................................. To leave Commie, hyper to http://commie.oy.com/commie_leaving.html ................................. COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FEBRUARY 15, 2001 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY EU COMMITS TO COPYRIGHT PROTECTION; CRITICS WARN IT COULD BOOST PRICES Issue: Intellectual Property The European Parliament approved a law to allow publishers and music and film producers to employ "technical protection measures," including encryption, to prevent people from making unauthorized copies of their works and would make it illegal, in most cases, to circumvent such measures. The law is expected to be endorsed without major changes by European Union governments and formally transposed into national law over the next couple of years. "Copyright owners now have wider protection here than in the U.S.," said Enrico Boselli, the Italian Member of Parliament who shepherded the draft law. But critics warned that the law does little to pave over practical differences between individual European countries and could result in higher prices for consumer electronics in the short term. Some European countries have long imposed levies on recording equipment to compensate musicians, composers, authors and producers for losses resulting from unauthor- ized copying. Some countries, including France and Germany, are now expanding such levies to include personal computers, scanners, printers and devices used to record on compact discs. [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal (A15), AUTHOR: Brandon Mitchener] See Also: EUROPE GETS A GUIDELINE TO PROTECTING COPYRIGHTS [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Paul Meller] http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/15/business/15DIGI.html (requires registration)
