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Members of the UK music business are said to have given support to an iPod tax – a copyright levy that would be added to the price of every MP3 player sold, based on the assumption that some music on the device has not been paid for.Some criticise the move, suggesting that this means music purchased legally is being bought twice. There is also a suggestion that by adding the tax to MP3 players, the music industry would be monetizing P2P trading and legitimizing the piracy.
The conviction of four self-proclaimed Robin Hoods for conspiracy to defraud last week has raised some serious questions over just how much public resource should be diverted into helping software companies protect their wares when they don't use all the security technology currently designed for just this purpose.
Britains super-rich rock veterans are about to get even richer. The government wants to extend copyright laws to ensure pop songs are protected for almost twice as long as the current 50 years.
According to a survey by Entertainment Media Research, UK legal digital music downloads have grown by a thumping great 75% in a year.
Sylvia Price could go to jail or be fined £4,000 after her daughter downloaded music from the internet. The 53-year-old couldn't believe it when she came home from work to find a summons from a London solicitors.Wiggins Solicitors, who prosecute internet pirates on behalf of record companies, say Mrs Price's daughter Emily, 14, has been breaking the law for two years.
Emily says she didn't know that the file-sharing program she used was wrong.
Charlotte McConnell, a solicitor at law firm Bristows, said: "It seems that with music piracy, the courts both in the UK and the US are keen to find a commercial entity to blame. In this case the primary infringers are the individuals downloading the music. But individuals are difficult to catch."After all, EasyInternetCafé was offering a perfectly legitimate service - it was the customers who transgressed.
A UK man has been fined £500 and sentenced to 12 months' conditional discharge for hijacking a wireless broadband connection.On Wednesday, a jury at Islewoth court in London found Gregory Straszkiewicz, 24, guilty of dishonestly obtaining an electronic communications service and possessing equipment for fraudulent use of a communications service.Straszkiewicz was prosecuted under sections 125 and 126 of the Communications Act 2003.
Mobile network operator 3 has partnered with record label EMI Music UK to offer customers full-length music tracks to download on their mobiles.The deal builds on 3’s existing music services, which includes full-length videos from Sony BMG and music videos from independent label artists through VidZone. The agreement will also give customers access to EMI Music’s labels, which include EMI Records, Parlophone, Relentless and Virgin, along with back catalogue material. The tracks will be available in either WMA or AAC format, depending on the handset. Tracks will cost £1.50 each.
You will not be charged for previewing tracks
SCOTLAND'S biggest pirate DVD and CD racket was sunk in a series of co-ordinated raids yesterday.Computer gear capable of churning out millions of pounds worth of counterfeit discs was seized.In a TV interview in February last year, Reid boasted that he would not be stopped and 'could not care less' if he was arrested.Reid has been raided before and had thousands of CDs seized. Most of his dodgy discs were sold to students at nearby Glasgow University.BPI investigator Pat Ferguson helped co-ordinate yesterday's operation. He said: 'People can claim all the benefits under the sun and make a lot of money on the side.'If you think a CD costs £11 in the shops and these bootleg master CDs hold 60 albums each, that's a loss to the music industry of £660 a pop.
HMV stores to give download help Retailer HMV will teach customers how to download music, to try to persuade a wider range of people to download as it enters the digital music market. The high street chain will install computers in 200 stores and launch its own download service in September. HMV said it aimed to "demystify" downloading for "women, older people and music fans in general". Earlier this year the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) estimated that 96% of downloaders were male.
A simulcast of BBC One or BBC Two, letting UK viewers see programmes on the web at the same time as they go out on TV, is being planned. Proposals to make clips available on mobile phones are also being speeded up, director of TV Jana Bennett said. A player to let viewers watch shows on the internet for a week after they have been broadcast on TV is in development. In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ms Bennett said she hoped to simulcast a channel within the next year. 'Wake-up call' "It's a great way of getting public service content, which people have already paid for, out to people in a different way," she said.
Tiscali UK is cracking down on broadband users who hammer the service at peak times. Its "three strikes and you're out" policy means that bandwidth hogs will receive three warnings if they are found to be abusing the service.If punters fail to moderate their usage, then the ISP plans to restrict their usage during peak hours "for the good of all other customers".
The National Consumer Council (NCC) has called on European Commission legislators to take a fairer stance on consumer intellectual property rights.The NCC believes it's disproportionate to invoke ever-tougher penalties for individuals found guilty of infringing intellectual property laws. The key word is 'individuals', because the NCC sees a clear difference between consumers copying content and "organised criminal gangs" doing the same. There is a difference - the latter are motivated solely by financial gain while consumers generally aren't. At the same time, because technology has made it so easy for consumer to duplicate content, the effect on copyright holders is increasingly the same whoever does the copying."The European Commission must think again before bringing in new and tougher intellectual property laws," said the NCC's policy director Jill Johnstone. "Criminal sanctions for infringing copyright holders' rights must be applied only to organised crime - not to individual citizens making use of new technologies.""Moves are afoot in Brussels to tighten up enforcement of intellectual property laws," she added. "It could mean consumers facing criminal sanctions and a criminal record for sharing creative content."
The British government is trying to use its presidency of the EU to push through a European directive would give police more powers to act against copyright infringers than they currently have to deal with suspected terrorists, according to the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR).The FIPR also warns that the directive, a follow up to the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement directive, would force the UK to criminalise patent infringement, and incitement to infringe copyrights or patents.If patent infringement becomes a crime, the FIPR argues, the risks involved in launching a technology start-up will be even greater than they are today. It warns that promising businesses will choose to set up in the US instead, where patent infringement will remain a civil matter.Ross Anderson, chair of FIPR and professor of security engineering at Cambridge University said that despite government promises to "foster the creative industries", this directive will have exactly the opposite effect."It will interfere with enterprise and choke off competition. It will push up prices for consumers at a time of rising global inflation, and do particular harm to the software and communications industries," he says. "It will also harm universities, libraries and the disabled
