Events

A Fair Deal on Copyright ?

A mini-conference organised by the Foundation for Information Policy Research

WHEN: 5.30pm-7pm, Wednesday 25 September 2002

WHERE: The Hong Kong Theatre, Clement House, LSE, The Aldwych, London WC2A 2AE

Hosted by the Department of Information Systems, London School of Economics

Admission is free, but space is limited, so please RSVP to <fairdeal02@fipr.org> if you would like to attend

The Internet has presented a dramatic challenge to the existing copyright regime. Rights holders such as the music and film industry claim that their businesses are losing many millions of dollars each year to file-swapping networks such as Napster and its successors. One of their main responses has been to lobby for changes in copyright legislation to restrict the ability of consumers to extract and exchange content on-line.

The UK government is now holding a consultation on legislation to update UK law in this area, based on the European Union's recent Copyright Directive. This would criminalise certain copyright infringements and circumvention of technology that controls access to media such as DVDs.

Would the draft legislation properly balance the incentives given to content creators through copyright, with the benefits to society of the free exchange of information? What effect will criminalising "circumvention technologies" have on computer and Internet security? Will authors, musicians and film-makers needing to sample previous works become criminals?

At this conference you can debate the issues with speakers from the Patent Office and open source and library communities, and hear how well similar US legislation has worked in practice.

Speakers:

• The Patent Office
  Intro and Q&A on the copyright consultation
• Julian Midgley, FIPR
  Problems with the draft legislation
• Toby Bainton, Society of College, National and University Libraries
  The effect on the UK's libraries
• Barbara Simons, Association for Computing Machinery
  Where the United States went wrong on copyright

Background

The Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC) - UK Implementation, The Patent Office

Critique of the Proposed UK Implementation of the EU Copyright Directive, Julian Midgley

ACM briefings on the US Digital Millenium Copyright Act

Media contacts

Ian Brown, Director, FIPR: ian@fipr.org / 07970 164 526
Ross Anderson, Chair, FIPR: rja@fipr.org / 01223 33 47 33