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EU Passes Nasty IP Law
FireBreathingDog writes "This BBC report details a new European Union law that 'allows companies to raid homes, seize property and ask courts to freeze bank accounts to protect trademarks or intellectual property they believe are being abused or stolen.'" Like any bit of controversial legislation, it can change massively just before being voted upon. This legislation, which originally had DMCA-like provisions (protections for technical protection measures on copyrighted works), seems to have lost them prior to passage. (I'm sure they'll be back in some new piece of legislation.) However, it does make "regular" copyright enforcement much more aggressive in the EU, with companies able to raid, confiscate and freeze the bank accounts of those accused of copyright infringement. More information: IP Justice, FFII, FFII background.
Welcome to the UK, how may we abuse you ?
*knock knock knock*
Who's there?
Goons... Hired goons.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Music firms might come knocking if you are swapping pop
Guess I won't be busted for sharing my Australian didgeridoo, german barbershop quartet or christian gangster rap collection.
My lazy clicking finger thanks you.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
From the submitter :
'allows companies to raid homes, seize property and ask courts to freeze bank accounts to protect trademarks or intellectual property they believe are being abused or stolen.'
From michael
with companies able to raid, confiscate and freeze the bank accounts of those accused of copyright infringement.
thanks!
wouldn't have known otherwise!
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
.. this was my idea! You stole it from me! Right - prepare to be living on whatever you've got in the office canteen - I'm suing and freezing your account. Now.. what's the dialling code for Brussels?
So if someone rips off my LGPL'd code, I can march into their property, breaking down the door, and walk off with all their kit :-) w00t! I feel a BIG beowulf cluster coming on :-)
Stick Men
One cultural difference though: in the USA, it's money that's used to corrupt; in Europe, it's sex.
Yes they are elected, and at least here in Finland people seem to vote for the most annoying politicians to become MEP:s, so they get rid of them for 4 years ;-)
(The European Parliament is in Brussels, long way from Finland)
> What is it like to create and then have your
> creation ripped off and given away for free?
Like signing a distribution deal?
Oh wait...
Cooper
--
I don't need a pass to pass this pass!
- Groo The Wanderer -
Lucky for me I live in that bastion of individual freedom: the U.S. of A.!
Hang on, someone is knocking at the door...
Soylent Green is peoplicious!
Traditionally that country would have been America. Go figure.
However, as long ago as 1870, when Jules Verne wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he had Captain Nemo note that the only place left free in the world was 30 feet under the surface of the sea, as even the sea's surface was no longer safe from police states.
Nowadays, of course, all the police states have hunter submarines.
KFG
Amen.
I believe we are humans after all and we deserve rights. If someone came busting into my house, I'll just shove that USB harddrive of mine right up my ass and run! GO FIND MY STASH, OFFICER!
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Of course there's an imminent threat of destruction of evidence. Microsoft has a nice little button installed in Gates's room that automatically deletes every file that has had GPL-taint in the entire Microsoft campus.
So, you see, we need to be able to break into his office before he can even realize it, and keep him away from the magic button, so we can demonstrate to the courts that they've been using GPL code all along.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
I have a (very small) company. SCO has been using my IP. Can I break down their doors now, and freeze their assets? Of course, I won't show any evidence of this, until, if ever, it gets to court. Just trust me on this. =)
> Heck, Great Britain doesn't even have a
> constitution, so if you'll ever say "buddy,
> you violate my constitutional rights" to a
> British policeman, you will probably give him
> a good laughter.
The UK doesn't have a constitution, but it *does* have habeas corpus; one of the few countries in the UK that does. (Although it's been threatened by some of the laws on terrorism.)
However, it's also had enough stupid cases of home-owners being jailed for assaulting burglars while defending their property that I can't see this being good.
I guess the next step is for the burglar to use a public recording booth to record himself singing "'ere we go" or whatever, take the CD with him when he breaks into someone's house and if he's caught, quickly throw down the CD, claim it was there before, and that he's only entered the house to investigate this unauthorised use of his IP..
with companies able to raid
Most unlikely. If companies can raid my home and rape my wife. Then watch me (the individual) how I can fly a plane into the company building.
End of story.
Who are they gonna send? Terry Tate?
Looks like Lucasarts will be able to reuse those old stormtrooper uniforms, after all...
RTFA, lemming.
What the directive says is _not_ that some company's private stormtroopers can bash your door in, whenever they see fit.
It basically says that, given reasonable suspicion that you're running a wholesale counterfeiting opperation, the company can call upon the authorities (i.e., police, courts, government agencies) to take action. And those authorities can take whatever steps are necessary to prevent you from destroying the _evidence_. Including, yes, taking that evidence into custody.
It also says that the company will have to pay for your inconvenience, if you were unjustly accused.
So my questions are:
1. What the **** is so outrageous about that? The police could already do that for non-IP crimes. E.g., if you were accused of stealing 2000 hard drives, the police, yes, could always come confiscate them as evidence. It's just a simple extension of what the existing laws said.
2. How the heck does that justify the generalized whine across 200 different posts about allowing companies to do their own raids? Nowhere does the directive say that. The whole directive just says, basically, in layman's terms "the countries will each provide their own details about how this will be done, but we ought to treat massive scale IP theft as seriously as we already treated any other theft of that scale." (Which I don't find unreasonable at all.)
Rest assured that not many politicians in the actual countries would fill in those details as "duh, just hire your own stormtroopers and do what you damn please." That's the beauty of having 4 or 5 political parties and elections where the "winner" has 40% or less of the seats: none of the parties wants to commit political seppuku like that.
Rest assured that whatever raids will be done, will be done by the police and will involve a warrant. _Not_ some masked private corporate stormtroopers kicking in your door and shooting your TV and dog, like in cheap Hollywood crap.
3. Ditto for the whine about how it lets them harrass innocent citizens. It doesn't. Any company wanting to go on a mass harrassment spree, damn better have very deep pockets to pay reparations to all the unjustly raided.
4. That is, assuming they could even get that many warrants. More likely they'll have to show some damn convincing proof that it's all one huge smuggling and counterfeiting ring or some such, or they'll get jack squat.
5. "0wz0r3d by big corporations just like the U.S"? Oh please. If I remember right, in the USA the RIAA and stuff needed no warrant whatsoever to bully people around. I also think that the mostly USA companies in the BSA ever thought of asking for a warrant first, and much less of compensating someone for their wasted time if one of their raids found nothing wrong. By comparison, I'd say that this directive lays out a much more reasonable framework.
Ah well... I guess it would be too much to ask for, that on Slashdot someone actually does at least some _minimal_ research before posting highly inflamatory falsehoods as a summary. Doubly so when expecting someone to actually RTFA before going into the usual "Waaah! Corporations suck! The government sucks! Heellpp!!!" mode.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
We don't want to sue in the US either... except for the lawyers and those they've suckered into being clients. Oh, and those that watch Oprah, read the Enquirer. Er, and those who live in Orem, Pedukah and Simi Valley...
Come to think of it, you may be right.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!