The Polish Ministry of Administration and Digitisation has initiated discussion on the law providing free access to public resources. The Ministry has made available on its webpage a document entitled “Draft Guidelines for the Proposal of the Act on Open Public Resources” and has invited interested parties to comment. Thus a process of “open access…
Breaking news. More than a year after Congress repealed the private copying levy, the Spanish Government agreed yesterday to begin paying taxes on blank media such as DVDs, CDs, pen drives and camera phones through a budget allotment. The Ministry of Culture would be in charged of determining each year how much should be allotted…
“According to the current formulation of the draft law, material quoted by humans for commentary and analysis, as opposed to that automatically selected by a computer, may be copied freely.” The link wars have once again broken out in Europe. In August, the German cabinet gave its backing to a draft law allowing news publishers…
“The Polish Parliament is of the opinion the draft proposal does not adequately explain why these goals can be “better” realised on the EU level. “ Friday, October 12th 2012 was packed with action in the Polish Parliament (Sejm), because on that day the prime minister subject his government to the vote of confidence and…
On 27 September, the Dutch government introduced what at first glance would seem an inconsequential proposal, e.g. to amend the Register Act of 1970 whereby the possibility for legal and natural persons to register their copyright protected work at the tax office will be eliminated. Should the Dutch proposal be adopted, the registration of private…
The “Arco” lamp is protected by copyright. But Italy is still struggling with the moratorium of the copyright protection of industrial design. With a 56-pages decision of the District Court of Milan published on 12 September 2012 and made available last week, the “Arco” lamp case, started as far back as 2006, has finally come…
Last week, the European Parliament approved the draft Directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works. The approval of the Council of Ministers is expected to occur shortly. This is big news indeed, for it’s the first draft directive in the area of copyright law to make it this far in more than 10 years….
“Some said this would be like an Opera House charging the taxi drivers for taking the audience to the venue.” It has been more than three years now since the infamous idea of a new neighbouring right for press publishers appeared in the coalition agreement of the second Merkel government out of thin air. On…
In less than a month Canadian Copyright law has been subjected to an unprecedented series of modifications that, without exaggerating, could be defined as revolutionary. First of all, on June 29th the long awaited bill C-11 (formerly C-32, C-61, and C-60) received royal assent becoming the Copyright Modernization Act. Canadian Copyright Act looks now much…
On September 23, 1912, the Dutch Copyright Act – Auteurswet – was enacted. A century after its enactment the Dutch law is one of the world’s oldest ‘living’ acts of the author’s rights tradition. While the Act has seen many small and large amendments since its adoption in 1912, it has never been thoroughly revised,…
