EU Weighs Copyright Law

Braedley writes "Some members of the European IT industry are unhappy with a proposed law that would penalize various parties, from software companies to ISPs, to even some hardware manufactures, but not the end users for infringing on intellectual property. Penalties for this aiding and abetting could include jail time for employees if found guilty."

Comments

Makes sense from a certain point of view

[drinkypoo]

Historically, prohibiting use of something does little to stop its use. In order to actually do something about it, you need to go after the supply.

Of course, what the bill totally ignores is that there is no technological solution. You can disguise your copyright infringement as any kind of other activity you like.

As such, there is no way for ISPs to prevent their systems being used for copyright infringement but to prevent all use, thus destroying the internet. Or at least, the ability of residents of nations adopting an idiot law like that one to access it.

Re:Makes sense from a certain point of view

[Original Replica]

"including prison time for employees, if their networks, software programs or online services are ever used to carry illegally copied material such as music or film, according to a draft law from the European Commission supported Tuesday by a committee of the European Parliament."

Sounds like it's time to find a way to pass downloads through government owned property. If any downloads even touch property owned by the EU, demand that your rep. do jail time.

Re:Makes sense from a certain point of view

[Benaiah]

This certainly does not make sense.

This is like making the government responsible for drug trafficking because they use the roads to get their drugs from supply to demand. i.e. a highschool. So if my child dies from an overdose. I can sue the government for allowing the drug users to use the roads with their cars carrying contraband!

They should have been able to stop them right? I mean comon? This is absolute crap. Impossible to enforce and punishing the people that you want on the governments side. This will make ISPs and the governments adversaries. ISP's will have regular "failures" and lose all their logs.

I really think the govt has lost it with this one.

NB.. Or substitute govt for private company if there is a toll road along the way.

Wow, that's pretty heavy handed

[Itninja]

But the UK is all metric system, so everything looks heavier on paper.

Sigh.....

[AlphaLop]

We need to get back to the system where copyright infringement is a civil matter and not a criminal matter. Then if the "pirates" are bad enough, the companies can sue them in civil court and quit suppressing our freedoms for the sake of their profits and then we can stop footing the bill to protect their corporate interests.

Re:Sigh.....

[zappepcs]

Sadly, they apparently will not learn until there is no tech industry left and unemployment has become an even bigger problem.

Re:Sigh.....

[iminplaya]

We need to get to a system that deals with plagiarism. Distribution is no longer a matter worth getting an ulcer over. Plagiarism is the only legitimate issue when dealing "intellectual property". Everything else is simply a matter of greed. What the market will bear... "What the market will bear" should NOT be codified into law.

Re:Sigh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually one problem with making it a civil matter is the lower standard of proof, the lack of a right to an attorney (which you do have in a criminal case) and therefore the likelihood that people who don't actually do any infringement could be stuck with large monthly bills for the rest of their lives. Even if the court agrees that they are innocent, they are stuck for attorney's fees, unless they countersue.

The criminal system has protections for defendants that should not be ignored.

(I write from the vantage point of the United States, but I'm sure that the EU also has better protections for defendants in criminal cases than in civil cases.)

Copyright is a matter of respect

[cdrguru]

If you do not respect it, about as much can be done as not respecting anyone or anything else.

We have moved to a period where a great deal of wealth is in the hands of patents, trademarks and copyrights. This means that "respecting copyright" or not can mean the difference between people being paid a salary or not. That starts to get pretty serious, at least as far as the affected people are concerned.

All the talk about rich corporations out to squeeze the last dime from the consumer is just a smoke screen. What it comes down to is can people rely on patents, trademarks and copyrights for a livelihood.

50 years ago the answer was an unqualified yes. Today, there are serious questions about this. In the near future the answer is likely to be no. This will certainly put a lot of people out on the street that today are employed because money can be had from patents, trademarks and copyrights.

I can't imagine that anyone growing up today will have any respect whatsoever for "copyright" in any form. Anything they can put their hands on will be redistributed, copied and plagiarized. DRM certainly isn't going to have the desired effect. Harsh lawsuits aren't having the desired effect. Education isn't working as most schools teach more about downloading music and copying software than the students find out of school.

Re:Copyright is a matter of respect

[vertinox]

All the talk about rich corporations out to squeeze the last dime from the consumer is just a smoke screen. What it comes down to is can people rely on patents, trademarks and copyrights for a livelihood.

Then why aren't these individuals pushing for change rather than the corporations? It is pretty clear that corporations want to use the law by any means needed to increase their profit margin. That is what they pay their legal experts and lobbyists to do.

To think otherwise is absurd.

Personally, I think you would be hard pressed to find a person who makes their livelihood based solely on intellectual property (in fact of the three you mention I would be shocked if an individual made a living on nothing but trademarks *coughs*).

In order to make a living, the artist or scientist often bring their materials to market often requiring them to give up their rights and hand them over to larger entities which makes the argument a moot point.

Often times these persons have to do secondary work (as in provide services) such as either live performances or perhaps technical troubleshooting service in the case of the patent in order to really make their end's meat.

