[DMCA-Activists] EU Parliament approves IP Enforcement Directive

[Seth Johnson]

-----Original Message-----
From: James Heald <address@hidden>
Date: Tue,  9 Mar 2004 17:36:54 +0000
Subject: [Fsfe-ie] EU Parliament approves IP Enforcement Directive


So in the end Mme Fourtou got her package through, with no further
amendments. The Directive is now likely to be signed off by the 
Council of Ministers on Thursday.

Final vote was 330 to 151 with 39 abstentions.

On the key amendments:
Am 77 (Art 2.1: Scope of the directive)  approved 307 to 185, 7
abstentions
Am 58 (Recital 13: to exclude Patents)  rejected 193 to 310
Am 59 (Recital 13a: to limit to Commercial Scale) rejected  198 to 305

So we were just over 50 MEPs away from successfully limiting the 
Directive to intentional commercial infringement.

See Google news for other summaries, including eg the Register.  Also, 
below, is a short summary the Greens are putting out.

Personally for me, I think the most depressing thing was not Arlene 
McCarthy4s enthusiastic brandishing of a fake Manchester United shirt 
and some "Viagra" she4d bought on the web, but hearing her explain to 
MEPs how "consumers acting in goodfaith are excluded from the scope of 
the scope of the directive", when in fact quite the contrary is the 
case, and she was imposing a three-line whip on Labour MEPs *against* 
an amendment proposed by Sir Neil MacCormack (SNP), which would 
actually have achieved this.

Malcolm Harbour made a firm speech for the Conservatives, explaining 
that whether or not it was perfect, the Directive had to go through 
now today at first reading without any amendment, otherwise on May 1st 
MEPs will have to explain why not, "when a container-load of 
counterfeit goods arrives from China, trans-shipped through one of the 
new Eastern states", which join the EU on that date.  [And which, like 
most EU member states, will probably not implement the directive for 
several years in any case, while they think about how to put it into 
law].

The Liberal group was divided, with Toine Manders MEP (Holland)
approving the text, but Astrid Thors (Finland) and Elly Plooij 
(Netherlands) both condemning it.  The UK Liberals all voted in favour 
of the directive, with the single exception of Nick Clegg MEP, who 
works quite closely with the Lib Dems4 IT spokesman in London, Richard 
Allan.

So rushed had been the procedure for the debate, that several legally 
significant translation discrepancies emerged between different 
language versions even during the voting proceedings.  The German 
Conservative spokeswoman also appeared confused, talked several times 
in her speech about the importance of the vote "tomorrow".  (MEPs 
usually take 24 hours to study the text, and consider the points made 
in the debate, before they actually vote).

Exactly what will now happen, and exactly what surprises it may lead 
to, will now depend on the different details of how the directive is 
now implemented from member country to member country across Europe.

==================================================================

Short summary from the Greens:

The Fourtou report on intellectual property passed today as the 
rapporteur wished. This means that the package proposed by Mrs Fourtou 
(and supported by her own group, the PSE, the ELDR and the UEN) after 
unofficial meetings with the Council working group and the Commission 
was adopted in it's entirety. All other amendments - those from V/ALE, 
Marco Cappato/others/GUE and EDD - were defeated.  The majority in all 
the roll call votes was of the order 300-350 with Fourtou, 100-200 
against.

This result means:

- patents are included within the scope of the directive.  This is of 
serious concern to a number of sectors including software developers 
and the free software movement, generic pharmaceutical companies, the 
automobile spare parts industry, farmers at threat from GM 
contamination etc.
- only 3 parts of the directive are limited to "commercial scale". 
This means that the provisions of Articles 7(1), 8 and 9 can 
potentially be used against consumers.  In the US this kind of 
legislation has been used to target, amongst others, children and 
their parents for downloading music.
- there are concerns amongst ISPs that they can be attacked 
for "providing" the means to download content which is protected by 
copyright.

During the voting session, Neil MacCormick raised the issue of family 
connections in relation to conflicts of interest.  This is in the 
light of numerous recent articles highlighting Mrs Fourtou's husband 
being CEO of Vivendi Universal.  Pat Cox indicated that this would be 
raised in the Parliament Bureau.

The results of roll call votes have not yet been published; however, 
it is clear that most PSE delegations voted in such a way as to defeat 
amendments on the scope and to support the final package.  Further 
details of voting patterns will be circulated later today.

=======================================================================

James Heald

UK co-ordinator,
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure

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