adamprocter

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The Digital Economy bill

4 years ago

The Digital Economy bill (#debill) was passed in the 'washup' and was granted Royal assent on the 8th of April and will come into force on June the 12th.

is a set of proposals designed to promote 'Digital Britain'. The Act covers many areas along with that of online copyright infringement. This area has had the most media attention as it sets out measures to disconnect users from the internet. Internet subscribers who are accused of allowing their internet connections to be used for copyright infringement (both home users and public wifi owners) are now liable even if someone else downloads or uploads something over your connection. It also outlines options to block websites and disconnect those who run these services if they are believed to be used in conjunction with copyright infringement.

Internet Service Providers are asked to monitor for these infringements and send out letters warning of reported copyright infringement, after three letters your internet connection will be terminated, there has also been discussion of automatically slowing the users internet connection to discourage downloading.

As feared the #debill was rapidly debated by a small minority of MP's. Glancing at some of the debate it soon becomes clear that most of them actually have no idea what they are talking about.

I don't want to pick on these almost laughable mistakes, you can do that at theyworkforyou.com via the commenting options.

As a side note the current election campaign attracted attention as Saatchi and Saatchi used a poster, designed by a member of the public, the photo montage is a BBC copyright owned Ashes to Ashes photo and a photo of David Cameron.Under the bill this supporter of the conservative party may well have had his internet connection terminated.

So what is #debill in reality ? It is a bungled attempt to try and enforce outdated copyright law in the digital era.The Guardian asks to simplify copyright but I say we need to take a serious look at what copyright should do and to rethink it and rewrite it.

The main purpose of copyright is to protect the rights of the creator and encourage further creativity and development. Exclusive rights to promote progress. Remunerating artists for creative work is very important and a fair copyright law should enable this. MP's have been hoodwinked into believing that the threat to the creative industries lies in what is banded as 'piracy'.

These MPs have been fed inaccurate and biased facts based purely from the point of view of trying to save old business models. In a recent US Government Accountability Office report, which attempted to quantify the economic effects of counterfeit and pirated goods in the US, it was found, after examining all the data and consulting with numerous experts inside and outside of government, that it is 'difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts.' and showed that the Motion Picture Association of America's own commissioned study on movie piracy had overstated collegiate downloading by a factor of three.

Just as the printing press was feared by governments that did not want to lose control (power) so today the record and film industries fear a loss of control (money) in the digital era.

The argument I would like to present here is that the real problem is not the damage illegal downloads is doing to the creative industries but the damage current copyright law and the measures taken to uphold it is doing.

Copyright law as we see it enacted today is not interested in creativity or creative technical development but it is used to lock up creative works for large periods of time in order to maximise profits from exclusive rights and in fact obstructing creativity. Those using copyright law most 'effectively' are corporations supposedly 'protecting' the artist.

Let's take one recent example. In 1983 Men at Work penned the hit 'Down Under' which reached number 1 in the Australian, UK and US charts in the 1980s and was played at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. It could be considered as an unofficial Australian anthem. However in Feb a federal court in Sydney ruled that the group plagiarised a campfire song 'The Kookaburra', written more than 70 years ago (1935) by the late Marion Sinclair, a teacher and girl guide leader. In 1990 Larrikin Music bought the rights to the song.

The Judges verdict - 'I have come to the view that the flute riff in 'Down Under' replicates in material form a substantial part of Ms Sinclair's work.'

Are we really to think that Marion Sinclair would have wanted to go to court against another national icon? Its worth noting that during the time she was alive no action was taken (you would have thought she would have been the first to notice) yet the action came a decade after her death by a corporation, and it was only when the Men at Work song was wrongly identified during a quiz show in 2008 that Larrikin Music even took action.

This should never have gone to court and if the need was there the ruling should have been 'Fair use'.

When asked how much money they wished to claim from Men At Work, Larrikin's solicitor replied, 'Obviously the more the better.'

Judge for yourself by listening to both tracks.

The indication that the 'The Kookaburra' may have some traditional Welsh history with the songs 'Wele ti'n eistedd aderyn du?' and 'Dyna ti yn eistedd', seems to have been missing from the case.

Being inspired and/or building upon others endeavours is the very essence of art, this type of ruling must send fear into all artists and in my opinion seriously stifles creativity.

Copyright law is woefully out of date in the 21st Century digital era and needs a rewrite. The corporations who explicitly aim to "exploit" current copyright law are actually criminalising creativity.

We now have the ability to Share and Create like never before, this should be driving creativity and innovation yet copyright law designed to encourage further creativity and development is doing the complete opposite.

Many will still argue that current copyright is the best way to protect rights and that the digital world of easy sharing is cutting into profits. Is this actually the case? As we noted earlier the figures from corporations are completely fictitious.

