RadioArchive.cc - RIP

[Christopher Woods (CM)]

On 18/01/2013 10:20, Jon Davies wrote:
> On 18 January 2013 09:57, Chris Marriott <chris at chrism.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> Actually, Jon, British copyright law is surprisingly lax when it comes to
>> radio broadcasts.  Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the copyright on UK
>> radio broadcasts, in its article "Copyright Law of the United Kingdom" [snip]
>>
>> Hence recording or copying a radio broadcast for non-commercial purposes is
>> not a copyright infringement.
> Two things:
> (a) note that there's a distinction between a broadcast and making an
> audio or video stream available on the net. Loosely speaking it's a
> broadcast if it's the same as what's currently being broadcast over
> terrestrial or satellite.  So the live streams on the BBC site are
> broadcasts, the iPlayer content is not.
> (b) quoting a wikipedia articel whose factual accuracy is noted as
> "disputed" doesn't make a strong argument
>
>  From the Act itself, the right to issue copies of a work to the public
> is reserved to the copyright owner.  The fair dealing provisions
> enable certain archiving, academic and personal uses, but don't allow
> public distribution.  Uploading to TPB feels like public distribution
> to me.
>
> Anything that's no longer in (or was never in) copyright is clearly a
> different matter.
>
>> It may of course be against the iPlayer terms
>> of service, but that's a different matter.
> different to copyright, but still one of the points of my email.
"Live broadcast" and "on-demand" mostly apply in the context of the TV 
tax; for copyright purposes there's little distinction - both are 
handled in the same way and treated as sound recordings. Public 
performance clauses cover all broadcast scenarios in addition to 
existing sound recording copyright.

Jon and others have it right here; do not conflate the right of 
recording with the right of distribution. By distributing a copyright 
worked you are reproducing the work where you do not have permission to 
do so. In law, this is defined as 'making available' and is viewed far 
more harshly than downloading whatever from wherever to hoard without 
ever sharing it with anyone else.

See also the EU rights of communication, reproduction and fixation, 
which works alongside the right of distribution and also dealt with in 
part by clauses in the rental and lending rights clauses of the EU 
Copyright Directive (as enacted in the Copyright, Designs and Patents 
Act as amended). EU's copyright laws now are almost entirely harmonised 
so the EU Copyright Directive can be viewed as authoritative on this matter.

I quote,

7. Restricted acts
It is an offence to perform any of the following acts without the 
consent of the owner:

Copy the work.
Rent, lend or issue copies of the work to the public.
Perform, broadcast or show the work in public.
Adapt the work.

[http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law]

And this isn't even considering that seeding torrents is a cross-border, 
and therefore cross-territory infringement! It has the potential to piss 
off original copyright owners as well as licensees and is generally 
Something To Avoid Doing.

Essentially, redistribution or reissuing is a breach of European 
copyright law. Broadcasters' copyrights on all broadcasts exist for 50 
years (from end of that calendar year; to increase to 70 years for all 
new sound recordings from 2014 onwards) in which a broadcast was first 
made. Also consider that there will always be exceptions to the rule -- 
not all BBC programmes have cleared music for all media (e.g. they have 
rights for broadcast and specifically the iPlayer, but no other format 
hence why podcasts hardly ever have music in as they would need to seek 
coupling - compilation - licenses for each podcast or just blanket 
licence for both publishing and mechanical as they currently do for TV 
sync). Samples from other sound recordings also fall into this bracket.

Complex copyright and licensing agreements are reasons why the iPlayer's 
geolocked... Never mind potential technical issues like 'clogging the 
tubes' if worldwide unfettered access was available. It's also how 
broadcasters continue to cover their costs. Brazen disregard of EU 
copyright and wilful copyright infringement will only result in Bad 
Times For You should you stick your head over the parapet too noisily. 
Nobody likes a civil conviction.