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E.U. Commission Suggests Permissive Copyright Rule
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Feb 02, 2003 04:49 AM
from the no-harm-no-foul dept.
from the no-harm-no-foul dept.
An anonymous reader submits "ITworld.com is reporting: 'The European Commission on Thursday presented a draft directive that punishes copyright infringement for commercial purposes, but leaves the home music downloader untouched, infuriating the entertainment industry.'"
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w00t! (Score:4, Funny)
Screw that (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:w00t!-Revolutionary War. (Score:5, Funny)
No. Many of you were kicked out, forcibly deported or fled persecution of one kind or another. The others for the most part didn't have to fight to go.
The "war" (rebellion would be more accurate) was to free yourselves from lawful authority and to avoid paying taxes, not to get away from Europe where (mostly) you weren't wanted anyway.
Parent
Re:w00t!-Revolutionary War. (Score:3, Informative)
Kind of ironic, considering how much we pay in taxes now...
Anyway, a large part of those taxes were taxes that were being levied only on the Colonies, and were designed to apparently put the colonies firmly in the pocket of a conglomerate of businessmen. Most of the taxes (like the tea tax, which led to the Boston Tea Party) were designed to force purchase of a "minimum amount" of English goods, so the owners of those companies could get much richer, without having to worry about any 'vocal opposition', as the colonies had no representation in the House of Lords or House of Commons. (You might recall "No taxation without representation". It doesn't mean that they were against all taxes. It's just that they wanted to have as equal a voice as any other citizen of England in the taxes that were being levied on them.)
The net result of the revolution was that the government that was to be formed was ostensibly to be different from the British one. Didn't succeed all that well though...
Kierthos
(Yes, yes, insightful, but off-topic as hell...)
Sounds good but... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, this will not sit well with American companies. It will not be allowed.
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are more people under EU law than there are under US law, and the EU is just starting to flex its' muscles a bit more. Negotiation is the key for getting your own way, either for member states or those outside the boundaries. Trying to impose a solution (by anyone, even founder member-states) is becoming more and more difficult.
Has anyone else noticed that plain 'ole numbers are becoming more important over time ? China and India are being cited as the future powerhouses of global commerce; the US and (to a lesser extent) the EU are outsourcing huge chunks of what would have been bread-and-butter work to external countries, etc. Maybe EU expansion isn't such a bad idea after all... Perhaps it'll be Russia next :-)
Simon
Parent
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason that China and India are both seen as possible (well, India at least still has some major economic hurdles to overcome, China seems a sure thing) economic powerhouses is largely because of not only their huge populations--but their huge and POOR populations! Cheap wages. Cheap costs in general. That's it.
Subsidies and wealth of the population are actually tied together too. As countries (largely) in the West have become more prosperous overall, costs of living go up, expected wages go up, costs of doing business go up. This in turn makes certain industries more expensive to operate, and in some cases uncompetitive globally. Thus the need for government subsidies.
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think there's a world (no pun intended :-) of difference between an internal market and an external market. The EU is doing more or less what EU-people expect if they "protect" EU-people from external states.
The (horrendously large) french farm subsidies are an internal matter for the EU to sort out, and mainly came from the way in which the EU was set up, with Britain excluded from the EU until "appropriate" safeguards had been made for French farmers.
[History, as far as I recall]
Britain had a far more efficient farming style, wanted to join the EU => France was scared, so as anEU member France lobbied for EU subsidies as a condition for UK entrance. The UK eventually agreed that there were still sufficiently large advantages to be had by membership, and reduced its' original proposed EU payments as well. Britain entered the EU, and France kept their farmers employed.
[/History]
The ideal would be to wean people off subsidies, but I still see the above as the EU "protecting" member states (in this case, France) from external interests (in this case, the UK) . Whether I agree with the subsidies or not isn't really relevant...
As for poverty being the root cause of India & China's resurgence, I don't doubt it's an economic argument that's the cause of the dilemma. I was trying to point out that a practice is being established... Any innate industry feeds from its market, and if the market disappears, so does the industry...
Simon.
Parent
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:5, Informative)
Try looking at The EU official website [eu.int]
The EU-15 zone is currently some 378.5 million people. There are another 10 countries currently under consideration for membership which will add a further 74.5 million people. This would make the US approximately 60% of the size.
Even Britain (approx the size of an averaged USA state) has some 59 million people...
Simon.
Parent
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:5, Informative)
If you check the US Government figures for population by country [census.gov] you'll note that whilst USA is third on the list (albeit a distant third to China and India) that if you go down the list a bit, adding up Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain... that combined they surpass the USA rather easily with more EU countries (smaller ones) still to be counted, and more joining too.
