European Parliament Still Debating Three Strikes Laws

from the which-way-will-they-go dept

I don't understand enough about how EU policy-making works to fully understand this, but the EU Parliament which has rejected "three strikes" type rules (that would kick those accused of copyright infringement offline after three accusations) as being against basic civil rights in the past, has apparently rejected yet again a three strikes approach. Yet... at almost the same time, we're being told that France is actively pushing the EU Parliament to approve a three strikes provision in a telco bill that will be voted on next week. There was some concern last year that while the EU Parliament rejected three strikes, it would backdoor its way in via a separate telco bill. Is that what's happening again, where there are two separate discussions about three strikes provisions? It would be great if those familiar with how the EU Parliament system works could explain the two items.
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Filed Under: europe, isps, politics, three strikes


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  • identicon
    Pudro, 27 Mar 2009 @ 2:53am

    A country's freedom in the EU

    Basically, I have been under the impression that the EU (as a governing body) is limited as to what it can impose upon its members. So while the EU (as per its previous ruling) cannot violate this "basic civil right", this is still something that a country can decide for itself (as it appears France is doing here). Maybe it can offer persuasion in some form, but can't outright decide this for them.

    Kind of like how the federal government of the United States persuades individual states without having the ability to actually make the decisions for them. Like the drinking age, for example - any state is free to lower their drinking age, but the federal government pressured states into implementing 21 as their drinking age.

    Seems sort of similar, at least.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Alex (profile), 27 Mar 2009 @ 3:01am

    The law being debated next week is the "telecoms package" in which "three-strikes" was rejected last November --- that was the first reading, this is the second reading. Yes, the one voted on yesterday is a separate law.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Alex (profile), 27 Mar 2009 @ 3:03am

    also it's a committee vote next week

    not a plenary session --- that's in about 6 weeks.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Jan Hopmans (profile), 27 Mar 2009 @ 6:51pm

    At least I am happy the Dutch government already came to the conclusion that this would be 'against the law' to implement or require ISP's to do.

    I don't know the exact details.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Laurent GUERBY, 28 Mar 2009 @ 5:30am

    What they call a "resolution" from the European Parliament is just a voted-on press release, it's not a law and has no more value than a blog post somewhere on the internet.

    See "non-binding resolutions" here:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament

    99% of what is reported by the media are those resolutions which have no interest whatsoever.

    The European Parliament does has no legislative initiative, that is it cannot propose new law. It must wait from the European Commission to propose one and then the law proposal, called a "directive" follows the "Codecision" procedure:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codecision_procedure

    Where the unelected and opaque commission of 27 people has the last word on everything, a unique quasi-dictatorial body concentrating most of legislative and executive power over 500 millions EU citizens.

    The "telco bill" is a directive, will be voted by the European Parliament without any significant change and will apply to 500 millions citizens.

    Just like the "database" bill was voted, etc...

    The only directive that was rejected by the parliament in the whole history of codecision was the patent directive (in second reading), but the commission will keep pushing such a patent directive until one passes.

    Sad state and no wonder you see in the media from time to time that citizen rejected some EU stuff by referendum when by chance there's a referendum.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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