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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.
from the article: But late amendments added to the law limited who intellectual property owners could take action against and what penalties they could apply.
This would be just great if companies like SCO get to have this power. The average politition may not realise what their new 'core business' consists of, and give them the keys to the IP city. In 16 months time will it be a common sight to see 'SCOrm Troopers' busting through windows of offices and razing them?
It's bad enough with the government departments doing this, but profit based companies? Shit, this is scary stuff
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
*knock knock knock*
Who's there?
Goons... Hired goons.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Here's some more information.
Underholdning.info
with companies able to raid, confiscate and freeze the bank accounts of those accused of copyright infringement.
Maybe one can use this against GPL violations. What does the legislation say about when, oh, Phillips or Vivendi might be violating GPL terms? Can we have their assets frozen?
Since your not going to rtfa, ill drop the highlights.
["Before the vote, critics said the law was flawed as it applied the same penalties to both professional counterfeiters and consumers." But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home."]
["The European law was shepherded through the European Parliament by MEP Janelly Fourtou, wife of Jean-Rene Fourtou who is boss of media giant Vivendi Universal. "]
["One amendment said action should not be taken against consumers who download music "in good faith" for their own use."]
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.
All references to commercial piracy have been removed. It does apply to non-commercial copyright violations now.
"The European law was shepherded through the European Parliament by MEP Janelly Fourtou, wife of Jean-Rene Fourtou who is boss of media giant Vivendi Universal."
Tom.
Oh arse
which gives the member states a framework for new laws that have to be put into legislation within a certain time frame (2 years). So there is still hope that individual states will have less stringent laws than the directive calls for. Although there may also be states that will have far more stringent laws.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
.. 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 exactly *why* are private parties given these rights? Shouldn't they be reserved for the "authorities" after a claim has been acertained as legitimate? What would this mean for a company like SCO that seems to have no real evidence for a claim of IP violation? Could they just use this bill against anyone they *claim* violated IP?
Looks to me like there's no escaping the soul-crushing, draconian corporate police state that's almost (if not already) here in everything but name.
Isn't there any country out there with the balls to refuse to give in to shit like this that isn't already a police state of some kind??
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
From the article:
"During the debates, the directive was widened to cover any infringement of intellectual property.
The directive 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."
Time to get some obscure patents or copyrighted material, let it find its way into commercial and government use, and then use the law to raid the business and government offices and seize their assets.
The article states:
The directive 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.
Is this correct? Are companies going to be granted powers that had been restricted to law-enforcement (for good reasons) up until now?
Will Kodak be able to raid Sony to protect it's intellectual property?
There should be one penalty for both the little guy and the big guy - the law should not be a respecter of persons.
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
It's called the European Union Copyright Directive and it was enacted into the national law of many member states last year. Imagine the fun if the worst provisions of this Directive get adopted into national law (they may not necessarily be so enacted) and the EU caves in over software patents - could a programmer's bank account be frozen and his house be raided at midnight for unkonwingly infringing a trivial and obvious patent? As has been remarked round these parts, George Orwell was right but out by 20 years...
I have not read the full suggestion yet, but all these laws that allows a company to take police actions makes me begin wondering... What would happen if I created a recording company, published a single song and began raiding political offices and homes as we have "Proof" of them sharing our intellectual property? And raiding ISP to take their servers? This seems to me like they are writing away an important part of the legal security and this is something to be very very affraid of when it begins happening. Giving a company the power of the police (intrusion etc) is never a good thing.
This has no relevance to parent post whatsoever, but it needs to be said and read.
These new laws, which probably will be passed, may have some nasty DMCA like tendencies, but there are good news as well.
It will outloaw technological measures to prevent free trade (like DVD-zones). It's not all to the record/movie-business.
Even if this law, I must admit, is the lowest I've ever seen the EU crawl for the industry.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
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!
I wonder if local authorities will allow non-official parties to enter your house without official government permission. The EU can decide this, but local authorities can still overrule it, AFAIK. But, IANAL.
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
Have been able to do it for hundreds of years. Their powers are greater than those of the Police. Nothing like the threat of a bit of tax evasion or smuggling to have the government breaking down your doors freezing your bank accounts and seizing your assets.
The reason I mentioned customs is that they handle fakes, counterfeiting etc here.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
One important detail that seems to have been missed out of the summary... (from the linked BBC article)
"But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home."
