Slashdot Mirror
E.U. Commission Suggests Permissive Copyright Rule
An anonymous reader submits "ITworld.com is reporting: 'The European Commission on Thursday presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry.'"
Copyright infringement still comes under CIVIL law, the record companies can sue if they want.
This is only about EU law, which is eventually enforced by national police forces. i.e. its criminal law.
So all the EU are saying is that for it to be a crime under national law there has to be a commercial gain behind the copyright infringement.
The normal copyright CIVIL laws are still there exactly as before.
This is quite reasonable. If the guys ripping off their stuff for profit, the police can intervene, if hes making copies for his friends, they have to take him to court.
No. they only want to stop the p2p people who make money off it all. The same ones who install spyware with their installers
Learn it. Know it. Be it.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The press release is here (in various languages). Don't forget to read it, and the draft directive, in detail before entering into uninformed discussion based upon a possibly incorrect third-party news article.
Try looking at The EU official website
The EU-15 zone is currently some 378.5 million people. There are another 10 countries currently under consideration for membership which will add a further 74.5 million people. This would make the US approximately 60% of the size.
Even Britain (approx the size of an averaged USA state) has some 59 million people...
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
the USA has around 260million people. That's a lot for europe or other places to compare to
If you check the US Government figures for population by country you'll note that whilst USA is third on the list (albeit a distant third to China and India) that if you go down the list a bit, adding up Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain... that combined they surpass the USA rather easily with more EU countries (smaller ones) still to be counted, and more joining too.
Which isn't to suggest that population is some sort of ultimate metric for the comparison of countries (in any event the EU and the USA are very different in nature, at least at present) just that 260 million isn't as many as you seem to think it is.
I have actually (Oh horror!) read the directive.
The directive does not legalise filesharing, or any other activity illegal under present copyright law. It deals solely with the enforcement of copyright law. A few highlights (or should i say lowlights?):
EU states must give anti-piracy alliances the right to apply for raids where they can seize infringing copies and related evidence. These raids can be granted without the presence or knowledge of the defendant, "in the event of an actually committed or imminent infringement"
It also demands that you must divulge information on the recievers and suppliers of "infringing goods" if you have yourself been pointed out as "a link in the network" of infringers.
Furthermore EU members must allow injunctions against "intermediar[ies] whose services are being used by a third party to infringe a right" (I wonder what exactly you'll have to do to prove that the resources you put the disposal of others will not be used for piracy...)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
> Because a lot of European states, including the UK, do not have any meaningful right of Fair Use for consumers.
In Germany, IRC, it is (or was) not only allowed to make copies of CDs, it is even allowed to give them to people you have a close relationship with. It is (or was) even explicitly allowed to circumvent copyright measurements for personal uses.
The downside is, that in Germany you pay a certain fee for every blank media (CD-R, cassette, MD: 6/h of recording time) and device (CD-Burner, tape-deck, MD-player) to compensate the artists for the estimated losses.
I'm not quite sure about the current situation, therefor "(or was)". I've found some an article, which mentions Germanys copyright legislation.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"