The Chief Executive of the Publishers Association, Richard Mollet, has called on the Government to reverse its copyright policy, saying that it is out of step with the rest of Europe.
Speaking at the Westminster Media Forum’s seminar earlier today (May 21st), Mr Mollet said that the Government has earned a reputation in Europe for wanting to review and weaken copyright laws, which makes other Europeans “incredulous”.
He added that in his opinion, the Hargreaves review of Intellectual Property had failed to provide any analysis or assessment about the impact of copyright directive changes on the British economy.
Mr Mollet said that the time is now ripe for ministers to perform a U-turn and signal to the European Commission that they wish to call a halt on reform and manoeuvre their stance to one that is supportive of British creators.
Ministers “need to make crystal clear that until such time as there is a full assessment of the impact of the proposals there should be no pushing for new provisions for copyright at EU level,” according to the publisher.
Meanwhile, the backlash from the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act continues on blogs and forums, with campaigners also calling on the Government to rethink.
Until now, ownership of a creation was automatically and legally considered to be the creator’s property, meaning that the creator could sue anyone who tried to exploit it.
However, the Act contains changes to UK copyright law, which permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the owner is missing, called “orphan works”, by placing the work into what’s known as “extended collective licensing” schemes.
Since most digital images on the internet today are orphans, as the metadata is missing or has been stripped by a large organisation, millions of photographs and illustrations are being swept into such schemes.