The Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is preparing to launch a last-minute push to convince SoftBank to list Arm in London.

The government will seek "high-level" talks with SoftBank executives as soon as the official mourning period for the Queen ends next week, according to The Financial Times, which cites officials with knowledge of the situation.

Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is also said to be keen to have the Cambridge-based chip giant list in the UK, despite the CEO of the Japanese conglomerate, Masayoshi Son, favouring a listing in New York. Son reportedly prefers a Nasdaq listing due to its high valuations and experience with major technology companies.

The PM and chancellor, however, are hoping to revive talks with SoftBank, which were said to have ended with Boris Johnson's resignation. MPs and senior executives from the London Stock Exchange have continued to lobby SoftBank since the leadership change, though the government's main push was led by former investment minister Gerry Grimstone who left Westminster shortly after Johnson's exit.

SoftBank executives have kept a close eye on the Conservative party's leadership race, according to FT sources, though the Japanese giant was never convinced that a UK listing was worthwhile. At the very least, the British government is said to want a dual listing between New York and London. That was the previous arrangement for Arm before it was acquired by SoftBank in 2016. A final decision on where Arm is floated is expected to come before Christmas, though SoftBank is thought to want a plan in place before the next quarter.

Arm has been stuck in a limbo of sorts since its proposed takeover by Nvidia was cancelled earlier in the year due to regulatory concerns put forward by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority and the wider chip manufacturing industry.

Antivirus giant Avast has said it plans to list its shares on the London Stock Exchange in what may be the largest ever UK technology IPO.

The world's largest antivirus provider by the number of customers is expected to float 25% of its shares in order to raise $200 million in primary funding. A secondary round of funding is expected to raise an additional $800 million, raising a total of $1 billion.

Provided the targets are hit, this would value Avast at around $4 billion (2.8 billion), and make it only the second cyber security company to list publicly in London following the IPO of cyber firm Sophos in 2015.

"A listing on the London Stock Exchange is a natural fit, providing us wider access to capital markets and supporting the future growth of our business in the years ahead," said CEO Vincent Steckler, in a statement to Reuters.

He added that despite changing nature of threats facing customers the company has been able to "stay ahead of the bad guys".

An IPO in the UK will mark the company's second attempt, having tried to list publicly in the US in 2012 only to back out due to changing market conditions.

Founded in 1988 in the Czech Republic, the company managed to navigate the political turmoil of the failing communist state to emerge as one of the early leaders in antivirus software development.

In 2001, despite feeling the effects of ongoing financial difficulties over the previous few years, Avast made the decision to move towards a 'freemium' model, offering their software for free to all customers with the option to bolt on premium services.

The decision caused a dramatic influx of new customers to their platform, growing from 1 million in 2004 to 20 million by 2006.

The success of its freemium model, as well as the acquisition of Czech rival AVG in 2016 for $1.3 billion, allowed Avast to secure 435 million users by the end of 2017, generating a turnover of $780 million, according to its most recent financial reports.

Image: Shutterstock

Dell's Pivotal offshoot has launched its IPO, with an anticipated share value of up to $592 million (420 million) if its 37 million Class A shares sell for the estimated $14 (10) to $16 (11) per share. It will also free up 5.6 million more shares for its underwriters to buy if it takes their fancy.

Dell's Pivotal offshoot has filed to launch its IPO, with an anticipated share value of up to $592 million (420 million) if its 37 million Class A shares sell for the estimated $14 (10) to $16 (11) per share.

It will also free up 5.6 million more shares for its underwriters to buy if they wish.

The company will trade under the ticker symbol "PVTL" with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup leading the sales. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBC Capital Markets, UBS Investment Bank and Wells Fargo Securities are also involved as book-running managers.

Pivotal filed for IPO back in March, though when it does go public Dell will keep its controlling share through its other subsidiary companies such as VMware, which owns shares in Pivotal.

"The funds will likely be used to further develop its subscription services, but this will increase operating expenses," pointed out Dale Peters, research director at analyst house TechMarketView, speaking to Cloud Pro at the time Pivotal announced its IPO.

Pivotal posted a net loss of $163.5 million (116 million) last financial year, which is an improvement on its previous year's losses of $232.9 million (165 million), but means the company's still not as buoyant as Dell would like. Peters said the IPO is likely separate to Dell's plans to go public once more, with the company looking to offset its debt from buying EMC.

"The IPO of Dell Technologies is one of the options it's looking at alongside the potential business combination of Dell Technologies and VMware - I don't think the Pivotal IPO changes anything in that respect," Peters said.

Another option for Dell is to reverse-merge with VMware.

Dell and Silver Lake Partners bought EMC back in 2013 for a cool $25 billion (18 billion), reportedly leaving the company in $38 billion (27 billion) debt up to February this year.

Uber has reportedly signed an investment agreement with SoftBank, in a deal that could see the Japanese giant funnel $10 billion into the ride-hailing firm.

Uber first agreed to a SoftBank investment over a month ago, but talks stalled after a lawsuit was brought against Kalanick by Benchmark Capital, according to Reuters. The suit allegedly claimed the former CEO misled stockholders to secure two additional empty board seats, which he then filled earlier this month without board approval.

As part of the agreement, Benchmark said it will suspend its lawsuit against Kalanick, which is reportedly likely to be dropped entirely once the investment has been completed. Uber has reportedly agreed terms with SoftBank, but not an overall sum.

"We've entered into an agreement with a consortium led by SoftBank and Dragoneer on a potential investment," said Uber in a statement to IT Pro. "We believe this agreement is a strong vote of confidence in Uber's long-term potential. Upon closing, it will help fuel our investments in technology and our continued expansion at home and abroad, while strengthening our corporate governance."

The Japanese investment giant will be joined by Dragoneer Investment Group, and will lead consortium of other smaller investors that are expected to invest another $1 billion and also buy up to 17% of the company's shares from existing investors at a lower valuation.

The deal will be considered a major victory for Uber and its new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Uber's board has approved a host of reforms that will remove the mechanisms that gave Kalanick disproportionately high voting power, including the super-voting rights, and new independent directors will be added to increase the board's overall number to 17.

17/10/2017: Uber's SoftBank investment to be finalised in the next week

Uber board member Arianna Huffington is confident that an Uber-SoftBank deal could be finalised within the next week.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal's technology event, D.Live, yesterday, she said it was "very likely" that a deal between the Japanese tech giant and US ride-sharing firm would be struck shortly, according to TechCrunch.

Huffington said the deal would involve a direct investment in the company at the last private valuation round, and also a secondary transaction that would involve buying out existing shareholders.

But she added that Uber is still "waiting on what's going to transpire in terms of the price".

Having SoftBank "on your cap[italisation] table is very important when they're also investing in so many of our competitors around the world", she said, and expects to see more consolidation in the ride-sharing space.

Uber is trying to turn itself around after experiencing a culture crisis in 2017, during which it lost its longtime CEO and founder, Travis Kalanick, and conducted internal and external reviews as a result of allegations of widespread sexism within the firm. It also lost its London operating licence last month, affecting 40,000 drivers in the capital.

"If your culture is so driven by growth at the expense of other things, there are consequences," said Huffington. "Culture, we're now recognising, is the immune system of a company."

She called Uber's new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, "unflappable" and that his "goal is to get people to love the company and not just the product". He also has a greater focus on cost-cutting, in order to meet the goal of taking Uber public by 2019, she said.

Uber is involved in an ongoing legal battle with Google's self-driving car unit Waymo, which still needs to be resolved.

04/10/2017: Uber to go public in 2019 after board shakeup

Uber is scheduled to go public in 2019, after a shakeup to the company's board of directors was agreed last night.

The changes are designed to limit the power that Uber's founder Travis Kalanick has over the company, curtailing the inflated voting power of shares owned by Kalanick and other early staff and investors. An extra six seats have also been added to the board, making it easier to overrule Kalanick and his friends when it comes to large decisions - such as any future votes to reinstate him as CEO.

The restructuring comes as Uber frantically attempts to repair its reputation. The embattled company is coming to the end of a difficult year in which it has lurched from one scandal to the next. First came Susan Fowler's allegations of systemic sexism, followed by calls to boycott uber in the midst of outrage over Trump's travel ban.

Then came regulatory pressure over 'Greyball', a string of high-profile departures from the company (including Kalanick himself) and, most recently, the decision by TfL not to renew the company's license to operate in London.

Many, both within Uber and without, have laid the blame for the company's woes at the feet of Kalanick himself, and the founder admitted earlier this year that he "must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up".

As well as reigning in Kalanick, the decisions have also removed the last obstacles standing in the way of a $1 billion investment from Japanese tech giant Softbank. The company has been flexing its muscles this year, making a series of high-profile investments and acquisitions of companies including ARM, Slack, and possibly even Toshiba's memory chip business.

"Today, after welcoming its new directors Ursula Burns and John Thain, the board voted unanimously to move forward with the proposed investment by SoftBank and with governance changes that would strengthen its independence and ensure equality among all shareholders," Uber said.

"SoftBank's interest is an incredible vote of confidence in Uber's business and long-term potential, and we look forward to finalising the investment in the coming weeks."

Kalanick's comments on the matter were equally effusive, saying: "Today the Board came together collaboratively and took a major step forward in Uber's journey to becoming a world-class public company."

"We approved moving forward with the Softbank transaction and reached unanimous agreement on a new governance framework that will serve Uber well. Under Dara's leadership and with strong guidance from the board, we should expect great things ahead for Uber."

Not everyone is pleased about the changes, however. Top Uber investors Steve Russell and Shervin Pishevar threatened a lawsuit following the decision, which would remove the tenfold voting power of their Class B common shares compared to regular Class A shares held by other investors.

"Today's action by the board was the culmination of a blatant bait and switch, essentially robbing loyal employees, including the more than 200 early founding Uber employees and advisors, of their hard earned shareholder rights," the two investors said in a statement.

"They may think they have won a battle today but rest assured they will lose the war."

Uber's new CEO is planning to take the taxi-hailing app public within three years.

Dara Khosrowshahi takes the wheel as CEO at Uber next week, but met with staff at the beleaguered company yesterday. According to a report in the Financial Times, one aspect of his plans for Uber is to take it public within 18 to 36 months.

Former CEO Travis Kalanick has previously said he was against going public, telling CNBC: "I'm going to make sure it happens as late as possible."

Despite that, Uber has long sat atop analysts and bankers' lists of expected IPOs, particularly after Kalanick's departure.

Before such a move, Khosrowshahi said Uber needs to get its business in shape and refocus on "paying the bills", the FT report said. Uber has yet to actually pull a profit, largely because of the high costs of its expansion and its "big shots" such as investment into flying cars.

He also pledged to change corporate culture the reason his predecessor was pushed out of the company. "This company has to change," Khosrowshahi reportedly said. "What got us here is not what's going to get us to the next level."

30/08/2017: Khosrowshahi says he's 'scared' about new role as Uber CEO

Former Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said he is "scared" about taking on the role as Uber's new boss, in a memo announcing his official appointment to employees.

"This has been one of the toughest decisions of my life," said Khosrowshahi, in a memo obtained by Recode. "I've had the privilege to run Expedia for 12+ years now, and most of you who have been on this journey with me know it has not been easy going."

However, he added that he was worried by the idea of moving out of his comfort zone: "I have to tell you I am scared. I've been here at Expedia for so long that I've forgotten what life is like outside this place. But the times of greatest learning for me have been when I've been through big changes, or taken on new roles."

Khosrowshahi was appointed to the role by Uber's executive board on Sunday, following the dismissal of co-founder and long-term CEO Travis Kalanick. It is thought he has since been negotiating his contract, which could worth as much as $200 million, according to figures unearthed by Business Insider.

In a joint statement, the board reiterated that Khosrowshahi had received unanimous support, and welcomed him to the role.

"We're really fortunate to gain a leader with Dara's experience, talent and vision," said the statement, which included Arianna Huffington, considered to be one of the main proponents of change at the company. "The board and executive leadership team are confident that Dara is the best person to lead Uber into the future building world-class products, transforming cities, and adding value to the lives of drivers and riders around the world, while continuously improving our culture and making Uber the best place to work."

One of his first duties will be to formally greet Uber employees at a meeting today at the company's San Francisco headquarters.

Travis Kalanick also congratulated the new CEO in a statement yesterday: "Casting a vote for the new chief executive was a big moment for me and I couldn't be happier to pass the torch to such an inspiring leader."

Uber will likely see the appointment as a significant step towards cleaning up the company's image, which has been tarred over the past year by allegations of systemic sexism and anti-competitive practices.

