Regardless of what you might think about the origins on The Pirate Party, there’s no denial that the movement resulted in a substantial number of votes across Europe. While it’s almost a given that the Pirate Party would have no success in U.S. (we doubt the well-lobbied legal system would refuse the registration of such political option) and many other ‘advanced’ parts of the globe – in Europe the situation is different.

The Pirate Party managed to enter European Parliament and several parliaments across Europe, and immediately begun with its campaigns to modify copyright laws. In a recent post on TorrentFreak, Rick Falkvinge, the founder of Pirate Party highlighted perhaps a key highlight in a short, not-even-decade old political initiative.

As noticed by Falkvinge, it is strange that the mainstream media failed to report that Julia Reda, representative of German Pirate Party is currently working on revising the copyright law in the European Union:

“The collateral damage to liberties has been immense, and has spilled far outside the net. In the US, people are complaining that copyright monopoly law is now unintentionally preventing them to modify items they legally own, such as cars or games consoles. They’re absolutely wrong: that was the exact intention with the most recent round of revisions to copyright monopoly law – to limit property rights and to lock people out of their own possessions. (The copyright monopoly is, and has always been, a limitation on property rights.)”

One such example of how EUCD and DMCA legislations were used was Neste Oil’s attack on Greenpeace by threatening the internet provider of Greenpeace. Then again, Europe always had different approach to copyright when it compares to the U.S. In 2005, European Commission refused to accept software patents which are at the core of many lawsuits in the U.S. and in front of the WTO.

If we forego the political boasting of the post, Falkvinge revealed that a Pirate Party member of the European and German parliament is working on the “European Union’s official evaluation of the copyright monopoly, and listing the set of necessary changes.”

What those changes might be remains unknown at this point in time, but if European Union adopts the report on April 16, 2015 (it needs a majority vote to pass), we just might see a very interesting change in dynamic in negotiations between MPAA / RIAA-led U.S. negotiators and the European Union. As a reminder, right now the members of U.S. is trying to create not just Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), but to create a single market between U.S. and the E.U.

Even if they fail in this attempt, there’s no denying that Pirate Party is creating an impact of copyright legislature. Time will tell how hard MPAA / RIAA-backed lobbyists can reply.

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Intel has lost a challenge in court today against the European Commission’s original judgement against them that found them guilty of breaching anti-trust laws and fined them $1.4 billion. This finding was originally handed down in 2009 after a long investigation and ruling process, even though the behavior happened well before 2009. In fact, Intel’s challenging of this ruling has pushed back the $1.4 billion fine nearly 5 years, which may have been part of Intel’s original strategy.

They can, however, further delay the process by taking the European Commission’s ruling and the denial of a challenge to the Court of Justice of the European Union which is the highest court in all of Europe on such matters. However, there is a possibility that the Court of Justice may not even hear their case as all previous courts have agreed with another on the gravity of the fine and the guiltiness of the party involved, Intel.

The $1.4 billion fine was based upon the EU watchdog’s calculation of 4.15 percent of Intel’s 2008 turnover, as opposed to the 10% maximum that the EU is allowed to fine. And considering the behavior that Intel participated in during those years, it shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone involved that they got fined $1.4 billion for their behavior. That year Intel posted $5.2 billion in profits on $37.5 billion in revenue, a $1.4 billion fine seems more than reasonable in terms of gravity of the deed and their overall size and profitability. In fact, Intel should be thankful it was calculated based on 2008 numbers, because if it were calculated based on 2013 revenue they would be going off $52 billion in revenue, which would make the 4.15 percent figure a whopping $2.1 billion, an increase of more than 50 percent.

Either way, there’s no doubt that based on our experiences with Intel over these past 5 years, they greatly regret their actions and are forced to behave in certain ways as a result of it. In fact, Intel is still walking on egg shells as a result of their behavior more than 5 years ago. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re without their faults or that they couldn’t do something like this again. Intel should be thankful that they got off with what they did and pay the fine and move on, because when things like this come up again from the past, it simply doesn’t reflect well upon Intel. They need to pay the fine and make it go away, because the current Intel doesn’t reflect the Intel of the past and they need to make sure these ugly things don’t rear their heads again.

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