censorship

Photo: cambiodefractal on Flickr.

From IPTegrity.com and Monica Horten (via HAX (Swedish)):

Annexe 1, Point 19 amendment to the Authorisation Directive has been deleted and replaced with an alternative text, that paves the way for ISP filtering at the framework level of EU law.

Annexe 1, Point 19 of the Authorisation Directive was an amendment which meant that EU governments could place copyright enforcement as a term of doing business for ISPs. In principle, it’s a good thing that it has been deleted. What I am concerned about, is the possible interpretation of the text that has replaced it.

The deletion was voted through by the Industry, Research and Energy committee (ITRE) on July 7th. In its place, there is a new text, which refers to another amendment – Article 8 – point 4 – g. This amendment refers (via another linked amendment) to co-operation between ISPs and rights-holders. I have now been able to analyse it, and as I suspected, it means more or less the same thing as the original amendment. It just says it in a roundabout way, instead of saying it directly, as the original one did.
[...]
This is an appalling way to make laws. Amendments, hidden within a long text on a different piece of policy, suddenly switched at the last minute before a vote, in such a fashion that no-one even knows they are there.

It would be comical, if it wasn’t so serious and if it didn’t mean the difference between a free or a restricted Internet.

Bolded by me, as I kinda recognize this from somewhere else… Oh yeah, it was when the Swedish gov. & Parliament tried to sneak through our massive wiretap law… :/

Are these guys sharing ideas or is it the same coach?

Anyways, in short, some of the effects of this law would be:

* Make it possible (but not mandatory) for member countries to force ISP’s to block filesharers.

* Recommend ISP’s to change their EULA’s to enable arbitrary disconnection of filesharers (without possibilities of appeal)

* This in turn forces ISP’s to monitor all traffic flowing through their network to identify potential filesharers. That is, they’ll be mandated to do surveillance of their customers.

And we’re worried about FRA and government surveillance, imagine this done by a private company with no public scrutiny whatsoever.

I wonder how happy the ISPs will be over having to act as police, prosecutor and judge. It’ll also create some “interesting” legal problems for them.

In the law-text there are also loose formulations that an ISPs customers should only be given access to “lawful content“. This could be interpreted that they are only to give users access to data that is expressively stated as lawful. As HAX notes, this is probably not the politicians intentions but it might be the real effect and then all information on the Internet will have to be classified

Hehe, I’d love to see that database (or even the supercomputer that is going to hold it)

The resistance (Swedish link) is being organized and the Swedish delegate Christofer Fjellner (from the Moderate party) is holding a press conference on the 27th of August in the European Parliament. The Speakers are:

* Jon Karlung, CEO, Bahnhof AB, Sweden
* Niels Huijbregts, Public Affairs, XS4ALL Internet bv, Netherlands
* Monica Horten, University of Westminster, Communications & Media Research Institute, UK
* Eddan Katz/ Gwen Hinze, Electronic Frontier Foundation, USA
* Jeffrey Lawrence, Director Content Policy, Intel Corporation
* Nuria Rodriguez Murillo, Legal Officer BEUC
* Levi Nietvelt, Economic Officer BEUC

Apparently, this conference has not been very popular with the French and some other regulation-happy countries. It is very nice to see a Swedish politician actually stand up for a free internet for a change.

Large portions of this post has been directly translated from HAXs latest blogposts (1|2) in order to spread this information as much as it’s possible.
I hope it’s OK