Being an European myself, I'm not surprised. Europe as such had always less serious approach to habeas corpus than America. In many European countries, police needs no warrant to search & seize private property. Police is not obliged to read the arrested person "his Miranda". When you are arrested in Europe and you'll say "hey! I have a right to make a phone call", the policeman is quite likely to say "no, you don't - you're watching too much American flicks". And he might be right. Of course, one can name many violations of individual freedom in the USA (especially in the past), but they are a violation of something that exists at least in theory. In Europe, it might not even be in theory, not to mention reality. 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.
;-)), but that's because I am very much concerned by the direction the EU is turning to. But I want to emphasize the fact, that while "hey, it's against habeas corpus!" is still a valid argument in the USA (even if it will be overruled by the "what's good for RIAA/MPAA is good for everyone", also known as the Zero Amendment) - in Europe it might not even be a valid argument at all.
One cannot forget that many European states had experiences with fascism, communism and other authoritarianisms. The lawmakers and administrators creating the democratic Germany and Austria had often Nazi or even SS past - like the infamous Theodor Oberlander or Kurt Waldheim. But similar affairs of the "Vichy past" were striking the French public life, and actually the Spanish "Guardia Civil" is exactly the same formation known as "death troops" during the Franco regime - they didn't even bother to change the name. The authoritarian past in Europe is not that distant - Spain, Portugal and Greece ended their dictatorships as late as in mid-1970's. Now Europe accepts fresh crop of authotirtarians from the post-communist states. The people who once sent other people to gulag and confiscated their "bourgeois property" will be the lawmakers in Strasbourg and Brussels. Along with the people who sent other people to "gaskammers" and confiscated their "Jewish property".
Yes, I am exaggerating (and maybe even flamebaiting
Actually, a lot of deals have a negative net value. You sell the rights to your music for what amounts to a loan. They give you an advance, but that, and things like marketting, recording studio time, CD pressing costs, and breakages (calculated from the losses caused by records breaking) are deducted from the bands cut of the royalties. A lot of people will find themselves in debt to a record company after a fairly succesful album.
"But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home."
... which brings up the ultimate goal of these disgusting cartels. If and when they get their way, there will be no place for us to move to. We'll all be equally beneath their heel.
One important detail got left out of your post.
This applies ONLY to freezing bank accounts and doing background checks.
They CAN still break down your door for suspected copyright infringement at the personal level. This includes trading cassette tapes, as college students have been doing for thirty years.
I predicted that, in the day of the Internet and digital media, either the copyright and patent regimes would have to weakened if not scrapped, or draconian laws that would make the former Soviet Union look liberal would have to be enacted.
Looks like we've chosen the stalinist route: Communism^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Capitalism over Freedom.
Nice going Europe. Scratch another place to move to
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
This same article says that no action may be taken against consumers who act in "good faith" and download music. Of course, we must see how this works out...
Making legislation to protect copyright rights is okay for me, making legislation to limit the use of legally licensed (equals bought) copyrighted material is what's really wrong.
I know exactly what it feels like. I am a practicing illustrator, and copyright is my bread and butter. Until computers transformed anyone with a copy of Photoshop into an "artist" and anyone with an HTML editor a "publisher", your could not exist as a professional without a firm understanding of copyright law. There were few abuses as a result. Since the revolution, theft of images is commonplace. However, as a fledgling illustrator with little to lose but my pride, I braved the web early and learned a lot about intellectual property and business. I learned:
1) Most people are decent and generally ask permission before reproducing my graphics
2) Many people are ignorant of copyright law altogether, but they are not the ones you need worry about
3) Contracts don't mean dink unless you can afford a good attorney
4) The best protection from those who steal intellectual property is your intellect itself. That is, I feel secure that I will survive as an artist even if one of my pieces is reproduced illegally. I can, after all, always make create more work. So I am not militant about copyright enforcement. Trespasses are rare, and do as much to promote my work as they diminish it.
The crooks, on the other hand, need to keep stealing to survive. Those with the most interest in copyright are the non-creators, whose only substinence is their parasitical relationship with creative people. They deal in commodities, exploiting the works of others, and without copyright protection they have no product at all.
Copyright is useful to an artist in the sense that it can permit us to make enough money to do our work full-time. A copyright is actually a bundle of rights, which can be parcelled out to various publishers for far more money than any one publisher is likely to pay. But copyright laws that are two restrictive can also hamper creativity and induce laziness. Personally, I'd love to see the stupid Sonny Bono act (the name says it all) repealed. There is no value in copyrights that last for decades...not to their creators, anyway.
