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UK ISPs To Pay 25% of Copyright Enforcement Costs
Andorin writes "The UK's Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has released a report (PDF) related to the new Digital Economy Act. The debate between copyright holders and ISPs about who should front the costs for the enforcement of the Act's anti-piracy provisions has come to a close: Rights holders will pay 75% of the copyright enforcement costs, with the remaining 25% of the bill going to ISPs (and therefore their customers). Says the Minister for Communications, Ed Vaizey: 'Protecting our valuable creative industries, which have already suffered significant losses as a result of people sharing digital content without paying for it, is at the heart of these measures... We expect the measures will benefit our creative economy by some £200m per year and as rights holders are the main beneficiaries of the system, we believe our decision on costs is proportionate to everyone involved.' Not surprisingly, some ISPs and consumer groups are up in arms about the decision, with one ISP calling it a government subsidy of the entertainment industries."
This cost will get passed on to the ISP's customers. Everyone with broadband will be required to subsidize the entertainment industry as it pretends to die from losses to piracy while reporting massive profits. If they're forcing me to compensate them for losses based on arbitrary made-up amounts for 'imaginary' lost sales then I will force them to compensate me by giving me free movies & tv shows based on my arbitrarily assigned figures for its value. I think a 2500th of it's retail price (as they like that figure and use it to calculate lawsuit settlements) is fair. I'll be more than happy to bittorrent the equivalent value with my broadband connection.
They instead should have figured it based on how likely the Act would have come into law had the copyright holders not lobbied.
If the answer is "not likely at all", then the copyright holders should foot the bill.
Living With a Nerd
It naturally follows that the ISPs should have a say in how much total money should be spent on copyright enforcement. Otherwise it's taxation without representation. ...or is that exclusively an 18th century American concept?
'Protecting our valuable creative industries, which have already suffered significant losses as a result of people sharing digital content without paying for it, is at the heart of these measures... We expect the measures will benefit our creative economy by some £200m per year and as rights holders are the main beneficiaries of the system, we believe our decision on costs is proportionate to everyone involved.'
Wow this quote is gold, I am curious how those of the UK will react. Seems a load of tripe to me.
Maybe the "common" public will start to see how the entertainment industry is corrupt, awful, and generally falling behind the times with no mass adoption of the "new methods" to make money.
Unfortunately in the mean time, the costs will get passed on from the ISP to the customers, who will end up paying more. But, hopefully that causes the above statement to be even more true. Maybe they should do this in the USA too so the MPAA and RIAA will fuck off and leave other non-US countries alone.
nonsense has arrived
If they're being forced to foot the bill to protect the Right's Holders interests, ISP's should start getting 25% of the profit the Rights Holder's make from those Interests.
So does that mean that if someone is copyright holder that hasn't had any issues with trying to enforce their copyright, they can claim some sort of tax benefit to receive a portion of that 25%?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It assumes that all Internet users are pirates: not so! Is this a statistical "taxation at the point of use", which assumes that the population has pirates in it, so we charge the population for use? I don't understand how the entertainment companies can justify the many ways they are taking money, other than direct payment for consumption. Solution (perhaps impractical, but ethical) is to charge users, and prosecute pirates.
Intellectual property gone nuts, will eventually strangle the western world to death.
Thankfully I'm no longer domiciled in the UK, but when I do return, I miss my 1000Mbit/s symmetric net connection, no caps, and being where the DMCA TDNs can never find me.
Seriously, UK is digital 3rd world.
we should just ban the whole internet! That way there can be no more piracy!
In other news, the UK Parliament passed a law requiring car owners to have a flag bearer walk in front of cars. The Minister of Roads claimed it was to protect the safety of pedestrians, but critics say the law is to protect the locomotive industry.
This new 25% Law is equally preposterous/bullshit
.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So the people who pirate are forcing the ones who don't to help rights holders regain a portion of revenue that would otherwise be lost to them. Looks like media companies are attacking pirates socially rather than financially.
