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EU IP Enforcement Directive Criticized
wiredog writes "A commentary at ZDNet UK concerning the proposed EU IP Enforcement Directive describes it as being as bad as, or possibly worse than, the American DMCA. Some snippets: 'You want to change the tyres on your 2006 model Ford Prefect? Anything other than genuine Ford tyres -- with the genuine Ford ID chip -- will disable your car. In the brave new world of the Directive, singing ... in public with your hat on the floor would be a crime,... You can imagine how much the police are going to enjoy having to cope with that.' It closes with the observation that "intellectual property is verging on thought crime."" Civil liberties groups have sent a letter to EU urging that the proposal be rejected.
Will this Directive mean that young people using file swapping software via their PCs will be held liable for IPR infringement?
The proposed Directive would not introduce tougher sanctions against individuals downloading the odd track for non-commercial purposes, though it would not stop Member State authorities from introducing and applying tougher laws.
The scope of this proposal covers infringements carried out for commercial purposes or which cause significant harm to the rightholder.
File swapping may be considered a copyright infringement depending on the national law in question.
This proposal only covers illegal acts, where authorisation has not been given by the rightholder or where the appropriate remuneration has not been paid for the use of that piece of intellectual property.
Exchanging illegal content over the internet is an illegal act, or an infringement of copyright if it relates to music files.
Although considerable injury to rightholders can be caused by an individual via his/her computer linked to the internet, it is not in the interest of rightholders to spend a lot of time and money in litigation to catch offenders who are simply sharing a few files with a handful of friends.
The proposed Directive aims to strike a fair balance between the interests of rightholders and legitimate users of intellectual property on the one hand and the wider opportunities the internet offers to consumers on the other, by focusing on commercial infringements or those which most damage rightholders' interests. It is not aimed at allowing the prosecution of large numbers of individuals using peer to peer (P2P) networks for casual file swapping.
For criminal sanctions to apply, the infringement must be 'serious'. An infringement is considered 'serious' if carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes.
Although the Directive also includes references to proportionality, i.e. for the punishment to fit the crime, it is up to national judges to decide on sentencing on a case by case basis.
The RIAA will come in the nii-iiight!
... stop me from putting my pants on backwards? If it does that then count me in.
Is it faster than Chevy's Arthur Dent or Toyotas Zaphod Beeblebrox?
Oh well, I just hope it comes with a towel... and a pint of beer!!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
Hey, I'm not trying to say that no matter what the people want all of the politicians backed by funding from large corporations are going to pass this law...OK maybe I am. But, maybe when this abuse of power and creation of "thought crime" laws becomes a worldwide phenomenon, we'll have an easier time fighting it. Then again, maybe I'm too optimistic.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
of the dictum that if you make enough laws then everyone can be a criminal
I will publish a book called "How to oppress the people", online, in a Wikipedia format. In that book I will describe and detail plans and methods for oppressing free speech, in a simple ho-to format. I will then sue any and all legislators that infringe upon my IP by writing blatent copies of my ideas.
meh
I rember when the CPTEA was upheld recently, it was upheald because the US Supreme Court found that it had been Congress's intention to harmonize US Copyright Law with that of Europe, not the intent to create a perpetual term of copyright.
As much as I am unhappy with the DMCA, I think that the criticism that the US is more unballanced in this regard than Europe is not accurate. Europe has been the leader in copyright terms.
It seems that the EC (European Commission) is trying to create a market for patent and copyright driven businesses by suggesting that they can provide better protection than the US. The US may try to match. the fundamental problem is that:
1: Unballanced protections such as we have today do NOT help produce innovation and will only relate to higher R&D costs which have to be passed on to the consumer and
2: Every other nation in the world will be forced to play this game of "I can offer you at least as much protection as they can."
This is a scary situation. I think we need to fight this one NOW.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
New Euro law could make criminals of us all
Umm, nope. From the EU site:
The proposed Directive deals with the enforcement of intellectual property rights and so it does not deal directly with the substance of IPRs (i.e. to what extent intellectual property is protected in law). That is already covered by an existing EU legal framework.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
They don't make tires either.
I'd be more concerned about InkJet printer manufacturers doing this... oh wait they already do... thats why I have a LaserJet...
Damnit, people, stop outlawing tools which have multiple uses. Outlaw the bad uses and you don't have any issues. I want to copy software illegally. That's already illegal. Now I want to run linux on my coke can. Why should that be illegal? Because copying software is not illegal enough. Isn't legality a boolean? Does it need to be compounded by superfluous laws?
I know the gun thing is probably overused, but let's say I want a high pressure water gun so I can soak my buddy with water. This is like outlawing this water pistol because someone else put bleach in theirs and sprayed it in the eyes of a law enforcement officer. Blinding a cop is illegal, and for good reason. Why make owning a water pistol illegal?
