Wired:Back in February I wrote about a new directive then marching its way through the European Union's institutions, writes Danny O'Brien

The Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive, second part - or Ipred Two - is a dangerously vague attempt to turn much intellectual property infringement into serious criminal offences that can be investigated by the police and are punishable by fines of as much as €100,000, asset seizure and a criminal record.

At the time I was primarily concerned that the vagueness of the directive would lead to business and individual uncertainty, and a chilling effect on innovation in Europe.

But it turns out that that's not the worst part of Ipred Two. As well as criminalising much casual infringement, it creates a brand new offence of "inciting" infringement.

What does that mean exactly? No one seems to know (like much of Ipred, no clear definition is given even of the most important terms). But the more I've been talking to concerned parties, the more it looks like "incitement" means simply advocating infringement.

This takes Ipred's excesses to an even higher level. Forget accidental infringers being hauled into court: now even talking about copyright reform would be a criminal act. Would selling the famous Yippie bible, Abbie Hoffman's Steal this Book, be a crime? What about the Swedish political party, the Pirate Party, for whom advocating what is viewed as infringement nowadays is part of a serious political platform?

And it's not just the wilder edges of the debate that may be implicated. As the British Law Society notes in its submission to the European Union, "could advice given to a third world country regarding the production of generic drugs by a solicitor or IP adviser in the EU be considered incitement?".

While incitement is a common idea in truly criminal acts such as murder and robbery, its explicit place in a new law has really only one recent parallel: laws against hate speech and inciting or glorifying terrorism. Have we really reached such a hysterical pitch in our discussions over intellectual property that we have to classify the discussion as the equivalent of "hate speech"? Of course not. That's just a side-effect of the real reason "incitement" is included in this law.

"Incitement" is the entertainment industry's attempt to re-fight the battles it has been pursuing against third parties like Internet Service Providers, intermediaries like YouTube, and the manufacturers of peer-to-peer filesharing software in the US.

In all these cases, the entertainment lobby appears convinced that these tech companies are conspiring to steal their own revenues by egging on widespread infringement, and are no better than pirates themselves. It goes after these legitimate companies with the same gusto that it pursues real, commercial pirates who make perfect copies of DVDs in China.

It genuinely doesn't see the difference between a criminal endeavour, like piracy, and tomorrow's market opportunity, like YouTube.

It's an old refrain: the same groups went after the creators of radio, video recorders and the MP3 player, claiming the same evil motives. But in all those cases, the established players had to do the pursuing themselves. The copyright industries had to fund legal battles that they lost - and then thanked their lucky stars they lost, as they went on to make billions exploiting, with radio placement of recording artists, video rentals and online music downloads.

But if Ipred Two passes, it will be the first time these companies will have successfully transferred the burden of pursuing these innovators to the state.

Perhaps we should hope that, by doing so, the police and governments of Europe will be put into such a ridiculous position - forcing the police into arresting teenagers and pensioners, tech billionaires and politicians - that the pendulum will swing back, and the propaganda of Hollywood and the record labels that there is no alternative to copyright maximalism will be shown up as extremist restraint on technological advance.

But these foolish laws always have unintended consequences. Prohibition was eventually abandoned, but that didn't stop the organised crime that grew at its heart. I'm shocked that in their eagerness to stop innovation and preserve their current business models, IP extremists might actually criminalise the speech of some of those who are opposing them.

Ipred Two is being voted on by the European Parliament this month, probably on April 25th. After that it goes to the Council of Ministers, which is unlikely to fix its excesses.

There's really only one chance to fix or throw out this terrible directive, and that's by encouraging our own MEPs to stand against its excessive language.

I sincerely hope they listen to the problems being raised against Ipred Two - before it's against the law to even suggest them.