The verdict in which a Swedish court jailed the founders The Pirate Bay site is just the latest attempt by the phonographic industries, film studios and record companies to cling on to the greedy monopoly they have over distribution of audio and visual media. The trouble is, even leaving the price of downloads aside, no [...]
The EU Commission is proposing an extension to copyright on sound recordings, the same idea having been rejected by the UK government last year. At present, copyright on a recording lasts for 50 years, after which it enters the public domain. The proposal is for the copyright to be extended to 95 years. Unsurprisingly, the [...]
In July 2006, another Wikipedia user left a message on my talk page to say that he had begun an article on renowned Leicester space physicist Ken Pounds, and noting that I was a Leicester physicist, invited me to contribute to the article. Although I was reluctant to write about someone I vaguely knew, the [...]
Copyright law in the UK allows few exceptions for fair use. People who rip their CDs to make MP3 files for their portable players are actually breaking the law, although record companies have indicated in the past that they won’t pursue people for doing so. Today, a consultation was announced on changes to copyright law [...]
Legal video download services are looking to the technologies used by “illegal” fire-sharing services to speed up downloads. By using a peer-to-peer network, the files are downloaded in parts from other users instead of being downloaded sequentially from a central server. This should improve the speed as it isn’t limited by the server’s bandwidth. But [...]
Last month I described how a new licensing regime has meant that listeners from outside the UK may no longer listen to British independent radio stations. But certain stations, including Classic FM, only required the listener to enter a valid UK postcode to listen. Then, at the start of this month, something changed again, and [...]
From 1 April 2006, internet streams of British independent radio stations ceased to be available for listeners outside the UK. Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL), who collect royalties on behalf of record companies, informed broadcasters that they are only in a position to sell broadcasting rights for the UK. Therefore, when the old licences expired on [...]
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