29/08/2017: Ex-Expedia chief takes on Uber CEO vacancy

Uber has announced the appointment of ex-Expedia boss Dara Khosrowshahi as its new CEO, replacing Travis Kalanick who resigned from the company last year amid reports of a corporate culture rife with sexism and harassment.

Dara Khosrowshahi has been the chief executive of Expedia since 2005. Before this, he worked at a number of other companies also led by Expedia chairman Barry Diller, including USA Networks and IAC Travel, which purchased Expedia in 2005. Khosrowshahi has also sat on the board of the New York Times since 2015.

Diller told Expedia's staff of Khosrowshahi's plans to accept the role in a memo. "Nothing has yet been finalised, but having extensively discussed this with Dara, I believe it is his intention to accept," he said according to the BBC.

Although rumours suggested HP chief executive Meg Whitman or Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric, could take up the demanding role, Immelt announced he wouldn't be joining the taxi firm in a tweet on Sunday.

"I have decided not to pursue a leadership position at Uber. I have immense respect for the company & founders - Travis, Garrett and Ryan," he wrote on the social network. Although he didn't go into more detail about why he wouldn't be taking up the role, the New York Times speculated Immelt didn't get enough votes from the Uber board.

Whitman said last week on Twitter she hadn't even considered leaving her role: "We have a lot of work still to do at HPE."

Neither Khosrowshahi nor Uber have commented on the appointment.

28/07/2017: Who will replace Travis Kalanick at Uber?

After increasing pressure from investors, Uber's CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from the company last June. Kalanick faced criticism after numerous scandals took place over the last few months involving claims of systemic sexism and harassment in the workplace.

Kalanick has held the position of CEO since he co-founded Uber back in 2009; it's now valued at nearly $70 billion. Despite this, Uber was plagued with problems and was subject to numerous reviews, especially after ex-employee Susan Fowler wrote a blog post about her experiences of sexual harassment at the company.

Now, the ride-hailing app is on the search for someone to take Kalanick's place and steer it onto the right course. It's hoping to name a CEO by early September which means the next few weeks will be awash with rumours as to who that person might be. Since Kalanick still owns the majority of Uber, it would also make sense that a future CEO would get along well with him too.

Who could the next CEO of Uber be?

Meg Whitman, HPE CEO

There were rumours that Meg Whitman, CEO of HPE, was being considered for the position. Whitman recently stepped off the board of directors of HP Inc which fuelled rumours that she might make the move to Uber. As reported by Bloomberg, the company has drawn up a shortlist of six candidates, one of which is Whitman. According to two sources known to the publication, the HPE CEO has been meeting the firm's leadership over recent weeks too.

Despite this, Whitman took to Twitter yesterday to say that she wasn't going to leave HPE anytime soon. She said that she doesn't normally comment on rumours but the speculation of her becoming Uber's CEO had become a "distraction".

Whitman said: "I am fully committed to HPE and plan to remain the company's CEO."

In a following tweet she made this even clearer: "We have a lot of work still to do at HPE and I am not going anywhere. Uber's CEO will not be Meg Whitman."

Jeffrey Immelt, General Electric outgoing CEO

Jeffrey Immelt is set to leave General Electric and it has been suggested that he may take the steering wheel of the ride-hailing app. Bloomberg sources told the publication that he is on the shortlist too.

Immelt is leaving GE after spending 16 years at the company and his departure date is set to be on 31 December 2017, although his successor John Flannery will take over at the start of August. This may mean that he has started looking for a new role which makes him a potential candidate.

Marissa Mayer, ex-Yahoo CEO

Mayer was Yahoo's CEO before Verizon completed its acquisition of the company. She left as a result of this acquisition, receiving a $186 million payout in the process, and now is reportedly looking for her next role at a company as the CEO.

Mayer told Business Insider on 19 July that she definitely wants a new CEO role and wouldn't comment on whether she would like to take the helm of Uber. She did say, however, that Uber hadn't reached out to ask her about filling the position.

Mayer has defended Travis Kalanick in the past, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, stating that Kalanick was unaware of the toxic culture at the company because it had grown so fast. She said: "I count Travis as one of my friends. I think he's a phenomenal leader; Uber is ridiculously interesting."

Financial analysts have aired fears that technology company valuations are overblown after US tech stocks tumbled 4% on Friday, losing $140 billion.

They continued to make losses on Monday despite recovering slightly at the end of the day, with Apple falling from $155.10 on Friday to $145.42 yesterday, and Amazon dropping from $1,012.99 on Friday but had lowered to $948.41 yesterday.

Netflix shares have fallen more than 4%, Google by 0.86%, Facebook by 0.78% and Microsoft by 0.77%, leading analysts to ask whether tech firms are overvalued, and whether the stock falls represent a pause in investment or whether they foreshadow more losses in the market.

Senior market analyst at ETX Capital Neil Wilson said in a report by The Telegraph: "The big US tech stocks have gone stratospheric this year and investors are querying if there is anything left in the tank."

"At the moment it looks like it's just a pause that allows for some profit taking before another push higher. But it certainly has the potential to rattle markets if it continues," he explained.

Apple's stock price hit a record high in February of $136.68 thanks to excitement surrounding the next iPhone model, but other technology giants have suffered on the stock market. Following Snap's IPO March debut that saw it valued at $30 billion on the first day of trading, it has since plummeted, with shares losing plenty of their value from a $27.09 peak in March to today's $18.20 valuation.

A study released at the start of 2017 found that one-third of tech IPOs within the last decade are now trading below their initial valuations.

Spotify is reportedly considering skipping out on its own IPO, in a controversial move that has left many experts scratching their heads.

Instead of an IPO, the company is said to be eyeing a direct listing, according to the Wall Street Journal. This method of going public negates the share price fluctuations that accompany a traditional IPO, but will likely reduce the amount of money generated by the company.

The WSJ referred to anonymous sources familiar with the matter, who said that the decision was being driven not by the desire to raise the large sums commonly associated with IPOs, but to give long-term investors and employees the chance to cash out. Spotify refused to comment on the matter.

In a standard IPO, early buyers (or, 'institutional investors') are approached to purchase blocks of new shares immediately before they go on the open market. Once trading opens, the shares usually jump in value, whereupon the institutional investors sell them for a profit. This, in turn, pushes the company's stock price higher and leads to a large, immediate payout for the company.

By listing their stock directly, Spotify would bypass the initial investors, selling shares directly to the public. This means that they're not going to surge in value in the same way, and will generate much less money than other tech IPOs.

This is partly why it's such an unusual model; tech IPOs in particular are generally used by companies to secure serious cash infusions in order to fuel expansion efforts. By not pursuing a standard IPO, Spotify would effectively be turning down millions of dollars, if not more.

This money could come in handy for the company, particularly in order to pay off some its $1 billion debts. It would also give the notoriously loss-making business a bit more breathing room in order to consolidate and further grow its business.

However, while recent tech IPOs like Snap's have seen huge valuations, they do not always work out - Twitter's stock price has halved since its market debut, for instance.

However, there are some upsides to a direct listing. Chief among these is a greater chance of stock price stability, as the company bypasses selling its shares to investors who are principally after a quick profit. Tech stocks have a habit of opening with incredibly high valuations, before quickly reducing in value. Similarly, this method could also be more likely to attract long-term investors who will stay with the company over a greater period.

It also sidesteps the fees charged by underwriters, avoids diluting the company's stock and allows the company to freely discuss its stocks without violating SEC regulations.

Rumours of an IPO have been circling the company for a long time, particularly following the company's $1 billion debt financing agreement last year. Provisos in the deal will penalise Spotify the longer it goes without floating its IPO, including rewarding investors with greater equity for every year the company doesn't go public.

It is currently unclear whether a direct listing, as opposed to an IPO, would satisfy the terms of this agreement.

The news comes in the same week that the company inked a new long-term licensing agreement with Universal Music Group, the biggest record label in the world and one of the three main sources of Spotify's catalogue.

The Copyright Licensing Agency's (CLA) CIO Adam Sewell made the decision to go with Microsoft Azure as its cloud computing platform ahead of other cloud vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) for "contractual reasons".

Sewell explains that, at the time when he was looking into a cloud provider, he found that "there were some elements that you'd expect in a contract that you'd get with Microsoft that you don't get with other leading cloud vendors".

He explained that the organisation was working with a development partner at the time who was implementing a solution for CLA, and it suggested using AWS.

"I sat down and read their terms for cloud services and did the same for Microsoft and a few other public cloud providers and I came to the conclusion that the one we could safely sign up for was a Microsoft contract," he explains.

Although Sewell declined to go into further detail about the specifics, he says that some of the contracts were worrying, particularly for small companies as they wouldn't be able to ask these major cloud companies to request changes to the default terms.

"A lot of people feel like they're stuck with [those terms], and therefore they've gone ahead and signed up for it without reading the small print and there are some real risks in doing that," he says.

Big changes

CLA has just completed a new three-year IT strategy document which is aligned to its corporate objectives. It should build on what the organisation has achieved over the last few years.

This includes the launch of a new product called the Digital Content Store which more than 65 High Education institutions have signed up to, with 900,000-plus downloads of content from students.

"This product has really helped those institutions that have adopted it by simplifying the creation of digital course packs while reducing the administrative burden associated with our licences in that sector," Sewell explains.

The agency has also implemented UC-as-a-service, with its telephony being provided through the cloud-hosted Skype for Business product.

Sewell states that the organisation is a heavy user of cloud it even developed its own product a few years ago which was built on Azure Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

And, partly because of the heavy use of cloud, Sewell says one of his biggest frustrations is the overuse of the word cloud'.

"I think it's very frustrating that so many people working in IT refer to cloud when something is simply not hosted within their office. Vendors are just as guilty they call everything a cloud-based solution'," he states.

And his issues with the term cloud' don't stop there.

"We certainly found trying to recruit people with cloud experience is the biggest challenge. My frustration is that anybody can stick cloud' on their CV but when you ask them in an interview about their experience, they say they've used Office 365 or Salesforce," he says.

"While it is software-as-a-service (SaaS), and is cloud computing, it's not the same as having experience of supporting critical applications running on critical platforms," he adds.

Business analysts are also hard to recruit, Sewell says, and the challenge of recruiting the right people is getting harder particularly with banks being able to lure candidates with big pay packages.

Safety first

The CLA has a lot of data about the 10 million-plus publications that are covered under its licences. It has tools to allow its customers to see whether they can copy anything over from any particular title and it also captures data about usage of those titles.

"As a company it's really important that we distribute money to the right people, paying the correct royalties to reflect the use of their work is really important," he says.

"Because we capture so much data across different sectors that we license, the way that data is captured varies considerably, so it's key to ensure we can capture and analyse all of that as efficiently as possible so we maximise the return back to the rights holders," he adds.

Sewell says the likes of AI and the IoT may well be areas that CLA could use in the future but for now he is focused on ensuring the company will be fully compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

"With the GDPR regulations coming in April 2018 there are big implications of how companies use data and CLA is focused on this," he says, adding that new technologies have to be fit in with the new legislation and vice versa.

But making sure CLA is fully compliant isn't just something that needs to be looked at from an IT perspective, Sewell emphasises.

"People across the business have to understand the implications of it what they can and can't do. It's going to be very different to today because of the huge fines if you breach legislation," he states.

He adds that a recent story which said that more than half of UK businesses were not prepared for GDPR didn't surprise him.

"There are implications across so many different systems about how organisations capture and use data; if organisations are not looking at this today, they will struggle to be prepared by April next year," he says.

Snap's shares climbed by 44% in value over the first day of its IPO, from $17 per share to $24.48.

The parent company of Snapchat, the photo messaging app, saw its stock market debut valued at $24 billion, the most a tech firm has hit since Facebook's debut in 2012, but the rise saw it buoy up to $30 billion.

However, Snapchat hasn't seen much user growth recently, with its core demographic being 18-24 year olds at 37%, according to Statista. Like similar tech IPOs, the company has never made a profit, either.

Brian Wieser, of Pivotal Research, said in a research note quoted by Business Insider: "It has a promising and innovative advertising offering, but so far it is still mostly unproven and difficult to quantify its ultimate scale.

"Investors will also be exposed to a novel corporate structure operated by a senior management team lacking experience transforming a successful new product into a successful company. High expenses and cash costs to run the company are negative as well."

Additionally, Snap's shareholders have no voting power, giving them little say over the direction of the company's future.

But Jordan Hiscott, chief trader at Ayondo Markets, told the BBC before the IPO that Snap could succeed where IPOs like Twitter's ultimately failed.