I cannot wait until ISPs and electronic industry grow a couple of balls and do what other industries do- establish a lobby, buy a bunch of MPs (preferably more than "creative" industries), and make sure laws like this never get passed.
I mean, Internet providers with electronics industry should earn more than "creative" industries, why do they still deal with this crap and allow RIAA to walk all over them. ISPs and device manufacturers should be the ones writing the rules.
--Coder
UK ISPs To Pass 25% of Copyright Enforcement Costs To Customers
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
It bears repeating that protecting the buggy whip manufacturers only hurts the manufacturers of the new-fangled horseless carriage, while doing nothing to ensure people will actually pay for buggy whips in the future.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
It's only fair that if you are "subsidizing" an industry because of claims of "lost profit", then said company should open up their books so the public can see what losses they are talking about. And I guarantee that ain't going to happen.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
...for the transgressions of the rest.
This is just going to cause internet prices to go up. The ISP's are not just going to eat the cost, they will pass it on to their customers as additional fees.
Would you penalize those that build highways for giving road racers the smooth and long pavement on which to drive recklessly? It's not their fault that people choose to break the law (or in this case, violate copyright).
I don't see how it's the responsbility of the providers to be liable for their customers use or abuse. That smacks big time of collusion in politics. Who in the UK parliament is supporting this bill?
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
I'm certain my album would have sold a billion copies if not for piracy. Where do I get my check?
Losses so significant, they're immeasurable...
ISP's are all basically bastards anyway, so I won't miss it. Bye bye, ISP. I'm a customer, not a consumer and I'll take my money with me. NONE of you are going to get it.
Okay, so RIAA plays EIAA 7.5 million dollars to enforce copyright law.
The ISP's are forced to pay 2.5 million dollars.
And EIAA, a wholy owned subsidiary under the same parent organization as RIAA passes the money uphill where it is distributed back down to RIAA.
And this can be raised to any amount up to the point where the ISP's are collapsing. And it's been done for close to 95 years now (at least the earliest I've heard of it was in the 20's but I guess it may have been done by plays and vaudeville beforethat).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Given games companies use ISPs for internet access, could they not pass the full costs costs directly back to the games companies in their internet bill? Somehow, I think that would be appropriate.
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
I have to get insurance to do that. Why shouldn't they?
How many programmers do we have? Would we have more if us programmers had rights to the code for 30 years as an incentive?
How many plumbers do we have? Maybe we'd have more if we gave them rights to the work they did on your bog for 30 years.
OR, maybe, just maybe, the people who go into the music business could do the same as a plumber or programmer or damn near any job apart from "creative industry" and SAVE UP for their kids if they die an untimely death.
What a load of bollocks you are talking.
10 years. If someone hasn't made 90% of the money from that copyright then they're crap or they have no customers.
Neither case warrants extended copyright.
By "creative industries" they mean of course, "businesses that sell copies of other people's work and pay the creators a tiny portion."
... that will subsidize artists who are convinced that there is no link between poor sales and their complete lack of talent.
Solution (perhaps impractical, but ethical) is to charge users, and prosecute pirates.
It is neither ethical or practical to do that. Instead, what needs to be set up is a new way to compensate artists -- not the RIAA or MPAA, but the artists who actually give us entertainment -- that is compatible with the Internet age. That means a system that is not based on people being unable to copy music and movies.
Perhaps instead of paying for enforcement, ISPs should pay into a fund for artists, and entirely cut the RIAA and MPAA out of the picture. That fund should be managed in a way that legally requires nondiscriminatory access for artists, perhaps with some sort of review process to decide who receives how much funding (e.g. to prevent abuses or outlandish requests).
Palm trees and 8
Queue "hollywood" accounting in 3..2...
The word you are looking for is "cue", which refers to a signal for something to happen at a certain time, such as an actor's line that immediately precedes and serves as a reminder for some action or speech, or a theatrical cue for a lighting effect for example.
