Hadopi, perhaps the world’s worst copyright law, is moribund but not quite dead (yet)
One of the best demonstrations that an obsession with protecting copyright’s intellectual monopoly drives politicians insane is the French law known as Hadopi, an acronym for ‘Haute Autorité…
Copyright industry intensifies efforts to undermine core Internet plumbing: VPNs
Last month Walled Culture wrote about an important case at the Court of Justice of the European Union, (CJEU), the EU’s top court, that could determine how VPNs…
Copyright litigation over Anne Frank’s writings likely to impact the fate of VPNs in the EU
“The Diary of a Young Girl” is a Dutch language diary written by the young Jewish writer Anne Frank while she was in hiding for two years with…
Top EU court’s advisor says manipulating transient data is not copyright infringement
One of the reasons that today’s copyright is such a bad fit for the modern digital world is that its roots lie deep in 18th-century law and analogue…
Top EU court says there is no right to online anonymity, because copyright is more important
A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about an extremely important case that was being considered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s top…
How copyright exceptionalism in France risks undermining the EU legal system
Back in May, Walled Culture wrote about an important case before the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It involved the “High…
Top EU court advisor says technical standards, like laws, should not be locked down by copyright
One of the most pernicious ideas that copyright maximalism has spread is that preventing people from freely accessing creative material is not just a good thing to do,…
Top EU court to issue definitive ruling on whether copyright is more important than privacy
Back in November last year, Walled Culture reported on the shocking opinion by a top EU court advisor that copyright was more important than privacy. The case in…
Why sharing ebooks is good for people – and good for publishers
One of the joys of reading is being able to share your favourite books with friends, family and colleagues. As I am sure is the case for most…
Here’s a puzzle: when is the public domain not in the public domain?
Walled Culture is a big fan of the public domain. The amazing artistic uses that people are able to make of material only once it enters the public…
Copyright is more important than privacy, says top EU court advisor
We recently wrote about the preliminary decision of Advocate General Szpunar, an advisor to the EU’s Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), concerning geoblocks. The same…
Top EU court’s advisor points out that geoblocks can be easily circumvented: time to get rid of them
One of the central ideas of both Walled Culture the blog and Walled Culture the book is that copyright simply doesn’t work in the digital world. One proof…
The Czech Republic’s proposed version of upload filters has a bad idea that could become a great one
A clear demonstration that the EU Copyright Directive is a badly-drafted law is the fact that it has still not been implemented in national legislation by all the…
Applying (artificial) intelligence to the Copyright Directive’s stupid idea of upload filters
Last week the European Union’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), handed down its judgment on whether upload filters should be allowed as…
Top EU court hands down judgment on upload filters that is as clear as mud
Walled Culture has just written about the great difficulty national governments are having in transposing the EU Copyright Directive into local law. That’s largely because of the badly-drafted…
Why add to Ukraine’s problems with an unnecessary implementation of a bad EU copyright law?
It would be something of an understatement to say that Ukraine is facing serious problems currently. Against that background, this news from the IPKat blog is rather surprising:…