Listening to Lynette Owen talking about licensing the copyright. Could be taken for granted for many year, she’s talking to those who are a little long in the tooth. Everything changed with the oncoming of the internet with things like Napster etc… The book industry was affected later but the scale of illegal book download sites is enormous. Over 3000 takedown notices to sites in places including Eastern Europe and Russia a month.
Copyright is still essential to facilitate access not to lock it down. Emphasis should be given to publishers and booksellers in the additional value they give to books. Sometimes the role of publisher is misunderstood by the public and sometimes government. They are thought just to be ‘printers’ rather than investing in bringing books to market.
The young think that everything should be free at the click of a mouse and not remunerate the creators of content. There are also anti piracy lobbyists such as the Swedish Pirate Party. Also advocates of open copyright such as CopyLeft and Creative Commons. Danger also comes from large orgs such as the Google Library Scanning Project, scanning content without permission and making it available. There are also govts around the world who see rights in favour of the user rather than the copyright holder.
Lots of reports over the last decode looking in to initiatives around copyright. Gowers Report in 2006, UKIPO consultation in 2009, Digital Britain report in 2009 and the Digital Economy Bill in 2009. Also, Copyright – The Way Ahead in 2009 and the Hargreaves Report in 2011, Hooper Report, Copyright Works in 2012. In the EU there was the Orphan Works directive in 2012 and the Review of EU Copyright Rules in 2013. Contractual Arrangements Applicable to Creators, Law and Practice of Member States, February 2014. Lots of work in this area has happened. These are just a few references for me to look at after the conference.
There are exceptions for the visually impaired and this might be extended to dyslexics. There might be copyright exceptions for educational use. This happens in Canada and also is planned in Australia. Sales of low price books destined for Asia but sold in the USA. Google got away with their scanning project because it was deemed .transformational’.
Education and academic works sees the most copyright infringement.
notatwork 