Private File Sharing To Remain/Become legal In EU

orzetto writes "Italian newspapers are reporting that the European parliament's Commitee for Legal Affairs approved an amendment presented by EMP Nicola Zingaretti (PSE, IT), that makes piracy a felony—but only if a monetary profit is made. As in the EU parliament's press release: 'Members of the Legal Affairs' committee [...] decided that criminal sanctions should only apply to those infringements deliberately carried out to obtain a commercial advantage. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes are therefore also excluded.' The complete proposal was passed with 23 votes in favour, 3 against and 3 abstained, and is intended to be applied to copyright, trademark, design and other IP fields, but not patent right which is explicitly excluded. The proposal has still to pass the vote of the parliament before becoming law in all EU countries, some of which (like Italy) do have criminal laws in place for non-profit file sharing. A note: Most EU countries use civil law, not common law. Translation of legal terms may be misleading."

Comments

To Remain/Become legal?

[kripkenstein]

Not how I understood TFA, but of course IANAL.

What I got from it was that a new directive, aimed at harsher Europe-wide criminal punishments for piracy, will be applied only to commercial piracy. Noncommercial piracy is not covered by the new directive. However, if it was illegal in a member state before, then it remains so.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

Re:To Remain/Become legal?

[gstoddart]

Noncommercial piracy is not covered by the new directive.

What you're describing has been known as "fair use" for a very long time.

I don't know about European Copyright law, but here in Canada (and I believe the US), I've been explicitly allowed to make a copy of an album to give to a family member or a friend forever.

It's only in the current climates that companies are trying to remove the fair use provisions in their entirety. Hence, "private, non-commercial piracy" is a misnomer -- it should remain "fair use still remains legal"; there's no piracy involved in something I already had the right to do.

Cheers

Re:Still liable for damages in civil suit?

[ArsonSmith]

From what it looks like and if the laws are at least similar, the civil side of copyright is still in full enforcement. This is just criminalizing for profit pirate centers.

Not legal!

[Bogtha]

They are criminalising commercial copyright infringement. Non-commercial copyright infringement is still illegal. This means that you get sued and pay damages instead of getting arrested and going to jail.

Civil law vs Common law

[ssuchter]

In case anyone else was interested but ignorant of the meaning of: Most EU countries use civil law, not common law. Translation of legal terms may be misleading., I read a few articles online. I think that this one was the most helpful:

http://fountainoflaw.com/Vocab/commonlaw.html

What I took away (apart from the very interesting history) was that common law expects/requires judges to consider past judges decisions, so the law is a combination of legislated statute and precedent. Civil law on the other hand focuses mostly/exclusively on legislated statue. (I'm sure I'm over-simplifying, so read the article yourself!)

Actually, From What I Understand...

[had3l]

All this law does is make copyright infringement for commercial purposes a crime. Non-commercial copyright infringement isn't in it's scope.

What that means is that, it is NOT saying that "if you pirate a CD for personal, non-profit use, you didn't commit a crime", what its saying is: "if you make a profit from it, you are DEFINITELY committing a crime, no matter what EU country you are in".

If pirating something for personal use is a crime in your country, it probably will still be a crime after this law passes. And if it isn't a crime, this law doesn't prevent legislation that criminalizes it.

Re:Like U.S. Copyright used to be?

[EmperorKagato]

Actually you don't.

Verizon charges you for the Service of providing you to download the ringtone. If you have the CD you can upload it http://www.mixxer.com/ and download it to your phone for free.

I'm not sure about Verizon yet I'm able to do with Sprint

Do not jump to conclusions!

[Mjlner]

First of all, this is a proposed EU directive, not "federal law", a concept that doesn't exist in the EU. A directive means that member countries should implement certain requirements in the directive or there may be sanctions. It also means that these requirements may be exceeded, at the discretion of the member countries' legislative bodies. Finland is one country which already implemented a much harsher copyright law than the EUCD required and it will be free to do so in the future. Private filesharing might be excluded from this directive, but that only means that the member countries are free to legislate as they are paid^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H as they like.