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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.'"
Ok, let's all move to Europe :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
This sounds fair but I hope the Europeans aren't harbouring any weapons, because if they are, it's only a matter of time before big business whispers in the ear of the military. Next thing you know we've got UN weapons inspectors who can't find anything but have the harshest of 'suspicions' about what the Europenans are planning to do the the God-fearing, fun-loving, democratic nation of the USA.
Seriously, this will not sit well with American companies. It will not be allowed.
I just gotta ask. What was wrong with the old copyright law that needs changing so bad?
Learn it. Know it. Be it.
We will stop exporting Britney Spears CDs as of now. See how ya like that!
Oh wait...
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.
It appears as though they would be mutualy exclusive, which is definetly a good thing. Any Europeans who follow these things know for sure.
At any right sweet if it passes, but it is still only a draft and the Media Groups will be lobying hard for changes so one can only hope it remains unscathed.
37 - what does it stand for really...
The FAQ proposed on the site of the European commission does provide much more information than the linked article...
FAQ on proposed directive
Great! The Europeans are sensible about all of this. Downloading music off of the internet is no different than recording music off of the radio and digitizing it. All music is just sound waves anyway.
I think that anyone that resells copyrighted material deserves whatever the content mafia deems possible.
If the content cartel would just ease up about suing all of their potential customers, they wouldnt have a problem with piracy. Each industry has its own issues to deal with.
Software. Makes $80 billion dollars, loses $12 billion on piracy.
Software activation and antipiracy stuff (MICROSOFT AND QUICKEN) are a hassle to customers. They have to justify their existence in the face of open sourced competition.
Movies. Makes a couple of billion dollars (I'm guessing maybe more), loses millions to crappy divx screeners and stuff. People are buying $20 DVDs buy the handful, renting DVD's for $4, and going to movies for $7 a whole hell of a lot! I find it hard to belive their claims about piracy when they are making money hand over fist. Given to head in the sand syndrome when they didnt allow Linux Users to have a version of DVD viewing software. If a bunch of programmers can make their own OS, then decoding DVDs must be trivially easy (Especially when Xing leaves a key around in plain sight--- geniuses). Region Coding is just a sham. Stop now and youll sell more movies. Go digital in projection screens and stop whining about costs to get movies out to justify delayed releases. Global simultaneous releases will do a lot to squashing piracy. Keep those DVD prices at $20 or less.
Music Industry. Must move away from selling CD's a lot. Must sell DRM-less digital download in the MP3, Mp4, or SHN format. Must convince stores like best buy to install kiosks that allow users to hook up iPods or Nomads to swipe credit cards and get albums for $2 (this reduces payoffs to teamsters and costs to get cds pressed and stuff), and singles for $0.10. It;d be a gold mine and I'd buy like crazy. In the meantime, stop suing your customers, stop peddling locked cds WITHOUT LABELING THEM, YOU DECEITFUL BASTARDS, and ease up on piracy. Lastly, dont pay broadcasters to play songs. Thats got you in a bigger bind than this. Oh, and get much more responsive to consumer tastes and demands. And never again sell a Britney Spears to the american public. Spears will be a porn star within 5 years, as if Christina Aguilera isnt one.
If the music industry doesnt serve its customers, it will become irrelevant. Why do you think that your devoted mouthpiece and IT whipping bitch Hilary Rosen left your sorry excuse for an industry? You guys suck, and we are taking our money elsewhere.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
It seems it's almost obligatory that any crime gets linked to terrorism now days
Whew! At least some politicians are showing intelligence.
US always tries to do the "Good Thing" but goes all backwards about it - ie during the War On Drugs they didn't focus enough on the source of the drugs, and too much on the "end-user", during the War On Terrorism, they are overthrowing political regimes(I'm not saying they shouldn't but thats the wrong way to go about it), while they should be cutting off the money supply to terrorism that flows from America itself. Now they do do some of the right stuff too, but primarily US politians loose focus too quickly.
Lets hope that EU will set a good example, by targeting the source of the disease instead of the symptoms.
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
In the US, the entire political system is based on money from corporations. As far as I understand, the EU isn't quite the same. Who are the companies bribing? Without money, there really is no way to 'put pressure' on anyone, so what's the tactic?
I'm sure most of the 'pressure' is coming from US companies, which begs the question, why does the EU care at all? Profits are only then to be made on selling the CDs and hosting concerts; Is there really all that much money coming through Europe to make it a big deal? In the US, every penny an artist or company makes is eventually going back into the economy, whether through buying a mansion in the Hills, or buying off a Senator. It's not like US artists are investing millions in real estate in England, and I don't think the politicians are quite so owned.
