EU Weighs Copyright Law 68
Braedley writes "Some members of the European IT industry are unhappy with a proposed law that would penalize various parties, from software companies to ISPs, to even some hardware manufactures, but not the end users for infringing on intellectual property. Penalties for this aiding and abetting could include jail time for employees if found guilty."
Makes sense from a certain point of view (Score:5, Insightful)
Historically, prohibiting use of something does little to stop its use. In order to actually do something about it, you need to go after the supply.
Of course, what the bill totally ignores is that there is no technological solution. You can disguise your copyright infringement as any kind of other activity you like.
As such, there is no way for ISPs to prevent their systems being used for copyright infringement but to prevent all use, thus destroying the internet. Or at least, the ability of residents of nations adopting an idiot law like that one to access it.
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So arrange for someone to pirate a home-made song of yours on a Sony Laptop, and then try to get Sir Howard in jail? I LOVE IT!
Re:Makes sense from a certain point of view (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like it's time to find a way to pass downloads through government owned property. If any downloads even touch property owned by the EU, demand that your rep. do jail time.
Re:Makes sense from a certain point of view (Score:4, Insightful)
This is like making the government responsible for drug trafficking because they use the roads to get their drugs from supply to demand. i.e. a highschool. So if my child dies from an overdose. I can sue the government for allowing the drug users to use the roads with their cars carrying contraband!
They should have been able to stop them right? I mean comon? This is absolute crap. Impossible to enforce and punishing the people that you want on the governments side. This will make ISPs and the governments adversaries. ISP's will have regular "failures" and lose all their logs.
I really think the govt has lost it with this one.
NB.. Or substitute govt for private company if there is a toll road along the way.
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As such, there is no way for ISPs to prevent their systems being used for copyright infringement but to prevent all use, thus destroying the internet.
Yep; I honestly don't see how this can be implemented and enforced without shutting down all communications channels, software (including development), etc, to a ludicruous degree... or alternately bankrupting those companies involved through legal action.
I can see a large number of people in the industry *not* wanting this to go through, and (if what I've read is a fair picture), I don't see that it's really in many *anyone's* interest when the consequences are taken into account.
Wow, that's pretty heavy handed (Score:5, Funny)
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Sigh..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sigh..... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sigh..... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Sigh..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually one problem with making it a civil matter is the lower standard of proof, the lack of a right to an attorney (which you do have in a criminal case) and therefore the likelihood that people who don't actually do any infringement could be stuck with large monthly bills for the rest of their lives. Even if the court agrees that they are innocent, they are stuck for attorney's fees, unless they countersue.
The criminal system has protections for defendants that should not be ignored.
(I write from the vantage point of the United States, but I'm sure that the EU also has better protections for defendants in criminal cases than in civil cases.)
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But as it stands now, it is both is it not? They can still bring a civil case against you if they choose with the law as it stands. How would dropping the criminal side not be a win for the public?
all the best,
drew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcaf2ThG7q4 [youtube.com]
UFO seen in skies over Winton!
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That will be viable as soon as we get back to a system where the costs and time required to duplicate and distribute infringing material on a wide scale are not marginally above 0. Otherwise, by the time the legal system reacts to an illegal act, the damage will typically have become permanent.
As is often pointed out around here, the world has moved on from the time when these laws were written, and in some ways the laws need to adapt to keep up. That partly means recognising the opportunities for artists
This is turning into a gun control debate. (Score:1, Flamebait)
National Technology Association: "Copyright infringers don't kill intellectual property, hardware manufacturers and programmers kill intellectual property!"
Copyright is a matter of respect (Score:3, Interesting)
We have moved to a period where a great deal of wealth is in the hands of patents, trademarks and copyrights. This means that "respecting copyright" or not can mean the difference between people being paid a salary or not. That starts to get pretty serious, at least as far as the affected people are concerned.
All the talk about rich corporations out to squeeze the last dime from the consumer is just a smoke screen. What it comes down to is can people rely on patents, trademarks and copyrights for a livelihood.
50 years ago the answer was an unqualified yes. Today, there are serious questions about this. In the near future the answer is likely to be no. This will certainly put a lot of people out on the street that today are employed because money can be had from patents, trademarks and copyrights.
I can't imagine that anyone growing up today will have any respect whatsoever for "copyright" in any form. Anything they can put their hands on will be redistributed, copied and plagiarized. DRM certainly isn't going to have the desired effect. Harsh lawsuits aren't having the desired effect. Education isn't working as most schools teach more about downloading music and copying software than the students find out of school.
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Pay close attention to what the OP said:
Note that he said the question is if people can rely on artificial construc
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But that artificial construct makes it possible to make millions from one month of actual work in the studio, what now I can't be independently wealthy because I wrote a catchy song ?!?
