U.K. creative industries are “busy streamlining copyright licensing for the...

review of whether the country’s copyright regime is fit for the digital environment. The “diagnostic phase” noted several major issues with the system; the report published Tuesday set out possible solutions. The fact that the music, publishing, audiovisual and image sectors are working on making licensing easier means the U.K. will strengthen its No. 1 position in the e-world, and that some of the “excuses” for “justifying” copyright infringement on the fixed and mobile Internet have been erased, wrote authors Richard Hooper and Ros Lynch. But the need to streamline licensing processes “never ends,” they said. The report’s key recommendation is for a “not-for-profit, industry-led Copyright Hub based in the U.K. that links interoperably and scalably to the growing national and international network of private and public sector digital copyright exchanges, rights registries and other copyright-related databases, using agreed cross-sector and cross-border data building blocks and standards, based on voluntary, opt-in, non-exclusive and pro-competitive principles.” Issues that must be resolved include, it said: (1) Data building blocks, such as standard international identifiers for works, their creators and accompanying rights, that enable development of better databases that are able to talk to each other across sectors. (2) Less-complex and expensive licensing of digital services. (3) Technical solutions to problems around orphan works whose owners can’t be contacted, and mass digitization, particularly by libraries, archives and museums. (4) “Repertoire imbalance” between what’s available in the physical world, such as on DVDs, and what can be obtained via downloads. To ensure that industry maintains momentum on these issues, the report recommended the creation of a steering group to facilitate cross-sector coordination. The creative industries have agreed in principle to fund an office to continue the work for one year, subject to discussion with the government, and the report recommended that the office be independent and industry-led. It also urged sectors other than the music industry to commit to an annual report to the government detailing their progress. The copyright hub is “potentially a ground-breaking step forward,” said Business Secretary Vince Cable. U.K. digital media lawyer Laurence Kaye praised the report for identifying the key issues needed to harness technology and the Web to make finding and licensing protected works cross-sectorally and internationally “as easy as search is today. Of course, the devil is in the implementation but we must laud the vision.” Separately, French citizens’ rights group La Quadrature du Net, fresh off the defeat of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, floated its vision for reform of copyright and related rights (http://xrl.us/bniy8f). Fighting the non-market sharing of digital works “has been a constant obsession during the past fifteen years,” the document said. It recommended that policymakers adapt to the digital world the legal doctrine of exhaustion of rights. That holds that when one takes possession of a copy of a work, some exclusive rights that previously applied to it no longer exist, making it possible to lend, give, sell and sometimes rent it, the organization said. Applying the concept to digital content would lead to the re-acknowledgment that copyright “has nothing to say” about non-market sharing of digital works between individuals and would open the door to recognition of new social rights to remuneration and access to financing for contributors, it said. Other proposals included: (1) Solid exceptions for educational and research practices. (2) Giving libraries and archives the right to make orphan works available free and with wide usage rights. (3) Creating non-market collective use policies, such as by turning the exception for public performances within the family circle into a non-commercial public performance exception. (4) Fairer digital publishing and distribution contacts. (5) Compulsory registration of works by authors. (6) Maintaining and expanding a free common infrastructure that combines open devices and net neutrality.