Today is the 26th of April. The UNESCO celebrations of books and copyrights still resound all over the world. It’s been a happy party of books, writing and reading.
But today, there is another sound in the air. The sound of ‘intellectual property’, of ‘my creativity is my castle’ — it’s the WIPO’s ‘Celebrations’ for the […]

The activities of the World Book and Copyright Day 2007 are well under way … for example in Switzerland, where Roger Lévy blogs live from Zurich main station (in German).

WIPO went to see a group of 16-17 year old students at an international school to find out, how they think about downloading music from the Internet. The first point went to WIPO — the students actually believe that downloading is illegal (which it might or might not be, depending on national legislation). […]

The “Nederlandse Mededingingsautoriteit” — the Dutch cartel police — is mainly powerless in face of megafusions in the energy, health or banking sector. But now they have found another group of criminals: translators. Illegally they have set a minimum fee, e.g. 5,9 Eurocent per word for translations from English or Hungarian. […]

A plea by Bruce Barrymore Halpenny - Author & Military Historian.
Authors across Europe have to come together to strengthen and harmonize the Copyright Laws in Europe. Those who take Copyright Work without the Copyright Owner’s authority, must be made to pay, for it is then stealing; for plagiarists damage the livelihood of genuine hard working […]

Many of us take it for granted that we can download films or music without paying. Now, new projects such as Google Book Search will make millions of books available too. What will this mean for authors and the publishing industry? John Lanchester asks who owns what in the digital age. Read the article published […]

“I’ve always wanted publishers and organized crime to swap.” This strapline caught my eyes this morning when I was combing through my already spam-stripped inbox. Some semi-intelligent robot out there on the net must have picked it up in order to fulfill one of my requests for up-to-date knowledge. (Yes, I admit, […]

On World Intellectual Property Day this year, WIPO celebrates the link between intellectual property (IP) and creativity under the theme - Encouraging Creativity. Visit the site.

[ 23 April 2007; ] The 23 April is the UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day. By celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright. For this reason the European Writers’ Congress (EWC), the federation of 55 writers’ associations in 29 countries of Europe, has started a campaign […]