December 6th, 2006
With thanks to David Berry on the FC-UK list, here’s the government’s response to the Gowers Review in the Pre Budget Report:
“3.81 The Government welcomes the Gowers Review and will take forward those recommendations for which it is responsible. The Government firmly believes in the need for strong enforcement of IP rights to support the UK’s creative industries. The Government is therefore today endorsing the full Gowers enforcement package to tackle piracy and other IP infringement and is providing Trading Standards with an additional £5 million in 2007-08 in order to support the implementation of their new powers to tackle copyright infringement. To ensure that IP policy is strategically formulated in the future, the Government also supports the creation of an independent Strategic Advisory Board for IP policy. This Board will receive £500,000 from the Patent Office to commission research on emerging IP trends. The Government notes the recommendation to the European Commission on copyright term.”
Full Pre Budget Report here.
Posted by Becky Hogge in Uncategorized | No Comments »
December 6th, 2006
The House of Commons have started debating Gordon Brown’s speech and the Gowers Review has been published online.
Here it is.
I’m reading over it now. Eye-catching recommendations include:
- tougher penalties for online copyright infringement - with a maximum 10 years imprisonment
- consulting on the use of civil damages as a deterrent for IP infringement
- business representatives sit on a new independent Strategic Advisory Board on IP Policy, advising the Government (what, no public interest groups?)
- a strictly limited ‘private copying’ exception to enable consumers to format-shift content they purchase for personal use. For example to legally transfer music from CD to their MP3 player
- clarifying (library) exceptions to copyright to make them fit for the digital age
- recommending that the European Commission does not change the status quo and retains the 50 year term of copyright protection for sound recordings and related performers’ rights
UPDATE: Those with a particular interest in the term extension debate might like to check out
this report, commissioned by the Review, into the economic arguments for and against.
Posted by Becky Hogge in freeculture, law, politics | No Comments »
December 6th, 2006
Gordon Brown has so far made a few mentions of intellectual property in his pre budget speech, stating that a “robust intellectual property regime” was needed to encourage innovation in the UK, vital to the UK’s competitiveness in the global marketplace. He has stated that the Secretary for Industry (Alistair Darling) will announce tighter penalties for piracy and new rights for private copying, as well as tighter trademark safeguards for SMEs.
Will there be more? Listen at the
BBC Parliament channel.
Posted by Becky Hogge in freeculture, law, politics | No Comments »
December 6th, 2006
I’m logged on to the
BBC Parliament channel this morning, awaiting Gordon Brown’s pre budget report, which should start in 15 minutes.
The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property will be released after this speech.
As a precursor to the report, my column in openDemocracy asks whether the government will go with Gowers’
leaked recommendation, that copyright on sound recordings remain at 50 years.
“The review has attracted submissions from the British Libraryto the National Union of Journalists, from digital-rights campaigners to the Open Rights Group to recording industry representatives the British Phonographic Institute (BPI). All in all, around 500 individuals and organisations submitted evidence to the review, a figure widely believed to have set a record for submissions to any independent review commissioned by the UK government.
“Why has there been so much interest? Perhaps because, until this point, there has been no effective, accessible forum for debating IP in the UK - or indeed anywhere. “The sense that democratic dialogue is failing on this topic is a serious one”, write Kay Withers and William Davies of the Institute for Public Policy Research in their recent paper Public Innovation, concluding a nine-month research project into the UK’s current intellectual-property framework. Gowers, it seems, opened the doors to such a dialogue. How his review is interpreted by government later this week will be crucial…”
Read the rest here.Once the review has been published, I’ll be interviewing Andrew Gowers face to face. I’ve only got fifteen minutes, but if anyone has anything they’re burning to ask, leave them in the comments and I’ll try and include them. Posted by Becky Hogge in freeculture, law, opendemocracy, politics | No Comments »
December 5th, 2006
I got to do one of those funny mini-interviews for New Media Knowledge this week, you know, the lovely throwaway kind that ask you what radio shows you listen to and what issues get under your skin. It made me feel very special.
Name:Becky Hogge.
Personal website or blog: Machine Envy.
Day jobs: Technology Director, openDemocracy; web culture columnist, New Statesman.
