Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/99) have now been published.

They come into force for the purposes inter alia of making an application to become an authorised electronic money institution on 9 February. They are fully in force from 30 April. The Regulations implement Directive 2009/110/EC.

Reminder: sources are evidence to support arguments

Dear all - please recall that in the last seminar of term I explained that you gain mark by good arguments supported by evidence - no-one LOSES marks as I do not start grading at 100%!!!
The E-commerce consultation responses appear to have had a holiday delay in publication so there is no 'consolidated' set of responses.
UPDATE: If it does not support your argument such that you footnote it, you do not get credit for it in the final mark - so please don't put into the bibliography sources that you don't think are worth putting into the footnotes!

New jurisdiction case: act committed where server based

This fresh UK High Court case on the EC Database Directive explains that actions take place where servers are based - not where companies are located. See Football Dataco Limited and others v Sportradar GmbH and another [2010] EWHC 2911: "online infringement of database rights occurs where the server which contains the data is based and not where the website user is located. On that basis, the Court stated that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the claim relating to database rights."

Lecture 2nd December postponed to 7th December 12-2pm

Due to the lovely skiing weather and the fact I'm in Cambridge looking at maps of the road problems, we're postponing today's lecture until Tuesday 12-2pm. Please let me know if that time is a major problem.

It means you have 2 lectures that day - I'll keep them down to 90min each so you don't get punchy.

Reading on jurisdiction is already posted on the blog.

Jurisdiction: Hague Convention on Private International law choice of courts

The status of the 2005 Convention is here, signed but not ratified. Note the EU has chosen to be bound without ratifying.

Theft of digital objects in Japan

Japanese police have arrested two people suspected of stealing virtual goods from players of online game Lineage II. The pair tricked victims via a booby-trapped program that claimed to help people play the game. Instead of boosting a character's abilities the program stole account names and passwords. About 100 people are thought to have fallen victim, netting the pair about 1m yen (£7,630).The money was made by selling off the virtual items, such as swords, shields and armour, that players were using on their characters. Yu Nishimura and Kaori Tanaka are believed to have met via Lineage II. The scam revolved around a website supposedly giving away an add-on program that boosted a character's fighting prowess. The pair have been accused under Japanese laws governing unauthorised access to computers. If found guilty they could face fines up to 500,000 yen (£3,800) or a maximum of a year in jail. NC Japan, which operates Lineage II in the country, is also believed to be considering suing the pair for compensation. It claims to have spent more than 100m yen to secure the game against malicious hackers or those using add-ons and other tools to boost in-game abilities.

E-Commerce directive: ensure freedom of expression and due process of law

EDRi has responded to the public consultation of the European Commission on Electronic Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC). This consultation, closed on 5 November 2010, aimed at assessing the implementation of the Directive in Member States, and at identifying limitations with the current text.
EDRi focuses its answer on the liability regime of the technical intermediaries set by Articles 12 to 15 of the Directive. This scheme applies to intermediaries providing access to the Internet as well as content distribution and hosting. From the users' perspective, this regime has a major impact on the level of freedom of expression, freedom of information, right to privacy and personal data protection on the Internet, as well as on the due process of law. From the technical intermediaries' perspective, it must ensure the needed legal certainty to run their activities.
EDRi's response stresses that the lack of clarity and precision of this regime does not currently allow adequate protection of human rights and the rule of law, nor does it ensure legal certainty for intermediaries. In support of this assertion, EDRi provides examples of concrete situations having occurred in different countries following the transposition of the Directive into national laws.
In order for the EU to respect its current obligations with regard to its own Charter of Fundamental Rights and its upcoming obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, EDRi underlines the need to revise the current intermediaries liability regime as follows:
- Where an intermediary is not hosting the content (acting as a mere conduit, an access provider or a search engine), it should have no liability for this content, nor should it have any obligations with regards to the
removal or filtering of this content;
- Where an intermediary acts as a hosting provider, its liability with respect to the content hosted should be restricted to its lack of compliance with a court order to take down this content;
- Intermediaries should have no obligation to monitor content;
- Services and activities currently not addressed by the Directive (search engines, web2.0 services, hypertext links) should also benefit from the same limited liability regime.