An international coalition of 39 civil liberties groups and consumer rights organisations sent a letter to the European Union on 11 August urging rejection of the proposed intellectual property enforcement directive. The coalition warns that the proposed Directive is over-broad and threatens civil liberties, innovation, and competition policy. The proposal requires EU Member States to criminalise all violations of any intellectual property right that can be tied to any commercial purpose, with penalties to include imprisonment.

"If this proposal becomes a reality, major companies from abroad can use 'intellectual property' regulations to gain control over the lives of ordinary European citizens and threaten digital freedoms", said Andy Muller-Maguhn, a board member of European Digital Rights (EDRI) and speaker for the Chaos Computer Club. "Under this proposal, a person's individual liberty to use his own property is replaced with a limited license that can be revoked or its terms changed at any time and for any reason," added the German civil rights activist.

"Currently EU-Member states are implementing the EU Copyright Directive and the EU Software Patent Directive is next in the line. We should really wait and see what effect these new laws have before adding any new legislation," said Ville Oksanen, a lawyer and Vice Chairman of Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFi), a signatory on the organisational letter. "Contrary to what the Enforcement Directive claims, Member States are already obliged by international treaties like TRIPS to protect intellectual property rights," Oksanen continued.

In its letter to EU members, the coalition expressed particular concern over Article 9 of the proposal, which gives intellectual property holders broad new powers to obtain personal information about any European citizen that is alleged to be connected to an infringement. Similar subpoena powers created by the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act are abused by the Recording Industry Association of America to obtain personal information about thousands of users of file-sharing software. The proposed IP Enforcement Directive would extend the ability to abuse this power to Europe.

In conjunction with the publication of the letter, the international group of activists launched the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) to raise awareness about the IP Enforcement proposals threat to consumer rights and market competition. CODE encourages European citizens to contact the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs and Internal Market and urge the proposals rejection before the hearing of 11 September 2003 on its merits in Brussels.

CODE Letter urging rejection of EU IP Enforcement Directive
http://www.ipjustice.org/codeletter.shtml

IP Justice White Paper on EU IP Enforcement Directive
http://www.ipjustice.org/ipenforcewhitepaper.shtml

Text of Proposed European Union IP Enforcement Directive
http://www.europa.eu.int/cgi-bin/eur-lex/udl.pl?REQUEST=Service-Search...