This week the news broke that the British government had announced plans to overhaul UK copyright law following recommendations contained in the Hargreaves report which had been commissioned by British Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Billboard article HERE provides detail including comments from UK label trade BPI chief-executive Geoff Taylor, “Every day blatantly illegal foreign sites flout our laws, rip off consumers and musicians and wreak huge damage on our creative sector. Government has recognized that blocking such sites could help to reduce levels of infringement, but that there needs to be a more effective framework that enables speedier action than would be possible under the relevant DEA provisions.” Taylor called for his government to “act urgently to put in place effective means to protect consumers, creators and UK jobs from the impact of illegal foreign sites.”
On the face of it, the UK government’s decision is bad news for labels and artists in the UK and, of course, that impacts us here as well. However, a recent U.K. court ruling ordering UK ISP BT to block access to the movie rights infringing website Newzbin2 leads us to infer that current legal interpretations and marketplace solutions to protect creators are already or will soon be in place in Great Britain.
The issues are:
*there’ll be no UK government intervention to block websites trafficking unlicensed creative content (but there is UK gov’t support of ISP’s doing that blocking similar to the recently announced U.S. ISP Copyright Alert Program in which A2IM members’ music will be included),
*Allowing mash-ups without licensing from copyright owners,
*Allowing usage of Orphan Works (A2IM’s concerns about how “orphan” is defined is something we’ve messaged consistently).
