Peter Bradwell, campaigner at the Open Rights Group
On Wednesday morning the world of intellectual property (IP) - yes, there is such a thing - held its breath. The previous six months had seen an intense debate about IP in the digital age. Is it too restrictive? Do we need to do more to make sure people can't take work without creators being adequately compensated? It was all aimed towards Ian Hargreaves, professor of digital economy at Cardiff University, UK. He was tasked by British Prime Minister David Cameron with writing an independent review of how IP affects innovation and growth.
His report was released at 10 am on Wednesday. At 10.05 am it seemed that Hargreaves had pulled off the impossible: pleasing everyone. The IP policy debate has tended to be an unusually shrill and sometimes acrimonious affair. So this is no small feat.
But this does not mean his recommendations are timid. They should add up to a significant shift in policy direction. The report squares this circle because it clearly reflects a respect both for IP rights and their limits.
Until now IP policy seemed to have proceeded on the basis that all new technology could do was lose creative people money. Hargreaves does two things to challenge this assumption. He shows that it is possible to have more flexible rules to maximise the value society can get from works covered by IP at the same time as sustaining flourishing IP industries. He also criticises past policy-makers for not taking account of objective, robust evidence - in short, for policy-making on faith, not fact.
The review calls for a number of "exceptions" that would allow people to do lots of useful things with works under copyright. Archivists and libraries would be permitted to take care of more of our cultural heritage. Medical researchers would be allowed to take advantage of new research techniques like data and text mining. Parodies, perhaps such as videos like Newport State of Mind, would be less likely to be unnecessarily removed.
The review rejects importing a general "fair use" rule, largely because it is incompatible with how European Union IP law works. But it follows its principle - to stimulate as much useful activity as possible around a given work. Given the incredible opportunities that new technologies afford us towards greater access to, manipulation of and learning from information, that principle has vital economic and social consequences.
Perhaps the most subtly radical sections are about evidence and IP policy. The report repeatedly emphasises the need for sound evidence and knocks previous efforts for failing to use such evidence. Hargreaves also concludes that "there is no doubt that the persuasive powers of celebrities and important UK creative companies have distorted policy outcomes". The result has been that consumers and non-rights- holders are ignored, a focus simply on stricter enforcement of IP, and no reliable data that policy is tackling the right problem in the right way. It is strong stuff.
There's more in this substantial report, including challenging ideas like a one-stop shop for IP rights and a solution to the problem of "orphan works" whose rights-holders cannot be established and so remain unavailable. It also doesn't give everybody everything they want - for example around moral rights for creators, or trademarks.
But Hargreaves has given us an important blueprint. Of course it is one thing for a government to read an independent review and quite another for it to implement the recommendations. It should help that this is not the first review to arrive at these conclusions - the Gowers review, for example, made similar recommendations in 2006. Those were ultimately dropped.
This time there seems to be early support from the relevant ministers. Let's hope that all this good does not go to waste.
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