Digital Rights Issues

Current reviews, enquiries, and proposed legislation

List of digital rights issues currently requiring consideration and response.

1. Gowers Review - Gowers Review of Intellectual Property
2. Data Retention - European Union legislation regarding the retention of phone and ISP traffic data
3. APIG DRM Public Inquiry - The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group's public inquiry into digital rights management

Possible:

1. Consumer confidence in digital environment

Digital Rights issues in art

We have collected relevant expressions of Digital Rights Issues in Art.

Current/Recent Issues

• Podcast - UK Podcast Licence: Free speech, and regulation of it.
• National Vehicle Tracking Database - Watched wherever you go
• Anti-Piracy - Attempts at strict control on media (DVDs, CDs, etc) and software anti piracy implementations
• Software Patents - Software patents and patents on computer-implemented inventions
• Sony DRM - Digital rights management on Sony CDs
• Computer Misuse Act Reform - Prosecuted for typing a URL?
• Data Retention - Your every web visit, stored
• IPRED - Criminalizing copyright
• ID Cards - a solution looking for a problem
• Criminalisation of Free Speech Online - hate crimes and pornography
• Open Spectrum - freeing the airwaves
• Open Geodata - your right to the data of your own soil
• Net Neutrality - the net works best when ISPs deliver every Internet site's traffic without discrimination
• Copyright Extension - enclosing the public domain
• Fair Dealing Reform - your right to private copies
• Open Government - the state's obligation to be open
• Open Formats - preserving interoperability
• Free Crown Copyright - making public information available for all to exploit
• Children's Digital Rights
• Data Protection Act Enforcement
• Gamer's Rights - virtual property needs real rights
• The End of Resale - should contracts trump ownership?
• The UK at WIPO - what we say globally
• Freedom of Information - using FOI to defend your rights
• The Right to Tinker - the right to reverse engineer
• Anti-Spam Legislation - how to use, how it can be abused
• Search engine censorship - whether, how, and why search engine databases are censored
• Internet privacy - ???
• Constitutional Changes - whether the government is about to end the notion of Parliamentary debate
• Databases - The European Commission has published an evaluation of the protection EU law gives to databases.
• Intellectual property - IP

See also The Register Internet & Law section: http://www.theregister.co.uk/internet

Possible campaigns

1. Most other countries around the world, including the US and the majority of EU member states allow their citizens to make private copies of copyright works without breaking the law. Australia is about to change its law to do so. Why is it illegal for us to copy CDs to our PCs and MP3 players? This does little to help artists but a great deal to create contempt for the law amongst users of copyright works. Can we apply pressure via the Gowers and APIG inquiries and a public campaign to introduce a private copying right?--Ianb 18:59, 2 January 2006 (GMT)
2. I saw in Ireland that they used the Data Protection Act to get a proposed third party service which tracks mobile phone locations and plots/displays them on a website blocked. According to the Guardian, there are similar kinds of services already operating here. Could we do something similar? Are UK Data Protection Laws the same as Ireland's?