European consumer groups on Thursday launched a new campaign aimed at Apple's FairPlay digital rights management (DRM), Sony's hidden copy protection and other security measures undertaken by high-tech and media companies. Jonny Evans, writing for Macworld UK, reports that that the groups "are angry at the criminalization of consumers and lack of interoperability between existing services and devices."

The groups want to create a bill of consumer rights that, according to Mr. Evans, calls for: "the right to choice, knowledge and cultural diversity; the right to the principle of technical neutrality; consumer rights in the digital environment; the right to benefit from technological innovations without abusive restrictions; the right to interoperability of content and devices; the right to the protection of privacy; the right not to be criminalized."

The groups also want to end the lawsuits filed by music labels and Hollywood studios against P2P file-sharing services. Jim Murray, director of the consumer rights umbrella organization BEUC, said: "The industry insists on informing, or rather misinforming consumers on what they cannot do in the digital world. We believe it is high time to guarantee consumers certain basic rights in the digital world and to tell them what they can do with their digital hardware and content."

Peter Jamieson, chairman of BPI, a British body that represents UK music labels, responded: "First, the BPI has not initiated any criminal actions. Any actions we have initiated have been civil cases. Second, we are not taking action against consumers. We are pursuing people who are taking music without permission and infringing the rights we have under the law.

"We make no apologies for enforcing the rights we have been given in law. But we have focused our attentions on some of the worst offenders - those people making available hundreds and often thousands of tracks available for others to download."