5 12 December 2003

News:

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has delayed plans to release new guidance on the complex issues involved in the regulation of emoney and premium SMS billing.

The Legal Advisor to the Information Commissioner (IC), Nicholas Tyler, will be speaking at a half-day event in London, organised by e-commercelaw&policy, which will explain the new guidelines on Subject Access in the light of the December 8 Court of Appeal decision in the case of Michael John Durant v The Financial Services Authority.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia backed internet service provider Verizon in their appeal against a lower Court decision which obliged the ISP to hand over details of subscribers who were accused of music piracy.

Features:

Something is happening. Everywhere you turn the web has, almost imperceptibly, arrived as an integral part of people’s lives. From local government, through to flights, hotels, banking, schools, street maps and music, music, music the web is the tool of kids, parents and grandparents.

Privacy and electronic communications

Broadcasters’ rights

Online banking

Internet chatroom moderation

Patentability of computer-implemented inventions

Intellectual property rights

Consultation on spectrum trading

Dates for your diary!

The draft EU Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights is causing deep divisions in Brussels, as the European Parliament and Member States struggle to agree on its scope and content. The draft Directive, presented in January 2003, covers infringement of all intellectual property rights (both copyright and industrial property, such as trademarks, patents and designs) deriving from Community and European law. This article aims to give an overview of the draft Directive and to highlight areas of controversy and uncertainty. In particular, while the Directive is not expected to have a significant impact on the UK’s enforcement system, there are particular concerns over potential changes to the liability of internet service providers (“ISPs”) and new prescriptive rules for both civil and criminal sanctions.

The UK Banking industry is now rolling out a Chip and Pin scheme designed to cut down the extent of credit card fraud. This article examines the scheme.

The first US federal law dealing with unsolicited e-mail marketing came into force on 1 January 2004. Despite being weaker than its European equivalent, the CAN-SPAM Act is a major step for the US legislator.

This article looks at the US legislation, its potentional impact on spam amd its implications for businesses operating in or targetting the US.

Data retention has been the subject of much controversy. This article examines the obligations to retain data under the existing legislation, who has access to data once collected and the case for a review of the law

The implementation of Egovernment poses many questions - is there really a business case for the massive investment required to get services online? Will the public use online services? However, the pace of egovernment and other public sector ICT procurement has exceeded expectations. This article examines the policy and legal issues, in particular data sharing, which are raised by egovernment.

A recent spate of lawsuits in France and in the US has put the way in which some major search engines sell search-related online advertising under potential threat. This article considers the practice of selling keywords as search terms and the disputes in France and the US.

The music industry suffered a blow in their battle against music file sharing when the Dutch Supreme Court rejected the appeal by the Dutch copyright collecting society Vereniging Stemra and Stichting Buma (BUMA) for an injunction against file swapping software provider Kazaa. This article looks at the case and its significance.