Slashdot Log In
UK Think Tank Calls For Fair Use Of Your Own CDs
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Oct 29, 2006 10:15 AM
from the fair-use-i-think-it's-called dept.
from the fair-use-i-think-it's-called dept.
jweatherley writes "The BBC reports that a UK think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, has called for the legalization of format shifting. In a report commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, they state that copyright laws are out of date, and that people should have a 'private right to copy' which would allow them to legally copy their own CDs and DVDs on to home computers, laptops and phones. The report goes on to say that: 'it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.' The report also argues that there is no evidence the current 50-year copyright term is insufficient. The UK music industry is campaigning to extend the copyright term in sound recordings to 95 years."
Related Stories
[+]
UK Copyright Extension Not Happening 391 comments
chiark writes "In a surprising move (surveys said that the public supports extending copyright), the UK will not extend copyright to 95 years following a recent study. Back when this was was covered on slashdot last year, I wrote to my MP and thought no more of it, but recently a UK thinktank has called for fair use to be enshrined in UK Law. Looks like the government is realizing that the public are the ones that vote 'em in or out." From the article: "Sir Cliff Richard and Jethro Tull had been among artists lobbying for copyright to last 95 years, rather than the present 50. The decision means that from 2008 Sir Cliff's earliest recordings will start to come out of copyright. "
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
I see just one problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I see just one problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I see just one problem (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, that's that then
Re:I see just one problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It will be a long climb back out of this particular hole for the media content generators.
Parent
Re:I see just one problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Contrary to the think tanks that come up with evil and outrageous ideas; those the government always listens to. Or could it be that the accept and reject ideas from both, at their own judgment, but we just notice and remember more when things don't happen the way we want them to happen?
Re:I see just one problem (Score:4, Informative)
Why? The two things aren't remotely comparable.
Patents are relatively damaging, they're a net removal of a technology from the public domain in the hope that the existance of the patent system itself will encourage invention over-all. Copyright only rewards actual creation with monopolies. If someone chooses not to make use of a copyrighted item, they're not restricted in any way.
Lifetime or X years, whichever is longer, strikes me as a reasonable copyright term length. Patents, on the other hand... I'd like to see them even further restricted, or abolished altogether in favour of a system of grants and prizes.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If the patent is truly inventive - not one of the "it should never have been granted to the patent troll in the first place" patents, its not a removal of technology from the public domain, since it did involve unique creation that never existed before and wasn't obvious.
But literature or music or art - give me a million monkeys and enough time and I'll recreate ALL literature. As for art, a lot of it could be improved by an attack of killer monkeys - on the fawning art critics who glorify drek.
The sam
Re:I see just one problem (Score:4, Insightful)
If copyright is supposed to be about protecting the artists then fine let's protect the artist. Corporations are not artists and that copyright should never be something they could own.
Parent
Oooh, so close! (Score:5, Insightful)
'it is not the music industry's job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.'
There I was thinking it was the job of society (i.e. the people themselves) to decide what rights people should have, and the job of the government to put into place laws describing and safeguarding (and where appropriate, limiting) those rights.
Guess I'm just getting old.
Re:Oooh, so close! (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In a democracy, the people ARE the government, and so they would both be correct. In a republic, the government is doing the law making, and the decisions for it. You may have elected them, but that's not the same as making the decisions.
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?gwp=13&s=democ racy [answers.com]
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?gwp=13&s=repub lic [answers.com]
Re:Oooh, so close! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Guess I'm just getting old.
No... you're just beginning to understand why the Americans chose to seperate themselves from the British 230 years ago.
The Americans have a completely different view of what constitues basic human liberty tha
Re: (Score:2)
1) If anything, it's worse in the US - PATRIOT Act, the DMCA, the repeal of habeus corpus, Guantanamo, etc.
2) I'm a Brit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Oooh, so close! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, these are not absolutes. All generalizations are false.
Parent
Re:Oooh, so close! (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I like (at least the idea of) the NHS and social security; it gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to think that at least part of my taxes are going to help those less fortunate than myself. A couple of friends have had serious illnesses that they probably would not have survived if not for the NHS (who, at 20, expects to develop cancer?). I see those who oppose such state-provided facilities funded through taxes as short-sighted and selfish. Opinions differ, of course.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
And here I was, thinking that people were endowed with certain inalienable rights nautrally. I guess I'm just getting old with this "natural rights" voodoo.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Oops, shouldn't have posted that, now maybe I won't get to hear any more Americans educating me on the safeguarding of human tort^H^H^H^Hrights.
