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 US. It appears to me that the law may also have been encouraged as a result of poor quality forged products on the market such as mobile phone batteries known to explode. CD and DVD piracy is also a main problem on the streets as these pose more of a problem than file sharing. For example, a person who buys a counterfeit CD is much less likely to purchase the official CD than if that same person sampled MP3's from a file sharing network.
Source: BBC News - Technology
