UK Government Launches Consultations on Regulating Collective Licensing Societies based on 2011 Report

The following is an excerpt from my post on the Canadian Intellectual Property Blog on September 11, 2013 dealing with the UK Government's decision to open a consultation for comments on an eventual law that will regulate copyright collective licensing bodies. The full version may be found here

On September 9, the UK Government launched a consultation initiative inviting comment on how copyright collective licensing agencies should be regulated. The consultation will result in new rules for copyright collectives and enforcement measures for the non-respect of those rules.  

Image by Renjith Krishnan

There is currently legislation on the books in the UK requiring copyright collectives to self-regulate. It would seem that the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) does not view these requirements alone as sufficient to address what many consider to be a critical issue for the way forward on digital copyright enforcement.  

The current consultation arose out of recommendations made in a 2011 policy paper known as the Hargreaves Report. A chapter of this Report dealt directly with the issue of collective copyright licensing in the digital age. While the comments of the Report may apply more broadly, much of the information discussed was in the context of the digital music market.