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van der Ploeg, Rick --- "Copyright and the cultural industries: the policy-maker's view" [2002] ELECD 46; in Towse, Ruth (ed), "Copyright in the Cultural Industries" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002)

Book Title: Copyright in the Cultural Industries

Editor(s): Towse, Ruth

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781840646610

Section: Chapter 1

Section Title: Copyright and the cultural industries: the policy-maker's view

Author(s): van der Ploeg, Rick

Number of pages: 8

Extract:

1. Copyright and the cultural industries:
the policy-maker's view
Rick van der Ploeg

The news bulletin on Dutch television on 21 July 2000 ended with a report
which had a bearing on the issue of copyright. The report showed how you
could download music from the Internet and make your own CD, including the
CD cover, of music by popular groups. Amazingly easy and at very little cost
- and no question of paying any royalties. The same report showed a radio DJ
using state-of-the-art equipment to download everything the music industry
had to offer, who said, and I quote: `I wouldn't really call it theft. To my mind,
music is public property after all.'
Anybody reading an article in the Dutch press the same day, in which the
journalist Francisco van Jole called for copyright values and standards to be
applied to the Internet, would have been rudely awakened from any flights of
fancy occasioned by the news item seen on TV.
Also on the same day, the newspapers carried a story on plans by the best-
selling author Stephen King to publish a number of chapters from his new
book on the Internet so that these could be read on payment of a fee without
the intervention of a publisher. The ultimate exploitation of copyright by none
other than the author himself.
Three copyright `hits' in one day - to use the Internet jargon - must add up
to something more than just a passing ...