The Times: Tech column - A Euro DMCA/airline data/Scientology
By David Rowan
UNTIL NOW Britain has been spared the draconian penalties of America's notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) - used in recent days to identify children swapping music on the Net, and threatening them with £95,000 fines for each song downloaded. Only in America, you might think, could the record labels track down 12-year-old Brianna LaHara, a New York schoolgirl, and make her "apologise" for her crime and hand over $2,000 (£1,300). But if the European Union has its way, the writs could soon be landing on our doormats too.
Prompted by the music and film industries, MEPs are considering a wide-ranging law modelled rather too closely on the DMCA. The draft "Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights" targets piracy by giving copyright holders tough new powers. But as well as giving record companies access to your personal details if they suspect you of downloading the latest J-Lo single, it also criminalises all sorts of other behaviour.
The directive would make criminals of street musicians; it would also prevent you playing a copy-protected CD anywhere that its manufacturer had not consented.
Every European state, in fact, would have to criminalise all violations of intellectual property that might have some commercial purpose. So if the manufacturer of your computer printer said you must use only proprietary ink cartridges, forget about using a cheap alternative that bypassed the printer's microchip. And so on.
It is not just consumers who stand to lose. Computer programmers and researchers say that they will be prevented from taking apart a company's products to understand how they work - a process known as reverse engineering. Two years ago the Recording Industry Association of America used the DMCA to prevent a Princeton academic from exposing flaws in digital watermarking technologies. The proposed European law would do much the same.
Around 40 European consumer and civil rights groups have written to the EU expressing their concerns. Let's hope that MEPs think carefully before debating the directive next month.
++++
STILL, Europe does not always see eye to eye with the Americans. A huge row is brewing in Brussels over US demands for European airlines to share passenger data, ostensibly to help Washington's fight against terrorism.
Since last March, airlines such as British Airways and Air France have had to give the US authorities access to 39 separate elements of passenger information - from your choice of in-flight meal (halal? kosher?) to your travel history and any remarks the check-in crew may have made about you.
The trouble is that US standards of data protection are far more lax than our own - and the Americans say that they will share your details with a wide range of agencies, for much more than simply counter-terrorism.
The European Parliament wants to block the automatic transfer of passenger data from next month. The Americans say they'll stop planes from landing. The fight is intensifying: if you're planning a US holiday, you had better be quick.
++++
BAD NEWS for the Church of Scientology. After an eight-year legal battle to silence its web critics, the group has finally been defeated in the Dutch Court of Appeal. It had pursued Karin Spaink, a writer who had cited damaging internal documents, claiming that she and her website host had breached Scientology copyright. Last week that claim was roundly defeated - so it is now perfectly safe for you to visit www.spaink.net and learn just what the "church" wanted to hide.
(The Times, September 16 2003)
UNTIL NOW Britain has been spared the draconian penalties of America's notorious Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) - used in recent days to identify children swapping music on the Net, and threatening them with £95,000 fines for each song downloaded. Only in America, you might think, could the record labels track down 12-year-old Brianna LaHara, a New York schoolgirl, and make her "apologise" for her crime and hand over $2,000 (£1,300). But if the European Union has its way, the writs could soon be landing on our doormats too.
Prompted by the music and film industries, MEPs are considering a wide-ranging law modelled rather too closely on the DMCA. The draft "Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights" targets piracy by giving copyright holders tough new powers. But as well as giving record companies access to your personal details if they suspect you of downloading the latest J-Lo single, it also criminalises all sorts of other behaviour.
The directive would make criminals of street musicians; it would also prevent you playing a copy-protected CD anywhere that its manufacturer had not consented.
Every European state, in fact, would have to criminalise all violations of intellectual property that might have some commercial purpose. So if the manufacturer of your computer printer said you must use only proprietary ink cartridges, forget about using a cheap alternative that bypassed the printer's microchip. And so on.
It is not just consumers who stand to lose. Computer programmers and researchers say that they will be prevented from taking apart a company's products to understand how they work - a process known as reverse engineering. Two years ago the Recording Industry Association of America used the DMCA to prevent a Princeton academic from exposing flaws in digital watermarking technologies. The proposed European law would do much the same.
Around 40 European consumer and civil rights groups have written to the EU expressing their concerns. Let's hope that MEPs think carefully before debating the directive next month.
++++
STILL, Europe does not always see eye to eye with the Americans. A huge row is brewing in Brussels over US demands for European airlines to share passenger data, ostensibly to help Washington's fight against terrorism.
Since last March, airlines such as British Airways and Air France have had to give the US authorities access to 39 separate elements of passenger information - from your choice of in-flight meal (halal? kosher?) to your travel history and any remarks the check-in crew may have made about you.
The trouble is that US standards of data protection are far more lax than our own - and the Americans say that they will share your details with a wide range of agencies, for much more than simply counter-terrorism.
The European Parliament wants to block the automatic transfer of passenger data from next month. The Americans say they'll stop planes from landing. The fight is intensifying: if you're planning a US holiday, you had better be quick.
++++
BAD NEWS for the Church of Scientology. After an eight-year legal battle to silence its web critics, the group has finally been defeated in the Dutch Court of Appeal. It had pursued Karin Spaink, a writer who had cited damaging internal documents, claiming that she and her website host had breached Scientology copyright. Last week that claim was roundly defeated - so it is now perfectly safe for you to visit www.spaink.net and learn just what the "church" wanted to hide.
(The Times, September 16 2003)
posted by David Rowan at Tuesday, September 16, 2003
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