UK Govt accepts all 10 points of the Hargreaves IP Report | Hacker News Reader

UK Govt accepts all 10 points of the Hargreaves IP Report

ipo.gov.uk

60 pointsswombat19 comments

I personally took part in the public consultations and workshops that formed the basis of the Hargreaves Report and was genuinely surprised not only by the committees detailed understanding of the issues involves (I learned a lot), but also their genuine openness to discuss new and controversial ideas.

However, I have close links with the Carbon trust and understand all too well how reports such as these are paid lip service by the government, and to a large degree used to force through unpopular and even corrupt legislation with tenuous links to original issue for political points or monetary gain for individual MPs.

Take for example the Carbon Trusts recommendation that old refrigerators posed a significant environmental risk. The trust put forward the idea that people should no longer be able to dump their old refrigerators along with regular waste, but should instead send their refrigerators to dedicated recycling centres where they could be properly dismantled. The Labour government took that idea, but failed to follow through on the dismantling process, so we ended up with fridge mountains up and down the UK, causing more environmental damage than the old system of just chucking them where ever you wanted to. Not only did this score some serious political votes with environmentalists, but a lot of money changed hands in the process of creating this new "infrastructure"

So it is with a cautious mindset that I approach the governments acceptance of the Hargreaves report. And there are a couple of things I think we need to be careful of, but most importantly, we need to keep a very close eye on this...

Point 4: A digital copyright exchange will facilitate copyright licensing and realise the growth potential of creative industries

We have to be careful that this doesn't open the door to a new kind of patent troll. If the government puts this out to the private sector (which they probably will), we could find ourselves lumbered with an Intellectual Ventures style monster who didn't even have to buy the original patents in the first place. It's a guaranteed certainty that someone out there is looking at the notion of a Digital Copyright Exchange from the point of view of making an absolute killing, and given the UK governments willingness to grant unreasonable favours to the private sector over the past 20 years, this has to be a very serious concern. Nothing that follows point 4 in the governments response is legally binding.

I'm not saying a DCE is a bad idea, I think it's a great idea, but it needs to be a not for profit venture, ideally controlled by the state. The second the people responsible for running the DCE start making profit, the game is up.

Whilst I agree that the DCE could be a disaster if applied to patents, I think they are very explicitly aiming that at the copyright problem, which is very different.

I also don't think the DCE can or should avoid aiming to make a profit. On the contrary, the only way to get a decent DCE in place will be to have multiple players competing in the space, which seems to be both the Hargreaves report's and the government's view.

Effectively, what we're talking about is a kind of iTunes-like marketplace for automated, mass licencing of copyrighted works, to make the process straightforward, transparent, predictable, etc. I don't see how preventing those from making a profit would help.

If the desired effect a a DCE actually manifest themselves, it would be better to keep it non profit and state run since any operating costs would be offset by the increased productivity in the wider economy. And if the mandate was issued by the public, based on frequent public consultation, it would essentially future proof itself.

That's not to say it shouldn't generate a lot of money, it easily could. I imagine a world where a DCE becomes so successful that it generates enough money to create new and advanced institutions for the arts and sciences, enabling Britain to invest heavily in its long term future.

However, if it were private, that revenue would not be put to such a good use, and the public would have no say in how the DCE operated. Any attempts to correct any inefficiencies or inequalities in the DCE would meet fierce legal opposition.

We don't know what the landscape will look like in 20, 30, 50 or a hundred years. Why saddle ourselves with an immutable, or near-immutable DCE?

The DCE sounds like the Copyright Clearance Center in the US. By the way, it is a total racket.

Some good quotes:

Orphaned works:

There are opportunities too in respect of so-called orphan works (Recommendation 4). The Government agrees with the Review’s fundamental premise that it benefits no-one to have a wealth of copyright works be entirely unusable under any circumstances because the owner of one or more rights in the work cannot be contacted. This is not simply a cultural issue; it is a very real economic issue that potentially valuable intangible assets are simply going to waste. The Government will this autumn bring forward proposals for an orphan works scheme that allows for both commercial and cultural uses of orphan works, subject to satisfactory safeguards for the interests of both owners of ‘orphan rights’ and rights holders who could suffer from unfair competition from an orphan works scheme.

