The Globe and Mail reports that the EU has given the go-ahead for trade talks with Canada. The potential free trade agreement would include a wide variety of provisions including copyright.
Post Tagged with: "EU"
EU Complains About Lack of U.S. Copyright Compliance
Michael Factor points to a release late last week by Ambassador John Bruton, the head of the European Commission Delegation to the United States, complaining about the failure of the United States to live up to its international copyright obligations.
Reading Materials
There are two new European Commission-commissioned reports worth checking out. First, there is a lengthy study [PDF] on the economic impact of open source software that provides numbers that should get the attention of politicians and policy makers worldwide. The study estimates that it would cost 12 billion euros (over C$18 billion) to reproduce the same software code of current quality FLOSS applications. Moreover, the number of new software applications is doubling every 18 – 24 months. It further finds an 800 million euro voluntary contribution by software programmers. The industry impact is breathtaking with estimates that firms representing 263 billion euro in revenue and 565,000 jobs have invested 1.2 billion euro in FLOSS software that is then made freely available. In short, the direct and indirect economic impact is very significant and must surely form a more integral part of any national economic and ICT strategy.
The EC has also released a study[PDF] completed by the exceptional Institute for Information Law on the harmonization of European copyright law.
Digitization Plans
The European Commission has announced that at least six million books, documents and other cultural works are to be put online and housed in the European Digital Library by 2010. The European Union's executive arm said it would help fund part of a network of digitization sites and study copyright […]
EU Data Protection Working Party on Email Screening
The European Union Data Protection Working Party has released new recommendations on email screening practices including screening for viruses, spam, and certain content. The report expresses concern with the false positive problem on spam filtering, suggesting that email providers ensure that users have control over the degree of filtering. The […]
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