"A pertinent point in the company's S1 filing for the IPO is that it doesn't call itself a messaging service, but a camera company," he said.

"This seems to be an intentional move to differentiate it from Facebook and Twitter and the success and failure of their respective IPOs, which in my view, is very clever."

02/03/2017: Snap IPO values company at $24 billion

Snap's long-awaited initial public offering (IPO) has smashed expectations, raising $3.4 billion and propelling the company to a $24 billion valuation.

Snap's IPO is the most valuable US tech IPO since Facebook first floated its stock in 2012. Demand for Snap's shares exceeded supply by more than ten times, even at $17 per share a more expensive price than initially forecast.

However, despite this surge of interest and an advertising business that has been growing fast, certain areas of the market have been skeptical about the ephemeral messaging app's potential for monetisation.

While revenue increased by nearly 700% last year, the company's net losses also increased to the tune of over $500 million. This was driven in part by expensive moonshots like the Google Glass-esque 'Spectacles', camera-enabled sunglasses that allow users to record short video clips and share them directly on Snapchat.

User growth has also slowed and Snap is facing stiff competition from rival messaging platforms as competitors like Facebook Messenger and Instagram start adding Snapchat-esque features.

Many commentators have pointed to the ailing fortunes of Twitter, which has consistently failed to deliver on investor expectations despite a mammoth IPO and a thriving user base.

Notably, Snap's shares carry no voting power, meaning that investors will have no control over the company's future direction a highly unusual move for a tech IPO. Snap also valued itself at 60 times its revenue more than double the ratio that Facebook fetched at its IPO.

Now that the company has finally floated its stock after months of anticipation, the real test is whether Snap can deliver on its promise, or if it will be as fleeting as the messages it hosts.

The European Commission is looking to change the rules on copyright across the EU in a bid to update them for the modern, digital age. The most important proposal is to relax the national restrictions that prevent you from watching and listening to content from the UK when you're abroad (such as shows on the BBC iPlayer), and vice versa. The proposals form part of efforts to create a Digital Single Market, which was announced in May 2015 in the hope of being delivered by the end of this year.

Why is it doing this?

Because currently each EU member state operates to a different set of rules, which makes it difficult for companies to license their content across country borders and prevents you from accessing what you want, where you want.

This system was sufficient in the days before the internet, but new rules are needed because there are so many ways to access copyright-protected content. Andrus Ansip, vice-president of the EU's Digital Single Market team, not only wants to reduce barriers across the 28 member states but also increase cultural diversity in the content that's available, while ensuring all work is fairly paid for and protected. It's a big ask.

How are the current restrictions affecting us?

According to EU figures, a third of Europeans want to access content they pay for from their home country when they are abroad, while a fifth want to do so from other EU countries when they are at home. But licensing difficulties within Europe mean that this isn't always possible. Broadcasters operating in one country have to negotiate individually with the copyright holder if they want to offer channels in other EU countries. These talks are costly and time-consuming, and often break down.

So what's going to change?

You'll be able to access everything you've bought or subscribe to movies, sport, music, ebooks, games and so on in any EU country. As well as affecting traditional broadcasters like the BBC, a change in the law would let viewers access TV services such as Now TV when outside the UK, but still inside the EU.

However, the EU has suggested new laws that go further. It wants collective bargaining of copyright, which means that broadcasters across the EU would club together to pay a one-off fee for the rights to a TV show (this has been described as a 'buy one, get 27 free' deal). This move would damage broadcasters such as ITV, which would no longer be able to negotiate a higher price for its programmes from broadcasters based in countries that have a larger population. Other broadcasters, including Sky, have said that this law will cut their revenues and lead to less investment in new programmes. But Mr Ansip is in favour, saying it would give consumers more choice.

What about videos that users post online?

They'll be affected too. One part of the new regulations deals with content being posted on video-sharing sites such as YouTube. Today, sites either remove content when they are informed of a copyright infringement, or they make money on behalf of the copyright owner through adverts. Under the new proposals, sites will have to introduce technology that can tell whether a video breaks copyright rules.

Doesn't YouTube already do this?

Yes, using its Content ID system, which compares videos and music to a database of copyrighted material. But the EU says that this doesn't go far enough. The new laws place more onus on YouTube to prevent any copyrighted material from being uploaded by ordinary users. For example, they will have to impose rigorous measures to stop users from submitting videos that use copyrighted music.

Are only videos being affected by the rules?

No. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said he wanted journalists, publishers and authors to be paid fairly for their work, online and offline. To this end, he wants to give writers and publishers the power to seize the rights to their own content, and refuse to let their work be listed on news 'aggregators' such as Google News, or negotiate payments for their inclusion. Mr Ansip says this won't mean charging companies and individuals for linking to copyright-protected material, though.

How has Google taken this?

Not very well. It believes that restricting services such as Google News will only hurt those who write, read and share the articles being linked to online. Google claims the EC is undermining the sharing nature of the web and it is concerned that websites are going to be forced to remove text, videos and images. It's pleased that the EC has recognised the importance of YouTube's Content ID in blocking copyrighted content, but believes the new rules are overkill. It fears that the internet will be turned into "a place where everything uploaded to the web must be cleared by lawyers before it can find an audience".

Isn't this a bit of an over-reaction?

Google feels it has a legitimate argument based upon similar rules that were introduced in Spain in 2014 as part of a new intellectual-property law. News aggregators started to be charged for showing snippets of news and linking to news stories. Fines for breaking the law ran into hundreds of thousands of euros.

Google acted swiftly to close its News service, causing web traffic to Spanish news sites to drop by 14% in a year. Revenues plummeted and some sites went bust, but the rules are still in place. "Paying to display snippets is not a viable option for anyone," Google says. It wants Spain to give websites the option to choose whether they allow Google to link to their stories. When this happened in Germany, Google says, many websites did just that.

So why is the EC still considering this?

It reckons that a pan-European approach will be more effective. Gunther Oettinger, the European Commissioner for digital economy and society, says that a global company of Google's size could not afford to exist without access to the entire EU market. Google is hoping it can convince the EU of alternatives, pointing to the Digital News Initiative which it runs with European news publishers to "support high-quality journalism" and develop ways it can make money in the future. It's in Google's interests, after all, that news websites continue to exist.

Will Brexit change things?

Everything depends on the deal that is eventually struck. The UK could retain copyright as it is today, including any EU rules that have been incorporated up to this point. Or it could adopt the new rules something it may be asked to do if it follows the Norwegian model by remaining part of the European Economic Area. Watch this space!

Want to change copyright law? Then sign Mozilla's petition

Firefox's developer Mozilla has launched an online petition asking for copyright law to be updated for the internet age, so users can "tinker, create and share" content without fear of breaking any laws. Mozilla says that online parodies and remixes, and use of material for educational purposes, should be free of restrictions.

It also points out how absurd some of the current rules are. For example, it's technically illegal to share online a photo of the Eiffel Tower's light display. The same applies to street graffiti, and certain buildings and cityscapes. Mozilla's answer is for the EU to implement a 'freedom of panorama' across Europe.

The restriction is surprisingly widespread. It's not part of UK law, but exists in many European countries, including France, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Iceland and Romania. Mozilla claims that ending this law will help to "keep the internet awesome", but ministers in Brussels say it's unlikely to change.

Snapchat has been accused of misleading investors to boost its IPO valuation, according to a lawsuit filed against the firm by a former employee.

In a complaint submitted to Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, the ex-Snapchat employee claims he discovered evidence of misrepresentation and was fired from the company for being a whistleblower.

Anthony Pompliano, who was in his position as growth lead at Snapchat for just three weeks, believes his termination was due to "the avarice of the small group of executives at the helm", following his apparent discovery of an "institutional pandemic" of misleading information surrounding Snapchat's IPO.

Snapchat's parent company, Snap, confidentially filed an initial public offering in November, according to Bloomberg, with sources close to the firm anticipating the messaging app will be valued between $20 billion and $25 billion when confirmation is made in early 2017. If true, this would make it the largest IPO from a US tech firm since Facebook went public in 2012 valued at $81.2 billion.

The complaint, seen by the Hollywood Reporter, is heavily redacted and omits specific details of the accusations against Snapchat, however Pompliano maintains that the firm falsely represented growth.

"Snapchat fraudulently induced Mr. Pompliano away from Facebook to run Snapchat's new user growth and engagement team by falsely representing to him, among other things, the Company's growth," said attorney David Michaels in the complaint.

Snapchat has responded to these claims in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter, claiming the complaint "has no merit" and "is totally made up by a disgruntled former employee."

IT Pro has contacted Snapchat, but had not received a response at the time of publication.

The complaint also argues that Snapchat poached Pompliano from his former position at Facebook in an attempt to gain insight into the social media's confidential practices, and pressured him into breaking non-disclosure agreements. It's alleged that his refusal to do so "drew the ire of Snapchat's senior management" and he was seen as an "impediment to their planned IPO because he refued to turn a blind eye to Snapchat's misrepresentations" to advertisers and investors.

"Because the truth concerning Mr. Pompliano's termination was so potentially damaging to Snapchat's planned IPO, terminating him wasn't enough to ensure the public was kept in the dark," said Michaels. "Accordingly, post termination, Snapchat has sought to destroy his career and reputation by waging a smear campaign against Mr. Pompliano, by making false representations concerning the circumstances of his termination."

Pompliano is now suing Snapchat for efforts to discredit his character after he had left the company, preventing him from securing future employment.

Pompliano v. Snap by ashley6cullins on Scribd

Snapchat could float on the stock market for up to $25 billion after confidentially filing for an IPO, according to Reuters.

The California-based picture messaging app's parent company, called Snap, is likely to go public as early as March 2017 and is valued between $20 billion to $25 billion, the biggest IPO since Chinese cloud giant Alibaba's floatation at $170 billion in 2014.

It would also be the largest IPO from a US tech company since Facebook went public in 2012, valued at $81.2 billion.

Snapchat has been able to file secretly with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the US Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, according to anonymous sources speaking to Reuters. This allows any company with revenues of less than $1 billion to quietly test the market and investor interest while keeping the financials confidential.

The company first launched in 2012 as a means for users to send and receive videos that would then self-delete. The app is now more popular than Twitter, with more than 100 million daily users.

Given that almost 62% of Snapchat users are aged between 13 and 24, companies will see the app as a valuable platform for advertising to young people.

However investors have been left shaken after a turbulent year for tech IPOs. So far, 123 US tech companies have made public offerings collectively valued at $7.1 billion, a 58% decline from this time last year.

Despite attracting some major investors, such as Google's venture capital firm CapitalG, investors fear that advertising remains Snapchat's only significant revenue stream, according to Reuters.

Snapchat is one of the largest private and venture-backed companies in the US, valued in the tens of billions, alongside the likes of Uber and Airbnb.

Nutanix has become the most successful company to float on the US Stock Exchange this year, reporting share increases of 130% on its first day trading.

The cloud storage company's share value grew to $37.00 at the end of last week, compared to its forecasted value of between $13 to $15.

Nutanix's success could, in some part, be a result of utilities and telecoms falling out of favour with investors and innovative technologies boosting the market somewhat. This is despite telecoms soaring almost 22% and utilities 21% in the first six months of 2016.

"[Nutanix] had a huge first half and rallied mostly because they have two characteristics people want especially during times of volatility," said Russ Koesterich at BlackRock told the Financial Times. "First, they are low beta they are less volatile than the markets; second, they offer high yields which became increasingly valuable when interest rates plummeted."

Additionally, the company offers a breath of fresh air to investors looking for something different. Also, only 80 businesses have listed on US markets so far this year, offering little choice for people who want to invest in a new company.

"There was definitely pent-up demand before this because there had been so few opportunities since a year ago," Lise Buyer, a former Google executive who worked on Nutanix's IPO and is now an advisor at Class V Group, told the FT.

Nutanix had a private valuation of more than $1 billion when it became a public company last week, but it priced its IPO above that and sold more than it was predicting, giving it a market value of $5.08 billion.

Conference call start-up LoopUp floated on the London Stock Exchange this morning, bringing its valuation to 40.8 million.

The London-based firm claims to be the UK's first tech firm to go public since the country voted to leave the EU, and it raised 8.5 million by selling shares at 100p each on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market its shares rose to 110p later this morning.

Co-CEO Steve Flavell said in a statement: "The completion of the IPO process marks an important and exciting milestone on LoopUp's journey as a UK-headquartered and internationally-minded technology company, and provides a significant catalyst for our continued growth.

