This time in '99: ISPs fight European Web cache law

The EU's proposed ban on Web caching provoked outcry, spearheaded by Silicon's 'Ban the Ban' campaign. It took former EU commissioner, Mario Monti, until the end of May to issue a revised directive, thereby excluding Article 5.1 and making Web caching exempt from the new regulations.
This is how the original story broke on 9 February 1999:

Proposed EU copyright legislation could seriously threaten the future of the Internet, according to European Internet service providers (ISP). ISP representatives from across the continent travel to the European Parliament (EP) in Strasbourg tomorrow, to make their case to MEPs.

The EP is currently drafting a Bill entitled 'Copyright in the Information Society', which aims to outlaw Web caching - a method of storing popular Web content on hard drives and ISP servers to avoid downloading the same information more than once. This can improve browsing speeds greatly.

But the Bill's authors consider caching to be illegal because copying Internet content could potentially be infringing on copyrights.

Nicholas Lansman, secretary general of the ISP Association (ISPA), said: "This situation is very serious and we're extremely concerned.

ISPA and EuroISPA are particularly concerned about Article 5.1 of the Bill, which outlaws non-essential copying. Lansman said: "This is a fairly widespread practice and, if banned, could seriously threaten the smooth running of the Internet." He added that the EC's own server regularly caches information, as do those of most organisations.

"The problem here is not malice, but mere lack of understanding," continued Lansman. "They clearly do not understand the serious implications of banning non-economic caching."

ISPA and EuroISPA will represent their own reworking of Article 5.1 to the EP tomorrow.