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New EU IP Law Deemed Harmful
JPMH writes "The Register is reporting on this alert from FFII about a new EU Directive on IP enforcement due to go to the Parliament legal affairs sub-committee on Monday, and full Plenary in two weeks time. The detailed text of the measure was only published on Tuesday. FFII says that without better defined safeguards the Directive will lead to a far more agressive, lawyer-driven legal environment for creative businesses. Having seen how similar legislation is used in the United States, FFII fears that it will provide the perfect means for agressive litigators holding dubious intellectual property rights to "pull a SCO" and use the powers of the Directive to seriously harass and damage small open-source projects and innovative businesses. FFII has a list of MEPs to contact here." The law has been described as a DMCA on steroids. We've reported on this before, but it bears repeating...
The draft Directive is a result of pressure brought by Hollywood and the music industry to crack down on music copying, and by luxury brand owners such as Yves Saint Laurent to crack down on counterfeiting. However, it is now apparent that the main result will not be a reduction in music copying, so much as a reduction in competition and in traditional usage rights. They seem to answer their own questions regarding stemming counterfeiting, yet they still intend on bringing out the laws. Amazing.
There will be significant adverse effects on economic growth and innovation; the European Single Market will be undermined; and liberty will suffer in many ways. What I don't understand is, if they're seeing all of this in their own words (source for the italics ), then why on earth would they bring down the house of cards.
Third, the winners are a small number of large organisations (AOLTimeWarner, Bertelsmann, Microsoft, Sony, Honda, Yves Saint Laurent...) who have been able to coordinate their activities and lobby internationally Personally I think someone/somegroup should ban together and create an international ban on those corporations who are threatening the liberties, and rights of others for their own gain. It would be nice to see the geekcommunity come together via some form of petition, but sadly I could see trollers messing things up/
Anyone care to draft up a legal go to hell for the overseers, I'll glady append the signature to it.
MoFscker
These new 'laws' which are being brought forth are further restricting our privacy and fundamental rights as citizens. As soon as any form of government censorship is instituted on the web bad things happen. Look at China for example and all of the problems which are resulting due to the increasing control of the government. Officals there have realized how the Internet brings forth free speech and are attempting to control it. This goes against the fundamental principles which the web was built upon.
I fear that the western world is headed down this path of censorship and corporate/government control.
/remove tinfoil hat
I think the problem is that we are going to get an international solution. Western civilization will decline across the board.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Drives the final nail in the coffin of a progressive EU willing to stand up to big business. Fine, they're gonna rip MS to shreds, but there will only be other fatass monopolies ready to take their place and this law will reinforce the fuckers.
I'm writing my MEP as soon as possible. (Yes, I am in Europe. Yes, I am in Britain. Yes, I do like Europe.)
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
Underdeveloped countries are the easiest to pressure. Just threaten to penalize companies who hire offshore workers from [insert third world country here]. It's a credible threat. I for one, do not welcome our new "intellectual property" overlords. The more I have thought about it, the more I have become convinced that intellectual property shouldn't exist at all.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
I read "lawer-driven" as "company X has no viable business plan, and will sue the ass off anyone who crosses their line of sight."
What pisses me off the most is how it is business that has become it's own worst enemy. Do you really think the companies pushing this type of legislation care about an economy free of arbitrary government control. Fuck no! They want the government throwing it's weight around, only as long as the government is on "their side." Dammit!
----
"Ours was a free culture. It is becoming much less so."-Lawrence Lessig
If European Software patents are introduced, Europe will be a technology victim, and will be restricted from innovating (dare I say) like other countries.
When will the European governments realise that software patents are/were a bad idea to implement? Will it be after their IT economy crashes? Or, several years after?
As time goes by it will be useful to observe how people will cling to an increasingly abusive state, and to see how many of them will turn on their own friends and relatives to ensure the safety of their own skin.
Meanwhile, for those of us who brave the -1 threshold I'm not even remotely surprised that this topic is being trolled to death. The corporatists have an agenda, and people trying to discuss their options threaten to interfere with their desire for unquestioned authority.
Good Luck Europe.
Perhaps there needs to be a cohesive international set of laws for such matters.
That is what we are in the process of acquiring.
That is the problem.
KFG
Here in the states, at least, the clueless ones have shown a marked tendency to listen to the "expert advice" of corporate lobbyists instead of the layman. So the end result has wound up being the same.
