(Department for Business, Innovation & Skills)
The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills is the Government Department with responsibility for wider copyright and intellectual property issues.

The simplest way to explain copyright is 'I wrote it, it's mine'. Copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author or creator of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute, license and adapt the work.

The creative industries are described by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as “those industries which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent which have a potential for job and wealth creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property” ('Creative Industries Mapping Document', DCMS, 2001). This includes industries such as film, music, publishing, photography, video games and performing arts.

(Digital Copyright Exchange)
The independent Review of Intellectual Property carried out by Professor Ian Hargreaves proposed a ‘one stop shop’ database for people seeking the rights to copyrighted material. This is generally referred to as a Digital Copyright Exchange.

(Department for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport)
The Department for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport is the Government Department with responsibility for implementation of the Digital Economy Act.

(Digital Economy Act)
The Digital Economy Act is a piece of legislation that was passed by the UK Parliament in April 2010. It is a broad piece of legislation which deals with a number of issues and includes provisions to help tackle online copyright infringement. For further details, please see the FAQ document.

Filesharing is the activity of trading digital files with other users over the internet. Users trade files by downloading (to obtain them) and uploading (to distribute them). This is illegal when copyrighted material is made available without the permission of the rights holders.

In November 2010, the Prime Minister David Cameron announced an independent review of how the UK’s Intellectual Property framework supports growth and innovation. He appointed Professor Ian Hargreaves to carry out this review and the final report was published in May 2011. To view the report click here

The Digital Economy Act requires Ofcom to publish a code of practice setting out the obligations placed on rights holders and internet service providers in relation to the notice sending elements of the anti-piracy measures contained in the Digital Economy Act. This will effectively set the framework within which the notice sending process will operate.

Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce. IP is divided into two categories: industrial property, which includes inventions (patents), trademarks, industrial designs, and geographic indications of source; and copyright, which includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems and plays, films, musical works, artistic works such as drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures, and architectural designs.

BT and TalkTalk launched a Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act in November 2010 on five separate grounds. Their appeal was rejected on almost all grounds on 20 April 2011 by Justice Parker who stated that ‘the DEA represents a more efficient, focussed and fair system than the current arrangements.’

Notice sending refers to the notices that internet service providers will be required to send to people whose internet connections have been used to infringe copyright online under the Digital Economy Act. The notices will contain information about where to access material online legally. For more information please see the FAQ document .

Ofcom is the media regulator which will have oversight of the notice sending anti-piracy measures contained within the Digital Economy Act.

An orphan work is a copyrighted work where it is difficult or impossible to trace or contact the copyright holder.

P2P (Peer-To-Peer) is a way of networking computers over the internet so they can exchange files directly. P2P became more widely known through the use of filesharing systems and applications such as the original Napster and Kazaa in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act is the UK implementation of Article 8.3 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive. It was introduced to give effect to European law that recognises that it can often be very difficult to stop people that are determined to operate unlawfully on the Internet and that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are well placed to take court-sanctioned action to block the unlawful activity.