Europeans: Do you want a total war on piracy?

October 19, 2003 11:33 PM

Europe's not-too-modest anti-piracy proposal. If accepted, it means that "not only could a teenager who downloaded a music file be sent to jail under it; so too could managers of the Internet service provider that the teenager happened to use, whether they knew what the teenager was doing or not." The proposal is being spearheaded by French parliamentarian Janelly Fourtou. Coincidentally enough, her husband is the chief executive of Vivendi Universal.
posted by Ljubljana (9 comments total)

Good grief.
posted by bz at 11:37 PM on October 19, 2003

But... but... I thought Europe was a bastion of freedom and liberty!?! Only the USA is a facist corpo-nation!
posted by PenDevil at 12:39 AM on October 20, 2003

What is wrong with jailing teenagers? Jail and/or a good stint in the military is what they need anyway.
posted by lilburne at 3:11 AM on October 20, 2003

Look out. According to this article, it looks like the UK will adopt the same law... UKers? Do you know any more about this - does it include the same possibility for prosecuting IPs?
posted by taz at 3:31 AM on October 20, 2003

Say hi to the hardliners. They tend to make a lot of noise, but ...

... The European Parliament voted on September 24th for a directive proposal which confirms the existing European law, makes software explicitly unpatentable and codifies additional safeguards, such as freedom of publication and interoperation. The amended directive proposal thereby achieves the claimed aims of the European Commission, especially "harmonization and clarification of the status quo" and "prevention of a drift toward US-style patentability of pure software and business methods".

FYI, Frits Bolkestein is not happy with it.
posted by magullo at 5:03 AM on October 20, 2003

Read the article. Even Nokia and Microsoft are against this law! If you panic about every little private member's bill (or whatever they're called in Europe) . . . well, that's a lot of panicking.
posted by tiamat at 7:10 AM on October 20, 2003

The article also mentions that this goes far beyond media copyright enforcement. This law would be a wet dream for a number of industries...but a nightmare for almost everyone else. Bad juju afoot here. Bad juju indeed.
posted by dejah420 at 8:09 AM on October 20, 2003

Caqpitalism (Large) is simply Neo-Feudalism.

There are the Capitalist producer-Lords, and the Consumer Serfs.

The Lords write the laws (with their complicit Politicians a wing of their movement) creating control over the serfs, who are subjugated and milked.

China's going to be the very model of this, er, model. America still has a fig-leaf of "democracy" (however transparent.)

The enemies of democracy aren't terrorists, they're large corporations, and complicit politicians, destroying it from within it's walls.
posted by Blue Stone at 12:39 PM on October 20, 2003

List of the stuff they're trying to put through.
posted by Blue Stone at 1:35 PM on October 20, 2003