GL
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.
This law sounds like it's consumer-friendly, perhaps creating some much-needed balance, but it really isn't. In fact, it's a broad expansion of current law that's bad for everyone that uses any kind of p2p, for legitimate reasons or otherwise.
Copyright infringement would still be a civil crime so the content industries could still go after consumers on their own, just like they can now -- the proposed legislation would change criminal law. Also (obviously) the existing law covers copyright infringement for profit as copyright infringement for profit is still copyright infringement.
So what's the point of the new law? Read closely:
Peer-to-peer file-sharing services that encourage copyright infringement and make money from advertising are commercial, according to the Commission. "That is illegal and should be stopped," the Commission said. Examples of file sharing services are Kazaa and Morpheus.
Got it yet?
What they're saying: "Criminal sanctions only apply when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes."
What they want to dupe the public into hearing: "You can download all you want as long as no money is involved."
What they mean: "Copyright infringement through p2p services hurts the profits of companies that make large campaign contributions. P2P companies produce highly functional p2p software which has a primary function of facilitating copyright infringement because there is a financial incentive to do so (adware/spyware). This aspect of the p2p business can be used to legitimate government attacks in order to shut down those businesses."
What this means for you: Say goodbye to KaZaA and other useful (meaning large, meaning commercially-supported) networks.
Before conventional notions of "selling content" go back to where they belong, namely the rubbish bin. It's always been a rotten system, paying for art, corrupting both the artist and the viewer. The best entertainment and art are communal, created for those around you and rewarded by status and reputation. /., chatrooms, and autoporn, than they do from commercial media, is the day that the discussion becomes moot.
This is the way music and entertainment (story telling?) work in villages and it's only the urban lifestyle that's made it impossible.
It should be completely obvious that the large-scale entertainment industries are already dead, but they just don't know it. Copyright extensions... piracy laws... anti-copying technology... it's all just pissing into the river.
One example: did anyone seriously enjoy LOTRTT as much as they enjoyed the parodies of it? You see what I mean. The day when more people get their kicks from community-created content (CCCtm) like web logs,
I'm speaking from experience: I used to be a street drummer, and I can say that the kick from getting fifty random people to stop from their shopping on a sunny saturday afternoon and move their booty to insanely loud drumming beats any other form of fun except possibly (possibly) sex.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
From another board
"I wish I could record a day's work and then sell that recording over and over and over to anyone who needed that day's work done for them.
Before geeks invented sound recording, musicians sang for their supper.
Now technology has come full circle, and it's back to singing for their supper--and those pampered, bloated, overpaid Holyweird types are scared stiff they might have to work for a living!
And why not?
Technology has ruined the careers of other blue collar workers--now it's the turn of entertainers, who after all are nothing but another kind of blue collar worker."
Yeah, I suppose buying copies of Win XP for a buck or two in SE Asia gets some money to the Triads, but how is downloading an Win XP ISO from a P2P network making Osama any money?
I suppose when I installed Windows 2000 on two different machines caused some planes to smash into buildings.
--
Every time you download off a P2P network, God kills a kitten
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
Didn't we have a war to get away from Europe?
No. Many of you were kicked out, forcibly deported or fled persecution of one kind or another. The others for the most part didn't have to fight to go.
The "war" (rebellion would be more accurate) was to free yourselves from lawful authority and to avoid paying taxes, not to get away from Europe where (mostly) you weren't wanted anyway.
As an Irish H1B Visa holder in the US, and recalling the pain an expense the INS made me endure, I can assure you that any American trying to get into the EU will be made to SUFFER - and SUFFER BAD!!! (if I have anything todo with it - which I won't).
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.
I believe that was the original intent of Copyright laws: To prevent you from making money of of work that was copyrighted. You could make a cassette tape of something off of the radio, and as long as you didn't try to sell it, you were fine. Same deal with using the VCR to tape something on TV. As long as you weren't making a profit off of your legally made copy, you were fine.
The RIAA member labels are just pissed because music downloading just means that they're not getting their cut. They've set insanely high prices for music CDs, and don't want to drop their prices to more reasonable levels (I'd have no problem laying down $7-10 for a CD, but $15-20 is asking a bit much). With the advent of the CD-R, the creation of a CD and the cost to do so was brought home to the consumer, and they realized that they were being gouged at the register. Until they bring the price of CDs down, file sharing will flourish. If prices are brought down to reasonable levels, then consumers would most likely download only to sample music they don't own yet, and then go out and buy the reasonably priced CD.
