Wednesday 26 September 2012

Further musings on copyright reform (1)

Slight change of plan. I was going to post a single blog on this but it might ramble on so instead I'll post a number of them as I work through and come back and correct any errors or misunderstandings.

For the last couple of evenings I have been reading the second half of the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) report on copyright reform.
I do these things for you...
I summarised my feelings on the first half here: Proposed UK Copyright reforms draft paper out

The second part of the report covers "Streamlining copyright licensing for the digital age" and yet, just 14 pages into the 76 of the report, I find myself wondering if a) they use the word "streamlining" in the same way that most of us would and b) if they're really aware of what's actually happening out there in the digital age.
I'm making these notes as I go along but things that concern me so far are:
In respect of streamlining the process, the first half of the report seems to make things more complex (as bemuso explains here).
In respect of understanding the digital age:
1) they appear to think that the representative groups from the analogue age still speak for the digital generations.
2) they appear to think that creators and consumers are two distinct groups and don't appear to understand the sheer volume of amateur / unpaid content creators out there.
3) they still don't appear to have grasped the scale of the issue they're attempting to solve, this is indicated by a suggestion that you-tube users would apply to license the music that's being played in the background of an amateur video.
Hello! Over 48 hours of video is uploaded every minute, how in the name of all that's holy do you intend to police this? Because if you can't, then people will just skip past your pain-in-the-arse (and probably stupidly expensive) licensing step and upload anyway.
sheesh.
Anyway, back to my reading.

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