It looks like the French government, having failed to impose an awful record-industry inspired snooping act at home, is trying to policy-launder it through the European Union….

http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecom-Package_Compromise-Amendments_ITRE-IMCO_7th-July

IANAL, but this does not seem so terrible.

To my poor understanding of law and English it seems that the amendments say:
– attempts to block copyright infringement should not disturb legitimate traffic
– DRM devices should not be mandatory
– existing DRM devices/software should not interfere with somebody’s personal data or misuse that personal data
– member states that are not pleased with these arrangements can inform the Commision, according to certain procedure, about their issues

I read as carefully as I could the articles and the amendments, and I could not find phrases that would mandate or make easier anything that is illegal right now (i.e.: ISP spying on their clients — http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7486743.stm ). Instead, the incriminated texts define limits that would make, for example, indiscriminate blocking or slowing of bittorent trafic illegal, and efficient supervision or filtering very difficult and expensive.

I see http://www.ffii.org/ are silent, for now, or at least don’t deal with this supposed emergency on pages that are easy to find. Considering the professional way they behaved during the swpat crisis, I’d get worried if they get worried first.

now I’ll crawl back to my neo-con dungeon.

In other words, they both have serious form as anti digital rights and pro big business being able to fuck people around.

I wonder if either of them are in the pay of RIAA or MPAA member companies? Would it be possible to find out?

http://www.laquadrature.net is extremely confusing; it’s probably useful for somebody that followed the issue from the beginning …

It would be nice to have a summary of the problem:

– what exactly was voted on April 10th ? a link on official EU site would be great: there is a guy I voted for in our EP elections on the list of members of IMCO committee that supposedly were against and I might write to thank him (I understand he voted against the “three strike” approach to fighting “IP piracy”).

– “Their further impose filters and spyware to internet users” – in the summary from http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/AnalyseCompromisVersionDiteFinale
but there is no mention of “spyware” in the detailed analysis from the same page.

I might be way off, and completely missed the point, but:
the detailed analysis sais this:
‘Recital 12c (compromise amendment 4) describes the so-called “preventive” phase of the “graduated response”.’
while the document from here (http://www.laquadrature.net/files/amendements-compromis_ITRE-IMCO_7juil/) only talks about how the service providers should inform the users about “copyright infringement, other unlawful uses and dissemination of harmful content, and advice and means of protection against risks to personal security” …

“Article 22(3) (compromise amendment 5) plans for the standards of surveillance and filtering to be defined by National regulatory authorities under control from the European Commission. The procedure defined in this article does not meet standards of democratic control.” — while in the document linked in the “Examined amendments” ( 080702 Art 22(3) CA 5.doc ) there is no mention of filtering or surveillance …

It’s like this: either I don’t understand Legalese, or the site it completely mixed up …