[end rant]send law enforcement agents into your home at any time of day or night to ensure that you are not making purchasing decisions that interfere with their ability to have a predictable revenue stream? Shouldn't any distortion of current laws/regulations that they can buy with their influence be enforced to the strictest letter of the law (including capital punishment where dictated) to make sure that profits are not harmed? Why aren't you all sitting in front of your TVs watching Rollerball (the original)? The Corporate Wars have been resolved for your benefit. Jonathan! Jonathan! Jonathan!
I'm glad to see that the United States doesn't have a monopoly on half-baked, industry-sponsored, wacked-out legislation...
No person creates anything except on the back of an unbroken chain of human culture, all ideas and concepts are the refinement of untold precedents, and the mere concept of defining these as the "property" of individuals or groups is a vile and sleazy attempt to create monopolies of thought.
What we call "creativity" is in fact the process of digesting and reformulating a huge number of existing concepts, ideas, patterns, and principles. Nobody creates anything from a blank slate, indeed the concept of a human being without the cultural baggage of a million years is a joke.
The good news is that any organization that closes itself off from the cultural mainstream becomes as relevant as an artist forever trying to protect that 'one big hit' instead of looking to create another one.
So, while this seems an inevitable symptom of today's cozy partnership between big business and big government, it won't last. The revolution always comes from those, with nothing to lose, who have everything to gain.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
It closes with the observation that "intellectual property is verging on thought crime."
/. I just wish people would quit trying to make parallels to Orwell's work every time they see something that threatens their liberty. It's the intellectual equivalent of solving philosophical problems using Dr. Seuss analogies.
This is a rather crass assumption. "Thought crime" gives the gov't control over what you think; this ip measure is just another over-excited corporate-sponsored piece of legislation. Don't get me wrong here--I don't like this garbage any more than the rest of
I read the article, and all I found was a few sensationalist generalities coupled with unsubstantiated analysis. Why not cite some of the injustices that the American DMCA has caused? Or talk about the long-term economic impact of creating all these false barriers to entry, rather than a few vauge assumptions? Nay, it's simply Orwellian.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
In fact, they could even have the ID chip shut off after a year, requiring people to buy new tyres from Ford on yearly basis no matter what the wear/tear/condition was.
yawn.... have you read 1984? if ford decides to modify their tires in the above prescribed way... what does that have to do with the government watching you? I dont see how the government is involved here. You could make the weak argument that what ford is doing is anti-competitive, but you still have the option to buy a different brand of car, dont you? If you dont like ford's scheme here, dont buy it. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the government or 1984.
Is it just me? Or are lawmakers and governments abroad focussing on creating legislation that protects IP rights (read corporations) over more pressing and populist laws?
People starve in the streets on all continents.
Tons of people not covered by a proper medicare system (U.S).
There are some seriously screwed up priorities in place by elected officials.
The U.S. "liberates: Iraq and what is the first major undertaking shortly thereafter??
Stabilize the country by providing policing and security to it's citizens?
Bring in food aid?
Nope!! Have Hilary Rosen draught IP laws ASAP for Iraq. Keep that technological world leader Iraq in check.
So much for the Iraqi's being liberated. Not counting their oil of course.
Oh brother...
NOTE: I did not RTFA.
This is a general statement about IP Laws and IP protection.
The highly developed, rich, nations (G7 - US, Europe, Japan) are moving away from manufacturing physical products. The companies in these countries will design a product and then contract a non-G7 country to do the actual manufacturing. You get parts made in China, assembled in Malaysia etc.
In reality any country can provide the design and the factories will make it. If the designs came from the countries that now have the factories then there would be no reason to involve the G7 countries except as markets. The value added provided by the G7 countries are the financing, original designs, and then the sales and marketing. The finacial, legal, design and marketing crap is all Intellectual Property.
If there were no Intellectual Property Laws the "rich" countries would end up just being investors and markets into which the goods are shipped. After some years all the money would flow out of these "rich" countries to the countries that actually made stuff and there would be no more money to finance third world factories. But that would be OK the third world would finance it themselves, now being rich.
So it is in a non-manufacturing country's best interest to accumulate as much IP as possible. Since IP is really a legal fiction (physical property can be fenced and protected) The more IP laws you have the more IP you have (in theory, in reality as you choke off the sharing of intellectual property less and less is created).
It is in the US interest to have as many bogus patents and restrictive copyrights as possible. Any country that does not recognize US patents and copyright are denied access to our markets (the only leverage besides military action we have). If a company patents the "method of living by breathing oxygen" it is in the US interest to push that claim and help the company collect money from all the other people on Earth. The US gov. can then tax that income. If all the IP went away the US gov could only live on sales taxes for a few decades as Americans bought cheap DVD players made on the Pacific rim and then revenue would dry up.