No software patents:

The Government will resist extensions of patents into sectors which are currently excluded unless there is clear evidence of a benefit to innovation and growth from such extension

Anti-patent trolls:

IPO will investigate the scale and prevalence of issues with patent thickets, including whether they present a particular problem to SMEs seeking to enter technology sectors. IPO will then explore options for addressing any problems identified, which could include coordinated international changes to patent fee structures if the issues prove to be international in scope.

>No software patents:

We have software patents in the UK, we just don't have them "as such"(!). I'm pretty sure your quote means business methods.

Whilst Aerotel/Macrossan has reinforced the notion of requirement of a technical effect the MPP says that the Macrossan methodology of assessing patent applications against SS1(2) is in effect the same as the "technical contribution" assessment given by following the previous established case law, Fujitsu et al. [MPP 1.10.2].

The EPO's position has liberalised somewhat and UKIPO hasn't followed (though they're supposed to assess similar parts of the law consistently with the EPO approach).

Yes, sorry, that's what I meant.

"Plans to create new exceptions to copyright laws, including a "limited" right to copy legitimately purchased copyrighted material for private use were announced in the Government report. "

http://www.out-law.com/page-12128

So if I read this right, they are planning on legalising the act of ripping music off your Cds and listening to them on an iPod.

This isn't radical. It isn't even up-to-date.

All governments, everywhere, suck, but the UK coalition appears to have been sucking less than most recently...

In countries where corporate political financing is not a decisive factor in the elections, it takes some time for corporations to buy their way into a new government. Plus those in power take some time to switch their focus from dealing with the immediate issues to the corrupting issue of "building their legacy". Just be patient.

Give them time - I will admit that they do seem to be doing an unexpectedly decent job so far, but even New Labour seemed to be decent enough in their first couple of years.

Edit: Maybe what we need is a limit on the number of years a PM can serve for?

I have this pet theory that coalition is always going to be the way forward for the UK. All the mainstream parties have some pretty good ideas, with a few pieces of radical idiocy on the edges. In coalition, parties can drop the radical bullshit parts, while implementing all the sensible ideas they have.

I agree with you to some extent, but the problem is that the political parties have decades of experience with the current winner-takes-all model. If we were to move to a model where they have to share power and cooperate they would have to completely rethink the way the parties market themselves to the electorate. At the moment they write a manifesto, and people expect them to deliver on what the manifesto says if they get in. With a coalition no party can guarantee that, so the manifesto loses its value.

The criticism that the Liberal Democrats ran in to demonstrates the problem: they campaigned for proportional representation, which I believe would be more likely to deliver coalition governments, and even on their most optimistic days I don't think they would believe they could gain a parliamentary majority. Knowing that, publicly signing a pledge around student tuition fees was hopelessly naive, as there was no way they could ever guarantee they would deliver on their pledge. And if the Lib Dems haven't worked out how to market themselves in a coalition government, you can guarantee the two main parties won't have done.

However, this system also blunts such 'radical edges' as civil unions, equalizing the age of consent, reform of drug laws and large infrastructure reforms.

We should have some way of the public identifying "extraordinary" issues (e.g. online petitions) and then having periodic referendums where the public can vote directly on these topics.

Otherwise, as you point out, there are many topics that will simply be ignored.

We do have an online petition system, http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/.

I'll agree that we need some system like that in Switzerland where a large enough proportion of the population can force a referendum.

>Maybe what we need is a limit on the number of years a PM can serve for?

We do, the country votes every 5 years. That's a democratic limit.

PMs die too but I guess you were thinking of a shorter hard limit.

To sum it up, it seems like it's a step in the right direction.

IPO's response to each 10 points: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ipresponse-full.pdf

Make it law and then I'll be impressed.

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