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Mike Weatherley puts focus on safe harbours with one last IP report

By | Published on Monday 30 March 2015

Mike Weatherly

As Parliament wound up last week ahead of the upcoming election most general, Mike Weatherley, outgoing MP for Hove and, for a time, IP Advisor to David Cameron, published one last paper on intellectual property issues in a bid to input on the current review of European copyright law in Brussels.

The focus of last week’s paper was the role of internet service providers and other web players in policing online piracy. And in particular the so called ‘safe-harbour’ clauses that were included in early internet regulation and which many in the content industries reckon have been used by web companies to knock back reasonable requests to stop third parties distributing unlicensed content online.

Although the safe-harbours contained in American law are more commonly discussed – with the ‘DMCA takedown requests’ now routinely filed by content companies against firms like Google stemming from the same legislation – similar provisions to protect tech companies were included in the European Union’s E-Commerce Directive in 2000.

Commenting on his latest paper, Weatherley told reporters: “As the former Intellectual Property Advisor to the Prime Minister, I felt that it was important to continue to highlight the issues that have grave consequences for our fantastic creative industries. The creative industries are huge contributors to our economy so it’s vital, in order to protect them, that the regulations which were set out in 2000 are updated. The broad scope of the Directive results in rights holders losing out to pirates on an industrial scale”.

The safe-harbours debate will be explored in more detail in the April edition of the CMU Trends Report, available to premium subscribers. But meanwhile, the newly vocal British Academy Of Songwriters And Composers has already welcomed Weatherley’s report, confirming that reform of safe-harbour rules are on its agenda too.

BASCA boss Vick Bain told reporters: “BASCA fully supports the conclusions and recommendations contained in Mike Weatherley’s report. We think there is an urgent need for a debate on the issues raised and on the role of ISPs in the ongoing battle against copyright infringement”.

She went on: “ISPs need to not only be ‘more proactive’ in taking down multiple copies of infringing works; they need to take down and keep down all copies of infringing works, not just the specific cases they are notified of. We would also encourage the UK Government to go even further, particularly on the subject of safe-harbour provisions, which are being systematically abused by some platforms, and we hope that this is the start of a constructive and collaborative debate on issues that directly impact songwriters and composers”.

You can read Weatherley’s report in full here.



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