EU bank stress tests. In graphics: Eurozone in crisis. Continue reading the main story EU rules say that countries using the euro are not allowed to have an annual deficit of more than 3% of GDP, but several countries have failed to keep to that rule in recent years. Note that Germany, Italy and France were all among the first countries to break the Maastricht rule during the last decade, while Spain and the Republic of Ireland ran surpluses before the 2008 crisis.
Since 2008, peripheral economies such as Spain, Greece and Portugal have run big deficits, because their economies have slumped, generating less tax revenues and requiring more unemployment benefit payments. Ireland experienced an exceptionally enormous deficit of 31% of its GDP in 2010, largely due to the cost of rescuing its banks. Italy, however, has faired surprisingly well. In fact, if you exclude the cost of interest payments on its enormous debts (which the graph does not), the Italian government has consistently run budget surpluses. Send us your feedback. FairShare Helps Bloggers Track Their Content Across The Web; Grab An Invite Here. FairShare, a new site launching today in private beta, is looking to help bloggers keep track of their content online. The free service allows users to specify what kind of Creative Commons distribution license they’ve previously assigned to their material, and uses a vast index of the web to see where their content has been distributed and how it has been used.
TechCrunch readers can grab one one of 1,000 invites by going here and entering the code “TechCrunch”. In many ways FairShare is a toned-down version of Attributor (an enterprise-grade web service that helps large media companies search the web for copyright infringement). The two services share the same massive and frequently-updated index of the web, which claims to search 35 billion pages.
Getting started with FairShare is straightforward. The service will appeal to two very different groups of people. European Intellectual Property Scholars: Copyright Extension Harms Innovation. Ip consultants non profit. A new, non-profit, legal services organization, the Virtual Intellectual Property Organization (VIPO), has opened in Second Life. VIPO advertises that it offers “accessible legal advice concerning virtual property, trade and commerce and the use of real life intellectual property in virtual worlds.”
VIPO is the brainchild of Tamiko Franklin (Second Life’s ‘Juris Amat’). Franklin was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and earned a Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics from Antioch College, and a J.D. and Master of Intellectual Property from Franklin Pierce Law. She is currently Director of International Legal Services for Matijevich Law Offices in Zagreb, Croatia and Director General of the VIPO. VB interviewed ‘Amat’ by email. “VB” is Virtually Blind, “JA” is ‘Juris Amat.’ VB: In very general terms, what is the Virtual Intellectual Property Association, and why did you start it? JA: VIPO is a virtual intellectual property legal services organization.