Current Law
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 currently governs UK copyright law. It gives the creators of literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works the right to control the manner in which their creative output may be exploited. Copyright protection is attached to the author’s creative output rather than the idea behind the creation and applies to a work if it is regarded as original, and exhibits a degree of labor, skill or judgment. Copyright is an automatic right which does not require registration to be enforceable. A copyrighted work affords the right owner protection for a period of 70 years from the end of the year in which the author dies. It is infringed by copying, publishing or broadcasting any ‘substantial’ part of the work.
P2P file sharing and UK Copyright Law
P2P file sharing activities can infringe a rights owners copyright under section 18 by ‘issuing copies to the public’ and section 20 of the CDPA by ‘communication to the public by electronic means in such a way that members of the public may access it from a place and at a time individually chosen by them’. Infringement can occur whether performed consciously or unconsciously. In Polydor Limited & Another v Brown & Others [2005] EWHC 3191 it was decided that a father, who had no knowledge that his children had downloaded P2P software and copied music files containing copies of copyright works in a shared directory onto his computer, was liable for infringement under section 20 on the basis that he had breached the copyright owner’s exclusive right to communicate the work to the public.
Our Solution
As a major asset to any business, copyright should be protected. P2P file sharing and illegal downloading, costs businesses across a wide range of industries millions of pounds in lost revenue every year. Therefore, to combat this we operate anti-piracy programmes whereby our experts monitor P2P networks to search for and accurately identify the source of files that are being made available. Action can then be taken against file-sharers on the basis of copyright infringement as outlined above under the CDPA. The UK High Court has granted orders of disclosure (known as Norwich Pharmacal Orders) against ISPs requiring them to provide details of these users and actions have on the whole settled out of court with the infringing users agreeing to pay around £700 to £500 in compensation to our client’s.
Whether a companies produces films, music or computer games (which are protected as literary works) the spread of digitalisation and the proliferation on the internet of peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions have raised fresh challenges which require a pro active approach by companies keen to protect their copyrighted material. ACS:Law is a specialist in this area and committed to assisting their clients maximize their creative output.