The European Commission has launched a consultation on the intellectual property rights enforcement directive (IPRED).

The European Digital Rights initiative (EDRi) explains:

“Injunctions, internet blocking, blackmailing of individuals accused of unauthorised peer-to-peer filesharing — the so-called IPRED Directive has been very controversial. Now, the European Commission has launched a consultation on the Directive (…) The consultation is of great importance not only to those working on copyright or ‘intellectual property rights’ in general, but in fact crucial to anyone using the Internet.”

Indeed! EDRi has prepared a very helpful answering tool. The deadline to submit responses using this tool is 7 April. However, you can use the Commission’s tool to respond until 15 April 2016.

Here is the FFII submission. After two extensive submissions, this year’s is rather short:

“Members and supporters of the FFII, and people in our networks and in wider society are harassed by software patent trolls, and experience issues regarding sequential innovation, remixing, and access to knowledge and culture. The FFII does not keep track of ongoing cases. We would only be able to report on an arbitrary tip of the iceberg. Hence we do not comment on specific cases and limit ourselves to a systemic analysis. In our 2011 IPRED consultation submission, the FFII argued that the EU legal situation should minimize market entrance risks for innovators. [1] In the light of aforementioned issues, the FFII in 2013 argued that EU law has to be made compatible with the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Since these two consultations the situation did not improve. Hence, in this submission, we limit ourselves to referring to the attachment to our 2013 IPRED submission. [2] [1] http://people.ffii.org/~ante/ipred/FFII_IPRED2011-3.pdf [2] http://people.ffii.org/~ante/ipred/FFII-IPRED-2013-03.pdf “