Parliamentary committee suspends intellectual property rights inquiry
Hargreaves review out soon, will suggest freeing up 'orphan' works
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
A parliamentary committee has dropped its inquiry into the Digital Economy Act (DEA) and whether it is the right mechanism to protect copyright on the internet.
The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee said that it was taking its decision in light of ongoing court action surrounding the controversial UK law.
Last month the High Court ruled that the DEA, which allows for regulations to be made that force internet service providers (ISPs) to disconnect users if copyright-holders believe the user is violating their rights, complies with EU law.
TalkTalk, one of the ISPs that led the court action, has said that it may challenge the ruling in the European courts.
The Committee had called for evidence in November last year to help it consider the DEA's new framework for protecting intellectual property (IP) rights online, and the extent to which the new laws would be a reasonable and sufficient response.
It planned to address issues raised by the government's ongoing review of the UK's intellectual property framework, which will be published later this week.
The Review of Intellectual Property and Growth is led by Professor Ian Hargreaves, chair of Digital Economy at Cardiff University. It was announced by the prime minister late last year.
The review aims to identify barriers to economic growth within the current IP framework, which consists of the rules and regulations covering how IP is created, used and protected. It will then see if the framework needs to be relaxed to provide more support to digital businesses.
Speaking to industry representatives in November 2010, the prime minister had said he wanted to see a US-style approach to IP laws, including a 'fair use' exemption to allow copyrighted material to be used freely without permission under certain conditions.
However, submissions to Professor Hargreaves' review panel indicated strong opposition to the idea from a range of media industry bodies including ITV, the CBI and News Corporation.
An imminent review of EU laws on IP, also due this month, will likely offer similar protections to creators' rights.
The Government has already promised to modernise the current copyright system, with simplified payments and minimal transaction costs, in response to Hargreaves' review as part of the Treasury's Plan for Growth (131-page / 1.7MB PDF). The report also commits the Government to no further broad IP rights reviews during this Parliament.
The review will also include recommendation to free up access to "orphan works", where the original rights-holder cannot be contacted, according to the Treasury report.
Mr Hargreaves is also expected to recommend legalising copying works to a different format for private use, such as converting tracks on a CD into a digital music library, according to a Sunday Telegraph report.
The government plans to set out the next steps needed to implement the DEA shortly, according to its response to the High Court ruling.
Copyright © 2011, OUT-LAW.com
OUT-LAW.COM is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
COMMENTS
Orpan works
The review will also include recommendation to free up access to "orphan works", where the original rights-holder cannot be contacted, according to the Treasury report.
Does this mean that if I write to SONY BMG and they do not get back to me, then the works become "orphan" ?
However I'm not sure that this will make up for the companies that deliberately remove the copyright information from photographs and then claim that the rights-hold cannot be contacted (e.g. BBC)
It seems to me. . .
It seems to me that this "Orphan Works" gambit is simply a way to strip copyright protection from everyone except the largest companies, with risk of having one's copyrighted work violated by fraudulently being labeled "orphan" increasing as the size of the copyright-owning entity decreases, with individual artists, not associated with large media companies, essentially being instantly expropriated by anyone who wants to use their work for free.
But then, isn't that really why the whole so-called "Orphan Works" problem has been created? - to give Google and other kleptocratic tech companies the ability to use whatever they want, at no cost to them? Correct answer: Yes.
I would be interested to know if there are any proposed penalties for falsely declaring a work "orphaned", or did Hargreaves not think that this could possibly happen? Or even a procedure that must be gone through before a work is declared an "orphan". No? Is the omission by oversight, or design, one has to wonder.
There may be laws more open to abuse than this, but I can't think of any. . .
Definition of "Orphaned"
Works are copyright at creation, but inability to find the rights holder no more makes the work orphaned than if you cannot find the parents of a child makes it orphaned. In both cases they are merely missing. It does not indicate anything about intent to protect the work or not.
Conversely, if a work is registered with the copyright office, the registrant is indicating they seek some protection for the work. If they later fail to keep up the registration or at least a trail to find them, that failure indicates they no longer care about protecting the work. From that you can now declare it orphaned.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Cloud based data management
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
