EU rejects anti-piracy pact
A controversial global anti-piracy trade agreement has been thrown out by the European Parliament following fears it would restrict internet freedom and fundamental civil rights.
The lawmakers' vote finally kills off the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which took four years to negotiate and had already been approved by all the EU's 27 member states.
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement’s (ACTA, a multinational treaty for the purpose of establishing international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement) defeat is the latest blow for global media companies seeking to combat online piracy, after the US shelved earlier this year two proposed laws designed to strengthen copyright enforcement.
Publishers and film production companies have requested strict global laws to protect their content from being illegally downloaded on the internet.
But technology companies such as Google and Facebook remain wary of evasive online copyright rules, which they fear could make them liable for links and content that they cannot easily control.
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, said the vote against ACTA was not one against the protection of intellectual property.
"The majority in the European Parliament is of the opinion that ACTA is too vague, leaving the room for abuses and raising concern about its impact on consumers' privacy and civil liberties, on innovation and the free flow of information."
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, which had referred ACTA to the European Court of Justice in February to seek its assessment on whether the treaty violated fundamental right and freedoms, said it would wait for the court's ruling before taking any action to revive the treaty.
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Is Ultraviolet What The Film Industry Needs?
The film industry itself has a hope: the hope of getting it’s consumers to buy films again, and this time in a more cost-effective way. Not producing DVDs and DVD cases: the film industry is going online and selling via cloud based services. It is all about the end users.
The film industry is arguing that cloud-based streaming will beat downloading, which takes up a lot of hard disc space and can take time. You can also stream to any device. Streaming also fixes one of the most annoying things about buying films: your purchase becoming outdated when the latest technology comes out.
Last year Ultraviolet was launched. Rick Finkelstein, chief operating officer of Universal Pictures said: “We have to make EST easier, if you can store a movie in the cloud and watch it on any device, that’s a great consumer proposition. And you don’t have to watch it in 24 or 48 hours, like you do with rental.”
Ultraviolet is a cloud based rights locker and authentication system. It also has the backing of big retailers like Best Buy, technology groups HP, Intel and Cisco and phone brands Nokia and Motorola. Apple has bowed out. Universal, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures and Fox have all jumped on-board Ultraviolet. In fact, every big studio has except Disney.
There has been some controversy about Ultraviolet: Wal-Mart announced in March an exclusive disc to digital conversion service which started on April the 16th in more than 3,500 of their stores. You can bring any DVD or Blue-ray disc and get it added to your movie collection, but it will cost you from $2 per movie to watch the movie you already paid for online.
If you own a non-HD DVD it will cost you £5 to upgrade. There has been some uproar from consumers at paying twice to watch a film. They may have a point since it costs movie studios basically nothing to store the movie in the cloud.
