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."

Comments

Don't forget the children!

[fanpoe]

From the fine article

The EP.....decided that criminal sanctions should apply only to infringements deliberately carried out to obtain a commercial advantage. Piracy committed by private users for personal, non-profit purposes is therefore

I see a lot of commentary around the web that YouTube's only valid business model is due to turning a blind eye to uploaded copyrighted clips. Having seen how my stepsons use YouTube and similar sites I am not at all convinced that this is the case. They are quite happy with the user generated content.

Re:Don't forget the children!

[alphamugwump]

In my experience, the primary attraction of youtube is not the content at all, but the "community". It is difficult to understand until you try it, but posting videos can be incredibly entertaining, due to the amount of attention it is possible to get. With no mods, one can post anything at all that isn't actually obscene, which, practically speaking, makes youtube the perfect environment for a troll. Owing to the way the system counts views and comments (whether positive or not) and gives you honors, anything moderately inflammatory will easily get you on the most-discussed list. Simply put, youtube enables normal people have their own cadre of fanbois.

That's not to say that I haven't used youtube to watch whole TV series, but if all the copyrighted content were to disappear, I agree that they wouldn't be much affected.

I don't understand: isn't this good?

[cyclop]

I'm all for legalizing free, noncommercial share of copyrighted information (that is, what it's called "end user piracy" today). As far as TFA says, it seems Europe now explicitely protects the end user right to share copyrighted information: something that previous Italian legislation, for example, explicitely *criminalized*, instead.

It seems to me that the law bans commercial, money-making piracy (that's OK for me). As for the "banning p2p software", I've not found clear references. Can someone explain me better?