Two controversial draft bills on internet piracy and intellectual property protection, which are currently being examined in the US Congress, are raising concerns among policymakers in the European Parliament. Marietje Schaake, a Dutch MEP, has taken up the issue and voiced her concerns to EurActiv in an interview.

In the past four weeks there has been rising visibility of the issue, probably more and more people will know about it. Initially members of parliament were probably unaware of the potential impact for Europe.

[...] there would be blocking of websites which are either infringing copyright or facilitating the infringing of copyright. And that leads to great concern because it directly hits the infrastructure of the internet through working with a domain name system which was proposed in the initial text. [...]

['three strikes' approach like in France] is the worst-case scenario and it is absolutely ineffective. I have made an assessment of the costs that have been put into this and the benefits and it is completely disproportionate.

http://www.euractiv.com/infosociety/schaake-mep-draft-us-online-piracy-b...