"The reception from investors has been positive and encouraging, and reinforces our belief that our differentiated product, business model and plans for the future provide the foundation needed to deliver on our potential as a public company.

"Our focus will continue to be on delivering an exceptional product and service to our customers around the world, supported by the funds we've raised and emboldened by the faith our new shareholders have placed in us. These are exciting times."

LoopUp hopes to differentiate itself in the conference call space by reducing noise interference, dialling out participants, rather than them having to remember the relevant codes themselves, while showing who is on the call and who is speaking.

Michael Hughes, co-CEO, told CNBC this morning: "When you think about most people's everyday conference calling experience, it is pretty poor, and I think investors have been very surprised to discover that over 14 billion of wasted time occurs in the US and the UK alone. What LoopUp's all about is trying to use the tools that you have with you everyday to solve these problems."

Guns N Roses frontman Axl Rose has attempted to use copyright infringement claims to remove an unflattering photo of him from the web.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA) is a piece of US legislation that allows copyright holders to request the removal of copyrighted content from the web.

While this serves an important function in protecting intellectual property, it can also be used to unfairly silence criticism.

Rose has filed six of these requests against a photo from a Canadian concert in 2010. The photo - which is somewhat unflattering - has spawned a series of 'Fat Axl' memes relating to the singer's increased weight.

While the motivation behind the takedowns has not been made public, some have suggested that it is an attempt at stopping the deluge of images ridiculing the aging rock star.

The requests were filed on behalf of Rose by anti-piracy firm Web Sherriff, and all target examples of the same picture hosted on Blogspot and GoogleUserContent domains.

However, the original image was taken by Winnipeg Free Press photojournalist Boris Minkevich, who said that the only copyright being infringed is his. "The photo was stolen off our website with no permission granted by the Winnipeg Free Press," Minkevich told Torrent Freak.

All photographers at Rose's gigs are required to sign a contract passing copyright ownership to Rose's company, Web Sherriff told the publication, but the photographer cannot remember whether he signed one or not.

Ownership of the actual image remains unclear, but the debate has once again raised the issue of internet censorship. Free speech advocates have previously accused companies of using DMCA takedown requests to censor their critics.

For example, bogus DMCA requests are a favourite tool of companies wishing to remove YouTube videos which portray them in a bad light, and although YouTube has promised better protection for creators hit by these spurious requests, the problem still persists.

Google has not yet acted on Rose's requests to have the photo removed.

Facebook has scored a notable victory in its copyright battle against a Chinese firm, which wanted to use the company's branding on various drinks products.

The social networking company took its case to the Beijing Municipal High People's Court, after two separate appeals to the country's Trademark Review and Adjudication Board failed.

The Zhongshan Pearl River Drinks company's use of the name 'Face Book' on its drinks was judged to be a violation of the social network's copyright.

According to Chinese copyright law, a company must prove that its brand was well-known in the country before a potentially infringing claim was filed.

This has been hailed as a victory for the social network, which is still blocked for Chinese citizens inside the country.

Zuckerberg has been attempting to get this ban lifted, and some local news outlets have taken it as a sign that the site will soon be exempt from China's notorious state censorship.

If true, it opens up one of the largest emerging markets in the world, and could see the company propelled to new heights. Residents currently use local alternatives, such as Weibo and RenRen.

The verdict comes just days after Apple lost a similar case to prevent a Chinese leather goods manufacturer from using the 'IPHONE' name on its products.

Despite the fact that the iPhone is one of the most popular devices in China, the court ruled that the brand was not well-known enough when leather goods company Xintong Tiandi filed for the trademark in 2007.

Google has received 77 million copyright removal requests in the past month, more than double the 34 million it received the same time last year.

Requests for the search giant to remove URLs that allegedly infringe copyright from its search results hit a record high of 21 million last week, compared to just 9.5 million in the corresponding week of 2015.

Google's transparency report is a partial record of the DMCA takedown requests it has received via its web submissions form. The data excludes other Google-owned services, such as YouTube and Blogger.

Requests for removal are made most frequently by copyright holders and reporting agencies that monitor the web on their behalf, and have shot up since Google started reporting takedown requests in July 2011. That year, it received less then a million requests to pull URLs.

In a submission to the US Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator in October, Google said that the unrelenting surge in removal demands does not influence its takedown speeds.

Furthermore, the company has not complied with recommendations by the US government for "whole-site" removals, insisting that copyright holders continue to report individual infringing URLs.

Google argues that the removal of entire domains would lead to greater censorship.

New regulation and changes to law in the EU, such as the Privacy Shield deal, mean rights holders may yet turn the pressure up on Google further still.

The European Commission has put forward proposals in its new Digital Single Market strategy that could end digital copyright restrictions across Europe, allowing users to access services regardless of their location within the EU.

The changes could allow Britons to watch BBC iPlayer or Sky Go without needing to be in the UK. At present, access to such services as these, as well as Netflix, are disrupted because of different EU states having different copyright laws.

The EC said it would introduce regulations that allow "portability" of online content services throughout the EU, harmonising the laws of 28 member states.

Andrus Ansip, Vice-President for the Digital Single Market, said: "We want to ensure the portability of content across borders. People who legally buy content films, books, football matches, TV series must be able to carry it with them anywhere they go in Europe. This is a real change, similar to what we did to end roaming charges. Today, we also set out our vision for a modern copyright regime in the EU and the gradual steps to achieve it."

He added that the EC wanted to widen access to cultural content online and "strengthen European R&D, using technologies like text and data mining."

The Digital Single Market is the blueprint for Europe claiming its place in the digital era, today we start making it a reality," said Ansip.

This comes as the Commission plans a new EU-wide copyright framework next year that better mirrors and enables people's use of digital content within the EU.

The four main aims of the framework are, first, to widen access to content within the EU and second to codify copyright exceptions. Third, the EC aims to create a fairer marketplace and fourth, fight piracy.

"We want a copyright environment that is stimulating, fair, rewards investment in creativity and makes it easier for Europeans to access and use content legally. Our ongoing work on the role of platforms and online intermediaries will also help to translate our plan into concrete proposals," said Gnther Oettinger, Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society.

In response to the new proposals, Charlotte Holloway, Head of Policy at techUK said that the Commission's thinking on the proposals will have a direct impact for UK companies operating here in the country and also exporting across Europe.

"In the push for a more harmonised single market, it is vital that we harmonise in a direction that supports innovation and doesn't seek to roll back the clock on Europe's digital transformation. UK firms, together with UK Government, will need to remain fully engaged on getting the detail right on what could be important pro-growth pro-innovation policies," she said.

She added that the Commission "must listen to companies to gain a clear understanding of the technical viability of what is being proposed".

"Creative media companies will be looking to further detail on proposals cross-border access that maintain the existing value facilitated by territorial copyright."

Google received over 65 million copyright removal requests in the last month alone, data has revealed. That equates to over 2 million a day, or 25 every single second.

The staggering figures were presented in company's latest transparency report. Among other things, the report lists the amount of requests made by intellectual property owners for Google to take down links to sites that infringe their copyright.

Since 2012, Google has been using this request data to ensure that sites that are frequently targeted by takedown requests are removed from its autocomplete results, and featured less visibly in search results.

Primarily, these takedown requests are directed against online pirates hosting free music and video downloads, with most of them coming from huge copyright cartels, filing takedowns on behalf of multiple artists.

Rivendell, Degban and the BPI the body representing the British recording industry together make up almost half of this month's total requests and have been the top three reporting organisations requesting the takedowns for the last year.

The data also shows a dramatic increase in the amount of overall removal requests made, which has risen by over 8X since this time last year. This is also not including requests made against non-search domains, like YouTube and blogger.

However, while the vast majority of these removals is likely to be due to piracy, there is also the possibility that the requests are bogus. Google itself has recently pledged to help YouTube creators who are hit by unfair DMCA removal claims in an attempt to sabotage their work.

Google has announced it will provide free legal support for some YouTube users whose videos have been subject to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns.

Many of the videos have been removed because they may include a song a record company thinks was used without permission, snippets of TV shows added to the video sharing website as part of another video or other claims.

YouTube said some of these videos have been used "new and transformative ways that have social value beyond the original (such as a parody or critique)." Although in the US some content is protected by fair use, they have been taken down by the original content owners, which Google believes is unfair.

Fred von Lohmann, Google's copyright legal director, wrote on the Google blog: "With approval of the video creators, we'll keep the videos live on YouTube in the US, feature them in the YouTube Copyright Center as strong examples of fair use, and cover the cost of any copyright lawsuits brought against them."

Google will provide other support too, helping the YouTube video creators navigate through the often complicated DMCA notification and litigation process.

The company has released a playlist of the videos it has agreed to defend in court to help other users and original content owners understand what should be deemed as 'fair use' and what may not be covered. YouTube will also develop best practice guidelines, enabling the entire YouTube community to benefit from free and open content.

"While we can't offer legal protection to every video creatoror even every video that has a strong fair use defensewe'll continue to resist legally unsupported DMCA takedowns as part of our normal processes," Von Lohmann continued. "We believe even the small number of videos we are able to protect will make a positive impact on the entire YouTube ecosystem, ensuring YouTube remains a place where creativity and expression can be rewarded."

British ISPs must block seven websites for sharing pirated ebooks, after a complaint from the Publishers Association (PA).

The UK High Court has previously ordered major ISPs to block more than a hundred piracy sites such as The Pirate Bay, but it's the first time it's specifically targeted websites sharing ebooks.

Under the order, BT, Virgin, Sky, EE and TalkTalk must block seven sites within the next ten days - they are AvaxHome, Bookfi, Bookre, Ebookee, Freebookspot, Freshwap and LibGen.

The order comes after an investigation by the PA itself showed that at least 80 per cent of the 10 million ebook files on the sites infringed copyright.

The PA had previously used takedown orders to fight piracy, filing a million requests to the seven sites.

A message on Freebookspot reads: "Publishers Association is going to block this site. I was forced to delete over 10,000 books."

Richard Mollet, CEO of the PA, welcomed the ruling. "A third of publisher revenues now come from digital sales but unfortunately this rise in the digital market has brought with it a growth in online infringement," he said.

"Our members need to be able to protect their authors' works from such illegal activity; writers need to be paid and publishers need to be able to continue to innovate and invest in new talent and material," he added.

The sites are blocked at the network level, using technology originally developed to stop child-abuse images from being viewed in the UK.

The White House believes Google owes Oracle damages over the use of Java code in the Android mobile operating system.

Oracle is demanding $1 billion (652 million) in damages over Google's use of Java to build the open source OS, maintaining that the search giant did not ask for permission to use its APIs.

Google successfully argued APIs cannot be copyrighted in a district court case in 2012, after Oracle first brought the case against it in 2010, but that ruling was overturned last summer.

An appeals court judge ruled Oracle could apply copyright to parts of Java, a coding language it acquired in the mid-1990s, until told otherwise by the Supreme Court or Congress.

Google is now appealing to the Supreme Court, arguing that granting Oracle victory would obstruct "an enormous amount of innovation", but the Obama administration appears to back Oracle, after being asked for its opinion by the Supreme Court, which asks the government for its view in cases of far-reaching consequences.

US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, in a court filing yesterday, disagreed with Google's argument that code does not deserve copyright protection, but admitted the company had raised important points about the consequences of the ruling for software development, according to Reuters.

However, he said those issues could be examined in a separate case detailing Google's fair use defence for using Java code in Android.

In a statement to Reuters, Google said: "We appreciate the solicitor general's careful review of this issue, however we're disappointed with these conclusions."

Oracle's head of corporate communications, Deborah Hellinger, said in a statement sent to IT Pro: "Oracle is pleased that the US Solicitor General has recommended that the Supreme Court deny Google's cert petition.

"In 2014 the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit unanimously rejected Google's arguments that software is entitled to less copyright protection than other original, creative works.

"The Solicitor General's brief agrees with the Federal Circuit's decision and affirms the importance of copyright protection as an incentive for software innovation."

More must be done to create a single digital market for Europe to remain competitive in the global economy, the EU's digital commissioner has warned.

Gnther Oettinger, commissioner for the digital economy and society said that companies operating in the EU are subject to a patchwork of rules and laws across EU member states, and claimed this is holding back business.

"Europe cannot be at the forefront of the digital revolution with a patchwork of 28 different rules for telecoms services, copyright, IT security and data protection," he said.

"We need a European market which allows new business models to flourish, start-ups to grow and the industry to take advantage of the Internet of Things (IoT). And people have to invest too - in their IT skills, be it in their job or their leisure time."

