By
The Associated Press
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Ministers from the 15 European Union nations adopted a directive yesterday that updates copyright laws to cover Internet song-swapping and other types of digital copying.
The pan-European rules, approved by the European Parliament in February, were adopted by consensus by the ministers. They now go to the individual member states for incorporation into national law over the next 18 months.
The new EU rules tighten the definition of "private copy" and ban commercial use of copied material taken from the Internet.
EU Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said the directive "brings European copyright rules into the digital age."
Adoption and implementation of the directive will enable the EU to ratify the 1996 World Intellectual Property Treaties, giving the treaties more than the minimum number of countries needed to come into force around the world.
The United States ratified them in 1998 through its Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
