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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."
Funny how politicians go up for election claiming this, that and the other - usually things like tax, education, health and transport. Then suddenly once they're in, enforcing draconian controls on digital media is what's important - would they get in if that's what they said up front?
I want a new directive. One that bans all member states from making any new laws for the next ten years.
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? I can't think of a single thing, not one, nothing. Maybe this is a failure of imagination on my part but on the whole laws in the last ten years have been mostly negative.
Maybe voting is declining in Britain not because of athapy, per se, but because people like myself our realizing the truth. Our politicians are powerless - they can't do a thing to change the plight of the average person on the street. They can raise taxes, lower taxes, pass all sorts of laws but they can't stop the dickheads burning people's bins or the fourteen year olds buying cider to vomit up on the street.
In short, what's the point in voting when both parties are equally as corrupt and when the decisions taken there never effect you? It's a powerful argument but not one I personally agree with. I vote not for myself but because a great many lives were lost trying to defend that vote. The tragedy is that this generation has come to find that their vote would be more productively used as toilet paper than a means of expressing your opinion.
We need a new sort of politics. A politics where local issues and common people are listened to. A politics where the career of the politician matters less than serving their constituents. A politics where issues are not decided based on the party your belong to but what improves the lives of the people of the country. We need a politics where an honest politician is not considered an oxymoron. We need a rupture from the past and we need it more urgently than ever before.
Simon.
attempt to harmonize the copyright laws
That's the lie that has continupously been used to increase copyright law for copyright holders. That's why copyright term was extended in the US - "to harmonize" with german/european law. They needed to "extend it" because the nazis suspended copyright during WWII. So th US law had to be extended to match their term length.
However, if you notice, copyright law was not suspended in the US during WWII.
Inciting or abetting or aiding a copyright infringement is also a crime.
Windows contains a CD ripper, there is no fair use in EU law, you are not allowed to rip CD, Windows is a commercial product, this fits the commercial scale aiding of piracy. It is no different from any other copying device. So how about we demand the criminal prosecution of Microsoft?
BSA was a strong backer of this law, essentially to protect Windows. So it would be fitting if we could get Microsoft as it's first victim. Nokia next, their phones can play MP3s. They also backed this law.
You may have difficulty getting enforcement, since this is a dipshit law and the policemen know it, but you can often file Ombudsman complaints against the police if they fail to enforce the law in some cases but not others.
This is a golden time, every major backer of this law is guilty of some infringement of it. You don't even need to be the copyright holder to file a complaint under this law! How cool is that? A law so vague every MP3 makers, duplicating machine maker, computer maker, phone maker, search engine maker, is guilty of violating it.
I fear the day that someone develops a nice killer app that turns out (entirely unexpectedly and unintentionally) to fuel piracy.
It could be a blog software with a vulnerability that some dev has no time to fix, or it could be some new secure p2p IM service with a casual file transfer built in. Any other software manifestation that carries with it honestly wonderful intentions can be construed as criminal in the hands of its users.
How does the opensource community, comprised of software authors with no legal protection, manage to protect their continued activities? Does anyone else fear the implications this has for entire opensource OS's and kernels that could somehow be construed as having code that "aids piracy" in some remote fashion? Softmac support in the form of people on wifi hotspots is one example I can think of.
for sale
I'm a self-modifying sig virus
In the name of providing video sharing services or Search engines, these sites indulge in mass copyright violation that requires the owners of copyrights (server admins) to set things like robots.txt etc.
Having said that, I can see where you are coming from in that such sites do enable the uninformed or unconcerned to infringe on others' copyrights. However such sites also have a legitimate use as venues for user generated content. The UGC on such sites may not interest you but, to judge my stepsons behaviour and that of their friends, there is an upcoming generation that does appreciate it and is more willing to create content rather than just be a passive consumer. As far as I'm concerned this is a positive thing and criminalising the video sharing sites to protect the rights of big business is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
There are always those looking for a free ride. You do what you can to reduce such attempts so that whatever you are doing is worth while and live with the rest. (Unless you work for big media businesses in the 21st century in which case you try to buy politicians and laws to put budding competitors out of the picture.)
A Prayer to the Omnipotent FSM
How long will it be until thoughtcrime becomes a punishable offense?
Excepting end-users doesn't alleviate this at all, especially since almost all end-users also upload copyrighted material in todays P2P networks (hence the acronym).
