prisiel EDRI newsletter a hned dve zaujimave spravy. pastujem sem cele. Prva o tom ako sa nemeckej softwarovej firme podarilo "dat dole" stranku nemeckej FFII, druha o hustom precedense s linkovanim na piratsku hudbu v Norsku (a Europe). Torrent trackre ako piratebay a srandicky ako fookovanie medzinarodneho autorskeho prava tu nebudu vecne :(

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5. Angry pro software patent company takes down FFII website
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The long running legal fight between the German software company Nutzwerk
(Leipzig) and the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII,
best known for its extensive lobby against software patents) has
culminated in the takedown of the FFII.org website on 1 August 2005.
Technically, the website itself wasn't removed, but in a far more radical
move, the German company Teamware removed the DNS-registration of the
website, making it invisible to the rest of the world. Nutzwerk justified
the takedown claim to Teamware by referring to an intermediate Hamburg
court injunction that ordered FFII to remove some specific phrases and an
insultory headline about Nutzwerk. The line was: 'Nutzwerk: Zuck und Nepp
mit Softwarepatenten' (which roughly translates as 'gamble and fake with
software patents').

Teamware was afraid it might be sued if it didn't take action, but also
hesitantly admitted to the Dutch e-zine Webwereld that there could also be
costs if Nutzwerk's claim was false and FFII would sue for damages. A
spokesperson told Webwereld: "We did offer FFII the possibility to host
their dns domain at another party," and even the reporter was offered to
administer the domain. The DNS-provider of the almost identical website at
www.ffii.de has not yet succumbed to the legal threats, nor has the
hosting company of this website, www.united-domains.de.

FFII has covered extensive reporting about 6 patent claims of the company,
following a public patent software row between Nutzwerk and the company
Cobion. One of these patents expired, two were declared invalid and two
were withdrawn. One patent has not been granted yet. When Google in 2003
showed a high page rank for these files about Nutzwerk, the company
started litigation. Later, FFII dug up news about confronting and/or
misleading search terms bought by Nutzwerk, including the term 'Scheiss
Juden' to advertise an anonymous surfing service. Currently the FFII
website contains some documented comments about a link-farm operated by
Nutzwerk, to confuse searchbots with many metatags. After publication of
this practice, Nutzwerk silently but immediately removed all the
misleading referrals.

The legal case started in October 2004, when Nutzwerk simultaneously
launched civil proceedings at courts in the cities Halle, Leipzig and
Hamburg, making it extremely expensive for FFII to defend itself. When the
reputable e-zine Heise reported about the case, on 28 October 2004,
Nutzwerk also started to litigate the publisher and the editor-in-chief.
In a recent article on the case, Heise writes they have already won in 10
different court proceedings.

While Nutzwerk claimed damage to personality rights, the FFII defence
attorney claimed freedom of speech rights, within the context of educating
a large audience about the problems arising from software patents. Since
the entire FFII website consists of links and commentaries to developments
with regards to software patents, the Nutzwerk file is nothing
exceptional. Besides, the attorney pointed out, Nutzwerk didn't succeed in
criminal proceedings against Cobion and also lost at the German patent
court.

The Hamburg court ordered FFII to remove 8 critical sentences, in Halle
Nutzwerk "lost 80% of the case" FFII says and in Leipzig Nutzwerk even
withdrew the case completely. According to EFFI, since May 2005 Nutzwerk
has successfully intimidated several web portal operators to remove links
to the documentation and succeeded in taking several entire websites down.
On 26 July 2005, the Internet service provider of the FFII, BayCIX,
received a similar takedown request:

"In accordance with the regulations of the telecommunication service act
(/Teledienstgesetz/) you are obliged, after getting knowledge of illegal
contents, to remove them (in comparison to the ruling of the Federal Court
(/Bundesgerichtshof/) from September 23rd, 2003, about reference number VI
ZR 335/02). We hereby demand you to de-connect the IP address 212.72.72.97
immediately, but no later than on 28 July 2005, at 18:00 (6pm)."

BayCIX wasn't intimidated. FFII claims the reference to the Federal Court
ruling is erroneous, since the case wasn't about takedown, but about a
specific claim transfer from a website author to an internet service
provider. In general, German jurisprudence rather excludes liability if
the author is only citing external sources. The express ruling of the
local court in Hamburg did not affect the nutzwerk.ffii.org documentation
as a whole nor the FFII server as a whole, but only 8 specific phrases.
These phrases were removed by FFII by mid-July 2005. But Nutzwerk
continues to send takedown letters, as if reporting about the court
decision is also forbidden.

Self-censored FFII case file on the legal battle against Nutzwerk (in German)
http://nutzwerk.ffii.org/index.de.html

FFII overview in English of press articles about the case
http://wiki.ffii.org/NutzwerkEn

Webwereld article, by Brenno de Winter (in English)
http://dewinter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=194

Heise article (02.08.2005)
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/62354

Counter file on the proceedings against Heise by Nutzwerk (in German)
http://www.nutzwerk-heise.de/

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6. First Norwegian verdict on hyperlinks
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On 27 January 2005 the Norwegian Supreme Court ruled on an old case; the
existence of the website napster.no, which Norwegian internet users could
use in 2001 to find music files (not more than 170 in practice) on the
Napster file-sharing system. The owner of the site is found guilty of
accessory copyright infringement, for having contributed to make the
copyright protected music files available to the public.

The Court states that it is beyond doubt that making a web-address known
on a website does not constitute a 'making available to the public',
regardless of whether or not the link refers to a web-address containing
legally or illegally published material. Whether a web-address is
expressed on the Internet or in a newspaper is immaterial.

If linking were to be considered as the 'making available to the public',
the Court writes, every link, be it to legally or illegally published
copyright protected material would require prior authorisation from the
rightholder. This was exactly what the music industry claimed. But the
court said this was too complicated a reasoning and therefore decided to
only look at accessory liability.

In the appeal procedure, the court of second instance had rejected this
claim, because it said that the uploaders' illegal acts stopped at the
point in time when the music was uploaded. But the Supreme Court finds an
uploader liable 'as long as the uploader makes the music available on the
Internet.' Bruviks contention - that if the linking was not considered as
making available to the public, there could be no legal basis for
accessory liability – was rejected by the Supreme Court stating that it is
not a requirement in criminal law that the accessory act in itself must be
illegal. The linking enhanced the effect of the uploaders' acts by
increasing the availability of the music.

Similar to the US Grokster case, the Norwegian Supreme Court states
further that Bruvik acted wilfully, referring to the introductory text on
the homepage: "Welcome to napster.no. You are now visiting Norway's
largest and best website with music free of charge. Here you may download
as much music as you desire."

The owner must pay an unspecified compensation for damages, related to the
amount of users of the website that otherwise would have bought the CDs.

Krog comments: "It is the first case of its kind in Norway, and one of the
first in Europe. The case is relevant for other jurisdictions as well
since the Norwegian Copyright Act is a result of international agreements
such as the Bern Convention and the EEA agreement with the EU."

Krog: Summary and link to extensive analysis of the case (14.05.2005)
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ugasser/discuss/msgReader$76?mode=topic

(Thanks to Georg Philip Krog, doctoral researcher in Private International
Law, University of Oslo)