The boss of cross-industry trade organisation UK Music, that'll be Feargal Sharkey, has criticised that previously reported report from the The Open Rights Group and the former National Consumer Council, now called Consumer Focus, which said that the UK's copyright laws fail to "balance the interests of rights holders and consumers" and that in a comparison between Britain's copyright system and those of 16 other countries, including China, India, Argentina, South Korea and Thailand, ours was "the worst, by far".
As we pondered yesterday, the comparison report undertaken by the two organisations does seem to be lacking in academic discipline somewhat, and was presumably commissioned to provide a catchy voxpop that backs up the two bodies' existing viewpoint that more of the 'fair use' principles that exist in US copyright law should be introduced over here. They were also keen to stress the stupidity of the 'private copying' situation in the UK - whereby millions of people technically speaking infringe copyrights every week by ripping tracks from CD to PC. Despite the flakiness of their research, both those viewpoints are entirely valid.
But it's that sweeping statement that the UK copyright system is "the worst, by far" when compared to China and India - both jurisdictions where music and film piracy is rampant - that has irked Mr Sharkey.
Music Week quote him thus: "Claims that Chinese and Indian consumers have greater freedoms to access copyrighted works than UK citizens are as ludicrous as they are offensive. I would query why a British public body - and member of Consumer International - would support this survey and feel it appropriate to use public funding to attack British industry in such an unsubstantiated and damaging manner".
The boss of the UK's Intellectual Property Office, Ian Fletcher, also had some things to say about the report, telling reporters: "We reject the misleading accusations made in this report, and believe that the UK's copyright system does a good job of balancing the interests of rights holders and users. A strong and effective copyright system is in the interests of both rights holders and users. Our UK system, ranked highly in a recent independent 2008 survey by IP law firm Taylor Wessing, has enabled our world class creative industries to flourish and, indeed, they contribute over 8% to the GDP. Each and every one of us benefits from this rich content environment".
He also took issue with the report's terminology, and especially claims that things like the private copying rules - which we all know everyone breaks - had the effect of criminalising consumers. As any legal action against someone who made a private copy of a track (not that any such action is likely) would be a civil lawsuit, Fletcher reckon using terms like "criminalising" is unnecessarily emotive. He added: "We disagree that the UK is criminalising consumers, when most of these issues are civil rather than criminal matters". Possibly alluding to the daftness of private copying, though, he did admit that UK's copyright laws did need reviewing, but added: "We have launched a wide ranging copyright debate, and are also in the process of updating copyright laws".