Silicon.com Leader: Brussels muscles in on copyright scene

[Owen Blacker]

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I rather resent the europhobia in the commentary, but the rest of the
article is quite good...

> HEADLINE: Brussels muscles in on copyright scene
> PUBLISHED: 5:30pm on Friday 26th October 2001
> CHANNEL: Government & law
> AUTHOR: editorial@silicon.com
> SERVICE: http://www.silicon.com
> 
> TEXT OF STORY FOLLOWS:
> 
> Mario goes the full Monti...
> 
> The people who tried to straighten our bananas and classify 
> our carrots as a fruit have brought us another piece of 
> fruity legislation.
> 
> Our chums in Brussels have made public their thoughts about 
> copyright, and legislation not due to affect us until the end 
> of next year. (That's law-making for you -- if one year is 
> worth seven to an internet worker or a dog, it's worth about 
> six weeks to a lawyer.)
> 
> The internet community and right thinking people everywhere 
> should have a chance to knock this legislation on the head 
> before it gets near the statute book.
> 
> But if it does make it to law in its present form, the big 
> publishing companies, all our old friends at AOL Time Warner, 
> Disney, News Corp and Vivendi will have a whole raft of new 
> powers to control how we buy, store and use their electronic products.
> 
> Under this new law, it could be a crime to interfere with the 
> copy protection on an e-book or a DVD. That's whether you're 
> intending to copy stuff illegally or not, whether you're an 
> encryption researcher or not. Touch it and you could be in jail.
> 
> Under this new law, what we now think of as 'fair use' of a 
> copyright work could also be made illegal. Say you're a 
> teacher, and you want to photocopy a book to show your 
> students. If it's an e-book, forget it -- the software won't 
> let you unless you pay for every copy you make. If you want 
> to make Braille copies for the visually impaired, well, 
> forget that too.
> 
> The European directive has some rather woolly 'protections' 
> which are meant to defend this fair use. But the lawyers we 
> spoke to felt these wouldn't guarantee much. One described 
> them as a fig leaf. Not very reassuring.
> 
> As writers, we at silicon.com believe in copyright protection 
> as much as anyone. But there has to be balance. Making 
> encryption research illegal is making an ass of the law. 
> 
> There has to be balance, and balance this is not. It's 
> heavily loaded in favour of the media behemoths, and it must 
> be stopped.
> 
> For related news, see:
> Microsoft hacked as digital music row resurfaces
> http://www.silicon.com/a48458 
> Free Dmitri protesters strike again
> http://www.silicon.com/a46959 
> Freedom in the air for Dmitri?
> http://www.silicon.com/a46768 
> Dmitri gets breathing space
> http://www.silicon.com/a46743 
> 
> 
> STORY ENDS
> 
> For more information on silicon.com go to http://www.silicon.com.
> 
> silicon.com - the who, what, when, where and why of ebusiness
> 

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