EFF Europe have published on their copycrime.eu websiteDocument No. 9446/07 of the Council of the European Union titled "Amended proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights". The paper is authored by the German EU Presidency and addressed to the Working Party on Substantive Criminal Law.
The IPRED2 draft is fiercely debated. EFF, for example, objects in particular:
"[...] IPRED2's new crime of 'aiding, abetting and inciting' infringement again takes aim at innovators, including open source coders, media-sharing sites like YouTube, and ISPs that refuse to block P2P services. [...]"
Main findings on behalf of the EU Council as of February 21, 2007, had been:
Bearing in mind the principle of subsidiarity, further scrutiny is needed with regard to the need of criminal measures at EU level to protect intellectual property rights.
The Presidency [Finland] will discuss with the incoming Presidency [Germany] the possible ways of handling the substantive provisions of the instrument while awaiting the evaluation of Directive 2004/48/EC[(IPRED1)] and the ruling of the Court of Justice in case C-440/05 which would give guidance on the question of Community competence in adopting criminal law measures.
The discussions on the substantive provisions of the instrument should be based on a scope of the instrument limited to the intellectual property rights harmonised in Community legislation, in line also with the principles included in the conclusions of the informal meeting in Vienna on 13/14 January 2006.
On April 25, 2007, the European Parliament had passed a legislative resolution on the Commission proposal (P 6_TA-PROV (2007)0145), adopting the proposal subject to a large number of amendments.Now, in view of this situation, the German Presidency feels that the following items should be addressed:
Legal basis for laying down rules on criminal law (to be deferred initially in the light of the above decision of the Justice and Home Affairs Ministers);
Scope of the Directive (confined to the infringement of intellectual property rights harmonised in Community legislation, or more far-reaching);
Definition of offences (e.g.: counterfeiting, piracy);
Qualitative limitations on offences (e.g.: on a commercial scale, serious crimes);
Participation (incitement/aiding and abetting);
Whether attempt should be a criminal offence;
Penalties for natural persons;
Liability of legal persons and penalties for legal persons;
Confiscation and forfeiture; extended powers of confiscation;
Joint investigation teams and involvement of right holders;
Further amendments tabled by the European Parliament.
According to the Document, the German Presidency would like to have used the meeting of the Working Party on Substantive Criminal Law on June 04, 2007, to discuss the amendments tabled by the European Parliament. Accordingly, it plans to start with a general exchange of views and then begin to examine the European Parliament position in detail. No details seem to be known in the public so far.
This appears to me as if virtually all interesting points are still open and undecided.
EFF Europe have published on their 