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Euro Parliament Warns Against Overzealous IP Enforcement

Posted by timothy on from the death-to-whistlers-of-beatles-tunes dept.

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."

6 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Abusers turn their attention to the Internet. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet. by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Funny

      Piracy is a serious issue.

      Indeed, but copyright is a fucking joke.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Abusers turn their attention to the Internet. by Chatterton · · Score: 4, Interesting

      copyright is a fucking joke by it's length of 95 years after the death of the author. 1) Tell me how a dead artist is compelled to create new content after his death by this income. 2) The copyright are generaly owned by corporation that can't be dead because they are already living dead soul suckers... If they decide to go back a little back on the length of the copyright and who can own a copyright, well then will I see it as an useful tool again.

  2. Nothing to do with IP by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
  3. Re:wonderfull news! by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.