EU Proposing to Make P2P Piracy A Criminal Offense 420
brajesh writes "The European Commission is pushing for a proposal (.pdf) to crack down on organized piracy, which could also make indirect copyright infringement a crime across Europe, with implications similar to the recent MGM v. Grokster U.S. Supreme Court ruling. If the directive is adopted, developers who create software for file sharing that is then used for illegal ends could potentially be criminally liable in EU member countries." From the article: "The problem here is some activities, such as the creation of software, can be used for legal and illegal purposes, as is the case with Grokster...It gets really messy, because it is unclear what is legal or not legal, and it is problematic to operate with such abstract terms."
But I thought Europe was all about freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just end it all, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's ban everything that attempts, aids, or incites acts of anything. It would eliminate cars, guns, tools, computers, people, milk, water, and air.
Fuck, let's just blow up the whole earth, some corporation would likely benefit from it -- I'm sure they have a patent on the bombs, cleaning up the destruction, and cloning human life after creating the vegetation and animal life.
Let's stop making laws that only support the businesses that have endless supplies of money please.
How about cracking down on another kind of... (Score:4, Insightful)
Two wrongs doesn't make a right (i know, three lefts do), but those corporations have no moral ground to talk about lost profits.
Lots of tools can be used to pirate (Score:3, Insightful)
Or, heaven forbid, a floppy disk containing copywritten software on it and thrown across the room.
Stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is some activities, such as the creation of software, can be used for legal and illegal purposes, as is the case with Grokster...It gets really messy, because it is unclear what is legal or not legal, and it is problematic to operate with such abstract terms."
Well, let me make it easy for you! Here's a hood ... it can protect you in a snowstorm, or you can use it to rob a bank. Ban hoods!
Geez!
zFunny, I thought piracy was already a criminal act (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't the former just a subset of the latter?
Do we need special laws to make FTP piracy illegal too?
Usenet piracy?
IRC piracy?
not gonna happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Mass criminalization (Score:5, Insightful)
If you lower the bar far enough, and make most everyone criminal, You can pretty much take away everyone's rights.
Once you are 'assumed' to be a criminal, just because you breathe
As well as destroy other rights you had, such as privacy.
Re:Just end it all, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason is because of lawyer speak. Guns were created to kill living things but they are marketed with clever wording that includes everything but.
P2P was created to quickly and effectively distribute data without a central server handling all the load. Problem is that the corporations that don't like it being used against their current business models have more money than the users and creaters of the P2P software.
I'm not slippery sloping anything. I'm stating a fact.
Re:Imprecise Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
(Note: I'm not saying the EU is totalitarian, mind you)
MOD PARENT DOWN!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Imprecise Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
This can only be explained by corporatism. Intellectual "property" protection protects mostly Microsofts and Disneys.
Re:Lots of tools can be used to pirate (Score:5, Insightful)
" What about MSN messenger? I send executable files across that all the time. Or, heaven forbid, a floppy disk containing copywritten software on it and thrown across the room."
I think the person who wrote the summary mistakenly assumed that most readers would know the background of the recent MGM vs. Grokster case.
The whole point is to separate the "bad actors" from the providers of generic tools. That's what the decision showed us -- if you create an ad campaign focused on piracy, build your business model on inciting piracy, leave an email trail showing that you're aware of and condone what's on your network, and then lie to the government about it, you'll get nailed.
Knowledge is power here, guys -- it's important to understand the difference between people who set about profiting off of other people's works, vs. the people who write IM applications. The EFF page linked in the summary contains further links to the supreme court decision and lots of other stuff which would have answered your question.
Re:Stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
You may laugh, but in some countries (eg. Costa Rica) it is ILLEGAL to sell full face motorcycle helmets because these were used by criminals to rob banks...
I guess it was easier to create this law than for bank security to USE COMMON SENSE AND DECENCY and ask customers to remove their helmets before being allowed in the bank.
Back on topic:
Funny how they never managed to make cassette tapes and tape recorders illegal, yet people used to tape stuff and make copies of casettes all the time. But now because someone THINKS they have the right to tell MY computer what to do (that's a real funny one), copying digital information is seen as "criminal behaviour".
At least some of us know HOW computers work, and we will never be stopped. It listens to me, not to you.
Just take away our computers and be done with it (Score:3, Insightful)
F**king Commission (Score:3, Insightful)
It really is high time that the EU Commission was given the boot.
And they wonder why people across the EU are jumping at the chance to say NO to the EU constitution, which cements the Commission into place...
How on earth did we get this bunch of cretins foisted upon us, and why aren't we the people of the EC allowed to say "actually, no, we don't want them, we never have"?
Democracy? Pah!
Sheesh... RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
When you come to technologies like BitTorrent or Freenet, you have technology platforms that are completely independent of what is being distributed. Going after BT because it allows infringement would be like going after E-Mail technology because you can send files, or FTP etc...
The wired article is a piece of FUD trying to scare up some controversy when what this proposal is calling for is to explicityly make criminal IP infringement through P2P. People love to argue that the law is fuzzy on whether or not it's criminal, so now they're clarifying it.
