The Impact of DRM on Access to Exceptions: First Empirical Assessment

"The Impact of DRM on Access to Exceptions: The First Empirical Assessment" is the title of a talk which Dr Patricia Akester (Centre for IP and Information Law, University of Cambridge) gives next Wednesday, 1 July 2009. I'm chairing the event, which is kindly hosted in the London office of law firm McDermott Will & Emery.

Right: some forms of digital management leave the customer feeling distinctly manipulated ...

According to information provided by the Intellectual Property Institute -- whose seminar this is:

"Dr Akester will be talking about a project she undertook looking at the impact of technological measures on the ability of users to take advantage of certain statutory exceptions to copyright. When technological measures were under consideration in the mid 1990s two stark scenarios presented themselves: on the one hand, an ideal world where copyright owners could use DRM to make their works available under a host of different conditions in a way that responded to the diversity of consumer demand; on the other, a more bleak environment where all users of copyright material (and much non-copyright material) would be forced to obtain permission and pay to access material that previously would have been available to all.

In the face of these two extreme visions, the European legislature developed a compromise position, embodied notoriously in Article 6(4) of the Information Society Directive. The legislature appeared to be hoping that rightholders would voluntarily make material within certain specified exceptions available to users.

Based on a series of interviews with key organisations and individuals, involved in the use of copyright material and the development and deployment of DRM, Dr Akester examined how these issues are working out in practice".

This will be a lovely event, so don't miss it. You can get all the details from the IPI's website here. It's £60 for casual attendees, £30 for IPI members and IPKat readers. If you're a student or an academic, entry is free. If you're coming in order to sound off about Digital Britain, you pay double. See you there?