Which isn't to suggest that population is some sort of ultimate metric for the comparison of countries (in any event the EU and the USA are very different in nature, at least at present) just that 260 million isn't as many as you seem to think it is.
Parent
France has nukes too. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:France has nukes too. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the past, they have done several tests of their ICBMs in the Atlantic whithout notifying neither the Americans, nor the Brits. As a result quite a few people in NORAD, RAF and the Russian missile command have quite a few grey hairs more then usual.
Seeing a missile appear from nowhere off the Irish Coast and head across the Atlantic in the general Wahington direction is not funny. At all. Or at least neither the Russians nor the US and the UK found it funny in the past. Dunno about the French.
Parent
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, though, it's hard over here getting support for a war in Iraq. The ignorant patriot has become sort of a humorous stereotye in other countries, but in actuality there is just no way the RIAA could force America to wage war.
Still, you do have a good point. Analysis of the Telecommunications Act of 1997 (I believe it was 1997, but I'm not sure) is proof of the massive media conglomerates power in Congress (the Act actually helped perpetuate this).
Re:Sounds good but... (Score:2)
Accurate would be insightful or informative.
Bloody accurate seems to get moderated as "Funny".
Try it this way. You can laugh or you can cry. Laughing's better.
Much more like gallows humor than enjoyable humor, but then humor is a serious business.
Why any law? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why any law? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's flooding across the world, the idea that copyright was once a workable solution but now is gradually being more and more perverse
Thanks to many commercial interests, companies are applying pressure to have copyright strengthened in a radical sense
More and more they want not only full control over who makes copies (the original idea) but how you use the copies you get. how you watch them, who you watch them with, what you do with the information on those copies
A home user making a copy of a DVD to have it on their upstares computer as well as their DVD player in the living room is one thing, and is meaninglless in the scheme of things
"they" however want to control you and sya you can't do 'x' or 'y'. when you want to do 'z'
something to think about
Parent
Because the EU is about standardising policy (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
there were no criminal statutes in old c'right law (Score:3, Informative)
IE copyright was traditionally only a part of civil laws.
Really the addition of copyright provisions to the criminal statutes is only relatively recent (post 1970?). All that's being suggested is that copright law should teturn to its traditional status in regards to infringment by individuals for personal reasons.
Even if this suggestion became law, record companies would still have the right to sue individual non-commercial copyright infringers in the civil courts
Re:Why any law? (Score:5, Informative)
In Germany, IRC, it is (or was) not only allowed to make copies of CDs, it is even allowed to give them to people you have a close relationship with. It is (or was) even explicitly allowed to circumvent copyright measurements for personal uses.
The downside is, that in Germany you pay a certain fee for every blank media (CD-R, cassette, MD: 6/h of recording time) and device (CD-Burner, tape-deck, MD-player) to compensate the artists for the estimated losses.
I'm not quite sure about the current situation, therefor "(or was)". I've found some an article [nmpa.org], which mentions Germanys copyright legislation.
Parent
OK, that's it.... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh wait...
Civil vs Criminal laws (Score:5, Informative)
This is only about EU law, which is eventually enforced by national police forces. i.e. its criminal law.
So all the EU are saying is that for it to be a crime under national law there has to be a commercial gain behind the copyright infringement.
The normal copyright CIVIL laws are still there exactly as before.
This is quite reasonable. If the guys ripping off their stuff for profit, the police can intervene, if hes making copies for his friends, they have to take him to court.
Re:Civil vs Criminal laws (Score:3, Interesting)
I cant help but agree, and its probably the first time that I can think of the European Union doing something reasonable. Since commercial copyright theft is believed to fund organized criminals who also control drugs and prostitution, then the EU has said catagroically that these people are a lot worse than those who infringe copyright at home. Hooray!
I'd still like to see the copyright laws returned to 14 years after publication, but you cant win them all.
Re:Civil vs Criminal laws (Score:2)
Now, IANAL, but I think thats how it works...
Re:Civil vs Criminal laws (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure about the latter part of your comment. (Since when has copyright infringement required proof you viewed or listened to the media?)
Yeh, they would need evidence before they bring a civil court case, just as they need evidence now to get a court to order a search. But thats the point isn't it!
Its stops people using laws as a way to harrass people for what could be argued to be fair-use rights.
We had an example of harrassment-by-law recently, when the FBI raided homes of alledged 'uncapped modem' users. Sure they broke they're terms of service, but since when has the FBI enforced ISPs terms of service?
