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Deutsch: Belgischer Senat streicht repressive Teile des 3-Strikes-Entwurfs
The Belgium version of the French Hadopi three strikes law was significantly changed by the Commission of Finance and Economical Affairs (COMFINECO) of the Belgium Senate during a hearing organised on 11 May 2011 on copyright and Internet.
The proposal, initially submitted in 2010 and re-tabled at the beginning of 2011, was amended by the removal of a series of articles which actually referred to the three strikes system.
NURPA (the Net Users' Rights Protection Association) warns that the proposed law, although amputated, still raises certain concerns and draws the attention especially to article 12 which "requires the settling of agreement between private actors and allows the limitation of the Internet user's freedom of usage". The article stipulates that the agreement signed with the ISPs "determines the limits and conditions under which a user that has access to a public online communication service can use it to exchange works protected by copyright or related right(s)."
Inspired also by the French Hadopi law, the proposed Belgium law introduces the creation of a Council for the protection of copyright on the Internet that would have as its main task to establish a list of legal offers. It is not clear which criteria will be used to determine what offers will be legal and which will be the means to keep such a list updated and complete. "Instead of seeing the Internet as an opportunity to reduce the number of intermediaries between the public and the artists, the text only continues to place the copyright collective societies in the centre of the revenue perception. There are innovating initiatives and a freedom of artistic distribution that should be encouraged rather than playing in the hands of the private societies" stated Daniel Faucon, spokesperson for NURPA.
Two contradictory opinions also marked the COMFINECO hearing, one according to which the service providers would incite to illegal downloading and therefore should be made responsible and a second one that is closer to net neutrality, meaning that the service providers should not be held accountable for the content exchanged on the Internet.
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http://nurpa.be/actualites/2011/05/HADOPI-belge-amputee-partie-repress...
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