Slashdot Mirror
EU Approves New Stricter Anti-Piracy Directive
A Pirate writes "The European Parliament has voted for the new report submitted by Italian parliament member Nicola Zingaretti that criminalize even attempts to infringe on copyrights. Even if the new directive excludes end-users from the law it will still criminalize sites like YouTube and practically all P2P services, and even the developers of these services. The exceptions beside the end-users' personal use, includes studies and research. While the European Parliament apparently describes the new directive as a an attempt to harmonize the copyright laws of the European Countries others have been describing it as a lobby directive."
"Harmonizing" only means that laws in different EU countries are brought to par so that every country has the same law. Now, lobbies have more or less power in various countries. In general, you can be fairly certain, though, that companies that invested a lot of money into laws in one country won't allow this to change and get more lenient, thus the politicians of the countries with a lot of lobby influence tend to be quite vocal to get their law pushed up to EU levels.
I mean, don't bite the hand that feeds you. Makes sense, doesn't it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Think about this for a second, think of one piece of legislation passed in the last ten years that has positively impacted anyone you know in the first world?
well, i like this one
this one is also very good. unfortunately the member states prefer to ignore this one.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
The FFII and the Vrijschrift.org Foundation tell us some more about how bad it could be.
The big one as far as I'm concerned is ``incitement to infringe'', which could open software writers to massive problems.
BTW a more informed (and partisan) view is available from CopyCrime.eu
"Linux is for noobs"-The new MS fud strategy
If this user downloads pirated material and use this only for his own entertainment [...] he or she can not be prosecuted through the new directive. For one thing the article just talks about DOWNLOADING, which is only half of any functioning P2P system. Furthermore I'm not quite sure how people are supposed to download content if the P2P systems are banned. But from the measly article it's hard to glean any kind of information about any of this ;(
So now E.U. citizens have the explicit right to make private copies for personal non-profit usage (something in line with the Betamax decision on U.S.), but infringement, complicity and incitement to infringement on commercial scale now holds harsher penalties. Slashdot groupthink like to imagine that they are the center of the world, and every piece of legislation is there to restrict their freedom, is aimed to them but in fact, this legislation main target is not even technological "IP" infringement, but good and old school counterfeiting of goods like clothes, bag and perfumes, that happens to be a big issue to France, for instance.
I'm all for both freedom for private personal copies and jail penalty for petty criminals that sell counterfeit CDs, DVDs and Dolce&Galbanna clothes on flea markets. The fact that this legislation could be interpreted as bad for the likes of YouTube is purely incidental, a side effect that can or cannot be interpreted this way. Now, cut this "MPAA bought E.U." bullshit. You nerds are not the center of the world, and pointing fingers to Venezuela, China, Brazil, E.U., Iran will not make U.S. problems go away.
Thanks for the link. In fact, it seems the legislation is not that bad. For example the justification of Amendment 3:
It should be made clear that the involvement of injured parties in investigations carried out by the police or public prosecutors' offices must not jeopardise the neutrality of those state investigation agencies. Maintaining objectivity and neutrality is part and parcel of the rule of law.
states basically that MPAA and RIAA cannot go berserk ignoring the neutrality of laws.
Amendment 16, instead, explicitly protects fair use: Member States shall ensure that the fair use of a protected work, including such use by reproduction in copies or audio or by any other means, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research, does not constitute a criminal offence.
Moreover I see nothing taking sides about P2P software and websites.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
They have voted to pass it on it's first reading. It still has some way to go yet before it becomes an actual directive, and there is still plenty of opportunity for it to be rejected or heavily ammended.
I would point out that most member states of the EU already crimialize "comercial" copyright infringment, and thus this could be seen as an attempt to "harmonizing" EU wide law. I would also point out the proposed directive would require member states to ensure fair use rights, something several member states don't do, starting with the U.K.
This is where most people here completely misunderstand the EU. Member states implement EU directives via laws introduced by their own parliaments, with the wording of law therefore very much down to the individual country (with the exception of directives relating to the Common Agricultural Policy). A member state can't completely ignore an entire directive indefinitely, but they can water-down or tighten-up a directive as they see fit (the word "directive" should give that one away, as opposed to EU "regulations" which are directly enforcible).
All the posts on here implying that the passing of this directive now instantly means all EU countries have much stricter anti-piracy laws are simply wrong. The "good" EU countries like Sweden will all but ignore this law, whereas the "bastard" countries (like the UK, where I live, and who were largely behind this directive) will introduce even stricter controls then the directive calls for.