UK Found To Be The Worst At Balancing Consumer Rights In Copyright Law
from the just-as-the-industry-would-like dept
As we've pointed out recently, the industries that rely on copyright have a habit of claiming that copyright is solely about protecting the interests and rights of copyright holders, leaving out the equally as important rights of the public as well. That's partly why we've seen copyright getting pushed increasingly towards the interests of industry. A consumers rights group has looked over copyright law in various countries and has found that the UK's is the absolute worst in terms of actually protecting the rights of consumers, and notes that rather than fixing things, it appears that the UK has given in to industry's desires to make the laws even worse. Hopefully, at some point, politicians will finally start to realize that copyright is a bargain between the public and content creators, and that continually handing over more and more rights to the content creators harms the public interest.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: copyright, uk, users' rights
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I'll stop you there. UK politicians don't realise anything they're not paid to realise. Try looking up the recent stories about MPs' expenses. These people have been bought and paid for and they're not about to ruin the good thing they've got going.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
UK Govt. vs the People
Hmmm, I admire your optimism but given the recent Digital Britain report and the fact that the Estblishment/Media/Entertainment axes are the ones at the heart of UK Govt policy and thinking (vis. Lloyd Weber's recent rant in the House of Lords) I doubt it very much.
The 'Mother(expletive?) of Parliaments' appears to have an increasingly cynical view of the British public, as evidenced by the endless recent leaks about its inner workings, and to be fair, the public view the body politic in much the same vein.
Our executive is unelected (that is how Lloyd Weber became a lord and has the right to sit in our upper house), we have no constitution and the unelected head of state considers us to be her subjects yet long ago gave any real politcal power to the venal, duplicitous political/administrative classes who run things today.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
We're the country that struggle to publicly celebrate Christmas since we're too politically correct, celebrating Christmas *may* offend someone, and we can't have that.
So of course, we have no problem writing new laws to give power over masses to the few.
And we don't complain about it, it's not very British.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: most creative music scene on the planet
The best of the UK music scene seems to occur when the artists are rebelling against the status quo. There was a brilliant documentary about Rough Trade and the genesis of the UK indy scene on BBC Four recently.
Perhaps the creativity stems from the fact that we know that the establishment is out to stiff us and therefore we have something to rebel against? Are you sure you are a consumer Anonymous Coward? Are you sure you're not an industry shill?
[ link to this | view in thread ]