Slashdot Mirror
European Court of Justice To Outlaw Net Filtering
jrepin writes "Today, the European Court of Justice gave a preliminary opinion that will have far-reaching implications in the fight against overaggressive copyright monopoly abusers. It is not a final verdict, but the advocate general's position; the Court generally follows this. The Advocate Generals says that no ISP can be required to filter the Internet, and particularly not to enforce the copyright monopoly."
Too much money riding on it. Corporations will win. Always.
You can bet the Copywrite lobby will fight this tooth and nail. After all, their yacht payme^H^H^H^H^^H^H^H^H^H^H^H artists livelihoods are at stake!
In a shocking development, the famous tech web site "Slashdot" has been found to post misleading headlines *again*. While the european court is moving to ban internet blocking without a law, it clearly states that it would be legal if a specific law would allow and specify the conditions for it.
Is this between the Fortress of Solitude and Lex's Lair?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Hello, Slashdot. I had intended to update this article tomorrow with a more detailed analysis, but given that it's now Slashdot Top Story, I posted the followup immediately. For your convenience:
What this does is say that:
One, no court may impose an ISP with an order to filter, in particular not because of enforcement of copyright monopolies;
Two, such filtering is a reduction of fundamental rights, so
Three, if laws are written requiring an ISP filter or block the internet, such laws must conform to very strict criteria that are applied to laws limiting fundamental rights. They must be effective, they must be proportionate, and they must be defensible in a democratic society. While this sounds like political wishywashing, it has some very specific meanings. It is useful to compare to what laws have been written to prevent terrorism: these laws are held to that standard, which the copyright industry wants badly to supersede. The Attorney General also goes into detail how such laws must be transparent and predictable.
What this does not say is that:
Four, no censorship must ever take place.
Five, no ISP may choose to limit what they present as "The Internet".
In conclusion:
Six, it has been the modus operandi of the copyright industry to threaten ISPs with "block to our wishes or we'll take you to court". This has been their standard operating procedure for the past couple of years, in order to establish enough precendents to get them written into law. Today's verdict, or potential verdict, gives those ISPs the power to say "go play on the highway, parasites, we have an order from the highest possible court saying no court can force us to do that. We care more about our customers than about obsolete irrelevants".
Seven, this is the highest court in Europe, referring to the (equivalent of) Constitution of Europe. Thus, there are no courts and no laws that can supersede this. No EU Directive can change this (potential) verdict. The way forward for the copyright industry appears permanently blocked; I hold it as absolutely improbable that they'll get paragraphs in the referred European Charter of Human Rights that put the copyright monopoly before the sanctity of correspondence, of personal data, and freedom of information.
There. Do I get karma for posting from my own blog when it is TFA?
Oh, and yay - my server is holding. *celebrate*
Hey, people in the land of freedom. How do you consider regulation such as this? It certainly is regulation, but it also certainly promotes freedom. I know there people who cannot fathom that freedom and regulation are not xor, infact I think you have minimum freedom in both the the minimum and the maximum end of the how-much-regulation-scale.
Maximum freedom is achieved some amount of regulation. How much regulation is dependent on the society, and I think it is an unstable maximum, which is why we need to update regulations continuously.
Or something.
Those who charge for bandwidth love piracy - since if the cost of the content goes to zero, all the profit in home-viewing of movies will go to the telcom companies & ISPs.
Also, telcom companies are known to be at least as skilled and powerful at lobbying than the copyright groups.
And the last thing ISPs want is to start having to filter content and therefore potentially become legally responsible for every wikileak and drug deal done through their network.
It'll be an interesting fight.
Here you can read why: http://jay.lu/2011/04/%E2%80%98scarlet-extended%E2%80%99-%E2%80%93-ecj-to-prohibit-internet-filtering/ Don't get too excited about this ECJ ruling on internetfiltering , firstly it isn't a ruling, secondly it doesn't outlaw web-blocking. In other words; it's all up to the individual EU memberstates now. What i think will happen, is that France & the UK will start the nasty .biz followed by a lobbying campaign in Brussels for EU ( legislative )"harmonization"
since this is how most nasty laws are passed.
One lever of influence gone: European courts*. What other levers exist to pressure ISPs into filtering?
Since the courts (or, more specifically, the threat of lengthy legal hassle) can no longer be used as a lever on ISPs to “voluntarily” filter content, what non-legal levers of influence will pro-filtering actors use on the ISPs? These aren't illegal levers, just ones which don't require the courts as bully. The separation of business interests (content creators and pipe-providers, for instance) suddenly becomes very important.
*Assuming the AG's opinion becomes a ruling, which is likely. Read the opinion -- pretty strong stuff.