Europe’s Version of the DMCA Delayed

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”

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Fraser Lovatt

Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people. Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon. At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC. After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video. These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?