IPRED2 - Open Rights Group vs. Their Rights Online 30
Elektroschock writes "The British Open Rights Groups yells the alarm bell. Europe again. Ipred v.2, a directive proposal, will pass the Legal Affairs Committee soon. ipred2 would brand 'all intentional intellectual property rights infringements on a commercial scale' a criminal offence, thus the public prosecutor will take action and take over the role of RIAA. For commercial social communities where infringements are inevitable — think of Youtube — they expect dangerous times ahead. On the other hand life of content industrials would get a lot easier. It is difficult to imagine how the consumer would benefit. Toine Manders, Dutch MEP in that Committee, openly advocates his amendment proposal aimed to criminalize consumers. Open Rights Group suggests you to write to your Members of Parliament. Will they have any impact? Janelly Fourtou, wife of the Vivendi boss, is a member of the Committee. And she pushed through ipred number 1, so why should public action make a difference? The EFF started only this month to build up an office in Brussels. Do MEPs listen or could Sealand be an option for Web 2.1?"
Re:I tried reading the proposal... (Score:3, Informative)
Please have a look at a presentation [ffii.org] I gave in the EP to interested assistants and MEPs about this. Although it may not be that clear without the accompanying commentary, I hope it still can clarify some of the important points.
Basically, the problem is that it does not only apply to commercial scale copyright piracy and trademark counterfeiting, but also criminalises
Alleged trademark confusion, e.g. Burger King v. Wholebake [bbc.co.uk], or L'oreal SA & Ors v Bellure NV & Ors [bailii.org]
Infringements on database rights. As you may know, database rights only apply in case a "substantial investment" occurred, but how is a competitor supposed to know this in advance? Further, case law on this new "right" is still very much in development (slides 14-15 of the presentation, e.g. a case about a company selling an electronic version of a phone directory )
Non-piracy related copyright infringements: e.g. Deutsche Bahn (the German national railway corporation) has been convicted for copyright infringement [bloomberg.com], because it altered the plans of the architect which designed their new Berlin railway station in a way which the architect considered to be infringing on his copyright. Another very nice on: a museum which is being sued [blogspot.com] for repairing an artwork which consisted of a urinal, because that person who destroyed it considered the "destroyed urinal" as a work of art in itself.
Then there are also registered and unregistered design rights, which like database rights are not examined at all for validity. If you start threatening criminal prosecution for infringing on "right" which may not be valid in the first place, you get really chilling effects in the market place.
If you have time to read only one background paper on this completely idiotic and misguided directive, have a look at the position paper of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys [cipa.org.uk]. But those of the Law Society of England and Wales [lawsociety.org.uk] and Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law [ip.mpg.de] are also very good. You can find a lot more position papers on FFII's IPRED2 workgroup page [ffii.org] under "External opinions"
Unlike the software patents directive, this is not a case of big companies vs small ones. Pretty much everyone except for the IFPI (music publishing industry) are trashing this directive like there's no tomorrow. And if you want to know why it is nevertheless being pushed through by the Commission, read my ENDitorial [edri.org] in the previous EDRI-gram.
Re:Who can I donate money to who will fight this? (Score:3, Informative)
The FFII's IPRED2 project needs your help. Defeating this directive requires a lot of analysis and writing of amendments, which is done by volunteers, but we also have to bring lobbyists to Brussels to do the groundwork with MEPs. That costs money - for travel, hotel, food, and in some cases, to pay people's time, because it's hard to spend months in Brussels without any income.
I know all this because I'm the FFII's president, and the only reason I accepted to take that (unpaid) job, a year and a half ago, was because this is the only pan-European organisation capable of fighting against software patents, and other bogus laws like IPRED2, effectively.
The new EFF team in Brussels actually consists of an ex-FFII activist, who is still on the IPRED2 workgroup, along with a dozen or more others. So if you want to help, give the FFII your support. See the FFII's donations page [ffii.org] for how to make a donation.
FSFE's page on IPRED2 (Score:3, Informative)
For more information on what IPRED2 is: