The Parliamentary committee which monitors the Business Department has warmly backed No 10's copyright revolution, and urged the Hargreaves' Independent Review of IP and Growth – aka the Google Review – to speed ahead. MPs recommend going further than many copyright radicals, supporting greatly expanded powers for the …

ExclusiveGoogle's influence on the UK copyright agenda is a little clearer today, thanks to an email seen by The Register. The email is a rallying cry to 'independent' copyright activists. In the email, Google's head of UK policy, Theo Bertram, urges the recipients to rally supporters behind a Parliamentary Early Day Motion in favour …

CommentA Westminster investigation into the machinations of the UK's copyright bureaucracy and the government's intellectual property policy opened very gently this week. The All Parliamentary Group on Intellectual Property is headed by heavyweight backbench MP John Whittingdale, and while members are pro-IP, they have plenty of …

The government should not change UK copyright laws until supposed problems with the current framework can be assessed in light of how a new 'digital copyright exchange' (DCE) works, the Publishers Association has said. Richard Mollet, chief executive of the association, said that the benefits the DCE could bring could …

All publicly-funded research data should be made freely accessible to benefit business and society, the government has said. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) said making the information freely available would help stimulate economic growth, innovation and entrepreneurism, and improve public sector …

CommentThanks to Yes, Minister, the idea of bureaucrats running the country is embedded in the nation's imagination. Governments change and ministers come and go with barely enough time to master the jargon. Public policy is quietly made in private, and while the media focuses on the elected government, the real one, our bureaucracy, …

Now we know why what was widely called the "Google Review" into intellectual property came to the conclusions it did. And we have it from the horse's mouth: not Google, but Professor Ian Hargreaves and his team at the IPO, who "guided" him. If you recall, a year ago the Prime Minister David Cameron revealed that the Google …

AnalysisBritain could have invented the iPod – if it wasn't for a copyright law that everyone ignores. So says the UK government in a remarkable economic justification of the so-called "Google Review", the Review of IP and Growth led by Ian Hargreaves. The document was written for the government by civil servants at the IPO, part of the …

Games, music and movie industries are putting a brave face on this week's deluge of official IP announcements, while anti-copyright campaigners will be delighted a chunk of legislation passed by elected MPs has been struck down by a quango. Britain's permanent government, our bureaucracy, has dug its heels in and managed to …

Vince Cable is expected to announce that the government will endorse all the recommendations of the Hargreaves Review into intellectual property, the "Google Review" – tomorrow. The FT adds that Cable will also announce that regulator Ofcom has said Clauses 17 and 18 of the Digital Economy Act, dealing with website blocking, are …

Governments have a long tradition of commissioning copyright overhauls and then throwing them in the bin. Will Ian Hargreaves' IP review suffer the same fate? I suspect most of it will, and here's why. IP is a layer cake of complex international treaties that limit the scope of what national governments may actually do. Europe …

The "Google Review" – Ian Hargreaves' Independent Review of IP and Growth – has been published. The report's language is more Dave Spart than Geoff Taylor; it reflects legal academia's view that IP is an oppressive hindrance on our way to a cybernetic utopia, rather than the creator and business' view that IP is a temporary …

Strategic leaks from the ongoing review of the UK's copyright law suggest Ian Hargreaves' team will establish a new intermediary agency he hopes will speed up digital licensing. The review was announced by PM David Cameron last October and surprised the Intellectual Property Office. Cameron said he wanted to reform UK IP laws …

Software companies should be entitled to bigger damages for the use of copied software, industry lobby group the Business Software Alliance (BSA) has said. Damages law needs to be changed so that companies are entitled to damages greater than the current rate of the equivalent to the cost of the software which has been copied …

Hurrah! Research company ABI has predicted a boom in paid-for streaming music services benefitting a long list of winners. There's just a few groups in the loser column... including the artists who make the music. ABI predicts a compound annual growth rate of 95 per cent, leading to 161 million subscribers by 2016. Services …

How curious. The Government's review into IP and growth may have been set up by mistake, or at least on a false premise. On announcing the review last November, Prime Minister David Cameron said something quite curious. Cameron explained that the review was a response to Google's concerns... "The founders of Google have said …

Two years ago Google embarked on a campaign to import US-style "fair use" into British copyright law. Three months ago the new Coalition obliged, by commissioning an independent review to examine growth and intellectual property, specifically tacking onto the group's To Do list. This may strike you as odd, since the UK …

The Government has asked businesses how it can help them to make more use of intellectual property (IP) assets. It has also published details of the review it will hold into IP growth. It said that it wanted to focus particularly on the use of IP by small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) and what it could do to help them to …