James Delahunty
31 Jan 2007 11:02
The European Parliament's committee for legal affairs met yesterday to vote on proposals for criminal penalties in relation to Intellectual Property (IP) rights. Among the possible violations is the illegal downloading of tracks of music. There is definitely a lot of division among MEPs over the legislation, with many amendments being tabled to limit or increase the level of penalties for infringements.
Some MEPs want patents to be left out of the directive completely, saying that EU member states already have sufficient legislation to cover that problem. Some say that it should only cover copyright and trademark violations. Liberal MEPs have called for personal use copies to be completely excluded.
However, some MEPs, like Dutch MEP Toine Manders want so called "fair use" copies to be included in the directive and also up to illegal music downloading.
Source:
The Register