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Deutsch: ENDitorial: Rechtsausschuss des EP verabschiedet inkohärenten Urheber...

This week, the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament adopted a far-reaching, contradictory and, at times, fundamentalist non-legislative report on enforcement of intellectual property rights. The Committee report takes some quite extreme, apocalyptic and sometimes almost comically absurd views of intellectual property infringements, claiming that they "constitute a danger" for health and safety and even endanger "our economies and societies", before making dire warnings about the "fade-out of innovation in the EU" and demands for criminal sanctions for infringements.

However, the text also contains some incongruous positive aspects. For example, regarding file sharing, one potentially mitigating amendment was adopted saying that online infringements should treated differently from offline counterfeiting. More importantly, one oral amendment that was adopted neatly sums up the folly of most of the text. That amendment attacks the alienation created by disproportionate and counterproductive enforcement of intellectual property and argues that "efforts to tackle infringement of copyright must enjoy public support in order not to risk eroding support for intellectual property rights amongst the citizens". It is a sign of the intellectual paucity and confused nature of the report adopted by the Committee that the MEP that tabled that amendment felt obliged to vote against the final text.

The report correctly points out that reliable data is not available to assess the scale of IPR infringement (neatly confusing all IPR infringements, thereby endangering the fight against life-threatening drug counterfeiting by putting this on the same level as unauthorised downloading of music). However, this recognised absence of reliable data did not inhibit the Committee from stating with complete certainty that unauthorised downloading was inhibiting the creation of legal music offerings. Continuing its efforts to create its own reality, the Committee also deleted a proposed amendment stating the fact that graduated response schemes were rejected in the telecoms package. Similarly, it also rejected an amendment recognising "the potential usefulness of authorised sharing between individuals of copies for non-commercial use." Having rejected the concept that citizens should be able to use and share data that they have obtained legally, the Committee then went on to adopt a text saying that consumers should be "educated" so that they could better understand intellectual property and how to respect it.

Astonishingly, however, the Committee adopted a text which re-enforced the Parliament's opposition to the scope of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which has been so far willfully misinterpreted by the European Commission. Echoing the Parliament resolution adopted in March of this year, the text "calls on the Commission to ensure that its efforts to further the negotiations on the multilateral Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) with a view to improving the effectiveness of the IPR enforcement system against counterfeiting are continued with full account being taken of the Parliament's position." This reinforces the Parliament's position of March of this year which insisted on the limitation of ACTA to counterfeiting (and not, for example, ISP liability). Since March, the Commission has blatantly ignored that position, with the apparent expectation that, once ACTA is completed, enough pressure can be brought to bear in the Parliament for it to cave in and adopt a text that contradicts its own stated views.

The report will be voted on at an upcoming plenary session of the European Parliament. Due to the confused, contradictory and incoherent nature of the Legal Affairs Committee text, it appears likely (and necessary, for the Parliament's credibility) that more consistent alternative texts will be tabled by one or more political groups prior to the vote. We can only hope that the Committee will learn the lesson that slavishly following the lobbying of certain entrenched, antediluvian industries serves only to undermine its credibility and the confidence of citizens in the European Parliament.

European People's Party press release on the vote
http://www.eppgroup.eu/Press/showpr.asp?PRControlDocTypeID=1&PRCon...

(Contribution by Joe McNamee - EDRi)