Want to meddle with IP rights? Use the law, not amended regulations Government plans to change the law so that future reforms to the copyright framework can be made through regulations rather than primary legislation could create problems for businesses, an expert has said. The proposed changes would make it easier for the government to change the law in relation to copyright. Earlier this …
I don't really care how they bring in exceptions, as long as they do it.
Surely if I have brought some media, I am buying the right to watch it when and how I want to?
So if I have legally paid for something, I should be allowed to rip it, copy it, convert it and play it wherever I want, as long as its not for profit.
I am 100% behind FACT in cracking down on DVD/BluRay farms, they do cost the film industry money.
BUT someone who rips all films they buy onto his media center is also not a lost sale.
I'm less happy about parody usage of copyrighted material, since that is generally for profit and in those cases the copyright holder should be paid, whether its a fixed fee or something I don't know, but I know if I created a piece of music and it was used in a parody of some kind without paying me, or getting permission to use it gratis, then I would be angry!
But since the RIAA , MPAA & other industry players seem to control government thinking, I doubt we will ever get real protections for fair use in this country.
For example, I can't get "TT3D: Closer To The Edge" AT ALL here in the States. Not on Bluray, not on DVD, not on stone tablet. There's no way I can "legally pay for it" but I can get it from pirates.
For me, piracy is the only lever I have to encourage such things I want as non-regionlocked disks, stuff I can play on Linux, and TV channels "a la carte" meaning I can choose which channels I want instead of buying packages carefully selected to maximize the trash.
You want my money, you have to sell me the fucking product in a form which I can use it.
I stopped pirating music when iTunes removed DRM so I could play it on Linux or whatever the hell I chose to play it on.
Surely, that depends where and what one bought.
For instance, if someone reading this were to purchase a set of DVDs on an auction site that contained 250,000 illegal copies of copyrighted works, regardless of the falsehoods contained in the listing about current "bestsellers" for various e-reading devices being in the public domain, he/she is not entitled to rip or resell or copy or convert.
The purchaser would be as much a copyright infringer as the person who sold him/her the illegal DVDs
because any reasonable person would know that ebooks by such well know authors as John Grisham, J K Rowling, Jeffrey Archer etc are not in the public domain.
EBooks are massively abused on the auction sites, especially by Britons living in the UK, so one hopes that American authors will not be considered orphans under any revised law.
The government is hamstrung as to what exceptions it can (lawfully) introduce by virtue of the directive. As such, the legislation simply needs to say that the power to implement exceptions by statutory instrument is limited to those exceptions set out in the directive.
The power under statutory instrument is simply to select from a predefined menu of exceptions, and implement them — primary legislation is unnecessary, since the scope is so limited, and would simply slow down the process unnecessarily. Which might be exactly what is intended by some parties?
"Business Secretary Vince Cable offered his "assurances" that future changes to the law in these areas would be subject to "proper parliamentary scrutiny" and that, in practice, the "order-making" powers would be used to ..."
Oh yes, you can always believe politicians when they tell you what new laws will be used for and how there will be proper scrutiny if they are modified.
I thought that parody and pastiche were already protected under copyright law, as was a 'reasonable' level of copying for genuine comment and criticism?
The purpose, or the intention of legislation, or the assurances of the lawmakers count for naught. The *only* thing that matters is what the legislation itself says. If it permits something undesirable, it should be changed before it reaches the statute book.
It was not the intention of RIPA to allow councils to tag individuals applying for school places. Jack Straw said "it is not our intention to ..." lots of times during its passage.
Having fairly static laws are a requirement for business. Encoding things in law is supposed to make sure that they are scrutinised for correctness properly, although since the beginning of nulab (and into the current regime) we've seen a steady erosion of the use of parliament for effective and clear law-making.
What happens if playing DVDs & BR with VLC becomes legal and you build up a nice linux STB business based on that and then they change their mind again after a dinner with the hardware manufacturers? The legal process is there to make sure that things have been thought through properly, rather than being made on a whim.
Having laws which are guided by moral principle rather than auctioned off to the highest bidder are the most stable.
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