If this bill passes, then Europeans' access to the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor would last only so long as they avoided three unsubstantiated accusations of downloading music or video or software without permission.
Worse still, the bill is set to be voted upon on July 7 -- that's this Monday.
The Open Rights Group has instructions for contacting your MEP. If you live in the EU and you care about your future as a citizen of the information society, call right away and make sure your MEP knows that this matters to you.
“One week before a key vote in the reform of European law on electronic communications (”Telecom Package”), La Quadrature du Net (Squaring the Net) denounces a series of amendments aimed at closing the open architecture of the Internet for more control and surveillance of users..Link…this set of amendments creates the unprecedented mechanism known as graduated response in European law; judicial authority and law courts are vacated in favour of private actors and “technical measures” of surveillance and filtering. According to rules set forth by administrative authorities and rights holders, intermediaries will be forced to cooperate in monitoring and filtering their subscribers, or they will be exposed to administrative sanctions”
See also: Three false copyright accusations and we'll cut off your Internet access
Firstly, every time I see someone say “I sent them an email” I think what a waste of (not much) time and effort. Politicians always ignore emails, as they are so easy to fake, and hence discount. If you want to be taken seriously send a real hardcopy letter, preferably hand written. THAT would get a message across. Those things are counted and collated. Sending an email is just slacktivism, and does nothing other than make you feel you helped someone or something. You didn’t.
Secondly, the European Parliament cannot enforce these laws anywhere even if passed. They would have to be adopted by individual member states, and would have to pass the various constitutional tests that laws in those states have to meet.
Thirdly, it does not help any cause to rant about how you hate copyright as infringing your freedom. Copyright is what allows creative works to be paid for, and also underpins most open source work today. You can argue that it lasts too long, but without copyright, there is no GPL (any version), and anybody can take your open source code, change it, hide it and sell it pretending it’s all their own work.
Dont even bother on patents, because most European countries don’t recognise patents on pure software ideas anyway.
@20 Frogsmoker
Your first post, eh? To say, “Stop all the downloading!”???
(Smells like astroturfing, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. But seriously, no netizen would ever use the agitprop phrase “illegal downloaders” or “killing the X business”.)
You’ve got that backwards; the only reason we need the GPL is because of copyright. It’s a recursive hack to turn copyright against itself. Without copyright, sure someone might modify your source code and compile it for obfuscation, but then you’d also be free to decompile that same software and reconstitute the changes. (i.e. reverse-engineering)
Or we could skip all that and use software systems relying on interpretation and introspection. Similar to how HTML is human-readable.
There are other ways to allow people to pay the creators for their creativity, rather than paying for the easily-copied information after the fact.
What’s singularly unique and genuinely rival for knowledge workers are their minds, not the “product of their minds”. Creative people need to be paid for creating, not for their creations (which are trivially copied ad infinitum).
So-called “intellectual property” is an attempt to retrofit the industrial economy mentality onto a knowledge economy circumstance — putting a square peg in a round hole. Furthermore, it transfers the economic value from the “creative class” into the portfolios of immortal corporations for rent-seeking.
Just to confirm that I also emailed (separately) all my MEPs, seven in total, and three replied. Two were signed personally by the MEPs, 1 by their office. Of the 3 respondents, two were definitely a direct response to my request and two made it clear they would vote against the bill. There is no harm in sending emails and at least two MEPs know my views on the subject, which is nice.
I emailed my MEPs about this on Wednesday. I received a reply from one on Friday saying he would arrange for the salient points to be discussed and “viewed favourably”.
One piece of advice I would offer on writing your MEPs is to avoid proselytising on the underlying issues like interminable copyrights and so-called intellectual property, though I know it’s difficult to resist when you have your rage on. Just report the outline of the issues, there’s no need to colour them in.
I got replies from Mary Honeyball and Syed Kamall (one of the original amendment makers).
I agree with Fee, the Conservative MEPs (the amendment makers) seem to be suggesting that their words were misrepresented, however if there was room in the language of the amendment to be misinterpreted, it was possibly bad language.
