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EuroLinux Alliance For immediate Release Paris. 2001-06-05. The draft Hague Convention is to be revised from June 6th. The Hague Convention defines a set of provisions for the execution of foreign judgements in the event of international disputes. Current drafts include industrial property and intellectual property within the potential scope of the proposed Convention. If the current draft were approved, the Hague Convention would eventually allow: 1.to enforce US Internet patents in EU; 2.to enforce non-EU laws in order to censor EU Internet web sites. An EU company publishing on a server located in the EU a web service which provides Internet airplane reservation services worldwide could be sued in the US by PriceLine for infringement on patent 5,794,207. A US judge could decide that this EU company should block access to its service to US citizens unless it gets a license from PriceLine. Under the current draft of the Hague Convention, such a judgement would be enforceable in the EU. A researcher who publishes on a EU server an article on the weaknesses of encryption techniques used in the media industry (ex. CSS, SDMI, etc.) could be sued in the US for infringing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. A US judge could decide that this EU researcher should block access to its research article to all US citizens. Under the current draft of the Hague Convention, such a judgement would be enforceable in the EU. Because all known techniques to block access to a category of citizens, people, country or IP adresses can be easily circumvented through “email tunneling” (a technique which consists in encapsulating any Internet protocol into encrypted email messages), the only two ways of enforcing foreign judgements which entail blocking access to a server require either to close EU services or contents which infringe on foreign laws, thus creating the conditions for global censorship, or to prohibit encryption and deny privacy on the Internet. Members of the Hague Conference include all EU countries as well as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Republic of Korea, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Morocco, Peru, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Suriname, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States of America, Uruguay and Venezuela. Some of these countries are well known for their agressive software patent practices or their restrictive laws on free speech. In particular, EuroLinux feels very concerned by the eventual enforceability of foreign Internet & software patents in Europe. EuroLinux urges members of the Hague Conference to put on hold current plans to extend the execution of foreign judgements in the fields of industial and intellectual property until their effects on software and the Internet have been carefully assessed. ReferencesCPT's Page on the Hague
Conference on Private International Law's -
Hague Conference on Private
International Law - Intellectual Property Draft -http://www.cptech.org/ecom/jurisdiction/IPWorkgroup3.pdf EuroLinux petition for a Software Patent Free Europe - http://petition.EuroLinux.org/ PriceLine patent already in dispute - http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctg949.htm DeCSS Author Arrested - http://www.slashdot.org/articles/00/01/25/0827258.shtml Copyright Thugs - The SDMI, the RIAA and industry lawyers better
get something straight: preventing piracy doesn't mean you can punish
researchers -
French hackers break SDMI, publish results
- About EuroLinux - www.EuroLinux.orgThe EuroLinux Alliance for a Free Information Infrastructure is an open coalition of commercial companies and non-profit associations united to promote and protect a vigourous European Software Culture based on Open Standards, Open Competition, Linux and Open Source Software. Companies members or supporters of EuroLinux develop or sell software under free, semi-free and non-free licenses for operating systems such as Linux, MacOS or Windows. The EuroLinux Alliance launched on 2000-06-15 an electronic petition to protect software innovation in Europe. The EuroLinux petition has received so far massive support from more than 70.000 European citizens, 2000 corporate managers and 200 companies. The EuroLinux Alliance has co-organised in 1999, together with the French Embassy in Japan, the first Europe-Japan conference on Linux and Free Software. The EuroLinux Alliance is at the initiative of the www.freepatents.org web site to promote and protect innovation and competition in the European IT industry. Press Contacts France & Europe: Stéfane Fermigier sf@fermigier.com
+33-6 63 04 12 77 Permanent URL for this PR http://petition.EuroLinux.org/pr/pr11.html LegaleseLinux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. |
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