Drastic action needed on copyright, libel and censorship legislation for a democratic internet age.

The internet user protection directive.



THE ISSUE: The copyright, censorship and libel laws throughout the
European Union were devised before the internet, and indeed from
before recorded media. In order to protect freedom, privacy and
intellectual property the very concepts have to be redefined. This
problem has caused the following effects:


a)	Due to the internet’s non-geographical nature, libel and other
types of defamation legislation whether criminal or civil become
almost randomly defined. Not just on the jurisdiction either- similar
variation exists from court to court, as to the sentencing which can
often vary from community service to a hefty jail sentence for the
same “offence”
Libel is interesting because it concerns both privacy and freedom of
information issues. On one hand, it is very important to protect the
right of a person or group to not have their social lives, reputations
or careers harmed by false or misleading stories.
On the other hand, we have the right to know of any misdemeanours
concerning public figures, powerful figures or enterprises that we
might be dealing with. And surely we don’t want children (or young
minded adults) barred from talking about the latest playground rumour
about their favourite celebrities. Of course, this has huge
implications for the culture of Satire which lightens “heavy” topics,
as well as providing the entertainment that we have enjoyed since
Shakespeare and before. Do we want a world where truth is defined by
having the most expensive lawers?
This suggests that the only alternative to draconian censorship or
outright anarchy is a targeted enforcement of defamation legislation.
Such a move would involve limiting all forms of defamation
prosecutions and lawsuits to cases where profit, gain or malice could
be reasonably proven. As well as targeting the police and courtroom
costs, essentially a finite resource, this brings the definition of
free speech to the general public consensus. That is, it is acceptable
to use all forms of free speech, without knowingly harming others with
ones words.

b)	Due again to the multi-jurisdictional nature of the internet, and
the lack of co-operation between government authorities and rival
software manufacturers, there is no coherent approach to the issue of
properly censoring potentially offensive material on the internet.
Fruitless effort is poured in to shutting down “illegal” or “ethicall
y
questionable” websites, FTP sites and chatrooms. What is more
important, and more achievable is preventing children and the easily
offended from accessing this material by accident or curiosity. As
internet content is less rigidly controlled than the film, print or
music industry, state censorship would be unworkable. However
requiring all content creators to “self rate” their material on the
same grounds as a DVD , could be achieved. Failure to rate correctly
could be made a criminal offence. Software could be designed with a
standardised content-rating system which would allow safer family
enjoyment and warning properly displayed if the content was of a
nature that could easily offend.



c)	The enforcement and management of copyright law is impractical
under current legislation. Digital media makes copying and converting
media a matter of mouse clicks. All forms of “digital rights
management systems” are crackable- almost all of the world’s
governments strictly forbid the commercial use of such sophisticated
cipher technology on national security grounds. Also, to severely
restrict the right of distribution of multimedia products is a
violation of the rights of independent media producers who wish to use
the internet as a showcase for there talent,. Perhaps even more
importantly, make the films and records that Hollywood don’t want you
to watch or hear. This amounts to a violation of the basic rights of
free expression.
Producers of multimedia content of any kind need to be remunerated for
their efforts. It is not a cheap or time-free affair to produce music,
books or films even as a hobby. The people who make the TV and movies
we enjoy are morally entitled to a fair degree of contribution toward
financing their art from their audience.
There are two ways of improving the situation. Firstly, there needs to
be the replacement of copy protection to copyright “watermarking”. Any
uploads to the internet of copyright material would have to be
digitally “watermarked” with a copyright license. This would allow
media producers to tract their digital “assets” across the internet.
Any enterprise attempting to extract profit or gain out of copyrighted
work would be obliged to pay a reasonable surcharge.
However, copyright holders should only have the access to details of
private domestic internet account holders in the event of uploads of
copyright material. This is because it is impossible for a user to
distinguish legal from illegal download sites and servers. Nor until
the completion of the download is it possible to accurately determine
whether the material is copyright and which licence it is subject to.
It needs to be an offence to upload copyrighted material until one
year old onto the internet unless authorised to do so by the copyright
holder. One year because of the pace at which the online community
moves.  Conventional copyright rules involves terms of between fifty
and one hundred years. This is impractical due to the nature of the
sheer volume of material available on line. It is most important to
protect the livelihoods of those currently active in the industry, as
this represents the media industry’s future. Other than that
condition, like libel, copyright enforcements against domestic
internet users should be considered only in cases of profit, gain or
malice. Again, this is not a case so much of a liberal approach, but a
practically and fairly enforceable one.
The issue of filesharing could be handled via a surcharge per gigabyte
of copyrighted, unlicenced media download, with a clearing house
system estimating from the details provided by “watermarking” and
reimbursing the copyright royalties to the appropriate holder. The ISP
would be surcharged by the copyright authorities as opposed to the end
user to protect privacy. This would allow the end user to choose an
ISP package that reflects their downloading habits. Those who download
or share copyright material would need to be on a higher tariff than
those who do not to cover the surcharge costs.
[ Auf dieses Posting antworten ]