The agency was proposed in the Government's recent Digital
Britain report as one of the measures aimed at reducing the amount
of copyright infringement and piracy in the UK.
The Government has asked industry to come up with a plan for
what the agency should do, and has said that its proposed
anti-piracy legislation depends on the degree to which the creative
industries engage in its anti-piracy plans.
"We have set out here a model which allows industry to keep
control of how this environment is created. This model depends on a
strong rights agency that can and does require specific actions of
its members," said its consultation with industry on the rights
agency. "We do not wish to be more prescriptive in legislation -
that would not be the best outcome for anyone – including rights
holders."
"If we are not convinced that industry is willing or able to
deliver an effective rights agency we will need to think about
alternative ways to approach the issue," it said. "However clear
the Government's commitment to tackling piracy we cannot, through
legislation, provide anything like the whole answer to this complex
area and the answer that we do find might prove to be short lived,
even counter-productive if we are forced to be prescriptive, and
that pushes infringement towards more difficult to detect
methods."
The digital britain report proposed new laws that would force
internet service providers (ISPs) to gather information on
copyright infringing customers and pass it on to rights holders
when presented with a court-issued warrant.
The Government said that the agency's role would be not just one
of enforcement, and that it would have to work alongside planned
legislation.
"We see it working alongside some specific legislative proposals
that we believe will make an impact to reduce the incidence of
unlawful peer-to-peer file-sharing and, in so doing, start to share
responsibility for changing and challenging wide-scale
infringement," said the consultation. "Put at its most ambitious,
our vision for a rights agency is to facilitate a major change of
approach across the whole value chain as to how content is
provided, packaged and sold to consumers."
It said, though, that the agency must be an industry body and
not another regulator. "We are not proposing that Government should
set up and run [the] agency. This is emphatically not a proposal
for a new government regulator," said the proposal. "Instead, we
are inviting industry to come together to create a body that could
tackle those parts of this agenda that are for industry to deal
with."
The Government proposes that the body support any legislation
the Government passes, that it try to come up with technical fixes
to digital copying, and that it have a role in educating the public
about piracy and encouraging people not to engage in it.
The Government has asked for responses to its proposals by 30th
March.
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