By Tim Ferguson, 30 October 2006 14:30
NEWS
Copyright laws need to be updated or millions of people in the UK will continue to be unfairly classed as criminals, according to a leading think tank.
A report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) recommends that consumers should have a "private right to copy", allowing them to copy their own music legally.
Some copyright laws are as much as 300 years old and their legal interpretation means consumers who copy CDs and DVDs in order to transfer them to their iPods or equivalent media players are breaking the law.
Kay Withers, who researched and compiled the report for the IPPR, told silicon.com this is a "key immediate issue for consumers" as "IP law affects absolutely everyone". She added that copyright law needs to be updated to come in line with public preferences for the way media is consumed.
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The recommendations are aimed at a review of intellectual property which was set up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, last year and is due to report its findings in November.
Dr Ian Kearns, deputy director of the IPPR, said: "It is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of the government."
The report also makes recommendations for the government to ignore calls to extend copyright terms for sound recordings as well as freeing libraries from the restrictions of digital rights management technology.
Comments
There are 14 comments. Join the discussion
1. Stephen
Now this article nails the topic on the head. We paid $19.99 or less for our CD or DVD, we should have the right to copy it to our computer.
2. Joseph A.
I concur with Dr. Ian Kearns: "It is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of the government." We could use such enlightened thinking in the U.S. federal government. In the meanwhile, I'll bet I can hold out longer not purchasing any of the music or film industries' products, or illegally downloading or copying them, than they can. As consumers, we may LIKE their products, but we certainly don't NEED them.
3. Patrick Orchard
Intellectual property and the downloading of songs and copying of CD's and DVD's is thievery. Purchasing for one's own personal use requires monitoring beyond anyone's control or right to control. They're all just pissed because they have not found a way to bill you for it yet.
4. Kelly Hayden
iPod users should be classified as criminals because the songwriters, singers, and bands don't get the money for something they did. (Ed note. Yes they do, in this instance - they get it the first time the consumer buys their CD. Why should they get it again, just because the consumer wants to copy the CD they bought onto their music player? That is the argument of the IPPR.)
Also iPod users are getting to have everything like TV and music on their iPod how much more would it hurt to make them pay for something they enjoy so that someone else can go off and improve it or make some more of it.
5. galley slave#41
Lets face it a CD,DVD, cassette or piece of vinyl is a very flimsy item and easily broken or damaged. ( ANY OTHER DAMAGED ITEM WOULD BE REPLACED UNDER GARANTEE!)
If a person buys music in any form one should be able to choose in which form to store it.
After all with only two ears per person one can only listen to one piece of music at a time
6. Galley Slave #42
How long before the copyright laws start limiting the number of people who can listen to my HiFi with me ?
I would like to see the laws saying that you've bought the right to the music for 'social and domestic' use, independent of the media.
7. David Bowler
I believe that French law has for many years recognised that 'the law cannot prohibit copying for one's own domestic use', (my translation from memory, when reading the french-language instructions for a cassete deck (remember those?) I bought about 30 years ago. Does anyone have more up-to-date information?
8. anonymous
This problem should have been addressed in the 70s when compact cassettes were first introduced. it wasn't legal to copy vinyl records onto cassette although many people did, if only to preserve the original vinyl recording and be able to listen to the music in their car. Record labels are notoriously greedy and resist change if they consider they can make more revenue. The changes are long overdue!
9. Peter O'Rourke
Piracy is used by the music, film and software industry as an excuse to create ever more inventive ways of parting largely honest folk from their money. If I buy a CD/Movie I expect to have the right to listen/watch how and where I want in my home, car, boat etc without further payment demands.
Whatever anti-fraud measures the music and film industries come up with, serious criminals won't be stopped from wholesale piracy, neither will small scale 'home' pirates and people who knowingly buy pirate copies won't ever stop either. The music and film industries know all of this but sensationalise piracy news in an effort to justify pointless anti-fraud schemes that do nothing other inconvenience legitimate users and/or act as means if extracting additional revenues.