Ms Honeyball (not an amendment maker) said:
“I am informed by my colleagues on the Committee that this directive
contains no provisions on the enforcement of intellectual property rights
online. The report encourages regulatory authorities to promote
appropriate cooperation to ensure lawful online activity. This does not
seek to promote or prescribe any enforcement regime, which would be
beyond the appropriate scope of the Directive.
However, one amendment by Conservative MEP Syed Kamall does introduce
potentially dangerous ambiguity in the field of privacy protection
online. This amendment was opposed by the Labour Group of MEPs but
adopted by a narrow majority in the Civil Liberties Committee.
Under the Parliament’s rules this text dealing with data protection was
adopted without a vote in the Internal Market Committee since it was
already adopted in the Civil Liberties Committee. Labour MEPs have called
for its withdrawal before the final report is adopted by the full sitting
of Parliament in September.”
Mr. Kamall has this to say about his amendment:
“I believe that you may be referring to two sets of amendments by me and
by my Conservative colleague Malcolm Harbour. My amendments were simply
intended to allow traffic data to be processed to ensure the security of
electronic communications networks, services and equipment. It was not
my intention with my amendments, for “the security of an electronic
communication equipment” to be interpreted as “the security of DRM
preventing, detecting, or intercepting IP infringements” as suggested by
some. However, I asked for legal clarification on whether a possible
unintended consequence of my amendment would be to allow DRM and
interception of IP infringements. Since I did not receive a satisfactory
answer I asked to withdraw the amendment in order to re-introduce it at
plenary with a clarification on the definition of “security”. I was
unable to withdraw it, so recommended a vote against. In the event, IMCO
committee did not vote on my amendment.
Malcolm Harbour is very clear that his amendments are not designed to
start a “three strikes and you are out” law. I certainly would not
support ISPs being forced to do the work of law enforcement agencies.
Also, I do not believe in collective punishment where because one family
member has been judged to download illegal material the whole household
loses its connection to essential services such as shopping, banking,
communications etc. Malcolm tells me that “as opposed to the text
proposed by the Commission, his amendments shift the burden of
explaining the law from the ISPs to the appropriate national
authorities. It also broadens the concept so that any type of unlawful
activities are covered, not only copyright infringement. Such other
activities could be for example child pornography. This public interest
information would be prepared by the relevant national authority and
then simply distributed by the ISP to all their customers. It involves
no monitoring of individual customer usage of the internet.”
Malcolm Harbour totally rejects the claims that these amendments are
intended to reduce consumer choice and undermine individual freedom. In
particular, the Directive contains no provisions on Copyright Law
enforcement, not does it refer, in any way, to the French Government’s
proposed enforcement agreement.”
@Mark Jeffrey, you are right about email being ignorable, so I’ll use an internet forum to respond :)
There’s nothing wrong with what you call slacktivism, activists don’t have a special call on MP’s or in this case MEP’s time, and their voting intentions are more likely to be predictable.
I wrote a letter in email form to my and other local MEPs, they can ignore it if they like, in fact they can ignore all their constituents all the time if they want to, at least until after the next election.
There is no reason why copyright or any person or corporation’s property rights need infringe upon my freedom or that of others, unless I/we are depriving them of those rights.
Copyright infringment is best dealt with by civil litigation. It isn’t important enough to be an excuse for state backed corporate surveillance and extralegal punishment, however petty the sanctions are.
3 accusations? Not 3 “convictions?”
I also received replies from Mary Honeyball and Syed Kamall containing the exact same text.
Also this from the Green party MEP Jean Lambert’s ‘office’ :
Jean does not sit on this committee but other members of the Green Group do, so have been working hard to ensure that any adopted text guarantees citizen’s rights. The Greens tabled an amendment requiring ISPs to ensure that subscribers can send and receive any form of content. We do recognise that in some extreme circumstances it might be necessary for ISPs to take action to preserve the integrity and security of the networks, but argue that this provision must relate only to network management, i.e. restrictions intended to avoid degradation or slowing of traffic in networks.
