On 13 December 2007 Ofcom published what it described as one of the most important decisions it has ever had to make: how it will award the valuable radio spectrum that will be made available by the switch from analogue to digital television broadcasting, otherwise known as the ‘digital dividend’. Over the next few years…
ICO Enforcement Action against Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk
Carphone Warehouse and sister company TalkTalk have been found in breach of the Data Protection Act 1998. The Information Commissioner made the ruling after investigating complaints concerning the way in which both organisations processed and stored personal information. The ICO has now issued Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk with an enforcement notice. The two companies must…
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Open Source Software in the Public Sector in Ireland
Open source software (OSS), has always had the advantage that it is inherently more adaptable than its commercial packaged equivalents. It is also true that, compared to commercial packages, it can appear inexpensive (at least initially). It is not surprising therefore that public administrations around the world are embracing the revolution and moving away from…
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E-disclosure: Giant Haystacks and the Needle of Doom
Messrs Charlton and Lavy make sound points with regard to poor execution of e-disclosure, and make some sensible suggestions as to how this can be avoided in the future in their article (E-disclosure, Needles and Haystacks, Vol 18, Issue 1). It is regrettable that anyone should have to wade through such a large number of…
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EU Commission Strategy for Creative Content Online
On 3 January the EU Commission ‘adopted a Communication on Creative Content Online which launches further actions to support the development of innovative business models and the deployment of cross-border delivery of diverse online creative content services’. The press release of that day is pasted below but is in part quite hard to follow. There…
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Cross-border Small Claims in the EU
Pablo Cortés reviews the proposal for a Regulation establishing a European Small Claims Procedure, which is due to be implemented by January 2009…
Gowers Review Consultation
The UK Intellectual Property Office has published its proposed changes to the copyright exceptions in a document entitled Taking Forward the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. Responses are sought by 8 April 2008. While the focus for many with an interest in technology has generally been on format shifting, all of the proposed changes…
Convergence and On-Demand Services
In a joint initiative by the Department for Business and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), a new Convergence Think Tank (CTT) has been established. It aims to examine the implications of technological development for the media and communications industries, and the consequences for both markets and consumers. The…
KM and Clients
‘Knowledge Management’ is an expression that has been around in law firms for a while now, but the term is often confined to organisation within the firm of its internal legal know-how. In this article we explore the use of knowledge management techniques to disseminate knowledge about clients to all within the firm who need…
A Ripping Yarn: Copying CDs to Computer
Thanks to the Impact blog and the IPKAT for drawing this site’s attention to the action brought by the RIAA against one Jeffrey Howell for ‘just’ copying CDs from disk to disk (CD to computer). The Washington Post has the story here but the reaction is at least as interesting as the story itself. And…