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."

Comments

Re:Innocent

[trezor]

• Innocent until proven guilty is a fundamental requirement of justice.

Oh.. In case you missed it, that is totally irellevant. You see, you are facing the recording industry here, not any agancy of legal investigation.

That they now seem to be given even more powers than these agencies, is however quite disturbing.

Now, I'll have to flee Europa as well.

Re:Constitution vs. freedom

[ReaperOfSouls]

Even if it was a real war on terror, it still be as doomed as the war on drugs.

Nothing can be that doomed...:-)

Terrorism isn't really something both parties willingly recieve or want; where as in most cases drugs are.

It's kinda like trying to cure the syndromes, and not going for the underlying decease.

Or in the case of drugs, going after something that is not in some cases a desease. Marajana has been proven to have viable and in some cases superior medicinal value then some pharma drugs. The real war on drugs is all about pharma companies making sure their profit margins aren't affected at the cost of sick people. Also its pretty sickening that in the US, more then 50% of imates in our prisons are there on drug convictions, most for mere possesion.