Among the main areas the European Commission (EC) wants to tackle is geo-blocking, where Europeans in one country cannot access services in another EU state, or are rerouted to a local store with a different set of prices.

The EC also wants to bolster cross-border e-commerce, with a focus on SMBs, by taking measures such as harmonising consumer and contract rules across member states, as well as introducing more efficient and affordable parcel delivery.

Today only 15 per cent of consumers shop online from another EU country which is not surprising, said the EC, if the delivery charge ends up higher than the actual price of the product.

It also wants to simplify VAT arrangements. The Commission said it was important to boost the cross-border activities of businesses, especially SMBs.

"The cost and complexity of having to deal with foreign tax rules are a major problem for SMEs. The VAT-related costs due to different requirements are estimated at 80 billion," it said.

Also on the single digital market agenda is the modernisation of copyright law "to ensure the right balance between the interests of creators and those of users or consumers".

Andrus Ansip, EC's vice-president for the digital single market, said that it was time to "do away with all those fences and walls that block us online".

"People must be able to freely go across borders online just as they do offline. Innovative businesses must be helped to grow across the EU, not remain locked into their home market," added Ansip.

"This will be an uphill struggle all the way, but we need an ambitious start. Europe should benefit fully from the digital age: better services, more participation and new jobs."

The EC are due to submit proposals on its digital single market strategy to the European Council in May.

Apple has been told to pay $533 million (340m) after losing a patent dispute against Texas-based Smartflash, which claimed the iTunes creator had infringed on copyrights relating to how its music service accessed and stored downloaded songs, videos, and games.

Although the company first referred in 2013 to iOS apps developed by Game Circus and KingsIsle Entertainment in its argument, Smartflash later decided to extend this to the whole iTunes service.

Both mentioned developers served as defendants in the case, but this was dismissed from the claim in 2014.

Apple said in a statement that Smartflash does not have grounds to claim for such ownership: "Smartflash makes no products, has no employees, creates no jobs, has no US presence, and is exploiting our patent system to seek royalties for technology Apple invented.

"We refused to pay off this company for the ideas our employees spent years innovating and unfortunately we have been left with no choice but to take this fight up through the court system."

However, the jury said Smartflash had a legitimate claim in its three filings, saying it first innovated the techniques to manage the storage of audio, video, game and app files, including the technology used by Apple to ensure the files had been correctly purchased before adding them to the library.

Smartflash originally claimed for $852m (550m) in damages, which was proportionate to the number of iOS and OS X devices sold, but said it was happy with the result. The company has also successfully filed cases against Google, Amazon and HTC, with Samsung its next target for the same patent claims.

Shops that copy the design and layout of an Apple store could soon be forced to change them following a European ruling.

Apple won its case with the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over whether it could trademark the layout of its stores. The firm secured a similar ruling in the US in 2010.

The US trademark covers the Genius Bar, the furniture and lighting and the faade, which gives rivals very little wriggle room.

In its decision, the ECJ said the layout of Apple Stores fulfilled the criteria for a trademark. In that it constituted a sign that can be represented in a graphic and distinguish goods or services of one company from another.

Apple failed in an attempt to trademark its stores with the courts in Germany last year, before coming to the ECJ as a final arbiter. The ECJ reversed a 2013 decision by the German Patent and Trademark Office, which ruled a retail store layout could not be trademarked by itself.

"From this the Court concludes that the representation of the layout of a retail store, by a design alone, without indicating the size or the proportions, may be registered as a trade mark for services," the court's judgment said.

"The Court takes the view in this respect that a representation that depicts the layout of a retail store by means of an integral collection of lines, curves and shapes, may constitute a trademark provided that it is capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings," it added.

"The Court emphasises, however, that the fact that a sign is generally capable of constituting a trademark does not imply that the sign necessarily possesses a distinctive character within the meaning of the directive.

The ruling now prevents other retail outlet from duplicating the Apple layout through the 27 member states.

IT Pro approached Apple for a comment on the ruling but had not received a reply at the time of writing.

The Pirate Bay's co-founder Peter Sunde has been arrested in Sweden after being on the run for two years, Swedish police announced on Saturday.

Sunde, who has been wanted by interpol since 2012, will now need to serve his eight-month sentence for copyright violations.

Four men linked to The Pirate Bay were each sentenced to a year in jail and fined 32 million crowns (2.9 million), but this was later increased to 46 million Swedish crowns (4.1 million) when their prison sentences were reduced by varying amounts.

These fines were specified by Swedish film and music companies who felt The Pirate Bay founders had breached copyright by allowing their media to be distributed for free via the site.

Peter Althin, who defended Sunde during the trial, told Swedish news service TT: "He is extremely talented and I still think that the judgment was wrong...It's about being on the cutting edge if one is going to be successful... But if one is too far ahead it is not always about success. Peter fought for file-sharing and in 10 years I think it goes without saying that file-sharing for one's own needs will be allowed."

After a short time of being offline for everyone, The Pirate Bay is back up and running, although many ISPs have blocked access to the site. However, the website has released PirateBrowser, an adapted version of Mozilla Firefox that prevents ISPs from blocking the site and allows anyone to access The Pirate Bay, via peer-to-peer technology.

The news comes as a piracy crackdown intensifies in the UK. Last week, one of the world's largest torrent search and download sites, Torrentz.eu, was closed down. Meanwhile, David Cameron's intellectual property advisor put responsibility on search engines to prevent blocked sites appearing in search results.

US copyright agency Rightscorp wants to bring its notorious protection methods to Europe and the UK.

Working on behalf of its copyright holder clients, RightsCorp monitors popular torrent sites and tracks the IP addresses of frequent pirates. Once it has a target, it then forces the Internet Service Provider (ISP) to contact the owner of the IP address.

The letters demand the alleged pirate pay $20 (12) for each file they have illegally downloaded. If they refuse RightsCorp will then take them to court.

The agency has accrued over 60,000 court settlements so far in the US, and is looking to bring its successful strategy to European shores.

Sites like IsoHunt or The Pirate Bay are directly monitored by Rightscorp, using software that connects to a downloading user as another file-sharer. In the window of time when the peer is seeding their torrent, the monitor used by Rightscorp determines what has been downloaded and whether it infringes copyright.

Research from the University of Birmingham in 2012 has shown that it takes only around three hours for a user to be tracked by an enforcement agency, and with some adopting blackmail-esque tactics, copyright pirates should watch where they tread.

The last company to attempt something similar was Golden Eye International, which during 2012-2013 sent hundreds of settlement letters to O2 customers. Golden Eye's actions were eventually watered down and withdrawn due to a challenge by the Open Rights Group.

Regarding the tactics employed by some copyright companies, a spokesman for the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) told IT Pro: "FACT proactively protects property in television, film and media using legal matters. We prefer to target those running the illegal sites, not the end users."

Julian Heathcote Hobbins, general counsel at the Federation Against Software Theft (FAST), added that the work of teams like PIPCU has been successful against illegal sites. Tackling the source protects the user, he told IT Pro.

The IP addresses and peer-to-peer sharing information that RightsCorp gathers are by no means solid evidence in a court of law. Only if the recipient of a notice from the agency agrees to settle - an admission of guilt - will they be susceptible to punishment.

What do you think? Is all fair in love and downloads or should there be more stringent rules in place for companies that act like this?

The Government has reminded end users that the legalisation of ripping content from CDs and DVDs does not grant them rights to copy media from on-demand streaming services, such as Spotify and Netflix.

The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has outlined plans to bring the UK's copyright laws up to date, which will see the act of ripping content from CDs and DVDs made legal from June 2014.

Under the current legislation, it is illegal for individuals to copy content from CDs or DVDs they have bought onto MP3 players or computers.

The IPO wants to legalise the process, provided the person copying the CD or DVD owns the media and will only use it privately.

"The changes will means that you will be able to copy a book or film you have purchased for one device onto another without infringing copyright," states the IPO's Exceptions to copyright: Guidance for consumers report.

"However, it will still be illegal to make copies for friends or family, or to make a copy of something you do not own or have acquired illegally, without the copyright owner's permission.

"So you will not be able to make copies of CDs for your friends, to copy CDs borrowed from friends, or to copy videos illegally downloaded from file-sharing websites," the document continues.

The document also states that end users will be permitted to backup copies of CDs and DVDs, for example, to a personal online storage account, but they will be breaking the law if they allow third parties to access them.

Because the legislation applies only to copies of media the end user actually owns, users of media streaming services such as Netflix and Spotify will still be banned from copying songs, TV shows or movies from these services, the report reiterates.

Furthermore, if people choose to sell their CDs at a later date, they will be found in breach of copyright law if they retain any copies of them taken for personal use.

"If you wish to give away or sell a CD you should first delete any personal copies you have made of it," the IPO document advises.

The changes are set to be debated in the Houses of Parliament, but if approved are expected to come into force on 1 June 2014.

"The Government has consulted extensively on these changes and on the draft legislation, and listened carefully to the views of a wide range of stakeholders," the IPO said in a statement.

"As a result of this process, the legislation published today strikes an important balance between enabling reasonable use of copyright material in the modern age with minimal impact on copyright owners."

Box is seeking to raise $250 million (150 million) in an initial public offering (IPO) despite widening losses.

The move follows on from other recent tech IPOs such as Twitter.Cloud storage rival Dropbox is also expected to follow suit in the coming months.

In Box's pre-IPO filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the cloud storage company's losses increased to $169 million (from $112.5 million last year), despite revenues increasing to $124 million. Its revenues have climbed 111 per cent over the past year from $58.8 million. Losses are largely attributed to the firm's sales and marketing efforts.

The filing, which runs to 150 pages, details how it now has more than 34,000 paying enterprise clients and 21 million registered users. The firm is more focused on the enterprise customers and in the last two years has signed up Eli Lilly, Bechtel and Gap as to its services. Paying customers make up 40 per cent of the Fortune 500 and a fifth of the Global 2000 firms.

The IPO should bolster the company's bottom line and ensure it can keep trading until it starts turning a profit. It has already raised $300 million from private investors.

Last year, Box opened up its international headquarters in Mayfair, London, with 110 staff working sales and technical support. Box claims its user base outside the US has doubled over the last few months.

The tech industry reacted reasonably positively to the news. Alastair Mitchell, chief executive of London cloud collaboration firm Huddle, claimed the news was a "real validation of the market that we're playing in."

"The future of enterprise software has well and truly arrived and companies are no longer afraid to try new, innovative cloud technologies," he said.

He added that firms such as Box have "set out to disrupt the traditional enterprise software market by giving today's office workers the tools they needed to get their jobs done and allow them to work securely from anywhere, at any time via any device."

Unsurprisingly, chief executive of rival firm Egnyte Vineet Jain was a little more dismissive of Box's IPO ambitions.

"This seems to have become a trend lately where companies are being rewarded with huge valuations for simply having a large customer list," he said.

"This has created a major disconnect from the traditionally successful business model which used to be based on creating profitability and sustainability. "

Business models with seven-figure funding rounds and 10-figure valuations becoming the norm may have taken pressure off companies to be successful in the present, but it has placed a heavy burden on them for the future, according to Jain.

"It is my hope that Box can become profitable and succeed in their IPO, strengthening the faith in our space," he added.

Twitter is to offer 70 million shares valued at between $17 and 20 each for its initial public offering, according to a regulatory filing, meaning it has valued itself at up to $11 billion (6.8 billion).

Those sales could bring in as much as $1.4 billion. As underwriters have the option to purchase up to an additional 10.5 million shares, that may rise to $1.6 billion.

Analysts had predicted the company would aim for a $15 billion valuation, indicating Twitter is not setting its targets too high in order to foster interest.

It will trade under the name TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange from 14 November. Twitter chose to avoid the NASDAQ, which Facebook had major issues with thanks to technical hiccups.

The $11 billion valuation looks low compared to Facebook, which had a tumultuous IPO last year but is now valued at $128 billion.

The company could raise the price of the IPO if it decides interest is greater than initially anticipated, with the final price expected on 6 November.

Twitter remains a loss-making company, as many growth-focused Internet companies are, but questions remain around whether it can turn a profit.

It has been busy pushing out features designed to impress advertising agencies, including promoted tweets. Twitter may also launch an instant messaging app, according to recent speculation.

The micro-blogging firm has over 200 million active users, generating revenue of $253.6 million in the first half of 2013.

It hasn't gone as far as Facebook and Google who have chosen to offer user images and information for advertising purposes, the latter doing so by default.

Twitter has filed paper work with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public and plans to raise $1 billion in the process.

