The IFPI has been hard at work in its attempts to lobby members of the European Parliament to introduce legislation which would force ISPs to take extreme measures to fight piracy. They suggested that ISPs should start to filter infringing content, block access to websites such as The Pirate Bay, and block filesharing protocols, no matter what they’re being used for.
In addition the IFPI was also looking for an extension of copyright, supposedly to help artists whose works will fall into the public domain in their lifetime, which is great for the artist but bad for culture. The extension was said to try and bring Europe closer to the protections available in the United States.
According to Danny OBrien at the EFF, the extensions wouldn’t make any sense: “..five Nobel-prize winning economists concluded that “copyright term extension is unjustified both as a protection to current artists (who rarely earn much from far future extensions), or as an economic positive for society as a whole. Yet the music industry, fearful of losing tight control of its own back catalog, still continues to advocate for more copyright, no matter the cost.”
Now, in what will be a huge blow to the IFPI, Danny O’Brien says that the proposals have been defeated.
He says: “Just got word from the European Parliament all three of the filtering/copyright extension amendments were defeated or withdrawn in the committee vote. We’re still waiting on the official record, but if that’s true, it’s an amazing victory — one was originally proposed by the original author of the report, Guy Bono himself, one was voted in by the powerful industry committee, and one was drafted by an EPP-ED member, the largest bloc in the parliament.”
In December we reported that the IFPI had already convinced several European politicians to support the proposals. However, The Committee on Culture and Education from the European parliament made a wise decision not to turn the proposed amendments into European policy.
