The Government will therefore bring forward proposals in autumn 2011 for a substantial opening up of the UK’s copyright exceptions regime on this basis. This will include
proposals for a limited private copying exception; to widen the exception for noncommercial research, which should also cover both text- and data-mining to the extent permissible under EU law; to widen the exception for library archiving; and to introduce an exception for parody.
Hooray! Sane minds prevail.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/the-british-government-has-endorsed.ars
Pay attention Government of Canada.
The most interesting tidbit I got from the response is the “commitment to evidence based legislation” and the requirement that all such evidence will be “open”, both in data set and analysis methodology.
This should result in a lot less passion filled and alarmist “reports” being dumped on policy makers. Hard evidence, which can be scrutinized by 3rd parties for accuracy and conclusions.
Things are going swimmingly across the pond …
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/08/p2p-lawyers-get-their-comeuppance-in-the-form-of-fine-suspension.ars
Let some of that fresh air flow this direction.
@Crockett
The overall picture tends to dovetail with some statistics I saw in an article I read recently.. I wish I could find it again. he article was about the US, but it applies elsewhere as well.
The point that hit home in the article is that there is an excess of graduating law students in the US. They “have to find work” somehow. The way the system is set up, they can “create” their own work just by convincing a potential client that there is a possibility of obtaining some money, and working on a percentage basis.
With an excess of lawyers and the “competition”, the quality of cases before the courts is bound to get worse, before it gets better.
Note really “on topic”, but this is the closest I could find for anything recent.
Apparently a lot of music artists are coming up on their 35 year “termination rights”, which will allow them to reclaim ownership of their material and/or performance rights.
The RIAA doesn’t seem to like this idea.. Here’s a quote:
“We believe the termination right doesn’t apply to most sound recordings, said Steven Marks, general counsel for the Recording Industry Association of America, a lobbying group in Washington that represents the interests of record labels. As the record companies see it, the master recordings belong to them in perpetuity, rather than to the artists who wrote and recorded the songs, because, the labels argue, the records are works for hire, compilations created not by independent performers but by musicians who are, in essence, their employees.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/arts/music/springsteen-and-others-soon-eligible-to-recover-song-rights.html?_r=1