The verb form of "Queue" means to stand in line, as in a line for the next available bank teller, or at a bus stop.
How about we make it illegal for businesses to make campaign contributions and lobby congress.
That would simply give the ISPs an incentive to try and help the "Rights Holders" screw us over.
I much prefer the current situation where the ISPs have very little incentive to fuck their customers over to appease the "Rights Holders".
To get a solution such as this someone is getting kissed or their wallets are getting full. Freedom lost another round.
For a long time people have been complaining about the big copyright owner groups not innovating or coming up with new business models but they seem to have finally done so - and it is an impressively clever one.
The DEA (well, the relevant copyright-litigation measures) are designed to make it easier for rich copyright owners to sue people (or threaten to sue them, see ACS:Law). Their aim is that this will increase their revenue by £200mpa. As there is no consensus about whether stronger copyright will actually help artists, encourage creativity etc., this can only be about the money.
1. get a law passed designed so you can make £200mpa more money.
Of course, their aim is to maximise profit, so they don't want to pay for this (part of the reason they haven't been suing so far is that it is very expensive with small returns in the UK due to their being no statutory minimum damages unlike elsewhere). They start by saying the costs of forcing ISPs to "protect" their copyrights should be shared between them (if you look through the BIS consultation responses nearly all the copyright owner groups argued for a 50:50 split). ISPs, consumer groups, and nearly everyone else rightly pointed out this was ridiculous, so the Government decided to reach a compromise that still means ISPs will be paying to make copyright owners more money.
2. get someone else to pay for your revenue-generating scheme.
But we know that ISPs won't absorb these costs, they'll pass them on to their customers as an 'Internet Levy'. Similarly, the remaining 75% of costs isn't going to come out of copyright owner profits, or their executive salaries/bonuses, or their vast lobbying budgets. The publishing groups are 'middle-men' so most likely this money will come from both ends: We already know how most record labels will add any expenses they possibly can to the "artist's share" of their revenue, so expect to see extra charges here for "protecting the artist's copyright so people can pay the artistpublisher more money". Also expect to see end prices go up (i.e. us paying more for music/films to cover this cost).
3. ????? [fiddle accounts]
Of course, the aim of this is for the "creative industries" (an amusing phrase, although in fairness, they are good at creating new legislation and accounting practices) to generate this £200mpa - but where is this going to come from? Well... us. Either through being sent threatening letters demanding we pay up, a few high-profile lawsuits, or general increased sales due to greater fear over piracy (somehow I doubt this last one will actually happen, but we'll see..) but yes, this £200mpa comes from us, the consumers.
4. Profit.
So, in summary, this law is about getting us to pay copyright owners so we can pay them more money.
As evil as it may seem, that is one impressively imaginative and innovative business model.
Oh, also it is interesting to see that there is currently no shortage of people complaining about this decision but strangely enough only 3 individuals actually responded to the BIS consultation on it... seems people are happy to complain once a bad decision is made, but aren't willing to actually do anything to help people make the right one.
How much, exactly, does copyright enforcement cost? It clearly has no affect what-so-ever so if the music/movie industry decides to just flush a billion dollars down the toilet on it, does that mean the ISPs have to fork over $250 million? It doesn't make a lot of sense.
Copyright: the freakish notion that culture shall be restricted, for the financial benefit of few, in detriment of many.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Set of cunts
My sales drop to close to zero after 3 years
Then try negotiating a time-delayed relicense with your publisher for your next book. The contract wording might look like this: "Starting five years after the date of first publication of the covered work, the author and publisher agree to allow distribution of copies of the covered work under the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0." Or you could adapt the wording of Founders' Copyright.
I cannot wait until ISPs and electronic industry grow a couple of balls
That might take a while. The companies that own the DOCSIS last mile also have to maintain business relationships with the owners of cable television channels.
We expect the measures will benefit our creative economy by some £200m per year and as rights holders are the main beneficiaries of the system,
If the ISP's are expected to pick up £200 million a year in fees, there will be no wanting to be an ISP....
