Relaxed Copyright Laws on the Way
Copyright law is one area of legislation that is most regularly broken in the UK, particularly by people who generally regard themselves as law-abiding.
Every time you photocopy a page from a book or a newspaper article, not to mention every CD you burn on to your MP3 player, it is a criminal violation of the owners' or artists' copyright.
Recognition that it was time to make major changes to a law that is routinely ignored, led the Government to commission a report, in 2006, on how copyright law might sensibly be reformed to reflect the realities of the digital age.
The Government has now accepted many of the report's recommendations, and a consultative process is underway to decide how relaxation of the law to allow limited private copying for non-commercial use might be enabled.
While details of the solutions under consideration have not been made public at the time of writing, it is understood that neither multiple copying nor file sharing over the Internet are likely to become lawful. Consultation is underway, but it is too early to say when the changes might be introduced.
Visit the UK Intellectual Property Office 'What's new in copyright' page at www.ipo.gov.uk/copy/c-whatsnew.htm for possible future updates on the situation.
Call Marti Burgess on 0117 9290451 or email mburgess@metcalfes.co.uk for more information.
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