The compromise legislative text does state that ISPs do not have the right to monitor or block traffic on the internet. However, elsewhere it is made clear that the public should be informed about any activities that are unlawful. Jean has serious concerns about the way this aspect of the legislation could be interpreted. She does not believe that this dichotomy of lawful and unlawful activity fully takes account of issues such as purpose and proportionality. To elaborate, Jean does not agree with tarnishing all users with the same stroke, if some are sharing files with peers and whereas others are contributing to the production and distribution of pirated material for profit. Moreover, the proportionality issue here is similar, in that the volume of unlawful activity is not considered and all users accused of copyright infringement may be subject to penalties through the ‘Three Strikes Out’ system. Out of principle, Jean does not agree with this system, as it assigns fixed punishments to those accused on an automatic basis without considering individual aspects of each case. She strongly believes that this development can be dangerous and result in abuse of power by ISPs, as they will be able to deny internet access to users by means of monitoring their activities and thereby invading users’ privacy. Thus, as you can see, Jean is concerned that the proposed text requires clarification through the removal of the vague and dangerous concept of “lawful”, as it does not belong in the Telecoms package, and that ISPs are not allocated too much power in order to maintain real net neutrality.
I replied to all three to the effect that I think that communication of data down wires should have the same level of protection as surface mail. i.e. nobody should be allowed to steam it open without a warrant.
Is Copyright Dead on the Net? by Lance Rose
Minor nit: the bill itself is an eminently sensible Telecoms Package — the damage lies in a bunch of Intellectual Property Amendments that have been tabled at the last minute, before the European Parliament goes into summer recess. MEPs have already voted on measures similar to those proposed in the amendments and tossed them out, so the shitweasels behind the measures are trying to sneak them in via the backdoor in an omnibus bill going through a committee process that most MEPs aren’t paying attention to.
Detailed analysis by a French net neutrality lobbying group here.
also….don’t use “the network that delivers freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, access to medicine, family, civic engagement, banking, government services, and the whole sweep of human online endeavor” to repeatedly steal other people’s stuff.
No suprise that the Dark Lords pulled a fast one and may pull off a royal-f-ed-flush.
Until the Copyleft starts speaking in a language that is clear, ethical and from the gut, MIA-style, the wonky-cyber-warriors of the mid-90s will continue to fly to Scandanavia, screech their Jeremiahs to the converted, ho-hum, ho-hum.
The copyleft’s brand is in need of serious strategic review. Unfortunately, I don’t know what they can afford…..
Change won’t happen until people closer to the center realize that their children’s futures are being corroded. For that to happen, fearless warriors will need to show a little more humility and actually step down from soap-boxes and engage. Digital networking and creating nodes of resistance is a key first step, but it’s time for the next set of projects.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed on this side of the pound, but the history of life in LA, esp. Cory’s prof. Fulbright homebase of USC — w/ South-Central now worse than it was a decade ago — ain’t too hopeful.
#4, if I understand the point, it’s 3 accusations, not 3 convictions, meaning you don’t have to “repeatedly steal other people’s stuff” to be accused. Copyright law is complicated and subject to all kinds of interpretation.
#5, you understand the point correctly. It does seem unfair to use accusations. I agree. I think it is a bad thing. But while we gripe about the steps governments take to limit stealing……..let us not steal.
So let them pass it.
And immediately file three accusations against every EU official that voted for this bill.
And then MPAA and the RIAA and their EU equivalents.
And then Google. Heh.
Once you have shut down every freaking website in the entire EU, maybe those in power will begin to see the silliness of this.
@4 Maturin
Copyright infringement is not theft.
Theft is invoked through property law and requires denial of use. Infringement doesn’t qualify, as information is non-rival (i.e. making a copy doesn’t deny you the use of your original). Though, a few governments have elected to permit monopolies of forced exclusion known as copyright, patents, and trademark, as a form of “economic stimulus”.
