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"Policy Field Internal Market, Intellectual Property ‑ Copyright Target group All stakeholders are welcome to contribute to this consultation. Contributions are particularly sought from consumers, users, authors, performers, publishers, producers, broadcasters, intermediaries, distributors and other service providers, Collective Management Organisations, public authorities and Member States. Period From 05.12.2013 to 05.02.2014. Objective The objective of this consultation is to gather input from all stakeholders on the review of the EU copyright rules. How to submit your contribution"

# One More Month: @ur #feedback, #highly #awaited.

" Andy on April 18, 2014 C: 116 Breaking Two years ago the Internet's biggest ever protest killed the hugely controversial anti-piracy legislation SOPA. Speaking to studios this week, a prominent UK government intellectual property advisor admitted that the damage caused was so great that it's unlikely that there will be a fresh piracy-focused legislative push for another five years."

" By Andy on June 15, 2014 C: 33 News The Commissioner of City of London Police admitted this week that just 4% to 10% of sites shut down when contacted by the new Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Alongside odd comments about the threat of "BitNet" and Tor making up "90% of the Internet", Leppard noted that enforcement will not provide a way out of the piracy problem. cityoflondonpoliceThis week's IP Enforcement Summit in London"

" Ernesto on October 10, 2015 C: 57 News A leaked chapter of the final Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement proposes several changes to the copyright laws of participating countries. The intellectual property chapter covers a broad range of issues including extended copyright terms, ISP liability and criminalization of non-commercial piracy."

"Today's release by Wikileaks of what is believed to be the current and essentially final version of the intellectual property (IP) chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) confirms our worst fears about the agreement, and dashes the few hopes that we held out that its most onerous provisions wouldn't survive to the end of the negotiations."

Sign up (email address) for updates on a monumental lobbying effort coming up in the next few days when Congress comes back into session and the legislation to "Fast Track" the TPP *and all future trade agrerements* is introduced. From leaked draft portions, we know that the TPP brings us internet censorship and a mass of copyright law changes that have the giant intellectual property corproate folk drooling at the mouth, because they helped write it while the public was excluded. This is your chance to help end secret trade agreements that the public doesn't even get to see until they have already been made into law.

" Ernesto on August 5, 2015 C: 156 News The High Court recently overturned private copying exceptions introduced last year by the UK Government, once again outlawing the habits of millions of citizens. The Intellectual Property Office today explains that ripping a CD in iTunes is no longer permitted, and neither is backing up your computer if it contains copyrighted content. "

"Abstract: The anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) was originally meant to harmonise and enforce intellectual property rights (IPR) provisions in existing trade agreements within a wider group of countries. This was commendable in itself, so ACTA's failure was all the more disappointing. In this article, I wish to contribute to the post-ACTA debate by proposing a specific analysis of the ethical reasons why ACTA failed, and what we can learn from them. I argue that five kinds of objections- namely, secret negotiations, lack of consultation, vague- ness of formulation, negotiations outside any international body, and the creation of a new governing body outside already existing forums-had only indirect ethical impli- cations. "

[A lot of unanswered questions lingered after Attachmate announced that it has negotiated an agreement to acquire Linux vendor Novell earlier this month. The company has since issued official statements to clear up several notable points of concern. Attachmate intends to continue developing the SUSE platform and will support the community-driven openSUSE project. The company has also confirmed that it has retained the UNIX copyrights, the intellectual property at the heart of the SCO dispute. ...]

[ La reciente publicación del informe "Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008" (PRO IP) debería sin duda generar problemas de conciencia a los senadores que se disponen a votar para volver a incluir la llamada "Ley Biden-Sinde" dentro de la Ley de Economía Sostenible: según el informe deja meridianamente claro, estamos ante un claro caso de "haz lo que digo, no lo que hago" por parte de los Estados Unido.s. ...]