Has it happened to me? Yes, and the law offered me no protection at all. Justice in this country goes to the highest bidder.
Like most parasites, though, I think those who would exploit the creativity of others will soon learn that a good parasite does not suck it's host dry and survive. Already, the RIAA is feeling the backlash of consumers fed up with manufactured music and strongarm tactics. Local animation houses have learned that if Americans can't get quality animation here, they will import it. (Animators are a very exploited breed of artist, who traditionally work long hours for low wages.) Disney is biting at it's own wounds after unwisely deciding that they had no use for traditional artists anymore (Pixar hired most of them...guess whose laughing now?). I think the MPAA and the endless guilds in Hollywood will soon learn that the Independents are numerous, talented and fully capable of distributing their own films, thankyou.
So, how does it feel? It feels lousy, but not nearly as bad signing those rights away to some exploitive corporation who may never get around to cutting you a check anyway.
Screw copyright. Only criminals need rules for morality spelled out on paper.
Its important to note that this legislation is not so much law as it is a framework for law. See this letter.
Well, this time it is possible to make a informed decision: results In short Finnish Greens and Conservatives (Piia-Noora missed the vote because of a traffic jam but she persuaded the rest to vote against..) + Seppanen + Thors voted against and SDP and Center party for the directive.
The Register, have reproduced a letter to them from Adrian McMenamin, the Press Officer of the European Parliamentary Labor Party.
The letter contains the the particularly juicy quote:
A grep for his name in the 2.6.3 linux source tree does not return anything, so I suspect he may be lying about his kernel modules, just like he is lying about DMCA in Europe. (The EUCD, which is like the DMCA, but stricter in some areas, was ratified in the UK a few months ago).
Does anyone know anything about Adrian McMenamin?. Has he in fact made any useful contribution to OSS?
The UK government (assuming Tory B. Liar to be still in power) would simply find a judge who is about to retire, secretly double his pension, and employ him to conduct a public enquiry.
Looks like Lucasarts will be able to reuse those old stormtrooper uniforms, after all...
If they freeze my bank account, how can I afford a lawyer? They would be taking my ability to defend myself.
Remember, licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets.
"will need to demonstrate ....that there is a clear and present danger of evidence being destroyed"
Not true, this was one of the things I didn't like. Its worded loosely here:
", in particular where any delay is likely to cause irreparable harm right holder, OR where there is a demonstrable risk of evidence being destroyed"
Note the 'OR', its enough to show that a delay is likely to cause irreparable harm. They don't have to show there is a risk of evidence being destroyed.
link 1
link 2
Unless somebody else used the same name of course, but this does lend some credibility to his claims
July 10 i believe
If you're an european citizen now's the time to make your vote count.
Check the FFII site for the list of members of parliament that voted for and against the amendement 59, then cast your vote accordingly.
(I just checked that my personal favorites voted for amendement 59. I didn't vote last time around, but this time they've get my vote!!!)
Too bad though, most EU civilians now are forbidden to own weapons.
When cops enter your home by "dynamic entry", that's one thing, but when CIVILIANS (which is what those private raiding parties are over there) break into your home by force, then they should be SHOT DEAD ON THE SPOT.
Maybe they can get some sharp sticks and skewer a few of them. When some of them get killed pulling these bullshit raids they'll back off..
Note to those thinging of this here: This is the USA, we are ARMED. Don't try it. You've been warned.
It would have been nice to stop this proposal, since there is no reason awarding special favors to plaintiffs in intellectual property cases as opposed to everyone else.
On the other hand, there is a bright side even to this unfortunate development. The Directive says nothing about penal sanctions. Contrary to the original Commission proposal, there is nothing left of Article 21 on the circumvention of technical measures. The article on damages has also been reduced, there are no damages at the amount of double license fees.
Since this is a Directive, the fight is far from over. It will now move on to the 25 stages of national legislation.
Lenz Blog
Wont this now migrate across the pond to the US due to the WTO's 'least common denominator' way of looking at inter-country commerce laws?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Actually, I'm looking towards South America, specifically Brazil.
Brazil seems to be improving rapidly, still, Lula seems to keep his eyes open and doesn't take in whatever comes from the large nations and corporations like most do. Brazil also seems to have quite a few good hackers allready, so it has a good start.
He's probably being told from the large ones that he has to enact draconian laws to encourage economic growth, and he is probably to some extent forced to do it through international treaties and bilateral "trade agreements".
