COPYRIGHT HUB
As it plans to provide access to orphan works, could the Hub adopt any measures to counter this potential problem?
“I think the Copyright Hub will definitely
encourage high standards, which is a crucial part of this story,” Hooper says.
“If licensing is easier, there will be more and better services on the Internet, fixed and mobile.”
Hooper suggests that the Hub may reduce the need for changes to copyright law. While there will always be tweaks and smaller changes to be made, he says, “if you spend energy, time and resources, the net result is less need for changes to copyright law”.
Future
At the time of print, the Copyright Hub is two months into its pilot phase. It is taking care to start small and expand only as it learns how people want to use it, and demand for the service grows. Early traffic data is “encouraging”, Hooper says.
Sherrell describes the Hub’s “incremental approach” as sensible: “It is likely to complement and benefit from some of the recent and
forthcoming changes in copyright law, rather than be a substitute for them,” he says.
In the next few months, Hooper says, the Hub will start linking to other organisations, and later still, a “federated searches” function will be implemented, allowing users to search the Hub’s ever-expanding database in a smarter way.
“Te exact nature of what form the Hub will take in those future phases is still up for grabs and open for discussion,” says Lake, although as the Hub evolves, he hopes its values don’t change. “Tere are certain basic principles in place that we would want to stick to, and the most important one of those is that it doesn’t cannibalise existing business, and doesn’t do what is already being done by BAPLA members and other picture libraries,” he says.
John Wilks, partner at DLA Piper in London, says that if the Hub becomes more sophisticated, it could enable increased competition in the market for copyright licensing.
“Whether this happens will depend in part on market forces, in particular on the extent to which both licensors and licensees use the Hub as a licensing platform, and also on the extent to which the Hub can be expanded internationally.”
Wilks agrees with Hooper’s recommendation to create the Hub as an independent industry-led body, rather than a government agency. “Te latter option may well have led to an expensive IT project that was out of
touch with the
realities of the fast-moving market for digital rights,” he says.
Looking elsewhere, Hooper says Europe has shown “great interest” in the Hub, and Australia is looking into establishing its own version.
“Te Hub, while it’s a UK initiative and has a UK leadership, is inevitably international for the simple reason that the Internet, and the digital world that we live in today, don’t recognise international borders,” Hooper says.
“Second, the Internet is, by its very nature, multimedia,” he. “Because of the wonderful nature of digital technology, the noughts and ones can carry text, sound and pictures, still or moving.”
So while digital copyright may throw up some challenges in terms of licensing, the very nature of
the medium creates benefits, too, allowing
schemes such as the Copyright Hub to reinforce the concept that the Internet is a “global village”.
www.worldipreview.com
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 2, Issue 3
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