EFF Launches Copycrime.eu in Opposition to IPRED2

Ahead of the EU Parliament vote on the Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive, the EFF’s European operation has launched a website called Copycrime.eu to raise awareness amongst users and get them aboard the campaign. For now there is  a petition, resources providing background information on the directive and a concise summary of the major problems. Pass it along.

Vote on IPRED2 Postponed (Again)

A key vote in the passage of the EU’s Intellectual property Enforcement Directive (IPRED) was postponed by the rapporteur Nicolas Zingaretti yesterday, and has been rescheduled for three weeks time. The EFF (newly established with full-time staff in Brussels) has a piece about it here, as does the the venerable Register.

The Criminalization Directive and The Japanese Stalking Horse

Interesting and informative article from IP Watch, reviewing proceeedings at the Global Conference on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy. They report that Japan took the opportunity to float the idea of an international treaty on intellectual property enforcement. Some readers may recall that Japan and the EU have also launched an enforcement ‘joint venture‘ in recent years. Japan has not historically been a key protagonist in IP policy, so one wonders whther they are in fact a stalking horse for moves from elsewhere. The same report contains a quotes from various EU officials confirming that IP enforcement is to get more aggressive and the IPR clauses in EU trade agreements will become more exhaustive and precise.

Meanwhile the most recent EDRI-gram carries an editorial by Jonas Maebe from the FFII on IPRED 2, Constitution by Criminalization, where the manoeuvres around the directive are situated within the ongoing struggle for power between the various EU institutions. Elsewhere he highlights the attempts by friends of the music industry to remove the ‘commercial scale’ requirement for a criminal prosecution so as to employ it in the jihad against music downloading. I’ve previously compiled some resources on IPRED 2 which you can find here.

IVIR Review of the EU Copyright Acquis Communautaire

The acquis communautaire is the accumulated body of law in the European Community, it comprises ECJ decisions, directives, regulations, treaties, recommendations and opinions. When a new country becomes a member state it must reform its legislation to be consistent with the acquis. Last year the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam (IVIR) was commissioned to carry out a study of the acquis in the area of copyright law, no mean task given that there have been seven directives in just fifteen years.

In addition to a general review of EU law, IVIR were asked to examine several issues in particular: the copyright term for sound recordings; problems related to multiple copyright ownership and orphan works; consumer awareness of copyright; term for co-written works.