New copyright regulations make their debut

✍ Scribed by Stephen Saxby

• Book ID: 104321945
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 68 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0267-3649
• DOI: 10.1016/s0267-3649(03)00601-0

✦ Synopsis

So, the waiting is over. On 27 September the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (No. 2498) were laid before Parliament, coming into force on 31 October. Their purpose, of course, is to implement EC Directive 2001/29/EC 1 (the Information Society Directive) which itself came into force on 22 June 2001. This is the latest in a line of directives from the EU intended to harmonise rules on intellectual property "relevant to the global challenge of digital technology"digitalisation, digital compression and improvements to bandwidth. 2 Essentially, its purpose is to implement the Copyright Treaty and Performances and Phonograms Treaty adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in 1996 to combat online infringement and to catch up with the United States -which adopted the treaties, via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as long ago as 1998.