Updated 20 June 2009
The Open Rights Group does not dispute that artists need paying and that copyright needs to function well. However it criticises this week's Digital Britain report for the way it proposes to "tackle piracy", arguing that the proposed legislation to reduce unlawful peer-to-peer file sharing - summarised here - will blur Ofcom's role from "protecting competition and the public interest" to one of "altering market access and conditions in favour of incumbent players".
Meanwhile:
- (via David Weinberger) File-Sharing and Copyright by Felix Oberholzer-Gee of Harvard University, and Koleman Strumpf of the University of Kansas, published on 15 May 2009, argues that weak copyright protection benefits society overall - see Michael Geist's summary;
- Donald Clark attacks Digital Britain for the way that old-world telco and media interests have dominated the line taken "BBC is mentioned 169 times, Google gets 6, FaceBook 5, Twitter 3, YouTube 2, iTunes 1, Games 0, Xbox 0, Playstation 0, Second Life 0, Wikipedia 0. It’s as if the internet doesn't really exist and that the digital future is an issue for broadcasters.";
- here is the remit [67 kB PDF] given to the Digital Inclusion Task Force, whose task is,
apparently,breathtakingly, "to be our conscience, on behalf of those citizens who are disadvantaged due to digital exclusion".
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