EU Court Says Simply Taking Someone's Photo Can Violate Their Civil Rights

from the who-did-what-now? dept

I'm definitely a big supporter of privacy rights, but sometimes it seems that big time privacy rights supporters go too far. The latest is that an EU court on human rights has declared that simply taking someone's photograph can be a violation of their privacy. In the past, laws in Europe have said that you can't necessarily publish a photo of someone without their permission, but merely taking the photo was allowed. No longer. In the press release about the decision, the court explained its reasoning:

"The Court reiterated that the concept of private life was a broad one which encompassed the right to identity. It stressed that a person's image revealed his or her unique characteristics and constituted one of the chief attributes of his or her personality. The Court added that effective protection of the right to control one's image presupposed, in the present circumstances, obtaining the consent of the person concerned when the picture was being taken and not just when it came to possible publication."

Now, I could potentially understand such reasoning in private settings, but the statements above don't seem to limit the issue to private settings. The situation in the case itself also highlights what's a gray area between public and private. It involved a hospital that photographed a newborn baby -- as it does with all newborn babies. The parents protested and demanded the negatives, claiming that the photograph violated their baby's privacy rights -- and the court agreed. What's troubling is the implications of such a ruling, that you simply cannot photograph anyone without their official approval. This will almost certainly lead to new lawsuits, and even begins to raise some other questions. If it's a violation of someone's privacy rights to photograph them, at what point is it a violation of their rights just to see them?

Filed Under: civil rights, eu, photographs, privacy

EU Proposal Would Outright Ban BitTorrent Sites, Make ISPs Copyright Cops & Use 3 Strikes

from the just-what-the-industry-ordered dept

You have to give the entertainment industry lobbyists credit for one thing: they never give up. When one of their proposals gets slapped down they always have many other efforts underway to give a similar proposal life somewhere else. So what if the EU Parliament said that using a three strikes policy went against basic civil rights? Just get another person to come up with a proposal that's even more strict. That seems to be what's happening as the EU Parliament may consider a proposal by Manuel Medina Ortega, which TorrentFreak notes basically is a perfect wishlist of the Big Copyright players. You've got your three strikes policies, your demands that ISPs "take responsibility" and (best of all) the declaration that all BitTorrent and file sharing services are 100% illegal -- no questions asked. Hmm. Apparently someone forgot to inform all the creative folks who are happily using such systems to distribute their works... I don't know enough about European politics to know if this is likely to go anywhere, but given earlier EU Parliament rulings, I'm hopeful that this is quickly tossed aside as being completely out of touch with reality.

Filed Under: eu, europe, isps, parliament, three strikes

EU Regulators Can't Resist: Go After Microsoft For Antitrust Yet Again

from the punching-bag dept

Microsoft is becoming quite the antitrust punching bag over in Europe. After a years long fight concerning antitrust charges in Europe, Microsoft finally gave in and agreed to pay up. So, now the matter is over with, right? No, of course not. EU regulators are back at it, telling Microsoft that the company is probably violating antitrust laws by bundling Microsoft Internet Explorer with Windows. This seems like an odd issue to bring up now as there is increasing competition in the browser market. Firefox's marketshare has continued to climb. Google has entered the market with Chrome. Safari is gaining increasing life (in part due to the iPhone) and there are numerous other upstarts as well. The idea that Microsoft is somehow exerting undue influence on the browser market (a market that, for the most part, involves free software) seems rather odd. It seems to confirm the initial opinion that many had of the original antitrust lawsuit in the EU against Microsoft. It's more about a simple dislike for Microsoft than any actual antitrust violation.

Filed Under: antitrust, browsers, bundling, eu, internet explorer, regulators
Companies: microsoft

Why Is The EU Funding DRM?

from the focus,-people,-focus dept

CaptainCode writes in to point to an article about an EU-funded project to create new methods for DRM. It makes you wonder why Europeans tax money is going to fund something like DRM. By now, plenty of folks are realizing that DRM serves no good purpose. It does not stop any kind of unauthorized use, and tends to piss off legitimate customers by putting unnecessary restrictions on them (devaluing the content). Its only purpose, really, is as a weak attempt to keep an obsolete business model in place. How is that possibly in the best interests of European citizens?

Filed Under: drm, eu

EU Catches On: Drug Companies Abuse Patent System To Block Competition

from the well,-duh dept

I'm long overdue on some promised posts concerning the patent system and the harm it does for the healthcare field, but it's going to have to wait a little while longer. In the meantime, it's good to see that more people (including those in a position to do something about it) are noticing this as well. While we often feel that the EU goes overboard in declaring monopolies or anti-competitive behavior, it's finally realizing the one area where monopolies really do tend to be a problem: patents. The European Commission has released a report detailing how pharmaceutical companies regularly abuse the patent process for anti-competitive purposes, rather than to promote and ensure progress. It's unlikely that much will come of this now, but it's good to see people starting to recognize that the patent system can often be more of a problem than a solution.

