The Government has accepted proposals to modernise the UK's copyright laws in order to boost the economy and keep up to date with new technologies.

Copyright law exists to protect creators of original work from those seeking to hijack their enrichment by copying the finished product, and in doing so avoid expending the time, costs and effort associated with the development of those works. Without this protection, there would be no economic incentive for anyone to create the ideas upon which industry thrives.

The music and film industry is particularly vulnerable to counterfeit markets; and even more so since the advent of the digital age, which has allowed the pirate copy CD and DVD industry to flourish and draw significant revenue streams away from the artists responsible for the production of popular music and film, in the process.

Copyright exceptions

Presently, copyright law will not prevent copying of original work where doing so delivers benefits which outweigh the need to protect creators. Those exceptions however are only available for narrow, mostly non-commercial uses such as criticism, news reporting, research and archiving.

That could be about to change as the government seeks to catch up with technological and social changes by introducing new exceptions such as the following:

• Private copying exception – private copying is widely carried out and tolerated in the UK, but is still a breach of copyright law. This has stifled entrepreneurs such as Martin Brennan, who created a music storage device allowing the user to 'rip' CDs directly onto its internal hard disk; this is innovative, yet technically breaks the law. Widening of this exception will reconcile the law with what consumers are already doing and will permit individuals to make copies for their own and immediate family's use on different media.
• Parody exception – the introduction of this exception will protect parodies such as the music video parody Newport State of Mind (based on Jay-Z's hit Empire State of Mind) which was a huge success on YouTube last year, but ended up being removed from the site after being hit by copyright law in the UK.
• Library archiving exception – Currently, copyright law prevents libraries from preserving certain content through digitalisation (making electronic copies).  This exception will seek to avoid such content deteriorating and being lost altogether.

Effects

It is estimated that reforms to UK intellectual property laws will encourage innovation and could benefit the economy by up to £8 billion by 2020. 

Reforms will also means that in future, copyright laws may no longer stand in the way of new innovative digital technologies from being set up in the UK. 'Cloud' music players such as Amazon Cloud Player recently launched in the US, are web based and allow users to host their music online and listen to it anywhere; though technically breach current UK copyright law. When the laws change, UK consumers will finally be able to benefit from such new technologies.

For more information about copyright law please call our helpline on 03700 86 86 86 or contact us online.

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