On Friday 04 June 2004 16:42, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote: > entirely inconstitutional in the United States, and I find it hard to > believe that such a law really exists in Europe either.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/legal/0,39020651,39148212,00.htm
Welcome to the "real world", Neo.
After reading everything I have time to read on such short notice, I see the following:
* An anti-piracy directive has been passed by the EU Parliament which will lead to the creation of laws in each individual member state. That directive has very vague wording, which could lead to individual laws of too-wide scope, and does not clearly restrict itself to commercial piracy, which could lead to harassment of individuals by rights holders.
* The UK has passed laws already which do allow some of the civil sanctions such as searches by rights holders. However, the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR), a pro-civil-rights group, also says that "UK courts have limited these provisions and instituted safeguards that are not included in the directive." I have found no further detail as to what these safeguards are, but do note that it was an opponent of the law who mentioned them as a palliative factor.
The individual reader is left to draw own conclusions. I believe that clearly there is a problem with the EU directive, that clearly there is a problem with the UK law, that work must be done to ensure that other member-states enact much-less-aggressive laws than the UK, and that the UK should revise its actual law. Obviously there is a problem here, of a *legal* and *judicial* nature.
However, I am not convinced that the original poster's statement about "laws recently approved in the EU that allow one to see his house raided by private police without a warrant on alledged [sic] violations of copyright" is accurate and objective.
Cheers,
-- Rodolfo J. Paiz rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.simpaticus.com
