Entertainment IPREDators
NO-IPRED2.org is the website (in Italian) that hosts the protest against the IPRED2 directive that may approved this April 24 by the European Parliament, without having received much publicity by the “traditional” media (especially in Italy — big surprise). A controversial directive at best, strongly wanted by major entertainment companies, it tries to define more clearly the rights and wrongs in terms of copyright infringement and protection of intellectual property, which apply particularly in contexts like P2P file sharing — and apparently fails.
Originally laid out to inflict harsher punishments on supposed “pirates”, adding jail time, business shutdowns and large monetary charges to the pool, it recently passed the scrutiny of the European JURI Commission with little modifications, that mainly added the distinction between personal and commercial use (absent from a previous draft): although many feel this was done in an ambiguous and not clearly defined way.
Several obscure spots remain: the directive appears to contradict itself in many articles, remaining too subject to interpretation; additionally, one of the main points the protest acts against is how the directive authorizes entertainment companies to take direct action in investigations undertaken by public authorities, even in the absence of a formal accusation, obtaining access to an enormous quantity of personal and sensitive data that belongs to private citizens. This would effectively make those private companies that feel they have been wronged, the same companies that are pushing for much harsher punishments in all of Europe, a new kind of vigilante.
This dystopian vision of the future is what led Italian senator Fiorello Cortiana to write a passionate open letter (which has also created an online petition) to the European Parliament to ask that clear distinctions be specified in the definitions of commercial and personal use in the final directive, and that private companies be allowed to take part in investigations only as external technical advisors.
Entertainment companies must begin to see that the market has already shifted to new grounds, like the Internet. Only by upgrading their own business model and offering fair services will they be able to thrive, not by laying out fences around the rights of the people, nor by gaining more and more rights for themselves at the expense of their own customers.
