NIPC Law

As everyone knows, copyright restricts the acts listed in s.16 (1) of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ("CDPA") in relation to a work in which copyright subsists ("a copyright work"). Those acts include copying, issuing copies, renting, lending or communicating the work to the public etc. Anyone who does any of those acts without the owner's licence infringes that copyright. He or she may be sued or in an extreme case prosecuted.
Clearly, if you want to broadcast, perform or otherwise make use of a copyright work it is a good idea to get a licence. As all those lovely artists, choreographers, composers. dramatists, novelists, poets, song writers and other authors need to live it is only right that they get paid a reasonable fee for their trouble. But therein lies the rub because what may seem reasonable to you and me as consumers may not feel reasonable to an artist in his garret or, more importantly, his agent in his BMW. As I argued  at the Arab-B…