Coordinated enforcement of intellectual property (IP) rights—copyright, patents and trade marks—has been an elusive goal for Europe. […]
Undeterred, the European Commission is trying once again. This time, it is trying to avoid a similarly humiliating defeat in Parliament by focusing on non-legislative strategies. […]
The most significant item of the Commission’s 10 point action plan is the proposal to conclude “Memoranda of Understanding to address the profits of commercial scale IP infringements in the online environment, following Stakeholder Dialogues involving advertising service providers, payment services and shippers.” For example, such Memoranda of Understanding might commit payment intermediaries or advertisers to undertake that they will not accept payments or run advertisements for a site accused of hosting infringing material, thereby depriving those sites of revenue. […]
This does not paint a positive picture of the future of copyright in Europe. A single-minded focus on enforcement, even when limited to supposedly commercial scale infringements, will do little to foster innovation and creativity, and may indeed achieve the opposite effect. Rather than simply pandering to the IP enforcement lobby, Europe needs to start thinking outside the box—something that its talented fan artists, writers and remixers have been doing for years, in the shadow of an outdated copyright regime.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/europe-serious-about-reforming-copyright