EU copyright reforms to be 'gradual, balanced and targeted', says Ansip EU copyright laws will not be overhauled completely but rather reformed in a gradual, balanced and targeted way, EU commissioner for the digital single market Andrus Ansip has said. Proposed changes to EU copyright laws will be set out in a "strategy paper" next month, Ansip said. In a speech in Strasbourg he revealed some of …
More than anything else, the music industry is against change. If they don't prosecute for private copying, why bother to go to court and get this regulation dropped?
Also I suppose the current government also thinks that the current situation where it's illegal but the music industry promises not to do anything about it is fine because that's the way it's always been done, but it just leaves everyone in a legal limbo.
make copyright law the same as patenting law?
On top of that, make a provision that the original (evidence required) creator has control of their creation (who uses it, why, where, etc) and get reimbursed a set value. The set value, for example, could be the investment required to develop the idea must be covered in whole (exclusive deal) or in part with a set percentage of the profit taken that can be attributed to the IP.
At he moment the only ones who seem to do well from the current IP law are large publishers.
Remember, if you play your radio so others can hear it you need a PRS license! (aah, the joy of living in a "free" country)
...that we, the public, will be worse off during and after "harmonisation" because no rights holder in any country is going to want a reduction in protection, only an increase.
For example, copyright duration increased EU wide to death+70 years because that's what Germany had despite the EU average being lower and many member countries having much shorter copyright periods.
And, of course, Disney and Cliff Richard will be at the forefront of the lobbying for longer, more stringent copyright rules.
As far as the British Library are concerned it is perpetual because everything in their newspaper archive the BL claim is their copyright even though most of it was printed in the nineteenth century. According to the UK Intellectual Property Office guidance:
"....in UK law, copyright can only subsist in subject matter that is original in the sense that it is the author’s own ‘intellectual creation’. Given this criteria, it seems unlikely that what is merely a retouched, digitised image of an older work can be considered as ‘original’. This is because there will generally be minimal scope for a creator to exercise free and creative choices if their aim is simply to make a faithful reproduction of an existing work."
The BL are profiteering from millions of documents and images that should be in the public domain by asserting copyright over the copies they made when it is clear that no copyright can subsist in the copies they have made.
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