Euro Parliament Warns Against Overzealous IP Enforcement

An anonymous reader writes "Days after New Zealand dropped its support for the 'three strikes and you're out' approach for terminating Internet subscribers, the European Parliament has now similarly rejected the proposed approach. Today the EP adopted a new report on security and fundamental freedoms on the Internet that expressly rejects disproportionate measures for IP enforcement and the use of excessive access restrictions placed by IP rights holders."

Comments

Abusers turn their attention to the Internet.

[Futurepower(R)]

There seem to be a huge number of governments, agencies, corporations, and people who are carefully measuring how abusive they can be to the Internet. It's the old story: The powerful want to make money or get more power by restricting someone else's freedom.

Piracy is a serious issue. But the bulk of the problem with individuals doing piracy seems to be that there is often no good option to buy music and videos. Once companies bring themselves into modern thinking and modern ways of commerce, piracy will be less of a problem.

Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet.

[Chemosabe]

Good to see that the European Parlament is in tune with what the pirate bay generation already know; that there is a change in the rules of the game.

Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, no one ever wins the game.

Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming that copyright is the "right way" to ensure that people who make IP get paid for it - indeed, authors already get paid for the "right to publish" their work (which amounts to selling their IP rights to someone else), which would be possible analogously (just not uploading the master to anyone until they pay you) without copyright, strictly. Of course, the incentive to buy those rights would be reduced, but...

The main problem with copyright, though, is that it has been strengthened and extended far too much over the last century, such that now it doesn't do what it was originally intended to do - encourage production of works *which enter the public domain after the copyright expires*. For several classes of content, copyright effectively never expires now, which removes the important second component of the feature.

Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet.

[smoker2]

I don't have a problem with copyright either. I do have an issue with limited copyright protection lasting 70 years after the authors death. I don't care how much they make from their creation, I do have an issue with how long they expect to keep making money from old work. If an artist, say a pop star, makes $10M in 2 years, from one hit album, then expecting society to protect their work from copying for more than 100 years is complete and utter greed. If an artist ,ie. a painter, creates a work, then they can sell it. There are no copyright issues lasting 100 years (not allowing for prints). Either they get paid or they don't. If they want to make more money they have to paint another work and sell it. It's time to stop these assholes who believe they are owed a lifetime monopoly for pretty minor contributions to society. I bet the pop star doesn't send money back to their English teacher, or their music teacher, or the town council or the innumerable other people who made their specific contributions to the success of that one artist. No, despite having all that help, once they make some money it's a case of "mine all mine".

People also tend to forget that a work being out of copyright, does not prevent the original author making money from it. I find it amusing that the fall in the standards of new music is paralleled by the rise in the length of copyright terms. Extended copyright terms leave new artists with nowhere to go. Which is precisely the opposite of what copyright was intended to achieve.

Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet.

[Andy_R]

Corporations dying or not is irrelevant, the right expires 95 years after the author dies, not the owner. The original reason for copyright extending beyond the author's life time was that back in the days before it was common for women to have jobs and for diseases to be curable the wives and children of authors would suffer a double blow if the author died, they would be widowed and deprived of their income, while the publishers would get a big financial bonus because they would no longer be paying royalties.

Given the way that pop records sell vastly more copies on the tragic death of the musician, coupled with the RIAA's known tendency towards evil, I really don't think that they should have a large financial incentive to encourage artists to become the next Tupac/Cobain/Hendrix/Joplin etc.

Personally, I'd go for 'copyright last x years after first publication, rights sold to coporations revert to the author if the work is not commercially exploited, rights reverted to the author expire quickly if the work is still not commercially exploited', and I'd say x should be around 30 to 50 ish.

Nothing to do with IP

[QuantumG]

Meh, these power grabs weren't even anything to do with "IP".. they were attempts to circumvent the legal system which has already rejected the nefarious claims of the music companies.

Re:wonderfull news!

[91degrees]

They are. The Council can quite effectively ignore the EP by afgreeing to implement the measures as part of national policy.

It's a shame. The EP is the only democratically elected part of the organisation, and the genuinely seem to have our best interests at heart.

Re:Useing the word "IP" is ovezealous.

[maxwell demon]

What method do you use to distinguish human rights from other rights? And how does this method detect normal property rights as human rights, but "IP" rights as other rights?

Re:wonderfull news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you know what you're talking about? The European Parliament is not the same thing as the Commission, the European Council or the Committees.

The European Parliament is relatively transparent, and it does not negotiate international treaties like ACTA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Counterfeiting_Trade_Agreement#European_Parliament

Re:Useing the word "IP" is ovezealous.

[Teun]

It seems you mix up the rights of the author and the printer.
Although I don't at al agree with the silly in excess of life time awarding of rights to authors and their successors I do wish to give them a chance to benefit from their often years of work.

truncate immedately visible post length

[unity100]

this spam is going way too far. we are having to scroll for pages until we can get to any valid comment. truncate immediately visible post length to a paragraph or something so that we wont need to scroll the hell outta page before getting to comments through spam. when we want we can read the full comment by clicking read more anyway.

Re:Useing the word "IP" is ovezealous.

[Sique]

One of the big differences is that you can actually have a border around your property. You can't have a border around your "intellectual property", because even in the most original Works of Art there are layers and layers of cultural knowledge, environmental influences and ideas from other people.

As an easy example: "Which part of '42' is public knowledge, and which part is the intellectual property of Douglas Adams (Estate)?" (To make it more simple for you, using 42 in any circumstances is completely free to everyone, but nearly everyone at least on Slashdot associates 42 with Douglas Adams).