I’ve just submitted a response to the Intellectual Property Office on their proposed amendments to the education exemptions to UK copyright law. These aim to extend the same permissions for distance learning as currently apply to the premises of an educational establishment. From Janet’s point of view as operator of a network and an access management […]
Category: Consultations
Invitations to comment on draft documents, for example new guidance or responses to Government consultation papers.
I’ve been looking at the Intellectual Property Office’s proposals to update copyright exemptions for education, to see if there’s anything I need to comment on. My initial observations are as follows, but I’d be very grateful for comments if I’ve missed something. I’m not an expert on copyright exemptions or education licensing, but I am […]
Categories
Nominet Domain Suspension Paper
Nominet have published an interesting analysis of the legal issues around any possible process for suspending domains associated with criminal activity. This raises the rather worrying issue that the legal position is not clear if a registry is informed of unlawful conduct somewhere in their domain and decides that the evidence is not strong enough […]
[Updated to add clause 6 on peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals] The House of Lords debate of clause 5 of the Defamation Bill this week suggested that the Bill might make it easier for universities and colleges to support vigorous debate through their websites. As Lord May (once the government’s chief scientific advisor) pointed out, […]
Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has asked for evidence on the Defamation Bill, so I’ve sent in a Janet submission pointing out the human rights issues that could be raised by the Bill. Although the aims of the provisions on websites are to increase the protection of free speech while ensuring that genuinely defamatory […]
I’ve submitted a Janet response to a European consultation on a future EU Network and Information Security legislative initiative. The consultation itself seems to suffer from “if you only have a hammer” syndrome: if you’re a legislator then it must be tempting to think that all problems (lack of reporting of “cybercrimes”, insecure end-user computers, […]
Categories
EU Notice and Action Consultation
I’ve sent in a Janet response to the EU’s consultation “A Clean and Open Internet: Procedures for notifying and acting on illegal content hosted by online intermediaries”. At the moment the E-Commerce Directive (transposed into UK law as the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002) says that websites aren’t liable for unlawful material (either criminal […]
I’ve made a Janet submission to the joint Parliamentary Committee considering the draft Communications Data Bill. It’s actually quite hard to predict what the effect of the Bill would be, as the Bill creates extremely wide powers for both the Home Secretary and Law Enforcement and the impact will depend on how those powers are […]
Categories
Ofcom Digital Economy Act Code
I’ve just sent off a Janet response to Ofcom’s consultation on the latest draft Initial Obligations Code under the Digital Economy Act 2010. On the wording of the Code itself there are just a couple of minor observations. There seems to be a drafting hiccup that means any ISP that becomes Qualifying in the second […]
Categories
Notice and Action procedures
The European Commission have opened a consultation on “notice and action” procedures (in the UK we tend to refer to them as notice and takedown) by those who host content on the Internet. Since Janet customers may see a different side of the issue from us as operators of the network, it would be helpful […]