Sandra Schmitz

The US SOPA and PIPA − a European perspective

According to US House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, ‘the theft of American intellectual property costs the American economy over

The RedTube copyright infringement affair in Germany: shame on who?

100 billion annually … and thousands of jobs’. Both houses of the US congress have been working on corresponding bills intending to give the US government and copyright holders more effective tools to curb access to so-called rogue websites that disseminate copyright-infringing content, especially those registered outside the US. Following a wake of protest, the Protect IP Act (PIPA) by the Senate and its counterpart in the House of Representatives, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), were postponed ‘until there is wider agreement on a solution’. This paper examines how the bills tried to strengthen the ability of US law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. It will also outline the recent developments and assess the implications that the bills have for freedom of speech online and cybersecurity, not only in the US but also in Europe.

Protection of the Content of a 'Wiki' Database Under the European Database Directive

Recently, tens of thousands of German Internet users were confronted with copyright infringement claims for allegedly watching porn clips on the streaming platform RedTube.com. The alleged copyright infringers received ‘Abmahnung’ cease and desist letters that gave them an opportunity to settle copyright infringements out of court by paying rights-holders €250 in compensation. While in cases relating to peer-to-peer file-sharing, the IP address of a peer can easily be identified,1 the RedTube case raises the question how consumers of a stream could be identified. In addition, it raises the question of whether the consumption of a stream is illegal under German law. Assuming that this is not the case, this analysis of the RedTube case highlights that the system of Abmahnungen is prone to abuse in an Internet context. Several weaknesses of the current system are identified, which show that disclosure requests are not thoroughly assessed by courts and that lawyers are far too willing to send out cease and desist letters although an infringement is not obvious. This environment allowed the emergence of anti-piracy business models that succeed in turning infringements into profit and that do not hesitate to make unfounded claims.

Teenage Folly or Child Abuse? State Responses to “Sexting” by Minors in the U.S. and Germany

Following the success of the free Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, many entities have discovered Wiki-based databases as a practicable solution to gather and administer content. Millions of volunteers around the world contribute to Wikipedia and other Wiki-based websites by adding and editing information. In Luxembourg, the Wiki-based WikiFood.eu website was launched in 2006 in order to set up a database of food ingredients data in a machine-readable way. WikiFood built up a volunteer network of food product users that help to expand the database by typing in the ingredients lists of products that may be interesting for the community of allergy patients and consumers. Anyone who has registered to wikifood and accepted the terms of use may edit or contribute to WikiFood, and the contribution is immediately available worldwide. One idea behind WikiFood was, that one day the provider might be able to sell the collected data to a presumably commercial entity which will market the parallel developed barcode-reading smartphone, the so-called Personal Allergy Assistant, and respective Smartphone Apps, which are able to scan a food packages EAN barcode and provide information on ingredients. Both, the PAA and the Apps are dependent on acquiring relevant information from the food ingredients database. In this context it is of interest whether intellectual property rights in a wiki-based database, in specific the WikiFood compilation of information, exist, and if so what scope they have.