Copyright reform that would hit DVD users attacked

Pressure groups have criticised proposed changes to the 14-year-old Copyright Act, under which the practice of setting up UK-bought DVD players to play discs bought in the United States could become illegal.

The new legislation could also introduce stringent restrictions on copying digital data such as CDs, online films and music, imposing swingeing fines – or even prison sentences – on offenders.

The Government is planning a shake-up of Britain's copyright laws to implement the EU Copyright Directive passed in April 2001, which must now be written into UK law.

The Patent Office is preparing a draft form of the legislation for the Department of Trade and Industry, which says it will issue them for consultation before amending the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act.

The DTI declined to say what changes were being planned, or when the new draft of the law will be ready for consultation. But it is likely to come up before Parliament next year.

Pressure groups are particularly concerned about Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive, which makes it illegal to circumvent hardware or software protection designed by the copyright holder in a program or product.

With DVDs, discs which are bought in one area of the world often cannot be played on machines in a different area.

Lars Gaarden, of the digital rights group Eurorights, said: "Article 6 is, in essence, removing the balance between the society and the author ... and replacing it with arbitrary rules governed by the software or hardware you use to access a copyrighted work."

Julian Midgley, a spokesman for Eurorights, said Article 6 could give further power to companies like Microsoft, which already enjoys a monopoly on desktop software. "If they were to introduce a word-processing program that included copyright protection, no other company could write a competing product that would be able to read it, without Microsoft's consent," he said.

Campaigners have vowed to oppose such changes and hope that they can win, following recent reverses for the government on the use of technology. During the last session, the Home Secretary, David Blunkett, was forced to retreat over plans to allow hundreds of organisations to spy on e-mails without peoples' knowledge.

Many of the groups opposing the proposals say that they were the result of intensive lobbying by film studios and record labels of the European Parliament when the proposed legislation was being drawn up and that it does not give normal consumers enough "fair use" rights to quote from works, or even to use them as they see fit.