[A2k] UK govt proposes fair use for EU

[Ian Brown]

http://dooooooom.blogspot.com/2006/12/treasury-proposes-radical-
copyright.html

Prime-minister-in-waiting Gordon Brown is spinning the UK
government's new copyright proposals [1] as being tough on
enforcement. In reality they are proposing a radical shift in
European law in favour of consumers and creativity, to allow a
generic "fair use" exception (rather than the limited set of "fair
dealing" exceptions we have under the Copyright Directive Article 5.)

The Treasury obviously took notice of the pointed reminder in
Google's submission to the Gowers review that their indexing and
caching of websites, legal in the US, would be highly risky in UK. I
have heard the Publishers' Association copyright counsel frothing on
this subject in the past, claiming that Google should have to ask the
permission of every single website operator on the Internet before
indexing their sites. Search engines would simply not exist if that
was required.

Gordon Brown may be proposing copyright reform in the expectation
that there is not a hope in hell of the EU making such a radical
change to its laws. If the Hugenholtz review of the copyright acquis
made similar proposals, we might see just how "evidence-based"
European law really is. (The Commission's dismissal of evidence that
the Database Directive actively damages the database sector in the EU
is not a good precedent.)



[1] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2489166,00.html