Media Wonk

Anarchy in the U.K. - July 26, 2007

The British music industry is crying foul this week over a government report that recommends against pressing the European Commission to increase the copyright term for sound recordings in the EU from 50 years to 70 years.

The report, by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, rejected the recommendation of a select committee of MPs that the U.K. should ask the EC to consider mandating the longer term. Instead, the government accepted the analysis of former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers, who argued in his 2006 report on intellectual property rights in the U.K. that the increase would benefit relatively few recording artists and would impose undue costs on consumers and other users of recorded music.

The Gowers report was commissioned last year by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who last month succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

But there was plenty more bad news for copyright owners to go around in the report.

The report defers, at least for now, the pleas of publishers to require news portals and search engines such as Google News (and Content Agenda for that matter) to license the content they display on their sites. Instead, it urges “both sides to work together to resolve specific issues.”

More significantly, the report recommends the U.K. adopt an explicit exemption in its copyright law to allow private copying for purposes of “format-shifting,” and said the government will begin a appear of public comment on the issue in the fall, similar to the public comment period on proposed regulations in the U.S.

While the report says the change would simply bring U.K. law into alignment with an activity that even the industry accepts as reasonable, it rejects the idea of imposing the sort of private-copying levies on blank media and recording devices to compensate rights owners common in other EU countries with explicit private-copying exemptions.

Instead it adopts the Gowers report’s argument that a levy system would unfairly burden consumers who might be using recorders and blank media for purposes that do not involve copyrighted material.

Although the report refers, by way of example, to the copying of CDs to portable MP3 players, the language of its recommendation does not limit the format-shifting exemption to music.

The report doesn’t specifically address the question of a private copying right would also include the right to circumvent encryption for format-shifting purposes, but the issue is bound to come up in the public comments.

In a separate section, the report notes that digital rights management technology “should not be allowed to override copyright exceptions.” Whether that means the government will ultimately propose allowing circumvention for purposes of private-copying is not clear from the report, but the possibility alone should be enough to worry the studios.

There were a few bright spots for copyright owners. While the report warns of the potential for DRM to unduly burden consumers, it stops short of calling for regulation of its use—at least for now.

The report also recommends making camcording of movies “in cinemas” a criminal offense and endorsing tougher penalties and enforcement in cases of copyright infringement.

LEAVE A COMMENT