Piracy law sparks IT outcry

The good news is that a draft European law designed to fight counterfeiting and piracy has been narrowed to exclude patent infringements – much to the relief of researchers across the Union. The bad news, however, is that many other legitimate activities, particularly in the information technology industry look set to be criminalised.

Companies from almost every corner of the IT industry face criminal sanctions – including prison time of up to four years for members of their staff –  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 European law concocted by the European Commission and supported on Tuesday by a committee of the European Parliament.

Sworn enemies united in outcry

The controversial draft law has sparked an outcry, uniting sworn enemies within the IT industry, ranging from free and open source software advocates the FFII (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure) at one end, to a lobbyist for the biggest software companies in the world, the Business Software Alliance (BSA), at the other.

The clause in the draft law that most worries them is one that criminalises the aiding and abetting, or incitement to infringe an intellectual property such as a copyright protected piece of music, software or film.

Another major concern across the board is the inclusion of utility models, which are 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 on 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 this draft becomes law “it will hamper software designers’ freedom to act in the market.”

‘Criminalising innovation’

“In a sense it criminalises innovation,” he said.

“The aiding and abetting clause is serious. It could sweep within its scope all kinds of online products and services,” said Thomas Vinje, a partner in the Brussels office of law firm Clifford Chance.

“It is very sensible of the Parliament to exclude patents from the scope of this directive but why then include utility models? It doesn’t make sense,” Vinje added.

Hardware manufacturers also fear being swept up into high stakes criminal proceedings. Mobile phone maker Nokia has spoken out against the proposal in the past. It wasn’t immediately reachable Tuesday for comment after the European Parliament committee vote.

Microsoft was approached for comment but was unable to respond in time for publication of this article.

Google, owner of YouTube, declined to comment.