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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."
Especially the freedoms we Americans don't have.
A directive being pushed by the European Commission would, among other things, criminalize "attempting, aiding or abetting and inciting" acts of copyright infringement.
Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air.
Fuck, let's just blow up the whole earth, some corporation would likely benefit from it -- I'm sure they have a patent on the bombs, cleaning up the destruction, and cloning human life after creating the vegetation and animal life.
Let's stop making laws that only support the businesses that have endless supplies of money please.
Crowds of file-sharing enthusiasts herded into makeshift prison camps.
How nostalgic for Europe.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
organized crime: monopolies and artificially inflated prices?
Two wrongs doesn't make a right (i know, three lefts do), but those corporations have no moral ground to talk about lost profits.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
What about MSN messenger? I send executable files across that all the time.
Or, heaven forbid, a floppy disk containing copywritten software on it and thrown across the room.
I am going to blame beer for making me share sex with girls that I may not have otherwise had sex with. Please governments of the world...save me!
I'm working on a good joke about your mom being
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."
Well, let me make it easy for you! Here's a hood ... it can protect you in a snowstorm, or you can use it to rob a bank. Ban hoods!
Geez!
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
What's the difference between P2P piracy and piracy?
Isn't the former just a subset of the latter?
Do we need special laws to make FTP piracy illegal too?
Usenet piracy?
IRC piracy?
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Another stupid law. Using this reasoning any web browser manufacturer could be found criminally liable.
1. Open mozilla browser.
2. Download image and share with friend.
3. Lawyer sues mozilla because they let me do it.
If I buy a pencil and poke my neighbor in they eye with it the lumber company should not be sued either.
They should go after the actual criminals but they don't because there isn't any money in it.
This law should be called the EU Extortion Act.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Lots of companies make products that can be used for both legal ald illegal purposes. No one is going to go to jail for making some software that merely allows people to swap files. Everytime somplace tries to make a law to limit/minimize illegal file sharing people here get all antsy. If you don't share things you aren't supposed to you won't get in trouble. If you don't like the laws concerning copyright, fight to change them. Why does everyone feel they have a right to do anything they want to simply because they can?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
Whoever came up with the "abstract terms" locution was pretty clever; that's certainly a new twist on it. Usually, the folks who want unenforceable laws want the laws to be abstract. Now that there's so little left unregulated, they can take the gloves off and come out and say it -- "everything not compulsory must be forbidden, and everything not forbidden must be compulsory."
If you lower the bar far enough, and make most everyone criminal, You can pretty much take away everyone's rights.
Once you are 'assumed' to be a criminal, just because you breathe
As well as destroy other rights you had, such as privacy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Better to err on the side of money... er, caution.
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
So SMTP, POP3, NNTP, FTP, and HTTP are potentially illegal as they can potentially be used to transmit and receive copyrighted material illegally. And I can potentially punch someone in the face with my fist (or both of them, if I'm lucky), so you'd better chop my hands off, just in case.
That has little to do with socialism and more to do with totalitarianism.
(Note: I'm not saying the EU is totalitarian, mind you)
I would equate this level action similar to what police do in inner city areas. You live there for years and there is a murder here and there, a few robberies a day and every once in a while some grandmotherly-type is raped and beaten. The police generally do nothing and it seems this is all just happening and nobody can do anything about it. Does this not sound like the level of copyright enforcement today?
Well, one day (actually more likely a dark night) the police come. Not just your usual two officers assigned to the neighborhood patrol car, but tens or even hundreds of cops in vests carrying all kinds of heavy weapons. Anything that gets in their way gets thrown into the paddy wagon and hauled off. Some people get shot, some by accident and some because they thought they would stand up against this invasion. Like what happened in Philly, maybe a building gets burned down as well.
Three weeks later, everything is back to normal. The drug dealers are back on the corner, the neighborhood liquor store got robbed last night and somebody gets shot and might live. The police came, put up a show of force, and left. They won't be back for a year or so.