I think those of us who are still alive half a century from now will look back on this period of time as the end of a Golden Age, before The Few Who Must Own Every God Damn Thing took the world back, and the rest of us resumed our roles as peasants. Or I guess it's "consumers" now.
Above all, FFII would like to see:
Disputes about patents and trade secrets/confidential information taken out of the scope of the directive altogether. The draconian measures being discussed are completely inappropriate for such complex disputes.
So does the FFII believe that these kind of disputes should be left to the legal systems of individual member nations then or would the FFII prefer to have the EU draft some other directives to handle them uniformly? Or would any directive on this kind of dispute be too draconian according to the FFII?
It's fine to oppose something on principle but the FFII's alert doesn't seem to be proposing any alternative solution, other than "not what you've got", which weakens their stance IMHO. If they want to make a stand on IP, then they should do so instead of just being naysayers.
to start filing patents like mad. They're the new gold.
The new alchemy, the new "philosopher's stone", is more like it.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
except for those states that have poor IP law
Since you don't tell us one goddamn thing about what your issues with the FFII's statements are-- you just say "it's FUD", but don't bother justifying this at all-- I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you're hiding one hell of a lot of stuff behind those nine words there.
Maybe the idea here is that the FFII's idea of "good IP law" and your idea of "poor IP law" happen to coincide, and what you call "poor IP law" is exactly what the FFII is trying to preserve?
So when FFII blocks this directive snip gpl abuse
This is a rediculous thing to say. The GPL requires a very minimal concept of copyright in order to operate. Essentially, in order to prevent abuse of the GPL, all that is necessary is for the law to say that you can't legally redistribute another person's copyrighted work without their consent.
If you're honestly stating that there's some area where the copyright law doesn't say that, well screw it, that means that persons in that area can make derived works of the GPL in that area and give them to other persons in that area without supplying source. That also means that persons in that area can make as many copies of Adobe Photoshop as they want and give them out to anyone. I think you're going to find very few GPL advocates complaining about this situation. I also think you're going to find these countries perfectly capable of concluding this is an unacceptable situation and fixing it completely of their own accord without the EU implying this from outside by force and with extra conditions added.
I did raise what my issues were with the FFII's statement: didn't you read the rest of the post?
Harmonization is bad. It means "take the union of all of the restrictions and laws that are found in any country and apply them all to every country." One problem with this is that the laws are never completely equal, so, there will be places with slight differences, and these differences will then become the foundation for the next round of "harmonization". That means that things keep getting worse. It's also bad because the countries have "lawmakers" whose job it is to make laws. And they're very prodigious. They can take the status quo and be told by their contributors that things need to be change, and the lawmakers will mount their high horses and propose new laws and restrictions so they can be seen to be doing something and there can be many buzzwords they use to justify this: "doing it for the children", or "harmonization" or "globalization" or "the war on terror" or "being tough on " or "free trade" or "fucking poor defenseless sheep" or "liberty and justice for all". And they will use these words as a smokescreen to cover up the powergrab that's basically being done in the name of the people who give them money. (And btw, I slipped a little joke fake reason into that list of reasons. Did you catch it? You did? Cool, I knew you would pick up on the fact that things aren't really done for liberty and justice for all.)
Ok, end of rant. But, I do think harmonization is dangerous for the reasons stated at the beginning of the post, and I don't even know if people realize that's what happens. Oh well.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
Go where? India will likely adopt similar
regulations to fall in with the US/EU model.
Australia seems to be doing the same.
Europe is about to expand to 25 nations. That
basically leaves Russia, China, the Middle East
(not my first choices of location), countries
in Africa with no IT industry, or Brazil.
To be honest only India (short term) and Brazil
look plausible.
Where would we go?
Countries like the US, Australia and Japan already have or are passing such laws.
Third-world countries and/or totalitarian states aren't exactly attractive alternatives for other reasons, so that eliminates much of Asia, Africa, the Middle-East, South America etc.
What's left? Canada and New Zealand, I guess... What if they cave in to industry pressures, as well?
... between the EU countries. What they want to avoid is the fact that a country with 'lax' IP laws could proof to be more successful than the ones with some kind of EU-DMCA.
The EU isn't 'united', it's a bunch of countries trying to equalize everything while milking the ones with some money left, Germany and France come to mind here (why these countries have to pay more than they get while being punished for not meeting the deficit criteria is beyond me). Europe is dictated by the individual interests of the members, e.g. you cannot afford to buy a decent banana from South-America in the EU because France made sure the imports from around the world except their old colonies are heavy taxed.
