Yesterday we launched a report on how to fix copyright (appropriately called Fixing Copyright), in which Dr Anton Howes sets out in detail how creativity is increasingly being dampened and innovation stifled by the current regime.
As Anton explains in this Tweet thread, copyright law has become a bit of a joke. Most of us are unintentionally breaking the law all the time, and while it has largely been unenforced, automation means that we’re about to enter an age of mass enforcement.
The report has a number of recommendations, including the creation of an exemption from copyright for format shifting for personal use; extending the exemption from copyright for text-and-data mining to for-profit uses; and limiting the liability for the use of orphan works that are of a certain age, provided the rightsholders have not registered the works on the government’s Orphan Works Register.
While there are limits to what can be reformed due to international treaties, we have more room for manoeuvre now we’ve left the EU (in fact, the UK has already decided not to implement the badly designed 2019 EU Directive on Copyright). The Directive is not all bad though. As Anton argues, we should implement Article 14, which stipulates that for something to be copyrighted, it must actually be original.
It’s a timely paper, but it’s also entertaining and informative (as you might expect from an award-winning writer). Read the report here, Anton’s article here, and our research director Sam Dumitriu’s article on the report here.
As always, we would value any feedback. Sooner or later, reform of some sort will become inevitable – not just in the UK but internationally. We have meetings lined up with the government to discuss this, so your considered thoughts will be properly considered by us. And as always, you can support us by sharing the report through social media or sending it on to people who you think might find it interesting.
Mission Impossible
Mariana Mazzucato is one of the most influential public intellectuals in innovation policy. Unlike so much academic work, her book, The Entrepreneurial State, cut through to politics, with successive governments inviting her in to advise them.
Mazzucato has been important (though probably not essential) in ensuring that successive governments have continued to fund research and development. But, as detailed here by Stian Westlake, her policy recommendations are less convincing (you can read Mazzucato’s response to Westlake here).
With a new book out, Mazzucato’s ideas will no doubt once more pique the interest of policymakers. ‘Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism’ makes the case for why governments should be inspired by the Apollo programme for solving problems.
Writing in the FT, John Kay isn’t convinced. Kay’s argument is that a key component of innovation is the pressure of market forces – including failure. Unlike the moon landings, Kay argues that the development of IT, perhaps the greatest innovation we’ve seen lately, “was characterised by a striking absence of centralised vision and direction.” Though he doesn’t frame it in Darwinian terms, failure and the redirection of resources to more productive uses is an essential part of why market economies trump those directed from the centre.
There is a lot that governments can do to support entrepreneurship, but more often than not they mess up incentives. For example, Mazzucato has suggested the UK government creates a sovereign wealth fund that invests and takes stakes in innovative companies.
I think there are objectively successful sovereign wealth funds; however, as I argue in this article, the management of these is diametrically opposite to the way Mazzucato wants the government to run one. There has never been an example of a fund of the sort Mazzucato wants being run successfully – I’m sceptical that there ever will be. While governments are in a unique position to tax and spend money on research whose spillovers make us all better off, there are limits to their ability to invest successfully.
Along these lines, Nicolas Colin has a great article in Sifted this week on why the EU is wrong to invest directly in startups. And as Josh Lerner argues in the brilliant Boulevard of Broken Dreams, sovereign wealth funds face the same problems as other government schemes to promote venture activity: “the temptation to invest too locally without considering broader options, a failure to assess performance, and pressures to invest in the ‘pet projects’ of political leaders and their associates.”
Peer(more)
We have been long-term champions of peer networks. So we are only too happy to pass on this opportunity from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for their Peer Networks programme. It aims to support you to find practical solutions to the challenges you're facing and new opportunities. They are delivered locally by Growth Hubs and supported by local enterprise partnerships. It’s for businesses in England with 5 or more employees that have been in business for at least a year, with turnover of over £100,000 and an aspiration to improve. Apparently it takes less than three minutes to enquire.
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