The Federation Against Software Theft is miffed at the UK Intellectual Property Office for not considering "recommended" changes to the copyright law that would punish online copyright infringers with 10 years of imprisonment in order to "bring parity with commercial dealing in pirated works."
In Other News
A copyright lawsuit against a man who posted instructions on how to print unlimited coupons online has finally been dropped after he argued that he didn't circumvent anyone's copyright protection in order to produce his "hack."
A federal judge has quashed a subpoena from the music industry, which for more information on three accused copyright infringers. The judge found that the university has demonstrated that it cannot identify them within a "reasonable degree of technical certainty."
Major movie studios aren't happy that Australian ISP iiNet won't disconnect users after receiving evidence that they have been sharing movies over BitTorrent. IiNet doesn't want to play traffic cop, but Australian law does demand it have (and act on) a disconnection policy for copyright infringers.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed three exemption requests with the U.S. Copyright Office today aimed at protecting the important work of video remix artists, iPhone owners, and cell phone recyclers from legal threats under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The DMCA prohibits "circumventing" digital rights management (DRM) and "other technical protection measures" used to protect copyrighted works.
The chief executive of UK anti-piracy FAST says the chances of a completely voluntary agreement between rights holders and ISPs to tackle file-sharing is "unlikely". John Lovelock, boss at the Federation Against Software Theft goes on to imply that what his outfit would really like is file-sharers' names and addresses on demand, with no need for a court order. This would be "gold plating" he said.
