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Axel Beelen
SAJ
21th May 2011
1. Evidence
2. International priorities
The UK should support moves by the European Commission to establish a framework for cross
border copyright licensing.
Collecting societies should be required by law to adopt codes of practice, approved by the IPO
and the UK competition authorities, to ensure that they operate in a way that is consistent with
the further development of efficient, open markets.
The aim is to establish a network of interoperable databases to provide a common platform for
licensing transactions.
Some have compared the task to the successful management of domain names on the internet.
The initiative should draw on and build on experience of these systems as it creates a
standardised approach.
In order to achieve the necessary momentum to create the Digital Copyright Exchange, a highly
respected figure will be needed to lead its formative stage. The goal should be to establish these
new arrangements by the end of 2012.
4. Orphan works
The Government should legislate to enable licensing of orphan works. This should establish
extended collective licensing for mass licensing of orphan works, and a clearance procedure for
use of individual works. In both cases, a work should only be treated as an orphan if it cannot be
found by search of the databases involved in the proposed Digital Copyright Exchange.
Because there is an urgent need for an efficient way to license collections of works in as
straightforward a manner as possible, enabling transaction costs to be kept to a minimum.
There are two distinct situations to consider: mass licensing of collections which include some
orphans, and use of individual orphan works.
Mass licensing: extendend collective licensing and before diligent search (through also the
DCE).
Any fees paid should be held by the collecting society running the ECL scheme until the owner is
identified, or a reasonable period of time elapses, in which case the monies should be used for
social or cultural purposes, or perhaps as a contribution to the running costs of the Digital
Copyright Exchange.
Government should firmly resist over regulation of activities which do not prejudice the central objective of copyright, namely the
provision of incentives to creators.
Government should deliver copyright exceptions at national level to realise all the opportunities within the EU framework,
including format shifting, parody, non-commercial research, and library archiving.
The UK should also promote at EU level a new exception to support text and data analytics. The UK should give a lead at EU level
to develop a further copyright exception designed to build into the EU framework adaptability to new technologies. This would
be designed to allow uses enabled by technology of works in ways which do not directly trade on the underlying creative and
expressive purpose of the work.
The Government should also legislate to ensure that these and other copyright exceptions are protected from override by
contract.
This is not about overriding the aim of copyright – these uses do not
compete with the normal exploitation of the work itself – indeed, they may
facilitate it. Nor is copyright intended to restrict use of facts. That these
new uses happen to fall within the scope of copyright regulation is
essentially a side effect of how copyright has been defined, rather than
being directly relevant to what copyright is supposed to protect.
“A recent study analysed 100 contracts offered to the British Library and
found numerous examples of the diversity of contracts and licences, as
well as demonstrating that contracts and licences often override the
exceptions and limitations allowed in copyright law. This imbalance must
be addressed, as licences should never substitute for legislation on core
maters such as exceptions and limitations. The licensing framework now
underpins much of the content online and contracts rather than
copyright dictate how content can be used. Legislation must be amended
to ensure that contracts are prevented from overriding copyright
exceptions.” LACA submission (Libraries and Archives Copyright
Alliance).
Applying contracts in this way means a rights holder can rewrite the limits the law has
set on the extent of the right conferred by copyright. It creates the risk that should
Government decide that UK law will permit private copying or text mining, these
permissions could be denied by contract. Where an institution has different contracts
with a number of providers, many of the contracts overriding exceptions in different
areas, it becomes very difficult to give clear guidance to users on what they are
permitted. Often the result will be that, for legal certainty, the institution will restrict
access to the most restrictive set of terms, significantly reducing the provisions for use
established by law. Even if unused, the possibility of contractual override is harmful
because it replaces clarity (“I have the right to make a private copy”) with uncertainty
(“I must check my licence to confirm that I have the right to make a private copy”).
The Government should change the law to make it clear no exception to
copyright can be overridden by contract.
8. Enforcement of IP rights
The Government should pursue an integrated approach based upon enforcement, education
and, crucially, measures to strengthen and grow legitimate markets in copyright and other IP
protected fields.
When the enforcement regime set out in the DEA becomes operational next year its impact
should be carefully monitored and compared with experience in other countries, in order to
provide the insight needed to adjust enforcement mechanisms as market conditions evolve. This
is urgent and Ofcom should not wait until then to establish its benchmarks and begin building
data on trends.
In order to support rights holders in enforcing their rights the Government should introduce a
small claims track for low monetary value IP claims in the Patents County Court.
We have not found either a figure for the prevalence and impact
of piracy worldwide or for the UK in which we can place our
confidence.
Where else can we look for evidence of the damage done by piracy and the
current enforcement regime? Creative industry sales figures provide a clue. In
the UK music industry, though some individual businesses have suffered
dramatically from the boom in digital downloads (HMV, the music retailer is an
example) music industry revenues overall have continued to grow year on year:
to £3.9 billion in 2009, up five per cent on 2008, driven by strong figures from
live music, growth in international licensing and some stabilisation in the
recorded musc market. In the much bigger publishing market, figures from the
Publishers Association, show that book sales have also grown or maintained
their net value between 2004 and 2009.12 The video sector too has managed
to maintain unit sales, but struggled somewhat to sustain value in the last two to
three years. All of this in spite of recession in Europe and North America.
The IPO should be given the necessary powers and mandate in law to ensure that it focuses on its
central task of ensuring that the UK’s IP system promotes innovation and growth through
efficient, contestable markets.
It should be empowered to issue statutory opinions where these will help clarify copyright law.
As an element of improved transparency and adaptability,
Government should ensure that by the end of 2013, the IPO publishes an assessment of the
impact of those measures advocated in this review which have been accepted by Government.