European Commission Mulls Forcing ISPs to Help Fight Piracy

[Daniel]

Report notes their status as ?intermediaries between all users of the Internet and the rightsholders,? and that in the face of an ?unprecedented increase in opportunities to infringe intellectual property rights? it must explore the possibility of exploiting their ?favourable position? in order to ?prevent? and ?terminate? online piracy. Also says online market places and search engines should be forced to take ?preventive measures.?

A new European Commission report suggests exploring increased involvement by ISPs, online marketplaces, and search engines in the war against online piracy.

It says that a an earlier intellectual property directive implemented back in 2004 helped improve enforcement efforts, but that since then the Internet has created an ?alarming? number of increased opportunities for infringement that the Directive didn?t foresee at that the time.

?The Internet and digital technologies have added an extra, challenging dimension to enforcing intellectual property rights,? it says. ?On the one hand, the Internet has allowed creators, inventors and their commercial partners to find new ways to market their products. On the other hand, it has also opened the door to new forms of infringements, some of which have proved difficult to combat.?

The report cites how the ?multi-purpose nature? of the Internet has made it easy for people to commit a wide variety of copyright infringements, that search engines and P2P enable users to conveniently sell, share, or download copyrighted material.

Part of the problem, it says, lies with copyright holders who have been ?unable,? though I?d argue unwilling, to keep up with the demand of legal digital content.

?File-sharing of copyright-protected content has become ubiquitous, partly because the development of legal offers of digital content has not been able to keep up with demand, especially on a cross-border basis, and has led many law-abiding citizens to commit massive infringements of copyright and related rights in the form of illegal up-loading and disseminating protected content.?

Because of this unmet demand many sites are either hosting or facilitating the illegal distribution of copyrighted material, and the existing law isn?t suited to address the problem. The report suggests that all ?intermediaries? between infringers and rightsholders whose services are used to infringe copyright be enlisted to play a role in combating the problem.

?Intermediaries who transport goods suspected of infringing intellectual property rights (such as carriers, freight forwarders, or shipping agents) can play a leading role in controlling the distribution of goods that infringe intellectual property rights,? adds the report. ?Internet platforms such as online market places or search engines can also play an important role in reducing the number of the infringements, in particular through preventive measures and ?notice and take-down? policies.?

ISPs are identified as a ?key? component of the Internet that allows users to access copyright infringing material, and that given the fact that current efforts have so far been unable to effectively stop or even decrease the level of online infringement more ?powerful? tools are needed.

?Given intermediaries? favourable position to contribute to the prevention and termination of online infringements, the Commission could explore how to involve them more closely,? it says.

It does say that any regulations it considers must respect privacy laws and the protection of personal data, but says there is no rule that the former should take ?precedence over the right to property or vice versa.? A balance between the rights of both parties must be found.

Another interesting suggestion by the report is the issue of damages. Its authors believe that ?damages awards do not currently appear to effectively dissuade potential infringers from engaging in illegal activities. This is particularly so where damages awarded by the courts fail to match the level of profit made by the infringers.?

The problem with this is that it could never properly address illegal file-sharing since it lacks an inherent profit motive. More importantly, there?s no way to fully quantify what damages have been done to a copyright holder by an individual file-sharer. Increasing damage awards risks unfair financial harm to individual file-sharers while at the same time serving as very little of a deterrent effect.

Thankfully, it does hint at the fact that it should explore the a ?commercial scale? requirement, that is that the ?infringing act is carried out for direct or indirect economic or commercial advantage.? That would go a long way towards ensuring that the rights of all parties involved are respected. There?s a big difference between file-sharing and file-selling.

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Daniel Reviewed by Daniel on 6th Jan 2011. European Commission Mulls Forcing ISPs to Help Fight Piracy http://www.zeropaid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/images1-100x65.jpg Report notes their status as ?intermediaries between all users of the Internet and the rightsholders,? and that in the face of an ?unprecedented increase in opportunities to infringe intellectual property rights? it must explore the possibility of exploiting their ?favourable position? in order to ?prevent? and ?terminate? online piracy. Also says online market places and search engines should be forced to take ?preventive Rating: 5

[cgworld]

so warez will return back to irc ??

[ahmedpeso]

so warez will return back