“Let’s Build Better Copyright Laws” Says La Quadrature Du Net

July 9, 2012 by
Filed under: Announcements & Events, Legal P2P News & Issues 

Soon after ACTA was denied in the European Parliament, La Quadrature Du Net is implying that this is a great opportunity to build new and more viable copyright laws.

Last week ACTA was voted against in the European Parliament with 478 votes against and 39 in favor, thus putting an end to the act that could have ignored your online privacy rights.

Now, after this great victory, a press release by La Quadrature Du Net  is talking about how favorable this event is to start constructing better copyright laws:

The European Parliament rejected ACTA1 by a huge majority, killing it for good. This is a major victory for the multitude of connected citizens and organizations who worked hard for years, but also a great hope on a global scale for a better democracy. On the ruins of ACTA we must now build a positive copyright reform2, taking into account our rights instead of attacking them. The ACTA victory must resonate as a wake up call for lawmakers: Fundamental freedoms as well as the free and open Internet must prevail over private interests.

Citizens from the Internet and all around the world have won! By 478 to 0393 during the final vote, Members of the EU Parliament killed ACTA once and for all. Together –connected through a decentralized communication architecture– we defeated this evil treaty negotiated in secret by a club of private interests and dogmatic civil servants. The ACTA battle demonstrates how crucial our networked public sphere is to the future of our societies and democracies.

La Quadrature du Net declared: “European institutions must now recognize that the alliance between citizens, civil society organizations and the EU Parliament is at the core of a new democratic era in Europe. European copyright policy must now be built with the participation of citizens.”

La Quadrature du Net warmly thanks and deeply congratulates every citizen, organization, cluster and network who collectively achieved this major victory! Let’s all celebrate and learn from this success, so as to be even stronger for the next battles!

“Beyond ACTA, we must stop this repressive trend which keeps imposing measures that harm the Internet and fundamental freedoms. Citizens must demand a reform of copyright which will foster online cultural practices such as sharing and remixing, instead of endlessly repressing them. The ACTA victory must be the beginning of a new era, in which policy-makers put freedoms and the open Internet –our common good– ahead of private interests.” concluded Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson for the citizen advocacy group.”

Along with the post a PDF file was attached containing some proposals. Here are just some of them:

- Repeal liberty-killer repressive schemes and Internet filtering
- Ban Technical Restriction Measures
- Shorten copyright terms
- Make the existing exceptions to copyright mandatory EU-wide
- Create new exceptions for not-for-profit sharing and re-use of cultural works
- Give room to the development of new funding models

Like we’ve said in a previous article, although ACTA’s demise can be considered a great victory, it doesn’t mean that supporters of harsher copyright laws will stop from doing what they do best. New legislations are to be proposed under different names, but with the same purpose. Such a law is already boycotted and its name is CISPA, a legislation that seems to be worse than SOPA.

Point is that in order to really change something in the copyright arena, we need to act fast!

(source Zeropaid)

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