Summary inaccurate? (Score:2)
I'm not sure how accurate the above line from the summary is, since the article seems to contradict it:
It sounds to me as if this report is independent of the Gover
The job of government... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The job of government... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
95 year protection? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:95 year protection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:95 year protection? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Job for governments, society or a corporations? (Score:4, Insightful)
Government can jail me, society can tell me to get lost, corporations can sue me -- but I will still use these hands and these ears and this voice as God gave them to me (yes, a religious slashdotter). No one can take them away, and no one can tell me what to do with them. I don't use them to hurt anyone. If I spend time making copies of something, it is my time I am wasting. I could use my hands to make a copy of a mechanical design that is patented -- it might take me thousands of hours, or I could just go and buy it. Some things are difficult to copy, so my time preference says it is better to buy it. I could make a copy of a CD -- it might take me 30 seconds, or I could just go buy it. Time preference works in my favor in this case.
I pay the plumber to fix the toilet -- his current action in front of me is worth my money. I pay the band to perform live for me -- their current action is worth my money. Recording their music on a CD is a great way for them to advertise their abilities to get me to come to their live show, but the CD is worthless. Supply and demand, people. The supply is near infinite (for the recorded music), so the price goes to zero. But the supply of the live band is limited, so the price goes up to meet demand.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If you can pull off a completely free market and ignore copyrights, then yes, the book will approach zero price because the data is infinitely copiable. I suppose then the motivation for non-fiction writers is to write by commission: e.g., a cons
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Good goals, but fundamentally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
I wholeheartedly support the things they're trying to achieve, but...I would be hard-pressed to find a statement that could be more fundamentally wrong than the above. It's that sort of thinking that's got us in the mess we're in.
The government, in no way whatsoever decides what rights people have. The function of legitimate government is no more or less than to recognize and to protect the rights people have*. The government doesn't grant rights, people have rights because they're people. The government, if anything, limits exercise of rights in the name of social order (don't read anything into this statement that isn't there - I'm not advocating anarchy, this is a legitimate function of government and necessary for society to function).
By ceding the power to government to decide what rights people have, we've opened the door for exactly the kind of abuse that now runs rampant. Government is controlled by money, and huge quantities of money are controlled by the pseudo-citizens we refer to as "corporations." Granting power to government is granting power to corporations.
It would be easy to say that the quote is just verbal shorthand, but I think there's a fundamental difference between the mindset "we have rights, and we delegate some authority to government" and the mindset "the government has authority, and delegates some rights to us" that is exhibited by such a statement.
*To demonstrate this to yourself, consider this: if government grants rights to people rather than people having rights and granting authority to government, then this means that there can be no such thing as a government abuse of rights. After all, if government can legitimately decide what your rights are, then you have no legitimate complaints about government trampling them. And I don't think you really need to look too far from home or too far in the past to find examples that, to me, pretty clearly indicate that the government can trample rights.
Re:Good goals, but fundamentally wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Note: the speaker did not say which rights the people (ie, the citizens of the state) have, it was which rights consumers have. We're not talking about fundamental rights of the citizen, we're talking about the rights of the consumer within a marketplace scenario. Generally, consumer protection is delegated to government as a power to ensure that vendors are not allowed to market falsely, exercise unconscionable contracts, etc. It's usually accepted in most European states that those possessing capital (the vendors) are in a stronger position than those parting with it (the consumers). The people have a right to expect that government will act as a shield for the weaker party, in order to ensure a fair marketplace. In other words, whether we're talking about a European model of liberty, or an American one, the point remains: consumer protection is generally a power which government has been given popular authority to exercise.
Remember the context: copyright legislation. At the moment, we have copyright legislation that's almost exclusively to the advantage of rightsholders, ignoring the basic truth that the fruits of knowledge can be shared almost trivially today. The IPPR are saying that it is the government's right and duty to reassert that ideas and their expressions are not primarily commercial quantities. That the right for consumers to copy their own possessions is not one which should have been ceded in the 300 years of copyright legislation.
