At the moment when the Canadian copyright lobby is encouraging the government to increase the damages associated with copyright infringement and the U.S. is proposing to increase copyright penalties, the UK Government has announced that it is proposing to eliminate the award of punitive damages in civil cases of copyright infringement.
UK Government Considers Dropping Punitive Copyright Damages
May 15, 2007
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Episode 280: A Fall Update on Where Things Stand on Canadian Digital Policy Reforms
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UK and Copyright terms
they also were recommended not to increase copyright terms from 50 to 75 years (despite lots of lobbying) [ link ]
“Andrew Gowers, former head of the Financial Times, led a UK inquiry into intellectual property rights last year and concluded (among many other things) that musical copyrights should not be extended from their current 50-year length to 95 years. Now, in an interview, Gowers says that the economic data he saw even supported reducing the 50 year term, but that political realities prevented him from recommending this.”