Peru: A red card for Roja Directa

Peru: A red card for Roja Directa

Patricia Covarrubia   September 22, 2018   No comments:

In Peru, the Copyright Commission, which is branch of the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and the Protection of Intellectual Property (INDECOPI), announces that it has issued two precautionary measures Resolutions No. 444-2018 / CDA-INDECOPI and No. 445-2018 / CDA-INDECOPI ) against a webpage.

The Commission has ordered the blocking of the website named ‘Roja Directa’, which facilitates illicit access to the transmission of various sporting events, in particular, football matches. For example,a bit of a search would indicate that they are the 'world's biggest index of sport streams'. The Resolutions were imparted to Telefónica del Perú S.A.A. and América Móvil Perú S.A.C., both Internet service providers. They shall proceed to block the website called 'Roja Directa' which contains several e-addresses. [Back in 2015 we may remember that in Spain a court also requested 'Roja Directa' to immediately cease its dissemination activity which was through the provision of links, of the football matches of the Spanish League and the Copa del Rey].

Roja Direct was infringing copyright and secondary rights as it contained a list of links that were transmitting simultaneously a sport event without having neither a license nor authorization by the company Fox Latin American Channel LLC (the right holders).The Decision No. 486 establishes the Common Industrial Property Regime of the Andean Community (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are all members) and, the Decreto Legislativo N° 822 de 23 de abril de 1996 regulates Copyright. In the latter, it is noted that the economic rights, derived from the property of a copyrighted work, grants the author (owner) the right to prevent third parties from: communicating to the public, reproducing, distributing and transforming the work. It is strongly advised to register copyright in Peru, although it is not compulsory.

The precautionary measure was requested by Fox Latin American Channel LLC in order to protect its rights. Currently there are collecting societies in Peru such as: APDAYC for the authors and composers of musical works; UNIMPRO for phonogram producers; EGEDA PERÚ for audio-visual producers and; APSAV for visual artists. They are non-profit organizations.

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Argentina: absence of 'safe harbor' attracts litigation

Argentina: absence of 'safe harbor' attracts litigation

Jeremy   August 23, 2010   No comments:

Given the length of its Atlantic seaboard, "No Safe Harbors in Argentina" might sound a surprising title for this piece for the New York Times, but Vinod Sreeharsha's article is about a rather different sort of harbour.

Internet service providers Google and Yahoo have both emerged successful on appeal following legal actions by Argentine entertainer Virginia Da Cunha (right), who sued them after it became apparent that her name and some photos were among search results connected with sex sites. The two companies argued that they weren't responsible for third-party content over which they had no knowledge. While this case involved defamation, the same point would apply to trade mark and copyright infringement too.

The United States has Safe Harbor legislation to protects technology companies from liability over third-party content but Argentina does not. While Google and Yahoo were successful in this action, there are apparently a large number of similar actions still pending and which are expensive for smaller and less well resourced companies such as start-ups to defend. Brazil is reportedly another problem area for internet hosts for the same reason, with Google being said to be facing up to 600 current actions. Of the countries in the region only Chile has enacted effective legislation, with a 'notice and takedown' system which is said to be an improvement on the US system on which it was modelled.

For an earlier IP Tango post on Ms Da Cunha's action see here.

Thanks go to our blogging friend and colleague Aurelia J. Schultz for this lead.

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Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement (ACTA)

Patricia Covarrubia   February 25, 2010   No comments:

ACTA is a proposed plurilateral agreement which aims to establish international standards on IPRs. The treaty is not part of any international agreement and it is criticised as being too severe. From Latin America, the only country that has joined the negotiations is Mexico; other countries are the US, the EU, Japan, Australia, Canada among others.

This week the European press has covered the 7th round of negotiation of this agreement - held in Mexico. The focus has being in a leaked document from last meeting. In this text, the United States proposed to establish a new role for Internet Service Providers (ISP) requiring them to engage fully in the fight against piracy. According to analysts, this role will put the Internet under total surveillance by private actors because they will need to block and filter sites.

To this effect, the European Data Protection fears for the privacy of the citizens and thus, it call for transparency in these negotiations. The next meeting of ACTA negotiators will take place in New Zealand in April.

For more info see also a report in the Numerama magazine (in French).

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