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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Consultation Response to the UK IPO

A bit of a boring read coming up, but a necessary one. The UK Intellectual Property Office had a consultation, dealing with changes to the copyright system, arising from the Hargreaves Report.

The title, "Consultation on proposals to change the UK's copyright system" might seem a little boring, but it's when you get to the text itself, that it turns out to be VERY boring. 120 pages of boring.

Nevertheless, here's our response.

Perhaps the most annoying thing about this consultation, was the constriction of the questions. Instead of having questions eliciting a response, they're very structured, and want an opinion only on a very narrow topic each time. And seriously, their obsession with 'costs' was unbelievable. Mainly because there's a little secret many people know, but can't get people in government to understand. Freeing up copyright has a miniscule cost, mainly to a handful of legacy companies that have been gaming the system for decades. The benefits are widespread to us all.

Anyway, here's the response, all 22 pages of it.
I hope you enjoy reading it more than I enjoyed writing it, because frankly, it was 15 hours of misery! No wonder the Open Rights Group ignored the questions, and just wrote an essay.

Norton P2P Research UK Consultation Response for March 21 2012

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