And furthermore, Spooke, the fact that all these cameras "are not networked together, are often terrible quality and are rarely monitored live" does not make anything OK. It simply tells us that for the limited uses in limited locations we might find them acceptable they, or their masters, do a rotten job. Everywhere else they do something unacceptable rather badly. That is nothing about which to be relaxed.

"CCTV is only valuable to the Police after the fact" – it also becomes valuable to anyone else who secretly acquires it and uses it for private gain or purposes which the subject of the film hasn't had a reasonable opportunity to prevent and may consider unreasonable at exactly the same moment.

And by the way, in Central London they are currently as networked together as is possible and you can bet that will be case at any point in time from now on – i.e. more and more.

Yes, the security camera is real. We are VERY well covered round here.

I am sure there's a Professor of Business Affairs at Hamburger University who would agree with you but not many courts would support the view that a McDonalds bag is capable of copyright protection. The logo as a distinct element, sure. Some incredible way of folding the structure which would be recognised as an original industrial design in certain jurisdictions, OK. But the bag itself and the way it performs its primary purpose (holding stuff), no.

Very few would dispute that a musical performance, live or recorded, is capable of copyright protection.

DG are in the business of acquiring and exploiting copyrights. They acquire ownership of some rights, licences of others. They sell at a market-tested rate something which people like to use and which is substantially subject to copyright. Treating that sale in some aspects as an absolute sale and in others as a licence doesn't involve changing any laws, it merely involves informing the customer which aspects are appropriate under what conditions. (Dare I say that McDonalds don't claim any control over what you do with their bag but they no doubt do over how you might you use the logo on it – pasting onto the bags you sell at your own burger joint being an example of something they might reasonably object to? I guess I do).

The free market in which DG, its competitors and those who contribute the copyrighted works operate does so in such a way as to have settled on a royalty in the region of 7% to the creator of the work (with lots of variables in either direction). Those artists (and managers and lawyers) who feel that they are unhappy with either this royalty or the extent of freedom granted the end users of their work are, of course, free to buy some Xserves, a chunk of bandwidth, some web design services, a back office suite, take on Product and Employee Liabilities (and a few others), put up posters, mail some critics and license their customers as widely as they wish. And take a 50% royalty or more. Some do, in fact.

Maybe DG could grant wider uses under their terms of sale. But they'd be taking a risk, particularly with people running around IP conferences saying that licences are theft and buying a copy of a copyrighted work should, in effect, let them put © followed by their name all over it. So they tend to err on the safe side, not disrupting the existing foundation of their modus operandi in underlying terms whilst still releasing the key benefits of new technologies to their customers. This means their customers get the principle use of the product they seek at a reasonable cost and greater speed and convenience than before. Want to do more? Get a licence – though what with the higher royalty they tend to cost a lot more. Or buy a burger. You can do what you want with them, anything at all.

McDonald's bags (with or without trademarked logos) are not in themselves works capable of copyright protection. Comparing these purchases is meaningless.

Whether you bought a wax cylinder or a download, you haven't ever "bought the copyright".

Some works in which copyright subsists – such as the performances encapsulated on wax cylinders and live theatrical performances – were/are pretty hard for the end user to copy and/or sell on. For others – such as digital downloads – it is marvellous easy to do so without any loss of the original experience. Just because the second of these may apply doesn't in itself call for the right to copy and associated rights to pass to the end user.

Yes, the labels have tended to make a dreadful hash of releasing all the benefits of recent technology. But asserting that those benefits should – as a consumer right – include the passing of the actual copyright when this has never previously been the case and when the full intended enjoyment of the work is available to you more cheaply and conveniently than it has ever before been seems a little, well, excessive.

Jitrobug,

It depends what the will said.