EU Public Affairs Monitor - 05/12/08

Industry welcomes Danish Pirate Bay Ruling
"A gaggle of trade body spokesmen, and that is the correct collective noun, in case you wondered, lined up to welcome a ruling in the Danish courts this week which upheld a previous ruling that Denmark-based internet service provider Sonofon is obliged to block access to The Pirate Bay website, because the site is responsible for mass copyright infringement.

The Pirate Bay, of course, is the most blatant of the BitTorrent trackers who provide access to all kinds of illegal sources of digital content. The Swedish based enterprise has continued to operate despite a number of court rulings against them. The people behind the website are facing prosecution in Sweden and could be in court as soon as February.
But the Danish case centered on ISP Sonofon who have been told they have to block access to The Pirate Bay, but who aren't so keen on doing so. They appealed an earlier ruling that ordered the blocking, but Denmark's appeal court upheld the original order on Wednesday." [CMUDaily]

New Firefox extension turns Amazon.com into illegal free-for-all
"A new Firefox extension called Pirates of the Amazon lets users download movies, games, TV shows, and MP3s free of charge by cross referencing Amazon's product pages with torrent files from the Pirate Bay.
If the content can be found on the Pirate Bay's search index it shows up as a "Download 4 Free" link on the top of the Amazon product page. This links directly to the hosted .torrent tracker file, letting the user avoid having to make a purchase from Amazon in place of acquiring it illegally via BitTorrent." [RecordOfTheDay]

Une vidéo sur les dessous du projet de loi Création et Internet
"La chaîne Public Sénat a consacré un des numéros de son émission les Dessous de la Loi, à la gestion de la loi Création et Internet. Un reportage intéressant en ce qu’il permet de replacer le texte dans son contexte et découvrir certains de ses dessous.

Au fil de l’émission, la parole est donnée aux principaux protagonistes de Christine Abanel, à Jérémie Zimmerman de la Quadrature du net, en passant par la SACEM, Pascal Nègre ou Mano Solo ou les inévitables Clément et Alexandre de la Chanson du Dimanche. Les divisions du PS, les positions de la Commission des affaires économiques, très sensibilisée aux conséquences de la coupure sur les réseaux sont également remis en lumière." [PCInpact]

A successful EU organisation
"The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market has approved more than 500,000 applications for EU-wide trademarks since it was created in 1996.

The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) is not the best known of EU organisations but it is arguably one of the most successful. The office, which grants Community-wide trademarks, has just approved its 500,000th application. It finances itself entirely from the fees it charges for trademark registration and is expecting to generate a surplus of €65 million this year. It has already built up reserves of €350m, which have made it possible to cut the registration fee to less than €1,000, down from €1,700 since 2005 and €2,075 from 1996 when the office became operational." [EuropeanVoice]