Be a copyright activist!

In a speech today WIPO Director General Francis Gurry set out his vision for the future of copyright:

History shows that it is an impossible task to reverse technological advantage and the change that it produces. Rather than resist it, we need to accept the inevitability of technological change and to seek an intelligent engagement with it. There is, in any case, no other choice – either the copyright system adapts to the natural advantage that has evolved or it will perish. Adaptation in this instance requires, in my view, activism.

I am firmly of the view that a passive and reactive approach to copyright and the digital revolution entails the major risk that policy outcomes will be determined by a Darwinian process of the survival of the fittest business model. The fittest business model may turn out to be the one that achieves or respects the right social balances in cultural policy. It may also, however, turn out not to respect those balances. The balances should not, in other words, be left to the chances of technological possibility and business evolution. They should, rather, be established through a conscious policy response.

He set out three guiding principles: neutrality to technology, simplifying copyright and a coherent policy response (including a key role for internet intermediaries, global licensing and inviting ‘pirates’ to share responsibility for the threat to the financial viability of culture).