Law in the Web

On July 7, 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) in Case C-494/15 ruled that the tenant of market halls who sublets the various sales points situated in those halls to market-traders, some of whom use their pitches in order to sell counterfeit branded products, falls within the concept of “intermediary”, against whom such injunctions may be addressed as provided for in the national law of the Member States. Put differently, and setting the case against the Polish legal backdrop for a change and effect, protection of claims and injunctions aimed at prohibiting the continuation of intellectual property (trademark related or otherwise) infringement may be applied or issued against the operators of a physical marketplace, based on Article 422 of the Polish Civil Code.

Link – i.e. a reference to another file or website is a convenient navigation tool and plays a vital role in websites’ SEO. However, embedding a link can be a risky business if it leads to a file or a website containing copyrighted work. Recently highest European courts were to decide whether the linking itself breaches the copyrights to the work to be find under the link by exposing it to the audience (legal term: dissemination) or not. Due to the scale of linking the judgment can be of interest of many IT professionals.

Most recent judgment in the case of Svensson and others against Retriever Sverige AB of the Court of Justice of European Union dated February 13^th, 2014 (C-466/12) answers a couple of questions: whether embedding a link to copyrighted work by someone else than a copyright holder is actually an act of making the work available for the audience (dissemination)? Furthermore does it depends on the access restriction (e.g. a fee for the access) to the website where the work was originally posted?

Safe Harbor Era

Through the judgment dated October 6, 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter: CJEU) invalidated the Commission Decision 2000/520 / EC of July 26, 2000 (hereinafter: Decision), and consequently voided the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework of its significance as a guarantee of an adequate level of personal data protection.
Permit me to recall to your memory that the Safe Harbor Framework was once developed by the European Commission and the US Department of Commerce as a practical means to overcome the differences in the approach to protection of personal data between the European Union and the United States. The high standards set by Directive 95/46 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 (hereinafter: Directive) determined the classification of the United States as a third country which does not ensure on its territory an adequate level of protection of personal data – to use the terminology employed in the Polish national legislation implementing the Directive (namely, the Act of August 29, 1997 on the protection of personal data; hereinafter: Act). Such a classification generally excludes the possibility of transferring data to the United States. But then, what are the exceptions for?

I. New regulations

From the beginning of 2015 an amendments to the Act on the Protection of Personal Data came into force. Changes concern the extension of entitlements and duties of the Personal Data Protection Official (Administrator Bezpieczeństwa Informacji – ABI). The main aim of the amendments is to harmonize polish law with the Directive 95/46 EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data.

II. Registration of the ABI

It is easy to find in the Internet many opinions that using peer to peer net should be legal, and save for the users. Defenders of so called “freedom of Internet” are everywhere (see in example https://uspirates.org/). You may find them even among important and influent scholars of University of Harvard (see amicus curia opinion of prof. Charles Nesson in Grockster case), but sometimes you may find them also among judiciary and prosecuting authorities, what may be much more complicating copyright owners life. Nevertheless existence of different points of view force us to go deeper into discussion, even when it appears that we must deal with something that at first glance looks like a nonsense.

Since its introduction in 2009 bitcoin proved extremely popular, particularly amid individuals seeking alternative forms of investment. Also number of entrepreneurs considered employing bitcoin as a part of their businesses as alternative to traditional currencies way of payment. Also in Poland bitcoin is traded by large number of ‘investors’. Economic functions and possible ways in which bitcoin may benefit those who trade in it (and possible risk associated with this ‘quasi’ currency) are beyond the scope of these remarks as being more of economic than legal nature. This article attempts to outline legal approach and challenges that may be faced by such new ‘tool’ as bitcoin under Polish taxation law.

Disturbed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are among the greatest threats in today’s cyber security, all over the world. In result of such an attack, the victim may suffer countable and uncountable damages. They may cause simply a cut off a web site or network from its end users. Such attacks have been successfully curried out against major online businesses including Visa and Mastercard, Twitter, and WordPress (source: http://www.esecurityplanet.com ).

The team of four researchers from “Terre des Hommes Netherlands” ( THN ) worked on the project called “Sweetie” for ten weeks in 2013. They posed in chat rooms as Philippine girls, and created a cyber model of a girl, who offered contact thru a web cam. Their activity provided a great amount of evidence of an illegal activity against minors. Tens of thousands internet users were directing their abusive communication to the fake character, on clearly sexual purposes.