We can expect a show of force soon over copyright. China gave up and has ceased all commercial music production. We can expect that in a few years here as well. It is almost the identical situation to the inner city - if the people don't give a hoot about it, the police (and RIAA, courts, government, etc.) can do nothing except put up a show of force. It is all just a show and it will be over soon.
This current initiative has absolutely nothing to do with socialism, but with politicians being bought out by corporate interests.
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
Right, the EU is considering this because of Socialism. Is socialism against filesharing? Copyright enforcement is hardly a socialist hot button.
This can only be explained by corporatism. Intellectual "property" protection protects mostly Microsofts and Disneys.
If you want to start making it illegal to posess software that could be used for piracy or counterfeiting then you might as well just call it quits on the whole computing age. Photoshop should be illegal since I could use it to claim credit for someone else's artwork. My soundblaster driver should be illegal because it allows me to record anything playing on it. Web browsers should be illegal because they cache copies of protected or copyright material that I can recover if I know where to look. Better get rid of my video capture functionality too, because I can record DVDs right from my Playstation with no issues other than a loss of quality. And TV-out, gotta get rid of that too, I might videotape licensed content off my computer. All chat programs are potential piracy vectors as well, for maintaining contact in 'the scene' or whatever, better get rid of those too. Where does it stop?
What the hell is it with this unelected bunch of goons? First they do their level best to introduce patents across the EU, despite the will of the (elected) parliament, now they're sticking their noses into another area they know bugger all about.
It really is high time that the EU Commission was given the boot.
And they wonder why people across the EU are jumping at the chance to say NO to the EU constitution, which cements the Commission into place...
How on earth did we get this bunch of cretins foisted upon us, and why aren't we the people of the EC allowed to say "actually, no, we don't want them, we never have"?
Democracy? Pah!
My understanding was that the issue in the MGM vs. Grokster case was that Grokster marketed their software to be used in an unlawful manner. But the judge clearly stated that other software (ie. IM software used to send files, web browsers, etc) and companies would not be held responsible for their tool simply being used for illegal purposes so long as the tool was not marketed to be used in that way. So whats the deal? That sounds like a logical outcome to me...
The other day I boarded me PC and headed out on the wide open network seas of information to find me some poor bloke's PC to board and swaggle all his mp3's for fear of me runnin' him thru with me l337 computer hacking skills. But to me su'prise, there were all sorts of bloke's wandering around the network seas INVITING me in to their cabin to rifle through their hoard of files in the hold's of their PC's! Shiver me timbers! They paid good drinkin' money for their massive hoards of music and movies and then started magically duplicatin' 'em and givin' to all us pirates FOR FREE!
Unhappy as a parrot without a shoulder, I turned me PC back around to head back to port 80, for me horn-swagglin' days of maurauding the wide open network seas were thru - for there be no one left to steal from these days!
Socialist governments like imprecise laws...
Maybe (and maybe not), but it's hardly relevant: as of 10th July 2005 the largest bloc in the European Parliament was not the GPES (European Socialist Party - including those notorious revolutionaries in the British Labour Party currently supporting Comrade Bush), but the EPP-ED (European Peoples Party - the conservative/Christian Democrat group): Wikipedia. Nice troll, though.
This is where the serious fun begins.
This is a proposal to attack specifically the act of INTENTIONALLY infringing or contributing to infringement. Grokster or Napster would get nailed under this because it is clear that ths software was meant to redistribute music files, they built their companies and communities on the idea of music piracy (ok... those of you who are going to say "But you could distribute your own music too!" can leave the room now. Both Napster and Grokster KNEW what was going on, they built the system to make it as easy as possible to pirate music).
When you come to technologies like BitTorrent or Freenet, you have technology platforms that are completely independent of what is being distributed. Going after BT because it allows infringement would be like going after E-Mail technology because you can send files, or FTP etc...
