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LGJ: IP Police, Arrest this man, He talks in torrents
Mark Methenitis contributes Law of the Game on Joystiq ("LGJ"), a column on legal issues as they relate to video games: [Image Source] I would imagine anyone reading this column has seen the coverage of the UK government's plan to create a "Pirate Finder General" and other new anti-piracy activities. The Pirate Finder General would have exceptionally broad powers to find and punish pirates with little supervision in an almost Judge Dredd-esque "I am the law!" kind of way. Of course, the whole matter is couched as a necessary measure to protect rights holders, ignoring what impact the ability to permanently revoke use of the internet might have on the average household. To me, this is just another sign of the times in the constantly tumultuous intellectual property ecosystem. While the situation could certainly turn out poorly for our friends in the UK, could something like this ever happen in the United States? The answer might not be as clear cut as you think. We have been over intellectual property topics of all shapes and sizes in the history of LGJ, and the one universal truth is that intellectual property rights exist for one reason: to balance the rights needed by IP producers to be able to profit from their work with the rights needed by IP consumers to be able to enjoy those works. The concept of intellectual property has never been about granting unlimited power to rights holders, nor unrestricted access to consumers. However, since the advent of the Internet, we have been in the middle of a digital arms race between pirates and various parts of the entertainment industry, which we have seen to have substantial resources and connections given some of the legal changes like the UK law cited above or the infamous Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Both sides have, at times, taken unsustainable or unrealistic positions, be that utopian unrestricted access to all intellectual property or draconian restrictions to simple use, like the position that ripping a CD you purchased to your iPod is copyright infringement.