The only people who really make a complete living off of intellectual property are of course corporations (and of course say... IP lawyers who didn't come up with the material themselves) and have a desire to appease shareholders so they maximize profits by paying their employees to do their best to change no only their company but consumers and of course law.

Like it or not... That is how things are really done. We could ban lobbying but that wouldn't really solve the core of the problem with the debate.

Re:Copyright is a matter of respect

[j1m 5n0w]

I agree with you. I don't respect copyright law as much as I used to, for several reasons:

• I perceive that copyright law ought to reflect my interests as a consumer as well as content owners, but it doesn't. If it did, the maximum copyright length would be much shorter.
• Huge penalties for violation and selective enforcement.
• Intellectual property tends to be overpriced to begin with (CDs especially).

That doesn't mean I go out and copy everything I can off of P2P networks, I'm just saying I don't feel much outrage when other people do so - quite the opposite. I think if the government (the US government in my case) wanted to regain my respect for copyright law, they should:

• Enact more reasonable copyright laws (this might mean leaving TRIPS).
• Reduce penalties for infringement that isn't for commercial gain, but shut down the guys that are, for instance, making a living selling anime bootlegs from China on Ebay.

and content owners need to

• Reduce their prices.
• Cater more to the "heavy tail" consumers.
• Stop trying to control what we do with the stuff they sell us (DRM).

The most likely way I see that these last three are going to come about is that new companies that actually want to sell the products that people want will replace the ones that don't. Some government action may be necessary to break up monopolies, I don't really understand the industry well enough to know if market forces are enough.

Re:Copyright is a matter of respect

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Then why aren't these individuals pushing for change rather than the corporations?

Flippant answer: Who says we're not?

Serious answer: We are, but the corporations have much more money and private armies of lawyers, so they get noticed a lot more.

Whether or not large corporations abuse today's copyright framework to become rich middle-men doesn't change the fact that copyright also protects many smaller artists. Contrary to what you describe in your post, I work in a high-tech city and know many people who make their living solely through developing intellectual property, generally in the form of software, as sole traders or in small, privately-owned companies.

I hesitate to post this -- the last twice I entered discussions on Slashdot and disagreed with the popular "copyright = bad" sentiment I was systematically hit with (-1, Overrated) mods for several days -- but sometimes you just have to tell it like it is. In this case, I agree with you that corporations do abuse copyright and lobby for beneficial laws, but that doesn't imply that there are no little guys benefiting from the laws working as they were originally intended.

The laws are strong enough already

[gilesjuk]

Far from serving citizens, all the governments of the world are all competing to create the most attractive country for businesses to trade at the cost of criminalising many of their residents.

Not sensible

[cyberbob2351]

Well, at least they are not focused on penalizing the end users...

Realistically however, theres only so much one can do. If ISP's start policing the nets more, it just means that the filetraders will resort to shadier and more secure methods of transport. The content distributors will rely more heavily on botnets and compromised webservers to hold the information, and we will see a higher prevalence of strongly encrypted darkets like WASTE for getting the information around.

If anything, people will go underground with sneakernet.

And how dare we hold hardware manufacturers accountable? Copying of information is just an inherent property of the technology. Writing implements can be used to copy written works, do we hold pencil manufacturers accountable? If sneakernet becomes the norm, do we hold ipods and portable hard drives the culprit?

Give it up. Filetrading is here to stay, regardless of what prohibitions the governments place on it.

Technology and Jobs

[Original Replica]

Maybe it's time in the evolution of things for copyright to go away. Yes alot of people's job's rely on them, but then again alot of people relied on factory positions that vanished because of technological progress, too. Where do they go? What do they do? I can't say for sure, but (IMHO) I imagine future job growth will be in services and tangible goods, things that can't be freely distributed across the globe.

They just can't wait to kill the internet

[SpaghettiCoder]

It's been their plan all along to implement something called "The Grid" - a massive centralized network including phones, computers, televisions, etc. This "Grid" would be accessible only by first giving personally identifiable info in the form of some kind of digital signature. The UK government proposed this to the telecoms industry in 1999 or thereabouts.

IIRC, this particular legislation would, according to the masterplan, be about 2 or 3 years ahead of schedule.

The EU is a very sinister machine. Power resides in the hands of the Council 100%. The Council proposes legislation, and submits them to the European Parliament for rubber-stamping. In most cases, the MEPs haven't read the legislation they're voting on (this isn't a piece of Slashdot bull - this is really the truth) and wouldn't be able to understand it anyway. They are there because it's a very easy way to get fat without doing anything. The European Parliament can send a piece of legislation back to the Council for amendment (and the Council usually just makes superficial changes), but the second time around it goes through (different rules regarding the majority).

Make no mistake: the Council itself is a puppet of the G6, the Carlyle Group and other secretive friends. It's been decided the internet (in the form it is in right now) has to go down. The Council has to formulate a 5/10 year plan and direct national governments and the EU about what they have to do.