A pilot version of the ‘Copyright Hub’, recommended by the Hooper report, went online last month in a bid to make it easier for people to track down and license copyrighted works legally on the internet.
Following the Hargreaves independent review of intellectual property in 2011, the Government commissioned a report by Dr Richard Hooper towards leading a feasibility study on developing a not-for-profit, industry-led Digital Copyright Exchange, in which he recommended the creation of a UK-based Copyright Hub.
The Hub has the following five main purposes:
1. Act as a signposting and navigation mechanism to the complex world of copyright;
2. Be the place to go for copyright education;
3. Be the place where any copyright owner can choose to register works, the associated rights to those works, permitted uses and licences granted;
4. Be the place for potential licensees to go for easy-to-use, transparent, low transaction cost copyright licensing via, for example, digital copyright exchanges (DCEs), acting in effect as a marketplace for rights; and
5. Be one of the authoritative places where prospective users of orphan works can go to demonstrate that they have done proper, reasonable and due diligent searches for the owners of those works before they digitise them.
In its current pilot form, which has been funded by a £150,000 grant from the Government, the Copyright Hub provides links to only a handful of copyright databases, including the BBC picture library and Getty Images.
However, the intention is for more information and resources to be developed and the number of linked databases to be increases substantially, as part of the current pilot phase. Further development of the Hub will continue in 2015.