I read it more as they're paying 25% of the cost and the rights holders pay the other 75%. So if their new anti-piracy division costs 100k a year to operate the ISP will eat (or pass on to their customers) 25k and the rights holders will have to pay 75k to the ISP. I think this is perfect. The ISP should take a page from the accounting books of the rights holders and say it costs a huge sum. The rights holder has to cough up 75% of that. Then the ISP tells it's customers that it's passing the costs on to them.
ISP - extra income.
Customers - no extra payment and happy thier ISP is standing up for them.
Rights holders - Huge bill forcing them into bankruptcy that much sooner.
I'm one of these sad people who doesn't (knowingly) infringe copyright on purpose. I'm a UK citizen and I respect copyright laws since they allow things like the GPL to operate and I make a reasonable living working for large companies that use Free and Open Source software in commercial products.
I'm not interested in "pirating" all of this main-stream music, TV and cinema. Life's too short to spend it ingesting drivel. I utterly resent having to pay for it just in case I might decide to "steal" some of it. I am selective about what I give my attention to and I like to obtain it fairly.
I like to support my favourite bands. I buy their CDs (and I break English law when I rip them and FLAC them for personal use) and I go to their shows. My wife and I spend hundreds of pounds a year going to see our favourite bands (including tickets, travel, food and drink, t-shirts). None of these are top-40 acts, by the way. The last lot we saw were Voivod when they played in Nottingham. This year we have also seen Les Claypool and Slayer.
I don't go to the cinema. There's nothing on. It's all aimed at retarded 7-year-olds. I don't "bit torrent" any films. We buy anything we do want to see (and keep) on DVD, including good TV programmes like Frasier, Father Ted etc.
We don't do ebooks. They are an abomination. Books are to be printed on paper and read.
I do "bit torrent" my Operating Systems and they are "copyright" (sic) i.e. copyrighted: but I'm not stealing since they are licensed under Free and Open Source terms and conditions.
If people want to earn money, they'd better jolly well produce something of value that people are willing to pay for. Hollywood cinema and manufactured pop music ain't it.
Stick Men
Any ISP who will forward me any such kind of harassment letter will get from me a reply which will tell them that the allegations are completely unjustified (and that I want to see any proofs of them supporting their allegations). I will warn them that if they continue to harass me, that I will with out further notice cancel my contract with them and move to an other ISP. If I receive another letter I will cancel my contract without any further warning. If they refuse to accept my cancellation I will sue them for harassment and I doubt that they will have any evidence whatsoever that I did anything wrong. So they will lose in court (and meanwhile I do have other means to get to the internet if things really go bad)...
Why do only ISPs bear the cost? Because you can't share files without the ISP? Isn't that also the logic behind the media levy?
By the same logic, shouldn't the manufacturers or suppliers of the following things be also required to share part of the cost?
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
As if the content owners won't do the same thing with their 75% ?
Couldn't we all just generate gigabytes worth of random data chunks that we "copyright" and then pass around a bit-- wouldn't we then qualify for some of that gravy as "rights holders"? Just how do you define a "rights holder" here anyway-- at the very least, shouldn't Slashdot get a piece of that as compensation for all of us here who are rampantly copying other people's content without paying for it in reading these forums?
Well of course it is. Its easier to get a handout then actually produce something.
So even if we all boycott them ( which is coming... ) they still get paid.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In 2005 I bought my last copyright industry linked music. Since then I haven't acquired, in any way shape or form, such music. I bought all CDs by Brad Sucks and Jade Leary plus a number of CDs from Magnatune. Still, I keep paying these copyright companies directly through taxes on CDs which I use for music from musicians that have expressly choosen not to participate in classic copyright structures. Is there no way I can escape from this? No way I can exist outside this? Not acquiring the music of RIAA (and their counterparts from other countries, like BUMA/STEMRA in mine) musicians should do that. But it doesn't. I keep paying them. I pay taxes. Part of these taxes go to crime fighting and prevention. Copyright theft is part of that. I can live with that, there are many forms of crime pertaining to matters I don't partake in and I can understand the need for doing something about it just the same. That should be the beginning and end of it. Getting money from other sources and putting a specific tab on it. It also prevents the music industry from having to innovate. It stems from their warped way of seeing things: everyone consumes their product, so everyone must pay, especially because everyone steals. That these people can wield so much disproportionate influence and power defies logic.