10. Charles Wood
This could be solved by the very industry that created the problem. An internet based database that registers YOUR right to access the item, in any form, would solve this issue completely. It would also stop all the music industrys arguments and some of their revenue streams, so they will not want it.
You would then register items on which you played the music or video, and items of music or video you had paid for the right to view or listen to.
Fair to everyone, and end of issue. The music industry will absolutely hate it because you as the copyright holder would be paid directly on the basis of this database. Many writers would walk away from labels completely.
The obvious question...why has MCPS not implemented this?
11. zakala
Hurray! At last someone actually willing to stand up to the BPI bully-boys. Let's just hope that the government listen to the recommendations from this thinktank and actually have the bottle to enact a law that protects the rights of the consumer over the rights of the multi-national entertainment conglomerates who think it's ok to install stealth software on your PC should you dare to listen to a CD on it.
We know what the big five want - they want the same ridiculous rights of ownership of their "product" as the software companies currently enjoy. They don't want you to own music, they want you only to own a license to listen to it. That way they can make you pay as many times as they like if you want to keep listening to it. I'm waiting for the first online store to try charging for a "music upgrade"; "but it's been remastered so that's another fiver you owe us."
Unfortunately it's the only way that they can see to retain their monopoly on music distribution - if they stitch up online distribution now by tying us all into proprietry DRM and music leasing they will eventually close off the internet to all the independant artists, through technology and consumer inertia.
None of the BPI recommendations are pro-artist, unless you sell so many units the record companies need you more than you need them. I think musicians are starting to realise that.
The record companies don't even have to pay huge advances anymore - they just pick up bands that have got a following themselves through hard work, the internet or a reality TV show. The Strokes even recorded their own first album - they paid for it.
CD's still cost less than 70p each to produce for quantaties over 1000 (that includes cases and artwork) yet we are lead to believe that £9.97 is "supermarket cheap". Yes, it costs to distribute them but a cd weighs as much as what? A banana? Bananas come from the tropics. On a boat or even by plane. They have a supply chain; producers, marketers, distributors, and sellers. They don't cost £10 each.
12. anonymous
Just about everything said here was said at APIG hearing in February (www.apig.org.uk/current-activities/apig-inquiry-into-digital-rights-management.html).
And it's all true. Especially the bit about DRM & anti-piracy doing nothing about wholesale industrial piracy. These organisations can afford to bribe their way towards unprotected originals, so any DRM is bypassed anyway.
Changes to the law are way overdue. An MP said that day "tell us what we should do." I hope that remark was aimed at consumers/users, not the greedy record/film companies.
We need the right to store, copy, backup, compress, encode, or whatever with content we pay good money for. We want to listen/watch it anywhere and everywhere, day and night, on whatever device is to hand.
Any law changes must be 'vague' enough that future developments aren't excluded or overlooked - in other words it describe our rights, not mechanisms or processes - so the word 'copy' might not be appropriate.
And if content was cheap enough (i.e. stop making such huge profits and paying artists millions) nobody would even consider giving a pal a copy - it wouldn't be worth the bother.
13. anonymous
If the recording industry wants to survive it will have to adapt to the changes being forced upon it not just by technology but also by the very people they supposedly represent, the musicians. There are now numerous artists producing, recording and posting their own material on their own web pages as free downloads thus sidelining the big music publishers. Artists are beginning to recognise that the main worth in their music is shifting from recordings to live performances. For many musicians revenue from recorded material will in general be accrued from royalties for public performance of their recordings, used as they are now on radio by marketing and advertising industry as bait.
It’s now too easy to download and copy music and human nature being what it is will drive almost everyone to maintaining, at least, a small collection of ripped music. Any new copyright laws introduced by governments will be a waste of time and all attempts to police them will be like a spit in the ocean.
I believe that the big earnings from recorded music will wane unless the recording industry rethinks its strategy, so I’ll say it again…… If the recording industry wants to survive it will have to adapt to the changes being forced upon it.
14. Joe Whitehead
300 years? Most of the most draconian aspects of copyright laws came in the last 20 years!
However, the aspect of thinking that it's 'hard' to publish is the part that should be reviewed from the older laws' reasoning.