Lets take a look at another example. In 2008 Nine Inch Nails released the LP Ghosts I-IV under a creative commons licence, that meant fans where able to share and even remix the LP for free. The record was freely available to download by anyone yet according to the band, the record generated $1.6 million in sales revenue in the first week and also went on to be the biggest selling mp3 album of 2008 on amazon.com.

A number of Independent Surveys ^{1 2 3} have found that those 'illegally' downloading music in fact purchase more music. One survey, found that those who admitted to illegally downloading music spent an average of £77 a year on music, £33 more than those who claim that they never download music illegally.

At the moment Copyright law is automatic, you do not need to do anything to have copyright, there is no filter process. This is having a damaging effect as anything can be copyrighted, unlike the Patent system where checks are made and you have to renew or revalidate your claim.

At the moment this automatic law in the UK for copyright is life + 70 years yet a staggering 98% of work is not commercially available after 50 years, so why continue to lock it up.

There are numerous Orphaned works that have no known copyright holder yet the copyright is still in place and the #debill has not attempted to set up a sensible mechanism (like the Copyright Board of Canada board) but one that is set to generate quick revenue for the government. Due to current length of copyright (way beyond that in Canada) these restrictions on Orphaned work could mean a generation of films will just disappear with no one willing to preserve them. In fact in the US 50% of all pre 1950 feature films have been lost and 80% lost before 1929 due to celluloid turning to dust as copyright law prevented others from archiving them over worries that the 'owners' may come out of the woodwork.

The #debill promotes the destruction of creativity, the lobby groups are corporations that care not for creativity or innovation but just profit lines. MP's have been fed a pack of misinformation and fooled into believing the #debill is the way to safe-guard the UK creative industries.

Although I set out saying I did not want to pick on misinformed MP's I would like to point out one shocking comment that Fergal Sharkey, Head of UK Music (probably the lead lobbyist on this) made when interviewed by Mark Thomas as he builds his entire argument about illegal downloading around the fact that 70% of ISP traffic is Peer to Peer.

Peer to Peer (P2P) traffic is the best and most effective way to transfer large files and/or files that are likely to be reused over a smaller area of the network. For example Spotify the legal service allows you to listen to music for free with occasional adverts, uses P2P to enable users nearer to each other to transfer data quicker and thus more effectively, unknown to most users Spotify is in fact caching or temporarily storing music files on your machine in order to either allow you to play the song again (without being downloaded) or to share (P2P) with a nearby Spotify user.

Numerous other legit internet services use P2P. The tracking of what is 'illegally' downloaded via HTTP (yes you can still download 'illegally' via 'normal' means) or P2P traffic is guess work at best. A similar #debill was passed in Sweden where they saw a dip in internet traffic, but after a short period this dip reversed and returned to a higher usage, the only other difference was that the large majority of traffic was encrypted. The users went into hiding.

Now Fergal Sharkey talks about the UK Music industry moving quickly to set up new ways to legitimately download music.Why do they need to attempt to enforce and criminalise fans first ? Why would they need to do anything now ?

Lets take a quick look at the legit service that is Spotify. I use Spotify a lot, I don't pay for it and I listen to any music I want, occasionally the listening is interrupted by an advert, normally asking me to pay £10 a month for the premium service which will remove the adverts and a few other minor perks. Yet only last year I would pay £10 for a CD from one artist, now I have an entire catalogue without having to pay at all, can Artists actually be benefiting from this? I have not purchased any music in a long time thanks to Spotify. Take a look at this infographic relating to music online and pay. Spotify could in fact be a nail in the coffin rather than a saviour.

Corporations need to wake up and change business models to embrace digital technology and the global market place.

For musicians selling around the record is one way, this can be either via limited edition box sets, promoting live events or other ways to engage with fans. Did you ever hear a musician complain about someone hearing their record ?

Although the industry would say that being able to 'illegally' obtain any movie on the day of release is damaging yet we see cinema ticket sales and profits are booming.

However only recently have the movie industry introduced 'new' triple play disks that contain a Bluray disk, dvd disk and a portable device version, rather than attempting to resell you the product three times however why not release this product at the same time as the cinema release, giving the consumer choice, legal options and maximise revenue, cutting out the 'pirate' from the profit.

said 'The music industry is booming but the recording industry is dying'.

He is right creativity is booming, direct from the creators, the corporations are losing control.

Creativity is all about building on the past and in a digital world we can really push creativity and create new exciting art. Copyright law and things like #debill are just designed to try and criminalise us and are a big threat to the creative industries, do we want to send our kids underground and make them 'pirates' for creating new artworks ?

This is an open 'essay' on the impact the UK Digital Economy Bill will have on creativity and is written under a Creative Commons Share A Like 3.0 Attribution Non Commercial Licence. Please comment and any links welcome.

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