The European Commission this week started providing some insight into its plans for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – in an event in the European Parliament organised by Dutch Liberal MEP, Marietje Schaake and in a “civil society” meeting in the Commission itself.

Both meetings started very promisingly. The Commission explained that it wasn't seeking to harmonise intellectual property legislation in both jurisdictions and said that it would only include such issues where a problem was identified by stakeholders – just a narrow range of issues and only “geographic indicators” have so far been selected. So, great, only identified problems would be addressed.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Finnland: Gesunder Menschenverstand im Urheberrecht

The Finnish campaign "Common Sense in Copyright Law" organized a blackout day 23 April 2013 to market the citizens' initiative, which would strip the worst parts out of the Finnish copyright law and add German-style fairness-requirement to the copyright contracts. More than 50 websites participated to the event, which was also widely published in the Finnish media.

The initiative has to collect 50 000 signatures before 23 July to get submitted to the Finnish parliament.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Licences for Europe: Die Diskussion muss breiter werden

In December 2012, the European Commission announced a stakeholder dialogue to discuss innovative solution to improve cross-border access to online content.

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: ENDitorial: Eine Woche des Schreckens für die deutsche Netzpolitik

In Germany, political developments in the last week have been perceived as a frustrating defeat by the "Internet community", as three legislative measures that had been heavily criticised (and ridiculed) have progressed in the Parliament.

On 20 March 2013, "De-Mail", Germany's standard for "court-proof" electronic communications and document exchange between citizens, authorities and businesses, was discussed in a hearing in the Committee on Internal Affairs of the Bundestag (the "lower house" in Germa

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Online-Piraterie nicht schuld an rückläufigen Musikumsätzen

As continuously argued by different IT specialists, digital freedom activists and organisations during the last few years, online piracy does not affect music industry revenues, as it is shown by a new research performed by The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies which is part of European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

After having examined the browsing habits of 16 000 Europeans, the researchers found there is actually a positive relationship between online piracy and visits to legal music s

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: Zivilgesellschaft gegen Urheberrechtsbestimmungen in TAFTA

More than 45 civil society organisations from US and Europe, including EDRi, ask that the proposed EU-US trade agreement called Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) should exclude any provisions related to patents, copyright, trademarks, or other forms of so-called "intellectual property".

US President Barack Obama, the European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and the European Commission President José Manuel Barroso announced on 13 February 2013 the official launch of negotiations of the Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA),

The Swedish Court of Appeal has referred to ECJ (European Court of Justice) a case involving the question of whether publishing a hyperlink to content can be considered a communication to the public and, implicitly, a breach of the creator’s copyright (in case the hyperlink is published without the author’s consent), under the European law.

The case in question is that of Svensson, a Swedish journalist who wrote an article published by a Swedish newspaper both in print and on the newspaper’s website and who claimed that Retriever Sverige AB, a subscription service providing links to articles that can be found online, had made links to his article available to the public, without his permission, and, therefore, for this he should be compensated.

But Retriever refused

This article is also available in:
Deutsch: ENDitorial: Europäische Lizenzen und der Fight Club ... es gibt nur e...

There was a moment in November 2012 when even the most cynical observers of the European Commission were hopeful of an effective reform of copyright. Commissioner Barnier gave a speech where he demonstrated that he understood the problems. He explained that “the digital revolution has not yet lived up to expectations in the European context” and described some barriers to cross-border access to content as illegitimate. Finally, the problems had been identified.