From: Gary Britt 

How could this possibly be in Adam's and Phil's workers paradise of human
liberty and dead Brazilians in trench coats?

Gary

Rich Gauszka wrote:
> Imprisonment if your network even serves as a conduit for illegally copied
> material? EU IT workers immediately go to jail - Do not pass GO
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070320/tc_pcworld/129995
> Companies from across IT face criminal sanctions, including prison time for
> employees, if their networks, software programs or online services are ever
> used to carry illegally copied material such as music or film, according to
> a draft law from the
> European Commission supported Tuesday by a committee of the European
> Parliament.
>
> The proposed directive switches the onus from end users to the technological
> conduits, which could include ISPs (Internet service providers), mobile
> phone operators, instant-messaging services, video- and music-sharing Web
> sites such as YouTube, as well as open-source software producers.
>
> The controversial draft law has sparked an outcry, uniting rivals within the
> IT industry, ranging from free and open-source software advocates, the
> Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, at one end to a lobbyist
> for the world's biggest software companies, the Business Software Alliance
> (BSA), at the other.
>
> The clause in the draft law that most worries them is one that criminalizes
> aiding and abetting or incitement to infringe an intellectual property such
> as copyright-protected music, software or film. Another major concern across
> the board is the inclusion of utility models-- in effect short-term,
> unexamined patents-- within the scope of the law.
>
> Patents themselves were included in the original version of the law proposed
> by the European Commission but the legal affairs committee of the Parliament
> excluded them from the scope of the law Tuesday.
>
> "The exclusion of patents is welcome, but we are very disappointed the
> committee chose to keep the incitement clause," said Francisco Mingorance,
> European affairs manager at the BSA.
>
> "This creates a huge legal threat right across the IT
industry," said Ante
> Wessels, an analyst at the FFII. He added that if the draft becomes law "it
> will hamper software designers' freedom to act in the market."
>
>

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