Robin Gross and Ross Anderson, organisations like FIPR and FFII, and many likeminded individuals will be greatly lamenting the European Parliament passing the intellectual property enforcement directive yesterday, Tuesday, 9 March, 2004. Looks like the CODE alliance, "an international coalition of civil liberties groups and consumer rights initiatives to protect consumer rights, innovation, and competition against the proposed European Union Directive on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property", has failed.

I understand that Pat Cox, the Irish head of the parliament, has said that the issue of the appearance of a potential conflict of interest involving the driving rapporteur, Jannelly Fourtou, whose husband, Jean-Rene Fourtou, is CEO of Vivendi Universal, would be raised in the Parliament Bureau. The question was raised during the voting session by MEP Neil MacCormick of the Scotish National Party.

The Competitiveness Council will rubber stamp the directive tomorrow and then 25 EU member states will be obliged to implement it into their national laws. CODE are unlikely to give up their campaign but it will have to be fought in relation to specific implementations in 25 jurisdictions now, rather than getting important checks and balances written into the directive itself. The specifics could mean the difference between having private security firms raiding homes in the middle of the night on the basis of very little evidence or requiring such raids only to be undertaken by official law enforcement authorities in response evidence 'beyond reasonable doubt' that someone is engaging in major intellectual property infringement. Even then I don't see why the directive could not have restricted this to commercial scale operations.

Parents of tech-savvy music loving teenagers would be particularly well advised to keep an eye on this. But it will be completely meaningless to most, even if it did get within touching distance of their awareness.

The gory detail of the directive is available at IP Justice.