"Expert Body" To Decide Which Sites To Block For Copyright Infringement

Barence writes "Rights holders in the UK are proposing to appoint a 'council' and an 'expert body' to decide which websites should be blocked by ISPs for infringing copyright. The controversial Digital Economy Act made provisions for sites accused of hosting copyrighted material to be blocked by British ISPs. 'The cost of the proposed scheme is not indicated, but is likely to be substantial, including the running cost of two non-judicial independent bodies and the cost to ISPs of permanently blocking websites,' Consumer Focus said."

Comments

Re:Prove or GTF Out

[Anonymous Coward]

Please note that this story is from England, and while England may look a lot like the US, its present government is assuredly not chartered under a constitution starting with "We The People". Other than that, you're largely correct.

Copyright as we know it (a government-established, time-limited, monopoly to each printed work, held by the author) started with the Statute of Anne, as a reform of the previously existing unlimited monopoly on all printed works held by the "Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers" (i.e. the London printer's guild, the MAFIAA of their day).

Of course the publishers, anxious to regain their previous unlimited monopoly in fact, if not in law, fought the effect of the law on two fronts. They sought to have a common-law copyright (of infinite duration) recognized, with the Statute only codifying a co-existing fixed-term right. To support this, they went to great efforts to spread the notion that copyright was a natural right of the author, and existed for their just compensation -- despite the clear statement of the Statute that copyright was a grant of the government "for the Encouragement of Learned Men to Compose and Write useful Books"; thus shifting the question from one of effective policy to one of theft, piracy, and the author's presumed starving children. (Of course, the publishers, then as now, were the ones profiting, usually buying the rights to a book outright, rather than signing a contract with eventual payouts based on sales -- so the benefit to hungry children was and is quite unclear.)

Additionally, they sought statutory extensions to the fixed term when it was about to run out. To quote an anti-MAFIAA pamphlet of the time:

I see no reason for granting a further term now, which will not hold as well for granting it again and again, as often as the old ones expire... it will in effect be establishing a perpetual monopoly, a thing deservedly odious in the eye of the law; it will be a great cramp to trade, a discouragement to learning, no benefit to authors, but a general tax on the public; and all this only to increase the private gain of booksellers.

Unlike their counterparts in the 20th century, they were unsuccessful in getting that first extension at the time; since the USA, after it attained independence, enacted a near-perfect clone of the British copyright law of the time, it's quite reasonable to suppose the sanity and spine of Parliament at this time is wholly responsible for you having any public-domain works available.