IPJUSTICE claimed that an intellectual property law is set to become law within a month's time and means that recording industry enforcers could raid consumers' homes and freeze bank accounts even for minor infringements.

The EU Directive for the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights will be finally debated today and tomorrow in the legal affairs committee.

According to Robin Gross, attorney and Executive Director of IP Justice, the law is being rushed through its final stages and includes enforcement rules that will be used against consumers for both non-commercial and accidental infringements.

She said: "For example, recording industry executives will be able to raid and ransack the homes of P2P file-sharers and freeze an alleged infringer's bank account without any hearing under the directive's Anton Pillar Orders and Mareva Injunctions".

Complete Story at the Inquirer.

Looks like the SS and Gestapo are back in business, boys and girls. Scary. And insane.

To our music and culture loving freinds across the water...

TAKE TO THE STREETS NOW!

Shmoo

I can easily see europeans rush to the streets the first time it happens

Is this for real???
I wonder if the US will be next?

It's very real.

In the RIAA's wet dream Gottagetsome

they could never do it here unless they suspend the constitution and no one would let that happen

What if individual european states refuse to enforce it?

Actually, this has already begun here in the States. Remember a while back when a music store got "raided" and the store owner had his remixes confiscated? I can't recall exactly when that was, but it wasn't too terribly long ago. The guy also worked as a DJ, I think, and had the discs compiled for dances and stuff. Any help here on specifics?

http://www.grayzone.com/march2003busts.htm

this is an interesting site to visit

This will do nothing but incite public outrage. When you start messing with ppl's homes and money, watch out!

Yeah, and Kazaa got raided.

We've known for a long time that the RIAA wanted the powers of the FBI. The infiltration of the Department of Justice is just beginning. The consumers of the world must band together and use their purchasing power to prevent this tyranny. That is the only ultimate solution, difficult as it is.

:-:~ Phantom

If they try and pull any shit on me, they're gonna feel the working end of my baseball bat - the whole lot of them.

I will protect my property at all costs.

DMCA IS suspension of our constitution.

God I HATE the EU!

My Family comes from the Czech Republik and they've been getting screwed over there by Germany, France, Belgium and all the other countries trying to take they're slice of europe. And now they're just getting awful, first by baning tourists from smoking 'certian substances' in Amstrdam and now by giving free reign to th music industry to walk all over peoples rights. And most of these countries are little over a decade from coming out of russian occupation. Way to screw freedom you bastards!

What next? RIAA (EU) Concentration Camps?

(Sorry for the rhetorical questions)

axxis, I totally agree. This is rediculous. People don't realize how passive we have become. You are within your rights to defend your home and your property. Unless you're harbouring al-Queda or kidnapped children in your house, you don't have to cooperate with anything that violates YOUR space. This has gotten way out of hand. I think we need to resort to agression. If you disagree, then let me ask you this. If a stranger wanted to come into your house and demand to confiscate your child, how would you react? And believe me, it IS the same thing. It is a violation of YOUR home. Period. Remember, no matter how they spin it, you are not a criminal for downloading. You do not need to be treated like one. Guy comes to my door demanding to see my shit, he's getting a shovel stuffed in his face. Period.

Surely there are armed robbers, rapists, burglers, murderers and other real criminals that actually deserve this treatment.

You know where most of this EU intellectual property crap is coming from, don't you. There are three main perpetrators...Brussels (Belgium), Holland (Amsterdam maybe), and the king of the New World Order countries,
Geneva Switzerland. Actually, for centuries, Switzerland has been trying to position itself this way....in my opinion.

It all gets shuttled through Germany, Denmark, England, and France...and yes, Italy, but these are like conduits, the real pump for all this is located in the beautiful country of Switzerland.

feh1234..you may not be far off...

Check out the full horror of the impending law......

http://www.ipjustice.org/

Cheers
www.boycott-bpi.co.uk

great link..

We need a boycott boycott-cria.ca, or at least we would if they were suing more than one out of every million people.

Also an interesting little tidbit from ipjustice.org

"The breakneck speed with which this directive has moved through the legislative process is particularly troubling. The directive's Rapporteur (also wife of Vivendi-Universal's CEO) French MEP Madame Janelly Fourtou has placed it on a "First Reading", a rarely used fast-track procedure for uncontroversial directives where there is unanimous agreement on a subject."

"Surely there are armed robbers, rapists, burglers, murderers and other real criminals that actually deserve this treatment."
Copyright infringement is way worse than any of these.
Just remember the next time you get robbed, that at least the artist is getting paid!

did you guys see this?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/music/newsid_3509000/3509401.stm
seems this is egg on the RIAA face's

Old story, Accipiter.

As for the proposed law mentioned in the article, aamendments have already been proposed to make it more consumer-friendly.

http://www.ffii.org.uk/ip_enforce/andreas2.html

Wow, the euros would allow any old joe with a hard on for intellectual property to search your house or freeze your bank account. Heck, maybe they will F your wife too in the process.