The social micro-blogging platform, which has 215 million active users and 500 million daily tweets, will be known as TWTR, but has yet to reveal which market it will trade in.

Twitter revealed that its revenue soared by 107 per cent over the last six months to $253.6 million. However, it's not profitable, chalking up a a net loss of $69.3 million - an increase of 41 per cent over the same period.

The site generates revenue primarily through ads but 15 per cent of sales also come from licensing data for analysis.

Twitter recognises that it faces a number of challenges after going public and that it will need to continue finding ways to grow.

"We may face challenges in increasing the size of our user base, including, among others, competition from alternative products and services, a decline in the number of influential users on Twitter or a perceived decline in the quality of content available on Twitter," the firm noted in the filing.

"We anticipate that our user growth rate will slow over time as the size of our user base increases. To the extent our user growth or user growth rate slows, our revenue growth will become increasingly dependent on our ability to increase levels of user engagement."

Twitter may go on to raise more then $1 billion when it floats on the stock market. When social networking arch-rival Facebook went public in 2012, it initially set out to raise $5bn and ended up securing $16 billion. However, Facebook had nearly four times as many users (845 million) and crucially profit of $1 billion when its IPO was filed.

The illegal downloading of copyrighted material is a "minority activity", according to a new Ofcom report.

The study, carried out on the regulator's behalf by Kantor Media, found that 74 per cent of copyright infringements were carried out by just two per cent of internet users.

"There is, therefore, a long tail of casual, low level or infrequent infringers," the report said.

It processed a total of 21,475 survey responses from individuals in four separate surveys carried out between May 2012 and May 2013.

The report, which was funded by the Intellectual Property Office, showed that 17 per cent of internet users consumed at least one item of infringing content, which equates to around a third (29 per cent) of all online content consumers.

The highest incidence of infringement occurred in music, but even here fewer than one in ten (9 per cent) internet users infringed, the report admitted. For software and video games the figure dropped to just two per cent of internet users.

Copyright infringers tend to spend more than non-infringers on legal digital content, the report also found.

On average those that illegally downloaded material spend 26 on legal content over a three-month period, compared with just 16 by those that never illegally downloaded content.

The most common reasons for infringing copyright online were because its "free", "convenient" and "quick", but there were significant differences between the various types of infringers.

The highest volume infringers were more likely to say they already spend enough on content (19 per cent for the top 10 per cent of infringers compared with seven per cent among the bottom 80 per cent) and that "legal content is too expensive" (38 per cent versus 13 per cent).

Others said they didn't want to wait for content to become available on legal services (19 per cent versus eight per cent), and that "the industry makes too much money" (19 per cent versus eight per cent).

Only one quarter of the people who consumed the most illegal content said they would stop if they thought they might be sued. One in five said they would stop if the got a letter from an ISP telling them their account would be suspended.

Ofcom said that no single enforcement solution is likely to address online copyright infringement in isolation.

"A complementary mix of measures including better lawful alternatives, more education about copyright matters, and targeted enforcement is more likely to be successful," the report concluded.

Sony has been advised to spin off its entertainment division as it could help the firm increase its value by up to 60 per cent.

Third Point, a hedge fund in New York, claimed that floating the Sony Entertainment division which includes one of Hollywood's leading film studios and one of the world's biggest music labels, would help the Japanese firm reduce its debt.

Third Point, a $13 billion hedge fund founded by billionaire investor Daniel Loeb, said it would put up 150-200 billion yen ($1.5-$2 billion) to support a public offering for Sony Entertainment.

In a letter to Sony Chief Executive Kazuo Hirai, the hedge fund recommended Sony sell a 15-20 per cent stake by offering subscription rights to existing Sony shareholders.

"Our plan shifts that paradigm and we believe, if managed properly, it could result in as much as 60 per cent upside to Sony's share price," Third Point said in a statement.

An official at Sony said its entertainment businesses are important growth contributors and are not for sale.

Third Point said it is the largest owner of Sony, holding shares worth 115 billion yen ($1.13 billion). Sony currently has a market value of close to $18.5 billion.

Loeb is one of the most closely watched hedge fund managers in the $2.25 trillion industry. His fund is known for building a sizeable position in distressed Greek government bonds last year and investing heavily in Yahoo shares.

Third Point's flagship hedge fund gained 1.4 percent in April, pushing returns to 10.5 percent for the year, according to an investor note reviewed by Reuters.

Five of the major ISPs in the US have begun a 'Six Strikes' policy against users they deem have committed copyright infringement.

The system is the brainchild of the Center for Copyright Information (CCI). This umbrella organisation comprises of five of the US's biggest ISPs - AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon as well as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

The system works by serving suspected copyright infringers warnings. After six such warnings, ISPs will limit but not cut off a suspect's internet access.

"Our content partners will begin sending notices of alleged peer-to-peer copyright infringement to ISPs, and the ISPs will begin forwarding those notices in the form of copyright alerts to consumers," CCI's executive director Jill Lesser said in a blog post.

"Most consumers will never receive alerts under the program. Consumers whose accounts have been used to share copyrighted content over P2P networks illegally (or without authority) will receive alerts that are meant to educate rather than punish, and direct them to legal alternatives," she added.

However, civil rights groups have branded the scheme tantamount to ISPs acting as "judge, jury and executioner".

"These mega-corporations now claim the authority to undermine your Internet access - and want to serve as judge, jury, and executioner," said activist organisation Demand Progress. "Tell them to back off - or that you'll start looking for other places to bring your business."

Other organisations have raised concerns about the scheme. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said such a scheme would undermine the open Wi-Fi movement, " even though open wireless is widely recognized to be tremendously beneficial to the public."

It said an independent body should be in charge of vetting the process.

In the UK, Ofcom's draft code would see users with three strikes within 12 months have anonymous information collected about the which would then be sent to copyright holders. These holders could then seek a court order to find out the identities of the suspected infringer.

The policy had been due to come into force March next year, but was delayed by a House of Lords committee that questioned whether the code, as part of the Digital Economy Act, compiled with Treasury rules.

Google has launched a viral campaign, trying to enlist public support against a proposed German law that could see it and other search engines forced to pay publishers royalties on search results.

The draft ancillary copyright for press publishers bill, which is set to be discussed late on Thursday evening, proposes that publishers could charge search engines for displaying snippets of articles that are under 12 months old in search results, or even sue them for copyright infringement.

If snippets and headlines require license fees ... search engines could (and likely will) simply remove the publishers from their index.

Google has hit back with a campaign called 'Defend your net - Will you be able to find what you are looking for in the future?', which warns users that the legislation could put a stop to easy access to information online. The campaign also includes a video that had been viewed approximately 80,000 times in just two days, showcasing the most important news searches from the last few months of the type that could be blocked by the new bill.

German lawyer Igor Barabash, who specialises in copyright law, told

Outlaw.com the campaign was "pretty clever", presenting information on the proposed changes to the law from a pro-Google' point of view and connecting users directly with the law makers.

Such tactics have been seen to work in campaigns run by pressure groups such as Avaaz and 38degrees.

Barabash also stated he believes Google chose to launch a pre-emptive campaign to prevent the draft bill being brought into force due to the difficulty and time consuming nature of trying to get enacted laws repealed.

"Bringing in the public opinion and therefore putting additional pressure on the government and the Bundestag would be the next logical step," Barabash said.

Mozilla, which derives almost all of its revenue from search engine deals, leant its backing to the Google campaign.

"Adopting such rules may be bad for users and the web. If snippets and headlines require license fees, the ability to locate information may be curtailed as search engines could (and likely will) simply remove the publishers from their index," the company said in a blog post.

However, the two biggest parties in the German government rebuked Google for its actions, saying "it is remarkable that a company would use the public for its own economic interests."

The misinterpretation of rules governing the import of new products into the EU could have disastrous consequences for the refurbished kit market and cause enterprise IT costs to soar.

This is the stark warning given by the chief executive of IT repair firm Comtek, Askar Sheibani, who described the EU's Trademark Rule as a "dangerous" and "poorly constructed" piece of legislation.

The EU Trademark Rule is designed to prevent the import of new products into the EU without the express permission of the vendor that makes them.

It also states that second-hand goods sold within the EU must have been purchased from an authorised dealer from another member state.

Manufacturers are acting unethically and trying to wipe out the second-hand IT industry.

However, Sheibani claims the legislation is being unfairly used by IT manufacturers to clamp down on European sales of second-hand kit.

"If you are a trader and buy a second-hand product from another person and sell it somewhere else, the manufacturer could claim that you have imported that product without their authorisation from abroad and the onus is on you to prove otherwise," Sheibani told IT Pro.

"The manufacturers are acting unethically [by doing this] and trying to wipe out the refurbished and second-hand IT industry."

Sheibani claims to be one of a number of concerned parties from within the refurbished market that are calling on the EU to tweak the legislation, explaining that it was never intended to be used in the way that vendors are.

"I have contacted our European Parliament representative and a lot of other organisations are talking to their representatives, asking for the law to be changed," he said.

Another reason Sheibani is campaigning against the policy is because he claims that it directly contradicts the WEEE directive, a law that encourages people to reuse and recycle electronic equipment.

"The two directives completely oppose each other," he added. "[The Trademark Law] could have a major impact on the industry, destroying jobs and the environment, but it was never intended to do that."

Mike Sheldon, chief executive of used IT equipment vendor Network Hardware Resale, also slammed the legislation for restricting the supply of IT goods within the EU and, in turn, artificially inflating prices.

However, he said the majority of second-hand kit vendors operate within the law, meaning their supply chains should be unaffected.

"This does not change the reality that EU businesses are paying high prices, while manufacturers are selling the very same items for much less overseas," Sheldon told IT Pro.

"The exact same item sold for 1,000 in the UK, for example, may sell for 400 in China, and Trademark Law protects the manufacturer from those identical items being imported into Europe and lowering prices. How does that benefit anyonebut the manufacturer?"

Business software maker Oracle has launched an appeal on a five-year long court case that could see SAP pay millions more in damages over copyright infringement.

A spokesperson for SAP confirmed a report in the German daily Mannheimer Morgen to this effect, adding that "in the worst case the appeal could take two years," adding SAP was disappointed that Oracle continued to drag out the process.

"We agreed to a reasonable arrangement, since we believe this case has already persisted long enough," the SAP spokesman said.

SAP agreed in August to pay Oracle $306 million in damages over copyright infringement allegations against a SAP unit, "to save the time and expense of this new trial, and to expedite the resolution of the appeal," as lawyers for both companies had said at the time.

A Northern California jury determined in 2010 that Oracle should be paid $1.3 billion over accusations SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow wrongfully downloaded millions of Oracle files.

However, US District Judge Phyllis Hamilton last year discarded the jury verdict and said Oracle could accept a $272 million award, or opt for a new trial against SAP.

One of the co-founders of file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay, has been arrested in Cambodia, and could be passed over to Swedish authorities for the alleged breach of copyright laws.

The Swedish man, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, 27, has been living in Cambodia for some time.

An appeals court in Sweden sentenced three others behind the site to between four months and 10 months in prison plus fines in 2010.

Warg failed to attend that hearing due to illness and his sentencing was deferred. He had originally been sentenced to a year in prison in 2009.

"We had a request from Sweden to make an arrest as he had committed cyber crime there," police spokesman Kirth Chantharith told Reuters.

"We don't have an extradition treaty with Sweden but there are other ways to do it," he added, without elaborating. Cambodian authorities were waiting for legal documents from Sweden, he said.

Cambodian website, Khmer440.com, which originally reported Warg's arrest, said he had been living in Phnom Penh for four years.

Swedish subsidiaries of prominent music and film companies had taken Pirate Bay to court claiming damages for lost revenue. Mainstream media firms have also taken steps in other countries to have it blocked.

Pirate Bay, launched in 2003, provides links to other sites where people can download music and films for free.

The group that controls it says no copyrighted material is stored on its servers and no exchange of files actually takes place there so it cannot be held responsible for what material is being exchanged.

Google has announced a change to its search algorithm that will see sites accused of copyright infringement appear lower down its list of search results.

From 13 August, the number of valid copyright removal notices received by the search giant will be used as a signal when generating a list of results. Sites with a high number of take down' notices will receive a less favourable ranking.

Google says this change should make it easier for users to find legitimate and quality sources of audio-visual content.

Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law.

In a statement, Google noted it is only courts to decide if copyright has been infringed, so it will not remove pages from search results unless a valid copyright removal notice from the rights owner is received.

"Google cannot determine whether a particular webpage does or does not violate copyright law," the firm said.