Your point was addressing the nature and rights of the citizen in the modern state: a far more general and differently rooted argument than the point at hand. Some here will consider that those rights are natural rights (ie, they stem from our being human), others will consider that rights are essentially civil (ie, they are reserved/ceded as part of a social contract); in either case, the power of government to act as a fair market arbiter tends to be accepted by either construction. (Yes, I'm aware that some libertarians do not accept that such a role of government is legitimate; however, the libertarian constructs of Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia would accept such a power as proper).
--Ng
Parent
Uh, Dude... (Score:5, Funny)
Progress (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not the government's job to decide our rights. We have rights, they are inalienable. It's the government's job to protect our rights. Protect our rights from corporations which would ignore or destroy them for a buck, or the power to make a buck. And we create our government to protect our rights. Our job is creating and perpetuating that government.
When the founders of the US specified the rights we have that the government would protect, they also made a compromise with the existing economy. The government would promote "the progress of science and useful arts" [usconstitution.net] by granting temporary monopolies - exclusive rights - to authors and inventors of their writings and discoveries. This limitation on freedom of others to copy and use writings and inventions was necessary in the late 1700s, and for many years after. But as the centuries have progressed, those writings and inventions have changed the economy so that "the progress of science and useful arts" is better promoted by more copying, not less. Even if temporary monopolies like copyrights and patents are still necessary, they are necessary for much less time than before. Instead, those monopolies are now extended for much more time, totally unjustified by any necessity to "promote progress".
The original time set in the 1790s was 17 years, a human generation. The next generation that grew up with the writings and inventions could, by the time they became adults and likely started having their own children, use those writings and inventions freely. Writings and inventions passed into the folk art, the folk consciousness, the folk wisdom, the folk heritage, for everyone to use. By which time, most of the value, especially of the writings, was delivered not by the author, but by the audience, the consumers, the people using it and perpetuating it. And any honest author will tell you that the process of adoption of their writings by their people is the most powerful promotion of their useful art.
Maybe the Internet has changed things, along with the rest of communications, manufacturing and distribution tech over the past 200 years. If anything, the lifecycle of content is much shorter before it's "old", either folklore or just obsolete. Likewise with most inventions. The length of copyright and patent exclusion should be, if anything, shorter - maybe 8-10 years, maybe 2-5. Maybe different for different kinds of "writing", whether a news article or an opera. But certainly promotion of progress is much more hurt now by these monopolies.
We still have control over our governments. Except when we ignore that control, and corporations and other greedy monopolists move into the power vacuum. If we don't create governments to protect our rights, we're creating ones to destroy them.
Schoolyard ahoy! (Score:4, Insightful)
To everyone harping on the UK Govt granting rights (Score:5, Informative)
In the Lockean philosophy of the United States constitution, and Declaration of Independence, Parliamentary Sovereignty is a crime and I agree with that view. This is why we fought to free ourselves from the authority of Britain. However, it is naive for people to make such bold assertions as, "It is NOT the role of the government to grant rights", when in fact, it IS the role of government (in the UK) to grant rights and take them away. It is important to accept this reality to better understand such things as why Britain has such high voter-turnout (wouldn't we have high voter turnout if the Pres was chosen by the House, the Senate was only symbolic, There was no Supreme Court and anything a new House passed was part of the constitution?), and important for understanding why there is a movement in Britain to pass a Bill of Rights, Create a codified Constitution, and other issues that pose sticky questions: "Parliament has been ceding its authority to the EU, what happens when the EU asserts its authority over Parliament and Parliament tries to take it's authority back?" Who is sovereign in that situation?. By actually trying to understand the realities of systems of government in other countries, some people might have a better appreciation for what we have in the United States. Here, it is not the role of government to determine our rights, in Britain it is. -- Dave
Re:To everyone harping on the UK Govt granting rig (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: That Bill of Rights is for Parliament (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, that's not quite correct. The courts (which are independent of the executive. Well, as independent as any judiciary can be) have long held that there are "ordinary statutes" and "constitutional statutes". And only a new constitutional statute can overturn an existing one. In other words, things like the Human Rights Act, the Representation fo the Peoples Act and the Bill of Rights (along with the Acts of Union, Settlement, etc, etc) must be purposefully overturned. You cannot just stick a rider onto a Fisheries Bill abolishing the right of appeal, or fling in a statutory instrument asserting the right of the executive to have detention without trial. It must be specifically brought forth and voted in by Parliament (all of Parliament, not just the House of Commons).
Afterall, the right to remain silent was sustained for 300 years based on tradition and self-restraint, yet Blair's government tossed both out the window and now that long-held right that was taken for granted is now gone.
