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UK Government Policy Statement Published

Submitted by veraliah on Tue, 03/07/2012 - 14:17

In a policy statement, published on 2 July 2012 (available here), the UK Government announced that it intends to introduce legislation to enable schemes to be introduced for the use of orphan works, voluntary extended collective licensing and codes of conduct for collecting societies as soon as possible.

In particular, the following items included in the policy statement seem worth highlighting:
 
1) Orphan works:
- There will be diligent search prior to the use;
- Both commercial and non-commercial uses will be permitted;
- Permission will be granted at "an appropriate price - a market rate", payable in advance;
- There will be a registry of orphan works;
- The scheme will not be based on an exception, but on authorisation by an independent body;
- No sector or type of work will be necessarily excluded (e.g., analogue photographs will be included, but not digital photographs).
- There will be sector-specific solutions to recognise the very real differences between different types of copyright works and their uses;
- Detailed consultations will follow to determine the identity of “authorising bodies”. It is not clear that they will necessarily be CMOs.
 
2) ECL:
- The UK Government will introduce legislation to enable voluntary ECL by CMOs, in particular for high-volume, low-value transactions with high administrative costs for clearance;
- CMOs will decide on the scope/scale of any application against the context of the ECL safeguards.
- The principles for ECL schemes largely follow the recommendations of CLA contained in its submissions, namely that:
     -  ECL schemes will be voluntary in nature and will have to be applied for in each case,
     -  rightholders can always ‘opt out’ of such schemes,
     -  bodies applying to run ECL schemes will have to demonstrate that they have the support of their members, and
     -  that they are genuinely representative of the rightholders affected by the scheme;
     -  bodies wishing to run ECL schemes will have to have a satisfactory code of conduct in place.
 
3) Codes of conduct for CMOs:
- The UK Government will legislate to allow the introduction, through regulations, of "a backstop power to enable the application of a statutory code of conduct" (in the event of failure by a CMO to implement or adhere to a voluntary code, with minimum standards);
- The UK Government will develop draft regulations for codes of conduct, both through an existing informal working group of users and CMOs, and through wider consultation.