Technology and Digital Media Lawyer & Attorney : Davis Wright Tremaine Law Firm : Ecommerce, Outsourcing, Web 2.0

The US on Friday placed nine countries on a "priority watch list" for allegedly failing to protect American producers of movies, computer software and other copyrighted material from widespread piracy.  This will subject them to extra scrutiny and could eventually lead to economic sanctions - if the administration decides to pursue complaints before the World Trade Organization.  The countries were China, Russia, Argentina, Chile, India, Israel, Pakistan, Thailand and Venezuela.  Four countries were removed from the list:  Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Ukraine.  Not surprisingly, a large part of the report focuses on China.   Ultimately, the report is a fascinating read on what the priorities are for the US in terms of intellectual protection (mainly pharmaceuticals and entertainment).  It's also an interesting treasure trove of where to get pirated materials when wandering the markets of the Czech Republic or Buenos Aires.  http://www.ustr.gov/Document_Library/Press_Releases/2008/April/USTR_Issues_2008_Special_301_Report.html

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 A recent French decision has blown a gaping hole in the defenses available to Internet companies for hosting third party content under French law.  Article 6-I-2 of the French Law for Confidence in the Digital Economy (LCEN) (which mirrors Article 14 of the EU E-Commerce Directive) states that public providers of "communications services" cannot be held liable for “information stored at the request of a recipient of those services" if the provider "did not have actual knowledge of [the] illegal nature" of the information, or if the provider "acted expeditiously to remove the data or make access impossible" after learning of its illegality (Basically, the requirements of the DMCA). 

The Paris Court of First Instance held last month, however, that Bloobox.net was not immune for hosting a user-submitted link on its Fuzz.fr service, and was liable as an editor for its putative involvement in the "organization and presentation" of the link and associated headline. 

This decision extends a trend in which European courts, particularly on the Continent, have increasingly been willing to find Internet companies liable for user-generated content.  If this trend continues, websites and Internet providers will be looking at major legal problems inEurope .

Thanks to Steptoe & Johnson's E-Commerce Law Week for the link.

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The EU Working Party responsible for implementing Europe's Data Protection Directive, i.e. the infamous European privacy laws issued an opinion this month found that the EU privacy directive covers a broad range of garden variety search engine activities, e.g. long term caching (a la the Internet Archive), search histories (like the material subpoenaed by the US government at the end of 2007), and collection of IP addresses.  The Working Party also noted that behavioral advertising may not be permissible without users' consent. 

This could hamstring the next generation interactive advertising and, even some garden variety website activities.  One more reason to use care if you're a US company moving into another jurisdiction.

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