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.

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.