International Civil Liberties Coalition Urges Rejection of IP Enforcement Directive

International Civil Liberties Coalition Urges Rejection of IP Enforcement Directive
Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) Sends Letter to EU to Protect Consumer Rights and Competition

An international coalition of 50 civil liberties groups and consumer rights campaigns sent a letter to the European Union today urging rejection of the proposed Intellectual property Enforcement Directive. The coalition warns that the proposed Directive is overbroad and threatens civil liberties, innovation, and competition policy. The proposal requires EU Member States to criminalize all violations of any intellectual property right that can be tied to any commercial purpose, with penalties to include imprisonment.

“If this proposal becomes a reality, major companies from abroad can use ‘intellectual property’ regulations to gain control over the lives of ordinary European citizens and threaten digital freedoms”, said Andy MÃ¼ller-Maguhn, a board member of European Digital Rights and speaker for the Chaos Computer Club. “Under this proposal, a person’s individual liberty to use his own property is replaced with a limited license that can be revoked or its terms changed at any time and for any reason,” added the German civil rights activist.

“Currently EU-Member states are implementing the EU Copyright Directive and the EU Software Patent Directive is next in the line. We should really wait and see what effect these new laws have before adding any new legislation, ” said Ville Oksanen, a lawyer and Vice Chairman of Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFi), a signatory on the organizational letter. “Contrary to what the Enforcement Directive claims, Member States are already obliged by international treaties like TRIPS to protect intellectual property rights,ï¿½ Oksanen continued.

In conjunction with the publication of the letter, the international group of activists launched the Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) to raise awareness about the IP Enforcement proposal’s threat to consumer rights and market competition. CODE encourages European citizens to contact the EUROPARL Committee on Legal Affairs and Internal Market and urge the proposal’s rejection before the September 11, 2003 hearing on its merits in Brussels.

ï¿½Major IP holders are highly organized to impose maximalist provisions in transnational agreements,ï¿½ said Robin D. Gross, Executive Director of IP Justice, an international civil liberties organization. ï¿½The CODE campaign unites people from many different countries to defend civil rights against the encroachment of overzealous intellectual property protection.ï¿½

In its letter to EU members, the coalition expressed particular concern over Article 9 of the proposal, which gives intellectual property holders broad new subpoena powers to obtain personal information about any European citizen that is alleged to be connected to an infringement. Similar subpoena powers created by the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act are abused by the Recording Industry Association of America to obtain personal information about thousands of users of file-sharing software. The proposed IP Enforcement Directive would extend the ability to abuse this power to Europe.

The international coalition also urged rejection of Article 21 of the proposal, which requires Member States to forbid technology including software that is capable of bypassing technical restrictions imposed by intellectual property holders. This provision threatens market competition by permitting foreign IP owners to restrict parallel imports and impose price discrimination within the EU. Article 21 would also forbid Europeans from deactivating or removing technical devices such as Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags that are embedded into clothing and other consumer goods to prevent counterfeiting but can also be used to track people.

“Forbiding tools that are required for the exercise of legally protected rights, like private use, preservation of works by libraries, and reverse engineering, means giving a complete monopoly to right-holders on the basic infrastructure needed to communicate in the digital world,” said JoÃ£o Miguel Neves, Vice-President of Portuguese National Association for Free Software (ANSOL).

ï¿½One can think of the EU IP Enforcement Directive as the ï¿½DMCA on steroids’ since any industrial property right that can be licensed will be enforced through technical devices that it will be absolutely illegal to circumvent throughout Europe,ï¿½ added Gross, an intellectual property attorney.

Media Contacts:

Robin Gross, Executive Director, IP Justice
robin@ipjustice.org +1 415.553.6261

Andy MÃ¼ller-Maguhn, Board Member, European Digital Rights (EDRi)
andy@edri.org + 49 (0) 30-3087 1715

JoÃ£o Miguel Neves, President, Portuguese National Association for Free Software (ANSOL)
joao.neves@ansol.org +351 933 252 302

Ville Oksanen, Vice-Chairman, Electronic Frontier Finland
ville.oksanen@effi.org +358 40 5368583

Frederic Couchet, Association Pour la Recherche en Informatique Libre (APRIL)
fcouchet@april.org +33 6 60 68 89 31

Alexandre Dulaunoy, President, NGO/ASBL Association Electronique Libre (AEL)
alexandre.dulaunoy@ael.be +352091303303

Martin Keegan, Deputy Leader, UK Campaign for Digital Rights
mk@ukcdr.org +44 7779 296469

Links for More Information:

CODE Organizational Letter Urging Rejection of EU IP Enforcement Directive:
http://www.ipjustice.org/CODE/codeletter_en.shtml

Campaign for an Open Digital Environment (CODE) Website:
http://www.ipjustice.org/CODE/

IP Justice White Paper on EU IP Enforcement Directive:
http://www.ipjustice.org/ipenforcewhitepaper.shtml

Foundation for Information Policy Research Analysis on Directive:
http://www.fipr.org/copyright/draft-ipr-enforce.html

Association Electronique Libre Webpage on IP Enforcement Directive:
http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/IPRProposalDirectiveInfoPage

Electronic Frontier Finland Statement on Enforcement Proposal:
http://www.effi.org/julkaisut/lausunnot/ipr_enforcement_lausunto.en.html
Text of Proposed European Union IP Enforcement Directive

Language Translations of Media Release and CODE Letter Opposing IP Enforcement Directive:

International Civil Liberties Coalition Urges Rejection of IP Enforcement Directive