I know I would...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
France is already pissed off at having to eat at Macdonellz and having to watch American movies. You mess with their oggs and LA gets vaporized, I tell you true.
Italy? Campaign contibutions? Ah!
We passed that stage long ago, now we directly elect people who have money and power, not their cronies!
(Yes, I'm Italian, and looking for a way out!)
dakkar - mobilis in mobile
This directive ensures copyright/trademark holders a minimum toolbox of legal attacks on copyright infringers. National law is explicitly left alone in so far it is "more favourable for right holders". It is clear that the industry is lobbying to make sure that copyrights are very strictly enforceable all across the EU along the way sneaking in injunctions against services used for infringement by "third parties".
The proposal may very well still be amended on its way through the Euro-parliament.
The EU countries already have laws in place for punishing copyright infringement. (And the copyright laws are also harmonised by directives) What's new is that the enforcement of these laws is harmonised.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
40% of software in use worldwide is believed to be pirated, and 37% in the EU (= loss of revenue of 2.9 billion euros annually).(2)
Worldwide, 36% of all music CDs and cassettes sold are pirated (total sales of pirated goods is 5 billion units).
Can this be debunked?
The same should be asked of the numbers on p. 10 of the directive (pdf)
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
> [...] but the way the EU commission works [...] that individual MEPs can be bribed [...]
You are aware, that the European Commission and the European Parliament are two different entities?
The commission is appointed by the member states (the national goverments) and aproved of the parliament. They are usually not MEPs, but former minister of some national goverment. (source)
But, you are right with the laughable controls over the MEPs.
Still, in past, the parliament has been quite in favour to consumer rights.
(Maybe because they don't have any real power)
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Wow, they have a commission on everything.
I always find that funny, Robbie wiliams who said P2P networks were great, got hammered for promoting "Drugs and Prostitution". WTF/
Anyhow, there are four systems,
1: The controled market (that the goverment loves)
2: The free market (the odd job on the side etc.. not taxed)
3: The black market (selling things that are illeagal)
4: and fraud.
So yeh, I like drugs... , I never quite understood pating for sex? maybe if it was a bit more kinky than your partner would do...
Do I give a fuck about the government.... umm..... nope.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
and to avoid paying taxes
Kind of ironic, considering how much we pay in taxes now...
Anyway, a large part of those taxes were taxes that were being levied only on the Colonies, and were designed to apparently put the colonies firmly in the pocket of a conglomerate of businessmen. Most of the taxes (like the tea tax, which led to the Boston Tea Party) were designed to force purchase of a "minimum amount" of English goods, so the owners of those companies could get much richer, without having to worry about any 'vocal opposition', as the colonies had no representation in the House of Lords or House of Commons. (You might recall "No taxation without representation". It doesn't mean that they were against all taxes. It's just that they wanted to have as equal a voice as any other citizen of England in the taxes that were being levied on them.)
The net result of the revolution was that the government that was to be formed was ostensibly to be different from the British one. Didn't succeed all that well though...
Kierthos
(Yes, yes, insightful, but off-topic as hell...)
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
traditionally copyright law was no different to patent law - if someone infinged on your copyrights it was up to you to sue 'em.
IE copyright was traditionally only a part of civil laws.
Really the addition of copyright provisions to the criminal statutes is only relatively recent (post 1970?). All that's being suggested is that copright law should teturn to its traditional status in regards to infringment by individuals for personal reasons.
Even if this suggestion became law, record companies would still have the right to sue individual non-commercial copyright infringers in the civil courts
Actually..
The taxes in the American colonies were roughly a twentieth of those in England, and were spent primarily on the defence of the colonies.
The Boston Tea Party was organised by smugglers,who were upset that duty had fallen, and their profitable smuggling trade was no longer viable.
The representation for the colonies in the House of Commons was as good as the representation of the average British Citizen in Liverpool or Manchester. Although that probably was more closely related to the main issue.
The House of Lords doesn't represent any specific area, so nobody is represented (except perhaps the church, and landed gentry).
Still, the basic point is correct. The people of the colonies felt that they should have their own local government determining taxation. A lesson learnt by the British Empire, allowing Great Britian to hang on to Australia and Canada simply by giving them their own assemblies.