[A2k] UK govt proposes fair use for EU

[Jeff Williams]

Ian and all,

  Yes, and perhaps Vint Cerf should be paying closer
attention to this along with the rest of Google/YouTube's
management.

Ian Brown wrote:

> 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
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Regards,

--
Jeffrey A. Williams
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