UK dons dunce hat on copyright law

It doesn't matter

Given that we are not allowed to take pictures in a public place when that place includes policemen, sensitive locations listed on an unreleased database etc. Any dissent is then dealt with by a baton charge to the legs/back by a masked Goon of the Met.

In order to take pictures of these areas, you need a black car with google down the side.

so if the public cannot make copyrighted works, we shouldnt be so selfish as to assume we have any rights at all! Are you with me George Orwell?

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God no.

If the government has given up on their reform in light of the Gower's report please, don't try and push them to revive it!!!!

The government reform in light of the Gower's report outright ignored most of the recommendations. One recommendation was copyright term length suggesting it should be lowered or at worst left as is, but the government in it's reform decided to up it to 75 or 95 years instead of 50.

If the government has given up it's for the best. Yes it's bad now, but if you push them to change it they'll make it even worse. Let's wait until we replace Labour and have a slightly more competent government in and push them instead please?

'The UK was the only country to be given an overall 'F' score by the report. '

So we still did well enough to study chemisty at A-level?

creating property

"Copyright is treated as property right…and hence copyright owners have the right to decide whether and how the copyrighted work is used."

this makes sense... and surely it's not only in the UK this is the case, I'm sure that there was some story that the family of Johnny Cash had stopped the Ring of Fire track being used in a Diarrhoea medication commercial.

that said, I can't understand why format shifting is a crime.

and if format shifting isn't a crime, then surely downloading MP3's of songs you already have on CD, or downloading videos that you already have on DVD but are too lazy to convert wouldn't be a crime either?

@Ian

'Let's wait until we replace Labour and have a slightly more competent government in'

I'm not sure I can wait that long Ian.. I may only have another 30 or 40 years left to live.

At the next election it seems likely that we will replace the current crop of lying, thieving, cheating, embezzling low-lifes with the same lying, thieving, cheating, embezzling low-lifes that f*cked us up last time around. Not sure how much of an improvement that is likely to be.

Not quite like that either

A J Stiles,

Most copyright cases are civil tort actions, not criminal prosecutions, so will be heard by a judge alone rather than a jury. Unless your case gets appealed up to the Court of Appeal or House of Lords, it's not going to set a precedent. And even if it was a criminal case (e.g. for selling bootleg copies) jury decisions don't set precedents.

Yep...

Yep, I think an "F" rating sounds right. The US isn't great about this either, but at least we don't have an agency trying to ask for fees for people at work listening to the radio.

That report...

I'm sure I've seen it somewhere before...

the problem

is that the companies want it both ways, they want it to be treated like property or copyright, depending on whichever happens to favour them.

I'd like it to be one way or the other, either you buy a physical product, which you can do what you want with, or you buy a licence to use the content.

for example, if it's the latter, then i'd be fully entitled to a blu-ray of a film i owned on dvd or vhs, however i obtained it, as i already have a licence to the content. Or, if i had a game on pc, i'd be fully entitled to an xbox version of the same game (again, however i obtain it). Music would be the same, if you have a licence for the music, the actual format or delivery mechanism is irrelevent.

Still not quite like that

Regardless of the fine details, the fact still remains that no case of simple format-shifting is ever going to get anywhere near a court of law. It is unprosecutable.

Levy

So tell me please, why are we still paying a levy on all blank media sold in the UK ?

You know, that one introduced to allow us to legally make a copy for personal use only.

Oh wait ...

@ ShaggyDoggy

We aren't.

Clueless fuckwits

"The five countries rated best for user protections in copyright law by Consumers International were [...] China [...]."

And we're supposed to take this report seriously? Yay, let's all rush to turn the UK into a totalitarian dictatorship where you can die for holding politically awkward views. Now *that's* user protection for you.

OK, so China presumably gets brownie points from these idiots because their idea of copyright is you can pirate as much as you like as long as it's the other guys stuff being nicked. Sadly that only really works as long as the law exists for the benefit of parasites and (at most) one creative entity, (that exception hereafter being known as "we" or "us").