EU Parliament Debates a DMCA Equivalent

bs0d3 writes "Right now what is lacking across Europe is a standard law to handle notice-and-take-downs of illegal sites like the U.S.'s DMCA. Right now illegal content across Europe is subject to non-standard takedown letters, some of which include no mention of what law was allegedly infringed, nor in which jurisdiction in Europe it's infringed, or who to contact in your jurisdiction to challenge the claim, or even which company it is that is being represented by the law firm that gets in touch with the [site owner]. They need a system so that the notices would have to include information that makes them verifiable as correct." Perhaps that will change; "The EU is holding a public consultation discussing notice-and-take-down laws."

Comments

DMCA = "Guilty until proven innocent"

[squash_me_quickly]

The problem with the DMCA is that, in every case where I have seen it used, ones content is blocked on the internet after lawyer are involved.
It is then completely up to the owner of the site to prove that they have no infringing content on their site.

The process of sending a DMCA complaint was free, the last time I checked. Go to DMCA.com... and fill out a form, quote from the site "The DMCA.com Takedown claim form takes about 3 minutes to fill out."

If one is a victim of a bogus DMCA complaint, there is no easy help to find on their site. Once one finds the correct page one can read that a counterclaim can only be sent "after the DMCA Takedown has been submitted and after the content has been removed."

Once on sends the the counterclaim to the ISP "they must wait 10-14 days" before they may unblock the content.

Accused = sentenced immediately :(
Exonerated = sorry, you got to wait 10-14 days :(

Re:DMCA = "Guilty until proven innocent"

[Kjella]

Yes, I think this is a big flaw with the DMCA. If you have the chutzpah to file a signed counter-notice under penalty of perjury with your real name and address, then I say the ISP should be required to "act expeditiously to restore, or enable access to, the material" and let them battle it out in court, it's a civil matter and there should be no presumption to either side. Also you run the risk of perjury and they don't, the notice should require the "A statement that the complaining party has a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law." to be under penalty of perjury. You might be wrong, but you must do so in "good faith" - right now you can send out anything you want as long as you don't "knowingly misrepresent" which is practically impossible to prove. If you have a stupid process with simple keyword searches and no QA you can be as reckless in sending out notices as you please and it's fully legal.

Public consultations

[Serpents]

I wonder how "public" they're going to be. During the ACTA debacle the Polish government invited representatives of all movie/music/whathaveyou industry organizations and not a single NGO, representative of an alternative point of view or somebody who actually has some idea about how the Internet works and they called it "public consultations". I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar here