Yes, copyright should be respected. Yes, artists need to be paid. But no: illicit copying is not the problem.
The tardiness of the music industry, who after nine years of market failure have only now began to offer alternatives like Spotify, is the problem.
As yet, industry offerings are not as digital native as P2P, [...]

Read the rest of "Pirate Bay: blame lies with industry failure"

In an open letter sent today to David Lammy, UK Minister for Innovation, some of the country’s most eminent economists and intellectual property scholars, have hit out at government proposals to consider changing policy on term extension. The letter, which has also been sent to the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and the Culture Minister, voices [...]

Read the rest of "Leading Academics Hit Out as Government Abandons Evidence-Based Policy on Copyright."

Consumer groups, musicians, academics and industry stakeholders, together with a cross party panel of MEPs, hit out at the “fairy tale” of copyright term extension at the ORG “Sound Copyright” conference in the European Parliament last week.
One by one speakers rubbished the proposal, as outgoing ORG Executive Director Becky Hogge pointed out that “All the evidence [...]

Read the rest of "Sound Copyright conference attacks the “fairy tale” of copyright term extension."

We are looking at the report in detail, but we are extremely concerned that the voice of consumers and citizens is being marginalised.
We are concerned that there is no suggestion that consumers and citizens should be represented on the proposed copyright ‘Rights Agency’. Without our voices, such an agency could easily be dominated by industry’s [...]

Read the rest of "Digital Britain: leaving consumers out of the picture"

Update (22.01.09): The European Bureau of Library, Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA) and French digital rights activists La Quadrature du Net have added their support to the joint statement,

Today, organisations representing consumers, citizens and libraries around the world united to condemn copyright term extension in Europe. The joint statement was sent to MEPs who sit [...]

Read the rest of "Consumers, citizens and information professionals around the world unite to condemn copyright extension"

When Andy Burnham indicated last week that he was willing to consider extending copyright term despite robust, independent evidence that it would cost consumers dear and benefit artists little, many in the Open Rights Group community were outraged. On top of the now 2 year delay to see vital exceptions and limitations to copyright law [...]

Read the rest of "UK Government launches new consultation on copyright"

ORG has submitted a response to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform’s consultation into legislative options to tackle illicit peer to peer filesharing [pdf]. Here are some of the main points from the response:

Illicit peer to peer filesharing is not a law enforcement problem, it’s a business model problem. The best way to [...]

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With the games industry apparently enthralled by DRM and committed to criminalising their customers, our upcoming event as part of the London Games Fringe is especially timely. Open Rights Group in conjunction with Own-It will co-host a panel discussion on the role of open source in the games industry and invites all our readers and [...]

Read the rest of "Open Source for Games Developers - A Debate on New Business Models"

Happy-snappers unite! We need as many people as possible to take photos of stuff that embodies the database state, and the UK’s world-famous surveillance society (wake up! You’ve just walked into it).
On 11 October, No2ID and the Open Rights Group will make a live collage of the images you’ve taken in a prominent location in [...]

Read the rest of "Capturing the database state: community photocall"

Will consumer pressure for a safer net mean the end of open platforms and rapid innovation? And should the geeks who “get” the net care if the rest of the world prefer TiVos and iPhones?
On Wednesday of this week we co-hosted an event at the British Computer Society to discuss the problems raised by Jonathan [...]

Read the rest of "The Future of the Internet in Focus"