Hey all, there was some talk recently in the UK about changing their copyright laws that I figured I would share here.
Basically, a few members of the United Kingdom House of Lords have been raising concerns about a loophole that has allowed some bettors to gain an advantage while gambling in horseracing. The ‘trick’ that the gamblers have used involves flying drones in order to get a private feed of the horserace that is streamed to them earlier than the normal feed which is shown on a slight delay. This short time advantage allows them to place bets during the race with better information than the ‘public’.
This has become a copyright issue because several Lords have called for the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act to be amended to give the racecourses copyright in order to prevent members of the public from recording the live sporting events. As we all know, sporting events are usually not copyrightable (FWS). One Lord, who is against the changes, said, “Sporting performances are not considered intellectual creations since the rules of sport leave only limited room for real creative freedom”.
I think this would be a weird turn for copyright law to take and would mark quite a shift. Fortunately, there seems to be a decent amount of resistance with other Lords commenting that this problem could be better addressed through changes to the Gambling Act.
https://torrentfreak.com/lawmakers-fix-copyright-law-to-stop-gamblers-beating-the-bookies-211214/
https://www.casino.org/news/racetrack-drones-do-not-violate-copyright-law-uk-government/
Communications Law
Should have commented much sooner. What a great story on the susceptibility of copyright being commandeered by legislators to solve problems that have nothing to do with why copyright exists in the first place. Not in the public interest IMHO, nor within any reasonable rule of law framework either.