My point here is, since everybody is eying all others who might have an advantage, all members are easy prey for the lobbyists. The EU Commission is constantly under fire for not getting the needs of the people but ruling in favor of the big companies exporting the jobs to some Third-World country. Voting this year won't make a difference because regarding IP laws, the lobbyists where faster and have deeper pockets. Remember last year when EU-Citizens annoyed the politicians by demanding things while not paying for a free lunch at the same time?
my 2 cents
The strongest criticism of this legislation has been pointed out by Ross Anderson: Why do we need any special rules favoring plaintiffs in IP cases, as opposed to plaintiffs in all other cases?
Even if there were any good reason for such special treatment, it comes at the cost of duplicating Member States' civil procedure and damage calculation rules, making them much more complicated.
The correct way to do this would be to work within the framework of EU contract law harmonization.
I have a few more comments on my blog, but generally I agree with all proposals to limit the damage from this harmful legislation project.
Lenz Blog
If you want an example of bad practice... just look at how EMI are coming down on DJ Danger Mouse for his remix of Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles White Album... they've had plenty of time to milk revenue from the Beatle's work... in fact most of the revenue now doesn't go to the former Beatles at all but to service Michael Jackson's Bank Of America Loan...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
As silly as this seems, for a banner campain to be even moderately successful, there needs to be a slogan. Something like "free kevin" or "burn all GIFs". Something simple; fewer syllables the better.
Strangely enough, this is just what Janelly Fourtou told us in Strasbourg last week, just after she tried to persuade MEPs that we were talking about an out-of-date draft of the Directive -- which we weren't; and just before she told us that she too has been trying to take patents out of the Directive -- which, according to minutes of recent 'Trialogue' meetings, she hasn't. (Mme Fourtou is the MEP who is steering this through the Europarliament, and entirely coincidentally happens to be the wife of the CEO of Vivendi-Universal)
It simply isn't true.
Anton Piller orders are currently only available in the UK and France ("saisi-contrefacon"). These secret court authorisations of raids for evidence carried out by the plaintiff's own agents are not available in any of the other states of the EU.
Furthermore, after very strong criticism from the most senior judges, in the UK a strict new code of practice was brought in in the early 90s which cut the number of applications granted by a factor of ten. (See this page for references to the detailed cases). The judge who led that criticism, Lord Scott, was subsequently head of civil justice for five years, and is now one of the Lords of Appeal in the House of Lords -- the most senior court in the UK. He now chairs the House of Lords scrutiny committee which has refused to clear this legislation. If he is concerned about the detailed text, then we all should be.
We are talking about unannounced dawn raids by private security firms, piling in with legal authority and seizing entire computer systems and filing cabinets full of documents. That is a terrifying and destructive experience for a small firm.
That is why FFII is arguing that such measures should only be available in the most extreme circumstances, and where there is clear evidence of a deliberate knowing intent to infringe for commercial gain on a commercial scale. Such measures are totally inappropriate where there is no such deliberate piracy, and no such emergency, in cases as complex as those in patent law and disputed ownership of confidential information/trade secrets, which routinely can take five years in court. Such measures should not become automatic standard procedure in all IP disputes.
Furthermore, we think it is simply insane to try to crash through such a major change in the civil justice system -- a truly massive change in the whole legal IP environment for most firms in Europe -- in three weeks flat from publication of the detailed text to final vote in Plenary, short circuiting all the normal three readings procedures of the Parliament, and before even first publication of the results of the UK consultation and the UK impact study.
No, this is not just FUD.
Your doing nothing more than using the US as a scape goat to the EU's own problems. The problem can't be here. It must be someone else, this decade it is the US. Next it will be India or China, maybe even dare I say it and EU country. There is a saying, and I don't remember correctly. a individual person is calm and rational. A group of people get frightened and irrational. That applies to the US. That applies the RIAA, that applies SCO board, that applies to the EU. The trick is getting them to stand on thier own. Look at the EU you have three powerfull countries tell all the rest what to do. Fixing them would be a great start. and Two of them at teaching you to the US as cause of your problems. Nice bait and switch.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
You're missing the point of the post you're replying to. What he was saying was, the right wing in the US is happy with international IP laws which match what US corporations want, but not happy with the UN trying to tell the US what to do. I don't even see how that amounts to claiming there's a problem in the US - it sounds like a perfectly rational point of view to me.