Publishers fight UK Government Text and Data Mining Plans
CLA, NLA and UK publishers are fighting to overturn a government proposal to waive all copyright restrictions on text and data mining activity. PDLN has added its support to a publisher complaint. The roots of the issue lie in a report by Professor Abbott for the IPO on artificial intelligence which seemed somewhat lacking in analysis and understand of the fact that making it easy to copy open online publisher material – newspaper websites – might damage commercial interests. The hope to make UK a ‘global AI superpower’ has echoes of the pro Google relaxation proposed by Hargreaves a decade ago. The fact NLA and CLA offer licences to cover the activity seems to have escaped the professor, and the governments eagerness to wrap this up as a Brexit dividend has exacerbated matters. There is hope a more commercial and pragmatic
The long running action between Copyright Austarlian – the licensing body – and MMOs has a twist in the tail. Despite the Copyright Tribunal supporting the MMO objection and (very strangely) ordering the major publishers not to pull out of the deal, MMOs have woken up to the fact that the order lasts three years and the dominant local publishers News and Fairfax will clearly head for the hills as soon as they can. Accordingly iSentia and Cision owned Streem are now keen to find a way forward. And Meltwater have found that publishers have no incentive to access to paywall websites, payment for which is outside the Copyright Tribunals terms of reference. Moral of the story seems to be you get what you pay for. And that while lawyers may enjoy tribunals, they can rarely overturn commercial common sense.
