Last Tuesday the European Parliament voted for an unamended version of something called the EU IP Enforcement Directive. The directive is now law - and it is a terrible law, writes Danny O'Brien

Under suspicion of breaking copyright, courts across Europe will be able secretly to order raids for evidence. The assets of those suspected of infringing copyright will be able to be frozen even before a case appears in court.

Suspects - or anyone connected to the suspect - can be obliged to reveal the personal details of anyone who was connected with the infringement.

And all of this, not just for the commercial acts of piracy that the MEPs understandably want to control, but for unintentional acts of infringement: a teenager using a "unofficial" Britney Spears ringtone; an uncleared sample accidentally included in a track by a DJ.

Theoretically, if you received this article, forwarded by a friend, I personally (as the copyright holder) could come after you with more force of law than if you'd picked my pocket.

It gets worse: patents are also included in the directive, so companies will be able to pre-emptively raid potential competitors under the suspicion of using patent-protected techniques. The mere threat of such unstoppable confiscations should be enough to chill innovation across many European tech industries.

The point of the law, of course, is mainly to give more elbow to media companies, consumed with worry over internet piracy. Faced with an almost unstoppable epidemic of copyright infringement, they have asked for - and got - a disproportionate amount of power.

The infringement will continue, of course, just as the infringement that the radio industry conducted on record companies' musicians, gramophone sellers perpetrated on sheet music sellers, and sheet sellers conducted on composers continues to this day. Every new media industry begins by infringing copyright.

Eventually, the law permits their work, with a nod to fairness to all the previous incumbents. And, then finally, the new incumbent sets on suing out of existence whoever comes along to take away their freshly legal business.

Our generation of media conglomerates has done rather better at getting legal assistance to stamp out this new menace.

But it was a close thing. Those concerned by the increasingly draconian enforcement of copyright across Europe fought hard to prevent the IP Enforcement Directive from getting through. The key amendments they supported were defeated, although by only 50 votes among the 700 MEPs.

It was amazing they managed to get so far. For the most part, those who were concerned were individuals trying to work together to prevent a law that massively favours the copyright aggregators in large media corporations. The tragedy is that there are precious few interfaces in Brussels for individuals expressing dislike of a particular Bill.

At Parliament, in the heart of the EU, the preference is for organisations as transnational as the EU itself to make their representations. MEPs are separated from their constituents by more than just distance: they deal almost exclusively not with their voters but with other representatives of companies, of non-governmental pressure groups, or other governments. Or lobbyists paid by any number of the above.

Now upset citizens can organise through the Net. With mailing lists and Web pages, individuals can join forces loosely across Europe without a formal organisation, and still manage to pick apart directives, draft amendments, and critically monitor goings-on in Brussels.

When the last major European Net campaign was taking place - over the relatively obscure technical issue of software patents - MEPs were disturbed to find actual constituents protesting with placards outside the Parliament.

On this occasion, several MEPs complained in the strongest terms to the more formal protesting bodies when an American civil rights group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, encouraged European citizens to fax their representatives. Up to 200 individual notes of dissent were, it seems, too much for the distracted MEPs.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Software patents were postponed by an MEP rebellion, encouraged and publicised by the protests. In that case, individuals fought a proposal that would be bad for all but a few firms, and won.

Those opposed to the Enforcement Directive had a tougher time. The directive was rushed through Parliament. Even during the debate, MEPs believed they would be given longer than a single session to debate the issues. Instead, the vote was called that day, without even the traditional 24-hour period for entertaining other views.

Several MEPs insisted the law would not apply to unintentional infringers (as opposed to commercial pirates), even as the word of the law made no such exception. And the MEP in charge of its passing, Janelly Fourtou, had an extra encouragement. Her husband is chief executive of Vivendi Universal, a major copyright aggregator which stands to benefit financially from its passing.

When the Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed in the US (while less strident on paper than the Enforcement Directive it still proved to be drastic and controversial in its effects), many in Europe said it couldn't happen here. The US political system was in the pocket of the multinationals which benefited from its provisions; we have greater checks, some said, against the use of money and professional lobbying to secure political power.

Well, now it's our turn. The creaking system of European governance with its ear turned to transnational organisations (both corporate and non-governmental), and away from its own electorate, is just as easily bypassed.

The internet - and the copyright issues it raises - merely highlight a much wider problem. One that, as these increasingly biased laws march through the Parliament, we have less and less time to fix.