The people that pirate, don't want to buy goods, so is not a sale lost. Is not a economic movement, is extra-economic. Greed fuel the feel that this is lost money, but thats simply untrue.
-Woof woof woof!
Are you really that confident than an ISP or recording industry can't manufacture all the evidence they need? Do you have your own personal group of white hat hackers that can protect you? You are living in a dream. Conglomerates and governments are equally corrupt and will do anything to get their way.
I'll be more than happy to bittorrent the equivalent value with my broadband connection.
Rebellion, insurgency, or copyright civil disobedience challenges, we need organization to challenge laws and force change. Individually and stealthily we will never gain news headlines and legislators attention, except for these more-repressive laws. I already have a related suit so just saying "I piss on the law" is not funny anymore. The law will just piss on you if caught, end of story. The bottom line is there is a movement towards repressing all kinds of things via legal excuses. Games, downloading, internet use, open debate, anonymous whistleblowing, kids using the internet. I have a cybercafe, might have to pay 10,000 for defamation, to a lady who got an email sent from here Allowed people to use computers without getting ID, name, phone, etc. Local law says anyone accessing the internet had to be recorded and identified. Result - now I demand ID to use any computer. And kids can't use them at all. I no longer piss on the law, I actually enforce it, hating myself all the way. Why, because individual rebellion isn't rebellion, it's just being an outlaw. Group rebellion is rebellion. Gather 100 or 10,000 and openly copy trade DVD's full of MP3 in a public square, that's rebellion. Mount a public-download WIFI-bluetooth hotspot in a public square, with posters on the sidewalk.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Wait, that's absurd!
That's like treating everyone like a criminal! It is also like taxing the medium rather than the actual pirates!
You should use Canada as a model... We would never... er... never mind.
1997 called, they want their stupid idea back.
I'm not saying Titanic didn't make a profit for the studio involved, but the gross and what the studio makes are vastly different. Theater chain "buyers" can negotiate a deal for each movie (or in groups - I'll take Piece of Crap if you give me Summer Blockbuster), meaning they can set the percentages for the entire run. From what I remember, Titanic wasn't predicted to gross very much (they were calling it Waterworld 2), so it likely got a standard deal that was something like this: Theater keeps 30% for the 1st two weeks, then it drops to 60% for two weeks, 50% for the next two, and 35% (the minimum) for the rest of the run. Titanic stayed number one for a very long time (14 weeks, maybe?) but the grosses were very even - around $20-$30 mil per weekend, and continued to play for eight months in some theaters, so the majority of the gross came at the 35% rate (for the studio). Add marketing costs, which are usually quoted as at least equal to the budget (and this film certainly met that), so $200 million, and you have much less profit than most people think. And that's just domestic distribution - foreign deals are usually more skewed towards the foreign distributor. Also, Cameorn put up some of his own money against the gross, so he made well over $100 million. So Titanic made a tidy profit, but my guess is the studio really only made $100-200 mil., which is 5-10% of the gross - not very good by Hollywood standards
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
'Content creators' need to unshackle themselves from the corporations which grudgingly pay them such a small cut from the profits. The only thing the corporate rights holders have to offer is their ability to market the content. Unfortunately the independent content creators do not have this at their disposal unless they are willing to sign the contract and get shafted.
Shameless plug: Go to the website in my sig and buy some tunes. I will get 90% of the sale price from all of the digital distributors and from CD sales. It will help me a lot! If I were signed, I might be better known but I would get a tiny share of the profit. Support independent artists! Thanks!
http://www.acetonestudio.com