Critics of the Copyright Alert System (CAS), also known as “six strikes” brought in yesterday (February 25th) to thwart illegal filesharing have accused the law of lacking transparency and lacking in penalties.
Battle Of The Giants
In response to a lawsuit slapped on it in 2011 for patent infringement, which it calls “meritless”, web giant Google and its phone subsidiary Motorola Mobility are countersuing BT for the same thing.
Stopping Piracy
According to recent research, seizing domains from sites which infringe copyright is not the way to stop piracy. Instead, the report suggests that a much more effective strategy would be to target the money that pirated materials and sites generate.
Pirates Of The Caribbean
The US Government is up in arms against the Caribbean island of Antigua’s plans to run a ‘legal’ piracy site that would sell music, movies and software but that ignores copyright law.
Writers Could Lose Out Under Changes To Copyright Law
Although the Government’s copyright modernisation programme has been largely welcomed by those in the creative world, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) is concerned about proposals to significantly widen the current ‘fair dealing’ exceptions; that is, limited allowances permitting use of copyright works without a licence in specific circumstances.