Europe Criminalizes Piracy in Heated Vote

A divided EU Parliament passed stiff anti-piracy legislation on Wednesday, marking the first time the body has moved to enact criminal penalties. It still must be approved by individual countries before becoming the law of the land(s).

The Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive 2, or IPRED2, could send intellectual property violators to the clink for up to four years. How will all this affect your ability to download F*** Off, I'm a Hairy Woman? While downloaders should be safe from prosecution--at least for now--anybody with a trunk full of fake Viagra or bootleg Phil Collins CDs could now be looking at fines up to $400,000 and even jail time.

And yet the mere act of creating a common criminal penalty across the EU's 27 member states, regardless of what's at issue, has raised hackles. As the Herald Tribune reports:

But the legislation has spurred angry resistance in some member states because criminal law has long been the exclusive domain of individual countries. Some EU members, like Britain and the Netherlands, believe the proposal strikes at the core of a countries' sovereignty and ought to remain under the authority of national governments.

Such has been the opposition to sacrificing national jurisdiction over crime-fighting that Franco Frattini, the EU's justice commissioner, has been unable to get EU countries to agree to drop their vetoes over judicial policy, even in the fight against terrorism.

In the case of the piracy legislation, the commission has overcome national vetoes by making use of powers conferred to it in a landmark European Court of Justice ruling in September 2005 that allows the executive body to propose harmonized penal sanctions if it deems them to be in the public interests.

What's more, the measure still faces stiff opposition from multiple fronts. Not only are groups like the Green Party and the EFF also concerned over IPRED2 even music industry trade groups like the IFPI are against it as it could let some infringers skate.