A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about an extremely important case that was being considered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s top court. The central question was wheth…

The key problem is that copyright infringement by a private individual is regarded by the court as something so serious that it negates the right to privacy. It’s a sign of the twisted values that copyright has succeeded on imposing on many legal systems. It equates the mere copying of a digital file with serious crimes that merit a prison sentence, an evident absurdity.

This is a good example of how copyright’s continuing obsession with ownership and control of digital material is warping the entire legal system in the EU. What was supposed to be simply a fair way of rewarding creators has resulted in a monstrous system of routine government surveillance carried out on hundreds of millions of innocent people just in case they copy a digital file.

  • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    96·
    13 days ago

    If copyright is sacrosanct then the creation of data by me is my own personal property and without a contract anyone holding my data is in violation.

    • crank0271@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      13 days ago

      Afraid to upvote this in case someone later attempts to prove I viewed this data with my eyes

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      13 days ago

      Every single person in the EU needs to sue on these grounds.

      Also fuck this corporatist statist bullshit. Why the fuck do people keep voting in authoritarians?

      • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
        42·
        13 days ago

        Cause for making an authoritarian change it’s sufficient to vote once, to revert it is voting in the situation created by it. It’s a logical OR in their favor.

        And it makes perfect sense that a big centralized state and putting rule of law above pride cause this.

        It’s like the “computer that you can’t throw out of the window” quote. A government you can’t change via riots is a bad government. A republic is about rule of people, not of stamped toiled paper with rules on it. The good French rioting tradition is also from this.

        Rule of law should never be put above common sense and pride.

        In a couple of decades the 2A crowd in the USA will become better understood by Americans and Europeans, I think.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      I can relate to the sentiment, but that just makes it worse. How do you enforce ownership of data?

      There’s only 1 thing for it: More internet surveillance.

    • PlexSheep@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      13 days ago

      The gdpr allows processing of personal data under a few circumstances and contracts are only one of them.