Online content includes music, film, radio, television, newspapers, games, and educational and user-generated content, such as blogs. The European Commission estimates that by 2010 revenue from these services will soar to over €8 billion in the EU, from less than €2 billion in 2005.
Such exponential revenue growth is in large part due to the increased number of affordable cultural products available on websites such as iTunes (for music), Netflix (for movies) and Amazon (for books). But the largest amount of downloaded material still comes from peer-to-peer websites, on which users share content, sometimes of illegal provenance.
Where does the emerging ‘right’ of free access to knowledge end? Where does established but endangered copyright of authors and labels begin? These are the main issues of contention between the so-called cultural industries and users, and Europe is still trying to strike the right balance.
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In February, the European Commission decided to shelve all its plans to tackle online privacy. As the end of the insitutions’ current mandate approaches, Brussels wanted to keep away from a topic which had become « too controversial », according to an official close to the dossier.
The French ‘graduated’ approach
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Under the French proposals, a new authority would be set up to apply sanctions on serial offenders. Internet service providers, which are often big telecoms companies, would implement filtering measures and apply sanctions on behalf of the new authority. The industry deal is currently in the process of being transformed into French law.
Other European countries are less keen on introducing such measures, but many are considering warning messages, which would be a sort of one-step approach and would not be followed by the enforcement of sanctions against offenders.
Controlling the Internet is controversial, because it raises highly sensitive issues like censorship. It is also technically very complex and prone to mistakes. Indeed, ISPs could end up cutting the wrong connection or punishing an entire building for the alleged misdeeds of a single user. What’s more, it is not easy to decide who should implement such sanctions.
Internet providers: Turning into policemen of the Web?
Internet service providers are lobbying hard to prevent such an unappealing task from falling on their shoulders. « We don’t want to become policemen of the Net, » they have underlined in many occasions. In this battle, they could rely on the support of consumer groups, which are strongly against filtering the Web and support peer-to-peer websites.
So far, their efforts appear to have been successful, since no EU-level initiative has been introduced to mirror the French model, despite a number of attempts to introduce similar measures via various legal instruments.
MEPs, mindful of authors’ rights and favourable to the French cause, tried to introduce explicit anti-piracy amendments to a review of EU rules governing electronic communications, which has been under discussion between the Union’s institutions since November 2007. But their attempts have so far failed (EurActiv 25/09/08).
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http://www.euractiv.com/fr/societe-information/protection-droits-auteur-contenus-ligne/article-180462#links