Amendments to the Copyright Act

Big change to the Copyright Act has been announced on a website of Ministry of Culture. It’s still a proposal, now it’s going to be discussed, firstly among governmental bodies then in public consultations.

This bill is aimed at implementation to the Polish copyright and patent law provisions of the Directive 2004/48/EC on the enforcement of intellectual property rights.

It contains a lot of changes including :

• protection by provisional and precautional measures such as injunctions
• new correcting measures
• poorly worded and thus ineffective provisions related to cracking of computer programs

Poland introduces 2-year data retention for telecom operators.

Poland has a new law introducing mandatory telephony data retention for 2 years. The Telecommunications Act has been amended after short discussion about the necessity an scope of data retention. These rapid changes are declared to be a measure of protection against terrorism , but also the well-known fact is that new Government formed by Law and Justice Party believe that telephone billings may help in politics ;-) You can find more on discussion here.

The two years period is said to be a “compromise”. The original proposal was 15 years, which was clearly against the European law.

New, amended article 165 states that :

Article 165. 1. The operator of a public telecommunications network or the Provider of

publicly available telecommunications services which processes transmission data concerning

subscribers and end users is obliged, owing to the performing by authorized bodies of national

defence and security and public safety and order related tasks and duties, to store this data for

24 months.

(..)

After this time, the transmission data is deleted or anonymized by the operator of

a public telecommunications network or the Provider of publicly available

telecommunications services which stores it.

(..)

2. The processing of transmission data necessary for charging subscriber fees and interoperator

clearings is permissible:

1) after the prior notification of the event to the subscriber or end user with regard to the

type of transmission data that is to be processed by the Provider of publicly available

telecommunications services, and with regard to the scope of this processing;

2) until the end of the period referred to in Article 108 (2) only.

3. The Provider of publicly available telecommunications services shall inform the subscriber

or end user with regard to the type of transmission data which is to be processed, as well as

with regard to the period of this processing for marketing telecommunications services or

providing value added services.

4. The Provider of a publicly available telecommunications service may process the

transmission data referred to in Paragraph 3 in the scope and period necessary for marketing

telecommunications services or providing value added services, in the event of the subscriber

or end user consenting to it.

5. Entities authorized to charge fees by the public telecommunications network operators and

Providers of publicly available telecommunications services to manage telecommunications

network traffic, perform customer support, manage the financial abuse detection system,

telecommunications services marketing or to provide value added services, are entitled to

process the transmission data under Paragraphs 1-4. These entities may process transmission

data only in the event of it being necessary to the performance of the aforementioned actions.

English translation of the 'old law' also might be helpful.