8 9 September 2006

News:

Remote gambling operators saw $7 billion wiped off their company valuations following the US Congress' last gasp passage of anti-online gambling legislation.

Internet search engine giant, Google, faces defeat in its legal dispute with Belgian publishers over its news service.

US internet advertising revenues totalled over $4 billion for the second quarter of 2006, representing a 36% increase over the same period during 2005, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Features:

The US Congress approval of the Port Security Bill, amended to include The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act at 2am on Saturday 30 September, failed to clarify the law on internet gambling.

World-wide advertising spend on mobile channels set to soar
Online bank customers may get chip and pin terminals to combat fraud
Gambling Commission launches consultation on televised prize competitions and free draws
EC consults on surveillance technology in civil society
Dates for your diary

The European Commission has recently proposed changes to the Television without Frontiers Directive, so as to regulate content via the internet and mobile technologies. However, the proposals have received strong opposition from the creative industries as well as some reservations from the UK government. Victoria Gaskell, a solicitor at Olswang, examines the proposals, the objections and suggests that a more flexible framework may be appropriate.

Many organisations, in the event of legal proceedings, prefer the private process of arbitration to the public spotlight of court proceedings. As Andrew Cromby, a partner at KSB Law LLP explains, this preference is likely to be strengthened following changes to the Civil Procedure Rules.

An explosion in Web 2.0 internet sites has presented new challenges in the areas of libel, unlawful data processing, harassment and privacy due to user pseudonyms, the number of sites on which content can appear, and methods in which content can be delivered. Ashley Hurst, a solicitor in the media litigation team at Olswang, details legislation used in recent cases involving Web 2.0, how successful it has been, and tracks how the law is developing in this area.

The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent-based database tracking shared files, has resisted all attempts to shut it down to date, its defence being that it only saves torrent files on the server, not copyrighted material. Hubert Best, a partner at Best & Soames and a registered EU Advocate in Sweden, examines Swedish and international copyright law, and how The Pirate Bay cases resulted in a political movement for a change in copyright law.

Christopher Rees, Head of the Herbert Smith LLP Global TMT group and Dominic Callaghan, senior associate, provide an overview of the latest key developments in IT and eCommerce in the EU.

Trademarks: 800-JR Cigar, Inc.
Libel: Al Amoudi v Brisard
Patents: Maxwell Phillips