"A stab in the back": Europe tackles online piracy

A leading European digital rights group describes a just-adopted, non-legislative European Parliament resolution on dealing with intellectual property as "a stab in the back of citizens' freedoms."

The internal traitor envisioned here is a French MEP, Marielle Gallo, the "rapporteur" who lead the drafting of a resolution regarding piracy. The "Gallo report," as the document is known, was drafted earlier this year, passed the JURI legal affairs committee over the summer, and today came up for a full plenary vote in Parliament. Despite the best efforts of opposition groups, the resolution passed 328-245. Jérémie Zimmermann of La Quadrature du Net led the charge against the report, calling it "an illustration of the will of the entertainment industry to try to impose private copyright police and justice of the Net." And it might be. Or not. The Gallo report is a pretty vague document that calls on ISPs and others to use "additional non-legislative measures" to address copyright infringement online. Zimmermann sees this as a move to privatize copyright infringement and take cases away from the judiciary -- a gutting of the rule of law.