Matt Locke’s report on the keynote speech at Institute for Public Policy Research given by James Purnell, the creative industries minister.[via]
The speech announced the successor to Chris Smith’s ‘creative industries task force’ – a new policy initiative to support the creative industries in the UK. Most of the speech was quite routine, but he did announce a new project to deliver the Government’s manifesto pledge to review the copyright/IP laws for a digital world.
It would be a shame if the DCMS assumed that a monolithic protectionist approach was the best model for the creative industries, whilst ‘older’ industries were moving towards models that maximised the return on IP through more flexible approaches. Creative Commons, Backstage and the BBC’s Creative Archive License are breaking new ground in this area, and the DCMS should be encouraging more experiments like this, not discouraging them.
Given this statement at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport website.
DCMS sponsors the music industry acting as its advocate within Government. The Department works closely with leading players and trade associations to identify what the Government and industry can do to improve its economic performance.
It appears to me that the Department sees only the monolithic protectionist approach as a model for the music industry. It would be good if the other side of the argument could be effectively given to the minister, that perhaps British culture is not best served by ever increasing terms of copyright protection. That creative works that pass into the public domain do not enter a black hole but are liberated to be reinvigorated and reinterpreted by other artists.
Tags: copyright