"We'll continue to provide counter-notice' tools so that those who believe their content has been wrongly removed can get it reinstated. We'll also continue to be transparent about copyright removals."

The algorithmic change comes two years after Google overhauled its copyright removals' system, which led to a huge increase in available data regarding infringement online.

Copyright infringement has been on the rise, with the firm saying it now receives more removal notices each day than it did in the whole of 2009.

Facebook reported a drastic slowdown in revenue growth and offered no financial forecasts after its first earnings report, sending its shares to a record low.

Facebook reported revenue increased 32 per cent in the second quarter to $1.18 billion, a hair above the average analyst forecast of $1.15 billion according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Executives from the social network pointed to early signs of success in new advertising services, but the lack of a detailed financial outlook went over poorly with investors hoping for evidence that the company could soon reverse the continuing slowdown in its business.

Shares of Facebook have shed a third of their value since their haphazard May debut at $38. They are now broke below $24.

"The question is, do you get a re-acceleration in the business at some point?" said Oppenheimer & Co analyst Jason Helfstein. "Because they didn't give you guidance, you're going to have to wait to find out what happens."

Shares of Facebook, which have shed a third of their value since their haphazard May debut at $38, broke below $24 in frenzied after-hours trading. The social networking pioneer was the first American company to debut with a market value of more than $100 billion.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 28-year-old chief executive who created Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, said the company was seeing encouraging results from newly introduced advertising services and that Facebook now has a "clear path" to building a strong mobile business.

"Mobile is a huge opportunity for Facebook," said Zuckerberg, noting that the company was investing "very heavily" in improving its mobile apps.

The company, which competes with established web companies such as Google and Yahoo, said its capital expenditures more than tripled to $413 million in the second quarter.

Facebook's finance chief also said operating expenses in the second half of the year would increase significantly compared with the rate in year-ago period.

"At this early stage of our growth, investment is a top priority as opposed to managing for a target margin," said CFO David Ebersman.

Facebook posted a net loss of $157 million, or 8 cents a share, in the second quarter after taking hefty stock compensation charges related to its IPO. That compared to net income of $240 million, or 11 cents, in the year-ago quarter.

Excluding the charges, Facebook said it earned 12 cents a share, in line with Wall Street's forecast.

RISING AD PRICES

Facebook has raced through eight years of break-neck growth that was to have culminated with its May initial public offering.

Instead, its share price has headed south as investors questioned its valuation of more than 50 times earnings and its longer-term ability to sustain growth as users migrate to mobile devices.

Monthly active users grew to 955 million at the end of the second quarter, up from 901 million at the end of March. Mobile monthly active users surged 67 per cent year-on-year to 543 million users, adding further pressure on Facebook's business, which only recently began to offer limited forms of mobile advertising.

Facebook's Ebersman noted that advertising "impressions" lagged user growth during the second quarter but that new social ads, which appear directly in Facebook users' "newsfeeds", were driving up ad rates.

The average price of a Facebook ad increased 9 per cent during the quarter, Ebersman said, driven primarily by the United States where rates jumped 20 percent with the company's newly released social ads.

"It's a positive, but it's still early," said Ken Sena, an analyst with Evercore Partners, about the performance of Facebook's new ads.

"We won't likely be seeing much material impact any time soon," he said.

The stock price is also likely to come under further pressure, Sena warned, from the imminent expiry of a stock lockup imposed on many Facebook employees after the IPO. That could bring a flood of new shares to the market.

Cloud search firm Simplexo has raised concerns over who owns the copyright of documents stored in Google Drive and Amazon Web Services' (AWS) online storage offerings.

The firm's chief technology officer, Simon Bain, said the terms and conditions of services provided by Google and Amazon are a legal minefield.

Bain picked on the part of Google Drive's terms and conditions that states: "When you upload or submit content to our services, you give Google a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative workscommunicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content."

He then went on to express his displeasure at Amazon's user agreement.

Bain gave an example in AWS' terms and conditions, which states: "You consent to our use of your content to provide the service offerings to you and any end users.

"We may disclose your content to provide the service offerings or to comply with any request of a governmental or regulatory body."

In light of this, Bain said business uses should take a close look at the terms and conditions before signing up.

"If you value your creative work, then take a close look and ask yourself this question: are they fit for purpose in the corporate world? The answer has to be no."

Simplexo's decision to voice its copyright concerns comes follows on from its earlier attack on Google, where it claimed Drive users would be forfeiting their privacy rights an allegation the search giant swiftly denied.

IT Pro was awaiting a response from Amazon about Simplexo's claims as this story went to press.

However, a Google spokesperson said the firm's user agreement makes it very clear that Drive account holders retain the copyright on any documents they upload.

"You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours," the spokesperson told IT Pro.

"Your fantasy football spreadsheets are not going to end up shared with the world unless you want them to," the spokesperson added.

Several Wall Street market makers have lodged financial claims, which are expected to exceed $100 million, against Nasdaq over Facebook's botched IPO.

A technical glitch delayed the social networking company's market debut by 30 minutes on last week and many client orders were delayed, giving some investors and traders significant losses as the stock price dropped.

We will continue to do so until we are confident that Nasdaq has done everything it can to mitigate the impact to our customers.

The exchange operator is facing lawsuits from investors and threats of legal action from brokers.

Four of the top market makers in the Facebook IPO - Knight Capital, Citadel Securities, UBS AG and Citi's Automated Trading Desk are thought to have lost more than $100 million from problems arising from the deal, said a senior executive at one of the firms.

Knight and Citadel are each claiming losses of $30 million to $35 million, potentially overwhelming a $13 million fund the exchange set up to deal with potential claims.

Nasdaq also has to contend with the outside prospect that it could lose the Facebook listing entirely after having just obtained it.

Facebook shares ended regular trading on Thursday up 3.2 percent at $33.03, about $5 short of their offering price. Action on the stock, however, has essentially become secondary to the fallout from the IPO - its price, its size, its execution and questions about selective disclosure of its financial prospects.

Regulators including the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin are now looking into how the IPO was handled. The U.S. Senate Banking Committee is also reviewing the matter.

Brokers up in arms

Advisers familiar with the situation said many investors are now finding out, nearly a week after the fact, that their orders were not executed at the prices they thought.

Fidelity, in a statement, said it was working with regulators and market makers on its clients' issues "and we will continue to do so until we are confident that Nasdaq has done everything it can to mitigate the impact to our customers."

Morgan Stanley is also still tending to trade orders placed by brokerage customers on Friday, two people familiar with the situation said. Nasdaq has said all orders were returned by 1:50 p.m. EDT last Friday, but a Morgan Stanley Smith Barney source said it did not get trade information in a "systemic, orderly way.

Late Thursday, the company held a call with its brokers and told them adjustments would be made to thousands of trades so that no limit orders would be filled at more than $43 a share for stock from the IPO day, sources claim.

While brokerages may have received confirmation of trades made on Friday, many were still handling customer disputes over what price they received on the trades, officials said.

The question is "who is going to eat the cost" of compensating those investors, said Alan Haft, a financial adviser with California-based Kings Point Capital LLC, which has $200 million in assets.

One prominent plaintiffs lawyer said what happened with Facebook was reminiscent of the dot-com bubble.

"This is just another spin on the same game of unfair treatment of individual investors," said Stanley Bernstein of Bernstein Liebhard. He chaired the plaintiffs' committee in an IPO class-action suit challenging the role of investment banks in more than 300 IPOs between 1998 and 2000. The litigation ended in a $586 million settlement in favor of the plaintiffs.

Market makers looms

The claims by market makers Knight and Citadel could end up dwarfing some of the brokerage issues, though.

"They are certainly facing the spectre of some significant lawsuits if this pool is not enough," a source familiar with Knight's situation said of the Nasdaq claims pool.

Citadel has sent its losses to Nasdaq for potential compensation, a source familiar with the matter said. Citadel's hedge fund was not affected.

The head of trading at Instinet said it still had no idea when Nasdaq would respond to requests for accommodation, essentially, compensation for the order problems or if those requests would be honoured.

"Were gonna be looking at a loss on our books" if Nasdaq does not honor the requests, Mark Turner said. "We basically made most of our clients whole because Nasdaq told us to go through the process and file for accommodation.

If Nasdaq does not accommodate us we're going to end up taking a loss."

"I don't know that I want to put a dollar amount on that but it's not nearly as significant as Knight's ($30-$35 million)," he said.

Citadel and Knight, as market makers to the Nasdaq, honor their clients' buy, sell and cancellation orders. The orders are supposed to be processed by the exchange within milliseconds, but there was a nearly two-hour delay in processing Facebook orders at the Nasdaq.

During that time, market makers had no idea where their orders stood. And in reality, the price clients bought or sold at was sometimes different than the price they actually got.

For example, Facebook shares began trading with an opening cross price - the first price at which those not in on the IPO could buy or sell - of $42 per share. If an order to sell 10,000 shares at $42 went in at that time, but wasn't filled until later in the day when shares were trading at around $39, a market maker like Citadel or Knight would make up the difference - in this case, at a cost of $30,000.

Nasdaq's computer systems malfunctioned on the first day Facebook shares started trading, tainting the largest-ever Silcon Valley IPO.

After having to put up with a 30-minute delay on Friday morning due to technical difficulties, Facebook shares were floated at $38. This gave the social networking site a total value of $104.2 billion, more than HP and Dell combined.

Shares for the Facebook were up 23 cents at $38.23 after the first day of trading, having peaked at $45.

However, many investors were then left waiting over two hours to before learning about the fate of their orders.

Some 30 million shares were submitted into the opening auction between 11.11 am and 11.30 am, according to Bloomberg. Around half may involve "some level of dispute," said Robert Greifeld, Nasdaq chief executive.

Greifeld told reporters there had been a malfunction in the IPO system, which was "humbly embarrassed" as it was not detected despite hundreds of hours of testing.

"This was not our finest hour," he said during a conference call.

After three technical faults in as many months, Nasdaq is planning to redesign its IPO systems.

Facebook floated 421 million shares, making this the third largest initial offering in US history after Visa and GM.

Shares for the Facebook finished the day up 23 cents at $38.23, having peaked at $45.

EMC chief executive, Joe Tucci, has reaffirmed his company's commitment to the ongoing development of its enterprise content management system (ECM) Documentum.

During his partner day keynote address at EMC World 2012, Tucci fielded questions from the audience about Facebook's IPO, his firm's acquisition strategy and its plans for Documentum.

I think you will see Documentum return to growth, and it will remain part of the company.

The latter is a key part of EMC's Information Intelligence Group's portfolio. In recent quarters, the division's revenues have remained flat, giving rise to speculation that EMC might sell off Documentum.

However, Tucci was quick to deny the firm would ditch the product, but admitted that it was in need of an overhaul.

"It was built as this big platform [that you would run applications on]. If you were an insurance company, you might [use it for] loans processing or other companies might use it to run expense control," said Tucci.

"But that's not the way consumers want to buy anymore. They want to buy more SaaS-orientated [services]."

That being said, the product has an important role to play in EMC's big data plans, stressed Tucci, which is why there are no plans to offload it.

"We're spending a lot of money [on Documentum]. Once you like a plan and have a team you think can execute it, you have to make sure you give[it] time," he said.

"I think you will see that return to growth, probably not next year, but it will remain a part of the company."

On the topic of Facebook's recent IPO, which saw the social networking site valued at $104 billion, Tucci pointed out that EMC was worth more than double that before the stock market crash at the turn of the century.

"When we hit the rough patch [the stock market crash], our market cap went from from $225 billion to $8.5 billion. That's a big drop," said Tucci.

"Look at the hype around Facebook at $104 billion. We were worth $225 billion. We were profitable, though, of course."

When asked about the firm's acquisition strategy, Tucci declined to comment on who the firm might snap up next.

"The one thing I've learned is, if you take any area that we are really interested in, there are only ever two companies in that area that are worth a hill of beans. The rest are just noise," he said. "

"Obviously, if I said that's an area I'm interested in, the price of those two companies would go way up. So you have to do that in stealth mode."

Facebook is to launch an online hub for consumers to find games and paid-for apps, as the company continues to look for ways to make money from its massive audience.

The Facebook App Center is due to launch in a few weeks and comes as the social networking site is preparing an initial public offering that would value the company between $77 billion and $96 billion.

A key concern for investors is Facebook's slowing revenue growth, due in part to the widening trend of consumers accessing its service on smartphones, where Facebook provides limited ads.

In an amended prospectus, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, Facebook said the popularity of mobile devices has caused its number of daily users to grow faster than the number of ads it is delivering.