The wired article is a piece of FUD trying to scare up some controversy when what this proposal is calling for is to explicityly make criminal IP infringement through P2P. People love to argue that the law is fuzzy on whether or not it's criminal, so now they're clarifying it.
NO! You can't copy floppy's, that's wrong! See this if you don't believe me!
You missed the point entirely.
They want to criminalize what software writers create if it's used for an illegal activity, but only for a single type of software.
Virus writers do more damage than copyright infringers, but you don't see the people that create software development tools going to jail, do you? That's because lawmakers aren't being pressured by the industry to do so, so we end up with crooked laws that don't make sense... they punish a very small subset of people while other people who are essentially doing the same thing (writing software) aren't punished.
For justice to be served you should punish the people who actually do the crime. Putting software writers in jail is absurd. This law would make Bram Cohen (author of Bittorrent) a criminal even though his software is used legitimately by countless companies to distribute large files, such as Linux ISOs.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Today the famous inventor Johannes Gutenberg was sentenced to 200 years of hard labour for creating, distributing and using machine for massive copyright violations.
Him so called "Printing Press" could produce hundreds and thousand copies of one book just for one week.
Pirates have used it in enormous proportions to execute undreamed copyright violations.
This had caused a big loss in book sells and SCWAA estimates them at 1 000 000 in gold.
This evil invention had taken the work and bread of more than 10 000 script copy writers, letting them and their families live in misery.
Guns can be used to kill people, but you don't see people taking the arms manufacturers to court do you?
Intention per se is essentially unprovable without documented evidence, and any law based around intention just results in business via conversations in remote places.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Man... I think we really need to make something.
I have read some of the comments in this thread... I can see we are all pissed off about the way things are going but we are all whinging in slashdot without anything else to do...
I have read some recommendations about 'voting with your money' or 'Talking to your representative' but I think that is *really* not making any difference...
We must find a way to make the government hear us. Governments are supposed to represent the people in our countries not to serve as big companies servants allowing them to profit... We need real actions, movements, people, we need to fight again for our rights, not in UK or France or USA, but in all the world, we have the Internet which is one of the best communications tools which can be useful for us...
Big companies are using the globalization to get more and more of the markets, meanwhile squeezing the goverments are making they take our rights.
I am sure this will continue until there is something more severe, this will end in a kind of civil war but between consumers (us) and big companies... I see this as the next big war, but as they always say it will be a war of information , it will be a 'revolution' to get again our freedom, once, we fought other countries to get freemod (like Mexico from Spain or US from UK or UK from Germany)... now all the world will have to join to fight the big corporations, to get our freedom.
The sad thing is that it is a system a big system which everyone of us is making work, because it is in those big corporations where people like you and me work. Although there are just like a thousand people that controls the 80% of those and it is of they most interest to make the system work smooth, that is what we need to change, we need to break that system and install a new system a new freedom for information, all kind of information.
But then again I am here, siting in my desk just about to press the submit button and then I will continue reading the next story and then I will read my email and then I will just go to sleep waiting for tomorrow to go to work again... although my soul is shouting to go liberated... can we do somehting?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I think the only way it will stop is that they go too far, and there is some kind of revolution. Let's get on with it...
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
What the hell is it with this unelected bunch of goons? First they do their level best to introduce patents across the EU, despite the will of the (elected) parliament, now they're sticking their noses into another area they know bugger all about.
You seem to be confused about how the EU works. The commission only proposes legislation. But nothing happens unless the Council agrees with it. That means a sizeable majority of the governments of the member states. So if bad legislation is passed in the EU, you should probably be complaining to your own government.
Of course, the same ministers who approve things in the Council then turn around and tell their peoples that unpopular decisions are "Europe's" fault, thus covering their own asses.
And they wonder why people across the EU are jumping at the chance to say NO to the EU constitution, which cements the Commission into place...
The Commission has existed in this form since 1967 or so. I'd say it's quite "cemented" already. And the rejection of the constitution means that its current powers stay exactly the same.