The veracity of such a government-business partnership as to whether it does more harm than good is an open subject of debate.
We do have economic alternatives to copyright. We don’t need it.
@21
“Firstly, every time I see someone say “I sent them an email” I think what a waste of (not much) time and effort. Politicians always ignore emails”
Actually, I emailed four MEPs and got a personal response from one of them. Not a form email, because it had typos and specifically referred to my email.
Naturally, a phone call has more weight than an email, but I suggest not being so cynical. Services like writetothem.com are a great idea and their output isn’t always ignored.
Good thing that infringing copyright by sharing copies isn’t stealing. ^_^
In other words, “Cypherpunks write code.”?
this is getting a bit like using the fisheries committee to slip through patent legislation…
Good thing that infringing copyright by sharing copies isn’t stealing. ^_^
I would not argue the terminology of this matter with much better informed people than myself. My point is this…..I agree that measures such as the ones described above are nonsensical….at the same time I think there exists a large (dare I say vast majority)of people who discuss this issues in terms of liberties and freedoms, when in fact they simply want other people’s stuff or stuff that other people have no intention of giving away for free….without paying for it. I feel that those who do see these matters in terms of liberty and freedoms have their argument undercut. Perhaps I a simply wrong.
The fact that this legislation has already been voted on and dismissed, and now some lobby is trying to sneak it in through another bill, makes it all the more insidious.
And this will force ISPs to monitor your internet connection 24/7 whether they want to or not. And you can be cut off, arbitrarily, just because somebody else was using your wi-fi or your kids went looking for pictures of Spiderman once.
If you’re in the UK, use They Work For You to write to your MEP—a good form letter is here.
@5, I’m an attorney, so I grasp the basics but was trying to use general terminology. Although I will admit that constitutional law (US) and medico-legal issues are more my speed.
Just sent via writetothem.com:
Dear John Bowis OBE, Jean Lambert, Robert Evans, Baroness Sarah Ludford, Syed Kamall, Gerard Batten, Mary Honeyball, Claude Moraes and Charles Tannock,
I am concerned about some of the implications of the forthcoming European legislation on electronic communications to be discussed, I believe, in the European parliament on Monday.
Malcolm Harbour’s amendment allowing commercial organisations to conduct surveillance on users of ISPs, i.e. nearly everyone, and apply sanctions to them without recourse to due legal process is particularly objectionable to me.
I do not believe that anyone at all apart from a police officer (with a court order, in the case of serious crime) should be allowed to conduct clandestine surveillance involving intercepting the telecommunications of British citizens or be allowed legally to use the results for any purpose.
Some parts of the bill appear to be aimed at hampering or preventing ‘file sharing’. I use file sharing software to obtain open source software for my computer. This is an entirely legitimate and widespread use of this technology. An impression has been created that the millions of people who use this software are engaged in some kind of copyright theft thereby. This is not the case, and if it were that would be a civil matter between the copyright owner and the infringer of copyright, not a criminal offence.
I would like to use your vote on my behalf to reject any such amendments or aspects of this bill and to ensure if necessary that it is returned for redrafting.
Yours sincerely,
Piers W
I just wrote to my MEPs, way late (sunday evening), but maybe they’ll check their mail before going to work :)
Also, to those saying this is about avoiding paying for stuff by dodging copyright measures.. no, it’s to stop being spied on by private companies, who think they have a right to enforce private laws on innocent people.
Good thing residents of the United States don’t put up with anything like that… oh wait.
Nice round up of the topic at PEP-NET The Pan European eParticipation Network.
They discuss how this law actually could effect Europeans and why there should have been a process of participation before the law is put to vote.
http://pep-net.eu/wordpress/?p=117
Note to Maturin:
The definitions of “copyright” and “breach of copyright” (which you are referring to mistakenly as “theft”) depend on a specific country’s legislation. For example, in Spain it was not illegal to copy software until about 1988 (therefore widespread copying of software was not a crime until then, whether you liked it or not).
