EU anti-piracy law under fire

A planned EU directive designed to strengthen intellectual property rights has hit a roadblock. Groups opposed to the directive, who call the law the Euro-Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), believe it will not only hurt competition but could also turn out to hurt its main corporate backers.

The text of the directive which is supposed to bolster the fight against counterfeiting now won't be discussed by MEPs this week. It was originally scheduled for debate on 11 September, but the discussions have now been pushed back to 4 November. The official reason is that the French MP in charge of examining the text, Janelly Fourtou, hasn't reached his conclusions for the report he is producing on the draft.

The first draft of the directive concerning "measures and procedures designed to assure respect for intellectual property rights" was presented to parliament on 30 January 2003. Its objective is to reinforce these rights "in order to dissuade counterfeiters and pirates". Its future applications will be applicable no across industry – and will govern everything from a Lacoste T-shirt to software CD-ROMs.

The text is a bone of contention for several groups. Since January, the music industry, via the IFPI, the organisation representing the international recording industry, has said that it finds the measures to be too weak on pirates.

Since then, other group have rushed to add their voices to the debate – but chiefly to dispute the IFPI's comments. At the head of the movement is the think-tank FIPR (Foundation for Information Policy Research). One of its members, Ross Anderson, claimed that the directive was like the American DMCA copyright law, only worse - the DMCA prohibits the circumvention of copy protection and the distribution of devices that can be used to circumvent copyrights - even if their users don't do anything illegal.

According to him, the law destroys the possibility for small companies to compete against the respective giants of the industry. The directive could equally turn out to hurt its principal proponents, such as Microsoft, Ross Anderson told ZDNet UK. One example is that in the event of intellectual property laws being strengthened, legal proceedings to recoup fees on patent violation may become more complicated.

It’s a similar situation for another internet behemoth, auction site eBay. "Reselling of intellectual property outside its original area of jurisdiction could become the subject of a lawsuit", he said. In that case, if an eBay user bought a CD in New York and then went on to sell it to a buyer in Paris, the seller could be sued for violation of copyright.

Estelle Dumout writes for ZDNet France