Slashdot Mirror
Eurorights Launched
LarsG writes: "Eurorights is an european open community effort similar to OpenLaw. The main goal is to provide a central european resource to gather information and craft legal arguments to make sure that the upcoming copyright directive in EU does not become a new DMCA." Best of luck. You've got an uphill battle in front of you.
What I mean is, suppose Belgium has a copyright term of twenty years from the date of publication. Then a work published in Spain in 1985 is copyright until 2005 in Belgium - even if Spanish copyright laws are different. The Belgian laws are not allowed to discriminate against foreign works (that would be some kind of trade barrier).
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The trouble is, most of this stuff is decided by the European Commission - which is appointed, not elected - and its civil servants. A directly-elected Commission might help; or transferring more of its powers to the European Parliament; or transferring them downwards to elected national governments.
I don't really see the need for standardized European copyright law. It would be better to let each member state decide what laws were appropriate for its conditions. That would lead to better-quality, more friendly laws and competition between member states to make the best environment for business. All that the Commission would need to do is make sure that countries don't discriminate against copyrighted works created in other member states, treating them with exactly the same protection as those created at 'home'.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
If we had, we might not have the DMCA now.
Have to think about this. It may be disirable to start such an orginization now.
On the other hand, what may be in order is simply more support to the EFF and the ACLU.
Although there's not mutch there yet. I urge every European (actually everybody) to subscribe to the mailing list.
Sorry about that. The directive has already been accepted by the EU Parliament, and from my understanding it will be hard to make wide-ranging amendments to the directive without public outcry. We're short on time, so we have to get started asap.
This is not necessarily because I share the RIAAs moral values, or microsofts ideas about business ethics, but for media, see above and for software, it could wreck my business and ultimately me.
This is an important point. Noone is seriously claming that piracy is good, or that creators should not be paid for their works. However, these laws and technical restrictions will kill fair use and give the publisher the power to control how we use works we buy.
To mention a few:
Your right to give or lend a book to someone.
Your right to watch your DVD movie on a laptop.
Your right to preserve and keep the books you buy.
Your right to record a tv broadcast.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
We're Sorry, this page no longer exists. Please go to our home page for further site browsing.
(http://www.mpa.org/about)
--
I have no sig at all.
I'm so sorry, that should be http://www.mpaa.org/about/.
The negative feed-back loop here is that it is precisely the Media based MegaCorps, whose brief it is to inform the public, who have the most to gain by these kinds of laws. Funny that they should prefer to keep the public in an uproar about 'Law & Order' rather than IP law, isn't it?
Perhaps I was being too negative before, after all the Net does provide us with a new opportunity to engage in meaningful 'communicative action,' as projects such as OpenLaw and the present one demonstrate. Clearly this is not to the liking of MegaCorp(TM), (witness the 'channel' metaphor in which a certain OS in cooperation with certain Media Corps tried to clothe the Web). We must beware (if there is anything we can do about it) that the digital legislation now being lobbied for, does not have the effect of limiting our communication. This is the major concern, for instance, of legislation such as the Australian censorship laws -- making ISPs liable for any offensive material which may reside on their servers, may, in the long run, make hosting USENET news an impossibility in .au (I hope not!). Remember too, the senior Murdoch exec, who, only half jokingly, described the Australian government as "a wholly owned subsidiary of News Inc."
When you are up against organised cartels like that of Disney, Sony, MGM, Paramount, Fox, Universal, Warner, not to mention the host of other MegaCorps who have interests in usurious IP legislation, individuals (ie. natural persons) will not be heard. Face it the 'citizen' and democracy are redundant, only the MegaCorp and what is being marketed as "free trade" (as if they would tolerate a market that really was free!) matter anymore. Resistance is futile!
My, I'm in a negative mood tonight ... Umm, best of luck guys! It will be an uphill battle.
In this atmosphere, Europe have sent the legal guys back to the drawing board and now commercial corporates and the open source community must collaborate to define new and desirable patent laws. In other words, the European government is devoted to introducing patent laws which will make everybody (well, hopefully) happy.
In my opinion, I think the battle for this lies in the making of reasonable concessions - quite democratic is it not?
Bizar technology?
Which spelling checker are you?
Bizar technology?
This is already happening, but so slowly we don't notice it. Ostensibly to appear more "user-friendly", computers now come with Windows pre-installed, with no Windows CD, just a "Restore kit".
Wow, don't even get me started. When I ordered my neato 3'000 quid Dell laptop (+# whatever for Win2K) I got one of those thingies. Now, this renders this paid for license useless. I have a 5 gig Windoze partition to edit DOCuments on a train ride and was seriously considering a Linux only laptop instead of forking another 100 quid for a W2K upgrade for my (hear, hear) legal NT license. I cannot have a dual boot with that utter piece of trash CD that Dell ships on behalf of Microsoft. A polite letter to Dell on the subject went unanswered, which I consider rotten customer care. And don't even get me started on Winmodems. They suck away CPU cycles and essentially represent a piece of shit software.