By then maybe we could become a source of cheap labor and a peaceful, rich, formerly third world country might locate a few factories here so we common people could actually make a living.
If the US wants to prevent that they need to back up stupid evil companies like Microsoft as they steal money from anyone who wants to use a computer worldwide. If MS Windows went away, the US would get no revenue from a computer sale since it would probably be manufactured in a Chinese Army Prison camp using slave labor and run English Language Linux software written in India. The only income the gov would get would be from the income tax being paid by a minimum wage sales clerk at CompUSA.
Repeat this scenario for all the other highly developed, post-industrial countries and you get the reason for all these stupid IP laws getting passed. They are frightened for their future existence.
If cops had no fundamental understanding of the functioning of a water pistol, then they probably would. That's why we're having the current problem - lawmakers have absolutely no idea how these systems work, so all they have to go on is the info from industry shills.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
There's a magazine in the UK called 'Private Eye'. One of the things it does is called 'Warballs', which is basically sending up anyone who references 11/9 inappropriately as a comment or justification for some action. Your comment is deserving of submission.
Do you expect the world to stop just because of an atrocity on your soil ? How arrogant can you get ? If you look long enough back in time, you'd probably be able to come up with a sufficiently-bad atrocity on every day of the year. You need perspective.
Yes, September 11th was "a bad thing". Yes, you should try to prevent it from happening again. Yes, you should mourn those who died. Yes, you should get on with your lives, and No, you should not try and associate anything you don't like with such an atrocity. Frankly, you cheapen it by doing so.
I don't particularly think this comment will get anywhere on Slashdot - it's a mostly-US board after all. It still needed saying.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Gee, seems to me that a bunch of non-Americans were laughing at us about DMCA issues. IIRC, things like this would NEVER happen outside of the US because they weren't dominated by capitalism.
[ sound of crickets ]
Yeah, I thought so. Now it isn't so funny, is it? So step up and show us how it is done. Show us how to fight these types of laws. Please, prove to us how things are supposed to be done. In all seriousness, I hope you can, because I want there to be somewhere I can move to when things get totally out of control here.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Fat chance. The EU is a huge bureaucracy. European don't even know the names of the EU commissars, and the Commission cultivates the virtue of secret and opacity with a success that would have made Beria jealous.
So public opinion has really no impact whatsoever on the bureaucrats. What matters is the lobbyists. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are about 10,000 lobbyists in Brussels. (I believe this doesn't include employees of the larger lobby cabinets).
Large companies are therefore overrepresented in Brussels. Contrary to what naive Americans can think, established companies love the thick layers of bureaucracy and the entanglements of redtape. Why? Because it allows them to:
1. Keep startup competitors out of their business by making it too difficult to enter the field,
2. Pass their pet legislations through coatroom deals.
Europeans wanted a super-state, they've got it. Oh wait... Cancel that. Nobody told the poor schmucks that they would eventually end up in a remake of the Ottoman Empire.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
I always see people from the other side of the "pond" saying how glad they are they don't live in America. Also many times I've read how they'd NEVER live here and would move if the same thing happened there.
Well its almost put up or shut up time. It will be interesting to see if people actually move because of this.
Note: I'm not trolling here, I am actually interested to see what happens. There has been a lot of talk and commotion from some people about never stepping foot in America because of the DMCA.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Does anyone else feel that this is the beginning of the end?
The RIAA and MPAA are spreading their filth outwards from the US, and trying to make it legally mandatory to implement DRM at the hardware level. The big companies only product anymore is profit, and they're trying to maximise it by elimating cash-sinks like manufacturing and employees. The biggest governments are trying to restrict the movements, actions, and tongues of their citizens in any way they can, and are starting to use those sabres they've been rattling for decades. They also don't seem to believe that their lies even have to be believable or verifiable anymore.
For nearly a quarter century (when I started following current events), I've been of the attitude that it's no worse than it's always been--that it only seems horrific because we're living through it. Now though, I don't know. Every citizen in the "Free Western World" is facing the prospect of being made a criminal, and subject to any punishment their government(s) feel like doling out that day--regardless of any of the things that have been established as basic undeniable human rights.
Frankly, I'm scared for the first time since the Iranian Hostage crisis. I'm afraid the world WILL go out, not with a bang but with a whimper.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Wrong. You need to read the Directive.
Article 21 prevents the use of devices that enable goods to be passed off as authentic *to the consumer*. If you make Ford-compatible tyres that are clearly labelled as being made by you then you are not in breach of the Directive. Even if your tyres fool my car into thinking they are made by Ford (and so the car starts), they are not fooling the consumer and hence are not in breach.
The DMCA is quite different and much wider: it criminalises all copy-circumvention technology