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Contents of today's ICOMP newsletter: 
ICOMP comes to Berlin ICOMP's latest Council meeting in Berlin, which took place over 4th & 5th February, was a great success, culminating in the largest ICOMP event to date with more than 160 people attending an ICOMP Symposium on online copyright issues, kindly co-hosted by Europa-Union Deutschland, the European Parliament Representation House for Germany. This was the 4th meeting of the ICOMP Council and began with dinner on the evening of the 4th February, hosted by Markus Löning, ICOMP member, and member of the Bundestag, who was joined by ICOMP members from across Europe and the US and distinguished guests including H.E. John Kornblum, the former US ambassador to Germany. Alexander Dix, Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection & Freedom of Information, gave a short dinner speech on data protection, which focused on the central importance of trust to sustaining a healthy Internet and how collaboration, consent & clarity are key to ensuring that everything consumers do online is guided by informed decisions in terms of how their personal data is utilised. The closed meeting took place on the morning of February 5th, in which plans for ICOMP in 2009 were presented and discussed. If you could not make it to the Council meeting, but wish to see more information please visit the file repository in the members' area of the website where the agenda, presentations and a full report are posted. Finally, the Council meeting concluded with a symposium on copyright issues co-hosted by Europa-Union Deutschland. Tying in with the Berlinale film festival, which was held at the same time, the symposium, entitled The Digital Revolution - Opportunity or Threat? explored how the internet is changing the creative industries, including music, books and film. The symposium consisted of discussion from a panel of guests, including:
On 29 January 2009, ICOMP was one of the sponsors of an event organised and held at King's College London that hosted Maglena Kuneva, EU Commissioner for Consumer Affairs. In her speech, Commissioner Kuneva spoke about the evolution of prices and innovation in liberalized markets, principally focussing on Energy, Aviation and Telecoms/Internet markets. She explained the challenges facing consumer policy, such as unfair practices and switching costs and discussed various policy responses including regulation, market monitoring and competition policy. This was the inaugural speech by a European Commissioner in what is intended to be an annual Commissioner's address to the students and faculty at King's. It is organised under the auspices of King's LLM in Competition Law, which includes a course on "Competition Law & Network Regulated Industries". ICOMP is also a co-sponsor of the LLM course and has offered a prize of €3,000 for the best essay on "How does economics and existing legal precedent on network industries guide us in assessing the existence of market power on the Internet?".
New features include a blog, monthly member profile, an events page for industry events as well as ICOMP's own, plus resources pages for all of ICOMP's core issues which will be continually updated. Please revisit the site to see what's being posted in the coming months and if you would like to contribute to the blog or with documents that you think would be of interest to ICOMP members & friends, please email them to icompsecretariat@bm.com The members' area of the website also includes a new wiki feature and a discussion board as well as a member file repository where documents can be posted. Please come and visit and contribute - we look forward to some lively debate on the discussion board! Recently added to the website:
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