Two powerful members of the EU Parliament are working to change EU copyright laws in such a way that practically any infringement of a copyright, no matter how small, could be punishable by exceedingly steep fines.From P2P-Blog, "Fontaine and Fourtou introduced several amendments to the second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive that is currently being debated by a committee of the European parliament. Some of them just consist of striking the words "on a commercial scale" out of the original proposal, thus making every act of copyright infringement a criminal offense."
Not only would Fontaine and Fourtou like to see the law expanded from commercial copyright infringement to reach any copyright infringement, they're also asking to increase minimum penalties. "Serious" cases could bring fines with a minimum price tag of €600,000, if the two get their way.
Think this is all the work of benevolent politicians with altruistic (albeit misguided) desires to halt piracy? Think again. Janelly Fourtou is married to the former Vivendi CEO Jean-René Fourtou; mon petite conflict of interest, no?
[via P2P-Blog]
1. This is a step on the way to good news.
Better news would be that the plaintiff was also prevented from withdrawing the charges, e.g. given an out of court settlement.
Better that 100,000 people are fined €600,000 each, than 100,000 people settle out of court for €1,000 each.
This is obviously because society will be happy to absorb the iniquity of modest settlements, whereas it would rebel against reverse lotteries.
Posted at 6:51PM on Jan 4th 2007 by Crosbie Fitch