Photo: rich115 on Flickr. Whole story behind image here.
Even though it doesn’t need to be… Here we go again… Not really sure I’ve got the energy for this lunacy…
First off, what’s the IPRED1 directive?
Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive 1 (IPRED1) is a directive created by lobbyists and pushed through the EU by a woman married to a record company executive. The gist of the directive is to enable rightsholders to force counterfeiting middle-men to tell where they got the goods from. So in the beginning this was but this was about physical counterfeiting. Along the way it got a bit manhandled by the IP-lobbyists and record companies and finally was voted through in the form of a law that would allow private companies to demand ISPs to hand over their client data for a specific client, so that the rightsholder could sue.
However,
The EU IPRED1 directive is not forced upon any member state in the European Union as ruled by the European Court of Justice (source EFF). From the article:
In a much-anticipated decision, the European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that European Community law does not require EU Member States to impose an obligation on ISPs to divulge customer data in response to a request from a copyright holder who alleges that copyright infringement has taken place. The decision in Promusicae v. Telefonica involved a request made by a Spanish music rightsholder association (Promusicae) to Spain’s leading ISP (Telefonica) for personal data about Telefonica subscribers using particular dynamic IP addresses, which Promusicae alleged were engaged in filesharing.
The European Court of Justice was asked to interpret a mesh of overlapping EU Community laws and answer the question: does European community law require EU Member States that are implementing this suite of EU directives to impose an obligation on ISPs to divulge their customers’ personal data to rightsholders in a civil copyright lawsuit? The court ruled no, but with some qualifications. Thus, the Spanish law is valid and Telefonica will not be forced to divulge its customers’ data.
And what does the Swedish government, with the help of record company lobbyists do now?
They go ahead and suggest a Swedish implementation and law which would grant MORE power to the IP-holders, effectively creating a corporate police which can, without any real evidence, get the identity of the person owning a specific IP-adress.
The law that is now proposed actually grants these commercial interests more power than the Swedish police.
Actually, it is so over-implemented so it actually breaches the directive’s own regulations which states:
3. Paragraphs 1 and 2 shall apply without prejudice to other statutory provisions which:
(a) grant the rightholder rights to receive fuller information;
(b) govern the use in civil or criminal proceedings of the information communicated pursuant to
this Article;
(c) govern responsibility for misuse of the right of information; or
(d) afford an opportunity for refusing to provide information which would force the person
referred to in paragraph 1 to admit to his own participation or that of his close relatives in an
infringement of an intellectual property right; or
(e) govern the protection of confidentiality of information sources or the processing of personal
data.
I mean come on.. If I, an uneducated IT-nerd with a taste for bodybuilding can find, read, and understand this, then why can’t the people preparing our laws do the same?
So, the question remains;
WTF?
Yep. That’s really the question. What the f*ck?
This, if voted through in parliament, will create a situation like the one in the US where companies threaten with lawsuits that no one can afford to challenge, effectively forcing you to pay up even though you haven’t done anything wrong.
Next question is the use of IP-addresses as evidence. What value does an IP-address have in Sweden today where most ISPs ship unsecured wireless APs as the default router? Not much.
This also presents more questions, like “If downloading torrents in an internet café, is the café liable?” and “What are your rights if a neighbour uses your WLAN, willingly or without knowing it, and downloads pirated material? Are you liable?”.
And again, why does this law grant commercial interests powers that now even our police have? Where’s the logic? It’s so glaringly see-through, ordered and paid for, lobbyist crap that has been suggested as a law.
As I wrote in some of the first FRA-posts… Where will this end?
Other writing about this in Swedish (plz use Google translate): Rick Falkvinge (PP), Opassande, HAX, El Rubio.
And here’s the whole crapfest that our swedish, newly suggested, law claims to be born out of.
