__/ [ Mark Kent ] on Sunday 25 March 2007 08:05 \__
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> EC leaves personal use out of criminal IP laws
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>| Arguments over the definition of what constitutes "commercial scale"
>>| infringement have been drawn out and complicated. Eventually, the
>>| committee agreed to leave copying for personal use uncriminalised.
>>| It states that to be criminal an infringement must be "a deliberate
>>| and conscious infringement of the intellectual property right for
>>| the purpose of obtaining commercial advantage".
>
> Why on earth would copyright violation become a criminal offence at all?
> Other than giving American music and film companies the opportunity to
> put people in gaol, what possible purpose could it serve? We already
> have laws about fraud and other financial crimes - they are surely
> adequate, and if not, should be updated.
>
>>|
>>| Lobby groups for rights holders are unsurprisingly unhappy with
>>| this clause.
>
> Ahh, so they want to put people into gaol, then. Will they try to
> persuade the EU countries to re-introduce the death penalty for this, or
> is taking away somebody's freedom a sufficient punishment for making a
> copy of something?
>
>> But the Business Software Alliance says it is also
>>| unhappy with the "incitement to infringe" clause. This might give
>>| Microsoft's execuitives pause for thought.
>> `----
>
> Well of course it will give them pause for thought - they've been trying
> to get the whole world to copy their software for years, and have been
> quite brazen about it, with the stated intent being to "collect later".
> Presumably, they want to go a step further now, and "collect" as well as
> gaol people.
>
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/22/ec_ip_incite/
>>
>
> In the end, we're still only talking about making a copy of something.
> Considering the wider picture of crime generally, private copying is a
> real non-issue, and commercially-driven re-distribution of copyrighted
> material without permission is clearly unacceptable, but is hardly
> remotely as significant as the kinds of crime we typically gaol people
> for. It doesn't really compare with murder, burglary, theft, gbh, abh,
> etc. etc.
>
> We seem to have lost sight of the wider picture, at some point along the
> way.
...All fine point, but a small bit of information I would like to add comes
from a statement made by a Microsoft exec a fortnight ago. He said that
Microdsoft wants people to pirate Microsoft software if they choose to
pirate something. Ah! Right from the horse's month. Didn't Gates also say
something about "getting them kind of addicted"? I think your "collect
later" remark covered it. This only comes to show that the lockin approach
makes people miserable. They are left with no choices and they become
vulnerable to a lot of abuse.
--
~~ Best wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | No SCO code was used to generate this sig
http://Schestowitz.com | RHAT GNU/Linux ¦ PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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