Filed Under: competition, eu, patents, pharmaceuticals

European Council Rejects EU Parliament's Amendment Against Three Strikes Rule

from the it's-good-to-be-the-king dept

Earlier this year, we noted that the European Parliament overwhelmingly rejected the idea of various countries implementing any kind of policy that would kick file sharers off the internet -- often referred to as "three strikes" legislation. However, TorrentFreak is now reporting that, despite 88% of Parliament voting in favor of rejecting any such law for being a violation of basic human rights, the European Council (made up of the heads of state of various EU governments, has rejected the amendment drafted by the Parliament. Why? Well, TorrentFreak notes that French President Sarkozy just so happens to be President of the European Council, and as we recently noted, France just recently moved forward in approving a three strikes law, which was originally championed by Sarkozy. So, rather than listen to the vast majority of the EU Parliament, Sarkozy has apparently convinced the Council to let him push through this particular law, despite the widespread concerns about its draconian nature.

Filed Under: eu, three strikes

Did The EU Actually Do Something Right In Its Efforts To Fight Google Dominance?

from the sorta dept

Over the past few years, we've seen various European governments freak out over Google's dominance over the internet, complaining that since it was an American company, it was a problem and "something must be done." Usually this took the form of handing over a ton of taxpayer money to some ill-defined project that would compete with Google, but which usually just turned into a way for private companies to get free money. However, one project to come out of these efforts actually does look interesting. The EU has launched Europeana, a site that attempts to offer up, digitally, various cultural artifacts of Europe -- and do so in creative and useful ways. Rather than just showing documents, for example, it ties together various multimedia to make things a lot more useful.

Considering that much of the cultural content being digitized for this project is already in the hands of the government, they're pretty much the only ones that can do this, and it does seem like a great way to expose more people to these cultural artifacts. So, consider us at least a bit surprised that something useful came out of all of this. Of course, this is hardly the "Google-killer" that's always discussed when talking about these projects. Even the article linked here seems to act as if this is a major triumph over Google, though it's not clear why. This isn't a competition, and putting this info online isn't somehow defeating Google. It's just another source of information, and that's a good thing. Of course, even in doing something "right" it looks like the EU screwed up a bit -- as they didn't plan for the amount of traffic the prototype site received, and it quickly went down.

Filed Under: culture, eu, europe, eurpeana, online

Three Strikes Rule May Sneak Into EU Law, Despite Earlier Rejection

from the never-let-your-guard-down dept

We've talked in the past about how the entertainment industry never gives up trying to push through its legislative agenda -- even after it is dealt setbacks. You may recall that the EU Parliament rejected a proposal to institute a "three strikes" law favored by the entertainment industry, that would kick people off the internet if they're accused (not found guilty, just accused) of unauthorized file sharing three times. The EU Parliament correctly noted that such a law would interfere with individuals privacy and civil rights. However, some academics have noted that another set of laws focusing on telco reform may backdoor in nearly identical three strikes language, requiring telcos to adopt such policies. The fear, obviously, is that this issue, buried in a big telco bill may not get very much attention and may be put into law without much debate, despite the EU Parliament's earlier rejection of such an idea.

Filed Under: eu, europe, telco regulations, three strikes

Once Again, Lego Learns That It Doesn't Own The Concept Of Interconnecting Blocks

from the welcome-to-the-world-of-competition dept

Back in 2005, we wrote about a Canadian Supreme Court decisions that cleared Montreal company Mega Brands from charges of trademark violations for creating Mega Bloks as a competitor to Lego's well known interconnecting blocks. For years, Lego owned patents on its blocks, but those patents expired and, as has been known to happen, competitors entered the space. Lego, of course, decided that rather than compete on the merits, it would continue to try to avoid market competition through the use of trademark and copyright law. Despite losing in Canada, the company still pushed its trademark claims in Europe -- but a European court has now sided with Mega Brands as well, in noting that no trademark should be allowed on the concept of interconnecting blocks.

It's quite likely that Lego will appeal this decision, as the company has quite the reputation for being overly aggressive when it comes to protecting its offerings. However, hopefully the company will realize that actually competing in the marketplace isn't such a bad thing sometimes.

Filed Under: blocks, eu, lego, mega bloks, toys, trademark
Companies: lego, mega brands

EU Continues To Give Bogus Reasons For Keeping ACTA Secret

from the transparency-please dept

One of the most disgusting displays of an industry crafting laws to benefit their industry in backrooms is the secret negotiations over the ACTA treaty. This is the international agreement on copyright that's basically been written by entertainment industry insiders, and will effectively force governments around the world to change copyright laws in favor of the entertainment industry. Yet, the actual negotiations are being held in secret. When confronted about it, various government negotiators have basically said it has to be secret because that's the way things are done. A few months ago, in defending the secrecy, one of the negotiators noted that it was being kept secret because negotiators had agreed to keep it secret. That's not a defense; that's a cop out.

Plenty of organizations around the world are pushing for more transparency and (*gasp!*) the actual inclusion of others who would be impacted by ACTA, but they're not finding it easy. Slashdot points us a press release from The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. FFII had filed a request to the EU Council to release some of the secret documents related to the ACTA negotiation, and the EU Council flat-out refused to do so. It would appear that when the government seeks to put in place an industry's preferred legislation, it doesn't like being called out on it.

However, the more that individuals and organizations around the world speak up and demand that the details behind ACTA be made public, hopefully the more politicians will realize that they can't sell out society's overall best interest in favor of a few industries who are abusing the treaty process for their own interests.

Filed Under: acta, copyright, eu, intellectual property, international trade, treaties