 |
Contents of today's ICOMP newsletter: 
ICOMP's First Anniversary
One year on, ICOMP is a well-established organisation with a regular presence at important industry events and conferences. ICOMP has also organised a number of own-branded successful events across Brussels, London and Berlin. Regular Council Meetings have gathered our most active members offering them a chance to influence directly ICOMP's agenda and activity as well as make valuable business connections amongst themselves. Furthermore, ICOMP is increasingly being called upon for comment related to its four areas of expertise by the media (See ICOMP in the News section for the latest coverage). Below are a few highlights of ICOMP's activity in its first year, more information on all of which can be obtained from the ICOMP events section on the website: In September 2008, ICOMP held a dinner debate in Brussels entitled "European Election Campaigns in the Internet Age: what lessons from the US?". Attended by guests such as the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media, Viviane Reding, and the former President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, every fifth person in the room was a Member of the European Parliament. Worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and senior Democratic campaign strategist Mark Penn shared his insights at this event.
Last October, ICOMP hosted a seminar "IP Issues and their Impact on Internet Commerce" placed intellectual property rights in the spotlight, attracting high profile EU insiders and legal experts. The day-long conference gathered speakers from Wunderman, Sanoma, Copiepresse, the Federation of European Film Directors, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe and the European Publisher's Council.
In November 2008, ICOMP co-hosted the Telecoms Roundtable at Business Week's European Leadership Forum in London. Executives and regulators gathered to debate the right balance between infrastructure and content to guarantee future income for the internet. Among the companies and organisations represented were Telefonica O2, Vodafone, Sony-Ericsson, Huawei Technology, Cisco, Belgacom, BT, Telenor, GSM Association, ETNO, and Ofcom. In January of this year, ICOMP sponsored the first of an annual series of lectures at King's College London, delivered by EU Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, Maglena Kuneva, on competition policy, and offering a prize of €3,000 for the best essay on economic and legal methods assessing market power on the Internet. An ICOMP Copyright Symposium tying in with Berlin's renowned international film festival Berlinale in February, entitled "The digital revolution - opportunity or threat?" brought together a panel of cross industry experts from the publishing and film industries to discuss how the internet is changing the creative industries. The event was co-sponsored by the EU Representation Office in Berlin which kindly provided their venue overlooking the Brandenburg Gate.
When: 27 April 2009, 11h30 - 18h00 Almost fifteen years after their adoption, the EU's data protection rules are widely recognised as an important guarantee, granting Internet users a high level of privacy protection, provided of course they are complied with. But at the time those rules were adopted, it was hard to anticipate the way in which the new technologies would allow the concentration of huge amounts of sensitive personal data in the hands of just a few large companies. The existing rules and regulations need to be actively enforced and, where needed, improved to increase users' privacy. ICOMP is organising a conference that will bring together regulators, company representatives and users to examine the right balance between competition and privacy. Confirmed speakers include Robert Madelin, Director-general at the European Commission, Sophie in't Veld, MEP, and Prof. Peter Swire, former Chief Privacy Official under President Clinton. ICOMP hosted Internet World seminar on "Protecting Brands Online". When: 28 April 2009. 12h00-14h00
ICOMP has been a partner of Internet World since 2008 and is this year hosting a panel on "protecting brands online", with ICOMP legal counsel David Wood and Julian Ormerod, Head of Digital at Wunderman.
In early March, the New York Times reported that the US White House would abandon YouTube as the provider of embedded videos of President Obama, giving in to pressure from privacy groups criticising YouTube's policy of tracking users' personal information for advertising purposes. The debate subsequently spilled over to Brussels when the EU-dedicated news source EurActiv drew attention to the fact that the European Commission has also been running its own channel on YouTube, "EUTube", and threw up the question whether the Commission might consider taking similar action to the White House. (EurActiv; Google under EU scrutiny for YouTube privacy policy) The European Commission's spokesperson on communication policy, Joseph Hennon, confirmed that it is investigating the privacy policy applied to their EUTube channel by YouTube, and did not rule out leaving YouTube in favour of other channels such as the French "Daily Motion". At the least, a new arrangement with Google would include the appearance of a prominent privacy statement in all EU videos, Hennon said. Liberal German MEP Alexander Alvaro also intends to seek further clarification on the privacy implications of visiting YouTube sites, and has submitted a parliamentary question to that effect to the Commission. The Heidelberg Petition for Freedom of Publication and the Protection of IPR Launched by the Institute for Textual Criticism in Heidelberg, the petition is primarily concerned with upholding the basic right affording legal protection to intellectual property rights. The signatories acknowledge that this right is presently under threat by a number of international and national forces. At the international level, the petition refers to Google and YouTube as a primary threat, and at the national level, it charges the Alliance of German Scientific Organizations with encroaching on the freedom of press and publication. Since its launch on March 22nd, more than 800 individuals and organisations signed the petition. Among them are a number of high-profile signatories including the Editor of the well-respected weekly national paper Die Zeit, the President of the International Association of Music Libraries, various publishers, authors, journalists, librarians, literary scholars, musicologist, photographers, philosophers and academics. ICOMP Director Auke Haagsma has also added his name to this long list of petitioners. You can read the full English version of the appeal here. UK Government Plans for a "Digital Rights Agency" The UK government in March outlined what a "Digital Rights Agency", as initially proposed in Lord Carter's Digital Britain report, could look like, and invited comment from industry and consumers. Facing a change in consumer behaviour and persistent breaches of civil copyright law, the new agency is supposed to establish a "co-regulatory" approach to online copyright issues for film and music content, such as illegal file sharing. It should help the industry in developing attractive legal ways for consumers to access content. "We need to make it easier for consumers to do the right thing", said David Lammy, Minister of State for Intellectual Property, ensuring artists get properly paid. However, so far there has been no indication that the DRA will actually hold any back-up legal powers through Ofcom, the UK competition authority for the communications industry, nor have details on how it should be funded been published. ICOMP legal counsel David Wood, cautioned that while bringing together interested parties to assist in the formulation of balanced legislative solutions creates 'win-win' scenarios for those that publish, own and reproduce intellectual property online and is the best way to make progress, the DRA "risks becoming a talking shop if it simply consists of a consortium of UK businesses making appeals to its own government". Wood went on to explain: "Creating a UK-focussed agency is a crucial first step in a long line of changes to how IP legislation is enforced across the digital globe. This can only be achieved if the agency also takes on an advocacy role in persuading other countries to adopt high standards when it comes to safeguarding the key elements of a knowledge economy. The second consideration is one of encouraging behavioural change in consumers. Many of them won't start paying greater respect to digital content just because a group of businesses wants them to. Government, industry, and key influencers all have their part to play in sending the message that using other people's intellectual property without permission is not only theft, but also impacts on the UK's economic competitiveness."
The BBC's Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones covered the case entering the ECJ on BBC Radio 4's influential Today programme, using it to highlight a broader view of Google's dominance. The piece referenced ICOMP and broadcast an interview with ICOMP legal counsel David Wood (BBC 4 - Today; Google/LVMH fight in Europe court). ICOMP's commentary on the case was also included in the BBC's dot.life technology blog (Google, Microsoft and calls of 'web bully'); and in coverage by the well-known UK marketing trade publication Brand Republic (Google appeals to European Court of Justice over Louis Vuitton trademark ruling), and marketing news source UTalkMarketing (LVMH will see Google in court over trademark row). For more information please refer to the ICOMP in the news section of the website.
|
|
