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[aldric13]

Okay, I'm basically reading up on the law behind all copyright infringement on intellectual property online. I've been looking around and not 100% sure where I should start looking to find information. My plan is to discuss and write a paper about online piracy/copyright infringement to about 5000 words.

I've made a start on it all going through things like the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 which has shed a little light, I'm also looking at the EC Directive to gather information. I am also planning on scrutinising the more recent Digital Economy Act 2010 as that is a much more recent piece of law concerning online copyright infringement.

What I'm mainly having an issue with though is finding past law or very recent law within the UK that has been implemented to safeguard and prevent digital copyright infringement and whether they are effective or not.

I'd like just a little push in the right direction because this kind of law seems very split up and a little confusing in this subject area but I'm really interested in writing an interesting paper on it all. So where would be the best place to start to find the safeguards for it before the Digital Economy Act and now after as I guess the Digital Economy Act sort of brings it a little together although from what I know it is arguably unfair to the public hence the recent Judicial Review.

So I'll reiterate. Where should I start to find current and past safeguards to prevent digital copyright infringement?

It would also be amazing if there was anywhere giving solutions for the future concerning it such as ideas that have been given recently as online copyright infringement taxes paid by internet users, distributed to the media industry.

Many thanks in advance, and would love to discuss this all further ^-^v

[matyas]

You have probably, by now, found all the relevant legislative material on copyright infringement. The thing is, that's it: there have been no other legislative efforts to deal with digital infringement. That is, in part, why the DEA was enacted.

The problems in dealing with online copyright infringement are not principally legal. Mass distribution of infringing copies of copyright material is, of course, secondary infringement under CDPA and a criminal offence. The difficulty is proving infringement against a given individual and pursuing that individual.

Consider the Davenport-Lyon/ACS scandal: On the face of it, it was a campaign to bring civil claims for infringement, by copyright holders against individuals. However, once claims were actually issued against some of these alleged infringers a number of problems became apparent:
1. The campaign relied upon claiming infringement based solely on evidence that a given IP address had been used to "seed" an infringing torrent, and an ISP's say so that the defendant had been assigned the IP address at a given time (obtained en masse by a Norwich Pharmacal Order). Of course, even if the evidence proved that the IP address had been seeding that would not establish conclusively that the bill payer of the account which had been assign the IP was the one who engaged in seeding.
2. The "claimant" in those cases, MediaCAT, was a strawman which on closer examination was found not in fact to have sufficient interest in the copyright works to enforce them. The copyright owners had simply assigned a right to "enforce" the copyrights, and that is not enough in law.
3. ACS Law, the solicitor, was found to have an illegal funding agreement with MediaCAT - it was champertous - that is to say, it was an agreement under which the solicitor would get a share of any damages he managed to obtain. That is illegal in litigious matters, in England and Wales.
4. ISPs did not always get the IP address assignment correct, or the evidence as to which IPs were seeding was false. It was announced sometime ago by file-sharing sites that some torrents contained "false" seeds, precisely to battle this sort of enforcement. These factors led to allegations of infringement against people who were evidently innocent.
5. The issue of damages remains open - just what is infringement worth?

In my view there are a number of problems here more fundamental than "how to enforce copyright online" (the way the copyright lobby looks at it). Many attempts, from ACS/MediaCAT to Digital Rights Management software to encryption of media discs, have failed to prevent infringement. The ultimate driving force behind mass infringement is the absence of a reasonably priced legal alternative. One reason that large scale enforcement is difficult and unpopular is that members of the public object to the ways in which copyright-reliant industries use their rights, in particular charging excessively high prices and dividing up the global market into regions, across which pricing structure differs.

It is for this reason that the most effective way to avoid (if not prevent) infringement is to provide legal distribution services at a reasonable price. Netflicks has changed the media down-loading market in the US and now takes a significant share of the market, far more than illegal torrents.

One must consider, too, the fundamental justifications for copyright. If you take the traditional English view, that copyright is not a natural right, but a state granted monopoly, then that monopoly exists for a reason. That reason is not to enrich content distributors. The original reasons for the creation of copyright (set out in the preamble of the very first copyright legislation - the Statute of Anne) still hold true today - the promotion of the creation and distribution of copyright material and the fair remuneration of the creators of those work. Therefore, in taking any step to increase the rights of copyright owners against individuals, whether through state action or granting additional private rights, must be considered in light of the objectives of behind the copyright monopoly.

There are of course, many more issues than these - I haven't even touched on the net neutrality, blocking and civil right issues... Good luck with the article, I suggest that you read the MediaCAT cases on www.bailii.org