European Union minsters have told EU governing bodies to revive plans to create a pan-EU law criminalising intellectual property infringement, and to make more use of a new body to cooperate on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

They have also asked the European Commission to create new laws if cooperation does not work. [...]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/eu_ip_enforcement/

Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The survey - of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries - found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.
Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.
International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.

Germany's highest court on Tuesday (2 March) ruled that a key data-retention law, arising from an EU directive seen as central in the fight against terrorism, contravened Germany's constitution.

The 2008 law required telecommunications companies to retain all citizens' telephone and internet data for six months.

But the proposal caused outrage among German citizens, concerned at breaches of privacy and civil liberty rights. A complaint was brought by 35,000 citizens, the largest number of plaintiffs ever associated with one case. [...]

"¿Cómo combatir las violaciones de la propiedad intelectual y los contenidos xenófobos y racistas y de pornografía infantil en Internet?" Esta es la pregunta que la Presidencia española de la UE hace a sus socios comunitarios en un documento (PDF) que los ministros de Justicia de la UE van a discutir de manera informal hoy.

BARCELONA, Spain--Josh Silverman, the chief executive of Skype, the voice over Internet phone service, could tick off the names of mobile phone operators that block his company's service.
But for Silverman, a 41-year-old Michigan native, it is quicker to name those that allow it, no strings attached.

A French proposal to tax online advertising revenues to subsidise struggling newspapers and music companies has drawn fire from the internet community.

The proposal was contained in a government-sponsored research paper following claims that news aggregators such as Google, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo and Facebook are profiting from their work without paying for it.

Internet activist Quadrature du Net said the tax would make all taxpayers pay for "out of date businesses".

Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing.

The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m.

Verizon pushed the search change over its network two days ago, the company has confirmed with The Reg. "We're a proud supporter of Microsoft's Bing search engine," a company spokesman tells us. [...]

The Federal Government will introduce laws to make ISP-level filtering mandatory for all refused-classification material hosted overseas.

Grants will be made to providers that wish to further filter X18+ sites.

Senator Conroy justified the filter, saying that "most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet content which is not acceptable in any civilised society".

The Government announced that the list of blocked RC content would be compiled "through a public complaints mechanism".

The Obama administration announced Tuesday it supports loosening international copyright protections to enable cross-border distribution of special-format reading materials for the blind, a move that puts it at odds with nearly all of U.S. industry. [...]

The IFPI has made its first request to the Swedish courts to force an ISP to hand over details of an alleged file sharer.

In April, Sweden brought in its IPRED legislation, designed to rein in the apparently rampant filesharing conducted in the country. It did this by allowing record cos and the like to track down filesharers, by getting a court order forcing ISPs to hand over customer details.

The Local.se reports that the move relates to the Direct Connect network, rather than Bittorrent-based filesharing.