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Category: Digital

In near future Russia will develop its own “digital law”

Within next five years Russia must develop its own digital law, believes deputy of Russian minister of economic development Savva Shipov. “Actually we need to create new digital law. It is necessary to achieve all these goals within next five years. It is maximum term we have. Afterwards it will be impossible to take a chance,” – he said.

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The new law on VPN services in Russia

The Russian president has signed the law on VPN services operating in Russia. This law is intended to prohibit dissemination of information, or in other words – prohibit access in Russia to information, forbidden by Russian law, with help of VPN services. Such services allow the internet user to receive access to any web-site, or almost any web-site, if such access has been blocked by Russian telecommunication companies, providing access to internet in Russia, under court order or in accordance with law.

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Now it is clear how to define whether service falls outside regulation on audio-visual services in Russia

Few weeks ago in Russia it was adopted the law on audio-visual services operating in Russia. In order to implement and execute the new law Russian Roskomnadzor has drafted and adopted the rules defining what an audio-visual service is, where mainly the users upload their videos. Roskomnadzor has defined the procedure and criterions.

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Reforming of copyright in EU and considered policy options

Summary of Impacts of Option 3b

Territoriality and absolute territorial restrictions in licensing agreements

Under the “country of origin” principle, a service provider can use the licence in its country of origin (possibly obtained from a person holding the rights in that country only) in order to actively market content outside its country of origin as well. When rights are territorially fragmented, e.g. when different persons or entities hold the rights for different Member States, a service provider established in one Member States may therefore undermine the economic position of right holders in other Member States.

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A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe

Preventing unjustified Geo-blocking (official)

Geo-blocking refers to practices used for commercial reasons by online service providers that result in the denial of access to websites based in other Member States or, where the consumer is able to access the website, they are still not able to purchase products or services from it. Sometimes the consumer will be re-routed to a local website with different prices or a different product or service. In other such cases, where the sale is not denied, geo-localising practices – where differing pricing structures are automatically applied based on geographic location – are often used to apply differentiated prices to consumers. Geo-blocking is one of several tools used by companies to segment markets along national borders (territorial restrictions). By limiting consumer opportunities and choice, geo-blocking constitutes a significant cause of consumer frustration and of fragmentation of the Internal Market.

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A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe

What should DSM (official) mean for citizens and business?

Making the Single Market fit for a digital age requires rapid actions to remove the major differences between the online and offline worlds i.e. breaking down barriers to cross-border online activity. This is the first pillar of actions for the Strategy. Secondly, since all digital services, applications and content depend on the availability throughout Europe of high-speed, secure and trustworthy infrastructures, we need action to create the right regulatory conditions for investment, stimulate competition and ensure a level playing field between market players. Thirdly, breaking down barriers to the Digital Single Market is not enough if businesses in Europe are not in a position to be able to adopt digital technologies. The Strategy supports increased digitalisation of the EU economy, including investment in ICT infrastructures. The Digital Single Market Strategy will therefore be built on the three pillars:

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Reforming of copyright in EU and one of the questions concerned: user-generated content

User Generated Content (UGC) is understood as referring to cases where a pre-existing work is taken by a user as a starting point for his/her own expression, modified or transformed in one way or another, and then made available online. It may also include the merging of two pre-existing works (“mash-ups”). The threshold may be lower than “a certain amount of creative effort”. It excludes the case of “mere upload”, where a user merely distributes on the internet (by uploading and sharing it) pre-existing works without having intervened in any way on the work. It also excludes “creation from scratch”, i.e. the case where a user creates a new work “from scratch”, without relying on a pre-existing work.

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White paper – Making available issue

There is no unitary copyright title in Europe, so works are protected on the basis on 28 national legislations. The use of a work in all EU Member States therefore requires the clearing of rights for 28 territories. The varying availability and accessibility of content services in the EU can thus be caused by the difficulties that service providers have in obtaining all the rights needed in all territories.

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