Europe votes on anti-piracy laws

[Ramen]

Edit: Proposed EU telecom amendments lack three-strikes provision[arstechnica.com]
Europe votes on anti-piracy laws[news.bbc.co.uk]

A sad day for Europe. Sarkozy failed in France and now this is at the EU level. Nice tidbits:

Among the amendments are calls to enact a Europe-wide "three strikes" law. This would see users banned from the web if they fail to heed three warnings that they are suspected of putting copyrighted works on file-sharing networks.

(emphasis mine)
Naturally, this task would fall to the ISPs or seme "impartial" private third party.

In addition it bestows powers on governments to decide which programs can be "lawfully" used on the internet.

"Many of these are acting quite legitimately and in order to determine whether or not such large files are or are not the produce of illicit file sharing the ISP will have to carry out an unprecedented degree of analysis of its customers' traffic."

At least it shows I'm not paranoid

[zelda_pinwheel]

a sad day indeed. but then, what did you expect, with sarko running things.

(i didn't vote for him).

well, hopefully the pirat parti in sweden will gain some power soon and be able to reverse the trend. i really don't like the idea of my isp nosing around my business.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

well, hopefully the pirat parti in sweden will gain some power soon

You are joking, I hope? You don't really want a group of people who have absolutely no respect for the rights and livelyhood of authors and musicians to come to power, do you? Or don't you believe that anyone has the right to make a living by writing books or music?

Legislation to allow people who illegally download material from the internet to be tracked down and published is absolutely vital, IMHO. Of course, there need to be "checks and balances" to ensure that only people who really have committed crimes are punished. As things stand at present, however, the activities of the criminals have "out-stripped" the ability of current legislation to punish, and that's clearly a situation which needs to be rectified.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You are joking, I hope? You don't really want a group of people who have absolutely no respect for the rights and livelyhood of authors and musicians to come to power, do you? Or don't you believe that anyone has the right to make a living by writing books or music?

hey golly, we certainly wouldn't want to jump to any conclusions about what other people beleive, would we ?? no !! so we'll make a point of FINDING OUT WHAT THE PIRAT PARTI IS ACTUALLY ABOUT before getting all irate and shouting "exterminate" !! i actually listened to the entire hour-long speech which was linked to in a different thread around here quite some time ago, and i frankly have to agree with pretty much everything that guy has to say.

believe it or not, they DO respect the rights and livelyhood of authors and musicians !! completely !! and in fact they are in favor of keeping copyright, although definitely not in the bloated and abusive form it currently has. can't argue with that !

however they also are pretty attached to their privacy, as individuals, and don't like the idea of ISPs playing the internet police. which seems like a pretty reasonable point of view to me too.

so yes, i do want the Pirat parti to come to power, and i ALSO want people to continue making a living by writing books and music, and those two desires are in NO WAY mutually exclusive.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

believe it or not, they DO respect the rights and livelyhood of authors and musicians !! completely !! and in fact they are in favor of keeping copyright, although definitely not in the bloated and abusive form it currently has. can't argue with that !

"Bloated and abusive"? Pardon me? Do you really consider it "abusive" for an author to want to get paid for sales of his books, rather than allowing them to be downloaded free of charge from BT sites?

however they also are pretty attached to their privacy, as individuals, and don't like the idea of ISPs playing the internet police. which seems like a pretty reasonable point of view to me too.

All that's being proposed, as I understand the EU legislation, is that if a copyright holder can show that their material is being offered for download illegally, the ISP will be obliged to provide personal details of the "owner" of that IP address. If the person ignores repeated warnings, their internet access will be terminated. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me - it's no different from banning from driving someone who persistently commits driving offences.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

"Bloated and abusive"? Pardon me? Do you really consider it "abusive" for an author to want to get paid for sales of his books, rather than allowing them to be downloaded free of charge from BT sites?

harry, please, let's try to stay reasonable and not mix everything up. i absolutely support authors being paid for sales of their books. but the whole (original) principle of copyright is to allow the author to profit from books they publish and therefore encourage them to continue to write. the current copyright of "life + 70 years" goes FAR beyond that (no author keeps writing for 70 years after they die...) and is in fact simply a greedy ploy on the part of corporations (disney...) to "lock up" ideas so they can keep making money off them. i cannot support that.

