Courts may order ISPs to block access to copyright-breaching websites under certain conditions, said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) Thursday in a decision one commentator called unsurprising but important. The ruling in UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH v. Constantin Film Verleih GmbH and Wega Filmproduktionsgesellschaft mbH (http://bit.ly/NYcjur) arose from complaints by the movie companies that their films could be viewed and downloaded from the website kino.to without authorization, the court said. They sought injunctions against ISP UPC Telekabel Wien, which argued that it couldn’t be enjoined because it had no business relationship with kino.to’s operators and there was no proof that its own customers acted unlawfully. The ISP also claimed any possible blocking measures could be circumvented, and some are excessively expensive. The ECJ said the EU copyright directive allows rights-holders to seek injunctions against intermediaries whose services are used by third parties to infringe their rights, and that UPC is such an intermediary. The law doesn’t require a specific relationship between the person carrying out the infringement and the intermediary against whom an injunction is issued, nor is it necessary to prove that an ISP’s customers are actually accessing the material, it said. But fundamental rights recognized by EU law permit injunctions on two conditions, the court said: (1) The ISP’s measure doesn’t unnecessarily deprive users of the ability to lawfully access the information. (2) The blocking or other actions do prevent unauthorized access to the material or at least make it hard to access. Intellectual property rights in such situations conflict with other rights such as the freedom to conduct a business and user’s freedom of information, the ECJ said. Where several basic rights are at issue, EU governments must ensure their national laws strike a fair balance, it said. The ruling isn’t surprising because EU laws implicitly allow such interventions in order to repress piracy, telecom consultant Innocenzo Genna wrote on his radiobruxelleslibera blog (http://bit.ly/1pzl2OJ). Genna, who represents new-entrant, non-incumbent operators, said the decision is “very important” because it’s the first time the ECJ has set out mandatory principles national courts must comply with when they order ISPs to block access to copyright-infringing websites. Under the decision, ISPs can’t be forced to bear significant costs and put in place complex and difficult technical solutions, Genna wrote. The court said Web-blocking must be strictly targeted, particularly when the illicit content is available on sites used for lawful purposes, he said. The decision is “an important clarification that will strengthen the ability of the music and other creative industries to tackle piracy,” said the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The ruling confirms that “copyright is itself a fundamental right requiring protection,” it said. Europe’s recording industry has more than 230 licensed services but its continued success depends on the legal environment in which it operates, IFPI said. “ISPs’ ability lawfully to prevent access to pirate sites that undermine legitimate music service is critically important.”

Federal policy must ensure fair financial practices as big data increasingly enables discriminatory practices, said a report submitted Thursday to the White House as part of the administration’s big data review, said (http://bit.ly/1dQEkeq) Executive Director Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy. CDD and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund jointly submitted the report, which was funded by the Ford Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Increasing digital- and mobile-based financial services “could provide further obstacles to the consumers most at risk today -- imposing new forms of unaffordable loans, discriminatory pricing, escalating fees for services and unfair marketing practices,” said the report. It sought federal and state “policies that encourage asset-building, budgeting, financial inclusion and opportunities.” The FTC and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “should be encouraged to review the products and services that comprise the contemporary underbanked financial marketplace,” the report said. And the government should review the Fair Credit Reporting Act “to ensure it addresses these current practices,” said the report. It said the FCC can also play a role, by promoting “affordable access to mobile devices."

Yahoo and Google’s most recent transparency reports, released Thursday, showed both companies were rejecting a higher percentage of U.S. government requests for data than in the past. Although Google has received an increasing number of requests over the years -- from 12,593 in the second half of 2009 to 27,477 in the second half of 2013 -- the company partially or completely complied with a lower percentage of requests over that time span (http://bit.ly/1hyRz4d). Google complied with 76 percent of requests in the second half of 2010, and only 64 percent by the second half of 2013, according to the report. Yahoo rejected 2 percent of 12,444 government requests in the first half of 2013, but 8 percent of 6,587 requests in the second half of 2013 (http://bit.ly/1dyDhoY). Both companies are also now able to also release some information about how many national security orders they receive, and the number of customer accounts targeted with those orders, because of a recent Justice Department decision. Yahoo received fewer than 1,000 national security letters in the second half of 2013, naming between 1,000 and 2,000 users. The FBI issues national security letters to require companies to disclose information such as the name and address of a particular user, Yahoo said. Google had previously disclosed its national security order data in February (http://bit.ly/1dmIHMN). Overall, it was Yahoo’s second transparency report and Google’s ninth.

The Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act was introduced Thursday in response to NTIA’s decision to transition the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority to a global multistakeholder body, said a news release (http://1.usa.gov/1gGRPmJ) from co-sponsors Reps. John Shimkus, R-Ill., Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Todd Rokita, R-Ind., Thursday. The bill’s other co-sponsors are Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., and Bob Latta, R-Ohio, it said. “We can’t let the Internet turn into another Russian land grab,” said Blackburn, in the release. “America shouldn’t surrender its leadership on the world stage to a ‘multistakeholder model’ that’s controlled by foreign governments,” she said. “Russia and China have sought such a venue in the past through the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union,” said the release. The bill would “prohibit” NTIA from “turning over its domain name system oversight responsibilities pending a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to Congress,” it said.

