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Authors opposed to the Digital Economy Bill have expressed relief at the removal of Clause 43, which covered provisions for extended licensing as well as for orphan works.
The bill was passed through the Commons at speed last week in advance of the general election,
with contested areas—including Clause 43—omitted to allow passage to go ahead.
Authors and agents had expressed concern that the clause could authorise licensing bodies to grant copyright licences for works even where they did not own the copyright or act on the copyright holder’s behalf.
Gill Spraggs, of campaign group Action on Authors’ Rights, said it was “delighted” to see the clause fall by the wayside. She said: “The ‘orphan works’ provisions lacked the safeguards necessary to protect the rights of unlocated authors, and the government never did explain the intentions behind the proposals for extended licensing, which were troublingly broad and vague.”
Last week Publishers’ Association chief executive Simon Juden described the loss of the Digital Economy Bill’s orphan works clause as “a missed opportunity”. He clarified the trade body’s position on extended collective licensing as remaining “reserved”.
“As the content industries, we absolutely need to be providing solutions which supply access to orphan works, and we will urgently and actively discuss this with the incoming administration,” he said.
“However, we share concerns around extended collective licensing. On Clause 43, we took a view that the benefit of allowing access to orphan works outweighed the risks. However, now Clause 43 has been dropped, while we strongly believe collective licensing societies like the CLA should be able to write licenses for orphan works, our position on extended collecting licensing shouldn’t be assumed.”
Meanwhile, Public Lending Right registrar Jim Parker said the bill had cleared the way for the PLR scheme to be extended to library loans of e-books and audiobooks. Work on redrafting legislation would begin after the election.
“The collection of data on e-books will be quite different with issues around ISBNs, and with audiobooks we will have two new groups of rightsholders—not just the authors, but also the narrators and producers,” he said.