Monthly Archives: May 2011

Net regulation tops G8 agenda in communique

May 27, 2011
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Copyright While the European Commission may have punted for now on stepped up enforcement of copyrights online, the G8 countries have put the issue front and center on the global economic agenda. The official communique from Deauville, France, where the G8 summit was held this week, makes Internet regulation, including copyright enforcement, the lead item after a pro forma statement of solidarity with Japan following the devastating earthquake and tsunami there in March.

Here are the money grafs: Read more »

Media Sans Frontières

May 25, 2011
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Licensing Before content owners get too excited about the possibility of mandatory Internet content filtering coming to Europe, highlighted in a Reuters story Monday based on leaked portions of a pending European Commission report on intellectual property rights, they might want to read through the full document now that it’s available on the EC website.

Any action that could involve stepped up enforcement of copyrights online by Internet service providers referenced in the report would be limited for now to studying “ways to create a framework allowing, in particular, combating infringements of IPR via the internet more effectively.” Any formal proposals to emerge from that studying,  moreover, which won’t even begin until 2012, will “not alter the existing rules on limited liability for certain types of ISP activities,” according to FAQ provided by the commission. Read more »

EU to put ISPs in piracy cross-hairs?

May 23, 2011
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Copyright With political leaders and technology executives from the G8 countries set to gather in Paris this week to discuss global Internet policy ( the “e-G8″), the European Commission is apparently poised to unveil its own proposal for enlisting Internet service providers in fighting online piracy “at [the] source.”

According to a Reuters report Monday, the executive arm of the European Union “will propose amendments to the [EU] (IPR) Enforcement Directive in order to create a framework allowing, in particular, combating infringements of IPRs via the internet more effectively.”

Those amendments, a leaked document seen by the news agency said, “should tackle the infringements at their source and, to that end, foster cooperation of intermediaries, such as internet service providers.”

While the Reuters report does not elaborate on what exactly the commission has in mind for tackling infringements “at their source” — filtering? domain seizures? — it clearly sees ISPs as instrumental to the plan. Read more »

Do as I say, not as I do

May 19, 2011
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Copyright National governments must operate in several different domains at once, both domestic and international. To expect absolute consistency in its positions across all of those domains is to misapprehend the role and process of government. Yet for all that, the contrast between current efforts in Congress to block U.S. citizens’ access to certain “rogue” web sites, and those of the U.S. State Department to help citizens of China to circumvent efforts by the Chinese government to block its citizens access to certain web sites, is striking. Read more »

Hulu IPO back on?

May 16, 2011
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Online Video Could the short-circuited Hulu IPO be back on? That’s one plausible outcome of the new long-term licensing deals the online video joint venture has apparently reached with its network owners.

According to a statement sent to the Wall Street Journal by Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, “News Corp [Fox], Disney [ABC], Providence and the Hulu team have been engaged in productive discussions to extend our existing content agreements a number of years. Keep in mind that our existing Hulu.com content agreements already extend for several more years; these discussions would extend the term further and also extend our separate Hulu Plus content agreements.”

NBC is also an equity partner in Hulu but gave up its seat on the board as a condition of the Comcast deal. It was unclear from the initial reports whether NBC content will also be covered by the new deals. Read more »