Criminal Measures IP Directive – 4 Essential Issues and Solutions

FFII letter to the Members of the European Parliament.

Re: Amended proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights (COM/2006/0168 final - COD 2005/0127)

Dear members of the European Parliament,

On. Nicola Zingaretti, rapporteur, decided to postpone the Legal Affairs Committee vote on the Criminal Measures IP Directive. We applaud and welcome this decision that creates time to adequately address important concerns. No compromises have yet been reached on essential issues as whether to criminalise consumers, the scope of the directive, and on measures to ensure IPR disputes that are essentially of a civil nature and occur between legitimate commercial enterprises, are not criminalised.

Some proposed measures threaten to criminalise large portions of the online population without demonstrable need or justification – even IP lawyers like Manders and Lehne risk criminalising themselves and the visitors of their websites. [1]

For the first time ever the European Community can impose criminal laws on the Member States. The Criminal Measures IP directive will influence the lives of 500 million Europeans. Highly respectable law institutions have published critical position papers about the Commission proposal. Their positions are generally in line with the industry's. Below we will identify the four most important unresolved issues and elaborate on how the experts propose to solve them.

more at ffii.org

IPRED2: Pausing For Thought

Call it the Universal Law of Bad Laws: the more problematic a proposed piece of legislation is, the keener its advocates are to rush it through. When that happens, it's often those in the system who call for delay that saves us all from its unintended consequences.

Praise, then, is due then for Nicola Zingaretti, the Italian Member of European Parliament (MEP) responsible for guiding the dangerous Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) through the European Parliament. Zingaretti called last week for another delay in a key vote by the EU's Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI), originally scheduled for today.

Zingaretti's postponement of the vote (his third) shows the complexity and the growing contentiousness of the directive, first proposed by the European Commission in 2005.

Even after several months of negotiations, MEPs cannot agree its core concept - defining when behavior is on a "commercial scale" and therefore subject to the draft's harsh criminal penalties - and are taking a closer look at how the directive would affect consumers. That's a welcome development, although disconcerting that it is taking place so perilously close to the final key vote.

The good news is that Zingaretti's postponement gives everyone a much-needed three week window to ponder the dangers of the directive.

more at eff.org

Microsoft to pay 1.3m $ for mp3 fraud

Microsoft is pushed to pay fines over mp3 fraud to Alcatel-Lucent.

Main article in german.

Russian schools abandon Windows?

Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies, said the region’s Education Minister Nikolay Karpushin. The announcement was made in line with the report on ensuring “license purity” in the region’s schools.

According to Nikolay Karpushin schools would start using freely distributed software like the Linux OS, Russky office and Open office desktop apps, Ekho Moskvi reports. “Buying business and commercial programmes from producers is quite expensive”, the Minister said.

cnews.ru

McCreevy seeks new patent laws

The European Commission will present new options to end a 20-year deadlock over patents, but plans for revamping a copyright tax are all but dead, internal market commissioner Charlie McCreevy said today.

Past attempts to create a single EU patent that would be valid in all the bloc's countries failed due to disagreements over the number of languages to be used.

ireland.com

Microsoft IPR "sharing"

It’s generally not a free license, but the intention is to give partners who do have the intention to build on these protocols a way to do so, without Microsoft giving away secrets to its competitors.

betanews

See you in Badajoz

I'll be attending the FLOSS world conference 2007 in Badajoz, Spain from 7.2.2007 - 9.2.2007. Durring this event I'll have also meeting from IDABC project. I would like to meet you all :)

FLOSS in Schools day

FLOSS in schools day will be part of international conference APLIMAT in Bratislava, Slovakia. Whole day will be focused on presentations of real FLOSS usage in various schools from Slovakia. Eleven teachers and university professors will bring and share the experience with different classes of open source daily use as a well build teaching platform and applications.

--
floss schools (SK)

OOXML ISO fast track opposition update

France, APRIL (French Free Software Association) has sent a letter to AFNO (france
representant at ISO). french

Bernard Carayon (MP of government party in Frace) has asked a written
question to the Minister of Industry, pointing at the conflict of this
fasttrack adoption of OOXML with the recommandation of Open Document
Format in the General Referential on Interoperability (a government
initiative to "impose" open standard for public documents, it was backed
by CCIA in an open letter. french

Netherlands is against the fast track procedure. dutch

Belgium, the responsible advising committee is mostly against it but they need
unanimity and Intel and Microsoft are in favor; now the standardisation
office itself has to decide on it. dutch