The Open Rights Group : Blog Archive » Chancellor Announces Intellectual Property Review

Chancellor Announces Intellectual Property Review

Posted by rufus in Intellectual Property at December 2nd, 2005

The Chancellor has announced that Andrew Gowers, former Editor of the Financial Times, will lead an independent review into intellectual property rights in the UK.

The review will analyze the whole of the UK IP regime but the specific areas of interest include:

Administration of the IP system (is it too complex, too difficult to enforce, too costly etc)
Whether the current technical and legal IP infringement framework reflects the digital environment, and whether provisions for ‘fair use’ by citizens are reasonable.
Term of copyright protection for sound recordings and performers rights

The press release says that It [the IP regime] must provide the optimal incentives for private industry and individuals to innovate and invest to create value, while preventing excessive inefficiencies and monopoly costs which can reduce competition and impede incremental innovation. This sounds promising, acknowledging, as it does, that intellectual property is a monopoly having real costs both to the general public and those who seek to building on existing work.

But Gowers says: I believe that Intellectual Property is at the heart of Britain’s success in the knowledge economy. This review will ensure that we maintain a world-class environment for creativity, design and innovation. which smacks of ‘intellectual property good, more intellectual property better’ school. The review also suffers from the deficiency that it is focused on the tool rather than the problem — the promotion of innovation, creativity and access to knowledge.

It is also noteworthy that the question of ‘fair use’ is framed in terms of reasonableness, not sufficiency, which seems to imply that the inquiry already believes that the current provisions are unreasonable and need scaling back.

Finally, details on how to get involved: The Gowers Review will be actively consulting stakeholders throughout its duration. A contact address will appear on the review website shortly.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Chancellor Announces Intellectual Property Review”

Neil Dunbar Says:
December 2nd, 2005 at 4:12 pm
From the article:

“The Government has previously committed to examining whether the current term of copyright protection on sound recordings and performers� rights is appropriate. This will also be conducted within the review.”

What’s the betting that this is where the BPI push for the 100 year copyright on sound recordings, and the film folks push for life+90 on films.

However, the terms of reference of the enquiry sound sufficiently reasonable to warrant submission. This should be a good chance for ORG activism. [And I'll happily sponsor it when the donation capability comes on line]

Neil
Kevin Marks Says:
December 3rd, 2005 at 12:00 am
And where we cite Macaulay and push for 28 year terms again?

For consider this; the evil effects of the monopoly are proportioned to the length of its duration. But the good effects for the sake of which we bear with the evil effects are by no means proportioned to the length of its duration. A monopoly of sixty years produces twice as much evil as a monopoly of thirty years, and thrice as much evil as a monopoly of twenty years. But it is by no means the fact that a posthumous monopoly of sixty years gives to an author thrice as much pleasure and thrice as strong a motive as a posthumous monopoly of twenty years. On the contrary, the difference is so small as to be hardly perceptible. We all know how faintly we are affected by the prospect of very distant advantages, even when they are advantages which we may reasonably hope that we shall ourselves enjoy. But an advantage that is to be enjoyed more than half a century after we are dead, by somebody, we know not by whom, perhaps by somebody unborn, by somebody utterly unconnected with us, is really no motive at all to action.
David Brake Says:
December 5th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Sounds like the terms of the inquiry are being narrowly focused on the economic cost/benefit. The ORG should make the point that there are major problems not related to innovation or monopoly power but related to cultural availability due (for example) to the vast amount of ‘grey’ material in copyright but without a clear owner. (Hence the need for a change in the law to require copyright holders to assert their rights after a short period as Lessig has suggested).
kenkil Says:
December 5th, 2005 at 9:33 pm
Economic cost/benefit are exactly the grounds on which the argument for limiting Copyright duration can be won.

If people are prepared to pay �10 for an Elvis CD, they do so because they think it’s worth something to them. If the Elvis back-catalogue became public domain, any publisher coujld issue the CDs, and it would not be illegal to obtain the music by copying (I think).

The economic benefits would be huge- anyone could get hold of this music for a reduced cost. Publishers would be forced to compete with low cost music from yesteryear- either by increasing quality or decreasing prices- another public gain. Remixers and Mashup artists would be able to operate with fewer legal hinderances.

Sure, a revenue stream would be lost to the publisher- but they should not have been counting on this revenue stream in the first place. And if many more people get access to the music, but get to keep their �10, this is a larger benefit than that loss.
Tom P Says:
December 7th, 2005 at 5:59 pm
A few points - BPI seem to be pushing for 95 years, not 100. I guess they think there’s something more psychologically acceptable about still staying in two figures… And the lobbying has already been underway for some time now; although the Chancellor’s review is new, that’s just becuase the Treasury have taken the issue away from DCMS.

The out-of-copyright market is already an economically significant one - with companies like Naxos, et al - and is a very effective argument against extension, as one element of a “bad for business, bad for the consumer, bad for the culture” approach.

Of course, the main point that needs to be pushed is that this all about Elvis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and nothing else - companies that have already made huge profits from these artists, but haven’t had the basic business sense to plan ahead for a slow, predictable loss of back-catalogue revenue. And so they want to lock down their entire back catalogue, most of which they do nothing with, because of revenues from a tiny percentage of those artists.