Since anyone can write a simple P2P system in a few hours and using just a few hundred lines of code, and since such a client could be applied for all kinds of legal and sensible uses like distributing patches, podcasts, etc, I find it a horrible idea to potentially send people to prison for writing such a system.
I agree that copyright infringement should be punished, but in light of the high usage of P2P systems no government acting in the interest of its people should criminalize such huge percentage of the people it represents. There has to be a real compromise between the content creators/owners and the end-users in whose interest governments should ultimately act. And sending people to prison or fining them many thousands of euros for illegally downloading digital content just doesn't seem that interest-protecting for the people to me!
When I hear the word "harmonise", I usually think of things being harmonious... however, what happens in looney Euroland is that harmonisation of laws results in things becoming equally bad for everyone... things never become less restrictive, they always manage to find a way for all the most restrictive laws to be kept and amalgated into the new "harmonised" version...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I have no problem with the prosecution of these small time crooks, as long as the worst trouble you can get in for copyright infringement does not exceed the punishment for worse laws... which I would say includes just about everything...
The people who whine about this shit don't understand that it just isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. A very small amount of the population stands to lose, while more of the population stands to gain. But I think that if you get 3 years for copyright infringement and 1 year for beating your wife or six months for aggrivated assault, then there is something seriously wrong with the system. It means that the money being lobbied is more important than the welfare of the people in a country.
Nothing new in our modern civilized societies though. Ick... that sounded bitter.
You take it, I don't want it...
There are some important parts there, that helps to clarify and protect private copying, while harmonizing the legislation among the members states to fight the real threat that this legislation aims: counterfeiting of real world trademarked and copyrighted goods. Here are some important parts of this amendments:
Now, again, let's comment on that. How is that bad for fair use, private copying, etc? It is exactly THE OPPOSITE of what is being stated in the summary of this article, it defines explicitly fair use, right to private copying and creates a legal framework for the IP holders to be able to assert their rights, while protecting the citizens against baseless suits.
And, as a side effect of that, it legalizes the legal parallel importing of goods, making the ones like Lik Sung (sic) to be able to operate on E.U. territory. See below:
The unfortunate reality is that with the typical electoral system in the west, each election is decided on the basis of a very small number of very high profile issues. Things like economics, "defence", healthcare, and crime are tried and tested. Trendy issues — currently it's anything environmental over here in the UK — can also register significantly. However, minor things that still affect many people every day are rarely even considered. This is how things like IP and road traffic laws can reach a point where a very significant proportion of the population are criminalised for doing something that a majority of the population does not believe to be ethically wrong.
This will probably continue as long as we have this bizarre idea that politicians can predict before the election what will happen throughout their entire term of office. That simply isn't possible, unless their policies are never going to change depending on context. Consider the unpredictability of a world stock market crash or a plane flying into an iconic building, and unsurprisingly the reality doesn't always match up. It is silly to expect that it ever will, and we would do far better if political manifestos set out the principles and values supported by the each candidate, and reserved concrete policies for examples: "Under the current circumstances, I would therefore support this measure to provide further financial support to that group." We also need to get over this idea that any politician who changes his or her position on an issue is "doing a U-turn" and doesn't know what they stand for. Maybe the circumstances just changed? Maybe they came across better information, and revised their opinion in light of it? These are good things for politicians to do, as long as their actions are consistent with the principles and values for which they stood at election time. The idea that all politicians should have evaluated all information on all issues comprehensively before every decision they are asked to make is simply unrealistic, and I would rather vote for someone who acknowledged this and made a genuine effort to dot the right thing than someone who pretended they were omniscient and used this to attack their more considerate opposition.
Of course, such a principled election system would also show up some other problems with "representative" democracy in places like the US and UK today. As far as I can see, the major political parties in these countries are so closely aligned on many issues that someone who is fairly central but tends towards individual responsibility and capitalism rather than socialism and a large government simply has no-one to vote for who will argue their case. Given the barriers to entry in starting a new political party, this means a significant proportion of the population's voice is never heard.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Black spots on your Insightful++
.don't understand that it just isn't that big of a deal"
."
"The people who whine . .
Yeah, one minor law isn't that big of a deal. Then the next little restriction is trivial, and a further one is insignificant . . . etc. We call that frog soup.
"A very small amount of the population stands to lose, while more of the population stands to gain . .
That's a very dangerous line of thinking. The same philosophy would apply if we murdered the richest 1% of the population, confiscated their wealth, and then divided it up equally among the remaining 99%. Who could possibly object to a policy that affects so few and benefits so many?