Modernising Copyright: the Irish plan

Here, via our good friend Deirdre Kilroy (LK Shields, Dublin), comes a link to “Modernising Copyright”, published by the Irish government-appointed Copyright Review Committee. It's a 180-page document which will take some reading and digesting. According to the Summary of Recommendations

"The centerpiece recommendations relate to the establishment of a Copyright Council of Ireland and specialist intellectual property tracks in the District and Circuit Courts, and to the introduction of tightly-drawn exceptions for innovation, fair use, and very small snippets of text in the context of online links. 

The position of rightsowners will be improved, by recommendations to extend remedies, technological protection measures, and rights management information. Furthermore, photographers in particular will benefit from the recommendation that copyright protection for metadata be strengthened.

The position of copyright users will also be improved, by recommendations to introduce the full range of exceptions permitted by EU law, including format-shifting, parody, education, disability, and heritage, as well as related exceptions for non-commercial user-generated content and content mining. Furthermore, copyright deposit libraries, in particular, will benefit from the recommendation that the existing legal copyright deposit provisions be extended to digital publications. Finally, all users will benefit from a comprehensive recommendation that any contract term which unfairly purports to restrict an exception permitted by the Act should be void".

We look forward to posting more about this, both in terms of readers' comments and from our cousins in Ireland who have been involved in these proposals or who may be affected by them.