directed our attention to a [...]

More on Pinterest and copyright

Source: google.ca via Andres on Pinterest

It seems like the Pinterest copyright meme refuses to die. Some days ago I wrote a short analysis of what I believed were the main issues in this subject, particularly concentrating on the fair use and DMCA take-down aspects of the question. [...]

TPP: Welcome to the global war on intermediaries

Don't shoot the messenger

SOPA and PIPA are knocked-out. ACTA is on the ropes… time to relax? Not yet, meet the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the new front in the War on Piracy™. While there is already a trade agreement under this name, the TPP has been enhanced and in November last year the [...]

SOPA and network architecture

The media frenzy over the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act (SOPA and PIPA respectively) appears to be finally dying down after last week’s Internet blackout, mostly due to the shocking news regarding the shutting down of Megaupload. While I publicly expressed some misgivings about the focus of the current debate, it [...]

The implications of Megaupload

May you live in interesting times, the Chinese say. Oh my, aren’t we blessed? The file-sharing site Megaupload has been the subject of an international law enforcement operation by U.S. authorities, who have arrested six men charged with running an international criminal operation engaged in copyright infringement. A fact that has been less reported is [...]

Stop Online Piracy Act: Putting the extra in extraterritoriality

The Internet has been abuzz with the latest attempt to regulate the Internet, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). I’ve finally managed to read the proposed bill, and it really is as bad as everyone is talking about. To quote Treebeard in The Two Towers: “There is no curse in Elvish, Entish, or the tongues [...]

Dutch ruling sends intermediary liability back to the 90s

Usenet servers and clients

A civil court in Amsterdam has delivered a throwback ruling that reverses a decade of legal practice in intermediary liability. The BREIN Foundation is an anti-piracy group in the Netherlands, and it sued News-Service.com Europe (NSE), one of the largest providers of Usenet services in Europe. BREIN brought the action [...]