[Fsfe-ie] european constitution and IP

[Teresa Hackett]

This came up briefly last year at the FIPR/EDRi meeting on the 
Commission copyright consultation. It would conceivably be countered by 
other human rights type provisions, such as freedom of access to 
information. But it's very unsatisfactory. I'll see if EDRi have looked 
further into this.

> Scanning through the document and coming across this stuff I'm really 
> shocked at the how much it essentialy locks down as the fundamentals 
> of European law. As you say, laws that lessen "intellectual property" 
> "rights" could be deemed unconstitutional. In a broader scope, it ties 
> Europe to a neo-liberal market approach in, for example, privatized 
> services. This could mean that in a few years time if one of the 
> member goverments decided that, no, privatizing the water, health care 
> and education services wasn't such a good idea after all, their 
> actions could be deemed unconstitutional!
>
This essentially occurs anyway under WTO agreements. Committments made 
under GATS are irreversible, permanant lock-in is a problem and there is 
almost no transparancy. But that's for another day and another list ;-)

Teresa