Battleangel

I happened to catch this rancid piece of news at Piratbyrån. There is definitely something foul afoot within the European Union. Michelle Childs reports from last week’s Creative Economy Conference

I attended the Creative economy conference last week in London. The purported purpose of the conference was to deliver policy recommendations to the European Commission on behalf of all stakeholders in the creative economy.

The Conference was under the name of the UK EU Presidency but was initiated jointly by the British Screen Advisory Council (BSAC) and the British Copyright Council (BCC). ( and sponsorship from companies like Time Warner and Microsoft) It had the support and participation of the UK Departments for Trade & Industry (DTI) and Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Directorates General Internal Market and Information Society and Media of the European Commission. WIPO officials were also in attendance.

Pretty vile stuff. Among other things it shows that some European politicians are far too deeply entangled in corporate prostitution for their own good.

The event ended with a speech from another Uk Minister: Lord Sainsbury Parliamentary Under Secretary of State – For Science and Innovation. Despite hearing the conclusions of the working groups and the split between rightholders and consumer groups and the limitations on representation he said that the breadth of participation gives the conclusions their credibility. He said that DRM was an exciting technology that promised consumers more choice and praised the music industry for their innovative business models.

But the most repugnant part was how the industry wanted to use data retention, as in the flawed anti-terror data retention proposal, to search for people infringing on their copyright and what-have-you. Didn’t take rocket science to figure out they wanted to do so. But now the cat is out of the bag.