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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A country's freedom in the EU
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.
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also it's a committee vote next week
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I don't know the exact details.
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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.
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