How on earth did we get this bunch of cretins foisted upon us
Probably because our respective democratically elected parliaments decided to join the EU.
and why aren't we the people of the EC allowed to say "actually, no, we don't want them, we never have"?
Spare me the victim mentality. You're not living in North Korea. You have elections, you know.
With the brilliance that come from making somthing illeagl just because of its potentil to cause harm would mean that any software can be illeagl. For instance, TCP, HTTP can be used to send pirated copies of software and child porn, should we now start arresting the IT people? Al Gore better watch out cause he claims to have invented all this. Its a bad day when it becomes a crime to make, build, or design anything that could be used for crime, but a good day for criminals. Criminals naturally dont follow rules, its only the law abiding that wll suffer.
Actually, it would appear that we are doing quite a bit. According to Rolling Stone magazine, sales of prerecorded CDs are falling about 5-7% a year. This is happening despite various superstar's hot new albums and mass purchases of must-have new releases. And despite that so many teeny-boppers have so much of their parent's money to spend and no political awareness whatsoever. Plus the audience of young people continues to grow worldwide and there is generally more money available for the purchase of recordings. The number of recorded music sales should be growing each year, but it is not.
Perhaps it is because we are effectively disseminating the message that there are alternatives to purchasing RIAA product on their terms and on their demanded price levels.
As for doing some kind of symbolic political action that attempts to presuade American politicians to consider a particular course of action? Forget it, symbolic political actions like marches, petitions, demonstrations, have no effect on the political process in the USA any more. You'll just end up getting sunburned, maced, tazered, arrested, and laughed at on the Murdoch-Clear Channel new outlets.
Keep quietly downloading, copying, and trading music and movies with your friends, and spending less and less on RIAA and MPAA product. It will take another 15-20 years, but eventually they will come to us to negotiate their continued existance on our terms, regardless of what stupid laws that they get their purchased politicians to pass.
These guys are having a real hard time understanding that this is the beginning of the information age and the age of the nation/state corporate or communist control of the economy is passing. In the information age, the people who create and guide the technology that distributes information have more power than the people who are able to control the systematic application of violence.
This is a long and slow transformation, but it is irreversable. Eventually the RIAA and MPAA will be on the side of the P2P designers and decentralized information distributers. They have no other real place to go. However, it's going to take a long time and there are going to be a lot of people put in prison for listening to music during the transistion. Do try not to be one of them.
>> You should rightly be paid for the original act of creation or performance. Not paid over and over again a hugely inflated price for each damn-near-negligible-cost-to-produce copy thereof.
> But why is this so bad? Why shouldn't the creator continue to be paid for his creation? Everyone says this is a horrible thing, but why is it a horrible thing? Is it just because YOU don't want to pay for something, or is their some grander scheme?
The US Constitution grants the Congress the power to enact laws to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." (section 8). Note use of the word "limited". Once an author creates a work, getting paid repeatedly, indefinitely, for that work does not incent him to continue to author. If he can just take his one book (or song or invention or whatever) to the bank for the rest of his and his children's children's children's lives, what motive would he have to continue to produce?
Notice how science and art are both represented here. Consider what would happen if universities treated discoveries the same way the **IAs treated media. Research would be impossible. If no one was ever allowed to build on the research and findings of those coming before them without financially compensating hundreds of other scientists in the process, it would be too cost prohibitive to research anything, and we'd forever be living in the bronze age. Why should it be one way for science and another way for the arts?
Now Disney and the **IAs want copyrights and patents to be enforcable indefinitely, because they don't want to have to create something new which would supplant the revenues lost when their copyright protection sunsets. This does not promote or incentivize new creativity. To the contrary, it shuts the door on it.
It's not a lie. It's the truth with lossy compression.
"As much as you seem to think that sadaam is a fun-loving guy that should be invited to everyone's graduation party..he killed 100's of thousands more than the U.S. invasion. But protesters seem to always forget this part."
