The European Parliament voted yes on the new controversial directive Ipred 2 which concludes that all kinds of infringement of the intellectual copyrights will be considered criminal. The directive is actually stricter than that and even criminalizes attempts of infringing on copyrights. In theory this means that basically all video sites, P2P developers and other services used to spread material around the web is criminal.

There is an exception though and that is the end-user. If this user downloads pirated material and use this only for his own entertainment, study or research he or she can not be prosecuted through the new directive. Ipred 2 has been harshly criticized from day 1 by people saying it in turn infringes on people freedom of speech and even been considered a lobby directive from the media industry.

At Nordic Hardware.

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