British Government Considers Tenfold Increase To Copyright Penalty

Out-Law is reporting that the British government is planning to increase the maximum fine that can be awarded for online copyright infringement tenfold. "The Government and the Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO) are consulting on the plans, which would allow Magistrates' Courts in England and Wales to issue summary fines of £50,000 for online copyright infringement. The larger fine is proposed for commercial scale infringements, where the person involved profits from the infringement. The plan would implement another of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, the 2006 report by former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers which has been the foundation of intellectual property policy since its publication."

The Gowers Report is well worth reading

[davide marney]

I highly recommend skimming through the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property [hm-treasury.gov.uk], the 2006 study on IP that seems to be the basis for this new law.

It seems to be a truly balanced study, full of interesting insights and recommendations. Some bits I liked:

• Page 34, Models of Innovation - a nice explanation of 'open' and 'closed' innovation
• Page 35, Cost of licensing spending - where I learned that in 1999, 90% of companies spent less than 10% of their R&D budget on licensing, but by 2009, that figure had dropped to only 10% of companies spending less than 10% on licensing. Wow.
• Page 49, IP "performance" scorecard - a frame for judging the cost/benefit of patents, copyrights, trademarks, and designs.
• Page 56, Revenue Distribution of Songs - where I learned that even the credit card companies make more on downloaded songs than the artist does (!). That's just sad.
• Page 58, Sales of fiction by year of publication - proof that an extremely small number of works makes any money beyond just a few years after publication

And I could go on with the remedies suggested by the study, but I'll stop here. If the world were to adopt the recommendations in this Study, I do think it would be a huge step forward.

Re:The Gowers Report is well worth reading

[davide marney]

Recompense is fine (hey, I'm a capitalist, too). It's just saddens me that the market values collecting the payment for a song greater than it values the actual writing or performing of it. That just doesn't feel right to me.