UK to decriminalise piracy from 2015

vidor

After many years of seemingly no progress, the UK Government has decided to scrap extensive punishment plans aimed at digital piracy. Instead, the VCAP (Voluntary Copyright Alert Programme) will be installed as of 2015. In a nutshell, this means that active illegal downloaders will receive up to 4 emails or letters a year, intended to inform the person of their illegal actions and the harm it causes to UK creative industries. The UK’s biggest internet providers – BT, Talktalk, Virgin and Sky have all signed on to the scheme with more obscure providers expected to follow. The biggest detail here is that there is absolutely no further action to be taken, even on repeated offense. Several statements have been made about the scheme, mostly claiming that the UK creative industries are suffering, but they are basically impossible to protect from piracy, but this is the most valid option they had.

Geoff Taylor, chief exec of the BPI claims that it’s about “persuading the persuadable, such as parents who do not know what is going on with their net connection.” Adding that “VCAP is not about denying access to the internet. It’s about changing attitudes and raising awareness so people can make the right choice.” Hence, the scheme is intended to educate, or perhaps threaten users into not engaging in piracy.
There are no current details as to how frequent or severe the offense has to be in order to be eligible for these emails, but it’s a safe suggestion that constant offenders will be the initial targets. The scheme seems like a decent attempt compared to previous plans to attack torrent websites. But it’s simply naive to think that this will have a long term impact on the state of UK-based digital piracy.

http://www.voletic.com/?p=3511


See the same happening here?

briany

vidor wrote: »

http://www.voletic.com/?p=3511


See the same happening here?

Eventually, I suppose. Eventually the lobbyists will stop paying, anyway. Trouble is, not that many parents really care. Those letters will probably just go in the bin and we'll end up with a load of scrap paper. I think the number of 'the persuadable' is being grossly overestimated.

Fysh

The writing's on the wall for punitive measures anyway - they've largely been consigned to the dustbin of history, because big companies demanding disproportionately huge payouts from offenders of usually limited means doesn't look good - especially when many people are still struggling due to the major issues with the economy for the last half decade or so.

The Digital Economy Bill that was going to introduce the disconnection measures was a poorly designed piece of crap legislation essentially written by large media company lobbyists and rushed through the UK Parliament shortly before they closed session, and wasn't popular with anyone (not least because it suggested an appeal system which would cost money for the accused, IIRC something like £25 a go). See earlier comment re: greedy large corporates (especially those who play at special tax avoidance games). The French already tried this with Hadopi and that was so resoundingly successful they've gotten rid of it, so ultimately it's looking like the industry has accepted they're ineffective measures.

The most noticeable factor in changing the amount of Flying The Jolly Roger that goes on in my immediate vicinity has been access to legal services. In the last couple of years, things like Netflix and NowTV have finally started giving me an option of paying to get legitimate access to stuff I want to see within a reasonable amount of time. Some companies are still being silly (eg HBO deciding that True Blood's final season should carry a 2-week delay in the UK - I'm betting the only thing this achieves is driving a bunch of potentially paying viewers to just say "screw it" and find it via Dodgy Means) but it is at least getting better. I know that international rights have always been complex when it comes to Intellectual Property, but it's astonishing how many companies seem not to realise that in order to profit from a product, they have to first provide a way for customers to pay them.

Before anyone says "well, just wait until they release it legally" - if they won't let audiences pay them for it legally, they aren't making a loss if it gets watched elsewhere. If that decision then has negative implications for their ability to subsequently release it legally in those regions, this should be taken into account when reviewing the costs & benefits of staggered regional releases. It's not my fault or my problem if a company decides to be bloody stupid and ignore what their customers want when deciding on business stragegies.

ScumLord

I think there are plenty of people that would happily pay for a service that is better than what the pirates offer. Netflix is worth the money (just about), Steam is worth the money, it's better than pirating in so many ways.

Bring out more services like these and the majority of people will use them I think.

McSasquatch II

Can someone actually point me to a reliable source that's making this claim, ie that the UK will decriminalise piracy? From what I have read, that's not what's happening at all.

Adamantium

So no more of this... awww.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

Fysh

Oak76 wrote: »

Can someone actually point me to a reliable source that's making this claim, ie that the UK will decriminalise piracy? From what I have read, that's not what's happening at all.

The phrasing is wrong - what's in fact happening is that the initially proposed measures in the Digital Economy Bill from a few years ago (2010, IIRC) have been watered down after some fairly protracted wrangling between ISPs and media company lobbyists. The ISPs were well aware that too excessive a crackdown would lose them huge numbers of customers, and wanted none of it - or at least as little extra work as possible. The media lobbyists basically wanted all the info to identify any customer who'd ever so much as had the word "torrent" feature in any traffic sent over their connection (I might be overstating the case just slightly there, but not by much).

The end result is a classic compromise in the "Nobody gets what they want" sense. More info here (Wired.co.uk) or here (Independent.co.uk) for example.

The sad thing is that if they'd spent even a fraction of as much time, money and effort into just getting worthwhile legal services off the ground they'd have all been making more money for the last few years.