- ES - Spain child porn: Dozens arrested +/-
(CNN) Spanish police say they have arrested 90 people, including 21 juveniles, in the country's largest operation against child pornography distribution. The suspects did not financially profit from the pornography that showed children engaged in sexual acts, including with adults. Instead, they received the pornographic material from abroad, stored it and distributed it among themselves on the Internet, the police said. [Ed: According to El País, the police acted following a report received from PROTEGELES, the Spanish hotline funded by the EU Safer Internet programme].
- Automated phishing on the rise +/-
(CNET News.com) Fraudsters are achieving higher levels of automation for phishing scams, using software tools and botnets to increase the reach of their work, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group. Security experts from the APWG have witnessed massive increases in the number of phishing Web sites, which they say suggests scammers are improving their techniques.
- EU - Change of name for Justice DG +/-
(Europa) Directorate General Justice and Home Affairs (DG JAI) has changed its name into Directorate General Justice, Freedom and Security (DG JLS). Its mandate and structure remain unchanged. Its role is to strengthen the EU as a single area of freedom, security and justice.
- UK - Court photos man gets six months +/-
(BBC) A man has been given a six month custodial sentence for taking photos in court with his mobile phone. Shaun Nash, 19, also used the phone to take video footage while sitting in the public gallery during a robbery trial at Bristol Crown Court.
- UK - Mobile phone database reunites phones and owners +/-
(out-law.com) A national mobile database, designed to keep a record of mobile phones and their owners, has been set up to help in the recovery of lost or stolen phones. The Mobile Equipment National Database (MEND) has the support of the police's National Mobile Phone Crime Unit.
- EU - ECJ gives first ruling on interpretation of Database Directive +/-
(Curia) The expression 'investment in ... the obtaining ... of the contents' of a database in Article 7(1) of Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases must be understood to refer to the resources used to seek out existing independent materials and collect them in the database. It does not cover the resources used for the creation of materials which make up the contents of a database. In the context of drawing up a fixture list for the purpose of organising football league fixtures, therefore, it does not cover the resources used to establish the dates, times and the team pairings for the various matches in the league. Case C-46/02, Fixtures Marketing Ltd v Oy Veikkaus Ab see also Case C-203/02, The British Horseracing Board Ltd and Others v William Hill Organization Ltd. The resources used to draw up a list of horses in a race and to carry out checks in that connection do not constitute investment in the obtaining and verification of the contents of the database in which that list appears.
- Ban hits Half-Life 2 pirates hard +/-
(BBC) About 20,000 people have been banned from playing the Half-Life 2 game. Game maker Valve shut down the online accounts of the players because it had evidence that their copy of the game had been obtained illegally. Copies of Half-Life 2 had been circulating on file-sharing systems soon after it was officially released. Experts said the success of the Half-Life 2 anti-piracy system might tempt other game makers into creating their own version.
- EU - Database Protection: A natural experiment +/-
(FT) by James Boyle. Despite the fact that the European Commission has a legal obligation to review the Database Directive for its effects on competition (they are three years late in issuing their report) no attention appears to be being paid to the actual evidence of whether the Directive helps or hurts in the EU.
- US - Actor fined for Oscars piracy +/-
(out-law.com) NYPD Blue actor Carmine Caridi has been fined a total of £309,600 for his involvement in the illegal copying of two Oscar-nominated films that he was due to judge as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Screeners for the films, The Last Samurai and Mystic River, were sent to Caridi in the run up to last year's Oscars in order that he might consider his vote. Like all members of the Academy, Caridi signed an agreement promising not to circulate the films. But he breached this agreement by passing the films onto a friend, who copied the films and distributed them over the internet. The pair were caught when a watermark on the copied films was traced back to Caridi's screener.
- US - Court nixes lawsuit fighting copyright law +/-
(CNET News.com) A lawsuit brought by a group of Internet archivists against recent congressional actions expanding copyright protections has been dismissed by a federal judge. The case was led by Net pioneer Brewster Kahle, whose most recent Internet Archive project aims to make a huge digital archive of Web sites and other media. The court's ruling, issued late last week, marks another setback for a movement of activists and scholars against expanding legal protections for artistic works.
- US - Outgunned on copyright? +/-
(CNET News.com) Is the entertainment industry losing its clout on Capitol Hill? At first blush, a lot of people might find that to be a laughable proposition. But a prominent architect of the Recording Industry Association of America's legal strategy confided to me last week that his colleagues are being 'outgunned' in the legislative skirmishing over new copyright laws.
- WIPO - The fight for your right to share +/-
(BBC) Ask the average man in the street what Wipo means to them and most will look at you blankly. But if truth be told the World Intellectual Property Organisation has a profound influence on the lives of anyone who watches TV, listens to the radio, uses the net or owns a portable music player - pretty much all of us. The treaties and agreements that Wipo agrees set the broad agenda for protection of intellectual property rights for the whole world.
- WIPO - U.S. vows to 'fight' the Push for Reform +/-
(IP-Watch) In an October 15 speech, the Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Jonathan Dudas, vowed that the U.S. government will "fight" proposals that aim to "fundamentally change the WIPO charter and philosophy" away from its current focus on the promotion of intellectual property. In his keynote remarks at the Annual Meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA - a 15,000-member U.S. bar association comprised primarily of intellectual property lawyers) Dudas stated emphatically that "our current system and international norms are properly balanced". In a not-so-oblique reference to recent discussions at WIPO of a 'Development Agenda,' Dudas derided efforts to encourage WIPO to take a more balanced approach to intellectual property as part of a "strategy to water down intellectual property protection" that is "even worse" than efforts to increase PCT application fees.
- Bill Gates receives 4 million spam messages in his email every day +/-
(Pravda) The Microsoft chairman is the world's most spammed person: about 4 million messages arrive in his mailbox on daily basis. Steve Ballmer made the startling claim at the start of a two-day Microsoft-sponsored Asia Leadership Forum in Singapore.
- ITU - Global Survey on Mobile Spam +/-
(ITU) Spam on mobile phones is a rising phenomenon worldwide. In order to better understand this problem, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and BMD Wireless invite you to take part in a global survey on mobile spam. There are two different surveys for different respondents: Industry players (operators, service providers); Consumers. The survey is anonymous and no personal information is required or used for any other purpose than the study.
- ITU - Virtual Conference on Countering Spam +/-
(ITU) On Friday 19 November 2004, ITU held a virtual conference on the status of regulatory efforts to counter spam. The virtual conference was moderated by John Haydon, Executive Manager, Australia Communications Authority. The conference united regulators responsible for countering Spam from Australia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, China, India and the International Telecommunications Users Group.