Last Pirate in Brussels: Put ME in charge of yer IP treasure chest. Yarr!

Head. Sphincter. Firmly.

Reda, on rare occasion, talks sense (i.e influences on politics must be visible and traceable, mandatory lobby register and auxiliary income transparency of all members of parliament), but generally she appears to live with her head orbiting the event horizon of a dysfunctional sphincter - as is the case here.

"The ability to understand the law is central to its acceptance and legitimacy", says Reda. Pfft. Head. Sphincter. Firmly, imo.

Having read the eval report, it's comes across as being just another harmonisation and 'single europe' piece, but with the added bonus of a degree of 'freetardness'. But then what else would we expect from a freetard who believes that the Merkel’s and Cameron's should have no say in how the EU develops (or fails).

It's fools like Reda that give lefties a bad name.

centralising member states' laws from the top down

"a single copyright law to rule them all"

"Member states would lose much of their autonomy,"

"It would take 30 or 40 years to negotiate and would look something like a Franco-German compromise."

Which is precisely why the EU is, and always will be, a fiasco based on bodge, deception and ambiguity. Despite all the high-falutin' words about union, every member wants things to be done their way.

Far better to just accept that, agree to disagree on most things, and get back to making business work instead of posturing about the benefits of unity.

So there are lots of quotations from people who use language like STEAL (note scare caps), so let's go to her report and see what she actually said. Since I didn't see any actual quotations from the original document in the scare story, or any quotations from people who don't agree with studio executives and mega-corps, let's see whether we, on balance, agree or disagree with what she has said. She helpfully numbered her points.

I recommend having a pdf of her report open at this point!

5. is interesting, and could cause a few problems if all documents in the legal or political process are copyright free, but as a general idea it seems reasonable enough. The text of laws shouldn't be copyrighted so you cannot access them without permission, for example, and that should be written somewhere.

6 and 7 are an attempt to stop Cliff Richard and Disney doing another mass land grab of public property, namely removing public works from the public domain. As they are public property, I think this is an entirely reasonable statement. I would say that copyright cannot be retroactively lengthened ever, in fact: if Cliff performed his songs expecting a certain length of copyright, why should he get all uppity now it's coming to an end?

9. is another one that is difficult to disagree with the principle.

Many more are to do with harmonization. Nobody in the EU superstate can really moan about this, since that's, you know, the entire point of the EU. Saying a single economic market is silly because it will take a while is a stupid argument: it will always take a while so will never be done. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Unless, that is, we don't believe in harmonization and ever closer union, and if we don't, then some fundamental parts of the EU Charter need to be changed.

15, for example, if just a tweak to the law clearly stating that hyperlinking is not copyright theft.

17. is one that exists in the US, but doesn't in France, and is mentioned in the article. It's not so clear how to strike a balance between the author's ownership and the public's right to mock. Remember all those send ups of Tory campaigns that would be illegal under a French interpretation against caricature?

18. is clearly a response to the recent Ryanair case. Data mining on things you are legally allowed to view is a very difficult question. All data mining is is reading something very carefully with a computer. It's going to be difficult to try to walk a line between "reading" and "mining", especially as we move towards a future where AI exists. We should definitely be thinking about what to do about computer programs reading something: is automatic translation even legal, or is that data mining?

19. is indefensible. A broad exemption for education is bad enough, but informal education is far too broad a term for this to be reasonable. There are educational exemptions currently, but strengthening of these (for example, universities can photocopy stuff, but some might not be able to store the same thing on a hard drive) to eliminate edge case loopholes is the right thing to do, not just say "education gets a free pass".

20. is a response to publishers being fuckwits about digital books, with ideas like an expiry date on a digital book that makes it crumble to pieces after a certain number of reads. These companies need to sort themselves out, and realize that if they pull that sort of stunt, some pissed off legislator will react at some point.

21. is for things like removing levies on a memory stick because someone somewhere steals music. It's rather like a tax on knives to go to a stabbing victim fund, that only pays out to the bosses of victims. Seriously, it was stupid to begin with, it's stupid now.

23. is saying that you cannot block me doing stuff I'm legally allowed to do. It's another attempt to stop companies pulling free content into the chargeable domain through techological blocks. Not sure how that would work in practice.

24. is the anti-DMCA. You should be legally allowed to break any code publishers put on stuff you own, unless the company tells you how it is secured, which is kind of against the point. There's somewhere that the right answer is on this scale, and the DMCA isn't it. It should not be illegal to ever break encryption if you are allowed to read the unencrypted file.

There are some silly things in here, but some good things. For someone who is allegedly rabidly anti-copyright, these proposals are pretty tame. If I saw a laundry list of what Disney wanted for copyright, I think I'd be much more unhappy. Something like

1. Life imprisonment for anyone who downloads anything we have decided they shouldn't.

etc.

"Pirate Party"

I think the "i" and "e" are redundant.

Can't think straight?

"Because almost anything is used in education, trying to establish a broad exception for education purposes is saying to authors that you will lose your ability to be rewarded."

This is a logical fallacy. The proposition "almost anything is used in education" does not imply that "almost nothing is used outside of education". This Richard Mollett requires more education.