DMCA-Alikes Sweep Europe

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."

Comments

Re:DMCA Sux

[Frymaster]

the dmca is just a thorn. if you wanna be concerned, take a looksee at the grandaddy of intellectual property agreements the world trade organization's trade-related intellectual property rights (trips) schedule.

read up on it. there will come a time when your petty national law will be overridden by the unelected, unaccountable wto... and then the dmca might look good.

Does not matter

[00_NOP]

In the end it doesn't matter whether this or that member state of the EU adopts the law. Three years after the directive is adopted it is justiciable in the European Court of Justice and states which haven't implemented it in domestic law can be taken to court and their domestic courts have to follow the precedent set by the ECJ.

It is not only the EuroDMCA...

[kaip]

The EU Copyright Directive is not the only worry. EU is also considering IPR Enforcement Directive which would add even more DMCA-like protections to technical measures. IPR Enforcement Directive would also introduce a "conviction of shame": if you are found guilty of rights infringment you must publish the judgement in a publication chosen by the rights owner at your own cost. See a statement by Electronic Frontier Finland on the proposed directive.

(For what it is worth, the Finnish parliament did not pass the national implementation of the EU Copyright Directive.)

Australia has one too...

[chriskenrick]

Even tech literate Aussies don't seem to know this, but we already adopted our own DMCA-alike.

See here for details.