[ The European Commission just launched a new consulation on its disastrously dogmatic report on IPRED, a directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights, adopted by the EU in 2004. The report -- whose logic is similar to ACTA -- is based on an analysis of the application of IPRED. It calls for the massive filtering of the Internet to tackle file-sharing: according to the Commission, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should "cooperate" in the war against sharing to avoid the threat of litigation. You can participate in the analysis by commenting both texts on co-ment: the IPRED report and the analysis of the application of IPRED **Citizens and NGOs have until March 31st, 2011 to sent a submission to answer the consultation. ]

"AN FRANCISCO -- As more employees continue to access consumer cloud accounts at work (regardless of IT rules), the enterprise world is about to reach a breaking point, based on a new report. Quite simply, U.K. cloud collaboration company Huddle described the trend as a "security time-bomb." At least 38 percent of U.S. office workers are said to have admitted to storing work documents on personal cloud tools and services, while a whopping 91 percent of workers added they use personal devices (i.e. USB drives) to store and share sensitive company documents. Huddle argued that this means enterprise and government organizations are at severe risk of losing both data intellectual property forever as this fragmentation continues. The London-headquartered company published its first State of the Enterprise assessment report amid the official opening of its San Francisco offices on Thursday morning as Huddle branches out to attract a U.S. customer base. "Legacy technologies create barriers to how we want to work," said Mitchell. Huddle produces a team-based collaboration platform designed for large teams within enterprises storing content securely and individually. The idea behind Huddle is to replace personal USB drives and "dumb file storage" platforms with open-security models and folder-based content. As the cloud-based storage and collaboration market grows, it looks like Huddle will be aiming to take on the likes of Box, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, and Dropbox, among others. Huddle is framing itself as different in that it constructs a single network for working and collaborating beyond a firewall, removing VPN complexities with single, company-wide login. Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell described during an inaugural media presentation that its customers are replacing legacy technologies, calling out SharePoint and Outlook in particular as users move content collaboration out of email. "Legacy technologies create barriers to how we want to work," sai

"We live in an age of ever-expanding copyright law. The length of time that elapses before a creative work enters the public domain is now so long that many items published early last century are still protected by copyright."

"We live in an age of ever-expanding copyright law. The length of time that elapses before a creative work enters the public domain is now so long that many items published early last century are still protected by copyright."

" By Andy on April 8, 2016 C: 43 News Young people are often the group most closely associated with consumption of illegal content yet the results of a new survey just published by the EU Intellectual Property Office paints them in a fairly reasonable light. While 38% of young European pirates see nothing wrong in piracy, just 5% exclusively use pirate sources."

"Fair Use and Intellectual Property: Defending the Balance International A just-leaked draft impact assessment on the modernization of European copyright rules could spell the end for many online services in Europe as we know them."

Note that an unofficial translation of the parliamentary motion is linked from the article. This adds substantially to the pressure internationally to end software patents because Germany has been the strongest defender of software patents in Europe. The same legal grounds would not apply in the U.S. The strongest argument for the non-patentability in the U.S., in my opinion, is that software patents embody embody both prior art and obviousness. A general purpose computer can accomplish nothing unforeseen by the prior art of the computing device. And it is impossible for software to do more than cause different sequences of bit register states to be executed. This is the province of "skilled artisans" using known methods to produce predictable results. There is a long line of Supreme Court decisions holding that an "invention" with such traits is non-patentable. I have summarized that argument with citations at . 

" By Ernesto on June 17, 2016 C: 25 News Marketing and sales company Smart Circle is using the DMCA to uncover the identity of a critical blogger. The company obtained a subpoena directed at WordPress, stating that the blogger in question violates their copyrights by publishing modified images of its key employees."

" Andy on June 21, 2016 C: 132 Breaking A coalition of 186 artists, bands and songwriters have penned an open letter to Congress complaining about the ineffectiveness of the DMCA. From Taylor Swift, Trent Reznor, deadmau5 and U2, to Sirs Paul McCartney and Elton John, the message is clear: The DMCA allows tech companies to make huge profits while artists and creators suffer."