The FTC approved a final order in its complaint against Apple, the commission said in a Thursday release. The FTC initially revealed its complaint in January, alleging Apple failed to notify parents of a 15-minute window after sign-on during which children could make unlimited in-app purchases without authorization (CD Jan 16 p12). Apple agreed to refund at least $32.5 million in the settlement and change its notification and billing practices by March 31. Commissioner Joshua Wright was the lone dissenting voice in the vote on the order, as he was in the initial settlement.

Collection and control of massive amounts of personal data are a source of market power for the world’s biggest Internet players, requiring closer interaction among different regulators, said the European Data Protection Supervisor Wednesday. EDPS said personal data has become a form of payment for so-called “free” online services, and is a valuable asset for a growing number of companies doing business in the EU. EDPS Peter Hustinx’s preliminary opinion on privacy and competitiveness in the age of big data: The interplay between data protection, competition law and consumer protection (http://bit.ly/1l47wUo) said there’s little dialogue among policy makers and experts in those fields, despite many sectors of the economy looking to exploit big data. The opinion noted convergences and tensions in the different areas of law against the evolution of big data, including: (1) The need for a better understanding of the massive growth in services which require payment in the form of personal information from customers. (2) The need for a definition of consumer harm in the enforcement of competition rules, in markets where powerful players may refuse access to personal data and have confusing privacy policies. (3) How closer dialogue among regulators and experts on the rules and policies in data protection, antitrust and consumer protection could give consumers more choice of services and greater control over their data. The EDPS will host a June 2 workshop in Brussels for experts and privacy practitioners from the EU and U.S., the office said. EDPS preliminary opinions don’t respond to a specific proposal from the European Commission but are intended to stimulate debate on how EU rules apply to a fast-expanding sector of the economy, it noted.

"There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading” or viewing Malibu Media videos, said Judge Ursula Ungaro, U.S. District Court in Miami, in a ruling (http://bit.ly/1gycWYs) against the porn studio filed last Thursday. In Malibu Media v. John Doe, the plaintiff tried to prove that an IP address can be traced back to the copyright infringer, in this case, from a user of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service, according to a court document filed by Malibu Media last year (http://bit.ly/1jD5oBs). “Even if this IP address is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access to that residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” said Ungaro in the decision. In 2012, Malibu Media in U.S. District Court in Dallas accused Verizon of acting in “bad faith” by not turning over identities of Internet subscribers alleged to have shared porn films via BitTorrent (CD Nov 29/12 p15).

Consumers need to be protected from major ISPs and the FCC can do that best by reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, Consumers Union said in comments filed at the FCC that were posted Tuesday. CU responded to an FCC public notice on potential new net neutrality rules. “The recently struck-down nondiscrimination and no-blocking rules leave ISPs free to experiment with anticompetitive and anti-consumer practices that are contrary to the longstanding principles underlying the Open Internet rules,” CU said (http://bit.ly/1ffs1J0). The FCC should not rely on its authority under Section 706 of the Communications Act to impose new rules, the group said. “We believe that Section 706 is not the best path forward to restoring the protections against discrimination and blocking. We are concerned that the provision, which gives the FCC the ability to use its expert judgment to ‘encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans’ is too general, lacks meaningful mechanisms to deter harmful conduct by ISPs, and provides little clarity about the extent to which a broadband ISP can interfere with traffic before it is deemed to have infringed upon consumers’ rights."

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t back down from his critical stance on U.S. government surveillance efforts after he and numerous tech company CEOs attended a meeting with President Barack Obama Friday (CD March 27 p18). In a statement via email, a Facebook spokeswoman said, “Mark Zuckerberg brought his concerns about government surveillance directly to the president today and is grateful for his continued personal engagement on this issue.” Zuckerberg and the president “had an honest talk about government intrusion on the Internet,” she said. “While the U.S. Government has taken helpful steps to reform its surveillance practices, these are simply not enough,” she said. “People around the globe deserve to know that their information is secure and Facebook will keep urging the U.S. Government to be more transparent about its practices and more protective of civil liberties."

Internet governance stakeholders should be wary of a government-controlled Internet, as the U.S. government transitions oversight of domain name functions to global stakeholders, said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a Friday blog post (http://tinyurl.com/ldku43y). NTIA announced March 14 it was asking the global Internet community to create an oversight plan for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). “If events don’t unfold as NTIA intends, however, Internet freedom, global prosperity and international political reform will be at risk,” McDowell said. If all goes according to plan, “existing, non-profit, private sector Internet governance groups [will] oversee ICANN’s management of these critical technical functions, just as they have other technical aspects of the Net for decades -- with a perfect track record of success,” McDowell said. “The worst case scenario would include foreign governments, either directly or through intergovernmental bodies, snatching the soon-to-be untethered technical functions for their own purposes.” McDowell pointed to foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has “plainly asserted” a goal to have international control of the Internet conducted by the United Nations. “This concern is more than theoretical,” McDowell said. “Countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and their client states, have worked for years to absorb many aspects of Internet governance into multilateral organizations ... rather than the non-profit private sector."