Slashdot Mirror
UK Reviewing Copyright Laws
Uebergeek writes "It looks like the UK is going to be reviewing its copyright laws. Prime Minister David Cameron specifically cites the US's Fair Use doctrine as something they wish to incorporate into their own laws... apparently they wish to 'encourage the sort of creative innovation that occurs in America.' One can only assume that they've been missing the continual assault on the Fair Use doctrine here in the States."
Best news of the day !
Well, I guess that they might see the value in the law as written, even if that doesn't tend to be how the law plays out.
Copy Canadian laws instead of American ones.
While I wholeheartedly welcome the opportunity to improve some of the frankly stupid laws floating around at the moment, the pessimist in me wonders how this will be twisted by lobbying into some ridiculous new round of laws. I'm going to wait six months before I celebrate this.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
Finally, UK TV might dump all those brain-dead quiz shows where people "know things" and that David Attaboy or whatever and his animal sex preoccupation and move towards more proper explosion-based documentaries like we have in the US.
And the news? Good grief - I watched UK news and the whole time it was just people talking about facts and things. There wasn't a SINGLE ARGUMENT or fight during the entire show. What the hell kind of news reporting is that?
This space available.
As an avid fan of David's shows on conservations, perhaps instead we can deport Glen Beck to insure that citizens of the UK really are brain dead and thus unable to challenge our technological superiority.
Starts good end bad. The pessimist in me is that due to "compromise" with "industry leader" a tad tiny bit of fair use will be added, but in addition heavy fine , prison stay will be added for copyright infrigement, and maybe even copyright lengthened a bit.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing#United_Kingdom
ACTA Sweetner(TM) guaranteed no calories and no teeth.
Cameron says, "So I can announce today that we are reviewing our IP laws, to see if we can make them fit for the internet age." However, he fails to mention that they are already "reviewing" the UK copyright laws under the veil of ACTA and in secret. This is just a bit of fluff to remove some heat from what is already a done deal.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
While we desperately need some sanity injected into the system after the Digital Britain Bill, I suspect this is going to really favour big-media's use of our copyrighted work.
"He said the law could be relaxed to allow greater use of copyright material without the owner's permission."
There must be plenty of companies drooling at the idea of smash and grab raids on flickr accounts and GPL'd software.
Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
Google have been lobbying Cameron for certain legal rights to help their business model, and Cameron will incorporate their request in a new draconian copyright proposal which will hinder other business models (and freedom in general).
Why would Cameron, a deeply conservative aristocrat, care one bit about what the riff-raff can do with his supporter's "intellectual property"? The British have caught the plague that began on my side of the Atlantic: kleptocrats compose a huge part of government, and they've been on a crusade against egalitarianism since the 1980s. Everything done by conservatives in power is aimed at enriching the already rich and reducing everyone else to desperate peasants. They yearn for a return to the Gilded Age or worse. If a conservative creates policy that benefits the people at large, he's done it by accident. Academic rationales and appeals to the public, however erudite or reasonable they might appear, are just meaningless words put together by consultants who specialize in creating talking points that promote a particular narrative among a particular audience. These statements are tools with a particular purpose, not sincere attempts to explain the genesis of an action and demonstrate its worth.
Knowing this, you must consider every action taken by a conservative through the lens of their ultimate goal. If Cameron says he wants to revise copyright law to foster creativity, don't take him at his word. Ask yourself, "In what way will these modifications enrich powerful backers? What loopholes exist? What narrative is the government trying to push? What does it prepare the population to accept? How can the change under consideration be used to hurt the opposition? Where are the lies? Where is the selective truth?"
Finally, consider the most important question of all: "Will the net effect of this action be to enrich the wealthy?" The answer will invariably be "yes".
But based on everything I've read online, including here on slashdot, US copyright law is the most absurd in the world. As far as I can see there is basically no fair use if you live within the United States of America. Even if US law allows it I would hazard to guess that many people are unwilling and reluctant to apply "fair use". The litigious nature of your corporations and government almost ensure that most sane persons will err on the side of caution, and maybe not publish anything at all in fear of being sued. How the fuck does fear encourage innovation?
After a little research, it seems to me that Israel is the first (and only) nation in the world where "fair use" is possibly a "right" (see the section titled ' New User "Rights" ').
This is since Sept. 2009. My impression is that the decision has been appealed but hasn't been heard yet. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama's administration wouldn't have a few (unofficial) things to say to the Israeli government when the appeal comes up in the Israeli courts.
Fair dealing isn't really similar. It's limited to a very specific set of situations that mean that most people are not able to take advantage of it. As an example, parody is not considered fair dealing.
How about also fixing the insane libel laws as well?
While we're here thinking how good this is that we will be able to post reviews of films,games and music on our blogs and not get takedown notices. But what this really means is that shitty british TV that does no original thinking (the news channels just report what they read on twitter) will just compile youtube videos and such without having to pay or ackowledge anyone. Which in a nice rounded world of share-alike licenses may seem all groovy, until you realize they're surrounded by adverts and on subscription channels. Heck, they'll probably even advertise it as a kind of internet summary show so that you don't have to go to the effort, risk viruses or bumping into paedos, etc. And the dumbass british public will probably lap it up.
Also if the law becomes "using less than one minute of footage" from any source but your hilarious slapstick youtube video is only 59 seconds long they'll be able to lift the whole thing. Again, in the world off CC this might not be too bad, but woe betide you if you accidentally use 1:01 of a clip from a commercial movie in your review because the law is clear and you'll go to jail. Of course if a big media company slips up in the same way they'll only get a letter from OfCom about it.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
On the subject of copyright some time ago, opposing extension of copyright, and was not impressed by the response.
