A new site on the Internet, IP Justice, is fighting legislation being presented to the European Union. The IPJ is an international, grass roots civil liberties organization. They promote balanced intellectual property law. IP Justice defends consumer rights to use digital media worldwide and is a registered California non-profit organization. Recently, they formed an international coalition of 48 civil liberties groups and consumer rights campaigns to compose a letter to the European Union. The letter urges rejection of the proposed Intellectual property Enforcement Directive. Created for the perusal of the European Parliment it speaks to "measures and procedures to ensure the enforcement of intellectual property rights". Warning that the Directive is overbroad and threatens civil liberties, innovation, and competition policy, the proposal requires EU Member States to criminalize all violations of any intellectual property right that can be tied to any commercial purpose. With penalties to include imprisonment.
One of the IP Enforcement proposal's most invasive provisions, Article 9, creates a 'Right of Information" that grants intellectual property owners broad subpoena powers to obtain personal information about European citizens. Besides violating consumer privacy rights, this provision unreasonably burdens universities, Internet service providers, and other innocent third-party intermediaries who must respond to massive numbers of subpoenas and turn in customers for prosecution. Similarly broad subpoena powers found in the controversial US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) are consistently abused by the Recording Industry Association of America to obtain personal information on thousands of users of file-sharing software. We urge the Commission to reject Article 9's 'Right of Information" in favor of less burdensome enforcement provisions that respect the privacy rights of European citizens. |
That's not all, according to the letter, Article 21 is a real doozy: "We are also particularly troubled by Article 21 of the proposed IP Enforcement Directive, which forbids using, making, importing, and distributing 'illegal technical devices" that can circumvent technologies designed to protect any industrial property right. Disregarding the fact that many unauthorized uses of intellectual property are perfectly lawful, Article 21 erodes the public's fair use (fair dealing) and freedom of expression rights by outlawing all technologies, including software, that are capable of bypassing technical restrictions".
This is exteremely troubling as it is a twisted attempt to grant broad powers that seem ripe for abuse by the intellectual property rights owners. The letter goes on to say: "Similar to the US DMCA, the EU IP Enforcement proposal's ban on circumvention devices is so broad that it permits intellectual property owners to extend their monopoly into separate markets, such as players, readers and other interoperable devices".
Source: ipjustice.org
