24 September 2010

Weekly Cyber-Law News Round

Wow this week has flown by so quickly: where did it all go?!! It has been quite exciting week in terms of legal developments in the area of cyberspace. The usual suspects are in the news: Google Street View, Facebook, piracy, and privacy. But it has also been a week of great significance for copyright laws in the UK (adoption of the Gallo report), and some surprising developments in trademarks law (woman claiming trademark protection for her name).

My pick of the top cyber-law news for this week in descending chronological order:

  • Google's 'Street View' banned for privacy invasion Czech Republic's privacy watchdog says Google http://bit.ly/cgJrA9
  • US Autodesk decision gives software company the tool to prevent the resale of licensed software by unauthorised third parties http://tinyurl.com/33u2bev #in
  • Google's new Transparency Report logs government requests for personal info, takedown requests and blocking: http://bit.ly/dueLKf
  • Lawyers Sued Over Blog Posts Criticizing Referral Hotline for Personal Injury Cases http://is.gd/flsUg
  • Woman Trademarks Her Name, Says No One Can Use It Without Her Permission http://ow.ly/2GSXx
Hope you guys enjoy the new weekly cyber-law news round!

22 September 2010

Mot du Jour: Pan-european Copyright Laws

The European Parliament has today endorsed the report produced by Marielle Gallo ('the Gallo Report'), a French MEP, on the enforcement of intellectual property rights ('IPR') in the internal market. It has recommended the creation of a pan-European copyright law which would tackle the issue of lack of harmonisation of copyright laws across Member States.

The Gallo Report has criticised the Commission for not assessing how the European legal framework could be strengthened in relation to cyberspace. It has asked the Commission to review the impact of the 2004 Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights.

calls on the Commission to conduct "an assessment of the ways to strengthen and upgrade the legal framework with respect to the Internet".

The report, by Marielle Gallo, asks the Commission to review the impact of 2004's Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, and to propose amendments to it which would strengthen EU powers to tackle infringement. It has also highlighted the need to review the impact on the legal frameworks of Member States on reducing instances of infringement. This will be in line with the current negotiation of the Commission of the Anti Counterfeit Trade Agreement.

The Parliament is pioneered the creation of better legitimate online content markets to tackle the growing instances of online infringement. Thus the Commission will have to propose strategies (including legal and technological ones) to create such a market.

21 September 2010

A brand new day!

It is a brand new day in the land of CyberPanda! Since its inception, the design has remained pretty much the same but tonight, I felt a wind of change urging me to revamp things!! So here it goes...ta da.... the newly designed CyberPanda with all the latest mod cons in the blogging/social media world (and here a much needed /self-deprecating eye wink!). Let me know what you guys think and let us hope that CyberPanda does not experience the similar XSS exploit experienced by Twitter after its revamp this week!

A hop, a skip, and a walk away from this week`s hottest ICT law news!!

In an attempt to blog more regularly, I have decided to dabble with a few new things which will make the most of my tweets on @cyber_panda_ since I seem to tweet more often than blog lately!! Something about the convenience of a 140-word entry combined with a more pronounced sense of community!! Hence I have now generated the first edition of The CyberLaw News Daily which I am aiming to generate on a day full of important legal developments in the ICT field.

Furthermore, I will also publish a weekly round-up of ICT law news at the end of this week. So keep an eye out for this!! I have added new twitter features of the blog to synchronise my blog with my tweets on @cyber_panda_ . Hope you guys enjoy these new developments and let me know your thoughts!