Its rather worrying in one respect that ensuring a standard set of laws across the EU is likely to work against the consumer and in favour of certain corrupt businesses.
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/12/08/user_rights_in_eu_co.htmlA new report from the Open Society Institute makes a number of recommendations for the future of European copyright law, aimed at making sure that user's rights are harmonized across the continent.
Right now, every nation in the Union has to set out the same minimum rights for copyright holders, but the rights they give to the public can vary from country to country. So a legal parody in one country might be a criminal infringement across the border.
Most interesting is the report's work on DRM. Under Europe's copyright directive, every EU nation has to pass laws that stop people from breaking DRM, but it also requires the states to hold DRM vendors to account when their crippleware infringes on legitimate consumer rights.
Get the report from here
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/uploads/1112/EUCD_Best_Practice_Guide_December_2006.pdfAt the moment its possible, using the differences in international law to ensure a basic set of freedoms of expression and access to tools to ensure those freedoms continue, implementing a EU wide set of values is likely to further dampen research and kill competition between member states, in effect a good idea would be turned around and made simpler for its opponenets to hijack.
