UK Publishers Pretend To Embrace Copyright Reform... In Order To Kill Copyright Reform

from the nice-try dept

One of the bolder ideas in the UK's Hargreaves report was the suggestion that a Digital Copyright Exchange should be set up. The idea here is to promote innovative uses of digital content by making it much easier to acquire the necessary licenses from rightsholders. So it's interesting to see the UK Publishers Association (PA) backing the idea:

The Publishers Association (PA) has today called for the development of a new online platform that would act as a “one stop shop” for the exchange of information about how to license copyright works online. Such a Digital Copyright Exchange (DCE) would counteract the need for dangerous changes to copyright law proposed by government in a parallel consultation, the PA argues.

However, as this indicates, the PA's support for the DCE is actually an attempt to get all the other suggestions in the Hargreaves report thrown out:

In supporting the development of the DCE, The PA urges government to suspend progress of the parallel Copyright Consultation launched by the Intellectual Property Office late last year, which recommends drastically weakening copyright. The PA maintains that many of the consultation’s proposals would remove or undermine the ability of rightsholders to develop licensing business models, and go against the grain of the market-based voluntary arrangements proposed in the DCE.

This is, of course, nonsense: there's no suggestion of weakening copyright, just trying to update it for the digital age -- and only in very minor ways. Proposals include things like permitting format shifting and also freeing up orphan works -- hardly radical.

Moreover, it turns out that the PA is only supporting the DCE if it's watered-down to the point of uselessness :

The PA makes the case for a DCE as a fully voluntary, interoperable platform, for use by businesses and the public, which could allow rights to be licensed more efficiently and openly. Its submission makes clear that the DCE would not be a place to set prices or terms, but rather to put potential users in touch with the rightsholders in a work, in all forms of content.

In other words, the PA wants the DCE to be a totally toothless system that would not solve the problems faced by innovative startups seeking to explore new uses of digital copyright material, but would allow publishers to simply carry on as before.

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Filed Under: digital copyright exchange, hargreaves report, publishers, reform, uk

HADOPI Wants To Research File Downloads: Shouldn't It Have Done That First?

from the better-late-than-never dept

One of the most important aspects of the UK's Hargreaves Report was that it called for copyright policy to be based on evidence. It also noted that so far that simply hadn't been the case, and that practically all of the so-called "studies" used to justify laws in this area came from the copyright industries, with missing or dubious methodologies.

The French three-strikes scheme known as HADOPI (actually the name of the government agency that oversees its implementation) is a perfect example of such dogma-based legislation: no research was done into how files were being shared or even whether they did any harm (there's a fair amount of evidence that file sharing increases sales).

So it's interesting to see HADOPI putting out a call for some research into streaming sites (original in French):

The commissioned study focuses on an economic analysis of streaming sites and direct download where illegal practices are the most common, offering cultural property in the areas of music and video.

This new interest in streaming sites is presumably a consequence of Nicolas Sarkozy's announcement at the recent Forum d'Avignon that "we have to tackle the streaming web sites." It's certainly welcome that HADOPI is doing some research before it draws up its proposals in this area; but shouldn't it have done the same with the original three-strikes scheme?

There's an interesting parallel with SOPA here. In the section with the splendid title "Denying U.S. Capital To Notorious Foreign Infringers", we read the following:

Report to Congress- The Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator shall, not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, submit to the Committees on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives and the Senate a report that includes the following:

(1) An analysis of notorious foreign infringers and a discussion of how these infringers violate industry norms regarding the protection of intellectual property.

(2) An analysis of the significant harm inflicted by notorious foreign infringers on consumers, businesses, and intellectual property industries in the United States and abroad.

Again, it's good that some research into that "significant harm" will be carried out, but shouldn't that come before the legislation is drawn up and enacted, not after it?

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Filed Under: evidence, france, hadopi, hargreaves report, impact, pipa, piracy, post hoc, protect ip, research, sopa