Digital Rights Declaration announced

The Consumer Digital Rights Campaign recently announced a declaration with the following 6 ‘digital rights’:

Right to choice, knowledge and cultural diversity

Right to the principle of “technical neutrality” – defend and maintain consumer rights in the digital environment

Right to benefit from technological innovations without abusive restrictions

Right to interoperability of content and devices

Right to the protection of privacy

Right not to be criminalised

Policy makers are being urged to endorse the 6 Consumers Digital Rights. The campaign demands:

A legal framework that will encourage new means of exposure and distribution of digital content, while guaranteeing remuneration to artists, creators and performers and providing consumers and the public
with new means of access, discovery and new uses;

A new balance between exclusive rights in the exploitation of digital content and public interest objectives in using and sharing such content, taking into account the new possibilities of content usage enabled by technical progress;

That industry desist from legal action against P2P downloaders to allow the market to find solutions for the on-line development of audio/visual distribution that takes due account of the public interest and the interest of artists, creators and performers;

Action to find solutions on how consumers can effectively exercise their private use rights and to guarantee that users of DRMs respect the legitimate interest of consumers in their personal autonomy and private sphere;

Mechanisms to ensure that TPMs or DRMs, which restrict uses legally exempted from copyright or not falling under copyright, do not benefit from legal protection;

A review of the EU legal framework on consumer protection and intellectual property in view of the 6 consumers rights demands expressed in this Declaration.