Iirc they're on charges of conspiracy to defraud, which is a separate offence to fraud. Fraud is quite narrowly defined (by the Fraud Act 2006). Conspiracy to defraud is one of the most controversial criminal offences in English law as it is incredibly broad and vague, potentially criminalising an agreement to do something that is of itself perfectly legal. It's popular with FACT and the MPAA at the moment as it is far easier to prove than criminal copyright infringement.

A crime was committed .... I know the MPAA is just supposed to roll over and let everybody steal from them, but they didn't do anything wrong or even questionable.

Firstly, a crime was *allegedly* committed. The couple involved are on trial at the moment, and they may be found not guilty.

Secondly, this is a UK situation, so there is no issue of "stealing". Plus I don't think the MPAA actually own that much to steal, being just an association.

Thirdly, what they did was definitely questionable, which is why the couple involved were able to sue them (or rather, their UK front company) and the local police. The couple won the initial case but then lost on appeal. So while that may not be wrong, at least a few English judges thought it was questionable.

If it helps, they did complain. They sued the police and FACT to get their equipment back after the charges were dropped (or rather a decision was made not to charge them). They lost on appeal.

England doesn't have plaintiffs any more, and this is a criminal case anyway, so it's a prosecutor.

But yes, they did try to get it thrown out, or rather, they sued the police and FACT (the MPAA's UK enforcement minions) to get back their equipment, but lost on appeal. Apparently it was all perfectly legal.

The MPAA (through their UK minions, FACT, a "private commercial organisation, representing the interests of the audio-visual industry") did some investigating to find out who the operator of SurfTheChannel.com was. After various undercover meetings, fake deals and that sort of thing, they were able to identify the operators as a UK-based couple. Then they set the police on them.

The police turned up, with FACT people, and arrested the couple, seizing a load of evidence, and a FACT specialist was able to copy a load of data from the computers (and may have done so illegally). While in custody the couple were interviewed with FACT people present, FACT were able to examine the evidence, and eventually most of it was handed over to them for analysis.

Eventually, the couple were released and the CPS (who decide whether or not to bring prosecutions) decided not to charge them. The police then handed the rest of the evidence over to FACT who wanted it so they could run a private prosecution. The couple sued the police and FACT to get their stuff back (after their direct requests were refused). These facts all come from the resulting case (Scopelight Ltd & Ors v Chief of Police for Northumbria & FACT) which FACT won on appeal.

The initial arrests were in August 2008, the CPS gave up in December 2008, FACT filed their private prosecution in February 2009 and that appeal was ruled on in November 2009. This new information has come to light because that private prosecution is currently being heard in Newcastle Crown Court.

The other major fact that emerged was that the US programmer who worked on the site was arrested by US authorities, but managed to get out of being convicted for his part in exchange for agreeing to testify in the UK case. So the US let an alleged criminal go so he could help a private, UK-based company win a private prosecution in the UK.

Congratulations, you've just nominated someone, pretty much at random, to be the heir to the Shakespeare copyrights, and therefore owner of most of the planet's wealth.

Untransferrable copyrights look like a great idea at first glance, but unless you allow authors to grant some kind of exclusivity to a publisher, then publishers can't do any useful kind of deal with authors. If you do allow this, then authors and publishers will draw up an agreement to hand over all the functional bits of copyright that acts in every practical way like a copyright transfer.

As for copyright expiry on death, I'm not convinced handing rap label owners a massive financial incentive to kill each other's artists would be a wise move!

A blanket expiration of IP after five years would have a problem dealing with trade secrets. Do you give everyone the right to stroll into Coke and KFC's corporate HQs and demand their secret recipies? If so, how do you deal with them replying 'nope, we changed it 4 years ago' without making a lot of lawyers very, very rich?

So you're saying that Microsoft would have an incentive to improve their software more frequently. Is there a downside?

I think the consequence of the thought experiment would be that we'd start attaching equivalent value to official endorsements. While anyone could make a Harry Potter film, JK Rowling would still be able to sell the right to call just one of them the official one, and use her name in the title, the advertising, etc. I'm not convinced that this would be a bad thing. Studios would be kept on their toes by competitors, and authors would actually have some weight to throw around when it matters, rather than when they sold a transferrable right many years ago. Would the world be a better place if Alan Moore could look at the rushes of 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' and instead of just taking his name off it and nobody caring much, he could say 'do it properly or I'll find a cool indy filmmaker and give him the endorsement instead'?