The DEA used to have no knock search warrants until they started killing innocent people. People also remember Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Wounded Knee.

Having the FBI raid your house for sharing music & other non-sensitive information is a scary thought. It wouldn't play in the USA, althought the Patriot act is close.

It must be a bitch being a european. What does the average guy do over there?

The only good that will come out of this is this: The more Big Music intervenes, the worse the RIAA looks in the eyes of the public. We need everybody to see just how dangerous these people are. More boycotting, very poor press-these guys will eventually destroy themselves.

Code, Switzerland is not part of the EU.

Code, Switzerland is not part of the EU.
Check the website:
http://europe.eu.int/abc/index_en.htm

Code, Switzerland is not part of the EU.
Check the website:
http://europe.eu.int/abc/index_en.htm

And click member states on the left.

Hmmm. Doesn't EMI top dog Alain Levy live in Switzerland?

DAAAMMMNN

thats bad...this needs to stop now.

I.I.N.M., Shania Twain, her hubby "Mutt" Lange and their family live in Switzerland. At least that's what I've heard . . .

But if this doesn't prove to most of the masses that we as a society in general (not just the U.S.) are sliding towards dictatorship, what will? (Besides the efforts of the judicial tyranny to ban any acknowledgement of God in our public discourse, as exemplified by the removal of the Ten Commandments from an Alabama courthouse last year, and other similar outrages.)

And I reiterate that five of the Supreme Court justices have openly advocated using FOREIGN precedent (most notably the New World Order / E.U.-rhymes-with-P.U. / U.N. agenda) to determine "the law" in this country. "Consumer beware," that's an understatement.

If you come in my door without me opening it, I'll shoot you in the face and put your head on a stick in my front yard.

You can quote me on that.
Maybe one day you'll see me back it up.

That, of course, doesn't go for the police (if they have a warrant).

If you're from the RIAA, and you swing open my door and try to look through my things, computer, whatever - there will be greedy blood all over the place.

Fuck these injust laws.
If you think people will stand for it, put it to the test.

In other words, if this comes to be in the US:

I hope you have a warrant, or me defending my freedom will be the last thing you ever see. And you won't be the last person to see it.

This "law" is too far.

And this is worth repeating, because this thread has nothing to do with music. If I had never heard of P2P, this thread would still be infuriating to me:

As an American, it is my duty to see to it that the government in power is abiding by the constitution. If it is not, then it is my duty to see to it that they no longer remain in power, first by voting. This isn't Iraq. Saddam doesn't have the final word. Thomas Jefferson & Co. do. Trust me on this one. Like I said - just put it to the test.

So much for getting worked up about silly lawsuits over a bunch of pirates, huh? The RIAA wants to personally invade your home without the police/warrant, etc. and only on suspicion.


"If they try and pull any shit on me, they're gonna feel the working end of my baseball bat - the whole lot of them."

That was a gentle way of putting it.

"Intellectual property law is set to become law within a month's time and means that recording industry enforcers could raid consumers' homes and freeze bank accounts..."

"Actually, this has already begun here in the States. Remember a while back when a music store got "raided"...'

"...RIAA (EU) Concentration Camps?"

"...unless they suspend the constitution"

"Kazaa got raided."

"...the RIAA wanted the powers of the FBI."

"DMCA IS suspension of our constitution."

"...the full horror of the impending law"

"TAKE TO THE STREETS NOW!"

"Is this for real???"

"...a music store got "raided"..."

"...thats bad...this needs to stop now."

"...incite public outrage"

"People don't realize how passive we have become. "

"Unless you're harbouring al-Queda..."

"Guy comes to my door demanding to see my shit, he's getting a shovel stuffed in his face. Period."


What will motivate everybody that visits this site to become proactive, even if it means that we are so busy being proactive that we never have time to visit this site and preach to the choir again?

"What next? RIAA (EU) Concentration Camps?"

It is interesting that you mention that. I was reading an article on CNN I think that talks about Ashcroft wanting to set up "workers camps" for "combatant Americans". I would not doubt it if the government already has them. Sounds like Nazi Germany to me.

I think you would be suprised what goes on under our noses.

Sorry it was a Los Angeles Times article. He includes an idea to use stamps to identify the "terrorists" and everything. Here it is:

Published on Wednesday, August 14, 2002 in the Los Angeles Times
Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision
Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.

by Jonathan Turley

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.

Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.

The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.

Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war."

In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States--two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.

Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.

Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.

We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.

For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.

Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.

Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.

His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.

In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.

More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"

Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."

Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.

Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.

Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

Sorry for all of the double posts. Here is a source of the article incase you think I might have changed it. I just typed in the article title in Google and picked the first result.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0814-05.htm

lololololol about the stamp thing. Time for bed.

My grandpa was a combat engineer he invaded Africa, Sicily and Italy. Was at the battle on Anzio. Almost had to go to Normandy. He put his life on the line for Europe. If he was still alive he be appalled at how Europe is treating its people.