EU Proposing to Make P2P Piracy A Criminal Offense

brajesh writes "The European Commission is pushing for a proposal (.pdf) to crack down on organized piracy, which could also make indirect copyright infringement a crime across Europe, with implications similar to the recent MGM v. Grokster U.S. Supreme Court ruling. If the directive is adopted, developers who create software for file sharing that is then used for illegal ends could potentially be criminally liable in EU member countries." From the article: "The problem here is some activities, such as the creation of software, can be used for legal and illegal purposes, as is the case with Grokster...It gets really messy, because it is unclear what is legal or not legal, and it is problematic to operate with such abstract terms."

Comments

Re:Just end it all, please...

[shark72]

"Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air."

Maybe the summary wasn't clear enough. This is an attempt to institute a standard of liability similar to that of MGM vs. Grokster. The folks behind Grokster were taking active measures to profit from piracy -- their ad campaigns and email trails showed that quite clearly. If you're not sure why Grokster fell into this category and a gun manufacturer does not, it may help to compare Grokster's business model and advertising campaign to that of BitTorrent.

Any moron can slippery-slope this one. We're smarter than that.