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Yes. For about $800 I can set you up with all the hardware you'd need.
Fact of the matter is we now have this fantastic technology which enables us to copy books freely, cheaply, and even make and bind our own. The only thing which costs anything is the time invested in writing.
The labor of creation is becoming less of a co
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Technology and Jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a fair analogy (Score:2)
Your analogy is a little unfair. Factories require less manpower today because much of the mundane, manual labour can now be performed by machines and software, with results as good or better than what went before. Do you really think machines and software can write a gripping novel, paint a beautiful picture, or develop the next great computer game?
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I didn't intend an analogy, I meant to illustrate that changing technology changes the market value of certain skillsets and consumer expectations. Take a look at furniture: All furniture used to be handmade by skilled artisans, it also used to last a long time. Now we have pressboard, flat-pack, semi-disposable furniture. Nothing that will be passed down through three
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What other job markets are there?
Re:Copyright is a matter of respect (Score:5, Insightful)
Then why aren't these individuals pushing for change rather than the corporations? It is pretty clear that corporations want to use the law by any means needed to increase their profit margin. That is what they pay their legal experts and lobbyists to do.
To think otherwise is absurd.
Personally, I think you would be hard pressed to find a person who makes their livelihood based solely on intellectual property (in fact of the three you mention I would be shocked if an individual made a living on nothing but trademarks *coughs*).
In order to make a living, the artist or scientist often bring their materials to market often requiring them to give up their rights and hand them over to larger entities which makes the argument a moot point.
Often times these persons have to do secondary work (as in provide services) such as either live performances or perhaps technical troubleshooting service in the case of the patent in order to really make their end's meat.
The only people who really make a complete living off of intellectual property are of course corporations (and of course say... IP lawyers who didn't come up with the material themselves) and have a desire to appease shareholders so they maximize profits by paying their employees to do their best to change no only their company but consumers and of course law.
Like it or not... That is how things are really done. We could ban lobbying but that wouldn't really solve the core of the problem with the debate.
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There are absolutely people who make a living solely on "intellectual property". There are even people who make a living on trademarks. These people are called "intellectual property lawyers". They are mostly scum who seek to exploit the law in whatever way they can to come up with ways their clients can squelch creativity and the propagation of knowledge for profit.
Re:Copyright is a matter of respect (Score:4, Insightful)
Flippant answer: Who says we're not?
Serious answer: We are, but the corporations have much more money and private armies of lawyers, so they get noticed a lot more.
Whether or not large corporations abuse today's copyright framework to become rich middle-men doesn't change the fact that copyright also protects many smaller artists. Contrary to what you describe in your post, I work in a high-tech city and know many people who make their living solely through developing intellectual property, generally in the form of software, as sole traders or in small, privately-owned companies.
I hesitate to post this -- the last twice I entered discussions on Slashdot and disagreed with the popular "copyright = bad" sentiment I was systematically hit with (-1, Overrated) mods for several days -- but sometimes you just have to tell it like it is. In this case, I agree with you that corporations do abuse copyright and lobby for beneficial laws, but that doesn't imply that there are no little guys benefiting from the laws working as they were originally intended.
Re:Copyright is a matter of respect (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't mean I go out and copy everything I can off of P2P networks, I'm just saying I don't feel much outrage when other people do so - quite the opposite. I think if the government (the US government in my case) wanted to regain my respect for copyright law, they should:
- Enact more reasonable copyright laws (this might mean leaving TRIPS [wikipedia.org]).
- Reduce penalties for infringement that isn't for commercial gain, but shut down the guys that are, for instance, making a living selling anime bootlegs from China on Ebay.
and content owners need to- Reduce their prices.
- Cater more to the "heavy tail" consumers.
- Stop trying to control what we do with the stuff they sell us (DRM).
The most likely way I see that these last three are going to come about is that new companies that actually want to sell the products that people want will replace the ones that don't. Some government action may be necessary to break up monopolies, I don't really understand the industry well enough to know if market forces are enough.Re: (Score:1)
if in creating a product you knowingly violate a patent, thats a lot different from copying some movie. You're making your living based upon work that someone else did and you are not paying for. It is much more analogous to a theater showing a pirated movie.
Patents are a great idea, they allows knowledge to be put out into public domain. However more and more today we are seeing worthless patents, hell, people are putting patents (or is it
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The law here is more about patents, and less about copyrights.
if in creating a product you knowingly violate a patent, thats a lot different from copying some movie. You're making your living based upon work that someone else did and you are not paying for. It is much more analogous to a theater showing a pirated movie.
Analogous how? You patent $foo, I independently make something based on $foo, and then discover your patent while bringing it to market (Or, everyone knows $foo, you patent $foo, and then I choose to knowingly disregard your patent). Very different from, I see your patent and duplicate what it says (which is more analogous to your theater example).
