Copyright Owners in UK to be subsidised by ISPs (updated)

There have been a lot of things wrong with New Zealand's attempts to come up with a system to cater for repeat online copyright infringement.  Section 92A was a disaster both in terms of its content and in the way it was snuck back in by way of an unheralded Supplementary Order Paper on April Fools Day.

Although it is a lot better, there are still some things wrong with the proposed replacement process in the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill (the fact that termination is still there being one of the problems).

However, one of the things that the new Bill has got right is the proposal that copyright owners will cover ISPs' capex and opex costs by way of a per notice fee, paid or agreed to be paid on submisison of the notice.  As I have said before, I like this also because it will make robot generated takedown notices difficult if not impossible.

It is entirely appropriate for the copyright owner to pay 100% of the cost:

• The fee is likely to be far less than even the filing fee for a Court application so a win there for smaller copyright owners in particular.

• It is the copyright owner's statutorily created economic property right which it is asking be protected.

Which is why I can well understand the ISP Association in the UK reacting angrily to the suggestion from the UK Government that UK ISPs should bear 25% of the cost of their proposed system under the Digital Economy Act (#deact on twitter).

ISPs and their non-infringing customers should not be subsidising copyright owners' enforcement of the latters' own economic property rights.

UPDATED: 14 OCTOBER 2010

BIS in the UK has just published a draft of the Online Infringement of Copyright (Initial Obligations) (Sharing of Costs) Order, which sets out the cost splitting regime.