Whilst he didn't reply personally, his office trotted out the tired old BSA/FAST/RIAA line of breach of copyright being theft, sponsoring terrorism etc,
So for this reason I will be highly surprised if he has had some sort of "road to Damascus" type conversion
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Enshrining it as a right kind of suggests that the copyright holder has more of a right to the content than they actually have. In fact, the copyright holder is granted a temporary monopoly, not because of any intrinsic "rights" (he doesn't have any to the content), but to benefit society. So, you don't need fair use as a "right", you already have all the rights anyway. Fair use is an exemption to a temporary monopoly.
A friend of mine who studied law said that parody can come under the "ctriticism" exception and there was legal precedent to this effect. I suspect that this is somewhat more limited an exception than in the US though. It is certainly the case that British publishers and producers will usually clear it with the copyright holder but this could just be playing safe.
Remember, these are the same conservatives (read idiots) who thought public health care would be better if modeled on the American system and if only the railroads were privately owned like in the US the same excellent results might be achieved.
There is just one tiny problem. The UK is not the US. It takes a certain type of person to be an American and the average brit doesn't have what it takes.
Take for instance the love for the BBC. State funded TV? No American would be able to stand even the thought of it, let alone watch it. London and its traffic regulation? Laws AGAINST cars? What is this, California? If so, then were is the sun?
But hey, you didn't want labour, so you went back to the conservatives, the guys you were so sick of you though Blair was a breath of fresh air. Amusing thing politics. Watch the sheep run back and forth between butchers to find the one who culls them the least.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"apparently they wish to 'encourage the sort of creative innovation that occurs in America.' One can only assume that they've been missing the continual assault on the Fair Use doctrine here in the States."
The two aren't mutually exclusive and, in the UK, revisions to our laws would help address a pernicious problem. It goes without saying that the US has, partly as a result of such nebulous doctrines, the most creative legal industry on the planet; one which contributes significantly to the overall economy. In the UK, where the economy is so fragile that even lawyers with parliamentary incomes are feeling the squeeze, borrowing such innovations makes perfect and practical sense.
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p09_fair_use
.. is theft of culture.
Maybe he meant to say Canadian fair-use policy?
I know I certainly get confused sometimes as to what's in Great Britain compared to the United Kingdom, so it's understandable if he gets the US and Canada mixed up.
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
'It's limited to a very specific set of situations that mean that most people are not able to take advantage of it.'
Indeed. Simply ripping a CD you own won't generally be for 'research and private study, criticism, review, and news reporting' so it's actually not legal, though a majority of the UK population think it is:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7176538.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8000876.stm
Fair Use is, in fact, a product of the US Constitution. There are two separate and somewhat conflicting constitutional provisions in play here:
Fair Use is a doctrine developed by judges in the 19th century to help resolve the conflict between these two provisions. It was later codified in the 20th century, but with the intent of preserving the existing judge-made law.
Rights enshrined in the Constitution do not enforce themselves. Some constitutional rights are so well-established that they seem to enforce themselves, but in marginal cases these rights must be asserted in court. In a noted recent case, a group called Citizens United was prohibited from speaking about a presidential candidate during the election, because of the source of some of its funding. Political speech is at the very core of the First Amendment, but the question was a close one, and could only be established by asserting it in court.
The fact that Fair Use must often be defended in court comes from the fact-intensive nature of the doctrine, making it difficult to decide a priori whether Fair Use applies or not. This uncertainty, combined with the American Rule for paying legal fees (each party pays his own lawyers), skews the playing field in favor of the big copyright holders. This is true even though Fair Use is, at bottom, a Constituional right.
they might even enshrine fair use as a right.. rather than merely as a "defense"
When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld serial extension of the copyright term in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the opinion of the Court included a section strongly implying that were it not for the fair use defense, copyright would violate the First Amendment. This suggests at least that freedom of the press implies fair use.
Also, note ACTA is an enforcement agreement, and doesn't really touch basic definitions of what constitutes an IP infringement
Of course it isn't an agreement on infringement of rights in IPv4 addresses. Managing address space on the Internet is not the job of countries' copyright offices. Please don't say "IP" when you mean copyright.
In many Common Law jurisdictions, the equivalent concept to Fair Use is Fair Dealing. A recent Supreme Court of Canada ruling described Fair Dealing as a right.
I will s/send an email to and phone him as I have a direct number to Cameron I have influence. /. users, take this with a pinch of salt, there are people with power on dashslot! consider this dealt with.
(Another too-late post...)
The difference between US "Fair Use" and UK "Fair Dealing" is at least somewhat described at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fair_dealing#United_Kingdom and in greater detail by a McGill Law Review PDF paper linked there.
As I read it, broadly the UK system enumerates a (restricted, fixed) set of allowed exceptions, while the US system allows any use conceivably to be "fair" pursuant to a set of factors (that are in practice defined by the court as-needed.)
Apparently the UK system doesn't explicitly allow "parody" which is one reason this comes up (as sort of referenced in the BBC article).
But I suspect the UK copyright minister isn't really interested in promoting "parody"; it's more about trying not to strangle the next Google from being invented in the UK. Ask yourself the broader business/economic question like "Google has taken such liberties with copyright fair use in their business model... man that worked out well... why couldn't Google have been invented in the UK? Oh yeah, the copyright system is really picky about what is/isn't allowed and this is anti-innovation; maybe we should legislate by liberty-allowing priority/tests than explictly enumerating consumers' rights and let the courts sort it out".
--LP