James Delahunty
8 Oct 2005 15:41
UK consumer watchdog, the National Consumer Council (NCC), has criticised the music industry in the UK for its "heavy-handed" use of court action against file sharers it accuses of illegally distributing copyright music files online. The NCC said that instead of this legal action, the recording industry should be looking for an affordable way of allowing fans to trade songs without dragging them to court. The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) has settled with about 60 Internet users so far for sums of money that range between £2,000 and £6,500.
The BPI claims that anyone it files lawsuits against has traded massive amounts of copyrighted music, thousands of songs in some cases. "There needs to be an affordable way of allowing music to be traded in the same way systems for downloading music legally have been developed." said the NCC's director of policy, Jill Johnstone. "There needs to be balance between the rights of the artist and those of the consumer. At the moment the balance is all on the side of the record companies."
The BPI was very angry about the criticism and has responded to the NCC. "We are not taking action against consumers. We are pursuing people who are taking music without permission and infringing the rights we have under the law." said Peter Jamieson who stressed the BPI was not taking criminal actions against file sharers. "When people cross the line from being paying customers to taking music without permission, they can no longer be regarded as consumers - they are law breakers."
The BPI claims the recording industry lost £650 million as a result of illegal file trading and it blames P2P for a 22% decrease in global music sales between 1999 and 2004. To sue a file sharer, the BPI needs the IP address of the user. This then leads to an ISP being forced to hand over the subscriber details of the user. Ms Johnstone also warned that tightening of the law on intellectual property will just make it worse for UK surfers.
The European Commission announced in July it was proposing to make widescale deliberate infringements of intellectual property rights a criminal offence. The NCC believes the proposed European directive is unclear and could potentially lead to people like home computer users being snared in the legislation. "Criminal sanctions for infringing copyright holders' rights must be applied only to organised crime - not to individual citizens making use of new technologies." Johnstone said.
Source:
Scotsman.com