That is so much bullshit. NOBODY likes Saddam. What a lot of people are pissed off about is that we were mislead into an unnecessary war. Iraq is NOT about terrorism. It was suppose to be about weapons of mass destruction but the Bush administration takes every opportunity to say that our troops are being attacked by "the terrorists." We invaded their fucking country and a lot of Iraq people are pissed off about that. Those Iraq people who are fighting us are NOT terrorists so let's stop justifying a war that was planned way before 9/11 and impeach the dumb son of a bitch that is the cause of over a thousand of our fine American men and women who faithfully followed the really stupid and evil orders of this administration.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
"But why is this so bad? Why shouldn't the creator continue to be paid for his creation? Everyone says this is a horrible thing, but why is it a horrible thing? Is it just because YOU don't want to pay for something, or is their some grander scheme?"
Straw man.
Firstly, the vast, vast major of contracted musicians don't see a penny from their copyrighted works, because they don't own the copyrights -- the labels do. And the labels screw them out of whatever cash they may be entitled to. Even successful artists rarely see a dime until the second or third hit album.
And anyway, copyright and payment is not a bad thing -- if it is limited for a short time. Copyright, however, is now eternal, and the original bargain made by the Constitution's framers is dead. Until copyright is reined in, it is a Bad Thing.
"what does a "free market" mean when there is only a single source of the goods?"
You've changed the definition of the goods. There is ONE source in the world for U2 performances -- U2 itself. That's what concerts are for, to obtain that unique product that only U2 can provide.
BUT, the recordings of the songs are not provided by a monopoly - not anymore - have millions of sources available for repro, are infinitely reproducible at almost no cost, and have a street value of either retail price or free. Amazingly, a lot of people are purchasing the retail package, but free seems to be popular as well. The free market has assigned its values. That the copyright lords do not agree with the reality of the free market doesn't change the reality. The copyright holders should be shudderingly grateful that people are willing to pay anything at all for a 25 cent disc.
"U2 can never compete with the freeloaders on price as long as they have to recoup their costs before they can turn a profit."
Obviously, they can compete. Bono doesn't seem to be hurtin' for money.
Bands, as I said before, rarely make money off of their album sales because of the amazing accounting practices of the recording industry. They DO make money off of their live performances, after the labels eat their share. Live performances are the way to go if you want to eat.
As for the revenues of the labels, who give a crap. They don't give it to their artists, and if you'll recall, they almost slipped a provision into federal law that would have made ALL RECORDINGS "works for hire" -- meaning the payment the artist received for recording the work would have been the LAST payment the artist would ever see, because the copyright would have been owned by the labels forever and ever and ever. And they probably would have taken the payment back from the artists for "expenses" that only they could define.
Wrappin' it up, I can only throw in my only real, extralegal reason for tossing copyright into the trash. Copyright was a deal, a compromise in the Constitution, that let a creator make money for a limited time, and then released the work into the public domain in less than 20 years. That would insure that things like "Huckleberry Finn" would be part of the public heritage, and available for interpretation and expansion or whatever anyone wanted to do with it.
But Twain's writings are STILL COPYRIGHTED, and will be forever; they are held by an IP concern which trades in the stuff like stock certificates. This is the reality. The works of mankind are now product, never to be released.
The deal was broken in the late 20th century. WE did not break it; greedy, selfish and stupid men broke it. They killed copyright by making it eternal, and made it criminal to violate their "property", making "reading" or "copying" equivalent to "stealing". Just the semantic evil of what they've done pisses me off.
They declared war on the human race, not me.
I almost always go back to first principles when hearing such stuff and it seems to me that this would set a fundamental precident such that, for example: the inventor of the kitchen knife will be liable for all the murders done using his creation. This makes the creator liable for the actions taken by anyone using his creation and NOT the perpetrator him/herself. Presumably, one could then do anything one damned well pleased with no consequences to oneself so long as one used something created/invented by someone else. Lobi Wan