EU body aims to settle web piracy disputes

Copyright holders, Internet service providers and online companies such as Yahoo are to come together in Brussels next September in the first step towards settling apparently irreconcilable differences over piracy.

The European Commission laid out plans for an “alliance” of creative artists, publishers and digital businesses owners, who continue to be at odds over intellectual property rights. The body, which has yet to be given a name, will meet for the first time in late September to try to thrash out solutions to disputes over payment-collection systems and, particularly, enforcement action against piracy. The planned alliance was one of few concrete steps to come out of the Commission’s Digital Agenda Assembly in Brussels last week, a wide-ranging effort to co-ordinate information technologies across the European Union.