Commission to revise rules on rivals' agreements The European Commission will revise its rules on agreements between competitors to help companies to agree on technical standards, it has said. The move is designed to help encourage cross-border trade in digital goods and services. Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia said that an EU digital single market could only …
I agree that we need a single European market for intellectual property. But why is it that they mention CDs specifically and not videos?
Censorsh^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HFilm classification.
Getting IP laws updated to prevent restriction of trade would be childsplay. There'd be a minor scuffle with the national music royalty collection agencies, but it's hard to argue that they have any rights to border restrictions than any other producer or vendor.
But pushing through a directive to force videos to be sellable across Europe would require one some kind of Europe-wide film classification scheme, which is something which will really set the Daily Mail set on the rampage. Or worse, the abolition of film classification entirely. Won't somebody think of the children?!?
There's a level of nudity in Spanish family drama (Spanish classification 7 yo and above) that would cause Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells to have a cardiac arrest if it was sold in the UK as a PG.
That's where the problems lie.
... that it is perfectly legal to buy a video or DVD from a European supplier (and have them post it to you here) which would be illegal to buy in the UK if it wasn't for sale in a licenced sex shop.
Film "Classification" is, of course, as you say, merely a form of censorship, it seems that our "powers that be" simply don't trust us to look at adult content without turning into rapists or murderers etc, so anything that is "too nasty" for our delicate sensibilities should be restricted to sale in sex shops or cut entirely.
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