Now, the making of a copy for non-commercial purposes (and Spanish courts have defined that as being when no money changes hands) is perfectly legal and is not classified as a breach of copyright. So P2P sharing is legal in Spain.
Therefore, don’t try to impose your (American?) ideas of copyright and theft on other countries.
I have now received two replies from the MEPs that I contacted. I have put up the replies on my blog at:
http://caliandris.blogspot.com/
in case anyone is interested. They seem to reject the idea that they were suggesting that individuals should be ousted from the internet….
What a brilliant law.
Anyone want to guess how long it will take for three random freedom fighters (in the correct and literal sense, not the euphemism for terrorist!!) to falsely accuse the offices of each and every “legislator” in the European “Parliament” of copyright violation?
I’d be all for this bill – and probably all for total intellectual property maximalism to prevent “theft,” “piracy” an the infringement of the human rights of rock stars – JUST as long as copyright was reduced to 7 years renewable for another 7 on application. Yep. That’d do it for me. Write your wonderful song, novel, cartoon or whatever and make bazillions off it for a maximum of 14 years before it zooms off into the public domain where we can all enjoy it while you’re writing your next opus. That’s fair. After all, last I checked, I didn’t have to pay the person that designed my TV every time I watched it, or bung some coins off to the architect of my house.
Thank you for the reminder – I’ve sent a polite email to all my MEPs to urge them to reject the amendments.
I also pointed that as a creator of entertainment I’m one of the people who gets work stolen, but I utterly condemn the notion of 3 accusations = termination.
I’m getting quite fatalistic about this. No matter how many times we try to bring this type of damaging legislation down, off the table. The lobbyists get it up in some other entirely unrelated bill.
Is it at all possible that we fight this and win in the end?
Yes every time we get something like this off the table it counts as a victory. But that’s just one battle, we are losing the war here.
The Netherlands, for instance, is the most tapped nation in the world percentage-wise, and we now also have a law in the works that makes it mandatory for ISPs to snoop on the Dutch internet users. (data-retention). (not sure if it’s already in place or if it’s still being debated)
We have politicians advocating censorship filters on the web (disguised as child porn filters, but he didn’t want judicial oversight on the filters)
We have flagrant abuse of our privacy, by trying to introduce a very insecure public transit card system.
We have untrustworthy voting machines (though those have been brought down, but only because they’d ‘leak’ information because of bad wiring, EM-radiation leaks, and not for the real issue of lack of transparency in the democratic process)
We have politicians trying to control the web, because they don’t want the ordinary people have that much power. They are scared, and are trying anything they can think of to destroy it.
I’m just afraid we can’t do what it takes to stop them. :(
Likewise. Have emailed my MEPs and, in fact, made a film encouraging others to do so…
As for MEP response rates, I wrote to all of Spain’s 54 MEPs – same letter but individually addressed (not a bcc to the lot).
Five came back due to bad addresses. Just one guy actually answered (David Hammerstein of the Green Party), and it was a personal reply. He opposed the amendments. He also wrote back today to tell me the amendments had passed.
The low response rate may be due to my belief that elected representatives in Spain are more beholden to the party (for their position on the slate) than to electors. In fact, most people here can’t name their local MP, much less their MEP. This is not because they don’t care. It’s because you vote for a party slate, not for individual candidates. Also, there is no door-to-door canvassing, or kissing babies or any of the stuff I was accustomed to in Irish elections. The result: a class of elected representatives who are quite cut off from the electorate.
I suggest looking at the amendments that are being complained about. They aren’t long and aren’t complex.
The final compromise amendments are what the objections are about. There’s an analysis of why they may be a bad idea.
I personally don’t read as much doom & gloom into the amendments as that analysis, but I’m reading them for the first time too.
I think that law is great and should be implemented asap. It’s the illegal downloaders that kill the music and movie biz.