On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 teresahackett(a)eircom.net wrote:
> The deadline for tabling amendments is on the Parliament website; your link,
> then go to deadlines.
Yes, but at least for the swpat-directive, if the report is delayed, the
deadline also moved to the Thursaday before the debate and vote. But it
may be different this time, since there is the next session on February 25/26
is only a mini-session(does not take a week, only two half days.) which
may have completely different rules.
> I've been told that even if the vote is delayed to
> March, the deadline for amendments will still be 5.2.2004, I'll let you know
> if I hear any different. As you say, the dates are a movable feast, and every
> few days I get another story ;-) We just have to keep our ears to the ground.
> Same here, but I fear we're gonna get a "worst of all".
Yes, this is what the big-company interest groups want(Of course)
Like in the swpat directive, I believe the industry will be much
stronger in the council than in the democratically elected parliament.
I think a reason for this is that the members of the council meetings
are basically civil servants of the national goverments which have been
intensively lobbied and the commission and and of course especially
the council are usually the two where the industry is most strong.
But the parliament does not represent the national goverement but
the people which elected the parliamentary groups and so the MEPs
are responsibly to their constitutients not to the local goverment.
At least the parliament should be a more democratic(demo = the people,
craty = to rule - the rule of the people) than the council and the
commission.
I think this is also what we see with the criminal penalties in Art 20,
the commission and council have them, while in the parliament there
was at least the amendment of JURI to leave it open.
> The criminal provisions were part of the original
> Commission proposal, but the directive was aimed at "counterfeiting and
> piracy" and the scope was limited to large scale commercial infringments or
> which caused significant harm to the rightholder. The Parliament has widened
> the scope to include *all* infringements, however trivial, unintentional,
> unknowing and which cause no harm to the rightholder. So big deal that they
> replaced criminal with civil sanctions ;-) The problem is that the Council
> have taken the Parliament amendment to widen the scope but have kept the
> Commission criminal provisions text.
I guess this was a deal of Fourtou(the wife of the Boss of Vivendi, one of
the four big media companies) to get the wide scope into the report while
still having the possibility to leave the criminal sactions in...
> This is totally the worst of both worlds, and not in line with the original
> objective of the proposal. If the Council maintain their Art 20, and the
> Parliment theirs, then there's a conflict and that might delay things into
> the next term.
Yes, I would like to ask the parliament to approve more amendments - I don't
know what the council says of it but for me it sounds also important to get
the clause to prevent monopoly lock-in by "technical devices" approved:
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Amendment 46
Article 21, paragraph 3 a (new)
3a. Where technical devices have the purpose or effect of restricting or
eliminating legal competition, they shall not enjoy the protection laid down in
this Article. If the use of technical devices by third parties is necessary in
order to maintain legal competition, such use shall then not be deemed illegal.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think this essential to allow free compeition for printer cartidges,
third-party replacement components for cars the right to provide competing
products which also deal with DRM-ed documents(I guess...)
(so that restriced pdf files could be read by a pdf reader from a competition
for example)
But I'm not a lawer, so I cannot judge but I think it should definitely help,
maybe it's already accepted by the council, I don't care so much anyway, what
I would like to have would be some very essential voting recommenations on
the amendments in the official report for a start and see what happens then.
Andreas Dietl told me he had some notes on the amendments but he made them
only for personal use, so I don't know if I can get them. Maybe other groups
would do such list...
If there are other amendments like JURI-43 (a short form for the amendment
no. 43 from the JURI report(which deletes the criminal provisions from Art20))
and JURI-46 with comments like above, I would certainly be interested.
Bernhard