European parliament votes to halt song swaps

[Daniel.Hanekuyk at CEC.EU.INT]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Fijn resultaat van de Eurodemocratie voor Y. van het Hek, Golden Earring en
vele anderen!
Nederland zal zich eraan moeten houden - het NL parlment heeft geen invloed
op het besluit.

Welke nationale TK leden hebben deelgenomen aan de voorbereidende
vergaderingen in het EP - vaak blijven de voor de nationale parlementariers
gereserveerde stoelen (met spreekrecht) leeg - ook voor D66?

Daniel Hanekuyk
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European parliament votes to halt song swaps
By Michael Mann in Strasbourg
Published: February 14 2001 20:03GMT | Last Updated: February 14 2001
21:08GMT
The European parliament approved rules on Wednesday that will stop companies
such as US file-swapping service Napster operating in the 15-member bloc
without authorisation from recording artists.
The parliament agreed a compromise on changes to the copyright rules that
steered clear of far reaching amendments sought by some members of the
assembly. The plans had unleashed an unprecedented lobbying effort from
groups representing both rights holders and consumer groups.
Wednesday's deal seeks to ease record company concerns over widespread
piracy of high quality digital copies while allowing individuals to continue
making recordings for personal use.
"This is a balanced directive, a positive directive that can establish a
kind of meeting point between the parties," said Enrico Boselli, the Italian
socialist who guided the legislation through the parliament. "What happened
to Napster is what will happen in Europe now. The illegal use of works
subject to copyright is banned."
On Monday, a US Federal appeals court upheld a ruling that popular song swap
service Napster must stop its millions of users from trading copyrighted
material.
While the US has had its Digital Millennium Copyright Act in place for the
past two years, Europe has lagged behind, as proposals to extend copyright
protection enjoyed by musicians, artists and authors over traditional use of
their material to the online environment worked their way slowly through the
EU's legislative maze.
The directive, which leaves a lot of loopholes and does not offer much
harmonisation of rules across the EU, would come into force 18 months after
securing ministerial approval.
"In the main, the Council [of ministers] position went through with some
trimmings around the edges," said Elizabeth Crossick of law firm Freshfields
Bruckhaus Deringer in Brussels.
"It's a victory for commonsense, and the European parliament has shown a lot
of maturity."
The dispute boiled down to how many copies individuals and institutions are
allowed to make of a video, television programme or CD.
"We're enormously relieved that it will remain up to the writer to negotiate
his own royalties," said the Writers Guild of Great Britain.

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