If we could convince a nation's leader that, to the contrary, to encourage growth, you have to let go of stringent laws and foster creativity, then we could have a free country. Furthermore, if geeks would move there en masse and create the greatest brainpool anywhere, encouraging the whole society to become creative, then it would lead the way for the rest of the world. Right now, I think Lula seems to be the leader most likely to be convinced this can be the case.
With a free country getting some real mindshare, it could easily take the lead...
I'd really like to hear what the brazilians here have to say about it.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
So, if the corp can come in your home, can they hire someone else to go do it for them? Like...a team of Shadowrunners? Yeah, it may be just a game, but there is a reason the genre is called "futureshock". I can see a corp hiring some ex-Gulf vets from Iraq to head up part of their "IP aquisition" team.
If I was in europe, and a corp stormed my house, I wonder if I could shot them. It's not like their police. In the US, the BSA usually comes with Federal Marshalls.
This is bad bad stuff. Like I told my 20 year old stripper girlfriend: "Every time I'm around you I feel I need to get my leather trench lined...with a nice tight kevlar weave."
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
I think a right to kill for protecting property is absolutely disgusting.
There is no absolute right to kill. People who shoot intruders under anything less then clear circumstances of a serious threat are often put on trial and have a tough time.
Price of a human life in USA is WAY too low.
The ignorance about what life is really like in the USA is WAY too high.
Look, in the middle of the night, you don't know the intruder's intent, and he's not going to have a little sit down to discuss it. Mere robbers will generally case a house (insert RFID comment here) and wait until it is unoccupied.
I will defend myself and my family to the fullest extent to which I am capable, and use whatever tools I am legally allowed to have (and a few I am not, but that's a different thread). I will take my chances with the legal system rather than the judgement of someone who has broken into my house.
--- Ban humanity.
This just sounds like the EU formalizing the common-law parctice of the Anton Piller order, which is basically a civil (as opposed to criminal) search warrant. In general, Anton Piller orders are very difficult to get and I imagine these would be too.
However, you can for practically all intents and purposes, shoot a stranger in your house as long as they die so there are no witnesses, and especially if they have no reason to be there and have been convicted of burglery before. As long as you stuck to your story that you thought they were reaching for a weapon, no court would convict you of anything. ( I don't know if their family could still sue you for depriving the burgler of their civil right to life. They would only have to get a jury to believe that it was 51% likely that you killed the burgler knowing they were not intent on hurting you )
I can think of many interesting legal/ethical conundrums regarding the right to kill though:
Imagine if there are 100 people about to be killed and the only way to save the other 99 is to shoot one of the 100. Is that legal? Maybe it would be since the 1 was dead meat anyway, but then again we are all dead meat in the long run.
What about if there are 100 people about to die and the only way to save them is to kill an innocent bystander 300 meters away by shooting them? ( maybe they were deaf an facing away, but their body will fall in such a way as to unplug the heavy piece of machinery that is about to crush the 100 people. ) This is probably the most ethical thing to do, but I don't know if it is legal. I wouldn't do it for 100 strangers because I wouldn't want to face the legal issues involved. But were I altruistic enough to sacrifice my own life for 100 strangers ( and some people are ) then I would probably be altruistic enough to kill the innocent bystander and face murder charges myself. If there was someone I cared alot about among the 100 I might do it too.
I suspect killing an innocent bystander to save 100 people is illegal, but what if there were 1000 people in certain to die without a blood sacrifice? 10000? 10,000,000 about to be blown up by a thermonuclear bomb? Would the murder of one innocent be immoral? Illegal?
If you buy that killing one innocent bystander is justified to save New York City from being obliterated by Tsar Bomba, then what about organ transplants? If you know someone's hematocrit etc, you can assemble a list of five or six people who will die soon unless you shoot that innocent person in the head and steal their organs... At how many people is the cut off? Exactly how many bricks does it take to make a Heap of Bricks?
Eat at Joe's.
Still, it would have to be a copyright infringement to start with. Trading cassette tapes (or CDs) with friends is not nessecarilly copyright infringement in some countries. Even with the new proposed copyright laws here in Sweden, you can copy for example music for close friends and family.
... which puts us right back where we started, with assets seized and frozen for downloading a song via a P2P protocol) is enough to have your assets frozen and seized, and your physical self imprisoned.
... our forefathers, spinning in their graves at what we've done, certainly are not.
