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It’s about time to put R&D and innovation at the heart of our strategy for the future which requires prioritising access to knowledge regimes that benefit researchers.
Knowledge Rights 21
Government digital regulation fails research
M AKING sure all
regulations of science and R&D are positive is the prime reason why Knowledge
Rights 21 exists and a matter of major public interest. With the many economic, environmental and social challenges we face today, the government cannot afford to waste money or under- perform.
The UK’s traditional strong
performance on research, development and innovation must not be taken for granted. It’s about time to put R&D and innovation at the heart of our strategy for the future which requires prioritising access to knowledge regimes that benefit researchers.
But it has become increasingly obvious that when governments seek to regulate issues caused by digitalisation (or when deciding not to), the needs of research and education organisations are all too often ignored. This results in either a failure to intervene, making access to information worse – as we see with the ever deteriorating situation universities and public libraries face with eBooks (
https://bit.ly/3Uk3XSz) – or a clumsy intervention that forgets the realities of universities, libraries and research organisations in the digital environment, making their work harder.
Open letter
This issue recently led Knowledge Rights 21 to work with other organisations and issue an open letter to the Secretary General of the European Commission (
https://bit.ly/4aUHZuU) who is responsible for its better regulation agenda. Broadly speaking the statement underlines the need to:
● Review the European Union’s Innovation Principle to ensure it reflects the importance of public sector research and education (right now, it only focuses on private sector innovation);
April-May 2024 Access
In contrast to the EU, the UK is marked by a lack of regulation to help the sector. Despite having some of the worst conditions for accessing eBooks in the English-speaking world (Giblin, R. et al. What can 100,000 books tell us about the international public library e-lending landscape?) there appears to be no appetite to secure stable access for libraries to eBooks on reasonable terms. The UK government also did a u-turn on its promise to update UK copyright law – the 2014 text and data mining exception – which would have helped the sector. Copyright law is an area where the government could actually locate a socalled “brexit benefit” by doing away with one of the ongoing hang-overs from EU copyright law: the limitation of research copying to non-commercial copying only.
The UK could revert to pre-2001 research flexibilities which allowed copying for research purposes whether done by an individual or by a business, and yet it has failed to do so.
Support
By maintaining unnecessary restrictions on commercial uses, applying an unrealistic and impractical conceptual divide between commercial and non- commercial uses, such activities are systemically undermined.
Another area where science, innovation and research could be supported is if the
UK were to follow the lead of the US and the countries in Asia known for their cutting-edge technology, and introduce flexible information access regimes, other wise known as “open norms” or general, flexible exceptions to copyright law. In 2023 Knowledge Rights 21 commissioned Bournemouth University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and Management to investigate more flexible approaches to copyright law. Copyright and Open Norms in Seven Jurisdictions: Benefits, Challenges and Policy Recommendations (
https://bit.ly/4b04xu3) explores the use of open norms in the US, Canada, Israel, Japan, Sri Lanka, South Korea and Singapore and concludes they have a number of benefits and few if any drawbacks. Beyond the obvious benefits for industry, further positives of open norms include, “allowing a country’s creative, educational and research sectors to progress effectively, and benefit from developments in technology in a timely manner.” For more information see:
https://bit.ly/4cXACER In conclusion, copyright regulates how information technologies drive innovation so there is a lot the UK government could do to support research, knowledge transfer and education. The question is whether (most likely the next government) has the capacity and wherewithal to engage in this area of policy making. Desperate for growth, there is a lot to suggest that they certainly should.
https://bit.ly/4cXACER. IP
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 43
● Update the Commission’s Better Regulation Toolkit and guidance on impact assessment to take better account of higher education and research and protect academic freedom
Rafts of legislation including the Digital Services Act, Data Act, Copyright in the Digital Single Markets Directive and more recently the AI Act equate digital activities solely with the actions of private actors, to the detriment of our public institutions.
Ben White is one of the founders of Knowledge Rights 21 and co-chair of its policy committee.
INSIGHT
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