The Pirate Bay Case: Judge was not biased
Sweden's Court of Appeal ruled on 25 June 2009 that the judge in the Pirate Bay case was not biased. The court, conceding that the judge was a member of organisations acting in the interests of rightholders, pointed out that these enjoy constitutional protection under Swedish law. While criticizing that the judge was negligent in his duty to inform the court of these details, it did not see that this was a sufficient reason for the verdict to be declared null and void. The case will not be reheard at Stockholm District Court (source: svd.se).
Developments in Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
The DOI® System has announced a new initiative - The Vocabulary Mapping Framework, funded by JISC with participation from all the major bibliographic and archive sectors. This has potentially great importance for interoperability of rights information. The DOI® System will also organise an event on 7 October in San Franciso in conjunction with the
iPres2009 Digital Preservation meeting, will consider this and wider issues of persistence. A wide attendance is invited.
French "3 strikes law" struck out
The French Constitutional court has declared illegal the French law, which would have deprived online pirates of their internet access after three offences. The law, which was passed by the National Assembly last month, was found to be unconstitutional in its violations of freedom of expression and the presumption of innocence. The Government announced that the law would represented in an amended form.
IFRRO Granted NGO Status with UNESCO
As of 24 April 2009 IFRRO has been granted Non-Governmental Status (NGO) and thus admitted into operational relations with UNESCO. IFRRO has already cooperated on a number of projects with UNESCO, including an Anti Piracy Training since 2006. We look forward to continuing this fruitful cooperation under our new and formalised relationship.
Two New RRO Members of IFRRO
The IFRRO has admitted two new RROs into its membership. BBDA (Bureau Burkinabé du Droit d'Auteur) is the multipurpose collective management organisation in Burkina Faso approved by the authorities also to administer reprographic reproduction rights. It has already started to collect reprographic fees on the basis of levies on devices. FILCOLS (Filipinas Copyright Licensing Society, Inc.) has been established by the authors and publishers as the RRO in the Philippines. It has also received the endorsement of both the Intellectual Property Office and the National Book Development Board of the Philippines. Licensing of users is expected to start later this year.
With these new members the total IFRRO membership has increased to 117 of which 69 administer reproduction rights in text and imaged based works, 56 with RRO membership in IFRRO.
IFRRO reaches its quarter century!
On 16 May IFRRO celebrated its 25th anniversary. IFRRO was established as a Forum on that day in 1984 at the Grand Hotel in Oslo.
Extension of the Opt-Out Deadline on the Google Book Search Copyright Settlement
The US Federal Court has extended the "opt-out"/objection deadline from May 5, 2009 to September 4, 2009. The change in the Opt-Out Deadline has caused the Final Fairness Hearing date to be rescheduled, from June 11, 2009 to October 7, 2009. All other dates in the case will remain the same. Read the full press release.
Rightsholders and National Library of Norway agreed on Digital library project
On 23 April, World Book and Copyright Day, Kopinor and the National Library of Norway signed an agreement regarding a pilot project called "Bookshelf". This project will make available on the internet a large amount of the library's collection from 1790s, 1890s and 1990s.
More information