How would you describe yourself to the world? I channel geeks.
Read the rest
here.
Posted by Becky Hogge in media | No Comments »
December 1st, 2006
Stef Magdalinski got in touch to let me know that following my NS piece about
MPs playing the system on
TheyWorkForYou.com, he was invited to go head to head with Emily Thornberry MP on BBC Radio 4’s Today in Parliament.
Steve Bowbrick has the mp3.
This week’s NS column is on e-voting, with a mini-interview from Jason Kitcat:
“In October, the Department for Constitutional Affairs announced plans for a series of e-voting pilot trials during the May 2007 local elections, and invited councils to submit proposals. Although the Birmingham postal vote fiasco sufficed to exclude postal balloting from the pilot projects (along with SMS and digital TV schemes), local councils were invited to experiment with remote internet voting, as well as the use of electronic voting and counting machines inside polling stations.”
Read it
here. NS launched their new website at the beginning of this week, and the good news is there’s no subscription barrier anymore. Congratulatoins and welcome to the internet!
Posted by Becky Hogge in newstatesman, politics | No Comments »
November 29th, 2006
As predicted, those who want the copyright terms in sound recordings extended are making a
huge amount of noise this week. They’re explicit about their hope - that government will ignore the recommendations of an independent review that has taken nearly a year to complete, and give them what they think they want anyway.
If politicians would like a clear view of how popular an extension of term is going to make them, they need look no further than the bevvy of responses to
Mick Hucknall’s incredibly ill-advised piece on Comment is Free last week. Even if you ignore the ad hominem stuff, the reaction’s pretty damning.
Posted by Becky Hogge in business, freeculture, media, music | 1 Comment »
November 27th, 2006
Ahead of its official launch after next week’s pre-budget speech (12.30, Wednesday 6 December,
economy fans) the BBC is reporting that the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property will recommend that copyright terms on sound recordings
should not be extended.
Boingboing may be
reporting this as a victory, but the battle isn’t over yet. The government will need to agree with Gowers, and as we know, a lot of high-level lobbyists have been side-stepping the independent review and going
straight to the top. This week is
the week to be making noise about why copyright terms shouldn’t be extended. My column in the New Statesmen this week is
dedicated to the issue.
If you live in the UK and you haven’t signed ORG’s Release the Music
petition yet, get to it. So far the media have gone with the “Poor Cliff” angle, but
the other side of the story needs to be told too. Can you
write a blog post/
write to your MP/
Give a Testimony that will let the UK government know that Gowers has got it right?
Posted by Becky Hogge in business, freeculture, media, music, newstatesman, politics | No Comments »
November 24th, 2006
Two reasons to drop in on openDemocracy this week. The first is a
pilot podcast, 20 minutes of audio journalism that takes in Sidney Blumenthal’s view on the Democrats’ victory in the states, Alain de Botton’s view on architecture, and prospects for an independent South Ossetia, as well as vox pops from the oD team. If you’ve got time to have a listen, please give some feedback as to whether you think it is a good investment of oD’s time and resources.
The second is this excellent overview of
ICT for development from Patricia Daniel, which makes clear that OLPC/XO-1/the $100 dollar laptop will not be operating in a vacuum in the developing world. David, our deputy editor, has been trying to source a piece like this for a long time - it’s a really useful summary of schemes in the Global South. What I took from it is, much ilke Web 2.0 hype in the West, the projects that work are the ones that are user-orientated, and that people want to use.
Posted by Becky Hogge in development, media, opendemocracy, ubuntu | No Comments »
November 23rd, 2006
Last Friday,
Open Business, in collaboration with
Bookmooch and
Magnatune, held the inaugural MiniBar, a geek social meant to rival SF’s
CC Salon. It was a whole lot cooler than most techie meets, being hosted in a warehouse bar off Bricklane and having actual DJs and everything.
Here I am with Open Business Hannah - you can see lots more photos
here. I was especially pleased to meet Ben Goldacre, who writes the
Bad Science column for the
Guardian, and Mark Pilkington, mission control for
Strange Attractor.
Posted by Becky Hogge in business, freeculture, networks | No Comments »
