The Digital Economy Bill has passed its second reading in the UK’s House of Commons and will be taken to a third today. During the reading, accuracy was thrown to the wind as Swedish Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge was reported as imprisoned.
While the Spanish Government tries to ram through legislation that will enable the authorities to shut down file-sharing sites more rapidly, employees of the ministry responsible have been exposed as pirates. Fresh data shows that at nearly all ministries, staff have been downloading copyrighted material.
The Pirate Party of the UK has released its list of candidates for the forthcoming national elections. The ten candidates, spread across England and Scotland, were announced by the party executives earlier this week, along with a plea for funding to help contest the election.
The four individuals convicted in The Pirate Bay trial have a preliminary date for their appeals. Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundstrom will head to the Court of Appeal on 28 September. This date is already being claimed as politically motivated, falling as it does just after Sweden’s parliamentary elections.
Following in the footsteps of the Swedes and Germans, the Dutch Pirate Party has decided to join the national elections being held this spring. The Pirate Party booked a surprising victory by scooping two seats in the European Parliament last year, but has yet to score its first elected seat in a national Parliament.
The Pirate Party may have won two seats in last June’s European Parliament elections, but it’s hard to see that in practice. Despite the Lisbon Treaty going into effect just over 6 weeks ago, there is still no news of when Piratpartiet may fill their second seat.
The Spanish cabinet has today passed legislation that will enable the authorities to shut down file-sharing sites more rapidly. The new legislation gives in to the demands of the US and local copyright lobby, who see Spain’s lenient copyright law as a thorn in their side.
In the first sitting, dozens of proposed amendments to Britain’s Digital Economy Bill started to move through the Lords committee stage yesterday. One interesting amendment put forward requires that when copyright holders inform ISPs of a file-sharing infringement, they must also put a value on it.
The Spanish Government is working on new legislation under which hundreds of file-sharing sites that are currently perfectly legal, could be shut off. In a response to these plans, a group of hacktivists have launched a clever campaign to prove that the proposal is useless, and that the Government might as well close down the whole Internet.
Following massive protests from the public, New Zealand’s proposed ‘guilty upon accusation’ anti-piracy law was scrapped earlier this year, although not for long. A revamped version of the law, that was initially characterized as unfair and unworkable, has been revealed today.