First Time Videos v. Does 1-37, 2011 WL 1431619 (N.D. California, April 14, 2011) Hard Drive Productions v. Does 1-118, 2011 WL 1431612 (N.D. California, April 14, 2011) There have been a couple of new cases filed in federal court in California alleging that unknown BitTorrent users committed copyright infringement and engaged in civil conspiracy [...]
We mentioned back in December that BT and Talk Talk had been granted a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act. Well today we’ve heard that the High Court has rejected most of the claims put forward by the ISPs,…
You may remember back in July that we mentioned the ongoing Digital Economy Act debate. Well, suffice to say that the discussion on the Act is now turning from a debate into a saga , as TalkTalk and BT have…
In my most recent post I contrasted the approaches of the UK and Finland towards access to broadband. Whilst reading a little further around the topic, I came across some interesting discussion of the controversy surrounding the Digital Economy Act….
I’m attending the Cybersecurity Workshop at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. The workshop seeks to help researchers set an agenda for studying cybersecurity policy and issues. Tomorrow, I’m moderating a panel on the role that information law plays in cybersecurity, and I’ll post a precis of my talk here afterwards. There’s a great mix [...]
Professor Richard Epstein (U. Chicago) and I have been debating Internet censorship, and the exchange is posted at the State Department’s America.gov site. This is a rematch of our Legal Affairs debate in 2006. I think the heart of the debate is Epstein’s position that there are universal moral norms that should govern (and, largely, [...]
Rogers Communications appeared before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and was asked by NDP MP Charlie Angus about their position on ACTA and ISP liability. Ken Englehart, Senior VP Regulatory, left little doubt about the company's concerns with ACTA and the possibility of a three-strikes and you're out model coming to Canada:
We are concerned, as many ISPs are, about the ACTA negotiations. It's supposed to be about counterfeiting, but it seems to have gone way past counterfeiting to talking about issues of ISPs and the downloading activities of our customers. We don't think ISPs should be put in the position of being traffic cops to decide what is legal and what is not. We really hate any idea that we would have to terminate our customers' service on a three-strikes policy. We do not want to do that at all. I have a great deal of sympathy for the copyright holders who feel that their content is being stolen. It's a big problem. But I don't want to see this done by putting ISPs in the position of having to disconnect their customers or aid in the conviction of their customers.
When asked to expand on how ISPs and copyright holders strike the balance, Englehart focused on the effectiveness of the current notice-and-notice system, arguing that "those types of mechanisms should be exhausted before any kind of more Draconian measures are imposed."
TechDirt points to a post at Eric Goldman's blog that reports that Brazil is working on new reforms that reject the U.S. notice-and-takedown approach for Internet intermediaries.
The Government has reintroduced a bill designed to require providers of Internet services to report incidents of child pornography. The bill was introduced as Bill C-58 last year. I discussed the bill here. The new bill is Bill C-22.
An op-ed version of my article Cybersieves is available at The Legal Workshop. It’s a condensed, hopefully snappier version of the piece, and is intended for the general public in addition to cyberlaw geeks like me. Many thanks to Lee Davis and the Duke Law Journal staff for their excellent work!