Facebook described the number of mobile ads it has recently begun showing to users as "immaterial."

Facebook makes the vast majority of its revenue from online ads, although it also collects fees when consumers purchase goods from within social apps, such as Zynga's Farmville.

The App Center will, for the first time, allow software developers to sell apps to consumers directly on Facebook.

Consumers will need to use Facebook Credits, the company's payment system, to purchase the apps and Facebook will take a 30 percent cut of the revenue as it does with in-app purchases, said Facebook spokeswoman Malorie Lucich.

Facebook is introducing the app service to give software developers additional options, but the company expects in-app purchases to remain more prevalent on the social network, said Lucich.

Apps, ranging from social games to music services, are popular activities on Facebook, the world's No.1 online social network with roughly 900 million users. According to the company, 200 of the apps that are available on Facebook have more than 1 million users.

The App Center will feature content designed for PCs and mobile devices. If a mobile app requires installation for the mobile device, Facebook said it will direct users to Apple's App Store or Google Inc's Play store to download it.

The App Center will showcase apps based on the quality scores that users give them and other data Facebook collects, such as how often and how long people use them for.

On January 26th 2012, 22 member states of the European Union put pen to paper on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). In the words of the European Commission, it's an agreement that "ensures people everywhere can continue to share non-pirated material and information on the web," whilst offering the reassurance that it "does not restrict freedom of the internet. ACTA will not censor or shut down websites."

The creation of ACTA has been beset with controversy. There's been a real sense of cloak and daggers about it.

It adds that "ACTA ensures the EU's already high standard of protection for intellectual property goes global - protecting jobs in Europe. Because Europe is losing 8 billion annually through counterfeit goods flooding our market."

Inevitably, though, the soothing words of the official EC language haven't offered too much comfort for those protesting what's proven to be a massively contentious agreement. Already, in the aftermath of ACTA being signed, one senior European Parliament official Kader Arif - has tendered his resignation, complaining that there was "no association of civil society, lack of transparency from the beginning and successive postponements of the signing of the text without any explanation".

So, what's been going on?

In the beginning

The story of ACTA began way back in 2006, as an attempt to bring together a unified response to the piracy of copyrighted work, and the global trade in counterfeit goods. In both instances, the internet, generally governed by local rather than international laws, had facilitated a massive surge in activity, and the idea with ACTA was to put together some tools to combat it.

Given the contentious nature of anything that in any way battles any degree of web freedom, the creation of ACTA has been beset with controversy. There's been a real sense of cloak and daggers about it.

The fact that, nearly four years later, an agreement is being signed tells its own story.

For and against

Sparing the bulk of what went on between 2008 and 2012, the arguments over ACTA have divided, inevitably, into two sides.

There are widespread fears that ACTA is a very blunt tool to deal with internet copyright issues.

The case for ACTA is that it enables, in theory, more effective combating of copyright breaches, counterfeit goods, and less than scrupulous pharmaceutical products. It does it with the aid of a body that sits outside of existing international organisations, and effectively puts in place standards for the enforcement of intellectual property that don't fall apart when they reach a particular country's border.

Those against ACTA suggest that it's become far more than originally outlined. Many perceive it, because of its name, to be about physical goods and their counterfeiting, but the breadth of the agreement's content means that internet distribution is firmly on its radar. Not without some substance do opponents argue that it's bringing in civil liberties concerns with regards the internet, and there are widespread fears that ACTA is a very blunt tool to deal with internet copyright issues.

The European Commission insists this isn't the case. In particular, it argues that "ACTA is not about how we use the internet in our everyday lives".

It is worth noting that one of the earlier drafts of the agreement included the ability to cut people off from the internet. Even in existing drafts, the onus seems to be on the internet service provider (ISP), with regards copyright matters, to take responsibility. In theory, we're back at ISPs taking on the role of the internet's police force. Were that to go ahead, the very least an end consumer could expect would be a bigger broadband bill.

It's not just the content of ACTA that's caused concern, though. The manner in which it has been put together has resulted in loud complaints. Most of the negotiations, for example, have been done behind closed doors, and to this stage, the citizens of the 22 countries that have signed up to date have not been able to scrutinise it and register any form of protest.

For businesses, many would hope that their copyrighted work would be afforded an extra level of protection, although whether that proves to be the case is debatable.

As Kader Arif said when he quit his post: "I have faced never-before-seen manoeuvres from the right wing of this Parliament to impose a rushed calendar before public opinion could be alerted, thus depriving the Parliament of its right to expression and of the tools at its disposal to convey citizens' legitimate demands".

Whilst the public at large hasn't been consulted, though, a 2009 freedom of information request revealed that Time Warner, eBay, Google, Dell and Sony Pictures were amongst those who had been sent a draft of the agreement. Furthermore, a year before that, a discussion paper had been sent to Wikileaks, which published it. An official draft was eventually published in 2010.

Impact?

So how will it affect users, and how will it affect business? Both good questions, but both without a definitive answer. Right now, ACTA moves onto the next stage in its life, where the European Parliament has to ratify it.

Assuming that it leaves the text pretty much in tact, and that individual nations adopt the agreement (which in itself it no given), then its overall impact is still variable. For businesses, many would hope that their copyrighted work would be afforded an extra level of protection, although whether that proves to be the case is debatable. However, for those whose businesses have been damaged by piracy to some degree, the thinking is that there is at least some recourse here.

The ACTA timeline

2006 - Preliminary talks begin, with a handful of countries involved (including Japan and the US, with the member states of the European Union following).

2008 - Official negotiations get underway, with more nations, including Australia and Singapore, joining talks.

May 2008 - The first public sign that ACTA was being considered, as a discussion document finds its way onto Wikileaks. More document leaks follow over the months ahead.

April 2010- The leaks keep getting bigger and bigger, and so in April, the first official draft text is officially released.

April 2011 - The finalised agreement text is published.

October 2011 - The first countries formally sign up to the agreement, with the US, Australia and Japan amongst the signatories. Many others, including EU countries, decline to sign at this stage, but promise to do so in the future.

January 2012 - 22 member states of the EU sign ACTA.

June 2012 - Ratification expected by European Parliament.

The future

There's still some way to go. As ACTA moves from closed meeting rooms to the public limelight, you can, at the very least, expect to be hearing much more about it in the months ahead.

Whether that changes what state it finally makes it onto the statute books isn't clear, but the path to it doing so still features some pretty hefty obstacles.

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has caused more controversy on his Twitter feed, labelling Google a "piracy leader."

Murdoch made the comments on Friday, the same day he issued a tirade against President Barack Obama's criticism of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).

"Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying," Murdoch tweeted, later saying Google was a "great company doing many exciting things."

Google respects copyright - and we've worked hard to help rights holders deal with piracy.

"Only one complaint, and it's important," he added.

Google has responded to Murdoch's criticism by pointing to the anti-piracy work it has done.

"Google respects copyright - and we've worked hard to help rights holders deal with piracy," a spokesperson said.

"Last year we took down five million infringing Web pages from our search results and invested more than $60 million in the fight against bad ads. Like many other tech companies, we believe that there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking US companies to censor the internet."

Google faced pressure in September last year to block copyright infringing websites in its results.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is said to be expanding its antitrust probe of Google to cover the company's social network Google+, according to Bloomberg.

Obama bashing

As for Obama, Murdoch said the president had "thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery."

The Obama administration has made it clear it will not stand for some of the more controversial aspects of Sopa and its Senate equivalent the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa).

In particular, Obama is concerned about legislation that would force internet service providers to block access to websites deemed to be infringing copyright.

According to Texas congressman Lamar Smith, the DNS blocking provision in the bill is to be dropped.

Various tech companies have distanced themselves from Sopa support, some soon after Anonymous threatened to take action against those in favour of the bill.

EA, Nintendo and Sony all recently backed away from the legislation.

A student accused of breaching piracy laws is facing extradition to the US, where he could get up to five years in jail.

Sheffield Hallam student Richard O'Dwyer, the 23-year-old behind the TVShack website, lost his case at Westminster Magistrates' Court, but his lawyer indicated an appeal would be made.

US authorities believe TVShack, which O'Dwyer's lawyer Ben Cooper claimed hosts links to content rather than the actual content itself, breaches copyright laws.

The case was brought by the US Customs and Border Protection agency and no criminal charges were lodged by British authorities. TVShack was shut down by US authorities.

A 19-year-old British kid built a search engine, gets sued by US Government and is now fighting extradition to USA.

O-Dwyer's mother, who told the BBC she was not fully aware of what her son's website did, said Britain's extradition treaty with the US was "rotten."

Some from the tech industry have expressed their opinions over the case on Twitter.

"A 19-year-old British kid built a search engine, gets sued by US Government and is now fighting extradition to USA," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure.

The case comes at a time when the Government is under pressure from MPs to review how it handles extradition hearings.

An independent review of the UK's current extradition arrangements carried out by Sir Scott Baker in 2010 claimed the current treaty between the US and the UK was fair.

However, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has called on the Government to renegotiate the UK-US agreement to ensure UK citizens get equal treatment to Americans.

The case of Gary McKinnon, who was accused of hacking into US military and NASA systems, continues as he also looks to avoid extradition.

An EU court has ruled that ISPs can't be forced to monitor network traffic to look for copyright infringement.

The ruling regards a Belgian case, where rights holder SABAM won a local court order forcing ISP Scarlet to block pirates from downloading its content. Scarlet argued that would require network-level monitoring of all its customers, which it said was against EU law.

It is true that the protection of the right to intellectual property is enshrined in the Chater of Fundamental Rights of the EU. There is, however, nothing whatsoever in the wording of the Charter or in the court's case-law to suggest that that right is inviolable and must for that reason be absolutely protected.

The Court of Justice of the European Union agreed with the ISP. While rights holders can apply for injunctions against ISPs to block specific sites, under EU law national courts aren't allowed to force ISPs to monitor traffic.

"It is true that the protection of the right to intellectual property is enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU," the court said in a statement. "There is, however, nothing whatsoever in the wording of the Charter or in the court's case-law to suggest that that right is inviolable and must for that reason be absolutely protected."

The court pointed out that such monitoring would not only infringe the rights of the ISP's customers, but would be expensive for Scarlet to run, hurting its business. It ruled that EU law "precludes an injunction made against an internet service provider requiring it to install a system for filtering all electronic communications passing via its services which applies indiscriminately to all its customers, as a preventive measure, exclusively at its expense, and for an unlimited period."

The decision comes at a key point in the online piracy battle. Last month, BT was forced to block downloading site Newzbin, while US politicians are debating tougher anti-piracy legislation. The EU, meanwhile, countered that current efforts were a waste of money.

Nelie Kroes set the proverbial cat among the copyright pigeons this weekend with a controversial speech about the limitations of current copyright systems, laws and technologies.

Kroes addressed an event in France hosted by the Forum D'Avignon think tank on Saturday, speaking about copyright issues as part of her role as European Commission vice president for the Digital Agenda.

Her speech questioned whether the current copyright system was the right and only tool to achieve the Commission's objectives of facilitating the consumption of creative content.

"We need flexibility in the system, not the straitjacket of a single model," Kroes said.

"In particular, we should make it as easy as possible to license, not obstruct that process, while making sure that the system efficiently secures the interests of artists themselves."

She referenced the commission's ongoing work towards its legislative proposal on collective rights management in response, and suggested that related directives, including that which levies VAT inconsistently between e-books and their physical equivalents, should be overhauled.

"The platforms, channels and business models by which content is produced, distributed and used can be as varied and innovative as the content itself," Kroes added, calling on the IT industry to play its role.

The EU's digital champion said technology providers should help make the purchase, delivery and consumption of content easier for EU citizens.

"Citizens increasingly hear the word copyright and hate what is behind it. Sadly, many see the current system as a tool to punish and withhold, not a tool to recognise and reward," she said.

Kroes suggested technology had a central role to play in helping artists connect directly and cheaply with audiences and by supporting systems of recognition and reward. She suggested a Global Repertoire database could be used to reference copyright, while tracking technologies could trace access to content and distribute revenues accordingly.

And she cited cloud computing for its disruptive potential for licensing content access on multiple devices.

"I see how some European stakeholders see with horror the arrival of Netflix, or the expansion of iTunes. We need to react, not to be paralysed by fear," she said.

To answer the need for more adaptable copyright models and technologies, Kroes said the current law needed to be re-examined and replace with a framework that was more flexible, echoing the sentiment behind the publication of the UK's Hargreaves report earlier this year.