Parent
What about the EUCD? (Score:2, Interesting)
It appears as though they would be mutualy exclusive, which is definetly a good thing. Any Europeans who follow these things know for sure.
At any right sweet if it passes, but it is still only a draft and the Media Groups will be lobying hard for changes so one can only hope it remains unscathed.
Can't buy off the EU? (Score:2)
Which would mean no expensive campaigns, which would make it much more difficult to bribe.
Personally, I doubt this law would ever pass, I'm so used to the ever-increasing authoritarianism in our government that liberalization just seems impossible to me.
Re:Can't buy off the EU? (Score:3, Interesting)
We passed that stage long ago, now we directly elect people who have money and power, not their cronies!
(Yes, I'm Italian, and looking for a way out!)
Re:Can't buy off the EU? (Score:3, Informative)
You are aware, that the European Commission and the European Parliament are two different entities?
The commission is appointed by the member states (the national goverments) and aproved of the parliament. They are usually not MEPs, but former minister of some national goverment. (source [eu.int])
But, you are right with the laughable controls over the MEPs.
Still, in past, the parliament has been quite in favour to consumer rights.
(Maybe because they don't have any real power)
More details about the european law on that matte (Score:3, Informative)
FAQ on proposed directive [eu.int]
Its good that someone gets it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that anyone that resells copyrighted material deserves whatever the content mafia deems possible.
If the content cartel would just ease up about suing all of their potential customers, they wouldnt have a problem with piracy. Each industry has its own issues to deal with.
Software. Makes $80 billion dollars, loses $12 billion on piracy.
Software activation and antipiracy stuff (MICROSOFT AND QUICKEN) are a hassle to customers. They have to justify their existence in the face of open sourced competition.
Movies. Makes a couple of billion dollars (I'm guessing maybe more), loses millions to crappy divx screeners and stuff. People are buying $20 DVDs buy the handful, renting DVD's for $4, and going to movies for $7 a whole hell of a lot! I find it hard to belive their claims about piracy when they are making money hand over fist. Given to head in the sand syndrome when they didnt allow Linux Users to have a version of DVD viewing software. If a bunch of programmers can make their own OS, then decoding DVDs must be trivially easy (Especially when Xing leaves a key around in plain sight--- geniuses). Region Coding is just a sham. Stop now and youll sell more movies. Go digital in projection screens and stop whining about costs to get movies out to justify delayed releases. Global simultaneous releases will do a lot to squashing piracy. Keep those DVD prices at $20 or less.
Music Industry. Must move away from selling CD's a lot. Must sell DRM-less digital download in the MP3, Mp4, or SHN format. Must convince stores like best buy to install kiosks that allow users to hook up iPods or Nomads to swipe credit cards and get albums for $2 (this reduces payoffs to teamsters and costs to get cds pressed and stuff), and singles for $0.10. It;d be a gold mine and I'd buy like crazy. In the meantime, stop suing your customers, stop peddling locked cds WITHOUT LABELING THEM, YOU DECEITFUL BASTARDS, and ease up on piracy. Lastly, dont pay broadcasters to play songs. Thats got you in a bigger bind than this. Oh, and get much more responsive to consumer tastes and demands. And never again sell a Britney Spears to the american public. Spears will be a porn star within 5 years, as if Christina Aguilera isnt one.
If the music industry doesnt serve its customers, it will become irrelevant. Why do you think that your devoted mouthpiece and IT whipping bitch Hilary Rosen left your sorry excuse for an industry? You guys suck, and we are taking our money elsewhere.
Re:Its good that someone gets it. (Score:2)
Damn, that's cheap. Where I'm from, it's $10 now (or was it $10.50?).
Re:Its good that someone gets it. (Score:5, Insightful)
They clamped down at the College on P2P. I used to bring a Zip Disk along and download a few samples using the lab's high speed access. I "met" all of my favorite artists that way. Example: I had no idea of who "Enya" was, but I got one of her songs on one of my kinda random downloads, I liked it. I found several more of hers. Liked them too. Next thing I know, when I was in any record store, I was looking for her CD's... I think I have her complete set now ( except for one compilation CD ). These were all purchased.
Now that I have been prohibited from sampling the music, I find something odd happening. Although I still go into the record store, there is now nothing running through my head that I want to buy. I see rows upon rows of CD's, but to me they are just so much clutter - I have no idea what they are - they may as well be in another language. I just do not see a thing I'm specifically looking for
I know what the problem is... I do not listen to the radio anymore. They would continuously play the hot list, interspersed with as much jabber as they thought I would tolerate. Problem is now its not just the "top 40" I have to choose from... its literally thousands of different titles in the store... and I don't know the slightest thing about any of the new ones.. I just remember some of the oldies from earlier years.
