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The extension of the copyright law aimed at fighting illegal file-sharing adopted on 11 April 2008 by the German Government creates concerns on how the p2p-related lawsuits will be considered under the new law.

The new text forces the ISPs to reveal the names and IP addresses of the file sharers. However, some lawyers warn that the procedure is limited by conditions that could turn against the music industry in court procedings .

The present procedure is as follows: industry detectives report the IP numbers of file sharers to the German police who traces the suspects and prosecutes those who offer more than 1000 tracks. However, the industry can demand the police files of all file sharers and

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Sony BMG has been accused by PointDev company of having used Ideal Migration, the administration software for Windows servers and client accounts, without having a licence.

On 22 January 2008, a bailiff mandated by PointDev found an illegal installation of the software on four computers belonging to Sony BMG. Paul-Henry Agustoni, owner and administrator of the editor claims 300 000 euro damages from Sony BMG.

The case started in November 2007 when a Sony employee requested online technical support from PointDev. Ideal Migration, like all the other products of the company is proposed on the Internet in a trial version. Following the purchase of the product, the client is provided with a key

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Although initially the Swedish Government promised not to hunt down young people for filesharing, on 14 March 2008, it made a proposal that will allow courts to force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to give up IP addresses used for illegal filesharing to the owners of the fileshared material.

The government's present proposal means the rejection of the previous alternative proposed by Appeals Court judge Cecilia Renfors who was suggesting ISPs should shut down users who repeatedly downloaded copyrighted material without permission.

ISPs welcomed the government decision considering that Renfors' proposal would have put the providers "in a position of having to police our own

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A new policy paper drafted by the European Commission (EC) shows its intention to promote new measures to fight against illegal file-sharing, taking as a positive example the French agreement between ISPs and the record industries already presented in EDRI-gram.

The policy paper obtained by EurActiv and entitled "Creative content online in the Single Market" wants to involve all the stakeholders in the activities against piracy: "It seems appropriate to instigate co-operation procedures between access and service providers, right holders and consumers".

The Commission communication also talks about the development of new legal offers of digital content available for consumers, educational programs to

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The recent meeting on 22-24 November 2007 of the Competitiveness European Council meeting adopted its conclusions on scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation.

The conclusions underline the importance of scientific output resulting from publicly funded research being available on the Internet at no cost to the reader under economically viable circumstances, including delayed open access. They also ask the member countries "to systematically assess conditions that affect access to scientific information", including:
a.The way in which researchers exercise their copyright on scientific articles;
b.The level of investments in the dissemination of scientific

Microsoft has lost the appeal made to the Court of First Instance against the European Commission's (EC) ruling of monopoly abuse that obliged Microsoft to grant competitors access to its server protocols and to unbundle its Media Player software from its Windows operating system .

The case has a long history; following a complaint in 2003 from Novell that accused Microsoft of making server protocol information unavailable, the European Commission gave a preliminary ruling ordering Microsoft to unbundled Windows Media Player from Windows and to give information to competitors to ensure compatibility with Windows servers. Considering Microsoft had not complied with that ruling, in March 2004, the European Commission fined Microsoft with the highest fine in the EU history - 497 million euro.

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In an unanimous decision on 25 May 2007, the Helsinki District Court ruled that Content Scrambling System (CSS) used in DVD movies is "ineffective". The decision is the first in Europe to interpret new copyright law amendments, based on EU Copyright Directive of 2001, that bans the circumvention of "effective technological measures". According to both Finnish copyright law and the above-mentioned directive, only such protection measure is effective, "which achieves the protection objective."

The background of the case was that after the copyright law amendment was accepted in 2005, a group of Finnish computer hobbyists and activists opened a website where they posted information on how to circumvent CSS.

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A new decision of the Paris Court of Appeal in the case Mulholland Drive considers that there is no right to the private copy that can forbid the presence of the DRMs, but the private copy can be a good argument for defence in cases of counterfeiting.

The case was brought up in 2003 by a consumer joined by the Association UFC-Que Choisir that made a complaint against the producers of the movie Mulholland Drive because the legally acquired DVD was protected by DRMs that did not permit the consumer to make a copy in order to see it on a VHS cassette at his parents' home. The DVD had no clear indication that it could be used only with some specific devices.

After a four year legal battle, with ups and downs, the case was returned to

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The independent authority foreseen by the new French law on copyright (DADVSI) was created in the last days of the Villepin government. This Authority for Regulations of the DRMs (Autorité de régulation des mesures techniques - ARMT) should ensure the interoperability of the DRM systems and allow the private copies.

Even though the law has been in force since August 2006, the official normative act creating the authority was published in the Official Journal only on 4 April 2007 and, a few days later, the Ministry of Culture has officially created the new authority. ARMT will be responsible, according to the DADVSI law, with seeing that the DRM systems do not create additional

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The UK Court of Appeal has ruled that general ideas in a computer game can be copied, in the appeal Nova Productions, producer of Pocket Money computer game, made against two rival companies, Mazooma Games and Bell Fruit Games.

Nova Productions had lost its case in first instance to the UK High Court by which it was accusing Mazooma Games and Bell Fruit Games for having used elements of its pool based game Pocket Money in creating their Jackpot Pool and Trick Shot games respectively, therefore infringing its copyright.

The High Court ruled against Nova in July 2006 when Nova argued that the EU's Software Directive of 1991 provided protection for programs as literary works claiming that the preparatory design material had been copied by its