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Entertainment Industry Trying to Sneak 'Three Strikes' Law into EU?

By soulxtc

Legal experts discover that proposed new European Union laws could lead to controversial 'three-strikes-and-your-out' plans despite previous rejections by the European Parliament. It was just two months ago that the European Parliament rejected "three-strikes" anti-file-sharing proposals to disconnect copyright infringers as well as plans to force ISPs to filter copyrighted material from their networks. All would seem well until recently when Sheffield University professor of internet law Lilian Edwards, and student Simon Bradshaw, began analyzing new European Union telecommunication reform documents and have discovered that proposed new EU laws could lead to a "three-strikes" or "connection sanctions" over the previous rejections by the European Parliament. From their analysis: On the basis of our analysis it is clear that the package does, or at least can provide a mandatory basis for the “warnings” part of a French­style connection sanctions law (the“strikes”) (see para 12 of brief), and also potentially provides a means by which public CSPs (ISPs and the like)can be compelled by the national regulator to work with (“promoting cooperation”) rightsholders to implement a disconnection scheme. Wording in various places of the latest version seems to confirm that this“co­operation” is a more extensive obligation than simply providing copyright­related public interest information.

Full post as published by ZeroPaid on November 24, 2008 (boomark / email).