Yes, the store does have listening kiosks, but each only has access to maybe 5 CD's, and I am quite uncomfortable having to stand in one spot for several minutes at a time trying to listen to them. Its not at all like queueing the disk up I made at College and having it play in the background while I do my homework, then if something strikes me while listening, reopening the jukebox window to see what it was. Most of the stuff I got at College was crap anyway, but there were a few gems in it, such as Enya and others. Well, maybe not crap - because music preferences are so unique to each individual, but definitely not mine.
I remember when I used to get excited about Baseball games. Then they had a strike. During the strike, I found something else to do. Guess what, I haven't been back to a game since! Now, it seems I take just about as much interest in how far some baseball player hits the friggen ball as I suspect he cares how I did on my calculus exam. I find once I "get out of sync" with something, I lose interest in it.
Yes, I guess the **AA may have won this one on me - as not only have I not downloaded for about 4 months now, nor have I had any reason to buy any recordings either.
I am not for sure that they really wanted what they won.
Parent
Terrorism (Score:5, Interesting)
Finally some sense! (Score:5, Interesting)
US always tries to do the "Good Thing" but goes all backwards about it - ie during the War On Drugs they didn't focus enough on the source of the drugs, and too much on the "end-user", during the War On Terrorism, they are overthrowing political regimes(I'm not saying they shouldn't but thats the wrong way to go about it), while they should be cutting off the money supply to terrorism that flows from America itself. Now they do do some of the right stuff too, but primarily US politians loose focus too quickly.
Lets hope that EU will set a good example, by targeting the source of the disease instead of the symptoms.
Who to Bribe (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure most of the 'pressure' is coming from US companies, which begs the question, why does the EU care at all? Profits are only then to be made on selling the CDs and hosting concerts; Is there really all that much money coming through Europe to make it a big deal? In the US, every penny an artist or company makes is eventually going back into the economy, whether through buying a mansion in the Hills, or buying off a Senator. It's not like US artists are investing millions in real estate in England, and I don't think the politicians are quite so owned.
This is the press release from the EU (Score:4, Informative)
The press release is here [eu.int] (in various languages). Don't forget to read it, and the draft directive, in detail before entering into uninformed discussion based upon a possibly incorrect third-party news article.
Yep, it's a dupe. (Score:2)
a really bad idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright infringement would still be a civil crime so the content industries could still go after consumers on their own, just like they can now -- the proposed legislation would change criminal law. Also (obviously) the existing law covers copyright infringement for profit as copyright infringement for profit is still copyright infringement.
So what's the point of the new law? Read closely:
Peer-to-peer file-sharing services that encourage copyright infringement and make money from advertising are commercial, according to the Commission. "That is illegal and should be stopped," the Commission said. Examples of file sharing services are Kazaa and Morpheus.
Got it yet?
What they're saying: "Criminal sanctions only apply when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes."
What they want to dupe the public into hearing: "You can download all you want as long as no money is involved."
What they mean: "Copyright infringement through p2p services hurts the profits of companies that make large campaign contributions. P2P companies produce highly functional p2p software which has a primary function of facilitating copyright infringement because there is a financial incentive to do so (adware/spyware). This aspect of the p2p business can be used to legitimate government attacks in order to shut down those businesses."
What this means for you: Say goodbye to KaZaA and other useful (meaning large, meaning commercially-supported) networks.
It's all just a matter of time... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the way music and entertainment (story telling?) work in villages and it's only the urban lifestyle that's made it impossible.
It should be completely obvious that the large-scale entertainment industries are already dead, but they just don't know it. Copyright extensions... piracy laws... anti-copying technology... it's all just pissing into the river.
One example: did anyone seriously enjoy LOTRTT as much as they enjoyed the parodies of it? You see what I mean. The day when more people get their kicks from community-created content (CCCtm) like web logs,
I'm speaking from experience: I used to be a street drummer, and I can say that the kick from getting fifty random people to stop from their shopping on a sunny saturday afternoon and move their booty to insanely loud drumming beats any other form of fun except possibly (possibly) sex.
Applicable quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"I wish I could record a day's work and then sell that recording over and over and over to anyone who needed that day's work done for them.
Before geeks invented sound recording, musicians sang for their supper.
Now technology has come full circle, and it's back to singing for their supper--and those pampered, bloated, overpaid Holyweird types are scared stiff they might have to work for a living!
And why not?
