Biz law reform: Bad news for lawyers, good news for hippies
Eco-tech funds in, tribunals out in draft bill
Posted in Management, 24th May 2012 10:33 GMT
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Vince Cable presented his new Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill to Parliament on Wednesday afternoon, promising more action on competition, streamlined employment tribunals and a £3bn Green Bank that will funnel cash into eco-friendly energy and tech industries.
The proposed changes to employment law will encourage work-related disputes to be settled by negotiation with the independent ACAS body, rather than tribunals, a process that should be faster and cheaper than the litigation route. Plans to stop people with less than two years' employment at a company from launching unfair dismissal cases have been dropped, however.
In a move to throttle directors' outlandish salaries, the Business Secretary's draft law also gives shareholders the ability to hold binding votes on board executives' pay.
Cable also announced an extension to copyright for artistic works, extending it to the author's life plus 70 years.
Meanwhile, the new Competition and Markets Authority proposed by the bill will bring together the monopoly probing functions of the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission, and will be the principal competition authority with a remit to tackle anticompetitive behaviour.
Cable said:
Growing our economy out of a period of acute crisis is the most pressing issue for this Government. We want to make sure the right conditions are in place to encourage investment and exports, boost enterprise, support green growth and build a responsible business culture.
However, Labour’s shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said the bill didn't provide a “compelling vision” for economic growth.
The proposals must now make their way through Parliament before the bill becomes law. ®
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COMMENTS
Re: No, no, no, no
Could you please explain to us why a person who's been dead for 69 years still needs food on their table?
Looks OK except for copyright extension
Why this gift to idle tossers who profit from somebody else's creative laurels?
I think copyright should be limited the later of the author's death or 20 years after first publication. That would suit me if I was the author and should give enough time for a publisher to recoup his outlay. Anything more just panders to third party greed.
Copyright extension? It needs a reduction.
If 25 years is enough for a patent then 25 years should be good enough for copyright. 25 years should also mean 25 years from date of creation. As the law stands the copyright period can be extended by advances in medicine. That is both wrong and stupid.
My opinion of Vince Cable just plummeted.
Copyright FAIL
"Cable also announced an extension to copyright for artistic works, extending it to the author's life plus 70 years."
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, this is absolute horseshit! Is the purpose of copyright to encourage creativity by allowing creators to profit exclusively from their creations? Or is it to allow companies to keep re-hashing the same tired old themes for 100+ years while profiting from someone else's creativity?
The term of a work should be from the date of first publication / exhibition. Firstly, using the author's death as a starting point will just allow creators to rest on their laurels after 1 big hit, and secondly, many works such as big studio films are copyrighted by a corporate entity, not a person. That corporate entity can "live" forever, so does it get an infinite copyright term??
Secondly, 70 years is way too long, 20-25 years is more than enough. Does anyone know of any book, film, song etc that lay in obscurity for 20-25 years and then suddenly became a huge hit? I very much doubt that any such exist. Artists and creators can make plenty of money in 20-25 years, and if they want more royalties after that, they can create some new stuff.
Copyright Extension
Here we go again, because we cannot have the beatles coming out of copyright into the public domain now can we?
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