BRITAIN NAMES A COPYRIGHT CZAR

British Prime Minister David Cameron has appointed a former entertainment industry executive, now a Member of Parliament, as his adviser on Internet piracy as a first step in launch a crackdown on copyright infringement, the London Financial Times reported today (Friday). Mike Weatherby had previusly served as the European had of the Motion Picture Licensing Company, which oversees film copyrights, and as financial controller of the music-industry’s Pete Waterman Group. He told the FT that he did not agree with all the “copyright exemptions” that were proposed in 2011 by the Hargreaves Review of Intellectual Property — principally modeled on the U.S.’s “fair use” doctrine. Among other controversial observations, the report noted, “It is difficult for anyone to understand why it is legal to lend a friend a book, but not a digital music file.”