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Domain: ael.be

Stories and comments across the archive that link to ael.be.

Stories · 5

  1. Europeans Still Battling Software Patents

    Yro · Patents · · posted by michael · from the long-haul dept. · 142 comments
    rimberg writes "The FFII in the UK is issuing an alert for all supporters to write to their MPs -- this weekend . In September the European Parliament voted for strong restrictions on software patents. But these could be set aside at a meeting of the EU's Competitiveness Council of Ministers on 10 November. The ministers' meeting is to be "prepared" at a meeting of senior patent officials from across Europe even sooner: this Thursday 23 October. Unless they can be convinced otherwise before 10 November, it is believed that UK ministers will push for the Council to adopt a November 2002 draft text, which is even worse than the infamous McCarthy report. The European Parliament's rules for second reading make it very difficult for MEPs to fix a bad text from the Council. The FFII says it desperately need a lot of letters to go out to MPs this weekend to tell the Government how bad the November 2002 draft is. More information at FFII-UK."

  2. DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe

    Yro · Software · · posted by timothy · from the heavy-linkage-send-help dept. · 281 comments
    D4C5CE writes "The number of European countries enacting their ignorance of the sad experiences from Four Years under the DMCA has just risen to 5, as the Upper House (Bundesrat, incidentally) of the German Parliament on Friday failed to veto (sorry, some press releases are only available in heavily spin-doctored German Legalese at this point in time) and is hence considered to have consented to the adoption by the Lower House (Bundestag) of a federal law implementing the dreaded DMCA's European sibling known as EU Copyright Directive 2001/29/EC." Read on for more on the copyright laws being considered around the EU.

    D4C5CE continues: "Earlier implementations have been reported from Austria, Denmark, Greece and Italy.
    Legal scholars consider the directive itself an invalid "monstrosity", and the German law unconstitutional. In fact, this legislation is viewed as so terribly awful that even from the U.S., the EFF tried to prevent it in a rare intervention overseas.

    Declaring that the circumvention rather than the use of Copy Protection is a Crime, the German parliament threatens to make things even worse by adopting a "second stage" with further steps to impose DRM and additional levies later this year, but unsurprisingly, all of the issues that DMCA-style laws have become notorious for are already there: Overbreadth, overprotection of technical measures, and Chilling Effects aplenty.

    Record companies eagerly awaiting this "lex Bertelsmann" have already caused ISPs to send out warning letters to P2P users for alleged copyright infringement, and are expected to take legal action against individual users of file-sharing networks, following in the footsteps of RIAA.

    Confirming the fears expressed by Alan Cox on Slashdot, computer gurus will soon find no place left to go even on the European side of the pond, and the Free-X "Independence Day" XBox exploit posted by one brave German just in time before this dismal day may well have been one of the very last legal disclosures in this part of the world as well."

  3. Italy Implements EU Copyright Directive

    Yro · Court · · posted by timothy · from the an-offer-to-refuse dept. · 19 comments
    Rozzo writes "On 29 April 2003 in Italy will be effective a new law modeled from DMCA, called EUCD, under European Community directives, which seems a very bad thing :-( Italy will tax also every music or video recording support (cdr, dvdr, videotapes...) often doubling it's actual street price. it's a tribute of 0.33$ for each hour of music recordable on a cdr, 1$ every 4.7Gb on recordable dvd... TV, radios and medias quite didn't mention this new law to the public ... fearing a mass disapproval as happened in Finland. Read more about it (in English) here. You can check the status of the EUCD threatening law. Starting 29 April 2003 that new law and tributes will be applied, and the masses will know about it and (perhaps...;-) react. Here's an Open Letter to the Italian 'culture commission'."

  4. Demonstation against Software Patents in Brussels

    · posted by ryuzaki0 · from the and-grab-me-some-chocolates-plz dept. · 10 comments
    ZooBaB writes "On May 8 morning in European Parliament in Brussels, innovative software companies such as MySQL, Galeco, Ilog, Opera ... will gather with Richard Stallman and MEPs from the Greens-efa Group to voice their concerns on the implications of software patents on SMEs. Eurolinux calls on software developers, software companies, and all those who support copyright protection for software to come in Brussels and to participate to a demonstration at Place du Luxembourg."

  5. Finland Drops EUCD For Now

    Yro · Censorship · · posted by michael · from the war-overseas dept. · 123 comments
    replicant_deckard writes "Electronic Frontier Finland just got a huge legal victory. They report the local DMCA-copy (based on EU copyright directive) was dropped today at the parliament after heavy criticism. So far just two EU nations have accepted the innovation threatening law. Campaigns go on in different European states. They need your support!" cabra771 writes "The European Commission has put up a new proposal dealing with online music piracy that appears to have slightly upset a few people."