In a report published yesterday (July 30) entitled Connectivity, Content and Consumers: Britain’s digital platform for growth, the Government said it would put consumers at the heart of its communication policies, including those covering copyright infringement and bill shock.
Announcing the plans, Culture Secretary Maria Miller said that, in this digital age ministers must ensure that the needs of the consumer are not lost in the dash for progress, and the changes they are making will put the public at the heart of the sector.
Apart from cracking down on nuisance calls, ending bill shock nightmares and protecting children online, the report also sets out a package of industry-led measures to tackle online copyright infringement, which includes targeting the ways people make money from sites offering this unlawful material.
As a means of enforcing this, a new police unit aimed at targeting intellectual property crime was launched last month by Intellectual Property Minister Lord Younger and City of London Police Commissioner, Adrian Leppard.
As the Commissioner pointed out, intellectual property crime is costing the UK economy hundreds of millions of pounds each year, with organised crime gangs causing significant damage to industries that produce legitimate, high quality, physical goods and online and digital content in an increasingly competitive climate.
According to recent data, around seven million people a month visit sites offering illegal content in the UK, and globally, it is projected that digitally pirated music, films and software will account for losses of around $80bn, which is expected to rise to $240bn by 2015.
Meanwhile, according to The Creative Coalition, which represents the rights of the creative sector, if nothing is done about copyright infringement, up to a quarter of a million jobs in the UK could be at risk by 2015.