Patents are a great idea, they allows knowledge to be put out into public domain.
They're *supposed* to, but then so it copyright. The question is whether and how well this actually works.
In today's world, every time you create something you have to check if someone has already patented it, thats the way it should be.
No, that's really ***ing stupid. If I invent/dis
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It just so happens that my moral view on it is reversed, with plagiarism being wrong, and copyright being the law I would like to see gotten rid of.
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1. While not "illegal", plagiarism is classed as a form of copyright infringement, so people and companies can be, and have been successfully sued for it. Here are some links (Google for "plagiarism lawsuit" to see a whole load of others):
http://abbeyrd.best.vwh.net/mysweet.htm [vwh.net]
http://arthistory.about.com/b/a/116985.htm [about.com]
http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2005/11/18/madonna- lo [plagiarismtoday.com]
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The only reason you may be sued if you plagiarize without permission is that doing so requires that you make a copy of the work. In other words, it has nothing to you plagiarizing, but with you making an unauthorized copy.
Since plagiarism is a crime against the reader, not the publisher, I consider this to be
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Oh dear. A ghost writer is employed to write about the life of another person who provides them with interviews and / or notes to work from, so where is this supposed plagiarism occurring? The person who is being written about is the sole source of information, so a ghost writer essentially acts as a specialised form of edit
Copyright law should have variable time limits (Score:1)
Copyright (and Patent) Law causes problems because it has been applied in an extreme way and is thus unnatural and unworkable.
Whilst it appears logical to protect one's intellectual property from 'copying', the morality of this originates in authorship - protection of the income generated from the work, and protection of the work itself (as being the 'original'). However, works age rapidly. The value of ideas is in their timeliness. So, an idea should become free once it has been sufficiently disseminated,
Won't pass (Score:2)
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would possibly read
The laws are strong enough already (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sensible (Score:5, Interesting)
Realistically however, theres only so much one can do. If ISP's start policing the nets more, it just means that the filetraders will resort to shadier and more secure methods of transport. The content distributors will rely more heavily on botnets and compromised webservers to hold the information, and we will see a higher prevalence of strongly encrypted darkets like WASTE for getting the information around.
If anything, people will go underground with sneakernet.
And how dare we hold hardware manufacturers accountable? Copying of information is just an inherent property of the technology. Writing implements can be used to copy written works, do we hold pencil manufacturers accountable? If sneakernet becomes the norm, do we hold ipods and portable hard drives the culprit?
Give it up. Filetrading is here to stay, regardless of what prohibitions the governments place on it.
commercial advantage? (Score:2)
This sounds like a horrible implementation of a good idea. I have thought that perhaps there should be a legal distinction between copyright infringement for monetary gain and copyright infringement not fo
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I take a different view: the distinction to me should be whether or not making the copy harms the copyright holder. In both of those cases, it does, since it reduces the size of the target market by one (leav
Incitement to Pirate? (Score:2)
"Incitement"? On this side of the pond they are floating the word "inducement". The difference: inducement is like someone leading you down the dark path; "incitement" is convincing you go down that path on your own accord. Both would imply some level of innocence on the part of the induced/
Something like this would work (Score:1)
How could they hold the harware manufacturer's responsibe? That'd be like charging H&K for every peron murdered with one of their guns.
and the "weighing" is over.. (Score:1)
thank you! thank you! i'll be here all night.
They just can't wait to kill the internet (Score:5, Interesting)
IIRC, this particular legislation would, according to the masterplan, be about 2 or 3 years ahead of schedule.
The EU is a very sinister machine. Power resides in the hands of the Council 100%. The Council proposes legislation, and submits them to the European Parliament for rubber-stamping. In most cases, the MEPs haven't read the legislation they're voting on (this isn't a piece of Slashdot bull - this is really the truth) and wouldn't be able to understand it anyway. They are there because it's a very easy way to get fat without doing anything. The European Parliament can send a piece of legislation back to the Council for amendment (and the Council usually just makes superficial changes), but the second time around it goes through (different rules regarding the majority).
Make no mistake: the Council itself is a puppet of the G6, the Carlyle Group and other secretive friends. It's been decided the internet (in the form it is in right now) has to go down. The Council has to formulate a 5/10 year plan and direct national governments and the EU about what they have to do.
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The European Parliament can send a piece of legislation back to the Council for amendment (and the Council usually just makes superficial changes), but the second time around it goes through (different rules regarding the majority).
Then how come the recent patent legislation was sent back so many times before finally not being passed at all?
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How did your post get modded up (Score:2)
Perhaps you mistook this drama series [bbc.co.uk] for a documentary?
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I didn't even know there was a television series called "The Grid". That doesn't seem like coincidence. Seems more a propaganda offensive to get the public used to the idea befor
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MS / Linux / OS-X (Score:2)