Our Communications Commissar, Mr. Ed Vaizey, has been having some more meetings with key stakeholders (other than, for example, the public) about copyright and such like. The people consulted about this are, naturally, the vested interests who would benefit from stricter copyright enforcement (provided the costs can be offloaded onto the taxpayer) rather than the diffuse and disparate interests who would benefit an environment more supportive of innovation. But there’s more at work here than Bastiat’s candlemakers, and I suspect something pernicious. As John Naughton picked out of the Hargreaves report on Intellectual Property:
In the case of IP policy and specifically copyright policy, however, there is no doubt that the persuasive powers of celebrities and important UK creative companies have distorted policy outcomes.
[From
The stupidity of our copyright laws is finally laid bare | Technology | The Observer ]
The economist John Kay is absolutely spot on about this in his comments on the Hargreaves report.
Mr Hargreaves deplores the way government policy has been led by business interests and not evidence of its effects. The Carter report, unintentionally, illustrated his point in every chapter.
[From
FT.com / Comment / Op-Ed Columnists – Publishers badly need a new Sir Thomas Bodley ]
If the debate were led by rational business interests, maximising the value of the industry for UK plc, that would be one thing. But it isn’t. It’s led by pop stars egged on by record companies, misguided authors and the owners of rights. I put this point to none other than
Fearghal Sharkey , once upon a time the lead singer of the Undertones , but now the CEO of lobby group UK Music .
We had an honest to and fro with
Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC in the middle and it made for an enjoyable end to a long day listening to people discussing the future of consumer electronics. I said, essentially, that I thought that copyright should be reduced to a welfare-maximising level of around 15 years in return for more effective enforcement of unauthorised copying of the material because the legal and regulatory environment should be constructed to the benefit of society as a whole and not be co-opted by the economic interests of particular sectors and he said, essentially, fuck off.
Snippings 