The European parliament has postponed a vote on a
controversial law on intellectual property enforcement until early
next week following drawn-out negotiations with the European
Commission and member state governments.
The parliament's legal affairs committee is to discuss the
proposal with the Irish government, which holds the presidency of
the European Union, and with the EU's executive body, the European
Commission, on Monday in an attempt to reach an agreement that can
be rubber stamped at next month's vote by the European
Parliament.
The commission is resisting signing up to an agreement that
would stretch the reach of the law to all infringements of
intellectual property such as patents, copyright and trademarks,
according to people close to the commission.
In its original proposal, the EU executive body limited the
tough criminal sanctions only to infringements made for commercial
purposes, tailoring the law to fight counterfeiting and piracy.
When it unveiled its proposal at the beginning of 2003, the
record industry and Hollywood movie studios slammed it as
insufficient. The record industry in particular wants the law to
apply to private infringements, such as those committed by
peer-to-peer exchanges of music files.
These rights holders joined forces with others such as software
producers, who also lose out from counterfeiting, and they lobbied
the European parliament intensively to get the proposed law
toughened up.
Their efforts were rewarded by the parliament's legal affairs
committee, under the supervision of Janelly Fourtou in late 2003,
when it adopted amendments to the text that struck out the words
"for commercial purposes".
The Irish presidency is expected to support the parliament's
plans to stretch the reach of the law. However, it is unlikely to
agree to permit criminal sanctions. Ireland, as well as many other
countries in the EU, prefers to leave the choice of sanctions up to
member state governments, and wants the reference to criminal
punishment scrapped from the text.
"There is a feeling that this isn't the right place to introduce
criminal sanctions," said one EU diplomat.
The commission may try to block the law if it cannot be won over
at Monday's closed-door meeting. Under EU procedures, the
commission can insist that all 15 EU member states must vote
unanimously to pass the law once the parliament has voted in
support of the proposal.
Normally it requires only a two-thirds majority of member states
in order to pass a union-wide law.
Paul Meller writes for IDG News
Service