Obstructive copyright slammed

The law on copyright has come under attack from the British Academy , which says its misuse is impeding new ideas.

A report on copyright from the scholarly body for the arts and humanities said copyright holders were obstructing many academic researchers by trying to stop them quoting from their work or demanding substantial payments. It accused commercial rights holders, particularly in the music industry, of being over-aggressive in defending their rights.

“Existing copyright law is vague, and few people are prepared to challenge copyright holders in court,” said John Kay , chair of the working group that compiled the report. “Publishers are risk-averse and not inclined to challenge other publishers’ assertions. In no individual case are the stakes so high it’s worth spending loads of money on legal cases.”

Kay expressed concern that many copyright holders were using digital technologies to circumvent the “fair dealing” copyright exemptions provided for in UK law.

“The law should not allow people to do via technology what they wouldn’t be allowed to do otherwise,” he said. “If it is legitimate to copy material in terms of the Copyright Act , it should not be legitimate to use a digital rights management system to circumvent that exemption.”

The report also criticised the EU database directive , which extends copyright protection to databases.

“Databases may become de facto monopolies of access to quite a lot of material,” warned Kay.

“If you think of material that is well out of copyright , at the moment you generally have fairly easy access to this through a variety of libraries. If this becomes digitised, which is a more economic and effective way of storing it, the number of points of access may become fewer,” said Kay.

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