Filtering the Internet – new request of music and film industry

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

Concern has been raised by a memo sent to European policy-makers by the
International Federation of Phonographic Industries asking European ISPs to
filter the content transferred by their networks. The music and film
industry continues to pressure from the EU regulators for control on the
Internet, through ISPs.

The issue raises even more concern as some European politicians seem
comfortable to consumer’s communications being interfered with and
controlled by ISPs on behalf of rightholders. In November 2007, the
European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE)
handed to the Parliament a report amending a previous Culture and Education
Committee report, calling ISPs “to apply filtering measures to prevent
copyright infringements” with the purpose to “rethink the critical issue of
intellectual property”.

Following this ITRE report, the EDRi-member Electronic Frontier Foundation
(EFF) Europe has sent a letter to the members of the Culture and Education
Committee, showing how damaging Internet filtering would be from several
points of view.

EFF points out that filtering by ISPs is inefficient, doing very little to
address the rightsholders’ concerns while affecting artists, researcher or
teachers, as filtering devices would be unable to evaluate the exceptions or
limitations of the copyright that these categories benefit of.

Internet content filtering will bring significant damages to the citizens’
individual rights “in their roles as consumers, artists and educators” as
well as additional costs for network reconfigurations that will be borne by
ISPs and therefore passed on to their consumers.

EFF believes that:” Any country that has a centralized system in place to
pry into all its citizen’s private communications, and then pre-emptively
sever those which it deems “unsuitable”, creates both a very disturbing
precedent, and a dangerously powerful tool vulnerable to misuse.”

The vote on the final document will take place on the 21 January 2008 in the
Culture and Education Committee.

Music Industry Pressures EU Politicians for Filtered Internet (7.12.2007)
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/12/music-industry-europe-filter-pressure

EFF Europe letter to the Culture and Education Committee
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/effeurope/CULT-filtering-letter.pdf

ISPs – Technical options for addressing online copyright infringement
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/effeurope/ifpi_filtering_memo.pdf

Network Filtering: Limiting Cultural Industries, Damaging the Internet
(12.12.2007)
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/effeurope/NetworkFiltering.pdf

Draft report on cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy –
Committee on Culture and Education (18.09.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/file.jsp?id=5498632

Draft Opinion of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy for the
Committee on Culture and Education on Cultural industries in Europe
(20.09.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/pa/685/685557/685557en.pdf

Amendements to the opinion – ITRE Committee (31.10.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/am/692/692488/692488en.pdf

Draft report – Guy Bono – Cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon
Strategy (26.11.2007)
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/registre/recherche/NoticeDetaillee.cfm?docid=254872&doclang=EN