Richard Hooper today published his diagnostic report on how fit for purpose is copyright licensing for the digital age. This is the first phase of the Digital Copyright Exchange Feasibility Study.
Today’s report concludes that relative to other countries in the world the UK’s copyright licensing processes compare well. But there is much that still could be improved.
Working closely with the creative industries themselves, Hooper identified a number of problems such as:
- Complexity in the way rights are licensed
- The complexity of organisations in terms of the numbers involved in licensing rights
- Less availability of repertoire (e.g. films) in digital services over the internet than in the physical world of CDs and DVDs
- Difficulty in finding out who owns the rights to particular content in specific countries
- Difficulty in paying creators fair and accurate shares of the revenues created by their copyright content
- Difficulty and expense in licensing copyright for the high volume/low value transactions that characterise the digital world
- A lack of common standards and a common language for sharing rights information between creative sectors and across national borders. Here to read more.
