Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Telecoms and Media has called on governments to be pragmatic and innovative in their approach to regulating internet content and piracy.

“Europe will need to create the right framework for ensuring effective competition and sound regulatory conditions in a well-functioning single market as well as incentives for innovation,” said Reding.
“We also need to make sure that in the end, consumers benefit from the digital economy. This is particularly important if we want to convince the digital natives to become the drivers of our digital economy,” she added, as cited by V3.

France tried to introduce a “three strikes” measure that would ban file sharers and illegal downloaders of the internet for up to a year if they were third-time offenders. In Britain a Digital Britain report offered plans to reduce illegal downloads by 80 percent. The idea is to give new powers to Ofcom that enables it to work with Internet service providers to target individuals sharing files with peers. A file sharer will receive written warning or by adopting this measure it can help copyright owners take legal action.

This is highly problematic as the EU’s diversity in income will not allow to introduce the same copyright laws in all countries. Less developed states in Eastern Europe will continue file sharing and piracy due to need for information.