The EU has passed the directive on the EU Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive on March 9th passed by 330 votes to 151. Just before the vote, a late amendment was made to the directive to limit it to organised counterfeiters, reduce the penalty level from criminal to civil and remove jail time. This means that music downloaders at home would no longer be affected.
This directive was primarily aimed at fighting against piracy on branded products such as handbags, football shirts, CDs and movies. Later on, it had been widened to cover any intellectual property infringement. This directive will allow companies to raid homes and seize property as well as ask courts to freeze bank accounts on suspect abuse or theft of its trademarks or intellectual property.
Later this week, the EU ministers are expected to sign off on the new directive and then the EU member states will have 18 months to implement their own versions of the directive. Quakester2000 submitted the following news from the BBC via our news submit :
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Under the law, counterfeiters could face civil penalties, but proposals for criminal sanctions were dropped. Before the vote, critics said the law was flawed as it applied the same penalties to both professional counterfeiters and consumers. But a late amendment limited them to organised counterfeiters and not people downloading music at home. Property price The final vote on the EU Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive took place in the European Parliament on 9 March. The directive was passed by 330 votes to 151. The law was drawn up to target professional pirates, criminals and counterfeiters who make copies of goods such as football shirts or CDs. During the debates, the directive was widened to cover any infringement of intellectual property. The directive allows companies to raid homes, seize property and ask courts to freeze bank accounts to protect trademarks or intellectual property they believe are being abused or stolen. Read the full article here. |
While this directive covers large scale music and video piracy, at least it has not been primarily tuned to the music or movie industry requirements like the DMCA legislation in the
Source: BBC News - Technology
This is truly a sad,sad day 
Too bad the general media,newspapers and tv channels don't care enough about this to actually have any coverage of this. If more people knew the consequences of this law they would propably have reacted. But only a few internet geeks knows about this.
It's truly sad...
The below was posted on www.theregister.co.uk. It was a letter sent in by a Labour Party member, indicating it's not all bad news, and infact the law isn't a law as such, just a guidline to law. It's upto individual states to implement it how they see fit...
"Dear Sir,
The American quoted in your article clearly doesn't understand how EU legislation works. It is now a matter for member states of the EU to translate the directive - which is a framework for law, not the law itself - into their national laws. If member states want to crack down on file sharers the directive approved by the European Parliament makes no odds - they can do that anyway. But given that the directive does not *require* member states to come down hard on individuals swapping files on a small scale there are no grounds for implying that, if they do, it is because of this directive - it will entirely be a matter for member states and their parliaments.
Those arguing against this directive have used scare tactics throughout and as a result have consistently alienated the vast majority of legislators in the European Parliament. Intellectual freedom is a valuable thing and its cause is being damaged by people who constantly cry wolf.
Britain has had laws very similar to those required by the directive for some years now and I do not see police raiding the homes of file sharers on a regular basis and nor do I see the development of OSS being halted - I should know, I have written several Linux kernel modules. Claims that the DMCA is coming to Europe are ridiculous.
A lot of those who opposed this directive did so because they do not believe in any sort of prohibitive intellectual property protection. It's a legitimate argument (though not one I support) but it has been tarnished by their decision to try to scare the living daylights out of people with talk of a coming "police state".
Yours sincerely,
Adrian McMenamin
Press Officer,
European Parliamentary Labour Party"
The ruling does of course suck, and it illustrates clearly how corrupt our politicians are. The individual who brought this ruling to the European Parliament is married to the Director of UniversalVivendi in Germany (or Europe) I can't remember which. So there you have it folks, if you want a license to print money get into politics...the real breeding ground for bribery, corruption and probably piracy as well!
Yes, it is a sad day when people from the RIAA or MPAA can gain access to your house because of suspected piracy! This is a job for the police and only the police!!
Who do we know that RIAA or others will use this in a fair way? We don't. How do we know that they won't make up evidence when they don't find what they were looking for. How can we ensure a fair trial when evidence is collected by biased people with strong economical interests?
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