Also released this week as part of the government's 'Digital Britain' report was some tedious prose on the role of collecting societies and the financial penalties for copyright infringement crimes. This particular bit of the proceedings actually came out of the Intellectual Property Office, and as such goes into specifics in much more detail than a lot of the rest of the document.
Regards collecting societies, like good old PPL and PRS in the music domain, proposals included giving such societies a mandate to collect for all rights holders within the content area they specialise in, even if some of those rights holders are not specifically members of the organisation. In these circumstances rights holders would have to opt out of representation by their sector's society, rather than always opt in. Proposed new rules would also provide protection for collecting societies who licence so called orphaned works (where the owner of a copyright is unknown, but might appear on the scene and claim infringement), while also introducing a statutory backed framework that underpins the society's entire operations.
These measures presumably show that government recognises collecting societies will only become more important in an era when the business to business licensing of content becomes more important than the sale of content direct to consumer, and when content owners have less and less control over where and when their content is distributed, meaning blanket licensing will probably extend to areas where it has not previously been the norm.
Commenting on the proposals, the minister with responsibility for all things intellectual property, that's David Lammy, told reporters: "In order to modernise and streamline the existing copyright system, I'm proposing a number of changes to the way collecting societies can operate. We should underpin the operation of collecting societies so that customers receive similar services and safeguards they would expect when dealing with a quality utility company".
With regards penalties for those who commit copyright crimes, the IP Office is proposing to make the maximum penalties for physical and online IP theft the same - and that's £50,000. Which is quite an increase for online copyright crimes, the maximum fine for which is currently five grand.
On that, Lammy says: "We must have the tools in place to tackle serious and organised IP crime. The proposed £50,000 maximum penalty for online and physical infringement sends a clear message to IP criminals. In this online age, IP infringement warrants a serious response. It needs to be stamped out- regardless of whether the offence is online or offline".