ACTA discussion with my MP

---- email to Tony Baldry, MP for Banbury area

Dear Tony

I read that the UK has agreed at a meeting in Tokyo to sign up to ACTA. If this is the case can I ask why this has had no public debate in UK and in parliament? The treaty is due to be signed in June.

Do you have any response to my previous request about ACTA?

What is your personal position?

Are you in agreement, for example, that your ISP will be allowed to monitor all your emails, web browsing, downloads, etc to check if you are downloading copyright material? Do you agree that such downloading will be a criminal offence, not a civil as today? Is this not a severe restriction of freedom? Just to satisfy an outdated business model relying on copyright and trademarks to profit from creative people's work?

Regards

Antony Watts

---- His reply

Dear Antony,

I think there is a fundamental difference between us. You clearly believe that anyone should be free to breach copyright and to download any copyright material. Whereas I believe that copyright is somebody else's property and I see no reason why taking that property does not constitute theft.

No, I do not believe that copyright and trade marks are outmoded business models. As you, in your e-mail, acknowledge they reflect protection for people's creative work, and I see absolutely no justification as to why other people should take some profit from other people's creative work in the way in which you suggest.

Best wishes,

Tony

----My reply

Dear Tony

Your email made me a bit cross. I think you are a bit short sighted and not up to speed on the issues.

I absolutely do support that creative people should have a means by which they get rewarded. And I accept that there is illegal copying (not theft as the owner does not lose his work, it is copying! And this is an infringement of his copyright). I do not do any illegal downloading and have paid for everything I have on my computers.

But things are not right, for example when an artists gets 10p payment for a CD that sells for £10, the rest going to the media conglomerates and publishers. So what is happening is:

- the global free flow of digital data is breaking the business models of these goliath's, cutting their traditional sales channels (CD, DVD, Cinemas) and allowing easy convenient home consumption at lower costs and with the potential to offer artists directly a bigger reward.

- For years and years the media industries have fought against progress, VCRs will kill us, Cassette tape will kill us, TV Remotes will kill us etc, etc. But this has not happened. Sales continue to boom. The thing that is "killing" them this time is the internet.

Well while they continue to persue their current business model, where they release CD and DVD in both time and geographic windows, do not offer a quality product (an MP3 is not quality audio), imposed DRM on movies, protect their cinema chains with 1st releases and do not establish direct global consumer sales channels via the internet, they will continue to suffer from what everyone calls "piracy".

The world is global today, if they have a product they should release it world wide. They should seek to meet customer needs. Just look at iTunes, Apple made the sensible move to respect copyright, but they made it easy to meet the needs for the consumer to purchase music and movies, and now they are the biggest distributor in the world. Why Apple and not Universal, Sony, etc? Given a friendly, easy way to purchase what they want people will turn their backs on illegal downloading.

In addition to this the laws on copyright need to be updated for the global digital world, they need to be harmonised, both for artists protection and earnings and for public rights for fair use, etc. For example I do not see that an artists can write one successful song and have it protected for 70 years. No, if he wants to continue to earn money he must continue to work, so 20 years might be a better protection for copyright. And remember that copyright is a monopoly, balanced by rights for the consumer of fair use, etc.

Lastly about the various laws and treaties, any infringement of copyright is between the copyright holder and the person infringing, it has absolutely nothing to do with the delivery chain, i.e. the ISPs and index sites like Google or even Pirate Bay. It is, and always has been, wrong to shoot the messenger. And it is very wrong to make ISPs into policemen and spies.

And on the subject of another curse, DRM, which is used not so much to protect a work as to allow it to be played ONLY on a specific piece of equipment, e.g. a DVD can only be played on a DVD player, and Blue-Ray must go through a encrypted link to a TV... the DRM's which also prevent me from copying the DVD I purchased to my computer media centre to view from there. When I purchase a movie I have it as property, I do not purchase only a licence to view it. Making software that allows me to break such insidious DRM seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable thing to do and I do it all the time.

All these things are against freedom and customer needs, that is what the fight is all about.

...Apart from the issue that ACTA never passed any democratic process, as far as I know you have not debated it in parliament???

I could go on and on about this, but I think you really need to face the facts and get on the right side of consumer support on these issues.

Regards

Antony Watts