April 18, 2011

IP Enforcement Roundup

EU Advocate General: ISPs Cannot Be Required to Block or Filter Content

The European internet service provider Scarlet Extended has appealed a court order that it block the file sharing of copyrighted music. In this context, the EU Advocate General Cruz Villalón has advised: “the Court of Justice should declare that EU law precludes a national court from making an order, on the basis of the Belgian statutory provision, requiring an internet service provider to install, in respect of all its customers, in abstracto and as a preventive measure, entirely at the expense of the internet service provider and for an unlimited period, a system for filtering all electronic communications passing via its services (in particular, those involving the use of peer-to-peer software) in order to identify on its network the sharing of electronic files containing a musical, cinematographic or audio-visual work in respect of which a third party claims rights, and subsequently to block the transfer of such files, either at the point at which they are requested or at the point at which they are sent.” Click here for more.

Figures from Microsoft’s Consumer Survey on Software Counterfeiting in India

Anil Varghese, Director of the Original Software Initiative, Microsoft India was recently interviewed for the Indian News outfit COIL. He told the interviewer that “software piracy rates in India have declined from 74 percent to 65 percent in the last seven years,” but “global losses from piracy and counterfeiting account for approximately $1 trillion.” When asked to share key findings from the MS India survey, he said that “consumers know the difference between genuine and counterfeit software; and that genuine software performs better; consumers are four times more likely to recommend genuine than counterfeit software; consumers think there are risks with using counterfeit software.”Click here for more.

Senator Wyden Tells Ars Technica He Will Block the Next Version of COICA

In an interview with Ars Technica on legislation currently being crafted in both houses of Congress to replace last year’s Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeiting Act (COICE), Senator Wyden says that “if the new version of COICA is like last year’s version of COICA, I will do everything in my power to block it.” He warns against “COICA-Plus” provisions he worries may be included this year’s bills, including increased liability for intermediaries and giving content owners a larger role in takedowns. Click here for the interview at arstechnica.com

Panel Debates Methodologies for the Measurement of the Economic Effect of Infringement

On Tuesday, April 12, the Broadband Breakfast Club hosted a panel discussion titled “The Costs of Global Intellectual Property Piracy: How Can the Phenomenon Be Empirically Quantified?” The event featured Loren Yager (lead author of the 2010 GAO report on piracy estimates); Stephen Siwek (author of numerous reports for IIPA and IPI estimating piracy rates for copyright industries); Bruce Lehman (currently conducting IIPI piracy studies in Asia); Sean Flynn (Associate Director, PIJIP); Morgan Reed (Executive Director, Association for Competitive Technology); and Matt Robinson (General Counsel for Attributor, a firm that tracks internet traffic). Click here for the webcast and notes.

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