Getting Going with Gowers

The Gower Review was an important document for the UK. It offered a thoughtful and rigorous analysis of the current copyright situation there, and looked at some of the problems the new digital world has with current copyright legislation. It also made a number of pretty sensible recommendations - even if it chickened out of calling for a reduction in some copyright terms, which Gowers himself admits that pure logic calls for.

Now we have the question of how that Review will be implemented. To move things on, here's a consultation document from the UK Government asking for people's views.

The main issues it considers are how to:

* enable schools and universities to make the most of digital technologies and facilitate distance learning;

* allow libraries and archives to use technology to preserve valuable material before it deteriorates or the format it is stored on becomes obsolete;

* introduce a format shifting exception to allow consumers to copy legitimately purchased content to another format, for example CD to MP3, in a manner that does not damage the interests of copyright owners; and

* provide a new exception for parody.

Specifically, it asks how those exceptions should be implemented. And I have to say, it does that with real intelligence. The questions it poses, soliciting input, are spot-on in terms of exploring the ramifications of copyright changes. I thoroughly recommend a slow perusal of the main document, since it provides a wonderful introduction to the thorny issues that copyright in the digital age must deal with.

None is thornier than DRM. Again and again in this document, questions arise about how people can be given the ability to derive the full benefit of copyright material when DRM gets in the way - and to what extent they should be allowed to circumvent it.

Of course, my answer is simple: get rid of the whole damn lot. Even a year or two that might have seemed radical or utopian, but with nearly all the main record labels embracing that strategy - and the film companies about to begin their own slow slouch towards Bethlehem - I think it will soon be seen as the best and most sensible thing to do.