Actually, that was the last Conservative government, with Home Secretary Michael Howard introducing the legislation.
In the end, the strength of the US Constitution is only as great as those charged with its defence, and the desire of the US population to see its strictures adhered to. It didn't stop the abomination of slavery - although its power was shown when that institution was finally abolished via constitutional amendment. Similarly, the desire of the US population to refrain from state torture seems to be somewhat ambivalent right now (And we can probably thank "24" for that...
At the moment, liberty is taking a bit of a pounding either side of the Atlantic. But it will reassert itself, and when it does, the centuries of British conventions, traditions and personal desire for liberty will prove just as powerful a force as the US's instruments of state. The British method of government and preservation of liberty isn't as capricious or fragile as one might think from your posting.
--Ng
Parent
Ignorance is no excuse... (Score:5, Informative)
1) In the UK, there is parliamentary sovereignty and no written constitution
There is no *single* written constitution, but there is Magna Carta (1215) [wikipedia.org], the Bill of rights (1689) [wikipedia.org], the act of settlement (1701) [wikipedia.org], and the Parliament acts (1911, 1949) [wikipedia.org]. These collectively form the constitution [wikipedia.org] of the United Kingdom.
As for parliamentary sovereignty, that was effectively removed when the UK joined the EU - the European courts can trump UK law, and people do take cases there. Even without that step, there are cases where UK courts have ordered an act of parliament to be changed, and it has happened.
2) There are no courts with the power to overrule any law passed by parliament (no uk version of the supreme court).
Oh yes there is [wikipedia.org] although they're still readying the building...
3) There are no REAL powers to curb the parliament's will. The House of Lords is mostly symbolic...
To abuse Pauli: "that's not even wrong". The House of Lords has been a critical part of UK parliamentary infrastructure. It has sent bill after bill back to the government for adjustment, and ironically enough is *far* more protective of the "common man" than the government of the day (whichever party is in power). As an overseer of an elected government body, they could do no better.
Of course, the House of Commons can ram legislation through if the Lords reject a bill 3 times, but this causes an immense, very public row. The Lords will quite happily eloquently state their case, or write op-ed pieces for the media saying why they rejected XXX, and since they're usually for very good reasons, politicians have to squirm on live TV interviews; they don't like that, which is why it happens rarely - usually a compromise is struck, or the Lords get their way. For an organisation with seemingly no power, they have a huge impact on UK law.
4) Royal assent (it's "assent" by the way, she's not climbing anywhere)
I'll just point out that just like life-insurance, past-performance is no guarantee of future success - just because royal-assent is only very rarely refused (the last time was 1708), it is still a requirement for any law. It is still a final check-and-balance within the judicial system. It is still very much *not* a rubber-stamp. Reserve powers like these *are* important during times of crisis [wikipedia.org], eg: the hung parliament example in the link.
If I go on like this, the reply will be miles long. Shortening things a little bit:
5) There is no written Bill of Rights
Yes there is. See above.
6) Tony Blair's government recently removed the right-to-remain silent without so much as a public debate
Apart from the massive public outcry, the weeks of TV coverage, and the end result being that in fact {you can remain silent, but the court is now told that you did} being the result of it all, you mean ?
Most of what you have written in the first paragraph (I'm not going to bother with the second, this reply is long enough, and it seems to be mainly based on the assumptions in the first paragraph anyway) is wrong and/or you've misunderstood the facts. That's not too surprising I guess - it certainly would be a lot easier if everything was collected in one place, and FWIW I'd like a constitution that placed limits on the UK government, but you can't use the above arguments to get there...
Simon
Parent
The BPI already bought an extension (Score:3, Informative)
Guess where our Prime Minister Tony Blair went for a free summer holiday? That's right, Cliff Richard's private island in Barbados (another BBC story [bbc.co.uk])
Does anyone want to bet that sanity and common sense will triumph over bribery?
Yes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Betraying the Digital Media revolution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The statement didn't come from anyone in government.
Re: (Score:2)
The name of the messenger is irrelevant for the validity of the message.
The political affiniation of the messenger may at best have some relevance for judging the exact wording and portrayed importance of the message, but still has zero to do with its validity.
What you are doing is suggesting that people should ignore the message because of the messenger. I really hope you do understand how ignorant that is...
Re:We are not granted rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent