Availability of material - suggestion

[Aradiel]

One thing we want to push for is to make Fair Dealing exceptions more like Fair Use exceptions, but I'd like to suggest something in addition to that:

I think that there should be some immunity from prosecution for piracy offered when the pirated material is not commercially available in the UK.

For example, is there a game you want to play that has not been released in the UK, but has been released in America, and due to the region locking on the console you would not be able to play the imported version on a UK machine? Then I feel that you should be immune from accusations of copyright infringment if you pirate the game to run it on an emulator (or get around the stupid region locking on your console) - if it was impossible for you to buy it, then the publisher shouldn't have a right to claim damages.

Of course this is simplistic in it's current form, so we'd need to discuss it thoroughly before it can become a proper pieve of policy.

[AndrewTindall]

I think this would be covered by non-commercial filesharing anyway. it's just a prime example of why.

[Aradiel]

It's good you mentioned non-commercail, as one possible flaw I see if it were to be implemented without mentioning non-commercialisation, could be that the market gets saturated with unlicsensed versions before a company picks up distribution rights... I don't think I'm saying that very well, but I see it as bad if we don't mention "non-commercial sharing"

My main reason for starting this thread is that, I think that sometimes reform can't be too revolutionary straight away - we might not be able to implement our entire manifesto at once, so we will need to prioritise and get small victories that in the end amount to the whole.

[AndrewTindall]

NC is explicitly in our manifesto already.

[Aradiel]

NC is explicitly in our manifesto already.

Thanks, but I already knew that. I just hadn't considered availability in the context of non-commercial until you said it, at which point I realised that availability wouldn't work as a clause without non-commercial (so it couldn't be a seperate piece to push through) - however, I do think that maybe we should try to mention it, as it might make our policies seem more reasonable to people who would otherwise disagree with us.