Furthermore, you will be forced to watch the adverts (leaving the room whilst the adverts are playing being in breach of the licence you implicitly agreed to by playing the disc)
Man, you're a cynic with a problem. The problem is you're possibly dead on! And that's the precise reason why we have to fight even slight tendencies pointing into such a direction and thatswhy such a mailing list is important as a starting point for all of us to get our lazy asses of the couch and actually do something before we don't even know what hit us.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Nothing here to apologize. You are not likely to get a lot of visitors that get off on dancing coffee cups or a streaming video from President Dubia.
You need basic information on that side and a possibility to get involved and organized. All of that is there and for the rest: So what ?
The directive has already been accepted by the EU Parliament, and from my understanding it will be hard to make wide-ranging amendments to the directive without public outcry.
I didn't know that and consider it even more important to get started now and get as many people (especially the mainstram) involved in issues like
Copy control
Content censorship and
Abuse of our legal system to push an agenda of greed while depriving us of rights which where developed in centuries (maybe beginning with Gutenberg)
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
First for the record: I never downloaded an MP3 (too cumbersome, to expensive in Europe), I watch movies preferredly in theatres with a 250m2 screen and an outrageous sound system and each and every piece of software I use is licensed.
This is not necessarily because I share the RIAAs moral values, or microsofts ideas about business ethics, but for media, see above and for software, it could wreck my business and ultimately me.
But, the development we see in the US is frightening. Computers are driven either into totally dumbed down, copy control encrypted, AOL compliant Idiot Boxes (or might be rendered illegal as a copy protection circumvention device eventually), media, especially movies and music, are turned into a pay per view event, provided you have the properly licensed Idiot Box - or be prepared to learn an instrument if you want music (watch out for books soon to come) and the American courts (well, at least in DCMA related cases) appear to have lost every last single ounce of common sense.
What's even more frightening (and somewhat related) is the tendency to drive us more and more into content control. Your Idiot Box is soon to come with pre-installed censor-ware, or your ISP is forced to filter stuff deemed bad for kiddies or for our spiritual well being (and who the hell decided that anyway)!
In the US those changes came in somewhat at a sneeky pace and - with few exceptions - nobody actually realized the impact of those changes until some courts showed us with a vengeance what this actually means.
This is not to be allowed happening in Europe
Although, I have _some_ confidence, that European legislators and courts value the individual somewhat higher then the business entity, this can change mighty rapidly, given enough money for bribi^H^H^H^H^H lobbying purpose and has to be fought before we suddenly find our self on Times Square just after the Disney Corporation was there for "refurbishing".
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
...instead, it's a windy and involves getting the politicians to understand that there are people (citizens) who have opinions in technical matters. It's not just the corporations running the tech industry.
Keeping
Absolutism is a curse, whatever name it goes by. Rather than raising a petition we should be raising an army - unless you want to see a house of enterprise (thank you Tad Williams for that chilling thought) alongside the other houses of whatever your parliament is called.
People have fought for a lot less.
Aux armes citoyens!
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Would that not create the problem if one company started producing better widgets and consumers flocked to buy products of that company ?
...
Of course it would - solution, legislate ALL companies make the same mediocre widgets, that way people choice won't matter anymore.
Typical European thinking
I do not think that this is able to be done. Badly ran corporations will use anything they can to make more money. These companies routinley find loop holes and ways to get what they want. Eventually all things are ended in court where these companies have the money and lawyers to win cases by just dragging them out for a long time, this is why you rarely see legal battles between 2 big companies, they know it will take a long time and both will waste more money than they can hope to make. BUT companies will easily take small companies and individuals to court becuase they know they cannot afford to fight a lawsuit and will most likley just quit.
What we all need to work on is electing people into power who know WTF they are doing. People in power should know a lot about the internet before they start making laws for it. These people need to educate themselves about the internet and then maybe we can see some laws and regulations that make sense unlike the whole DMCA and other crap laws that any lawyer can rip apart in court.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
What about that law the EU passed? Of course, that has to go through those countries' parliments to take effect, correct?
I figure, the DMCA will be rendered (drifting offtopic) unconsitutional in twenty years when liberal judges will be on the Supreme Court, why? Because now, its a conservative court and with Dubya in the White House, and the Court having numerous judges headed towards retirement....
Anyways, back ON topic. This is a noble cause, and it is an assurance that we do have control in the industry, but then again, there's Open Source
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?