Philip Willan reports: Both sides claimed victory Monday after a Rome judge took a minimalist view of the responsibilities of telecom carriers for stamping out online piracy in a court battle pitting copyright defenders against Internet distributors and privacy interests. Judge Antonella Izzo rejected a request from the Audiovisual Antipiracy Federation (FAPAV) that Telecom Italia…
Category: Court
Oral arguments in City of Ontario v. Quon today (updated)
Although Mark Sherman of the Associated Press reports that it sounds like the Supreme Court justices will find for the employer in this important workplace text-message privacy case, Orin Kerr had a somewhat different take on how oral argument went: […] Justice Breyer focused on the reasonableness of the search (Step 2 of the O’Connor…
Irish court says Eircom disconnections do not breach privacy laws
Eircom, which is the privately-owned former state telecoms monopoly, came to a settlement with the four major record labels EMI, Sony BMG, Warner and Universal when the companies sued it over its customers’ file-sharing activities. In the settlement Eircom agreed to operate the ‘three strikes’ disconnection policy advocated internationally by music labels and film studios….
French TV channel fined for reporting Bruni rumours
A Paris court fined the France 24 news channel on Friday for reporting rumours that first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was having an affair with a French pop singer. Judges ordered the publicly-funded television channel to pay 3,000 euros to the singer in question, Benjamin Biolay, after ruling that the coverage violated his privacy. Biolay had…