As reported by the Newspaper Society: The changes relate to copyright exceptions contained in the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. They come after three years of consultation in the wake of the publication of the Hargreaves Review in May 2011.
The NS and NPA and have worked throughout the process to ensure that the changes do not impact negatively upon the industry and that the majority of uses of copyright material will continue to require permission from copyright owners. The NS and NPA have made detailed written submissions and attended meetings with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and other groups.
Industry publishers should familiarise themselves with the updated exceptions and take steps to enforce their rights where dealings fall outside the scope of what is permitted by the new rules.
The IPO will be reviewing the operation of the exceptions a year after they come into force, and has undertaken to address areas where there is evidence of problems. Publishers are asked to log any problems or concerns so that the NS and NPA can relay them to the IPO at the appropriate time.
The first tranche of changes, which will affect publishers whose work may be used for ‘data mining’, will come into force on 1 June. A new exception for Text and Data Mining will be introduced and some existing exceptions amended, namely the Research, Education, Libraries and Archives, Disability and Public Administration exceptions.
Catherine Courtney, NS legal advisor, said: “In our view there is no convincing evidence that TDM is being blocked by current copyright law or by publishers themselves. On the contrary, licenses are available which make works accessible at low cost on terms that respect the interests of rightsholders.
“More headway was made in respect of the Quotations exception, which now augments rather than replaces the exception for criticism and review.”
Questions remain, with the result that the new Regulations on Quotation; Personal Copies for Private Use; and Parody, caricature and pastiche, will not be implemented until October at the earliest,and may be delayed beyond the General Election in May 2015.
The Government’s stated aim is to introduce “greater freedoms in copyright law to allow third parties to use copyright works for a variety of economically and/or socially valuable purposes without the need to seek permission from copyright owners.” It is asserted that “Protections for the interests of copyright owners and creators are built in to the proposed changes.”
