The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being brokered by the U.S. government on behalf of the entertainment industry has caught the attention of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx. He authored an opinion paper on several topics that include ACTA, and said he was concerned that it violated the legal rights of citizens in nations across Europe.
“The EDPS strongly encourages the European Commission to establish a public and transparent dialogue on ACTA, possibly by means of a public consultation, which would also help ensuring that the measures to be adopted are compliant with EU privacy and data protection law requirements,” Hustinx writes in his opinion piece. ACTA has already found itself in the line of fire from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for some of its provisions.
There are fears that ACTA includes measures to enable warrantless searches of citizens and destruction of devices containing potentially pirated content. Recently in the UK, Junior business minister David Lammy said documents related to ACTA will not be put in the House of Commons library, due to the desire for other countries to keep the negotiations secret.
The European Commission said recently that ACTA will not go any further than current EU policies related to copyright infringement, and dismissed fears that ACTA will lead to border searches of iPods and other gadgets in case they contain pirated multimedia content.
“EU customs, frequently confronted with traffics of drugs, weapons or people, do neither have the time nor the legal basis to look for a couple of pirated songs on an iPod music player or laptop computer, and there is no intention to change this,” the Commission said at the time.
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Result for: multimedia content
Alltel Wireless, one of the US’ largest mobile phone carriers, has announced the the new service nuTsie which should allow users to listen to playlists from their iTunes libraries while using certain Alltel phone models.
Additionally, nuTsie allows users to share those playlists with friends and other Alltel members over the Internet.
The service costs $5 USD per month or $20 USD for a one year subscription and can be accessed from the “Alltel Shop” via your handset. Making the service more interesting, users can listen to the playlists of anyone who is using the service, giving you access to many tracks.
“Our customers are now relying on their wireless phones to provide entertainment as well as reliability,” said Kristi Crum, director of multimedia content for Alltel Wireless. “The launch of nuTsie will maximize the music capabilities on their phones so they can now easily listen to their favorite music from iTunes, no matter where they go.”
The application will be available on the MOTORAZRTM V3m and V3c, the MOTOKRZR K1m, the MOTORAZR2 V9m, the MOTOROKRTM Z6m, the LG AX565, The Wave(TM) by LG, the LG AX8600, Samsung MuseTM, the Alltel HueTM by Samsung and The WaferTM by Samsung.
“nuTsie offers Alltel Wireless customers an easy, inexpensive way to access their iTunes libraries on the go and to hear new music from other users’ playlists and from our own programmed music,” added Dave Dederer, Vice President of Business Development at Melodeo, the company that developed the software. “We’re extremely pleased to be teaming with Alltel to bring nuTsie to a wider audience.”
