Spain’s Joaquim Rodriguez, race leader riding for the Russian team Katusha, competes at Stage 20 of the 2012 Giro d’Italia cycling race.(RIA Novosti / Konstantin Chalabov)The Court of Arbitration for Sport has upheld the Russian Katusha team’s appeal against the International Cycling Union’s refusal to grant it a 2013 World Tour license.
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”The CAS (Court of Arbitration for Sport) Panel did not reach the same conclusions as the UCI Licensing Commission and decided to uphold the appeal,” said a statement on the Court of Arbitration for Sport website. “According to the CAS decision, the application of Katusha Management SA to be registered as a UCI ProTeam for the season 2013 of the UCI World Tour is granted.” The hearing on the issue took place in Lausanne, Switzerland on February 8, with panel members Professor Luigi Fumagalli of Italy, and Switzerland’s Luc Argand and Michele Bernasconi.The International Cycling Union denied Katusha a World Tour license on December 10, 2012 on the grounds the team had an unclear financial situation and was making insufficient anti-doping efforts. Katusha considered the decision unfair and appealed to the CAS in order to be registered as a UCI ProTeam in 2013.Katusha are one of the leading cycling teams, with their rider, Joaquim Rodriguez of Spain, finishing high in the UCI 2012 world rankings. … Read More
Sports Court orders return of Katusha’s World Tour license
Have Yourself A Very Litigious Christmas: Instagram Sued for Changes to its Terms of Service
View article: Have Yourself A Very Litigious Christmas: Instagram Sued for Changes to its Terms of Service
Four huge corporate power grabs possibly worse than Citizens United
Court-awarded corporate power is growing beyond the world of campaigns and elections, often at the expense of individual rights and Americans’ ability to bring businesses to court.A handful of recent decisions highlight this less-watched area of corporate clout. In two rulings this year, federal courts have concluded that secular for-profit businesses have First Amendment religious rights. In another ruling, a business that challenged its inclusion in a federal consumer product complaint database won and then successfully sealed federal court records, with the judge saying that protecting the firm’s economic reputation was a higher constitutional priority than keeping court records public.In other instances, federal courts have upheld arbitration agreements that customers must sign for a range of services that include daily necessities, blocking people from going to court when disputes arise. And in the patent law arena, a range of individuals — from farmers who want to protect their seed stock to health advocates concerned about privatized cancer research — have been losing to corporations that have patented seeds and even human genes.Continue Reading… … Read More
Six Strikes Anti-Piracy Plan Delayed Till 2013
During the summer of 2011 the MPAA and RIAA teamed up with five major Internet providers in the United States, announcing their a plan to warn and “punish” BitTorrent pirates.
The parties launched the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) and agreed on a system through which Internet account holders will be warned if their connections are used to commit copyright infringement. After five or six warnings ISPs may then take a variety of repressive measures.
Initially the first ISPs were expected to send out the first “copyright alerts” by the end of 2011, but for reasons unknown this deadline silently passed, as did the revised July 2012 start date.
When leaked AT&T documents cited November 28 as the planned start date CCI confirmed that the first alerts would indeed be sent out late 2012, but today the group announced yet another delay.
“Due to unexpected factors largely stemming from Hurricane Sandy which have seriously affected our final testing schedules, CCI anticipates that the participating ISPs will begin sending alerts under the Copyright Alert System in the early part of 2013, rather than by the end of the year,” CCI’s Executive Director Jill Lesser explains.
“We need to be sure that all of our ‘I’s are dotted and ‘T’s crossed before any company begins sending alerts, and we know that those who are following our progress will agree,” Lesser adds.
November 28?
It’s unclear how Hurricane Sandy affected the launch, but it’s unlikely to explain the delay of more than a month.
TorrentFreak has learned that the main problem is to get all actors, including the ISPs and the American Arbitration Association, lined up to move at once. This proved to be much more difficult than anticipated.
Three of the five U.S. ISPs participating in the copyright alerts plan have revealed what mitigation measures they will take after the fourth warning.
AT&T will block users’ access to some of the most frequently websites on the Internet, until they complete a copyright course. Verizon will slow down the connection speeds of repeated pirates, and Time Warner Cable will temporarily interrupt people’s ability to browse the Internet.
It’s expected that the two remaining providers, Cablevison and Comcast, will take similar measures. None of the ISPs will permanently disconnect repeat infringers as part of the plan.
Source: Six Strikes Anti-Piracy Plan Delayed Till 2013
