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(Fwd) Directive on Conditional Access Services



------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Thu, 15 Oct 1998 14:30:13
To:            ecup-list@kaapeli.fi
From:          Barbara Schleihagen <Eblida@nblc.nl>
Subject:       Directive on Conditional Access Services
Reply-to:      ecup-list@kaapeli.fi

Dear All,

The European Parliament adopted at second reading the report by MEP
Georgios Anastassopoulos (EPP, Greece) on the Directive on the legal
protection of services based on, or consisting of, conditional access.
By adopting the report, the parliament approved the Council's common
position with two amendments. The draft directive is aimed at ensuring
adequate legal protection for TV, radio and information society
services for which remuneration depends on conditional access such as
encryption or electronic locking systems. At first reading, the
parliament adopted 24 amendments, with two main goals:

1. to extent the protection to conditional access services seeking to
protect "economic value" of a service and not only to ensure
remuneration for it (amendments 2,5, 20) and 2. to extend the
definition of illicit activities to not only commercial activities
but, more generally, to any activities for direct or indirect
financial gain (amendments 9 and 23).

The Council did not incorporate these amendments into its common
position. The Commission intends to conduct a study to determine
whether or not it would be appropriate to extend legal protection to
services using conditional access for reasons other than to ensure
remuneration for them. Pending possible Commission proposals further
to the study that it has commissioned, the European Parliament only
re-introduced two amendments at second reading, specifying that Member
States must provide adequate legal protection against release on the
market of illegal devices used to circumvent measures to protect the
remuneration of a legally provided service.

The recommendation for second reading can be found at:
http://www.europarl.eu.int/
under no. A4-0325/98.

Barbara Schleihagen