By Lucy Sherriff for The
Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure hailed the
delay as a "strong political signal [from rapporteur Zingaretti] to
the commission to withdraw or rewrite its proposal".
FFII analyst Jonas Maebe said: "We believe that a definition of
commercial scale in terms of intent to earn a profit is
indispensable for fixing this directive." He warns that if the
commercial scale requirement of the law is weakened, ordinary
consumers could easily be criminalised.
A spokesman for the bill, Socialist MEP Nicola Zingaretti, told
us that a group of MEPs had made a request to change the definition
and "it was thought more respectful" to give all the MEPs more time
to consider the proposal.
The vote on the directive will now take place on 20 March. If it
is passed, as seems likely at this stage, it will then head to a
plenary session of the parliament some time in April or May. MEPs
can introduce further amendments at this stage, Zingaretti's
spokesman added.
© The Register
2007
