52 | LEGAL ADVICE | F INANCE AND MARKETS
internet piracy and the challenge of digital technology, copyright was "dead". Those involved in university teaching and research may have some sympathy with this view, given the restrictions it imposed on use of modern tools to disseminate, analyse and preserve copyright materials. However, conference delegates with a
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sense of history had reason to doubt his analysis. Copyright has been threatened by technological changes before, yet copyright owners and legislators have so far always managed to secure reforms, enabling copyright to adapt, survive and thrive.
Copyright reform – the daughter of invention Students of copyright will know that it has evolved constantly in response to technical and social changes. Examples abound – early on, balancing the interests of authors, publishers and the public arising from the arrival of the printing press; later, with the invention of gramophone records, the law being updated so that composers benefi t ed from the sale of recordings of their compositions. Copyright protection of fi lms came with moving pictures, performers obtained legal protection against bootleg recordings of performances in 1925, and in 1985, legislators felt it necessary to provide statutory confi rmation that computer programs were indeed copyright works. Copyright owners have also responded
to these challenges with the development of collecting societies, at fi rst so they could collect royalties from record companies and entertainment venues and distribute them to composers and publishers. Later, in response to rapid technology changes in the 1970s, other collection societies sprang up to deal with artistic works, newspapers and reproductions for educational purposes.
COPYRIGHT:
BACK FROM THE DEAD AND “FIT FOR THE INTERNET AGE?”
The call for change A growing awareness of the value to the UK economy of its knowledge and creative industries and institutions, and the challenges implicit in new digital technologies, led governments to commission a series of reports on intellectual property in the early 2000s. In 2010 the Prime Minister announced a review of intellectual property law, to ensure that it was "fi t for the internet age". Professor Ian Hargreaves led that
few years back, a prominent politician at a media conference declared that, overwhelmed by
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