Growing resistance to excessive German copyright reform
As heise.de reports (German), the parliamentary group of the German Social Democrats is getting queasy about the draft copyright reform. The government recently agreed on a draft.
The concerns voiced by centre-left MPs are not for the faint of heart. They recommend that the copying of works for private purposes should remain exempt from punishment.
They are also toying with the idea that the protection of rights-holders might actually come with obligations, such as enabling the "technology-neutral" use of "content" (presumably referring to having online music work in other players than just iTunes).
While this has the conservative Christian Democrats and the rights-holders lobbies going up the wall, some of the most inane provisions remain in place: Namely, the law is going to severly restrict what libraries can do with the media they have bought.
Why the publisher’s guild considers it a good idea to keep readers away from books is beyond me. The heise.de article quotes a nice statistic: People who use libraries regularly buy nine books per year on average. People who don’t buy a full 1.1.
It seems that the publishers have hired the music industry’s marketing consultants.