No. There need only be the accusation of copyright infringement. The DMCA is used at least as often to silence criticism as it is to take down actual, infringing material. It, like this law, has no requirement for due process: the accusation is sufficient to have a web site silenced and an account revoked. The same is true of this law: the accusation is enough to have your door broken down, and the accusation of organized copyright infringement (what defines "organized" I wonder? Participating in a p2p network with thousands of other users might qualify as "organized" to many
This law is a trajedy for Europe. I do not think most Europeans realize just how many of their basic freedoms and rights they have lost with this one piece of ill-considered legislation.
This gets back to the argument I made years ago. Capitalism doesn't work in a world of plenty. It doesn't work with ideas, it doesn't work with expression, and it most assuredly doesn't work with digital information. To make it work, you have to enact and enforce profoundly draconian laws: laws that run counter to every human impulse with respect to sharing (information, knowledge, expression, you name it) in order to create an artificial scarcity where in reality none exists. This will work no better than communism's attempt to impose a communist economic system on a domain where it wasn't applicable (a domain of scarcity), and the result will be the same draconian government, the same lack of freedoms, the same invasive government that will make no one safe, even in their own homes.
Farewell enlightened democracy in the west. We've chosen an outmoded economic system over the ideals of our forefathers. I hope we're proud of ourselves
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Yesterday I made a post about an article which quoted Blake Stowell (SCO's director of public relations) who replied, when asked the question "will you also sue European firms?" his reply was "Not in the next few days."
I have this horrible feeling that what was meant by that reply is that they were going to see if this was passed or not.
At the moment there is a lot of talk about the high probability of SCO looking to sue companies here in the UK and Europe in general, and to be honest they must like what they see now and if anything will make it more likely.
Its going to be harder to fight them here too. With the US cases, if a company is sued they can at least bring forward the fact about the IBM case and wish to put a hold on the lawsuit untill a decision has been made.
Unfortunatly here we may not have that ability. Where it seems common sense to take the US IBM lawsuit into account and as always it is down to the courts discretion as to whether this is granted or not. But the fact that the trial is overseas makes this a lot less likely.
This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
1) But late amendments added to the law limited who intellectual property owners could take action against and what penalties they could apply. The amendments the parliament refers to are actually a compromise reached between parliament and the council of ministers (representatives of EU national governments) earlier in the process. The amendment says, in the preamble (not the main body of the text) that some (not all) of the harshest sanctions, such as freezing bank accounts, should only apply to 'commercial' violations. However, this is very broadly defined as a violation that gives someone an 'economic advantage', which could be applied to, say, someone who downloads a song off the Internet for free. For more information see this story.
2) This legislation, which originally had DMCA-like provisions The provisions banning circumventions of copy-protection technology were passed in the EU Copyright Directive of 2001, and according to a recent study, EU member nations are implementing these sanctions in full, without including protections to researchers and business competition, which they are allowed to do. See this story.
3) with companies able to raid, confiscate and freeze the bank accounts of those accused of copyright infringement This is accurate: these surprise raids are known as Anton Pillar orders, and in civil cases, they allow companies themselves to carry out the raids, hopefully overseen by their solicitors to make sure they keep within the rules of the order. More information on these orders here. In criminal cases, which are the only kind in which most countries allow Anton Pillar orders, the raids are carried out by police. In the UK the raids are allowed in civil IP cases, but only for large-scale piracy or counterfeiting. The new IP directive could make these raids available for any civil IP case. The recent raids on Sharman Networks and others in Australia were authorised by Anton Pillar orders.
It is true that the directive must still be interpreted by member states and implemented in their national laws, and this could represent an opportunity for the directive's harsher aspects to be limited. But it will now be a matter of making this happen in 25 different member countries (post-enlargement of EU) rather than on a Europe-wide level. Additionally, the experience of implementation of the EUCD (see above) suggests that member states won't automatically limit bizarre and repressive directives, no matter how controversial they are.
This is partly because, when they're debating laws like this at a national level, they tend to talk to the parties directly affected -- in this case, people like the BSA and the IFPI (Euro-RIAA); ordinary citizens have to work harder to be included in the process.
Matt Broersma, ZDNet UK
There's a whole lot of hullaballo by people who don't quite get the picture here. It's an E.U. DIRECTIVE. Not the same as a law. It's a bunch of orders which should be implemented in State law as the governments see fit. (They only have to follow the broad thrust of the directive, and not clash with it).
If a government decides to implement this in a draconian way - then it is that government who should be lambasted, NOT the E.U. This is the usual E.U. bashing from Euroskeptics who are having the wool pulled in front of their eyes by their own national government. Governments all over the E.U. tend to blame the E.U. for unpopular decisions the GOVERNMENT have made.
