69 Romanian copyright enforcement: level 2

If you’ve read my previous post on the subject of copyright enforcement in Romania, you’re familiar with the issue. In the end of that post I was expressing what I considered to be sane ways to tackle the problem, and concern regarding the debute of the copyright enforcement operations in Romania.

It’s been more than a month and the government has had time to come up with a revised strategy. It’s time to see what it is.

These days (11-12th of July), Romania hosts the “Eastern Europe and Central Asia Regional Congress on Combating Counterfeiting and Piracy” at Bucharest. High Romanian officials are attending, including the Minister of Justice, the Prime Minister and the President of Romania.

You can examine the subject of the congress or the agenda (PDF) yourself. Bucharest Business Week has an article outlining key declarations offered by various attendants.

So far, so good. Indeed, the issue of counterfeit merchendise is an ongoing problem in Romania, as well as other poor countries. Citizens are unwilling to make any kind of distinction between a brand item and a fake one, other than price. A paramount strategy in countering this is awareness raising, which is indeed mentioned several times in both the agenda and the congress outline, as well as increased cooperation between law enforcement agencies across borders.

Here’s where the unsettling part comes in, in the form of an article in Romanian newspaper Gardianul, entitled Operation Gramophone is extending rapidly to international level. Granted, piracy of intellectual production is also the target of the Congress’ works. A relation between the operation and the Congress is natural.

But not in the way the Gardianul article makes it look. Their take on the subject is quite upside-down: the “Gramophone” operation seems to take the central stage, and is said to be “taken to international level”, as if the Congress was centered around the topics of concern for this operation.

That is quite the mistification. Operation “Gramophone” has proved itself as a very disturbing and clumsy action so far. It attacked much more file-sharers than actual pirates and it’s long term use and outcome is still a matter of debate. Saying that ordinary people who share digital copies among themselves is the same as organized networks who make money on the black market from counterfeit products is a severly unsettling idea.

If anything, this Congress may have helped the Romanian authorities realise that an awareness-raising program is very much needed, against both counterfeiting and copyright infringement. Coming down hard on people who don’t even understand what’s going on is not going to accomplish much in any way. Operation “Gramophone” should have a second level, a national program explaining to people why copyright infrigement is bad.

It should ideally lead to a common ground, not impose things blindly. Laws are ultimately the expression of the society’s desires. If most of the society wants to do file-sharing perhaps it’s time to rethink the appropriate laws.

Let’s hope that the Guardianul article is just a misguided attempt at journalism and not a real tendency. I’ll be back with updates.