EU Public Affairs Monitor - 11/08/08

80% of artists would get <€30/year from copyright extension September 08, 2008
The EU is considering a plan to extend musical copyrights for another 45 years, ostensibly to help out aging performers who are being cut off when the current 50-year terms expire. But those musicians (can someone introduce them to the concept of saving for retirement?) won't see much of the new cash, according to the UK's Open Rights Group. Most performers will make less than €30 a year, even as major labels and big stars take far more.

The Open Rights Group, a UK "grassroots technology advocacy organization," is responding to a request for comments from the UK's Intellectual Property Office. UKIPO wants to know how it should weigh in on the EU-wide proposal, and the Open Rights Group's response is clear: the proposal is a bad idea." [ArsTechnica]

Committee amends, approves "enormous gift" to Big Content September 11, 2008
"The Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, which was blasted by consumer groups and library associations this week as an "enormous gift" to the content industry, won the approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee this afternoon by a 14-4 vote. As first reported by Ars this morning, a series of amendments were added during committee mark-up, providing privacy safeguards for records seized under the law and stripping away several controversial provisions—though not the hotly contested section empowering the Justice Department to litigate civil infringement suits on behalf of IP owners.

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One significant change to the proposed legislation addressed, at least in some small measure, a concern broached by Public Knowledge and other consumer groups in a letter to the Judiciary Committee yesterday. Though the amended bill still creates expanded provisions for civil forfeiture of property implicated in an IP infringement case—potentially including servers or storage devices containing the personal data of large numbers of innocent persons—lawmakers altered the bill's language to affirmatively require a court to issue a protective order "with respect to discovery and use of any records or information that has been impounded," establishing "procedures to ensure that confidential, private, proprietary, or privileged information contained in such records is not improperly disclosed or used." They did not, however, go so far as to immunize the data of "virtual bystanders" from seizure, as the letter had requested." [ArsTechnica]

Copyright bill blasted as "enormous gift" to Big Content September 11, 2008
"The United States Congress returned to work this week, and senators appear to have copyright on the brain: A broad intellectual property enforcement bill introduced in July is slated for markup by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, and another aimed at cracking down on piracy overseas was introduced Wednesday.

As Ars reported in July, the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act of 2008, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), enacts a potpourri of measures long sought by content industries. Most significant of these is a provision allowing for the Department of Justice to bring civil suits against IP infringers, with any damages won to be turned over to content owners. It would also expand civil forfeiture powers in IP cases, create a federal copyright czar to "harmonize" IP enforcement between state and federal agencies, and establish liaisons to foreign IP "hot spots" where piracy is rampant." [ArsTechnica]