Blocking The Net 'Not The European Option' -- EU Commissioner Reding
from the quick,-get-that-in-writing dept
One of the useful side-effects of the groundswell of protest against SOPA and PIPA is that a surprising number of people in positions of power have come out against their approach, notably in Europe. First, we had Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, who tweeted:
Glad tide is turning on #SOPA: don't need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net.
And now she's been joined by her colleague, Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship:
"The protection of creators must never be used as pretext to intervene in the freedom of the Internet," Reding told an international Internet conference in the southern German city of Munich, noting the "heated debate" surrounding the issue.
That's an interesting comment to make when the European Commission-supported ACTA is arguably doing precisely that. For example, the academics Douwe Korff and Ian Brown prepared a report on ACTA in October last year at the request of the Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament. Here's what they wrote in on the topic of ACTA and fundamental rights in their conclusion:
Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others. It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides or allows for the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end.
This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and standards.
In her comments at the German conference, Reding went on to make an even more interesting statement:
"You'll never have from Europe a blocking of the Internet -- that's not the European option," she said.
If she meant it, then that's an extremely important line in the sand given that the blocking of sites has already started in Finland, the Netherlands, and the UK. It will be interesting to see if she and her colleagues back those words up with any action.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyoneâs attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: blocking, eu, free speech, viviane reding
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
talk is cheap, let's see what action comes from her talk! i bet very little, if anything at all! member countries still do their own thing anyway, ignoring what the EU commission says!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DNSSEC
It light of the nature of DNSSEC is it unlikely that the Court would still require a block when that would trash the security of DNSSEC.
We stand no hope getting ACTA stopped without Civil War when that is one bill that has rejected all public debate and then was sneaked into Europe disguised as a fish.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Copyright Enforcement Debate Misses Big Picture
Copyright Enforcement Debate Misses Big Picture
By Cathy Young
Real Clear Politics
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/01/24/copyright_debate_misses_big_picture_1 12884.html
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The Wild West days are over
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: DNSSEC
anyone surprised at the lengths gone to to get this in? proves how bad a Bill it is when it cant be brought up under it's own heading. perhaps Viviane Reding would like to make a comment on that, given her statements above?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
hi from .fi
(English version may or may not appear on their pages tomorrow or the day after)
they're pondering about MORE censorship in finland.
Google translation of the chapter:
The committee also proposes provisions for telecommunications carrier-targeted prevention provision. The court could order the telecommunications carrier (network provider) to prevent their clients access to the infringement of copyright for the website, unless it can be regarded as excessive, taking into account the evidence available to the public for the person, agent, or the author's rights. The need for such a provision is added the fact that more and more Finnish market network operates abroad. The proposal aims to contribute to reducing the unauthorized online distribution of the negative effects of right holders and consumers, as well as to control the use of legal services.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&a mp;ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fchristianengstrom.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F01%2 F19%2Flankar-om-eus-svar-pa-sopapipa%2F
(Google translate from Swedish)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
They don't want just to block the internet they want to spy on you on it even when you are in your cellphone, they want cellphone carriers to monitor people for them.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Because some European countries already are blocking websites.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No we will just allow Finland, UK, Netherlands and Italy to do it and punish people who didn't even comit the crime like in Germany that made an old woman pay for it, or like in France where people must now become network wiz to not let others do anything wrong with their connection, they also should not buy any Wii consoles or any other electronic that doesn't use the latest WiFi encryption which is soon to become obsolette and people will be forced to buy new equipment or ditch WiFi altogether because of the cost to keep it up to date.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
oh to live in Utopia, where politicians did the job they were elected to do and actually told the truth! one day, perhaps!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
the OCCUPATION of Palestine is a crime against humanity and common decency---------------------the occupy protest movements did nothing to impede banker(corporate) moves on the Continent of Europe.
the PIRACY in international waters near the Palestinian Coast and the murders commited in the course of the acts of PIRACY by the Israellys was also a crime against humanity.-----------------------------the furore over file sharing and internet freedoms and the occupy protest movements have virtually erased google search results for the two terms which in 2010 would have certainly brought the user to the Palestinian Human Rights/Apartheid debate.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
dd
[ link to this | view in thread ]
thanks
[ link to this | view in thread ]