Mandelson seeks to amend copyright law in new crackdown on filesharing – The Guardian — Could he make it any more clear that he’s in bed with Big Content? Is this sneaky crooked amendment aimed at creating the office of Pirate Finder General?
Lord Mandelson is seeking to amend the laws on copyright to give the government sweeping new powers against people accused of illegal downloading.
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The proposed alteration to the Copyright Act would create a new offence of downloading material that infringes copyright laws, as well as giving new powers or rights to “protect” rights holders such as record companies and movie studios – and, controversially, conferring powers on “any person as may be specified” to help cut down online infringement of copyright.The changes proposed seem small – but are enormously wideranging, given both the breadth of even minor copyright infringement online, where photographs and text are copied with little regard to ownership, and the complexity of ownership.
Mandelson says in his letter that he is concerned about “cyberlockers” – websites that offer users private storage spaces whose contents can be shared by passing a web link via email.
“These can be used entirely legitimately, but recently rights holders have pointed to them as being used for illegal use,” Mandelson writes in the letter.
But the proposal to alter the Copyright Act in this way has caused alarm within government, where some fear that an incoming Tory administration could use it to curry favour with Murdoch, head of the News International publishing group.
More copyright insanity. Next they’ll be saying “You’d better not be singing copyrighted songs in the shower, either!”
For more copyright insanity, check out the story about “Walmart Won’t Let Family Print Photos Of Dead Relative For Funeral”
[unbelieveable – ed.]
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/11/19/help-eff-save-web-content-prove-podcasting-and-media-patent-is-wrong/#more-8394
Patenting the use of all episodic media on the Web might sound absurd, but the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted just such a patent, to a company called VoloMedia. It’s a significant issue, one that could threaten the freedom of all media distribution online. Wherever you are in the world, you can help.
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The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s patent-busting project aims to take down unfair patents that threaten common-sense uses of technology. A number of these have applied to music and audio. The EFF has already won a big victory against what had been the worst offender – media giant Clear Channel actually successfully patented recording live shows. (No, really — recording a live gig, then burning them on the spot. The EFF was able to bust that patent.) The advocacy group also scored significant victories against patents on sending and receiving online streams and encoding media. (If someone thought they could patent your ears and charge you royalties for hearing, they probably would.)
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VoloMedia’s Bogus Patent – And Why It’s Dangerous
VoloMedia has been granted a patent for “providing episodic media.” The patent is broad enough to endanger any independent podcast or episodic media producer. Over the summer, Volomedia’s own Murgesh Navar sidestepped concerns about patent abuse to brag on the company blog about just how broad that claim was – that even non-RSS-based episodic media belong to them:
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Aside from the “before the start of podcasting” lie – and I believe “lie” is the only accurate word – it’s the implied threat that should send a chill down the spine of anyone using the Internet. Make no mistake about it: VoloMedia wants anyone doing podcasting, via any mechanism, to work with them.
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Plain English translation: if what you’re doing with media has episodes, you owe VoloMedia.
If this patent were allowed to stand, and if VoloMedia were able to successfully enforce it, it would have a chilling effect on all Internet distribution. Regardless of the likelihood of their legal success, that underlies the fundamental problem with patent law – it has come completely unglued from reality. That alone ought to motivate people to fully document these issues and try to effect change.
Lord Mandelson is the business secretary not secretary of state.
#4 ikapuza89
He’s both
I stand corrected, I thought it was still John Prescott. Embarrassing…
Copyright was suppose to be a private monopoly. The person who got it was suppose to enforce it. So if governments and ISPs are getting getting in on the enforcement do they get a bigger cut of the revenue? If copyright owners are outsourcing their responsibility they should also give away part of the profits to the ones enforcing their responsibility.
@pben
The government agrees to uphold it in return for a copy of the work being placed in a copyright library (British Library, U Cambridge, U Oxford).
The reason is that a copy of the copyrighted work, such as the source code for Windows7 and a DVD of “Debbie does Dallas” is available for scholars to study for the good of the nation.
I was thinking of buying a few DVDs for Christmas presents this year. But now I’m thinking, “screw the MPAA, I’ll stick to things not copyrighted by mega corporations”. Probably a lot less costly, anyway. And they can blame piracy for yet more sales losses. Rather than millions of people being out of work, that weren’t the year before.
As for movies, I wouldn’t even bother to pirate 99.9% of what’s made today. And much of it, isn’t exactly what you could call an original idea. Like, how many vampire and werewolf stories have there been, so far? Or how many world disaster movies? Come on! If it hasn’t been Meteors, or Glaciers, or evil Aliens, or earthquakes, or something. It’s been a combination of two or more of these. Forget piracy. The industry plagiarizes and steals from itself. Oh, but I guess that’s Ok. As long as the producers and directors are all old buddies.
What the man means is I have been offered a major bribe to sell out the people of the UK and I can’t wait to cash the check.