EU debate to take up P-to-P filesharing

The European NetAlliance, which includes BT, Deutsche Telekom AG, Vodafone Group PLC, MCI (WorldCom Inc.), Verizon Communications Inc. and Yahoo Inc., have warned of the risks that a widening of the directive would pose. "It must be ensured that consumers are not placed on the same level as parties that violate copyright for commercial gain or as members of organized crime," the trade group wrote.

Similar words of warning were voiced by legal experts, who expressed concern that EU lawmakers have gone to far in their efforts to protect copyright holders by pushing for a law that goes beyond piracy and counterfeiting. William Cornish, a professor at the University of Cambridge in England, and Josef Drexl, Reto Hilty and Annette Kur from the Max Planck Institute in Germany wrote in an article published in the European Intellectual Property Review: "Haste and political pressure from interest groups do not make for good counsel when it comes to regulating complex and sensitive fields like that of sanctions and procedural measures for IP (intellectual property) protection.''

Consumer groups have also weighed in. "We are worried that the current European Parliament text would allow consumers to be prosecuted, judged and condemned as harshly as a person making and selling millions of copies of CDs, BEUC (Bureau Européen des Unions de Consommateurs) said. "We do not see why a consumer downloading music from the Internet to make a private copy for personal and noncommercial use should be prosecuted at all."

National governments are also unhappy about criminalizing file sharers. One EU diplomat said the Council of National Government Ministers may agree to stretch the directive to cover file sharers, but only if criminal sanctions against P-to-P exchanges of content such as music and movies are dropped.

The Council, Parliament and the Commission have held four meetings this year to try to reach a swift conclusion to the debate. All three institutions want the directive agreed to at first reading in the Parliament before March when the parliamentarians leave Brussels to campaign for re-election.

The EU diplomat admitted that efforts to push the directive through before the recess could be "overly hasty." He criticized the Commission for not doing its homework before proposing the directive a year ago. "A little more consultation would have been useful," he said.

The Parliament hopes to put the proposed directive to a vote toward the end of February. However, the topic has already been added and removed from the plenary agenda several times. Many critics of the bill say it would be sensible to delay it again.