Don't expect to see national governments implementing powers of search and destroy for anything other than suspected mass counterfeiters. They'll be out on their ear sooner than you can say "general election".
Piracy here in Ireland is CERTAINLY financing terrorists in Northern Ireland. It HAS to go. These measures outlined in the directive ARE badly needed on an E.U.-wide basis to counter-act mass counterfeiters.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
The only problem with that is that European countries have already disarmed their citizenry with anti-gun legislation. The chances of finding an armed home-owner defending themselves in Germany, England, or France is much lower than in the U.S. I don't have the exact stats, but I'm sure any compentant corporate actuarial would be able to bless a company's raid, as well as give acceptable loss numbers...
...and you run and you run and you can't stop what's been done...
...if this law were passed in America? Corporate troopers breaking down the doors, and if you resist they can just shoot your ass. Speak ill of any corporation and all of a sudden 'evidence' will be manufactured, er, provided to 'competent law enforcement agencies' that you're a copyright evil-doer.
Perhaps you'll eventually be exonerated - that is, if said 'evidence' doesn't mysteriously appear on your computer *AFTER* it's seized and hauled off to corporate headquarters - but you'll have to wait years to get back your property, your money, and recover what's left of your life.
If shit like this comes anywhere close to passing in the U.S. I'm moving to Canada.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
In December of 2002 I got to give a presentation over IP rights and the EU to members of the German Parliment and other officials from several soon to be EU members' Embassies as well as officials from the United States and the UK. *now for the karama hit* I was arguing that while technology allows easier infringement, people's copyrights, patents, etc. need to be respected and that they key wasn't in new laws, but enforcement of existing laws.
At that time the EUCD was "Supposed" to be in effect by the 23rd of December 2002, if I remember correctly. For some reason people think of the Internet as something "new" that requires "new" laws for a "new" time, and that is the false primise that I brought up in my 30 minute presentation, well I hope...German is a second language to me and far from perfect, however the professor advising said I did fine.
The Worldsofends.com paper/site whatever it is brings up the very point of what the Internet is: a method of transmission of data. The internet itself is designed to route data packets and that's about it. (that's my summation of their main point anyway...RTFA make sure I'm not smoking anything)
Right now I am doing a study for the local chamber of commerce and downtown development agency about collecting sales tax for internet transactions at least in the United States and basically my arguement is this: A company that uses an online catalog (shopping cart) to facilitate sales of goods that are shipped between state lines is not any different that an existing mail order/catalog business. The only difference is that the paper printed catalog has been replaced by the innovation of an online shopping cart. There is no need for "new" laws, simply enforcing existing laws that govern this industry.
Once you explain it in those terms, people begin to understand that business on the internet is no different than brick and morter. Don't get me wrong, there are some other pressing international issues that are still being worked out like the old Yahoo! Vs. France (9th Circus of Appeals case).
Copyright is really is no different. All that needed to be said in the DMCA and the EUCD or now EUIPsomethingsomething was: "The internet, or anyother electronic transmission method is still subject to the laws of international copyright".
Geesh, maybe after my masters degree, I should start some foundation that attempts to advise people, hold seminars, charge $500 a head and make a lot of money.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Quite simply, the government is a battleground for different powers, be they the populace, wealthy individuals, wise counsel, charismatic leaders, or whatnot.
Traditionally, each of these powers has created its own government, which lasted for a short while. When recognized by a government, the power is controlled, and you don't have illegitimate control over the government by that power.
However, when a power isn't recognized, then it can overwhelm the government, and cause it to fall in a characteristic fashion.
Ignore the populace, and you get a French-style revolution. (We have Congress).
Ignore the charismatic leader, and you get a coup. (We have the President).
Ignore the wise counsel, and you get civil disorder (we have the supreme court).
Ignore the press, and you get a government that loses its grip on reality. (We have a press).
Ignore groups of like-thinking individuals, and you get balkanization (we have the Senate, though it used to function better when economic interest varied more by state than by profession).
Ignore money, and you get essentially bribery undermining every part of the government.
We have nothing to recognize money.
Thus, money is undermining our government.
The solution, perhaps, is to have a 3rd house of Congress, one in which the seats are auctioned off, one per year for a full year, to be filled by a citizen of the choice of the winner, and which has its own power of veto.
But until you have something like that, yes, money is going to undermine your government.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's