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The government has delayed the implementation of copyright exceptions regarding parody and private copying, following concerns raised about the wording of the exceptions.
In March the government published a series of proposed changes to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The amendments, known as statutory instruments (SIs) were due to be adopted formally as law this summer.
But the government has now delayed the implementation of two of the five sets of SIs.
Last month the British Copyright Council (BCC) wrote to the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments (JCSI) and the House of Lords Secondary Legislation Committee (SLC) explaining how it felt the wording of some SIs failed to meet specific requirements of EU law, and this week the SLC took the unusual step of questioning Viscount Younger of Leckie, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), about the proposed changes.
In a statement released today, Viscount Younger said: “The government welcomes the fact that the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments has concluded its consideration of three of the five copyright exceptions statutory instruments (SIs).
“The Public Administration, Disability, and Research, Education, Libraries & Archives SIs will all be discussed in Parliament next week and subject to parliamentary approval will come into force on 1st June 2014.
“The committee has some questions about the private copying and parody exceptions that they would like to discuss with us. It is not unusual for the committee to want to spend more time considering SIs, but it will have implications for the timetable given where we are in the parliamentary cycle.
It is likely to mean these two SIs are implemented later than 1st June 2014.
“While this delay is disappointing for both the government and many of our stakeholders, the government remains firmly committed to implementing each of these important exceptions to copyright law as soon as possible.”
The SI on copying work for text and data analysis for non-commercial research say copyright is not infringed if a “copy is made in order that a person who has lawful access to the work may carry out a computational analysis of anything recorded in the work for the sole purpose of research for a non-commercial purpose”.
The copy also needs to be “accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement (unless this would be impossible for reasons of practicality or otherwise)”.
Copyright is infringed if the copy is transferred to another person or the copy is used for a purpose other than non-commercial research without the permission of the copyright owner.
The parody SI gives people the right to use a work for parody, pastiche and caricature.