Copywrong?

Yesterday the British government published its “Digital Britain” report on the future of communications in the UK. One of the many outcomes of the report is to improve enforcement procedures against internet piracy. This recommendation comes in the context of action by other European governments against internet copyright violators, most notably the French Hadopi law. The Hadopi law was suspended by the Conseil Constitutionnel earlier this month, which judged that the penalty of suspending an individual’s internet connection if they repeatedly downloaded unlicensed copyrighted material contravened constitutional rights.

The issue of copyright and the internet came to the fore in the European elections earlier this month, when the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament. This happened in the wake of The Pirate Bay court case, when a Swedish court sentenced the owners of this peer-to-peer filesharing website to a year in jail as well as to paying £2.5m of damages. The Pirate Party campaigns for a free internet, encompassing reform to intellectual property law, and claims more than 45,000 members now in Sweden, mostly among young people. The Pirate Party in Germany won about 1% of the vote there in the European elections, and affiliated Pirate Parties have been set up in various other countries.

Digital Britain announces that the British government considers the piracy of intellectual property as theft, and outlines the government strategy in dealing with this issue. It advocates an education campaign to inform the public about the lawfulness of their actions and the use of the civil law by rights-holders and internet service providers (“ISPs”) against internet users who “wilfully continue unlawful activity”. The report also proposes a new duty for Ofcom, the communications regulator, to notify holders of internet accounts that their account appears to have been used to infringe copyright, and to maintain and make available (according to a court order being obtained) data to allow the identification of “serious repeat infringers”. There are also more punitive measures outlined for ISPs to take if these measures fail to solve the problem.

The recently-formed Pirate Party of the United Kingdom (“PPUK”) today issued its response to the Digital Britain report, criticising the government’s understanding of digital media issues. On the issue of copyright, the PPUK implied that the proposals were being driven by the interests and lobbying-budgets of “rights-holder industries”, and showed a “basic misunderstanding of the fundamentals of copyright”, adding “the concerns and voices of ordinary citizens are ignored”.

In their response, the PPUK were correct to mention the origins and purpose of copyright law: the purpose of copyright law ought to centre on compensating creative individuals for their endeavours, especially when this would not otherwise occur, and not propping up industries with business models struggling in the new technological climate. Furthermore, the distinction the PPUK’s response draws out between “authors” and “rights-holders” is key: many copyrights are not owned by the creators of the work, but by other persons, and creators often do not control the rights to their work. Instead, the rights-holder, often a corporation, is enriched through the enforcement of the copyright, seemingly not furthering the interests of creators. The PPUK points out a lack of evidence of the losses caused by file-sharing: the only statistics quoted by the Digital Britain report come from the BPI (which claimed that file-sharing costs the British film industry £180m per year) and IPSOS (which claimed a loss in the UK for TV and films or £152m). These are two industry groups, with an evident interest in seeing the tighter enforcement of copyrights, and there is no independent analysis or verification of these statistics. Moreover, it seems that there has been little input into this report from citizens and consumer rights advocates: another proposal is for an industry body known as the “rights authority” to draft a code of practice for Ofcom to approve, with the government encouraging the participation of rights-holders and ISPs to play a role in this, with no mention of any citizen/consumer groups.

The whole area and purpose of copyright law must be re-examined in the contemporary context. New technology has allowed creators more direct access to their audiences than before, as well as allowing a vast amount more information to be available freely, easily and in the public domain. To ensure that we continue to benefit from the fruits of creativity in our capitalist economy, it is essential that creators are compensated for their work. However, stricter enforcement of the current copyright regime will not further this goal. We should be aware of whom the true beneficiaries of measures such as those outlined in Digital Britain are, and of the implications: in this case, shoring up big business in the creative “industries”. The popular politicisation of this issue, as seen in the European elections, is a welcome development.