European law (was: Re: Dear Fedora Community, what do you want?)

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

At 13:22 6/4/2004, Andy Green wrote:
>On Friday 04 June 2004 16:42, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> > entirely inconstitutional in the United States, and I find it hard to
> > believe that such a law really exists in Europe either.
>
>http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39148212,00.htm
>
>Welcome to the "real world", Neo.

After reading everything I have time to read on such short notice, I see 
the following:

         * An anti-piracy directive has been passed by the EU Parliament 
which will lead to the creation of laws in each individual member state. 
That directive has very vague wording, which could lead to individual laws 
of too-wide scope, and does not clearly restrict itself to commercial 
piracy, which could lead to harassment of individuals by rights holders.

         * The UK has passed laws already which do allow some of the civil 
sanctions such as searches by rights holders. However, the Foundation for 
Information Policy Research (FIPR), a pro-civil-rights group, also says 
that "UK courts have limited these provisions and instituted safeguards 
that are not included in the directive." I have found no further detail as 
to what these safeguards are, but do note that it was an opponent of the 
law who mentioned them as a palliative factor.

The individual reader is left to draw own conclusions. I believe that 
clearly there is a problem with the EU directive, that clearly there is a 
problem with the UK law, that work must be done to ensure that other 
member-states enact much-less-aggressive laws than the UK, and that the UK 
should revise its actual law. Obviously there is a problem here, of a 
*legal* and *judicial* nature.

However, I am not convinced that the original poster's statement about 
"laws recently approved in the EU that allow one to see his house raided by 
private police without a warrant on alledged [sic] violations of copyright" 
is accurate and objective.

Cheers,


-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz
rpaiz at simpaticus.com
http://www.simpaticus.com