Europe’s Version of the DMCA Delayed

Posted by Fraser Lovatt on 15 September 2003 at 12:44 pm | Tagged as: Business

Voting on Europe’s own version of the controversial DMCA, the EU IP Enforcement Directive, has been postponed until 4th November, amid criticism that its implementation would criminalize many activities.

The proposed EU directive is heavily backed by Microsoft and eBay, as you can imagine, and was due for a vote this week. Janelly Fourtou, the MEP responsible for seeing the proposal through parliament has not yet managed to produce her report on the legislation, hence the delay.

Many groups see it as a further erosion of the consumer’s rights in favour of large multinational corporations. Like the DMCA, the directive outlaws reverse engineering and the practice of defeating copyright mechanisms. Buskers will also become copyright criminals, but that’s another matter.

IP Justice

ZDNet: “Europe’s DMCA on Steriods”