The BPI are "criminalising" consumers. No really. Well, they are according to the National Consumer Council. As chiefs from the recording, film, IT and pharmaceutical industry announce they are collaborating to tackle intellectual property theft around the world, and with the courts and legislators seemingly ever more supportive of copyright holders protecting their interests, the NCC is calling for caution in any developments in copyright law, arguing the IP industries are in danger of violating consumer rights.
The Council's Director Of Policy, Jill Johnstone, said in a statement yesterday: "Moves are afoot in Brussels to tighten up enforcement of intellectual property laws. It could mean consumers facing criminal sanctions and a criminal record for sharing creative content. The European Commission must think again before bringing in new and tougher IP laws. Criminal sanctions for infringing copyright holders' rights must be applied only to organised crime - not to individual citizens making use of new technologies. Any new laws must be very clear on this point and must strike a balance between right holders' interests in getting a fair return and the public and consumer interests of fair access and use, and the encouragement of innovation."
Responding, the BPI told reporters "you know, she's right, we're going to give everything away from this point on". Not really of course. Rather BPI boss Peter Jamieson issued a rather long statement defending his industry's litigious response to digital piracy.
He said (deep breath now): "The NCC's comments are misleading. First, the BPI has not initiated any criminal actions. Any actions we have initiated have been civil cases. Second, 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. 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. Independent research demonstrates that illegal filesharing has cost the record industry £650 million in lost sales in the past two years alone, which means inevitably means there is less money available to invest in new British music. Illegal filesharing is in a very real sense bad for the consumer as well as for the music industry. We make no apologies for enforcing the rights we have been given in law. But we have focused our attentions on some of the worst offenders - those people making available hundreds and often thousands of tracks available for others to download. More than 60 people in the UK have accepted that they were distributing music illegally on the internet and paid fines of up to £6,500 to avoid civil lawsuits. Our campaign of education and awareness has included distributing hundreds of thousands of instant messages and tens of thousands of leaflets in public buildings. The record industry has even developed free software to help consumers stay legal. As a body representing consumers, we hope that the NCC share our view that consumers need to understand how to avoid breaking the law whilst using the internet. Although the NCC have offered no support so far for our two-year consumer campaign, the door is always open and we would welcome any support they can offer."
So that's that settled. I wonder who it is who is sitting on the £650 million the recording industry thinks it has lost because of P2P file sharing? Those file sharing kids must have some pretty full piggy banks.