UK copyright Review

[GhostShip]

It looks like the UK government is being fed horse feed instead of information with this review.

http://www.theregister.com/2006/12/06/gowers_review_brief/

Former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers recommended to the Treasury that penalties for illegal downloading should match those for physical piracy. [That's flogging dodgy disks at car boot sales, not highjacking on the high seas]

Trading Standards officers should be given new powers to act on digital copyright infringement, he reported. They currently only enforce the law in relation to physical copying.
As expected, Gowers reckons the rules outlawing ripping CDs should be updated. By 2008 loading music onto your iTunes shouldn't be against the law.

A series of recommendations surround the flexibilty of intellectual property law include several on fair use; Gowers pushes for an exception to copyright for the purposes of "caricature, parody or pastiche" for example. "Transformative and derivative works", which use copyrighted material as their basis, should be allowed here as they are in the US, he argues.

Lets be honest here, it seems to be a lame effort to declare p2p illegal by mincing the words slightly, I notice no mention of "illegal in the UK"  denial of service attacks being launched against p2p network users, wonder why that is, perhaps mr Gower can tell us ?

[KM]

you notice the wording, trying to sound like it's just planning to give enforcement powers, implying that it's currently illegal when they know damn well it isn't

...next they will try removing my current legal right to download a copy of windows and use it without microsofts permission