i know you frequent the BAEN site ; there was another link here to a series of articles about copyright written by Eric Flint. here's one of the links : i'm sure you can easily find the other articles in the series. this article is called "Copyright: How Long Should It Be?" and it makes some excellent points. http://baens-universe.com/articles/salvos3
i haven't read all the articles yet, but the ones i have read have been well thought-out, logical, convincing, and thoroughly respectful of BOTH authors AND the public, which current copyright law is emphatically not.

and again, before you blindly attack the Pirat Parti, please go to the source and see what they actually have to say. from your statements, you clearly have not done that, so you really can't make an informed judgement of them.

All that's being proposed, as I understand the EU legislation, is that if a copyright holder can show that their material is being offered for download illegally, the ISP will be obliged to provide personal details of the "owner" of that IP address. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Why do you object to it?

i do not like the idea of ISPs, which are private companies and in no way competent for the task, to be given powers of "policing" my traffic. my privacy is important to me, so on principle alone i don't want that, and that's not to mention the very very real possibilities that opens up for misuse, abuse, accidents, mistakes, and other irritations (or significantly worse) to me, the end user. this is a step in the wrong direction. i don't want to start down this path, so regardless of how innocuous you may think this is, i think it's a very dangerous beginning.

[zelda_pinwheel]

interesting quotation from that article i linked to, by the way :

In a nutshell: Copyright terms that become excessively long—and modern terms are absolutely grotesque in that respect—especially when combined with policies that place too many restrictions on fair use, start undermining the whole purpose of copyright. Which is not to provide a living for authors, but to set up a system that maximizes the benefits of intellectual work for the entire society.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

harry, please, let's try to stay reasonable and not mix everything up. i absolutely support authors being paid for sales of their books. but the whole (original) principle of copyright is to allow the author to profit from books they publish and therefore encourage them to continue to write. the current copyright of "life + 70 years" goes FAR beyond that (no author keeps writing for 70 years after they die...) and is in fact simply a greedy ploy on the part of corporations (disney...) to "lock up" ideas so they can keep making money off them. i cannot support that.

An author's income from his work forms his "estate". Suppose an author is married, and dies; is there really anything wrong with their wife/husband and children being able to continue receiving income from the sale of the author's books? If the person had bought shares in a company, they could be passed on in the author's will (and shares are just as "ephemeral" as "rights" to a book). Why single out "intellectual" work as not been permitted to benefit the dependents of the author? It just seems wholy unreasonable to me.

and again, before you blindly attack the Pirat Parti, please go to the source and see what they actually have to say. from your statements, you clearly have not done that, so you really can't make an informed judgement of them.

OK, I've looked at it. They may be "technically" a political party, but they aren't REALLY one - they're a single-issue pressure group. They have no policy whatsoever on taxation, defence, education, health, or any other issue that's necessary to run a country. It would be highly irresponsible to want such a pressure group to come to power, IMHO. Do you really think that they are capable of running a country?

i do not like the idea of ISPs, which are private companies and in no way competent for the task, to be given powers of "policing" my traffic. my privacy is important to me, so on principle alone i don't want that, and that's not to mention the very very real possibilities that opens up for misuse, abuse, accidents, mistakes, and other irritations (or significantly worse) to me, the end user. this is a step in the wrong direction. i don't want to start down this path, so regardless of how innocuous you may think this is, i think it's a very dangerous beginning.

Do you think that the government should do it instead? The whole point of laws is that they are monitored and enforced centrally. As things stand, if I, as an author, find one of my books illegally offered for upload on a BT site, I have absolutely no "power" to discover who it is that's committing the crime. Surely my rights to prosecute a criminal should be considered more important than protecting the "anonymity" of the criminal, shouldn't they? As things stand, these criminals are virtually immune from being tracked down, and they know it!

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

All that's being proposed, as I understand the EU legislation, is that if a copyright holder can show that their material is being offered for download illegally, the ISP will be obliged to provide personal details of the "owner" of that IP address. If the person ignores repeated warnings, their internet access will be terminated. That doesn't seem unreasonable to me - it's no different from banning from driving someone who persistently commits driving offences.

