Slashdot Mirror
EU Poised to Attack P2P File-Sharers
Robin Gross of IP Justice writes "The EU is about to vote on a controversial piece of legislation that targets P2P file-sharing and other non-commercial infringements.
The EU Intellectual Property Rights Directive creates a 'nuclear weapons' of
law enforcement tools for intellectual property holders. It
combines the most extreme enforcement provisions
found throughout Europe and imposes them collectively onto all of
Europe, for example England's Anton
Pillar orders that permit recording industry executives to
raid and ransack the homes of alleged users of file-sharing software or
it's Mareva injunctions that
freeze a defendant's bank accounts without a
hearing. The vote in the EU plenary will likely be March 11, 2004
- watch the CODE site for
developments."
When I saw in Lessig's blog what presidential candidate Mr Kerry has to say about enforcing IP rights I really shuddered.
Look at: Lessig blog entry and Kerry about technology
You can defy gravity... for a short time
The EU is even more extreme in its introduced laws then the US because of the far greater number of political parties. Fortunally we also got far more parties that will therefore be opposed to the more extreme proposals. Not like the US were at times one or the other party is supposed to be in control.
So yes we should be worried about this proposal but if democracy still works then it will fail as with similar proposals before. Europe may not get much done but they have succeeded so far in getting a lot of things not done. Including people not getting sentenced because the european of human rights overturns national laws that slipped through. And given its track record so far that court would never hold up a case based on this. Long live the lawyers eh.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Quoting the article:
According to reports of EU negotiations, the directive will no longer attempt to exceed its jurisdiction by creating criminal law sanctions (Article 20) and the right of information (Article 9) will be limited to "appropriate court cases" to ensure that a case has been filed before personal information is forcibly disclosed. Together with an exclusion of (Article 21's) ban on technical devices, these changes would mark an improvement in the directive's overall handling of consumer rights.