Just as the copyright section of the Digital Economy Act – the bit that puts in place the framework of a three-strikes system for combating file-sharing – heads to judicial review, the London School Of Economics has published a report called ‘Creative Destruction & Copyright Protection’ which questions the proportionality and likely effectiveness of the legislation’s anti-piracy measures.
As previously reported, BT and TalkTalk have taken the DEA’s copyright provisions to judicial review claiming that they infringe the “basic rights and freedoms” of net users and were passed with insufficient scrutiny in parliament. The High Court will consider those claims this week and, if they decide to proceed with a full judicial review, it could take up to a year before they decide whether or not the DEA’s three-strikes provisions can go ahead as planned.
The LSE report, commissioned by the university’s Media Policy Project, says legislators got the “balance between copyright infringement and innovation” wrong, and that they are in danger of “suppressing technological advances” in a bid to protect “out-of-date business models”. It says more efforts should be put into developing user-friendly legal music services than developing draconian measures to combat online piracy.
One of the report’s authors, Bart Cammaerts, says: “The music industry and artists should innovate and actively reconnect with their sharing fans rather than treat them as criminals. They should acknowledge that there are also other reasons for [the record industry's] relative decline beyond the sharing of copyright protected content, not least the rising costs of live performances and other leisure services to the detriment of leisure goods. Alternative sources of income generation for artists should be considered instead of actively monitoring the online behaviour of UK citizens”.
Of course, there’s nothing in any of that which hasn’t been said before, and the record labels will always respond to such arguments by saying that they have been very busy developing and licensing user-friendly legal digital services in recent years, but that they and the operators of those services need the stick of new anti-piracy measures alongside the carrot of new platforms to help kick-start the legitimate digital content market – hence three-strikes.
So much so, this report would probably not get so much attention, if it had not been published just as judges in the High Court begin to consider BT and TalkTalk’s objections to the DEA. Plus, of course, it comes as Professor Hargreaves reviews the wider issues of copyright in the digital age for the government, with stronger leanings – it is believed – to those in the tech community who want copyright reform than to traditional rights owners who are calling for the DEA’s three-strikes provisions to be properly put in motion.
Commenting on the report and the upcoming judicial review, LSE media lecturer Bingchun Meng told reporters: “The DEA has given too much consideration to the interests of copyright holders, while ignoring other stakeholders such as users, ISPs, and new players in the creative industry. I hope the Judicial Review will make the government reconsider its approach toward file-sharing”.
Sections: In The Pop Courts - Music Business - Top Stories | Tags: Copyright, Digital Economy Act, London School Of Economics, Piracy
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