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The government has published a series of changes to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, including giving people the right to use a work for parody, pastiche and caricature, and the right to copy work for text and data analysis for non-commercial research.
The amendments, known as statutory instruments (SIs) are due to be adopted formally as law this summer.
They follow the Hargreaves Review of 2010, which was set up to look at “barriers to growth” within the intellectual property system, and will affect how consumers “can use content like books, music, films and photographs” and “will also introduce greater freedoms in copyright law to allow third parties to use copyright works for a variety of economically and/or socially valuable purposes without the need to seek permission from copyright owners”.
The amendments are expected to become law in June.
The Intellectual Property Office said: "The changes make small but important reforms to UK copyright law and aim to end the current situation where minor and reasonable acts of copying which benefit consumers, society and the economy are unlawful. They also remove a range of unnecessary rules and regulations from the statute book in line with the government’s aim to reduce regulation.
"The government has consulted extensively on these changes and on the draft legislation, and listened carefully to the views of a wide range of stakeholders. As a result of this process, the legislation published today strikes an important balance between enabling reasonable use of copyright material in the modern age with minimal impact on copyright owners."
However Sam Edenborough, president of the Association of Authors Agents, said the group was “particularly concerned with the new exception created for parody, pastiche and caricature”.
He said: “Our view is that an exception for pastiche is a very broad gap through which one could sail a large boat. Parody is relatively easy to define but pastiche is very hard to define – musical pastiche is different to literary pastiche and so on. It always involves copying or mimicry. In theory someone could take large chunks of several works, stitch them together and claim the result is pastiche. It is unlikely to happen with any regularity but we feel this new exception is a further chipping away of an author’s rights.
“This isn’t the end of the world but it’s another blow to authors’ ability to earn a living from their writing.”
Richard Mollett, chief executive of the Publishers Association, said there were no surprises in the SIs, and that the PA would now be looking to make sure the guidance for consumers was clear. He said: “I think the main thing we are looking to do is tighten up the language in the explanatory notes which accompany the SIs. There is recipe for consumer confusion.”
The amendments include guidance on copying work for text and data analysis for non-commercial research, which 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 is 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 SIs also say the copying and use of extracts of works by educational establishments do not infringe copyright provided extracts are for instruction of a non-commercial purpose, and that no more than 5% of a work can be copied by or on behalf of an educational establishment in a period of 12 months.
The amendments, guidance and explanatory notes have been published online.