The European Parliament has begun preparing its opinion on the European Commission’s flawed proposal to extend the term of copyright protection for sound recordings. MEPs have been appointed to act as rapporteurs, who will guide the committees that will recommend how Parliament should vote. Your MEPs need to know that their voters are concerned [...]

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Read the rest of "Performers likely to get as little as 50¢ a year from increased term of copyright"

When the European Commission put forward their proposal to retrospectively extend the copyright term granted to sound recordings, locking away vast swathes of our cultural heritage in a commercial vacuum for 45 years, it was clear that they had rejected all the expert evidence in favour of voodoo economics.
Now Professor Bernt Hugenholtz has written a [...]

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Disregarding the evidence-based findings of their own advisors, the UK government’s independent analysis, and those of Europe’s leading intellectual property research centres, the EU Commission has formally accepted DG Internal Market’s proposal to extend the duration of copyright protection for sound recordings.
Copyright term is a quid pro quo, designed to balance the interests of consumers [...]

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Today, the leading European centres for intellectual property research have released a joint letter to EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso, enclosing an impact assessment detailing the far-reaching and negative effects of the proposal to extend the term of copyright in sound recordings. With the confusion and disillusionment of Ireland’s rejection of the Lisbon Treaty [...]

Read the rest of "Term Extension “will damage Commission’s reputation”, top legal advisers tell Barroso"

When the government mailed half the nation’s bank details to the darknet at the end of last year, it looked like 2008 was going to be the year privacy issues hit the headlines. But, when it comes to digital rights stories, privacy has been seeing stiff competition from that old foe of the digital society: [...]

Read the rest of "Copyright commotions 101: Free event at LSE next month"

Update: David Bausola of Imagination (www.imagination.com) and Rob Myers - the conceptual engineers behind the commercial media production model that uses Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike as in Ford of Europe’s Where are the Joneses? - will both be joining Tom and John (see below) for our panel Q&A at the Monday seminar
Over the last few [...]

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The Open Rights Group, in collaboration with 01zero-one and funded by the London Development Agency, is beginning an exciting new research project, examining how the internet enables creative entrepreneurs to develop innovative business practices by being more open with their intellectual property. Creative Business in the Digital Era will examine new business models and the [...]

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This morning sees the release of The Power of Information, an independent review, commissioned by Hilary Armstrong MP at the Cabinet Office, into “state- and citizen-generated information”. The report, authored by Tom Steinberg (MySociety) and Ed Mayo (National Consumer Council), calls for the government to thoroughly examine the economic case for keeping some public sector [...]

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The Gowers Review, commissioned by the government to look at intellectual property law in the United Kingdom, published its final report today. It was commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown MP so it is expected that the report will hold a lot of weight and that its recommendations will be followed. We [...]

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