So you can get someone's license removed by making 3 accusations without proof? No due process? No trial? Because that is what would happen here.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

So you can get someone's license removed by making 3 accusations without proof? No due process? No trial? Because that is what would happen here.

Perhaps you overlooked my previous statement that there obviously do need to be checks and balances in place to ensure that such things don't happen. Could you point out which specific part of the EU proposal would permit this?

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by HarryT

An author's income from his work forms his "estate". Suppose an author is married, and dies; is there really anything wrong with their wife/husband and children being able to continue receiving income from the sale of the author's books? If the person had bought shares in a company, they could be passed on in the author's will (and shares are just as "ephemeral" as "rights" to a book). Why single out "intellectual" work as not been permitted to benefit the dependents of the author? It just seems wholy unreasonable to me.

seriously, read the article by Flint. he says it much better than i can.

OK, I've looked at it. They may be "technically" a political party, but they aren't REALLY one - they're a single-issue pressure group. They have no policy whatsoever on taxation, defence, education, health, or any other issue that's necessary to run a country. It would be highly irresponsible to want such a pressure group to come to power, IMHO. Do you really think that they are capable of running a country?

yes, they are are a single-issue group. they don't claim to be anything else. and it doesn't matter whether they are capable of running a country, because that is not in fact their goal : they simply want to gain enough seats in parliament to be able to make a alliance with whatever party is running the country, on the basis that if the party in power supports their stand on copyright, they will support the party's stand on other issues.

Do you think that the government should do it instead? The whole point of laws is that they are monitored and enforced centrally. As things stand, if I, as an author, find one of my books illegally offered for upload on a BT site, I have absolutely no "power" to discover who it is that's committing the crime. Surely my rights to prosecute a criminal should be considered more important than protecting the "anonymity" of the criminal, shouldn't they? As things stand, these criminals are virtually immune from being tracked down, and they know it!

again, nobody has any business monitering my traffic just in case i might be uploading a book to The Darknet. my privacy is important to me, and i don't want it compromised, and ESPECIALLY not for such issues as potential copyright infringement, since i also have not seen ANY evidence supporting the alarmist proclamations that The Darknet will kill all creation. in fact, the (completely empiric, granted, but nonetheless ONLY) evidence i have seen, would tend to prove the opposite.

this is of course a whole separate issue, but i'm sorry, there is no convincing evidence that The Darknet is that much of a threat (or possibly, any threat at all). have musicians completely disappeared ? stopped making music, because people were sharing too many mp3s ? no. have the authors whose works are freely available for sale in digital format noticed their sales plummetting because someone might have uploaded one ? no.

it certainly is not a sufficient justification for my privacy as an individual to be undermined, and my private life ransacked.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You are joking, I hope? You don't really want a group of people who have absolutely no respect for the rights and livelyhood of authors and musicians to come to power, do you? Or don't you believe that anyone has the right to make a living by writing books or music?

How is the Pirate Parti worse than the current system, which has no respect for the customer or for the general welfare? How does the current copyright law benefit society? How does DRM benefit the end user?

And no, no one has a "right" to make a living. Just because an author wrote something doesn't mean the public will think it's worth paying for. I'm not talking about piracy, I'm talking about crappy product.

[Sparrow]

I agree with this article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7444390.stm

It'll just encourage people to acquire the skills to circumvent snooping.

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

How is the Pirate Parti worse than the current system, which has no respect for the customer or for the general welfare? How does the current copyright law benefit society? How does DRM benefit the end user?

And no, no one has a "right" to make a living. Just because an author wrote something doesn't mean the public will think it's worth paying for. I'm not talking about piracy, I'm talking about crappy product.

yes, exactly.

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Perhaps you overlooked my previous statement that there obviously do need to be checks and balances in place to ensure that such things don't happen. Could you point out which specific part of the EU proposal would permit this?

Actually, no. That part has been dropped.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...provision.html

BTW, I did miss your checks and balances post. I was reading the list backwards. Sorry.