

EU Court of Justice: Censorship in Name of Copyright Violates Fundamental Rights - yogsototh
http://www.laquadrature.net/en/eu-court-of-justice-censorship-in-name-of-copyright-violates-fundamental-rights

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asmala
This is, for once, an amazingly common sense decision, striking a good balance
between IP protection, sensible business environment for the ISP, and personal
freedom.

From the official press release[1]:

 _"The Court finds that, in adopting the injunction requiring Scarlet to
install such a filtering system, the national court would not be respecting
the requirement that a fair balance be struck between the right to
intellectual property, on the one hand, and the freedom to conduct business,
the right to protection of personal data and the right to receive or impart
information, on the other."_

I understand this isn't exactly revolutionary but amidst ACTA, SOPA, bailouts,
and similar lunacy, this is a breath of fresh air and a glimmer of hope.

[1]:
[http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011...](http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011-11/cp110126en.pdf)

EDIT: Formatting.

~~~
mattmanser
I totally disagree with you.

This is an unelected body making sweeping decisions without any accountability
on a set of laws no-one voted for and a 'nation' that no-one voted for.

It may be positive for us, but in terms of democracy it highlights how
ridiculous the EU and its unaccountable mechanisms have become.

I also believe my country, the UK, is trying to wriggle itself out of the
human rights laws of the EU as they're too strong and (apparently) being
abused, so expect other countries to follow suit and this judgement to be
worthless in the long run.

After all this is in direct contradiction with explicitly passed laws in this
country. Seriously worrying that an EU judge thinks he should start making
these claims in direct contradiction to an elected body passing laws.

~~~
estel
> the UK, is trying to wriggle itself out of the human rights laws of the EU
> as they're too strong and (apparently) being abused

It's worth pointing out again that the European Convention on and European
Court of Human Rights are entirely and completely distinct from the EU and any
federalisation coming from Brussels.

Not that this decision from the European Court of Justice (which _is_ an EU
institution) has anything to do with Human Rights anyway (other than perhaps
insofar as the ECHR already stipulates the right of privacy).

~~~
mattmanser
As far as I understand it it's far more complicated than you make out:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_Fundamental_Rights_of_the_European_Union)

Also they _did_ rule that this was incompatible with the fundamental right to
privacy (final sentence, rest preserved for context):

 _the Court finds that the injunction in question would require Scarlet to
actively monitor all the data relating to each of its customers in order to
prevent any infringement of intellectual-property rights. It follows that the
injunction would impose general monitoring, something which is incompatible
with the E-Commerce Directive. Moreover, such an injunction would not respect
the applicable fundamental rights._

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marquis
>the war on culture sharing

What a powerful concept as an anti-dote to 'war on file-sharing'.

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smickie
How will if effect decisions like this:

<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15459005>

...where BT (big British isp) was told to block sites?

~~~
asmala
Judging by the Court press release[1], it would seem that the unreasonable
cost of filtering _all_ P2P traffic for copyrighted material (yes, they
actually asked for that) weighed heavily in the Belgian case. This would
likely not be much of a factor when it comes to filtering a single domain, as
mentioned in the UK case you linked to.

Still, the injunction by the EU court could well shift the balance even in
cases where blocking is more technically feasible. Fingers crossed.

[1]:
[http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011...](http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2011-11/cp110126en.pdf)

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arnoooooo
I wonder what consequences this will have on three strike laws.

~~~
tonfa
This is unrelated to 3-strike. This is more about DPI filtering.

~~~
Gmo
Well, the French 3-strikes law mandates that to ensure you won't be attacked
in court for downloading, you have to install a monitoring software on your
computer. So I think in this case, it could apply.

Of course, in such a case, the devil is in the details so maybe it does not
apply because it's not asked to the ISPs to do that.

~~~
tonfa
The French 3-strikes law does not mandate anything like that. It only says
that you should make sure your access is not used for downloading illegaly,
but does not specify how. (And no decree was published, afaik).

~~~
babebridou
Your analysis is right, but unfortunately the decree has been published last
year. The first few third-strokes were struck in the past few months.

(FR)
[http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do;?cidTexte...](http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do;?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006069414&idArticle=LEGIARTI000022402015&dateTexte=vig)

~~~
tonfa
There are still no formal definition of what securing your access means
("moyen de sécurisation").

~~~
babebridou
Ah, yeah, true. And fortunately, they are not that dumb as to hurry up and
make things worse than they already are... or are they?

Orange (major French ISP) tried to monetize a securization solution based on a
2€/month contract that would block P2P traffic from unauthorized WLAN clients
directly on the box. The solution was hacked within days (hours? not sure),
simply by grabbing plain-text IP adresses of all the users with a simple
/status http query to the webserver of the service provider, and injecting
them on random P2P networks using IPFuck (sic), de facto forcing all customers
to break the law.

Orange retired their solution from the market and decided to never again try
to take on that subject.

Right now the only official stance from HADOPI (3-strikes organization) is a
recommandation to use WPA2 instead of WEP. Still no means of securization, so
if you get caught, you're to blame for not doing something nobody knows how to
do.

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pilif
The cynic in me tells me that this is more about providing a huge competitive
advantage over countries with SOPA like laws than it is about protecting human
rights.

But as they say, one should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

What happens with a decision like this is that countries with SOPA like laws
will be where you want to be as part of the publishing industry whereas the EU
now is the place where you want to be (or at least where you want your
hardware to be) if you are a content hoster like youtube.

That's fine.

Of course this might end up with content only being available in countries
with SOPA like laws, but looking at what is available for purchase here in
Switzerland, I'd say that this is already the case.

As such, I'm really happy about this decision and I have in fact printed it
out with the intention to hang it on the office wall.

~~~
exit
> _but looking at what is available for purchase here in Switzerland_

can you explain what you mean by that for those not familiar with switzerland?

~~~
Gmo
I'm not in Switzerland but I'm a Frenchman in the Netherlands, and I believe
the situation is the same.

Basically, there is plenty of content with geographic limitations. Something
that might be less visible from the US but that can be pretty annoying once
outside.

And that's without counting missing services such as Hulu or Netflix, for the
same reasons.

~~~
radicalbyte
Yeah, I've got the same experiences in both Netherlands and the UK (I'm an
Englishman living in the Netherlands, and working for a French multinational -
just up the road in Ede).

Sure, we can use VPNs to access Hulu or BBC iPlayer, but that's an extra
expense and adds an extra layer of complexity to it.

Take, for example, my BoxeeBox: it works great for local files, but it misses
all of the cool streaming features that American users can enjoy.

