The Committee report (available on the parliament’s website) rejected the assertions of the Open Rights Group and other internet/copyleft advocacy groups that the problem was too many copyright restrictions. Instead, said the Committee, “While we share the Open Rights Group’s attachment to freedom of expression via the internet, we firmly repudiate their laissez-faire attitudes towards copyright infringement.”
Noting the frequently-cited canard that infringement estimates are exaggerated, the Committee wrote: ” Such quibbles in our view…should not detract from the existential threat that online piracy clearly poses to the creative Economy.”
The Committee admonished the content industry to do more, but pointed the figure squarely where it belongs, at government: “ We encourage businesses to use the current law to bring claims wherever it is feasible for them to do so. There nonetheless remains a systemic failure to enforce the existing laws effectively against rife online piracy.
The Intellectual Property Office came in for some heat: There should be within Government a powerful champion of IP with a duty to protect and promote the interests of UK IP, to co-ordinate enforcement of IP rights in the UK and overseas and to educate consumers on the value of IP and the importance of respecting IP rights. Logically the IPO should take on this role. Yet too often it is seen as wishing to dilute copyright rather than defend and enforce it.”
And on the other side of the industry, the report blasted online search engines, and “their evident reluctance to block infringing websites on the flimsy grounds that some operate under the cover of hosting some legal content. The continuing promotion by search engines of illegal content on the internet is unacceptable…. We do not believe it to be beyond the wit of the engineers employed by Google and others to demote and, ideally, remove copyright infringing material from search engine results.”