Re:Stupid law... (Score:3, Insightful)
My understanding with the Grokster case is that Grokster opened themselves up to trouble because they promoted it as tool to help trade illegally shared files, which "incitement" was almost an accurate term for it, the way it was promoted.
Mozilla does not promote Firefox, Mozilla Suite, etc. as a tool to break the law, which is a key difference, even if Firefox could be used to do so. Firefox could be used as a means to trade child porn, but because Mozilla Foundation doesn't promote it as such, they can't be held liable.
Re:Just end it all, please... (Score:4, Insightful)
If your software is advertised as a way to download copyrighted works without permission from copyright holder, you are a Napster and will be held liable.
If your software is advertised as a data distribution network with no emphasis on copyrighted works, you are a bittorrent and will not be held liable.
(If you are a gun manufacturer and you advertise that your weapons can be used to kill HUMANS you will be held liable. If you advertise that your weapons can be used to kill animals and targets, you won't be held liable.)
Re:Imprecise Laws (Score:3, Insightful)
They want to criminalize what software writers create if it's used for an illegal activity, but only for a single type of software.
Virus writers do more damage than copyright infringers, but you don't see the people that create software development tools going to jail, do you? That's because lawmakers aren't being pressured by the industry to do so, so we end up with crooked laws that don't make sense... they punish a very small subset of people while other people who are essentially doing the same thing (writing software) aren't punished.
For justice to be served you should punish the people who actually do the crime. Putting software writers in jail is absurd. This law would make Bram Cohen (author of Bittorrent) a criminal even though his software is used legitimately by countless companies to distribute large files, such as Linux ISOs.
windows Xp illegal in EU (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Just end it all, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two million people marched in London to protest against the Iraq war.
Approximately 78% of the electorate did not vote for Tony Blair's Labour party at the recent UK general election.
Our troops still went into Iraq, and Blair is still in power.
If the biggest mass protest in recent history couldn't avert a war that has killed thousands, it's not going to do much about some random Eurocrap. We need to do something more than bitch on Slashdot, but apparently marching isn't it.
Re:GUNS! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Just end it all, please... (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be more accurate to say that you'd be held liable if you marketed your guns for killing people illegally. Like, "Is your neighbor annoying you? Our guns will shut him up, forever." On the other hand, "Worried about home invasions? Protect your family with our guns" would be seen as a legitimate use of the weapon, which also involves killing humans.
Yes, you can share data with lots of people without it being illegal. If you market your data sharing tool as a way to get Hollywood movies for free, that's when you're crossing the line. Market it for getting copies of people's crappy home movies, and you're fine.
What's so hard to understand? (Score:2, Insightful)
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Seems very to the point to me.
Re:Just end it all, please... (Score:5, Insightful)
In that figure you are of course including the people who did not vote at all, despite being eligible. According to the BBC [bbc.co.uk], there was about a 60% turnout of voters. Therefore, 40% of that 78% didn't vote at all.
I'm not detracting from your main point - that the majority of us did not vote Labour - but the way you present it implies that something dishonest occurred, which is not the case.
We need to do something more than bitch on Slashdot, but apparently marching isn't it.
Our government isn't listening. It hears what it wants to - fears over immigration, terrorism, etc - and acts on that. On other matters - ID cards, the Iraq war, etc - it simply claims to know best and carrys on regardless.
And you know what? It's as much a fault of the 40% who didn't vote at all, as it is of those that voted Labour. (Not that the Tories are any better if you ask me, but that's a rant for another time)
Oh, and a disclaimer: it's my fault too, as in the end I didn't vote either. I didn't see that there was any real point; my constituency (Hornchurch) is split roughly 45/45 Tory/Labour, with the remaining 10% or so "other" (mainly Lib Dem). Not much of a choice, if you ask me.
we really need to do something... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have read some of the comments in this thread... I can see we are all pissed off about the way things are going but we are all whinging in slashdot without anything else to do...
I have read some recommendations about 'voting with your money' or 'Talking to your representative' but I think that is *really* not making any difference...
We must find a way to make the government hear us. Governments are supposed to represent the people in our countries not to serve as big companies servants allowing them to profit... We need real actions, movements, people, we need to fight again for our rights, not in UK or France or USA, but in all the world, we have the Internet which is one of the best communications tools which can be useful for us...
Big companies are using the globalization to get more and more of the markets, meanwhile squeezing the goverments are making they take our rights.
I am sure this will continue until there is something more severe, this will end in a kind of civil war but between consumers (us) and big companies... I see this as the next big war, but as they always say it will be a war of information , it will be a 'revolution' to get again our freedom, once, we fought other countries to get freemod (like Mexico from Spain or US from UK or UK from Germany)... now all the world will have to join to fight the big corporations, to get our freedom.
The sad thing is that it is a system a big system which everyone of us is making work, because it is in those big corporations where people like you and me work. Although there are just like a thousand people that controls the 80% of those and it is of they most interest to make the system work smooth, that is what we need to change, we need to break that system and install a new system a new freedom for information, all kind of information.
But then again I am here, siting in my desk just about to press the submit button and then I will continue reading the next story and then I will read my email and then I will just go to sleep waiting for tomorrow to go to work again... although my soul is shouting to go liberated... can we do somehting?
