ISP Filters & Copyright Extension Defeated In EU

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Last November, EU regulators in the European Parliament's Committee on Culture and Education began looking at how culture affects the economy and recommended a 'balance between the opportunities for access to cultural events and content and intellectual property' saying that 'criminalizing consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution.' Industry lobbyists, of course, immediately sprang into action to try to turn that around, writing amendments that would set up mandatory ISP copyright filters and extend EU copyrights to match the USA's life-plus-70 term. Thankfully, the committee rejected all of those amendments: 'Clearly, they're not going to let the ITRE or the European recording industry push them around, which is great news for Europeans. Now if we could only get the US Congress to show as much spine as the French (ouch).'"

Comments

Life+70 is just obscene

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Disney have a lot to answer for. Veto all Disney products :-)

Re:show as much spine as the French

[Amorymeltzer]

...the fact that criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution. (emphasis mine)

When was the last time anyone aside from the consumer expressed that view so blatantly? When was the last time anyone in government expressed that view? The two together is just about as close to Christmas in January as you can get - and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm a Jew...

Re:Now is the time for reform

[Rakishi]

Congratulation you just killed open source.

Re:Let me guess...

[Jugalator]

Let me guess... You don't understand how free software can be big business.

Let me make a second guess... You don't understand why indie producers make a profit on sites where you can also download their music.

Re:Now is the time for reform

[Ajehals]

I wontget into a lengthy discussion of your points, mainly because I generally agree with the direction (if not the specifics). However there is one glaring problem:

3. Death of the registered person means death of the copyright (you can't encourage dead people to make new works no matter how hard you try) Firstly I don't think that copyright should be about terms of life + X years, it should be about a fixed length, long enough for the creator to have the opportunity to profit (and hence be motivated to create more), but short enough that material is still culturally relevant when it becomes public domain (IMHO this would be far shorter for software due to the pace of change, especially when compared to other arts, probably longest for books as they seem to endure). It should definitely not be tied to the life of the creator, after all it may be seen in some quarters as an acceptable risk to kill someone in order to remove copyright protection :) .

Re:show as much spine as the French

[Ajehals]

I would suggest that (parts) of the EU, or rather elements of the apparatus that make up the Frankenstein-esque quasi-federal EU 'government' are considerably more pro-consumer and anti-monopolist than most other similar bodies. I am not surprised that this has come from the EU, it is in line with many of their better idea's (although there still appear to be quite a few stinkers hanging around in the system.)

My worry is that once the EU settles down and ceases to be about member nations haggling for power and influence, that the lobbyists and other 'usual suspects' of corporate power achieve some level of patronage and influence. The only really surprising thing is that given how unaccountable the whole EU system seems at present, that it hasn't happened already.

But then I am a pessimist, happy Hanukkah.

Re:Now is the time for reform

[Bogtha]

If you think any of that kills open source, then I suspect you are confusing open source with copyleft. Even if you abolished copyright altogether, open source software would remain. It is copyleft licenses like the GPL that depend upon copyright to operate.

Re:As a US citizen I find our government lacking

[mr_matticus]

Really. Which one of the 670,000 people she represents is she supposed to dance for? Seriously, I want to know.

If you think that you put people in office to do what you would do, then you're sorely missing the point of a republic. They're in place because we (theoretically) value their (hypothetical) decisionmaking abilities and they best reflect the () values of those electing said representative. We send people to Washington as trustees, not as mouthpieces, because the people rarely speak with one voice and the Framers were deathly afraid of the masses.

If you don't like the values of the representative, get a different representative. Don't whine about media control or interest groups or the "myth of two different parties"--if the people wanted something else, they'd have it. The fact that they don't generally give a crap is just part of the reality of our society, and in true democratic fashion, they get an equal voice for their apathy, pound for pound.

Re:Now is the time for reform

[SQL Error]

1. The copyright must be registered

At present, every blog post, every comment on Slashdot, every image I use in my site design, receives copyright protection automatically. You've just destroyed that. Oh, and Creative Commons with it.

2. An actual person must be named (just like with patents)

Just destroyed any right to privacy.

3. Death of the registered person means death of the copyright (you can't encourage dead people to make new works no matter how hard you try)

So if I work hard building - let's say - boats, and one day I drop dead of a heart attack, my children inherit the boats and can sell them. But if I work hard designing boats, my kids starve?

4. At time of registration a term can be chosen, and an appropriate fee paid.

Since copyright is currently extended to millions of creations every single day, this is completely untenable.

5. A reasonable number of extensions (say, three) are permitted, provided a new fee is paid.

And this too.

6. A set of standard royalties for a common class of work (say, songs) should be decided, and made available to anyone who cares to pay the standard rate.

And let's do the same for cars! Okay, Ferrari, Rolls Royce, Mercedes: All your cars now cost $20,000.

7. Willful royalty evasion justifies reasonable punitive damages (say, 3 times the standard royalty), nothing else does.

Levied by whom, and payable to whom? Currently, copyright infringement is in miost cases a civil matter, requiring the rights holder to bring suit. If you are legislating penalties, are you saying that this is now a criminal offense? Who will police it, and how?

8. Indoctrinated fair use should be ratified by international treaty and be recognized as a means to end a complaint pre-trial.

I'm not sure what "indoctrinated fair use" is even supposed to mean.

As far as I can see, your proposal is worse than the status quo in every way imaginable.