On 9 March the European Parliament finally adopted the Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights. The Strasbourg Plenary passed the text, which had previously been agreed behind closed doors by a handful of MEPs in no less than 11 informal meetings with the Council, without any amendment. Although majorities were much thinner than the rapporteur, French Conservative Janelly Fourtou, would have had them ­ only 277 MEPs voted down the line for the so-called compromise of the rapporteur, while 240 wanted to amend it one way or another -, the Directive is now more than likely to pass in the First Reading procedure, which is foreseen for uncontroversial reports.

The Directive applies indiscriminately to all infringements of all intellectual property rights, including patents. A limitation to

The European Union's disputed Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights is scheduled for a fast-track procedure that may lead to it being adopted by the European Council in little more than two weeks. At present, it is still under discussion in the Brussels Parliament. The Rapporteur, French Conservative Janelly Fourtou, and the Council both wish to pass this Directive in First Reading, before the enlargement of the European Union. Trying to avoid delay by too much discussion, they have each chosen the fastest procedure possible in their respective institutions.

The final discussion about the report in the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee took place on Monday 23 February. The item was scheduled at the very last minute, the Friday before, when most of the Members of Parliament were already gone. With many MEPs still on their way to Brussels on Monday, only 14 MEPs were present. The discussion only lasted 15 minutes after the Council and the Commission had ended their formal introductions.

The Article 29 Working Party, the European collaboration of the Data Protection Authorities, has published a (brief!) 'Working Document on Trusted Computing Platforms and in particular on the work done by the Trusted Computing Group (TCG group).' It is a balanced description of 'work in progress', since there are not many end-user applications yet, besides some widely published tests with Digital Rights Management.

The document offers general observations derived from privacy principles, like the need to distinguish between usage in a corporate and in a private environment and the need to provide clear information to users, while always protecting the security of data.

"Both those who design technical specifications and those who actually build or implement applications or operating systems bear responsibility for the data protection aspects, although at different levels. Those who build, commercialise and use the applications bear responsibilities as well, especially organisations that process user data, as they will normally be the last one in the chain and the ones who interact with the user."

The IFPI, the international representative of the recording industry, has instigated legal proceedings against the Belgian ISP Telenet for the unauthorised distribution of music via Usenet (newsgroups). Telenet refuses to block the access to certain newsgroups in its newsservice 'Bommanews'. The ISP argues that providing Usenet services is a 'mere conduit' activity, and under the E-Commerce Directive (2002/58/EC) a provider cannot be held liable for just passing bits. The ISP states: "Telenet does not control the content of data that are being transported over the network by its customers. Telenet acknowledges the right to privacy and the freedom of speech of its customers."

It is the first time that the recording industry attacks an internet provider for offering usenet services, testing the strict non-liability

Peter Schaar, appointed 2 months ago as Germany's chief Data Protection Commissioner, has severely criticized the draft Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights, currently under discussion in the European Parliament and the Council. Interviewed by the online news service Heise, Schaar said the Directive brought along many risks, including deep cuts into the confidentiality of communication and citizen's privacy rights by giving too many rights of information to the rights holders. The Directive is, according to Schaar, also likely to undermine current initiatives to regulate the use of RFID tags, and he criticizes the possible extension of the field of application from professional copyright pirates to 'everyone exchanging private copies', which would be 'unproportional'.

On 15 January 2004 the European Parliament accepted an own-initiative report about the importance and future of collecting societies, the organisations that collect the rights on copyright and neighbouring rights. The report states that Digital Rights Management is insufficiently developed to replace the work of collecting societies. According to the report, reasonable levies (for example on blank CD-recordables) are "the only means of ensuring equitable remuneration for creators and easy access by users to intellectual property works and cannot be replaced by Digital Rights Management Systems."

In 2002 the European Commission promised to produce a Communication about the collecting societies, to fill in some details left open by the new Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC). The communication never materialised, and the Austrian Member of Parliament Mercedes Echerer took the initiative herself.

On 5 January 2004 the Irish Free Software Organisation (IFSO) was launched. Since June 2003, members of a European free software mailing list have been collaborating on issues such as software patents, and the European Copyright Directive. One of the founders, Ciaran O'Riordan, comments: "With Ireland holding the presidency of the EU for the next six months, political lobbying in Ireland will be of increased importance. The fate of the software patentability directive is still undecided, and we now also have the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive to deal with. In the coming months, we also hope to work on spreading education and adoption of Free Software in Ireland."

Irish Free Software Organisation
http://ifso.info/

Ciaran O'Riordan
http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/

On 8 January 2004 the second reading by the French National Assembly of the draft law on Digital Economy (Loi sur la confiance dans l'economie numerique or LEN) stirred up public controversy. The law aims at transposing the E-Commerce Directive (2000/31/EC) and part of the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications (2002/58/EC).

The National Assembly not only confirmed its willingness to allow for private justice in France with the notice and take down procedure, but it also adopted a general obligation on hosting providers to monitor the content of their customers, a measure explicitly forbidden by the E-Commerce Directive. In addition, access and hosting providers would have the obligation to filter some contents upon judicial request, a measure which obviously applies to content hosted on foreign websites. Another amendment from the right-wing UDF party obliges internet providers to warn against possible infringements of copyrights in all their advertisements with the mandatory line: 'piracy harms artistic creation'.