Re:But I thought Europe was all about freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
corruption and "lobbyists" go hand in hand.. skipping all the way to the IMF/Worldbank.
What are we doing about it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it is because we are effectively disseminating the message that there are alternatives to purchasing RIAA product on their terms and on their demanded price levels.
As for doing some kind of symbolic political action that attempts to presuade American politicians to consider a particular course of action? Forget it, symbolic political actions like marches, petitions, demonstrations, have no effect on the political process in the USA any more. You'll just end up getting sunburned, maced, tazered, arrested, and laughed at on the Murdoch-Clear Channel new outlets.
Keep quietly downloading, copying, and trading music and movies with your friends, and spending less and less on RIAA and MPAA product. It will take another 15-20 years, but eventually they will come to us to negotiate their continued existance on our terms, regardless of what stupid laws that they get their purchased politicians to pass.
These guys are having a real hard time understanding that this is the beginning of the information age and the age of the nation/state corporate or communist control of the economy is passing. In the information age, the people who create and guide the technology that distributes information have more power than the people who are able to control the systematic application of violence.
This is a long and slow transformation, but it is irreversable. Eventually the RIAA and MPAA will be on the side of the P2P designers and decentralized information distributers. They have no other real place to go. However, it's going to take a long time and there are going to be a lot of people put in prison for listening to music during the transistion. Do try not to be one of them.
Re:Imprecise Laws (Score:4, Insightful)
>> You should rightly be paid for the original act of creation or performance. Not paid over and over again a hugely inflated price for each damn-near-negligible-cost-to-produce copy thereof.
> But why is this so bad? Why shouldn't the creator continue to be paid for his creation? Everyone says this is a horrible thing, but why is it a horrible thing? Is it just because YOU don't want to pay for something, or is their some grander scheme?
The US Constitution grants the Congress the power to enact laws to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." [senate.gov] (section 8). Note use of the word "limited". Once an author creates a work, getting paid repeatedly, indefinitely, for that work does not incent him to continue to author. If he can just take his one book (or song or invention or whatever) to the bank for the rest of his and his children's children's children's lives, what motive would he have to continue to produce?
Notice how science and art are both represented here. Consider what would happen if universities treated discoveries the same way the **IAs treated media. Research would be impossible. If no one was ever allowed to build on the research and findings of those coming before them without financially compensating hundreds of other scientists in the process, it would be too cost prohibitive to research anything, and we'd forever be living in the bronze age. Why should it be one way for science and another way for the arts?
Now Disney and the **IAs want copyrights and patents to be enforcable indefinitely, because they don't want to have to create something new which would supplant the revenues lost when their copyright protection sunsets. This does not promote or incentivize new creativity. To the contrary, it shuts the door on it.
Oh please.... (Score:4, Insightful)
That is so much bullshit. NOBODY likes Saddam. What a lot of people are pissed off about is that we were mislead into an unnecessary war. Iraq is NOT about terrorism. It was suppose to be about weapons of mass destruction but the Bush administration takes every opportunity to say that our troops are being attacked by "the terrorists." We invaded their fucking country and a lot of Iraq people are pissed off about that. Those Iraq people who are fighting us are NOT terrorists so let's stop justifying a war that was planned way before 9/11 and impeach the dumb son of a bitch that is the cause of over a thousand of our fine American men and women who faithfully followed the really stupid and evil orders of this administration.
Re:First copyright battle led to thousands of deat (Score:1, Insightful)
That account misses some important points:
Columcille's side won the battle and the High King Diarmaid soon became an ex-High King, for starters.
If you are reading this and wondering wtf a priest was doing with a thousands-strong army, it helps to know Colum O'Donnell [newadvent.org] (Columcille was his nickname because he was associated with the church (cille) was a prince from a very powerful clan (he was a descendant of Niall of the Nine Hostages)), and thus himself potentially in line for the throne before he gave up his title and joined the church.
And Columcille didn't just "build a monastery and exile himself" - he travelled around the islands of Britannia and Hibernia, founding monasteries such as Iona [iona.org.uk] dedicated in part to the preservation of ancient literature by its transcription (i.e. rampant copying
That "battle cry" does represent the first recorded instance of a copyright law in Europe. And it is nothing to be proud of. The thing to be proud of is that Columcille spotted and defeated the nascent tyranny of the first copyright law.
Look also at Columcille's defence of the Bards [irishcultu...ustoms.com] - does that sound like a man who "repented" of his opposition to copyright??? No - Columcille repented the great loss of life in the battle with the High King's forces, but did all he could to oppose those who would stifle the free flow of information.
Columcille was made a saint. But he was a scholar first and foremost, and a truly good man who quickly saw what I ("even" as an atheist) consider a real evil and defeated it. His legacy made Ireland a beacon of knowledge and hope in the Europe of the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman empire, a legacy then carried to continental europe by St. Columbanus (easily confused with Columba, but a different guy...)
People think I'm crazy when I say there might yet be another war about copyright. But there might have to be, or we might not ever escape its tyranny.
I downloaded some warez with IE... (Score:1, Insightful)