Gowers Review of Intellectual Property

At the Enterprise Conference on 2 December 2005, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that, as part of the Pre-Budget Report 2005 package, he was asking Andrew Gowers to lead an Independent Review to examine the UK's intellectual property framework.

The Open Rights Group has been formally invited to participate. We are currently drafting our submission and wish to include your thoughts and opinions. We have reproduced the Call for Evidence below and invite you to contribute - just hit 'respond' next to the paragraph you wish to comment on.

Many of the questions asked by Andrew Gowers in this review are very focused, but you should feel free to comment on the issues and the wider implications rather than feel obliged to provide specific answers. If you want to talk about issues not raised by this call for evidence, please do - just leave your comments on the Introduction.

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  • Copyright © digital rights management

    Background: Increasingly digital media content is distributed with digital rights management (DRM) technologies that can enable rights-holders to track usage and prevent unlicensed copying by technological means. However concerns have been raised about interoperability and that such technologies may impair the content consumer’s legal rights. For example they may be unable to take into account exceptions to copyright, the ultimate expiry of copyright term, or the future evolution of technology. They may therefore undermine legitimate rights to access digital content, now and in the future. (NB: We are aware of all formal submissions that have been made to the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group on this issue.)
    (a) Do you have a view on how the use of digital rights management technologies should be regulated?

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2 responses

  1. Kevin Marks Says:
    March 14th, 2006 at 00:44

    Note that ORG has collected its own and others’ APIG submissions on its wiki.

  2. Andrew Sidwell Says:
    March 17th, 2006 at 22:04

    (a) DRM should be left unregulated (to regulate it would be to give it more permanency than it deserves), but there should be a specific anti-circumvention law allowing circumvention for personal and private use. To do otherwise would be extending the copyright term infinitely for DRM-protected works.