Technology has ruined the careers of other blue collar workers--now it's the turn of entertainers, who after all are nothing but another kind of blue collar worker."
P2P Terrorists? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I suppose buying copies of Win XP for a buck or two in SE Asia gets some money to the Triads, but how is downloading an Win XP ISO from a P2P network making Osama any money?
I suppose when I installed Windows 2000 on two different machines caused some planes to smash into buildings.
--
Every time you download off a P2P network, God kills a kitten
Re:P2P Terrorists? (Score:5, Insightful)
I sat browsing the Prelinger archive [archive.org] last night, and download three or four movies.
From "The Terrible Truth" (1951) [archive.org]: "Some say the reds are promoting dope traffic in the United States to undermine national moral. They did it in China a few years back. It's certainly true that the increased use of narcotics plays right into their hands."
Oookay... Sounded a little paranoid, but I didn't think much more about it. After all, I've heard of McCartyism, and know it was blown out of proportions. The next movie was about pornographic litterature (Yeah, yeah, I know I downloaded some of the more sensational ones, but I wanted entertainment) :
"Perversion for Profit" (ca. 1964-1965) [archive.org]: "This moral decay weakens our resistance to the onslaught of the Communist masters of deceit."
Uh. Two movies in a row, selected at (pretty much) random, made over 10 years apart. Both blaming communism for plotting to destroy the nation. If I've downloaded more movies from the archive, I'm sure I would have found more of the same.
Anyway... This made me think of Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" [imdb.com], and what the movie says about fear being used to make the public act in certain ways or accept whatever are presented to them. Sample quote: "The media, the corporations, the politicans, have all done such a good job of scaring the American public, it has come to the point that they don't have to give any reason at all."
If this is how it works, can single words have the power to trigger these effects? Don't forget how hard it is to say no to a law that has "patriotic" as part of it's name (Because saying "no" would mean UNpatriotic, and you KNOW you either are with us or against us).
If shouting "communist" at things and people you wanted to get rid of worked in the 50's and 60's, certainly linking the word "terrorist" to illegal copying should have some effect on public opinion and lawmakers.
Seems to me like "terrorist" is the fnord [everything2.com] of our time.
Parent
Unambitious? (Score:2)
Completely wrong submission! (Score:5, Informative)
The directive does not legalise filesharing, or any other activity illegal under present copyright law. It deals solely with the enforcement of copyright law. A few highlights (or should i say lowlights?):
EU states must give anti-piracy alliances the right to apply for raids where they can seize infringing copies and related evidence. These raids can be granted without the presence or knowledge of the defendant, "in the event of an actually committed or imminent infringement"
It also demands that you must divulge information on the recievers and suppliers of "infringing goods" if you have yourself been pointed out as "a link in the network" of infringers.
Furthermore EU members must allow injunctions against "intermediar[ies] whose services are being used by a third party to infringe a right" (I wonder what exactly you'll have to do to prove that the resources you put the disposal of others will not be used for piracy...)
Re:Completely wrong submission! (Score:4, Informative)
It looks like the ITworld article has got two different proposals mixed up.
The 'Directive on copyright and related rights in the Information Society' which alledgedly gives people fair-use rights, but then takes them away again by making it illegal to circumvent 'Technical Protection Measures'
The other directive ' of the European Parliament and of the Council on measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights' is the gnarly one that gives the copyright holders lots more power in the courts.
Parent
A little background (Score:3, Informative)
The proposal may very well still be amended on its way through the Euro-parliament.
The EU countries already have laws in place for punishing copyright infringement. (And the copyright laws are also harmonised by directives) What's new is that the enforcement of these laws is harmonised.
Realistic piracy figures? (Score:3, Informative)
40% of software in use worldwide is believed to be pirated, and 37% in the EU (= loss of revenue of 2.9 billion euros annually).(2) [bsa.org]
Worldwide, 36% of all music CDs and cassettes sold are pirated (total sales of pirated goods is 5 billion units).
Can this be debunked?
The same should be asked of the numbers on p. 10 of the directive (pdf) [eu.int]
Re:Realistic piracy figures? (Score:3, Insightful)
Never trust music industry claims on how much money or how many jobs are "lost" because of copying. Most of the monetary losses are due to large-scale, professional pirates who actually sell bootleg copies of the music, rather than casual Internet downloaders. Nonetheless, it's not very efficient to cripple the computer industry to prevent piracy, and it's not really efficient to be having law enforcement go after casual downloaders instead of (for example) worrying about violent crime, organized crime, etc.
The European Commission on Thursday (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Still not good news (Score:4, Informative)
Parent