BPI Gives Evidence Before Commons Select Committee

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

09 June 2006

A team from the UK recording industry's trade association, the BPI, on Tuesday gave oral evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media & Sport's inquiry into New Media and the Creative Industries.

Leading the BPI delegation was Chairman Peter Jamieson, accompanied by BPI General Counsel Roz Groome and Mark Richardson, Managing Director of BPI independent member, Independiente.

Mr Jamieson was quizzed by MPs on the fact that the “all rights reserved” nature of British copyright law means that – without specific authorisation – any UK consumer who rips CDs they have bought in order to fill an iPod or other MP3 player is currently guilty of copyright infringement.

However, he sought to reassure consumers by explaining that:

“Traditionally the recording industry has turned a blind eye to private copying and has used the strength of the law to pursue commercial pirates."

“We believe that we now need to make a clear and public distinction between copying for your own use and copying for dissemination to third parties and make it unequivocally clear to the consumer that if they copy their CDs for their own private use in order to move the music from format to format we will not pursue them.”

He went on to stress to the Select Committee the vital importance of extending the term of copyright for sound recordings from the current 50 years to 95 years, arguing that the current 50 year term is outdated and discriminates against recording artists, and threatens economic damage to one of the UK’s most successful export industries.

Meanwhile, in response to a question about the much-publicised Russian download site AllofMP3.com, BPI General Counsel Roz Groome confirmed that:

"AllofMP3.com is illegal under UK law and it is illegal to download from it.”

AllofMP3.com’s claims to be legal are false, she added, revealing that neither artists nor record companies receive any payment from the site.

Despite media speculation that the BPI would move to take action against users of the illegal website, Groome told the Select Committee that:

“We are going to sue AllofMP3.com in the UK courts – we are going to seek a judgment not against the users of the site, but against the site itself.”

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