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Deutsch: Verlängerte Urheberrechtsfrist für Tonaufnahmen abgelehnt

The proposal for the extension of the copyright terms for sound recordings was rejected on 27 March 2009 by COREPER, which has the task to negotiate a consensus before the EU Council of Ministers takes votes.

To the great disappointment of the recording industry, COREPER rejected the extension of the copyright term as there was no consensus of the Member States on the matter.

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Deutsch: Irische ISP-Vereinigung weist die Drohungen der Copyrightindustrie ab

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Macedonian: Ирската асоцијација на интернет прова...

After several weeks of silence in the the Eircom deal with IRMA (Irish Recorded Music Association), the Irish ISP Association (ISPAI) has reacted considering the legal threats as spurious and that there is no evidence of wrong-doing by Internet Service Providers.

The Irish ISP scandal has starte

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The war between IFPI and the Pirate Bay continues with a new banning of the site in Denmark ruled by a Danish court at the beginning of February this year.

Exactly a year ago, in February 2008, following an IFPI action, a Danish court ruled that Tele2 had to block its users from accessing The Pirate Bay. Now, the court has issued a preliminary injunction against DMT meaning that all ISPs owned by DMT have to deny their users' access to The Pirate Bay. Also, in January 2009, TDC, the largest Danish ISP and owner of most of the cables, decided to block access to the Swedish site as a preventive measure.

However, ISPs are not happy with the decision and three of them, TDC

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A roundtable on online retailing with the interested private companies, including online music providers, and consumers organisations took place at the European Commission in Brussels on 17 September 2008 with competition commissioner Neelie Kroes and internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy.

Ms Kroes expressed her concern regarding the barriers in buying music online: "Why is it possible to buy a CD from an online retailer and have it shipped to anywhere in Europe, but it is not possible to buy the same music, by the same artist, as an electronic download with similar ease?

Against the high pressure from rights managers, the European Commission decided to ban certain copyright handling practices, mainly the obligation of an author not to move from a collective society to another.

On 16 July 2007, Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes asked 24 European collecting societies managing copyright on behalf of music authors to eliminate the clause from their contracts preventing authors from moving to another collecting society.

The Commission had opened an investigation following complaints from broadcasting group RTL and the UK online music provider Music Choice. In February 2007, the Commission sent a formal statement of objections to the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) regarding the restrictiveness of certain business practices. In March 2007,

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Commissioner Charlie McCreevy's announcement in February 2008 that he proposes to nearly double the term of copyright protection for sound recordings from 50 to 95 years came as a shock to UK digital rights campaigners. Back in 2006, here in the UK, the case against copyright term extension was robustly made - by campaigners such as my organisation, the Open Rights Group, and more importantly, by economists from one of the UK's leading universities. It led to a firm commitment from our Government that they would never seek to extend copyright term retrospectively.

There is no case for copyright term extension. Term extension would reduce, yet again, the size of the public domain, harming public

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On 3 January 2008, the European Commission (EC) launched a public consultation for the preparation of a recommendation on Creative Content Online to be adopted by the European Parliament and Council that calls for a common legal environment for online content, proposing multi-territory licences.

In the opinion of the European Commission, EU policies should support the rapid implementation of "new services and related business models for the creation and circulation of European content and knowledge online."

As a result of the public consultation on "Content Online in the Single Market" launched by the EC in July 2006, there were several calls for the encouragement of the cooperation between industry, right holders and

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During a conference on creative rights and cultural diversity organised by EUobserver on 6 December 2007, José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, stated the European Commission (EC) was not yet ready to take any short-term decision related to the management of the online music market.

Despite new calls at the conference to review the voluntary guidelines on the collective management of online music rights issued in 2005 by the EC and supported by collective rights managers (CRMs), Barroso said the EC needed some time to find the right solutions based on a balanced, sustainable consensus of all the involved stakeholders.

The guidelines are not legally binding for the EU states and, according to