Its nice to see nothing much has changed in politics , with the politicians keeping the topic of voting to themselves rther than asking what their voters think we are likely to see some rather skewed results.
http://www.theregister.com/2007/01/30/vote_meps/The European Parliament's committee for legal affairs meets today to vote on proposals for criminal penalties to be imposed on those who infringe intellectual property (IP) rights.
The vote today will determine whether or not a person who downloads a single unlicensed track of music could be sent to jail.
The scope of the directive has been the subject of much debate, with an array of amendments being tabled to either limit or broaden the remit of the proposed legislation. The level of penalties set out has also caused division between groups of MEPs.
For example, while the proposal refers to all kinds of IP rights, some MEPs want patents specifically excluded from the directive, arguing that most European states have sufficient civil remedies for such infringements.
It is my guess that any attack on file sharing will be met with increased encryption and security to protect user online privacy from "desperate to please the Cartel" politicians and the practices of discredited organisations such as MediaSentry and BayTSP who wilfully breach EU law in their data harvesting activities.
