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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
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
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."
You are also free not to buy any of it.
The problems with these types of laws is that you don't always know if what you are downloading off the internet is something that is copyright'd ,and not freely re-distributable, vs something that may be copyrighted, but freely destributable (opensource software, promotional free-music, etc). You usually don't really know until you have it downloaded and can run/play it. Even then, you might not know if it's legal or not. ex: Plan 9 from outerspace was a commercial movie, but it's now being freely distributed legally.
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!
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.
" 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 think the person who wrote the summary mistakenly assumed that most readers would know the background of the recent MGM vs. Grokster case.
The whole point is to separate the "bad actors" from the providers of generic tools. That's what the decision showed us -- if you create an ad campaign focused on piracy, build your business model on inciting piracy, leave an email trail showing that you're aware of and condone what's on your network, and then lie to the government about it, you'll get nailed.
Knowledge is power here, guys -- it's important to understand the difference between people who set about profiting off of other people's works, vs. the people who write IM applications. The EFF page linked in the summary contains further links to the supreme court decision and lots of other stuff which would have answered your question.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
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'