iPRED2
I hope you will take a moment to go sign this petition against the Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) which is due to go before the European Parliament on April 24th:
If IPRED2 passes in its current form, "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement on a "commercial scale" in the EU will become a crime.
Penalties for these brand new copycrimes will include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.
IPRED2's backers say these copycrimes are meant only for professional criminals selling fake merchandise. But Europe already has laws against these fraudsters. With many terms in IPRED2 left unclear or completeley undefined - including "commercial scale" and "incitement" - IPRED2 will expand police authority and make suspects out of legitimate consumers and businesses, slowing innovation and limiting your digital rights.
- copycrime.eu
Besides the fact that we simply do not need any more IP law (really, we need far, far less) the wording of this directing is vague to the point of disingenuousness. Personally I would give the phrase "commercial scale" as much meaning is as "square scale" or "red scale". It leaves the door wide open for interpretation in the effort to punish this newly invented crime.
If you physically copy a CD and give it to an acquaintance, and they then use that CD to create a hundred thousand copies to sell for profit, does that mean you are guilty of 'aiding commercial scale IP infringement"? What if you happen to show up in the same P2P swarm as someone downloading a movie with the intention of making physical copies to sell?
How many copyfight oriented forums and personal blogs out there, including this one, might be considered "incitement" because of their anti-copyright, pro file-sharing stance? I hope the doom9 folks have their ID trails thoroughly obfuscated since their attempts to return our fair use rights are easily interpreted by this directive as aiding, abetting and inciting. Who knows if this law could be used to criminalise something as simple as describing the means to circumvent DRM (like burning iTunes tracks to audio CD then ripping them back into an open format).
Will hardware manufacturers now face criminal investigation for creating devices that might be used in the commission of a crime (where a weapons manufacturer would get off scot-free)? Is this nothing more than a way for the recording industry to persuade hardware developers to sell broken machines?
This directive may be aimed at large scale criminal activity but with language like this it is nothing more than a dragnet for IP-delusional companies and their equally deranged legal departments. Rather than having to pursue civil cases all they have to do is report infringement and present themselves as victims and witnesses.
So-called IP infringement is so simple today that it requires no significant knowledge, no more resources than a networked computer and no more criminal intent than two friends sharing their love of music, movies or any other expression of our culture.
If you do nothing else today, go sign that petition. Don't let bad laws come into force, and certainly not bad laws with such open and easily abused language.
Update: in their article, 'European ISPs: "Aiding and abetting" copyright violations could land our CEOs in jail', Ars Technica points out that recent amendments to the bill now suggests fair use exceptions to national laws and explicitly excludes "acts carried out by private users for personal and not for profits purposes". Good news. But that still leaves this directive with enough interpretive swing to throttle future technical innovations in information technology, to put increasing pressure on our internet service providers to limit our use of what is supposed to be a neutral network, and ultimately tighten the recording industry's grip on our culture.
If IPRED2 passes in its current form, "aiding, abetting, or inciting" copyright infringement on a "commercial scale" in the EU will become a crime.
Penalties for these brand new copycrimes will include permanent bans on doing business, seizure of assets, criminal records, and fines of up to €100,000.
IPRED2's backers say these copycrimes are meant only for professional criminals selling fake merchandise. But Europe already has laws against these fraudsters. With many terms in IPRED2 left unclear or completeley undefined - including "commercial scale" and "incitement" - IPRED2 will expand police authority and make suspects out of legitimate consumers and businesses, slowing innovation and limiting your digital rights.
- copycrime.eu
Besides the fact that we simply do not need any more IP law (really, we need far, far less) the wording of this directing is vague to the point of disingenuousness. Personally I would give the phrase "commercial scale" as much meaning is as "square scale" or "red scale". It leaves the door wide open for interpretation in the effort to punish this newly invented crime.
If you physically copy a CD and give it to an acquaintance, and they then use that CD to create a hundred thousand copies to sell for profit, does that mean you are guilty of 'aiding commercial scale IP infringement"? What if you happen to show up in the same P2P swarm as someone downloading a movie with the intention of making physical copies to sell?
How many copyfight oriented forums and personal blogs out there, including this one, might be considered "incitement" because of their anti-copyright, pro file-sharing stance? I hope the doom9 folks have their ID trails thoroughly obfuscated since their attempts to return our fair use rights are easily interpreted by this directive as aiding, abetting and inciting. Who knows if this law could be used to criminalise something as simple as describing the means to circumvent DRM (like burning iTunes tracks to audio CD then ripping them back into an open format).
Will hardware manufacturers now face criminal investigation for creating devices that might be used in the commission of a crime (where a weapons manufacturer would get off scot-free)? Is this nothing more than a way for the recording industry to persuade hardware developers to sell broken machines?
This directive may be aimed at large scale criminal activity but with language like this it is nothing more than a dragnet for IP-delusional companies and their equally deranged legal departments. Rather than having to pursue civil cases all they have to do is report infringement and present themselves as victims and witnesses.
So-called IP infringement is so simple today that it requires no significant knowledge, no more resources than a networked computer and no more criminal intent than two friends sharing their love of music, movies or any other expression of our culture.
If you do nothing else today, go sign that petition. Don't let bad laws come into force, and certainly not bad laws with such open and easily abused language.
Update: in their article, 'European ISPs: "Aiding and abetting" copyright violations could land our CEOs in jail', Ars Technica points out that recent amendments to the bill now suggests fair use exceptions to national laws and explicitly excludes "acts carried out by private users for personal and not for profits purposes". Good news. But that still leaves this directive with enough interpretive swing to throttle future technical innovations in information technology, to put increasing pressure on our internet service providers to limit our use of what is supposed to be a neutral network, and ultimately tighten the recording industry's grip on our culture.